April Meeting, 1935

A STATED Meeting of the Society was held, at the invitation of Mr. Kenneth G. T. Webster, at Gerry’s Landing, Cambridge, on Thursday, April 25, at eight o’clock in the evening, the President, Samuel Eliot Morison, in the chair.

The records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.

The Corresponding Secretary announced the death of Frank Brewer Bemis, a Resident Member, on March 10, 1935, and of the Hon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, an Honorary Member, on March 6, 1935.

The Corresponding Secretary reported that a letter had been received from Mr. Frank Wilson Cheney Hersey accepting Resident Membership in the Society.

Mr. Lawrence Counselman Wroth, of Providence, Rhode Island, was elected a Corresponding Member, and Mr. Zoltán Haraszti, of Boston, was elected an Associate Member of the Society.

The President appointed the following committees in anticipation of the Annual Meeting in November:

To nominate candidates for the several offices,—Dr. James Lincoln Huntington, Dr. Harold Bowditch, and Perry Miller.

To examine the Treasurer’s accounts,—Matt Bushnell Jones, Henry Lee Shattuck, and Raymond Walker Stanley.

Mr. Arthur H. Buffinton read the following paper:

The Massachusetts Experiment of 1630

AMONG the widely different opinions held concerning the Puritan settlers of New England, perhaps the only one on which there is general agreement is that they cannot be ignored. They had an abiding influence on American character and institutions, but whether that influence was for good or for evil has been a matter of much controversy. Earlier generations praised them as exiles for conscience sake, as pioneers of liberty and democracy. Of late they have been more often described as hypocritical religionists, as authors of an inhuman moral code which they imposed upon all within their reach, as rebels against authority who tyrannized over others.

It was this latter viewpoint which predominated five years ago when the tercentenary of the founding of Massachusetts was celebrated. During the preceding decade Mr. Mencken and his disciples had filled the magazines with gibes and taunts and tirades against Puritanism and everything connected with it. Many who felt that Mr. Mencken’s views were too prejudiced were impressed by the criticisms of Mr. James Truslow Adams, whose Founding of New England appeared at the beginning of the decade. Mr. Adams, it will be recalled, was willing to concede some merit to the settlers of Rhode Island and Connecticut, but the settlers of Massachusetts he pictured as men who did not believe in democracy, who ruthlessly disregarded the rights of minorities, and who dealt with the natives in anything but that spirit of trusteeship enjoined upon mandatory powers by the Covenant of the League of Nations. As for the Puritans being exiles for conscience sake, such an explanation could not stand the cynical scrutiny of a generation which sniffed the economic motive on every tainted breeze.

Those who in 1930 undertook to counter the blasts of Mr. Mencken and to neutralize the acid criticisms of Mr. Adams found themselves confronted with an almost impossible task. The public for which they were writing had already given an adverse verdict. Their utmost efforts, to quote the president of this Society, “left the American public completely cold.”892

But times have changed since 1930, and the present situation of affairs offers an opportunity to place the settlement of New England in a new light. The year 1935 finds the American people in the midst of a great social and political experiment. Nor is this situation peculiar to the United States, for our contemporary world abounds in experiments, which for number and variety cannot be matched in any other period of the world’s history.

For such an age the Massachusetts experiment of three centuries ago takes on a new significance, for it was one of the first of its kind in human history. Here, under unusually favorable conditions, the founders of this Commonwealth were able to put their ideas into practice, and to establish a new political and social order which differed in many respects from the characteristic political and social systems of Europe.

This view of the significance of the settlement of New England was suggested, perhaps for the first time, by Alexis de Tocqueville just a century ago. In his celebrated Democracy in America De Tocqueville described the settlers of New England as “daring innovators.” “Political principles and all human laws and institutions,” he says, “were moulded and altered at their pleasure; the barriers of the society in which they were born were broken down before them; the old principles which had governed the world for ages were no more; a path without a term and a field without a horizon were opened to the exploring and ardent curiosity of man.”893

To interpret the Massachusetts experiment in terms intelligible to the twentieth century is, however, not an easy task. The questions which concern us are the future of capitalism and democracy. In 1630, capitalism was in its infancy, and democracy, even as a theory of government, commanded the assent of only the most radical. We commonly think of experiments as forward-looking, as an attempt to put new social theories into action. The Massachusetts experiment was, in its origins, backward-looking. The political and social philosophy of the founders was Biblical and medieval. The system which they established in Massachusetts was consciously modelled on the Hebrew commonwealth and upon the Christian church-state of the Middle Ages. We expect Utopia to come from economic measures; they, in common with most of their generation, looked to religion for social regeneration.

By applying certain tests, however, it becomes possible to establish a basis for comparison between this experiment of the seventeenth century and the experiments of our own time. One such test which may be applied is that of the method employed in making the experiment. Judged by this test our modern experiments fall into two groups: those which have been carried out by revolutionary means, and those which strive to effect the necessary changes by existing constitutional methods.

The Massachusetts experiment belongs in the class of revolutionary movements, and only as such can it be understood. The fact that this was no ordinary migration of a body of Englishmen to the New World has been recognized by some of the most eminent students of the colonial period. “The settlement of New England,” wrote George Louis Beer, “was not the result of a normal expansion of the state, but was rather of the nature of a schism therein or of a secession therefrom.”894 And in his latest book Professor Andrews has asserted that Massachusetts Bay was “no ordinary offshoot of English colonization. It formed an exception to every known condition governing England’s expansion beyond the seas, for it was called into being for divine not human ends.”895

Winthrop and his friends who took control of the Massachusetts Bay Company in the summer of 1629 evidently intended to establish in New England a new community which should have as little connection as possible with that which they were leaving. Hence it was that they took the charter with them, that they established an independent church, and that as long as the first charter stood they and their successors consistently sought to interpret it as entailing a minimum of subordination to the government of England. English observers who described them as considering Massachusetts a free commonwealth were not far wrong.

If further evidence of the revolutionary character of the movement be necessary, it may be found in the characteristic signs of revolutionary psychology. Thus these Puritans had what has sometimes been called the persecution complex. Not long ago, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, there was a discussion as to whether the Puritans were really persecuted.896 Whether they were or were not persecuted may be a matter of debate, but it cannot be successfully denied, I think, that they believed that they were persecuted.

Another sign of the revolutionary temper of the Massachusetts settlers is their sense of being a chosen people and of having a divine mission. This idea is so prevalent in all their writings and is so familiar to us all that quotations are scarcely necessary. It animated leaders like Winthrop; it forms the theme of Captain Edward Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England; it became the accepted version of the beginnings of the colony embodied for later generations of New Englanders in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana.

This fact of the revolutionary character of the Massachusetts experiment will for many Americans constitute something of a barrier to a sympathetic understanding of it. Despite the fact that the United States owes its existence as an independent nation to a revolution and that the right of revolution was long regarded by Americans as inalienable, the tradition has grown up among us that Americans are able to effect the necessary political and social changes by non-revolutionary methods.

Such was the picture of American political and social development presented a century ago by De Tocqueville. In America, he said, the social revolution had been effected “with ease and quietness.” America was “reaping the fruits of a democratic revolution without having had the revolution itself.” America was “the only country in which it has been possible to witness the natural and tranquil growth of society.”897

Nevertheless, as the history of our own American Revolution shows, it has not always been possible even for Americans to effect desirable changes “with ease and quietness,” nor is it possible, once the revolutionary process has begun, to foresee where it will ultimately lead. Once the revolution has been launched, those who are its leaders will inevitably employ whatever means may seem necessary to insure success. It is this general law of revolutions which goes far to explain the treatment accorded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony to political and religious dissenters. Having come to America to carry out a holy experiment, they did not propose to sit idly by and see others endanger its success. Does history record a group of men, whatever their professed creed, who were willing to do otherwise?

What shocks the modern conscience about Puritan intolerance is that it was directed against religious beliefs. In colonial Massachusetts, however, this was necessarily the case. Religion was the motive force of the experiment; it was religion which gave it both form and sanction. If in our time economic opinions are the object of intolerance, that is the result of the fact that we look to economic measures for a solution of our problems.

Moreover, we twentieth-century Americans are so accustomed to regard religion as a purely private and personal matter that we often forget that it may have political and social implications. Such it surely had in the seventeenth century. Roger Williams challenged the validity of the charter, which formed the legal basis of the colony, and preached the separation of Church and State. Anne Hutchinson’s claim to inner illumination and the right of individual interpretation of the Scriptures might well have led not only to moral license but to a questioning of any kind of authority. The similar views of the early Quakers did lead them to take an attitude of defiance towards all constituted authorities. The dangerous character of the Antinomian movement was visibly manifest when it led to serious internal dissension at a time when the very existence of the colony was threatened by Laud and Gorges.

Of the later victims of Massachusetts intolerance the Baptists were associated in the popular mind with the excesses of John of Leyden, and they were also accused of denying the lawfulness of magistrates and of war. As for the Quakers, they were in popular estimation anarchists, an impression which the extraordinary behavior of some of them and their generally defiant attitude towards authority did nothing to remove. Even so liberal a man as Roger Williams could not stomach the Quakers, and the Rhode Island magistrates described their doctrines as tending to the “very absolute cutting downe and overturninge relations and civill government among men.”898 The Baptists and Quakers of this period belonged to what we should call today the lunatic fringe, and their adherents cherished all kinds of subversive political and social ideas.

I do not wish to be understood as defending intolerance. Once we recognize, however, that the founders of Massachusetts were carrying on a revolutionary experiment, I think we can understand better why they treated dissenters as they did. Toleration of dissent in Church and State is a mark either of indifference or of security, and the Massachusetts leaders were not indifferent; neither did they feel secure. The expulsion of Roger Williams and the Antinomians came at a time when the colony was being attacked by its enemies in England. The banishment of the Baptists was decreed when the Civil War in England, troubles with the Indians and the French, and serious disputes within the colony itself created a special sense of insecurity. As for the Quakers, from the Puritan viewpoint they were without the pale and would probably not have been voluntarily tolerated under any circumstances.

When one turns from the form of the Massachusetts experiment to consider its substance, a description of it in terms intelligible to the twentieth century is more difficult. Every politico-social experiment involves a consideration of the related problems of the kind of social order which it is desired to establish, and of the kind of government which will best conduce to that end. With our modern experimenters the social and economic system is the primary objective, and governmental institutions are regarded more as means than as ends in themselves.

The attitude of the seventeenth century towards these two related problems was very different. In a pre-industrial age the idea of any drastic reordering of society was beyond the imagination of all but the most visionary. The social structure was regarded as relatively static, and the chief object of contemporary statesmen was to use existing social arrangements to strengthen the state rather than to create a new social order.

Such was the case in France where Richelieu and his successors brought all classes under the control of the monarchy, and in Prussia where the Hohenzollerns built a new state by similar processes. Even in England where the revolutions of the seventeenth century have sometimes been described as marking the triumph of the middle class over the nobility, the social changes produced by the Puritan revolution were less marked than those produced by the spoliation of the Church in the preceding century. The object of the prevailing mercantile system was to strengthen the state, not to redistribute wealth or to modify the existing social structure. The social revolution in Europe which De Tocqueville in 1835 described as being in its earlier stages was the result of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, not of the seventeenth-century experiments in state-building.

The Massachusetts Puritans were not in advance of their generation in their attitude towards social arrangements. That they came to America partly because it promised them a freer opportunity to make a comfortable living, they frankly admitted; but they did not come here to build an ideal society. They were not Utopians or visionaries. They accepted without question the idea of private property and of a society in which there were distinctions of class and wealth. Their social philosophy was thus markedly different from that of some of our modern experimenters. It may perhaps best be defined as a kind of seventeenth-century Christian socialism. As in so many other respects, their theories stemmed back through Calvin to the medieval Schoolmen. Their ideal was the medieval Christian one of a society composed of mutually interdependent individuals, each occupying the place to which God had assigned him, each having duties as well as rights, and the whole functioning in accordance with the will of God. To them, society was not a mechanism which could be altered by changing the structure, but a living organism, the life-giving principle of which was religion.

Theory is one thing, however, and practice another. As regards Puritan practice there is very little difference of opinion among those who have made a study of the question. “The spirit of the Puritan colonies,” writes Professor Clive Day, “was on the whole rather socialistic than capitalistic.”899 The testimony of Professor Tawney regarding Calvinism in general is similar. “The social ethics of the heroic age of Calvinism,” he says, “savored more of a collectivist dictatorship than of individualism.”900 The individual was encouraged to labor, to be thrifty, to accumulate wealth, but such wealth as he might gain he held as the steward of God’s bounty, and the interests of the community were to take precedence over those of the individual. As John Winthrop put it: “The care of the publique must oversway all private respects.”901

The results, however, were not what the founders planned. The influence of the frontier and the coming of commercial prosperity made Massachusetts an individualistic and capitalistic community rather than a Christian socialist commonwealth. Among the founders themselves were not a few who were unable to restrain their acquisitive instincts, and the increasing prosperity of the colony attracted to its shores a growing number who came for no other reason than the hope of gain. The forebodings of Captain Edward Johnson were justified in the event, and “the men of trade in hope of gain” did “mar the work of Christ intended.”902

Even more potent in producing a new type of society in Massachusetts were the system of landholding and the law of inheritance. The vast importance of these factors in determining the structure of society was pointed out more than a century ago by Daniel Webster when he asserted, in his celebrated Plymouth oration, that the character of the political institutions of New England “was determined by the fundamental laws respecting property…. The consequence … has been, a great subdivision of the soil, and a great equality of condition; the true basis, most certainly, of a popular government.”903

I can find no evidence that in discarding feudal forms of land tenure and in adopting a rule of inheritance which made for the equal distribution of property the settlers of Massachusetts were conscious of the far-reaching effects which these arrangements would have upon the society of their commonwealth. So far as the evidence goes, their action was based on preference and on a feeling that such arrangements were just and equitable. The results, however, are written large in the subsequent history of New England and of the United States.904

In his presidential address to the American Historical Association in December, 1934, Dr. Dodd described the plantation system which developed in Virginia after the Restoration as “the first social order in the United States.”905 By what warrant he used the word “first” in this connection I am unable to discover. Long before 1660 New England had developed its distinctive form of society, which in its commercial aspects, its wide distribution of property, and its absence of those feudal rules of inheritance so characteristic of Europe was far more typically American, and more typical, it may be added, of modern society in general, than was the plantation system of the pre-Revolutionary South.

In common with their contemporaries, the founders of Massachusetts were more concerned about their political system than about social arrangements. Their object, as Winthrop said, was to establish “a due forme of Government both ciuill and ecclesiasticall.”906 Many of our modern experiments, whatever the kind of society they may aim to establish, have found it necessary to set up a highly authoritative government, a dictatorship either of a class or of a political party. This is done, not merely as a matter of necessity, but also in accordance with the political theories governing these experiments. Democracy is repudiated in theory as well as in practice; the ideal form of state is the totalitarian state.

At first sight there seems to be a considerable resemblance between the government of Massachusetts and some of our contemporary dictatorships. The founders of Massachusetts also rejected democracy, and the government which they established might perhaps be described as a dictatorship of the church-members, in whom alone resided political authority.

But when one examines Puritan political theory, one finds that it has little in common with the antidemocratic political theories on which modern dictatorships are based. These latter are more akin to the theory of Divine Right which was being preached in England by the Stuart kings and their High Church supporters, and which was the basis of the continental absolutisms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Under these governments the individual ceased to have political rights, and even a great international organization like the Church of Rome, with its age-old tradition of resistance to secular authority, was unable to escape the all-absorbing power of the state.

With such political ideas the settlers of Massachusetts had no sympathy. It was to escape a government which was attempting to put these ideas into practice that they left England. Their political philosophy was that of the Middle Ages, as reinterpreted by Calvin and his disciples. Concerning the character of medieval and Calvinistic political ideas, there can be no doubt. Both asserted the principle of a fundamental higher law which in the last analysis was identical with the Law of God. Both taught that the community itself was the ultimate source of political authority, and that government was contractual in character. To these ideas Calvinism added that of the right of resistance. Kings and magistrates were to be obeyed only in the Lord; they were responsible both to God and to men.907

Here surely was no basis for an absolute government or a totalitarian state, and the Massachusetts experiment shows a recognition of this fact. It is true that the government of Massachusetts was based, not on a compact, as was that of Plymouth, but on a royal charter. That charter, however, did not establish an absolute government, for the final authority rested with the freemen. In his elaborate defence of the government of Massachusetts, Winthrop described an arbitrary government as one “where a people have men sett ouer them, without their choyce, or allowance: who haue power to governe them, & Judge their Causes without a Rule.” The government of Massachusetts, Winthrop argued, was not arbitrary because the people had liberty to choose their governors and to “require the Rule by which they shalbe governed & Judged.”908

No doubt the ideal form of government for Massachusetts in the eyes of Winthrop and his more conservative fellow-leaders was one in which the supreme authority was the Law of God as interpreted by magistrates and clergy. They believed in an aristocracy, a government of the best. This they regarded as necessary for the success of their experiment. But the majority of the settlers and not a few among the leaders refused to accept this ideal, and the principle of self-government was continually enlarged. The freemen insisted upon their right to choose the magistrates, and refused several times to elect Winthrop as governor. The deputies made good their right to an equal voice in the government with the magistrates, and even refused the latter that discretion in the enforcement of the law for which Winthrop argued. Furthermore, they insisted on having a written code of law to which they assented so that all might know precisely what the law was. This code, or Body of Liberties, was both a legal code and a bill of rights. The preamble of it reads as follows: “We hould it therefore our dutie and safetie… to collect and expresse all such freedomes as for present we foresee may concerne us, and our posteritie after us, And to ratify them with our sollemne consent.”909

The Massachusetts system had other democratic features which made the development of an arbitrary government impossible. Not only was society democratically organized—a fact which was recognized by granting non-freemen a share in the local town governments—but the Massachusetts churches were formed by compact and had a democratic organization.

One sees indeed that here was no arbitrary government, but that “mixture of aristocracy and democracy” which was the Calvinist ideal. “The leaders of Massachusetts,” says Professor Osgood, “for the sake of their religion, established and defended an aristocratic system of government in church and state, but the substratum of their thought was democratic.”910 It was doubtless this democratic substratum of their political theory, as well as the democratizing influence of their frontier environment and of the social system which they established, which made it impossible for these leaders to resist the growth of a more democratic system of government. Rejecting arbitrary government in theory, they could not insist upon it in practice, even though to some of them it appeared that their concessions to democracy were endangering the success of their experiment.

Finally, we may test the Massachusetts experiment by its attitude towards other states and other forms of society. Modern experiments have shown a marked tendency to extend their particular system either by propaganda or by force, or by a combination of both. The leaders and defenders of these experiments have argued that their particular system is of universal validity and that, if generally adopted, it would produce something approaching the millennium.

I have no doubt that the founders of Massachusetts also were convinced that their particular system was the best possible, and that they desired to see it extended. In its earlier days the colony did show a marked tendency to extend its influence and authority beyond its charter limits. But the very nature of their system and fundamental principles precluded any indefinite expansion. Unlike the medieval church-state or the Hebrew commonwealth, which were its models, the Massachusetts system was not inclusive. Church-membership, which was the passport to political power, depended upon the manifestation of outward signs of a probable election, and election was a matter determined not by men but by God. The number of the elect could not be increased either by skilful propaganda or by forcible conversion. Whether the Almighty would see fit to bring to the light the benighted people of Rhode Island and New York was something which He only could decide.\

In one further respect Puritan principles formed a barrier to the indefinite extension of the power of Massachusetts, and that was the Puritan attitude towards war. This is a subject which I have already considered in a paper read before this Society.911 It will suffice to point out here that the Puritans distinguished between lawful and unlawful wars, and that among the latter they included wars of aggression and wars of policy. War, like all other human institutions, must conform to the Law of God. This is a far cry from the theory and practice of seventeenth-century absolutisms, and from that glorification of force which is characteristic of some of our modern dictatorships. The Puritan commonwealth of Massachusetts does not belong in the category of those governments which acknowledge no limitations on their right to impose their will upon other states.

Few experiments work out as originally planned, and to this general rule the Massachusetts experiment was no exception. The ideal of a Christian socialist church-state could not be realized when the medieval world from which it was drawn had already passed away. Judged bythe ideals which those who conducted it professed, therefore, the experiment was a failure.

But to pronounce it a failure would be to miss much of its significance. Half unwittingly, the founders of Massachusetts made a notable contribution to the development of free government and of a democratic society. With its active commercial life, its freedom of economic opportunity, its wide distribution of property, and its government in which political power also was widely distributed, Massachusetts became a kind of prophecy of what the future United States, indeed the modern free state, was to be.

The foundations of a democratic society had been laid at the very beginning of the colony. The change from the aristocratic system of the founders to a more democratic form of government began long before the loss of the first charter, and, as I have suggested, was not contrary to the fundamental principles of the Puritan political creed. Even the clergy, as a recent writer has shown, did not consider the government provided for by the second charter to be a violent break with the colony’s past.912

Under the second charter the political development of Massachusetts continued along lines already marked out, and in the later controversy with England Massachusetts played a leading part. It was John Adams who said, long after the Revolution, that if Fourth of July orators wished to understand the principles and feelings which produced the Revolution they should study Dr. Mayhew’s sermon on passive obedience and non-resistance.913

By 1775, the political philosophy of the Puritans, liberalized and extended by eighteenth-century thinkers, pervaded liberal circles throughout Europe and America. In one respect, however, New England remained unique and continued to bear witness to the influence of its founders: its insistence that all things should be tested by what Henry Adams called “a priori moral principles.” It was this which distinguished the political thought of the first two Massachusetts presidents from that of their contemporaries. Others might regard forms of government and social arrangements as matters of expediency to be determined by economic or class interests, but the genuine New Englander continued to insist that government and society had a moral aspect and should take forms which were in accordance with the moral law. A recent writer has said of the first Adams that his political philosophy was “based on a conception of justice, and not merely of expediency and of property rights,” and of the younger Adams that he “erected the dictum of the ethical absolute as final law.”914

How to establish a government or a society in which justice and the moral law, not tradition or expediency, shall be the determining factors is a problem which has defied solution. The Puritan’s ideal of a Christian socialist state remains an unrealized Utopia. It is glory enough for the founders of Massachusetts that they established here a body politic in the structure of which there was “little that was either feudal, ecclesiastical, or monarchical.”915 It is glory enough that they brought into being a type of democratic society which came to be recognized as the norm towards which, as De Tocqueville predicted, all modern societies have, until recently, tended to develop.

Mr. Samuel Eliot Morison read a paper entitled:

The Reverend Seaborn Cotton’s Commonplace Book

THE New England Historic Genealogical Society possesses a manuscript commonplace book that belonged to the Reverend Seaborn Cotton (1633–1686) of Hampton, New Hampshire, to his son and successor, the Reverend John Cotton (1658–1710), and to the latter’s son-in-law and successor, the Reverend Nathaniel Gookin (1687–1734). The book measures 2¾ by 4¾ inches and is bound in calf, probably the original binding in which it was imported from England. Inside the front cover is written, in Seaborn’s hand, “29 of April,” and below, “Cherry June 15. & possibly pye,” a note more likely to have been made at the Hampton parsonage than at Harvard College commons. The back cover had disappeared before the book was given to its present owner in 1882 by Dr. John S. H. Fogg, of an old Hampton family. Dr. Fogg communicated some of the genealogical data to the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1879 and 1880;916 Joseph Dow’s History of Hampton refers to it as a “book of records”; but our associate Dr. C. K. Shipton was the first to notice the literary flores in the volume.917

Seaborn Cotton, the eldest son of the Reverend John Cotton of both Bostons, owes his name (which appears in the old Harvard Triennials as Mangeria Cottonus) to his birth at sea on the Griffin, August 12, 1633. He entered Harvard at the age of fifteen and graduated second in the Class of 1651, of which Michael Wigglesworth became head after the withdrawal of Samuel Malbone. The College Steward’s accounts918 show that Seaborn gave up his corner study in the lower east chamber just before his bachelor’s Commencement, and engaged the west study in the corner of the long chamber, which had just been vacated by Jonathan Mitchell, the senior fellow. Apparently he remained in residence about two years, since, upon taking his master’s degree in 1654, he was charged 18s 4½d discontinuance for “3 quarters and 9 weekes of a forth.” After preaching in various places, he was settled in 1657 or 1658 as minister of Hampton. At this farming and fishing town, then in the Massachusetts Bay jurisdiction, but allotted to the Province of New Hampshire in 1677, Seaborn Cotton remained until his death on April 19, 1686.919

The chronology and handwritings in the commonplace book which he kept offer considerable difficulty. Seaborn Cotton’s own hand, here designated as A, is easily identified by his signature in several places. I have called his earlier, middle-aged, and old-aged handwritings A, A′, and A″. They overlap one another to some extent; but, in general, A is the hand of his undergraduate and bachelor days; A′ is the hand of the Parson of Hampton until about 1670; and A″ is the hand of his old age. It seems that Seaborn began the book in college, using pages both in front and in back for copying his favorite songs, ballads, and prose extracts, often leaving blank pages between these extracts.920 Later, as minister, he used the book, the larger part of which was still blank, for church and family records, and even a horse deal.

The handwriting of certain flores suggests that they were written long after Seaborn left college, but it is easier to imagine that most of them were chosen by an undergraduate rather than by a settled minister in a Puritan community. The fact that no printed version of the ballads that he copied can be found before 1660 need not alter the attribution of the copies to his undergraduate days since these ballads may well have been sung for years before they were printed, and doubtless older editions of the broad-sheets than those which have survived once existed. But it is difficult to explain why the ballad “The Young-Man’s Answer” should have been broken off on page [54], just before a page containing church records of 1698, and have been concluded on the opening page of the book. One is tempted to infer that the church records of 1698 were already entered when the ballad was copied. Yet the ballad is unmistakably in the youngest hand of Seaborn Cotton, and the church records are certainly in the hand of his son John. Moreover, the conclusion of the ballad, on page [1], is in the same hand and in ink of the same color as the beginning of it, on page [54]. I cannot explain why Seaborn should have returned to a blank leaf at the beginning of the book to finish his ballad when a blank leaf lay before him. But who can explain all the vagaries of scribes?

The chief puzzle in the hook is the identity of B, as I have designated the strange handwriting that first appears in a ballad on page [145], and which, in an older variant, B′, covers many of the following pages with poetry and astrological data. The only clue is the signature “D.C.” to the Melpomene ballad. These are the initials of Seaborn’s wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1654. They may, of course, stand for the author of the song rather than the copyist. Mrs. Dorothy (Bradstreet) Cotton was the daughter of Anne Bradstreet the poet, and hence likely to share the literary interests of her mother and her husband. The fact that Seaborn Cotton’s record of his horse trade, dated August 6, 1669, in spite of its length, begins on the second half of page [169], suggests that the song “Happy you leaves” on the first half of that page, in handwriting B, was placed there before that date. Mrs. Cotton died in 1672.

Seaborn Cotton bequeathed the book to his son John, whose handwriting I have designated as C. The Reverend John filled up the blank spaces between ballads, and covered some of the pages following his father’s vital records with family and church records. After John Cotton’s death in 1710, the genealogical data were continued by his son-in-law, the Reverend Nathaniel Gookin (H.C. 1703).

Apart from the vital and church records, only part of which are reprinted here, the book is largely an anthology of prose and poetry of a decidedly secular, not to say pagan, character. Several ballads, such as “The Last Lamentation of the Languishing Squire,” “Two Faithful Lovers,” and “The Love-Sick Maid; Or, Cordelia’s Lamentation for the Absence of her Gerhard,” are included; and Cotton’s variations from the printed versions suggest that he heard them sung and wrote down the words from memory. Michael Wigglesworth, a classmate of Seaborn, who became a tutor of the college shortly after graduation, complains of one of his pupils “playing musick” instead of studying Hebrew.921 In view of Dr. Percy Scholes’s recent revelations of the musical propensities of Puritans, it seems not far-fetched to suppose that Cotton and his classmates sang ballads in their chambers in the College Yard while one of them strummed on a guitar or other instrument.

Young Seaborn was especially attracted by Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, a work not supposed to be favored by Puritans. He copied a part of the dedication to the Countess of Pembroke, sundry epigrams, the beautiful song “What Tongue Can Her Perfections Tell,” the ironical “Verses upon Brave Mopsa,” and charming descriptions such as that of the “Queene of Love, young Philoclea,” before whom “apples fell downe from the trees to doe homage to the apples of her breast.”

The most entertaining set of extracts come from George Herbert’s compilation of 1640, Witts Recreations Selected from the Finest Fancies of Moderne Muses.922 Seaborn Cotton culled from this collection nineteen epigrams, witty epitaphs, anagrams, and riddles, several of them so free in language as to be unprintable even here; yet he copied none of the bawdier pieces. Both in his hand and in the mysterious handwriting B, there are a number of verses and prose passages as yet unidentified.

Although a few leaves have been removed from the book, it is clear that the Reverend Seaborn Cotton never grew ashamed of his youthful taste in literature; for instead of destroying this record of student days, or removing the profane pages, he kept the book intact, and curiously interspersed his church records among pagan flores. For instance, after two pages of verses to “my Dearest Deare” we have legal notes, records of disciplinary cases at Hampton (with names of the culprits disguised in Greek letters), theological notes, and records of church meetings, followed by more poetry. The amusing recipe “for to make a handsome woman” is followed by the minister’s record of Goodman Roby’s pungent antipaedobaptist remarks: “He said that I might as well have cast y^e water upon a beasts face standing by as upon these children.” And from the church records of 1696–1699, kept by Cotton’s son John, we leap into the Arcadia, with which the back of the book (p. [117]) also begins. More appropriately, we find a ballad beginning

If thou wast fairer, yⁿ thou art,

which lyeth not in y^e power of art,

facing the record of Seaborn Cotton’s marriage to the young lady of whom her mother, Anne Bradstreet, wrote:

A prettier bird was no where seen

Along the beach among the treen.

Records of the first seven offspring of that marriage follow, and then two unidentified ballads beginning “Walkeing in a pleasant feilde,” and “Melpomene assist mee now,” in handwriting B, the owner of which shows his or her interest in the effect of lunar and planetary dispositions on the birth of children. Altogether an interesting combination of piety and humanism, beauty and bawdry, university learning and frontier horse-sense; a fair reflection of the average college graduate’s life, thoughts, and occupations in the Puritan century.

The pages of the manuscript book have been numbered in pencil. Pages [1–116] are at the present front end of the book, following the one remaining calf cover; page [117] is the first at the back of the book, reversed. An enlarged negative photostat has been made of all except pages [89–116] and [178–193]. This has been desposited in the Harvard University Archives and may be used for making positives for those who wish to examine the handwriting.

Our former president, George Lyman Kittredge, my colleague, Professor Hyder E. Rollins, and my secretary, Miss Florence Berlin are responsible for most of the identifications. All unidentified flores are here printed in full, so far as they are decipherable; identified ones, only in part. Of the church and vital records, only samples are printed, and those mostly of the ministry of Seaborn Cotton.

A table of contents of the book follows:

	Hand-writing	Page of MS.	Page of this Volume
Ballad, “The Young-Man’s Answer,” Continuation	A	1–2	326
Song, “My Dearest Deare”	A′	3–4	327
Law Notes	A″	5–8	328
Case of Goodman Palmer, Hampton Church	A″	8–9	329
Notes from Theological Writers	A″	10–15	not printed
Brother Wiggin’s Admission, 1661	A′	15	330
Church Meetings of 1662: the Goose Children	A′	16	330
Richard Swain’s Excommunication, 1668	A′ or A″	16	330
Attending Quaker Meetings Forbidden	A′ or A″	16	330
Old Swain’s Charges	A″	17–19	not printed
Verse, “They That Are to Mirth Inclined”	B	20	330
Verse, “Sorrow a Fury Is”	B	20	330
“For to Make a Handsom Woman”	B	21	331
Church Meeting, 1663, on Goodman Roby	A′	22	331
Mrs. Deering Denied Admission, 1668	A′ or A″	22	331
Old Swain, Vote on Church Children, List of Communicants	A′ or A″	23	not printed
Goodman Roby’s Charges, January 1, 1663/64	A″	24–25	not printed
Admonition to the Congregation, February 14, 1663/64	A″	25–26	not printed
Church Meeting, 1667/68, on Admission of Adult Church Children	A″	27	not printed
List of Admissions, through 1669	A′	28–30	not printed
Admissions, 1675–1677	A′	30–32	not printed
Permission to Have Colcord Children Baptized	A″	31	not printed
Marriage Records, 1685, Signed by Seaborn Cotton	A′	33	not printed
John Clifford’s Relations	A″	37–39	not printed
Names of Hampton Church Members	A′	40–43	not printed
John Cotton’s Church Records, 1696–1699	C	44–50	not printed
Extracts from Dedication to Sidney’s Arcadia	A	51	332
Verses upon Brave Mopsa (Arcadia)	A	51–52	333
Ballad, “The Love-Sick Maid”	A	53–54	333
Ballad, “The Young-Man’s Answer”	A	54	335
John Cotton’s Record of Hampton Church Admissions and Baptisms, 1698–1704	C	55–74	not printed
Prose Extracts from Sidney’s Arcadia	A	75–77	336
Song, “Since So Mine Eyes” (Arcadia)	A	77	336
Prose Extracts from Arcadia	A	77–78	336
Song, “What Tongue Can Her Perfections Tell” (Arcadia)	A	79–84	337
Prose Extracts from Arcadia	A	84–86	337
Latin Letter to His Father	A	87–88	338
Hampton Records of Baptism and Marriages, Kept by His Son John Cotton, Continued from Page [74]	C	89–115	not printed
Prose Extract from Arcadia (?)	A	117923–119	339
Letter from A Young Lady, 1650	A	120–122	339
Song, “The Last Lamentation of the Languishing Squire”	A	131–132	340
Facetiae from Witts Recreations	A	133–139	342
Ballad, “The Two Faithful Lovers”	A	139	346
Ballad, “Disdain Returned”	A	140	347
Record of Seaborn Cotton’s First Marriage, and of Births and Deaths in the Family	A, A′, A″	143–144	348
Ballad, “Walkeing in a Pleasant Feilde”	B	145	348
Ballad, “Melpomene Assist Me Now”	B	147	349
Nature and Disposition of the Moon in the Birth of Children	B′	149–161	not printed
Dispositions of the Planets	B′	162–168	not printed
Song, “Happy You Leaves When As Those Lily Hands”	B	169	350
Horse Trade, August 6, 1669	A′	169–170	350
Seaborn Cotton’s Family Records, Amplified	A′, A″	171–174	351
Death Records	C	175	352
John Cotton’s Family Records, 1687–1710	C	176–180	not printed
Family Records after 1710	various hands	181–193	not printed

[1] [The Young-Man’s Answer; or, his Dying Breath, Lamenting for his fair Cordelia’s Death]924

Had not y^e pow^r [for] to resist y^e same

And shee who by Her last acknowledgement confest

thou hadst no craft,

Yet from thy Bow, thou madst her know

w^t pow^r lay in thy shaft,

and yⁿ thou sendst another arrow, w^ch me of

my Hopes bereft

Much like a foe to wound me so

for whome no cure is left.

Wherfore Physitians did you give my M^rs ore;

had you no more

Experience but w^t you in Bookes Have read,

Or why you learn^d D^rs did you cease to try

your wits925 when I

Might have revivd Hir, had shee not bin dead.926

But since I come to late to view her,

If it bee not in vain927

After Hir death I would spend my breath

to fetch Her back againe.

Unto y^t fayre Elyziū y^ther will I goe

whereas I know

shee is among those sacred ones preferd.

when I shall be admitted for to come so nigh

pardon lie cry

for My long absence wherin I haue errd

And since I was by her esteemd so m^ch on y^e earth

wⁿ shee was Here,

Hence for Hir sake no rest lie take

till I’Have fo[u]nd Hir there. [2]

No more doe I desire yⁿ but for to Heare

My passing bell,

That virgins may lament y^e day

of gera’s928 last far[w]ell.

Finis [3]

My dearest deare could I with suting skills929

paint to th’life my anguisht heart I’de borrow

Apelles pencill; & braue Homers skill,

& make thy heart glad long before y^e morrow

but who cant goe must come agen & who cant write

must blot, who’ere will truly paint my woe

must write & Limne, be able to Indite

with virgills skill, though I be nothing so,

yet takes yre lives as bleeding from an heart

y’s full of throbs & dolefull mournefull tones

y^t now is part opprest with filling smart,

& now sends forth yre last & dying grones.930

Thou art y^e person whome I dearly love

yet thy strange strangenesse doth my heart oppress

To thee I yet did ever constant prove,

Thy stealing love thou dost nere fill with ill,

Those frowning wrinkles lodg upon thy Brow.

Thy wound was Loathing to my kinde embrace

Those fayre & sweets wch bitter sweets are now

Thou [ ] my love dost chase.

But y^t Its wrought by yⁿ allmighty God

in my ne’re changing but most cofistant Heart,

y^t all yse things I doe apease his rod

To Husbands love my heart shall nere depart.

yet must I say unlesse thou change y^y cheere

must thereby some desert coast goe spy

where I may write, [ ] it my hand [ ] dear

& y^r [ ] me unpittyd weepe, & dy.

yet for I goe as deaths wer [ ] to day,

Ile make my will dispose of all I haue.…

The last four lines of this page are illegible, and so are the twenty-eight lines that continue the same poem through page [4]. On page [5] are notes apparently copied from some law book. They are in the handwriting (A″) of Seaborn Cotton’s old age.

Contra Testimonia Ru[ ] et Ma:

It is a rule in nature y^t a testimony hath Its principall force from y^e testator or witnesse, & y^rfore nature layeth down yse 3 things as necessary to any witnesse to make his testimony believed, i. He must be prudent, y^t is He must haue skill to try his rule, every deduct[ion] from his rule to practise; y^t is, He must not be simple, & silly to tattle & prattle &c freely [?] w^t not. He must have discretion & be quiet, to [ ] & deliver a truth: again 2^dly. He must be vertuous for if He have not vertue ioyned with his prudence, y^t is, if He make not conscience of witnessing y^e truth wⁿ He is [ ] not to name such a witnesse so as He must be able to [ ] truth, so must He have conscience to vtter It. lastly. He must be benevolent.…

These notes continue through the middle of page [8] and are followed by what is evidently the record of a church meeting, written at the same time and in the same hand (A″).

Θϵἴσ^τ υοτε

those y^t have cleare light, & doe clearly Judge, that y^r is full sufficient evidence for y^e convictions & condemnations of U P in w^t γοοδμαν Παλμερ931 & ἱζ ὡιφε hath said let y^m lift up y^r hands, et vice versa.

9 affirmative. y^e maior part Negative.

Θε 2^δ υοτε

those y^t doe Judge M S a clear & sufficient [ ] evidence for conviction & condemnation in a religious society let y^m lift up y^r hands et vice versa: [9]

ἴν θὲ χάσε ὄφ γοοδι Πάλμερ

There follows one page, almost undecipherable, of speculation about scriptural authority for admonition by the minister. Beginning on page [10] and continuing through the middle of page [15] there are notes on Cotton’s reading on various theological subjects: “M^r Manton on James. 5. 12. pag. 563”932; “Elton on y^e Cort^s pag. 76”933; “Barker on y^e 10 cap^t pag. 164”934; Ursinus on y^e 3^d Cap^t pag. 168.”935; “Ursinus in Catechesi. pag. 699”936; “Perkins in his case of Conscience. 2 book. 13. chap. 2 section”937; “Calvin in 3^tiū Præcep^t [ ]. pag. 312”938; “Idem in 9 præc, pag. 393”; “[ ] on y^e 7^th Cap^t pag. 416”; “Perkins in his ii vol. pag. 42”; “Ames. 2 lib. Theo: Cap^t 21. 5. 7. 8”939; “My father upon y^e 3^d Cap^t 5 sermon”940; “[ ] on y^e 2^d cap^t pag. 348.”

Beginning at the middle of page [15] the church records are resumed. They are written in a different ink and in the younger hand (A′) of Seaborn Cotton.

Those y^t doe apprehend y^t my Brother Wiggin standing propounded to y^e Ch for full com̄union now solemnly owning y^e covenant of [ ] made by his parents for him in infancy professing subjection to all y^e ordinances of [ ] desiring y^e church care & eye of him for his Intire course & being willing to provide [?] as y^r Ch shall see meet, desiring baptism for his ⊗ shall signify [ ] by lifting up y^r hands

This vote affirmatively by y^e Ch,

Aprill 6.61. [16]

At a church meeting, August 11. 1662.

Whither women who professe theyre inability to speake in publique may bee admitted to com̄union with y^e church by the reading of what they com̄unicate in writing. This is owned as y^e Jdgment of y^e church.

Whither The church consent That M^rs Goose may have hir Children Baptized upon y^e anniv. of Hir covenant with y^e church, & that then shee & hir Children be recom̄ended & dismissed to y^e watchfullnesse of y^e church w^r they live.

Whether y^e church consent That theyre pastor shall have y^e Liberty of his conscience in The Baptizing of M^r Gooses children The Maior Part voted for this Last.

This Richard Swaine for His obstinate refusing to heare the Church, & being fundamentally hereticall, & scandalous as in the charges mentioned was excom̄nicated May 31. 1668.941

It was also agreed to by the Church that whatever Church members of ours should attend y^e meetings of Quakers & ioyne with y^m therein, y^e It was scandalous & offensive to the whole body.942

Beginning on page [17] are Cotton’s memoranda, in handwriting A″, with regard to “Old Swaines Charges.” They are continued through page [19] and are mostly illegible. One gathers that old Swain absented himself from public ordinances, attended “y^e abominable worship” of certain “seducers,” and showed himself “contemptuos of y^e Church.”

With page [20] Cotton returns to miscellaneous literary matters.943

they that are to mirth inclined

yet hath woe within the mind

they that are to sorrow givn

yet Sorrow will not bring t’ heavn

Sorrow a fury is944

and greife is to unkind

it beat’s back all our ioys

and creepes it selfe into the mind

Loue is a cruel paine

nay more a torment fell

they who haue felt it say

tis next the paines of hell [21]

for to make a handsom woman

shee must first haue a light browne haire a full high fore head with a straite brow not bending out with narrow black eye brows with a round full hazell eye a white nose straite not rising up nor flat pure vermilion cheeks [six words erased] with a little mouth and Corral lips the under lip a little fuller than the uper, a pretty long white neck straite back her shoulders of a middle breadth slender waste middle sised hipps a small leg and foot her hands and finger long and small her body must not be very tall but rather inclining to be tall then short

On page [22] church records are resumed.945

At a church meeting Decem: 16. 1663.

goodman Roby is charged with these speeches & actions, viz: Novem: 5. coming into y^e meetinghouse He publiquely said, That I would baptize all y^e heathen in y^e country if there were water enough, attested by Th: Marston & Henery New.

further y^e said Roby said y^e same night going homewards about Anthony Taylours house, speaking with goodman Warren, about y^e baptizing of y^e children y^e day. He said that I might as well have cast y^e water upon a beasts face standing by as upon these children, witn: M^rs Dudley [name illegible] Will: More.

againe Decem: 9. 63. being a fast this goodman Roby after y^e beginning of y^e sermon in y^e forenoone turnd his backe upon me & went out of y^e meetinghouse & came no more y^t day to joyne with y^e church in y^e worship w^ch himself agreed to, as many of y^e Church can testify.

whither y^e Church themselves meet to allow perfect [?] communion in y^e seales with the members of other churches y^t live not in y^e towne but come transiently. The Ch must expresse y^r consent to It affirmatively.

August 30. 1668. M^rs Deering was denyed to be admitted to this church, because shee lived at Pascataque & Dover Church was nearer & wee could not practice y^e Covenant to her so remote as they said.946

The records continue on page [23] with another vote on old Swain’s offences, a vote on church children, and a list of those admitted to full communion “since my coming.”947 On pages [24–25] are “Goodman Roby’s [ ] Charges,” dated January 1, 1663/64.948 On pages [25–26] there is an entry, dated February 14, 1663/64, starting as follows: “I shall not use many words unto you, but I should [ ] y^u a reasonable creature, should I not take notice of y^e late contempt y^t has been offered unto me at least by som.” This is apparently an admonition of the parson, addressed to the whole congregation.949 On page [27] is entered the vote, “At a Church-meeting at Brother Fullers House, Janu: 13. 1667,” on admission of “adult church children.”950 On page [28] and continuing to the middle of page [30] is the record of those who “publiquely owne & renew the church-covenant,” 1667–1669.951 Further miscellaneous records, including the vote of the church meeting to allow Mrs. Colcord to have her grandchildren baptized, and a list of admissions in 1675–1677, run from the middle of page [30] through page [32]. On page [33] are the records of three marriages in 1685, each signed “Seaborne Cotton.”952 The next three pages are blank. Pages [37–39] are given over to an account, almost illegible, of “John Clifford’s953 Relation” on applying for church membership. “The Names of the members in full Com̄union with the Church at Hampton” appear on pages [40–41], and “The Names of the Female members in full com̄union surviving Sept 18. 1671,” on pages [42–43]. Beginning on page [44] and continuing through page [50] are found the church records of the Reverend John Cotton (H.C. 1678).

With page [51] we return to literary excerpts in the youthful handwriting (A) of Seaborn Cotton. The following are from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, the first excerpt being the beginning and end of Sidney’s dedication to the Countess of Pembroke. Cotton is not an accurate quoter, hence it is impossible to ascertain which of the many editions available in his day he used; his spelling and capitalization are nearer, however, to the 1633 edition than to the earlier ones. My footnote references are (1) to the books, chapters, and sections of the Arcadia, and (2) to the Cambridge, 1922, edition of Sidney’s works.954 I have omitted parts of several passages on account of their length.

Most deare & most worthy to be most deare.955 here you have this most idle work of mine, which I feare (like y^e spiders web) will be thought fitter to be swept away, then worne to any other purpose. In very truth I could find in my heart to cast it out in some desert of forgetfulness which I am loth to owne. but you desired me to doe it & your desire to my heart is an absolute com̄dt. yet I hope you will continue to love y^e writer, who doth exceedingly love you & most most [sic] heartily prayes you may long live to be a principal ornament to our family.

O blessed be thou love y^e sweetest fayrenesse & fairest sweetness.

Let us thinke with consideration, & consider with acknowledging, & acknowledge with admiration, & admire with love, & love with Joy in y^e midst of all woes.956

Some verses upon brave Mopsa

what length of verse can serve brave Mopsa’s good to show?

when vertues strange & beauties such as no man them may know: [52]

thus shrewdly burdned then, how can my muse escape

the gods must helpe, & precious things must serve to show her shape.

like great god Saturne faire, & like faire Venus chaste,

as smooth as Pan, as Juno mild, like goddesse Iris fac’d,

with Cupid shee fore sees, & goes god Vulcans pace,

& for a taste of all these gifts shee steales God Momus grace,

Her forhead Jacinth like, her cheekes of Opall Hue,

Her twincling eyes bedect with Pearles, her lips as Saphir blew

Her haire like Crapal stone, her mouth O heavenly wide,

Her skin like burnisht gold, her hands like silver ure untried,

as for her parts unknowne which Hidden sur are best:

Happy be they which wel believe & never seeke y^e Rest.957 [53]

[The Love-Sick Maid; Or, Cordelia’s Lamentation for the absence of her Gerhard]958

Begon thou fiery fatall feavor now begon,

Let Love alone,

with his ætheriall flames possesse my breast,

The heat of thy consuming fires no aide requires

But swift desires,

transport my passions to a throne of rest:

When I who in y^e pride of youth could never finde

such Joyes to move

By sicknesse tam’d am so inflamd

I know no Joyes, but love.

And he y^t trifled many a long houre away

my Love to try,

He in short space, hath gaind y^e grace

to have more pow^r yⁿ I.

Depart thou scorching fury quickly now depart

thinke not my heart

to thy dull flames shall be a sacrifice

A mayd dred Cupid on y^y altar now is

layd by thee Betraid

A rich oblation to restore thine Eyes.

Nor feare I if within thy treasures all at once

thy shafts doe move

shee y^t receives ten thousands sheaves

Can do no more but love.959

This should be belowe y^t which is above it.960

But yet my first acknowldgmt shall testify

thou hadst not craft

to bend thy bow against that foe

y^t aimd to catch y^e shaft.

No more y^e learnd physitians, tire your brains no more

pray give me o’re

you may as well goe practise on the dead

although you learned doctors, all y^e world doth know,

in learning flow,

Mine is a cure in physicke nevr read961

For if my Gerrard deignes to veiw me w^th y^e

sunshine of his lookes,

I shall not doubt to live without

Physitians & y^r bookes. [54]

Tis he y^t w^th his balmy kisses can restore

my latest breath

what blisse is this, to gaine a kisse

can raise a maid frō death.

To you divines962 y^t preach another world I bow,

& will allow,

your sacred præcepts if youle grant me this

that He whome I esteeme of next to Diety [sic]

may goe with me,

without whose presence y^r can be no blisse:

Goe preach your præcepts of ætenity

to those y^e aged bee,

Never perswade, a love-sick mayd

thers any heaven but he

But stay mythinkes an ycy slumber doth possesse

my wearied braine

Pray bid him dy if you see I

do neer wake againe:

Finis

His Answer963

Come on thou fatall messenger fro her y^ts gone

lest I alone,

within y^t quenchlesse flāe for evr fry

y^t fire of Love being kindled w^rin none can take

rest, but to wake

which makes me wish no longer live but dy.964

y^t w^th my fayre Cordelia I may goe

& take asleep

w^th lids wide spred upon my bed

I m forct a watch to keep965

Dispatch thou scorching fury quickly now dispatch

by death I watch

to be released from yis tormenting flame

y^e dart sent frō dread cupid sticks fast in my heart

I wanting art966

Pages [55–74] are given over to church records for the period 1698–1704, entered in handwriting C. Beginning with page [75] extracts from Sidney’s Arcadia are resumed.

it is y^ee I love which nothing shall breake, no com̄and^t dissolve, no foulnesse defile, nor no death finish.967

thou are y^e pearles of all y^e maides of Mantinoea who as shee went to y^e temple to be married, her eyes themselves seemed a temple wherein love & beauty were married, her lips though they were kept close with modest silence, yet with a pretty kind of naturall swelling they seemed to invite y^e guests y^t looked on them: her cheekes blushing, & withal when shee was spoken to a little smiling, were like roses when their leaves are with a litle breath stirred.968

Pamela did apparalle her apparall & with y^e preciousnesse of her body made it most sumptuous. But when y^e ornament of y^e earth, y^e modell of heaven, y^e triumph of nature, y^e life & beauty, y^e queene of love young Philoclea appeard in her nimphlike apparall, then I say indeed me thought y^e lilies grew pale for enuie, y^e roses blushed for to see sweeter roses in her cheekes, & y^e apples fell downe from y^e trees to doe homage to y^e apples of her breast. [76] & yⁿ clouds gave place.…969[77]

shee was y^e loadstone of my life y^e blessing of my eyes, y^e sweetness of my heart even sweetening y^e death.…

A Song

since so mine eyes are subiect to y^r sight

y^t in your sight y^y fixed have my braine,

since so my heart is filled with y^t light,

y^t onely light doth all my life retaine.…970

lady most worthy of all duty in whome all virtue shines.971

I therfore desire her that shee would unarme her noble heart of y^t steely resistance ag^st y^e sweet blows of love,.…972 [78]

Imcomparable lady your com̄p^t doth not only give me the will but y^e power to obey you: such influence hath your excellence …. [79]

A song

What tongue can her pefections tell,

In whose each part all pens may dwell

Her Haire fine threds of finest Gold,

In curled knots mans thoughts to hold

But y^t her forehead says in mee

A whiter Beauty you may see;

whiter indeede, more white yⁿ snow,

which on cold winters face doth grow,

that doth present those even browes,

whose equal line there angles bowes, .…973

Cotton copies almost the whole of this poem, which extends through the middle of page [84] of his manuscript. He then returns to prose extracts from the Arcadia, only a portion of which I have attempted to identify.

this showes y^e power of your beauty which forced me to doe this.

If ther be any beauty in me, it is in mine eyes w^ch your blessed presence hath Imparted to you…974

Most beloved lady y^e Incomparable excellency of your selfe, doe allmost make me tremble to offer unto you y^e desires of my soule. doe you onely now voucsafe to beare [85] y^e matter of a mind most perplexed …

O Deare, I hope your beauty will not be without pitty unto me …

I hope you will not deny y^e shining of your eyes upon me.

I do rather wish that I had never been begotten, rather than by my meanes y^e sky of your virtue should be overclouded with sorrow. [86] …

O sweet Philoclea thy heavenly face is my astronomy, thy sweet vertue, my sweet Philosophy, let me profit therin, & farewell all other Cogitations …975

The following Latin letter, written in Seaborn Cotton’s earliest hand, signed with his initials and addressed to his father, is certainly not original with him, since the mistakes in Latin are of the sort that creep into a text recopied several times. It is a complimentary letter from a college student to his father and benefactor, perhaps intended to put the fond parent in the proper state of mind to heed a subsequent request for pecunia. Over some of the words are numbers indicating that he intended to change their order in copying out the letter. We have followed his directions in that respect.

[87] P. R. H. et Ch.976

Quum ab Ingratitudine non secus abhorream quam Achilles ille Homericus a Mendacio, et mecum Perpenderem quam esset Immenso quod tuæ debeam Benignitati ut Meritum omne, omne quoque officium exsuperet meum, credidi te Accepturū si tibi Literariâ strenulâ, aut flosculo quopiam e Musarum Hortulis decerpto animū Memorem et Gratum utcunque testarer. Oh utinam tua in Me Perpetuò collata (multò plùs meritò) Beneficia unquam solvendo esse queam. Grates persolvere Dignas, Hoc opus, His Labor est.

Pro tuo Mei amore summo, et in me Jam sæpè collocatâ Benignitate, et gratias quas habeo maximas animo perquam Libentissimo rependo, et Omnia Mea deinceps in Posterū officia voluntate paratissimâ offero et addico. Non latent tuæ solicitudines anxiæ, nec Anx[i]etates quotidianæ Mei Boni gratiâ tibi emergentes, patent Molestiæ, patent angores tui, patent denique omnes Curæ tuæ, mei Com̄odi Gratiâ. Novi quantū Olei operaci [sic]977 sumpsisti ut doctus evadam, Novi (et melius mihi esset si melius possem) quot consilia quot suasoria verba mihi dixisti, quoties me Monitū voluisti ut Probus existam. quoties suasisti quoties Incitasti neu tibi dedecori et aliis scandalo fierem. Deus novit, quam tua tunc Concilia posthabui, et non secundū ea vitam degi: nunc vero Me meæ Negligentiæ pendet978 nunc Me parvi earū æstimationis tædet poenitet e[ ] sed, ah Me videre est Me potius propter omnia tua beneficia tibi Pandoram979 esse potius quam illas gratias referentem vel saltem [88] juxta eorum merita merent gerentem.

Ipero [sic]980 tamen Me Hinc inde Melius Conciliis tuis auscutare, monitis tuis obedire pro virili conatū fore. Et quanta in Me posita est vis Me filium patris Jussa prestare gaudentem pæbiturum esse, et memet non patris suasiones vili ӕstimantem esse exhibiturum. quid tibi, quid inquam pollicear? nam meipsum quantæ [?] sim dedimus et exiguum est Me illi dedendum, qui nisi fuisset Ipse non essem. Tibi denique quod possum et quod [?] non possim debeo, et ut solvam quæ debeo, Te Humillime obtestor ut in propiisimis ad thronum gratiæ accessibus Deum obnixe petas, ut cor novum mihi det, et lapidem in Carneum Mutat, ut quid in postero vitæ Meæ cursu, magis ad illius Honorem et gratiæ suæ [?] gloriam vitam degam, quam in initio ætatis meæ adhuc vixerim [?] et ut Deus ille Misericors Omnipotens, peccata Mea sanguine Christi abluat, ut quum vivos et Mortuos Judicat Ego inter Oves apud Dextrāsuam integer et Immaculatus appaream.

Hæc supliciter petens acquiesco.

O. F.981

S C.

On page [91] the Hampton Church records under John Cotton are resumed, a continuation from page [74]. On pages [89–102] are baptisms, 1704–1707, with an occasional admission to full communion and record of choice of deacons. On pages [103–111] are marriage records, 1701–1709/10, each signed “Jn^o Cotton.” Pages [110–113] are blank. On page [115] are a few baptisms of 1707–1708, with a reference in John Cotton’s hand to “liber alter viz. Chh. Records.” Several blank leaves follow; the next page, which I have numbered [116], is at the back of the book, reversed. Pages [117–118], in Seaborn Cotton’s handwriting (A), are so mutilated that no text can be established. They are followed by three pages of prose. On the lower half of page [119] begins a new paragraph, probably an excerpt from Sidney’s Arcadia:

I beseech you take my words in y^t go[od] part my affection deserves, all I de[sire] is y^t as all my thoughts are dedicat[ed] & devoted to y^e honour service & love of y^e heavenly vertues of your soule, and all my wishes but to be acceptable unto you & yours may so farre ensure them, as to set all other freindship & affections behind mine,.…

The next excerpt, on page [120], is obviously a letter written by a young lady in Arcadian style. I expected to find it in Sidney, but searched in vain. Possibly some romantic lady of Seaborn’s acquaintance wrote it to him; but more likely he copied it from a book while on a visit to Braintree in 1650.

Braintree August 10. 1650982

Most Intirely affectionate & best beloved freind.

The manifold happy meetings & pleasant Embracings which yourselfe hath dignifyed mee withall heretofore, your amorous savour, your smiling aspect, and lovely countenance, which these Eyes of mine (though vnworthy to behold so rare a beauty) have in beholding often been dazeled withall. the very many vertues I have ever told you endowed withal, and often manifested by the vnvterable courtesies & Innumerable & well deserving kindnesses that I have often participated of. I [torn] y^e Consideration of my [121] former enjoyment of these & many other (though most vnworthy & least able ever to make recompense) hath stricken me with so great a wound which none but yourselfe must or can Cure. To be plaine, (for plaine dealing I hold ever best) these often & experienced gratifications of love which your selfe hath often vouchsafed mee, hath exrimulated y^e erors of my weake though true affection tha[t] I must plainly confesse (though Contrary to y^e Modesty of our sex) that I am so farre Enamored with your person & personali vertue that I am quite sepulted in y^t la[ ] which is usually with a trible knot Thus, Confiding that you will Conceale my affection, & shortly answer my good will with renewed life (now gasping for life) I must though very loath breake off and remain at present as one bereft of life not knowing which way fortune [122] [may] turne y^e whele. But it may [be], You may obiect, your freinds & mine may not be willing hereafter, to which I answer, so y^t I enioy but you I will run through all difficultyes. let come what will, I desire you S^r y^t so soone as you have rec^d this you would commit it to y^e mercilesse flames, least some oversight may breed future trouble, or at least blot out y^e name. But this in hast I must with a submissive salutation bid adieu. And shall while I am

remaine

Your Humbly devoted & true affectionate freind.983

The four leaves following page [122] have been cutout. On page [131] Cotton returns to his poetical excerpts.

[The Last Lamentation of the Languishing Squire; or, Love overcomes all Things]984

A Song

As I walk’d forth to veiw y^e spring

which flora had adorned

In gorgeous rayment every thing

from winters rage had turned.

I cast mine eye & did espy

A boy w^ch made much clamor

And drawing nigh I heard him cry

tis omnia vincit Amor.

As by himselfe he sat alone

fast by y^e chrystall river985

then mournfully this doleful tone986

with sighes he did deliver,

woe with that face & comly grace987

of her y^t none can shame her

her beauty faire makes me with feare988

cry omnia vincit amor.

you silent streames that swiftly gli[de]

by part[n]er of y^e morning989

you flagrant [sic] feilds & flora’s bride990

condeme her for her scorning

let every tree a witnesse bee

how Justly I might blāe her

you chanting birdes note y^s my words

tis omnia vincit amor.991

had shee been kind as shee was faire

she might have bin admired,

In evry part without compare

which hath my life expired.992 [132]

At length his breath began to faile

he could not speake but stam̄ar.

then sighing sore he said no more

but omnia vincit amor.

And when shee saw me neare my death993

shee ran in haste to save mee

but quickly I resigne my breath

so deepe a wound love gave me.

Yet for her sake this vow Ile make

my tongue shall ne’re defame her

but on her herse I’le write this verse

tis omnia vincit amor.994

All men can harpe upon this string

& rusticke clownes doe know y^ts sound

that sting[ing] dart that love doth fling

doth allwayes smite a deadly wound.

nay evry boy y^t goes to schoole

that hath but learned his gram̄er

doth scorne to look to find ins booke

Oh omnia vincit Amor.

Now may you see close love doth bind

whome god & man keapes under

although young cupid was yⁿ blinde

could not y^m breake asunder.

Nor thundring Jove nor warlike mars

nor vulcan with his ham̄er

none can withstand this boyes com̄and

but Omnia vincit Amor.

Finis.

With page [133] we come to the excerpts from the Witts Recreations. As the text of these may be established from the Facetiae reprint of 1874, or from the 1640 edition which Cotton evidently used, I have not reproduced in full some of the broader quotations.

On Women995

Women are bookes & men y^e readers bee

In whome oft times y^y great Erratas see

here sometimes nere a blot y^r we espy

(A leafe misplaced at least a line awry;

if y^y are bookes I wish y^t my wife were

An Almanake to change her evry yeare.

on his M^rs996

I saw faire flora take y^e ayre

When Phoebus shind & it was fayre

the heavens to allay y^e heat

sent drops of raine w^ch gently beat

the sun retires ashamed to see

that he was barrd from kissing y^ee.

then boreas tooke such high disdaine

that soone he dryd those drops againe:

ah cunning plot & most divine

thus to Mix his breath with thine.

Eidem997

When first I saw y^e th[ou] didst sweady play

the gentle theife & stole my heart away,

render me mine againe or leave thy owne

two are to mch for y^e since I have none

but if thou wilt not I will seware thou are

a sweet faced-creature with a double heart.

[The Crab is Restorative]998

The crab of y^e wood

is sauce very good

for y^e crab of y^e foaming sea.

but y^e wood of a crab

is sauce for a drab

that will not her husband obey. [134]

to his M^rs999

Sweetest fayre be not too cruel

blot not beauty with disdaine

let not those bright eyes adde fewell

to a burning heart in vaine.

least men Justly when I dy

deeme you y^e Candle mee y^e fly.

how to choose a wife1000

Good sir if you’le shew y^e best of your skil

to picke a vertuous creature,

then picke such a wife as you love a life

of a comely grace & feature.

the noblest part let it be her hart

without deceiet or cunning.

with a nimble wit & all things fit

with a tongue y^ts never running.

y^e hayre of her head it must not be red

but faire & browne as a berry

her forhead high with a christall eye

her lips as red as a cherry.

on his M^rs1001

My love & I for kisses playd

she would keepe stakes I was content

& when I wonne shee would be payd

this made me aske her w^t she meant,

Sayth shee since you are in this wrangling vayne

take you your kisses & give me mine againe. [135]

of women1002

Commit thy ship vnto y^e winde

but not y^y faith to womankind

there is more safety in a wave

then in y^y faith y^t women have

no womans good, if chance it fall

some one be good amongst them all.

some strange Intent y^e destinies had

to make a good thing of a bad.

A riddle1003

thoughts	c
searching
valued	may B
love

Truth nev^r lies

too A foole y y:

if haue part.

then to you surely are in heart.

On women1004

Womans y^e centre & y^e lines are men

the Circles love, how Doe y^y differ then?

Circles draw many lines unto y^e Centre

but love giues leave to onely one to enter.

On womans love1005

A womans love is like a Syrian flw^re,

y^t buds & spreads & withers in an houre

On Cupid1006

Cupid no wonder was not cloathd of old

for love though naked seldome e’re is cold. [136]

A witty Passage1007

An old man sitting at a Christmas feast

By Eating Brawne occationed a Jest…

of letting1008

In bed a young man with his old wife lay

O wife quoth he I have let a thing today … [137]

To his M^rs1009

your lips fayre lady ift be not too much

I beg to kisse your hand I crave to touch …

To his M^rs1010

take oh take those lips away

that so sweetly were forswome

& those eyes like breake of day

lights y^t doe mislead y^e morne

but my kisses bring againe

Seales of love though sealed in vaine.

hide oh hide those hilles of snow

which y^y frozen bosome beares

on whose tops y^e pinkes y^t growes

Are of those y^t Aprill weares:

but first set my poore heart free

bound in those icy chaines by thee.

to young men1011

young men fly when beauty darts

amorous glances at your hearts

the fixt marke gives your shooter ayme

& ladyes lookes have pow^r to mayme,

now twixt y^r lips now in y^r eyes

wrapt in a kisse or smile love lyes

then fly betimes for only they

conquer love y^t run away. [138]

In Amorem1012

Love if a god thou art, then ever more thou must

be mercifull & Just;

If Just thou be O wherfore doth thy dart

Wound mine alone & not my Mistresse heart

Who have thee truly served,

Whyle shee that for thy pow^r cares not a fly

laughes y^ee to scorne & liues at liberty.

Then if a god thou wilt accounted bee,

Heale me like her or else wound her like me. [139]

Amicitia1013

what[s] freindship? tis a treasure,

tis a pleasure:

bred twixt two worthy spirits,

by there merits:

tis two minds in one meeting,

never fleeting:

Two wills in one Consenting,

each Contenting:

One brest in two divided yet not parted;

a double body, & yet single hearted;

two bodies making one through selfe election

two minds, yet having both but one affection.

Finis ad hoc Tempus.

[The Two Faithful Lovers]1014

Farewell my hearts delight, Lady adieu.

I must goe take my flight, when it ensues.

My countrymen I doe see they cannot yet agree

till things will better bee England adeiu.

O be not so unkind, Love heart, & Joy.

for to leave mee behind, breeds my anoy.

have a patient heart, Ile helpe to beare y^e smart,

Ere y^ee & I depart my turtle dove.1015

Ile leave y^ee gold good store, y^ee to maintaine

what canst thou wish for more, doe not complaine.

servants shall waite on y^ee, Ile leave y^ee Jewells 3

y^t thou maist thinke on mee when I am gone.1016

if thou wilt goe to sea love heart, & Joy

I will attend on you and be your Boy,

for here lie not abide w^t ere me betide,

Heavens yn be my guide & leade y^e way. [140]

[Disdain Returned]1017

If thou wast fairer, yⁿ thou art,

which lyeth not in y^e power of art,

or Hadst thou in thine eyes more darts,

yⁿ ever Cupid shot at Hearts,

But if y^y were, not shot at mee,

I would not Have one thought of y^e,

I would rather Marry a disease,

then court the thing I cannot please

shee that would cherish my desire,

Must meete my flame w^th æqual fire,

W^t pleasure is y^r in a kisse,

To him y^t doubts y^e Hearts not His,

I love y^ee not b’cause thou art fayre

Softer yⁿ downe, sweeter yⁿ Ayre,

Nor for those graces which doe ly

In every corner of thine Eye.

If thou wouldst know w^t it may bee

Its I love y^ee, Cause thou Lovest Mee.

The Anser followeth

One leaf following page [140] has been cut out. Page [143] is all in Seaborn Cotton’s handwriting, and obviously written at four separate times: (1) the marriage record; (2) the first four births; (3) from “this childe dyed” through the entry for the second Sarah; and (4) seventh child.1018

I was married by My Father The 14 of June, 1654.

My 1^st childe still borne novem. 21 at nine of y^e clocke at night, in y^e year 1655.

y^e 2^d Dorothy nov: 11 at 5 of y^e clocke in y^e morning 1656.

y^e 3^d John. May y^e 8^th between 3 & 4 in y^e morning. 1658.

y^e 4^th Sarah feb. 22 about 1 in y^e afternoone. 1659: this childe dyed Aprill 1 about 2 in y^e morning. 1660.

y^e 5^th was borne on thursday august [ ] 1661 at halfe an houre past twelve at noone. Her name is Anne.

y^e 6^th was borne on thursday July 3. 63 betweene 5 & 6 of the clocke in the morning. Her name is Sarah.

y^e 71^th was borne on y^e lords day, being august 13. 1665 about 3 of y^e clocke in y^e morning, baptized y^e same day & named Elizabeth.

Death records, beginning with that of John Cotton, December 23, 1652, are entered on page [144]. They also are in Seaborn Cotton’s hand, and written at a different time from any of the preceding. They are repeated on page [173], and from that page are printed below. On page [145] begins another group of poetical excerpts. The following ballads are in handwriting B.

Walkeing in a pleasant feilde

Where trees goodly fruite did yield

round aboute I Cast my eye

for to see what I Coulde spye

Many trees I saw there grow

which did make a pleasant show

but amongst this pleasant wood

there a stately Cedar stood

young it was but yet well grown

the statelyest tree that I haue known

when uppon it I did loock

mee thought my very hart was struck

as I was gazeing on this tree

admireing that which I did see

Suddenly I saw a Creature

going towards this stately Cedar

it pulled the boughes from of the body

but yet this gallant tree stood steady

it pulled & tore it very sore

but yet this tree stood as before

and stand it will in spighte of all

though som do hope to make it fall

DC [147]1019

Melpomene assist mee now

with doleful mourneful tones

Some of your sacred skill impart

to utter forth my grones

O had I now but eloquence

my greifes for to relate

sure I could moue the ruthless stones

to pitty my harde fate

My soule with trouble is overwhelmed

my harte with greife nighe broake

my wounde it is incurable

So heauy is my yoake

Coulde I put life into my pen

to understand my woe

instead of inke then drops of blood

full soone from thence woulde flow

Although thus deadly be my greife

and burdensome my smart

yet close I will it keepe within

the secret of my hart

theres none aliue shall euer know

what doth my soule oppress

vnless that I were sure that they

Coulde ease my sad distress [149]1020

The next entry in the commonplace book deals with “the nature & disposition of the moone in the birth of children.” These forecasts for each day of the moon cover pages [149–161]. They are in what appears to be a much older handwriting (B′) of the person who copied the preceding ballads. There follow, in the same handwriting, on pages [162–168] notes on “The dispositions of the planets,” of which the following extract is typical:

Saturne, iupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, Luna,

Saturne is the Cause of death, dearth & peace, Jupiter is the Cause of Long peace rest & vertuous liuing …

The following poem at the top of page [169] is in the same hand (B′). It has the appearance of having been copied earlier than the astrological data, but later than the ballads on pages [145–147].

happy you Leaues when as those

Lilly hands, which hold my Life

in there dead doing might

shall handle you and hold in Loues

softe bands, Like trembling

captiues at there victors sight

and happy Liues on which with

Bravry Light those Lampes

With delight somtime to look

and read the sorrows of my

dying sprighte, written with

teares in harts Close bleeding

book

The following record of a horse trade is in Seaborn Cotton’s hand (A′).

A Bargaine made between John Garland & my selfe August 6. 1669. That He should send mee forthwith the Horse I borrowed of him to Plymouth1021 which Horse I am to have for mine owne paying the said Garland seven pounds in manner following viz: 2000 foot of boards between the next spring & midsummer at price currant, & the remainder of y^e pay, to be set off in his next rate, & what that falls short of the whole summe [170] to be payd in corne or staves at the price that I receive them, this agreement was made the day aboue mentioned, between John Garland, & Seaborne Cotton, my wife & M^r Colcord being present, further the vse that I have had of the Horse was to be freely for nothing as the same attest, and further It was agreed that if the said Garland should become indebted to M^r Groth for any Care, I paying M^r Groth what was due should have It allowed mee out of the summe of the seven pounds: this was y^e full bargaine.

On page [171] we return to family records.

I was Marryed by My Father M^r Simon Bradstreet to His Eldest Daughter Dorothy: June 14. 1654.

The record of childbirths printed on page 348, above, from page [143] of the manuscript is here repeated in handwriting A′. There follow, in a different ink and in Seaborn Cotton’s oldest hand, these addenda.1022

The Eighth was borne on friday night about 1 of y^e clocke in y^e morning The 2^d of November & was baptized the 4^th 1666 and was named Mercy. [172]

The 9^th my wife miscarryed with on monday night, the night following the 30^th of december 1667. It was a boy. The Lord helpe vs to make good vse of his providence.

The 10^th was borne vpon Monday morning being the 5^th of Aprill 1669 between sixe, & seven in y^e morning, & was baptized the 11^th of y^e same moneth, and named Abiah; & dyed May the 11^th 1669 about noone: The Will of the Lord bee done.1023

The 11^th was borne upon thursday night, about midnight being Aprill 21. 1670. was baptized the 24 of y^e same instant, named Maryah.

My Deare wife dyed & went to heaven feb 26 1671. & was buried feb 28 1671. & was with childe so her 12^th childe yet never delivered. [173]

My Deare Father M^r John Cotton having lived 67 yeares & 20 dayes, dyed on thursday morning about eleven of y^e clocke decemb. 23. 1652 & was buried the following tuesday being decemb: 28. 1652. cuius vestigia semper adoro.

My Sister Sarah having lived betweē 14 & 15 yeares, dyed, Jan. 20.1649 & was buried y^e next day:

My Brother Rowland fell sicke Jan. 18 & dyed about 8 dayes after my sister 1649. was aged 6 yeares.

My Sister Elizabeth dyed in childebed august: 31. 1656. was aged about 18 yeares: shee dyed at one in y^e morning being Lords day as also my Sister Sarah dyed y^e Lords day in y^e afternoone.

My deare Mother M^rs Sarah Mather, Formerly M^rs Cotton, having lived about 75 yeares dyed in the Lord May 27.1676 & was buried May 28 being the Lords Day. Let mee never Forgett her dying words.1024 [174]

I was marryed to my second wife, M^rs Prudence Crosbey The daughter of M^r Jonathan Wade of Ipswich the 9^th of July 1673 by Maior Denison

My 1^st childe by Her, y^e 13^th in all, was born on Satturday night, about 7 of y^e clocke, It being y^e 29^th of August, & was baptized august 30. 1674 & was named Rowland. The Lord give us Rest.

My 2^d childe by her & 14^th in all, was borne october 6 about 5 of y^e clocke in y^e morning 1676 & baptized octob. 8 1676 & was named Wade, in honour of his Grandfather Wade & to put him in mind of wading through all trialls to heaven He dyed & was buried octob. 11. 76. [175]

My Hon^d Father m^r Seaborne Cotton having lived 53 years dyed April 20 1686 about break of y^e day …1025

I was married to M^rs Anna Lake by Maj^r Richards Aug. 17 1686 at evening. Jn^o: Cotton

The rest of this book contains John Cotton’s family records, 1687–1710, in his and later hands (pages [177–180]); an account of his death (page [181]); and later family records made by one of his sons or grandsons (pages [182–193]).

1 See below, p. 15.

2 Edward Randolph (Prince Society Publications), II. 217, 220–222, 256; III. 92, 161, 178, 147, 187, 286.

3 Andros Tracts (Prince Society Publications), II. 37.

4 Viola F. Barnes, The Dominion of New England, p. 124.

5 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 258, 571.

6 Cotton Mather makes some amusing comments on this situation in his Diary (7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 804).

7 The First Americans, p. 108.

8 James Truslow Adams, The Founding of New England, p. 450. For more of the same, see id., pp. 447, 449; Homer C. Hockett, Political and Social Growth of the United States, p. 120; Marcus W. Jernegan, The American Colonies, p. 160; Wertenbaker, First Americans, pp. 108–109.

9 Randolph, iv. 92, 107.

10 Andros Tracts, ii. 37–39, 71.

11 Jeremy Belknap, History of New Hampshire, i. 178.

12 For example, Vernon L. Parrington, The Colonial Mind, p. 87.

13 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 280–281, 312.

14 Randolph, iv. 106.

15 Andros Tracts, iii. 174.

16 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 617–620.

17 Id., p. 253.

18 Randolph, iv. 105.

19 Randolph, iii. 146–148, 180; iv. 90; vi. 189; Andros Tracts, iii. 200.

20 Randolph, iii. 290.

21 Id., pp. 322–323.

22 Andros Tracts, ii. 76.

23 Id., 45.

24 Samuel G. Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island, i. 474.

25 Belknap, New Hampshire, i. 205–206.

26 Andros Tracts, ii. 200; Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 149–151.

27 Sketches of Elisha Cooke, Timothy Lindall, and Jonathan Belcher in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iv.

28 Andros Tracts, iii. 155, 169–173; Cotton Mather’s Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 148.

29 See sketches of Pemberton, Colman, and Wadsworth in Sibley, iv.

30 Disquisition Concerning Ecclesiastical Councils (Boston, 1716).

31 See below, pp. 35–37.

32 Photostat of agreement of June 1, 1704, at Massachusetts Historical Society.

33 Particularly the Brookfield Association. Congregational Quarterly, xii. 277 ff.

34 For example, Calvin R. Batchelder, History of the Eastern Diocese.

35 Ebenezer Turell, The Life and Character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman (Boston, 1749), PP. 136–141.

36 Recently by J. T. Adams, Provincial Society, p. 63.

37 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 291–292.

38 Id.

39 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., p. 478.

40 Id., p. 508.

41 Samuel Willard, Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam (Boston, 1681).

42 Sibley, iv. 194.

43 Cotton Mather’s Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii, passim.

44 Brooks Adams, Emancipation of Massachusetts, p. 297. Cf. Kenneth B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 142.

45 Abijah P. Marvin, Cotton Mather, p. iii; Mather, Optanda (Boston, 1692), pp. 42–45.

46 Memorable Providences (Boston, 1689), appendix, p. ii.

47 Andros Tracts, iii. 170.

48 Magnalia (ed. 1702), Bk. vii. 23.

49 Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 445.

50 Colonial Mind, p. 113.

51 Andros Tracts, ii. 73.

52 Id., i. 68.

53 Magnalia (ed. 1702), Bk. iii. 10.

54 See sketch of Cutler in Sibley, v.

55 Chronological History (Boston, 1826), p. xxi.

56 Parable of the Ten Virgins (2d ed., Boston, 1747), pp. 56–57 (first published, 1707).

57 The Duty of an Apostatizing People (Boston, 1737), p. 67.

58 Andros Tracts, ii. 37. See also Taken from the Flying-Post, May 14–16, 1719 (broadside in Harvard College Library).

59 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 621–622.

60 Id., pp. 397–401; Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 161–162.

61 This recalcitrant seems to have been the only clergyman the writer’s family ever produced.

62 Parrington, Colonial Mind, p. 86.

63 Id., p. 114.

64 Id., p. 148; Wertenbaker (First Americans, p. 113) says of the new rationalism: “This movement found no corresponding development among the old school of churchmen. So far from attempting … to shape their theology in conformity with new ideals and new points of view, they remained rigid and unyielding.”

65 Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 349–350.

66 First Americans, p. 248.

67 Samuel E. Morison, “The Harvard School of Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century,” New England Quarterly, vi. 3–24.

68 Preface, p. xviii.

69 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 354–355. The book was probably John Spencer’s Discourse Concerning Prodigies (London, 1663).

70 “An arch-conservative, he justified his ways to his conscience by the excellence of the heritage he strove to conserve. A formalist, he satisfied his intellectual curiosity by extolling the sufficiency of the creed of the fathers. He closed the windows of his mind against the winds of new doctrine, and bounded the fields of speculative inquiry by orthodox fences … Why should one expect to find in the works of such a man the seeds of new systems of thought…?” Parrington, Colonial Mind, pp. 99, 100.

71 Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 86.

72 Id., p. 282 and passim.

73 The Christian Philosopher (London, 1721). This may be the “volume of garbled science and platitudinous moralizing” which Mr. Adams (Revolutionary New England, p. 36) attacks on the authority of a secondary work, but, as his reference is incorrect, one cannot be certain.

74 New York Times, December 24, 1933.

75 For violently contrasting interpretations, cf. Moses Coit Tyler, History of American Literature, ii. 183, 185–187, and American Literature, i. 393–404.

76 For an attack by Cotton Mather on popular astronomical superstitions, see Manuductio ad Ministerium (Boston, 1726), pp. 54, 55.

77 Jernegan, American Colonies, p. 187.

78 Founding of New England, p. 396.

79 Political and Social Growth, p. 124. See also Wertenbaker, First Americans, p. 155.

80 Truth Held Forthe (New York, 1695), pp. 174–200. Cf. John Hale, A Modest Inquiry (Boston, 1702), pp. 155–156.

81 Political and Social Growth, p. 124.

82 Printed in 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 550–570.

83 For example, Hockett, Political and Social Growth, p. 124.

84 Their attitude was that of modern psychologists who warn people not to play with automatic writing lest it lead to split personalities. These last square perfectly with the “demoniac seizures” of witchcraft days. For modern examples, distressing to a man who likes an ordered universe, see Elwood Worcester, Body, Mind, and Spirit.

85 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 391–397.

86 More Wonders, p. 93 (i.e., 53).

87 Christ’s Fidelity (London, 1704), pp. 70 ff.

88 Some Miscellany Observations (Philadelphia, 1692).

89 Political and Social Growth, p. 125.

90 Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience (Boston, 1693), appendix.

91 Id., p. 32.

92 This has been proved by the vast scholarship of Thomas J. Holmes in Increase Mather, A Bibliography of his Works, i. 115–138. This book was not available to the men I have been criticizing.

93 Cases of Conscience, postscript.

94 P. 13 of “Enchantments Encountered,” in Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston, 1693).

95 Adams, Founding of New England, p. 454.

96 Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 50–51, and “Enchantments Encountered” in id.

97 “Cotton Mather not only ran with the mob, but he came near to outdistancing the most credulous.” Parrington, Colonial Mind, p. 115.

98 Adams, Founding of New England, p. 455. “During the Salem witchcraft delusion it was Thomas Brattle and Robert Calef, both merchants, who had the common sense to see the folly of the inquisition and the bravery to denounce the justices and the ministers for their part in it.” Wertenbaker, First Americans, p. 113.

99 The letter on which his reputation in this matter is based is printed in i Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 61–79.

100 Founding of New England, p. 455; Provincial Society, p. 120.

101 More Wonders, p. 78.

102 This statement is based on the frequent appearance of Hale’s book in inventories and on mention of it elsewhere. But it is true that people who left enough books to be inventoried would have been the sort to despise Calef.

103 Hockett, Political and Social Growth, p. 125; Wertenbaker, First Americans, pp. 113, 162; Adams, Founding of New England, p. 455.

104 Provincial Society, p. 120.

105 More Wonders, p. 96 (i.e., 56).

106 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 646–647.

107 Printed in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxiii. 193 n.

108 Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 739–740.

109 For a detailed account of Edwards’s reading, see our Publications, xxviii. 193–222.

110 Cotton Mather, p. 303.

111 The situation is well illustrated by the experience of the town of Norwich, Connecticut, which was unable to pay the salary of its minister, John Woodward. But when he was discharged in 1716, the church split into four congregations, and under his successor the First Church threw off three more.

112 Daniel Lewes, Of Taking Heed to, and Fulfilling the Ministry (Boston, 1720), introduction, p. ii.

113 The Firm Union of a People Represented (New London, 1717), p. 55.

114 These are based upon Sibley, Dexter, histories and records of towns and churches, diaries, letters, and all the available newspapers of the period.

115 For examples, sec Justin Winsor, History of Duxbury, pp. 189–192. “One does not, of course, look for any genuine humility or a sense of humor in a Puritan. They destroy his specific characteristics as the sunshine does microbes, and that way tolerance lies.” Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 34. Of course one does not find things without looking for them.

116 The Defects of Preachers Reproved (New London, 1724).

117 Edward L. Goodwin, The Colonial Church in Virginia, pp. 241–319. Of course no New England colony ever legislated in regard to its clergy as did Virginia. Cf. William W. Hening, Virginia Statutes at Large, iii. 362.

118 Sibley, iii. 396.

119 Id., iv, see index.

120 Franklin B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, pp. 182–184.

121 Solomon Stoddard, Defects of Preachers, introduction, pp. iv, v.

122 For example, Andrew Gardner of Worcester. Sibley, v.

123 The Man of God Thoroughly Furnished to Every Good Work (New London, 1758).

124 First Americans, pp. 189–190.

125 Id., p. 273.

126 Thomas W. Higginson, Travellers and Outlaws, pp. 15–16.

127 Diary, 7 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii.

128 In Terra Nova: The Northeast Coast of America before 1602.

129 First published in the London Chronicle, February 8, 1766, with an introduction by “A Lover of Britain”; see The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, A. H. Smyth, editor (cited hereafter as Writings), iii. 231, and Correspondence of William Shirley, C. H. Lincoln, editor, ii. 103–107. The text of the quotations is from the latter, pp. 104, 106–107.

130 Writings, iv. 362.

131 MS., William L. Clements Library. In this letter Franklin went on to assert that the plan had later found favor with members of the Rockingham ministry, who conferred frequently with him upon it, “and really strengthened one another and their Friends in the Resolution of Repealing the Stamp Act, on a Supposition that by this Plan of a Loan Office they could raise a greater sum with more satisfaction to the People.” The letter is referred to briefly by R. A. Humphreys in the English Historical Review, l. 267–268; and also by L. J. Carey in Franklin’s Economic Views (p. 20). But by the latter the episode is assigned to the year 1766, which obscures the true raison d’être of the proposal. I have also been able to identify a portion of Franklin’s draft of his scheme in the American Philosophical Society, Franklin Manuscripts, l (ii), 18. It is clear that this is the project which Pownall inserted in 1768 in his current edition of The Administration of the Colonies, and which he described as the joint production of himself and an American friend. But by 1768—indeed by 1767, when it looked for a time as if parliament, with the backing of the merchants, would take it seriously—Franklin had long since lost his enthusiasm for the plan. For his later attitude toward this revenue scheme, see his letter to Galloway of June 13, 1767, in Writings, v. 25–28.

132 American Philosophical Society, Franklin MSS., lviii (i), 36. The letter is dated December 21, 1766, and is incomplete.

133 “Observations,” in the London Chronicle, January 15, 1765; and “North American,” reprinted in the Newport Mercury, June 3, 1765, probably from the Westminster Gazette.

134 On Franklin and the Mutiny Act (5 Geo. III, c. 33). see Writings, iv. 388; v. 18. Bernard Faÿ, in his Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times, p. 315, makes this a provision of the Stamp Act. In the Am. Philos. Soc., Franklin MSS., l (ii), 55, is a draft in Franklin’s own hand of a note to Welbore Ellis, Secretary at War: “Mr Glover & Mr Trecothic from the Committee of North American Merch^ts present their respectful Compliments to Mr [Ellis—name struck out] Secretary at War, and request halt an Hours Audience of him on the Mutiny Bill.…” The agents’ card is in the Newport Mercury, July 8, 1765, reprinted from the Gazetteer, May 2, 1765; the letters by “An American” are in the St. James’s Chronicle, April 18 and 23, 1765.

135 Writings, iv. 390.

136 London Chronicle, November 16, 1765. See Franklin to Thomson, February 27, 1766, Writings, iv. 411.

137 Writings, iv. p. 392.

138 Pennsylvania Magazine of History, x. 92.

139 Writings, v. 16.

140 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn Papers (MSS.), Official Correspondence, x. 35; Pemberton Papers (MSS.), xxxiv. 142.

141 Pennsylvania Chronicle, February 9, 1767. See also the issues for February 16, 23, March 9, 23, 1767. These pieces are incompletely reprinted in Writings, iv. 393–399; v. 14–15.

142 Pennsylvania Journal, September 25, 1766.

143 Pennsylvania Chronicle, March 23, 1767.

144 “A Virginian,” in Lloyd’s Evening Post, September 2, 11, 1765 (the letters were dated, respectively, August 23 and September 5); “Equity,” in the Boston Evening-Post, December 2, 1765, reprinted from the Gazetteer, September 3, 1765.

145 “Americus,” in the Newport Mercury, February 3, 1766, reprinted from the Public Ledger, November 22, 1765; “Justice,” in the Newport Mercury, February 17, 1766, probably from the Gazetteer; “O,” in the Boston Evening-Post, March 17, 1766, reprinted from the Gazetteer, December 16, 1765.

146 Pennsylvania Journal, Supplement, September 18, 1766: “An Essay, Towards discovering the Authors and Promoters of the memorable Stamp Act, In a Letter from a Gentleman in London, to his friend in Philadelphia.”

147 Am. Philos. Soc., Franklin MSS., L (ii), 27, 30a, 31, 31a, 31b, 31c, 31d, 31e. A draft of the letter in the London Chronicle, April 9, 1767, is found in id., L. 9.

148 “Extract of a Letter from B. F. to W[illiam] F[ranklin],” London, November 9, 1765, Charles Norton Smith MSS., ii. 44, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. This is a copy in the handwriting of William Franklin. The original letter, not at the moment available, is in the Mason collection of Franklin material recently acquired by Yale University.

149 L. S. Sutherland, “Edmund Burke and the First Rockingham Ministry,” English Historical Review, xlvii. 46–70. At several points this new and illuminating exposition of the twofold movement for repeal and trade reform can be supplemented by a reading of the many extracts dealing with the movement from letters from London which were published in the colonial newspapers in the early months of 1766. In particular it appears that trade reform was the original purpose of the merchants, but that they were persuaded, probably by the arguments of the colonial agents, to concentrate first upon repeal.

150 Pennsylvania Journal, Supplement, September 18, 1766.

151 Am. Philos. Soc., Franklin MSS., l (ii), 46, 51. These parallels include two of the most famous passages in the Examination: the description of the altered temper of the Americans toward Great Britain after 1763; and the long discussion of colonial participation in the last French war and the character of the war as one for the supremacy of a British interest, the Indian trade. See Writings, iv. 418–419, 436–439.

152 Am. Philos. Soc., Franklin MSS., l (ii), 51.

153 Writings, iv. 446.

154 Id., p. 419.

155 On Franklin’s library and the present location of Franklin’s copies of the controversial pamphlets of this period, some of them annotated, see George Simpson Eddy, “Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s Library,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s., xxxiv. 206–226. Franklin’s copy of the charters is in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the other two items are in the New York Public Library.

156 F. J. Hinkhouse, The Preliminaries of the American Revolution as seen in the English Press, 1763–1775 (1926), pp. 93–94; and advertisements, as in the Daily Advertiser, January 11, 1766.

157 Franklin was uncomfortably aware of the reservation in the Pennsylvania charter of which the Grenvillites made so much: “King covenants not to tax but by Assembly or Act of Par^t” was his entry opposite this clause. When he noted the point in Knox, The Claim of the Colonies (p. 5), he wrote: “A Right that never existed cannot be a Right Reserved. … Qu^y If the Parliament had before no such Right, it would not be given to them by Words in the Charter?” See also his argument in his examination, Writings, iv. 445.

158 At the head of the title-page is a mutilated entry: “… mean by a thorough Inquisition of the point to procure a Settlement of Rights.” Again, opposite the record of the vote in the House of Lords on repeal, is the memorandum: “Comp[limen]t the Lords … Proof of my Opinion of their Goodness in the Freedom with which I purpose to examine their Protests.” And following a passage in which the peers had contested the right of the Americans to be exempt from a due share of the imperial burdens, he wrote: “Repeat on this Head all that has been done & paid by America.—King’s Message, Parl^t Grants, &c.” Where the Lords alleged that the last war was entered upon “for the interest and security of those Colonies,” Franklin wrote: “The fact deny’d. State the Cause & Effect of the War. The expensive Manner of Carrying it on &c.” Others of these marginalia are in the same style of hints for an intended rejoinder.

159 Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act (1766), p. 11.

160 Gazetteer, January 11, 1766, reprinted in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, March 9, 1767; Writings, iv. 421.

161 The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks, editor, iv. 209–210; Protest, p. 13.

162 Writings, iv. 441.

163 Protest, p. 12.

164 Id., p. 6.

165 William Knox, The Claim of the Colonies (1765), p. 8.

166 Id.

167 Protest, p. 4. Franklin, to be sure, struck out the second sentence, but apparently because it rested upon a strained reading of the text. Franklin also wrote “Neg.” in the margin opposite this passage.

168 There was, to be sure, a good deal of home-rule sentiment and expression in America from the beginning of the controversy, as Professor C. F. Mullett has clearly shown in his “Colonial Claims to Home Rule (1764–1775),” University of Missouri Studies, ii, no. 4 (1927).

169 Protest, p. 10. This claim, the text continued, “must (if admitted) set them absolutely free from any obedience to the power of the British Legislature.” Franklin commented: “but not to the Power of the Crown.”

170 The Claim of the Colonies, p. 9. Knox specified, among other such acts, those “restraining their commerce; prohibiting the carriage or exportation of their manufactures from one colony to another; taxing the productions of one colony when brought into another.” Franklin underscored these lines, and wrote: “Wicked.” When the Lords referred to “the wise policy” of the Navigation Act and subsequent trade laws (Protest, p. 11), Franklin observed: “The Policy wise with regard to foreigners. Selfish with Regd to Colonies.” Opposite the prediction of evils which would follow “that absolute freedom of trade, which they appear to desire,” he wrote “Qu^y. Other Advantages of Colonies besides Commerce. Selfishness of Commercial Views.”

171 Writings, v. 324–325.

172 In the margin of the Protest, p. 7.

173 Writings, v. 20–21.

174 Id., pp. 115–116.

175 Protest, p. 15.

176 Writings, v. 17–18, 21. Cf. “Letter concerning the Gratitude of America,” January 6, 1766, id., iv. 400–404.

177 Protest, p. 8. See also Writings, v. 260, for another expression of this view in 1770.

178 Writings, iv. 456.

179 See Franklin to Samuel Cooper, June 8, 1770, id., v. 261. The quotation is from Franklin to Joseph Galloway, January 11, 1770, MS., William L. Clements Library.

180 Writings, iv. 456; v. 17. See also “Francis Lynn,” id., v. 168. The germ of these passages is to be found in Am. Philos. Soc., Franklin MSS., l (ii), 46b.

181 Letter of February 18, 1774, MS., William L. Clements Library.

182 Writings, v. 115.

183 Id., vi. 260.

184 The Victoria County History of Survey, iv. 32–33.

185 Gardyner, Description, pp. 54–55.

186 Id., pp. 55–56.

187 Id., p. 74.

188 John H. Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, 1515–1685, i. 548.

189 Leo F. Stock, Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America, i. 169–170.

190 Id., p. 196.

191 Id., p. 196 n.

192 Henry Wilkinson, The Adventurers of Bermuda, pp. 285, 287.

193 I am obliged to Miss Mary Isabel Fry, of the staff of the Huntington Library, for the careful collation of this text with the photostatic copy.

194 A useful short introduction is Arthur S. P. Woodhouse, “Milton, Puritanism, and Liberty,” University of Toronto Quarterly, iv. 483–513.

195 In addition to indebtedness for aid specifically acknowledged in the notes, the author wishes to express his thanks to the Library Company of Philadelphia, and to its librarian, Mr. Austin K. Gray, for many courtesies, culminating in permission to reproduce here the Maylem manuscript poems and letters in the Du Simitière Papers (see note 2, p. 94). Most of this material is now printed for the first time.

196 Statements concerning Maylem, incorrect in one or both of these particulars, are found in Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American Poetry, i. 83; E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Literature, i. 432; Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature, ii. 53–54, in which the poet is confused with his father, but the inconsistency concerning his death in 1742 is pointed out; John C. Stockbridge, A Catalogue of the Harris Collection of American Poetry, p. 167; Charles E. Hammett, A Contribution to the Bibliography and Literature of Newport, R. I., p. 92; S. A. Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature, ii. 1255; Charles Evans, American Bibliography, iii, Index of Authors. So far as I know, the first writer to point out the inconsistency in full was the late Sidney Rider, in a severe review of Hammett’s Bibliography of Newport, published in his Book Notes, ii (Providence, R. I., January 7, 1888). I should like to acknowledge in this note my indebtedness in the preparation of the present study to Mr. Rider, in whose miscellaneous collections in the John Hay Library of Brown University I found (Box 245, No. 8) notes and transcripts that opened the way to the main lines of inquiry pursued in my investigation.

197 Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, i. 560, 570; ii. xii.

198 See the will of Joseph Maylem, dated August 13, 1730, in the Suffolk County Probate Court Records, Case No. 6378. Our Publications, xiv. 405, locates one of his lots in Boston next door to that upon which was built the Huguenot Church. This lot was left by the above-mentioned will to his son Mark. Joseph Maylem’s will was allowed February 13, 1733. The Boston Weekly News-Letter for Thursday, February 1, 1733, contains a notice which reads: “On Monday Evening [i.e. January 29, 1733] died at his House in School-Street, Mr. Joseph Maylem, who laboured under great bodily Indisposition and Pain for a long Time, in the 74th year of his age.” Samuel G. Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 592 n, suggests that Joseph was the son of the John Mylom referred to in the text above as having been admitted into church membership in 1635 The relationship is probable, but not certain.

199 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 167.

200 “Record Book of First Church in Charlestown,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxix. 71.

201 Emma L. Coleman, New England Captives Carried to Canada between 1677 and 1760, i. 74, 209, 212. Sec also Herbert I. Brackett, Brackett Genealogy, p. 122.

202 Suffolk County Probate Court Records, xxxi. 317. See also, for information about Keziah (Brackett) Maylem, Brackett, Brackett Genealogy, pp. 71, 122. Keziah Maylem’s will was allowed March 20, 1733. The Boston Weekly News-Letter for Thursday, March 8, 1733, contains a notice announcing that on “Tuesday last [i.e. March 6, 1733] died here the Widow Maylem, a very discreet and industrious Woman.”

203 See note 2, p. 91, below, for the names of the children of John and Ann Maylem.

204 Joseph Maylem names in his will (note 3, p. 88, above) three sons: Joseph, Mark, and John. The first of these he cut off with the proverbial five shillings, for reasons given. After providing for his widow Keziah by her legal “thirds,” he made a scrupulous division of his remaining property, real and personal, between his sons Mark and John. John’s inheritance, briefly stated, was a ten-acre lot, No. 17, in Bow Street in the township of Nottingham, New Hampshire, with buildings and improvements thereon; a silver tankard; a great chest with a Dantrick lock on it; the easternmost half of his double house in School Street, Boston; and a piece of land in that city lately purchased from. Peter Luce, both these pieces of real estate to be entailed to the third generation.

205 This date is given in Charles Evans, American Bibliography, iii, Index of Authors. It is obviously approximately correct.

206 For these newspaper references I am indebted to the interest of Mr. Clifford K. Shipton.

207 In her application for administrative rights upon the estate of her sister, Rachel Greene, Ann Maylem, or an amanuensis, has twice written the name Rachel “Dehane” and then erased it in favor of the married name “Greene.” Rhode Island Archives, Records of Governor and Council folder, 1760–1769, and “Petitions Voted Out” folder, June, 1768. Jacob Dehane, of Newport, on one occasion went on John Maylem’s bond. Rhode Island Archives, Cases in Equity, Part ii, 1743, 35–4, pp. 5–6. In the Short Narrative (see facsimile) Ann refers to a bond jointly signed by her husband and “Brother Dehane.”

208 See note 3, p. 92, below.

209 The Maylem family Bible was first described and its entries published by Dr. Henry E. Turner, its former owner, in the Rhode Island Historical Magazine, vi. 50. It is not definitely stated in the Bible that the births recorded there are those of the children of John and Ann Maylem, but the grounds for such an assertion are solid. The Bible contains this inscription: “The gift of Ann Maylem to her daughter, Rachel Denison, May the 6th, 1775.” The list of children shows three daughters, Frances, Rachel, and Mary, and a son John, alive in 1742, when in the newspaper notice of the death of John Maylem of Newport three daughters and one son were said to survive him. Furthermore, in the Newport Town Council Records (x. 6), in June, 1743, we find guardianship granted to Ann Maylem, widow of John, for her children Frances, Rachel, Mary, and John. There can be no question that the Bible referred to is the family Bible of John and Ann Maylem. I owe thanks to the late Lloyd M. Mayer, Librarian of the Newport Historical Society, for numerous courtesies in connection with the preparation of this paper, notably for information about the Maylem Bible, and for the several extracts from the Newport Town Council Records, the Newport Administration Bonds, and the Newport Land Evidence Records, which are referred to elsewhere in the notes.

It seems worth while to record here the essential data from the Maylem Bible, as abstracted for me by Mr. Mayer from Dr. Henry E. Turner’s manuscript collections.

Children of John and Ann Maylem from the Maylem Bible.

Ann Maylem, born July 22, 1721, Newport; bapt. by Mr. Clap; died Sept. 28, 1721, Newport (Common Burial Ground). The date of death is given as September 5 by Dr. Turner in the Rhode Island Historical Magazine, vi. 51.
Mary Maylem, born Feb. 7, 1722/3, Newport; bapt. by Mr. Clap; died Sept. 5, 1727, at Newport (Common Burial Ground).
Francis Maylem, born Oct. 8, 1725, Newport; died (still-born) Oct. 8, 1725 (Common Burial Ground).
Frances Maylem, born March 13, 1726/7, Newport; bapt. by Mr. Clap; died Feb. 4, 1750/1, aged 23 yrs. 10 mos. 22 days.
Brackett Maylem, born May 24, 1728, Newport; bapt. by Mr. Clap; died Aug. 22, Exeter.
Keziah Maylem, born Dec. 7, 1730, Exeter; bapt. by Mr. Odlin; died Nov. 13, 1731, Exeter.
Rachel Maylem, born Jan. 1, 1733/4, Boston; bapt. by Dr. Sewall; married — Denison.
Mary Maylem, born Aug. 12, 1737, Boston; bapt. by Mr. Prince.
John Maylem, born April 30, 1739, Boston; bapt. May 6, 1739, by Dr. Sewall.

In the Rider Collection in the John Hay Library of Brown University, Box 245, No. 8, is the following note: “Extracts by Dr. Turner from Church Records. Frances Maylen married Wm. Gubbins, May 7, 1747. (1st C. Ch.) Rachel Malane married Jabez Dennison, Nov. 17, 1774. (2nd C. Ch.) Mary Maylen married Paul Mumford Feb. 3, 1769 (Trinity Ch.).”

Mary Maylem, who married Paul Mumford, was doubtless the “Molly Maylem” who before her marriage conducted what seems to have been a large and active dry-goods store in Newport. See her numerous advertisements in the Newport Mercury, for example that of November 17, 1766, signed “Molly Maylem,” and a later one of June 25, 1767, signed “Mary Maylem.”

210 Land Evidence Records, Newport, vii 124–125.

211 John Bolitho’s petition of June 16, 1729, is found in Petitions to the Rhode Island General Assembly, 1725–1729, i. 60, MS. in Rhode Island Archives.

212 During this period, 1729–1732, John Maylem, husband of Ann, is three times described as of Nottingham or of Exeter, New Hampshire. The following extracts, covering a period of twenty years, from the New Hampshire Provincial Deeds, at the New Hampshire Historical Society, for which I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Otis G. Hammond, indicate a fairly extensive interest on the part of the elder John Maylem in land transactions in New Hampshire and Maine:

1722, May 21, John Maylem of Boston, gentleman, buys a proprietor’s right in Nottingham, N. H., from John Russell of Boston.
1729, December 10, John Maylem of Exeter, N. H., sells land in Nottingham to Samuel Little of Newmarket, N. H.; on June 28, 1731, to Israel Folsom of Newmarket.
1731, John Maylem of Nottingham, together with wife Ann, sells land in Nottingham to John Rindge of Portsmouth, N. H.; 1731/2, February 1, to Thomas Bartlett of Newbury, Mass.
1732, August 13, John Maylem of Nottingham buys land in Exeter from Moses Norris of Nottingham.
1741 October 6, John Maylem of Newport, R. I., together with wife Ann, sells land in Falmouth, Me., Exeter, N. H., Sagadahoc, Me., and Nottingham, N. H., to Samuel Lowe of Barrington, Mass.

213 One of these copies, bearing the inscription, “John Maylem Feb. 12th 1736/37 d^d to him this day by Mr. Gerrish,” was sold as No. 261 in the sale catalogue of The Library of the late Rev. Dr. Roderick Terry of Newport, Rhode Island, Part Two, American Art Association-Anderson Galleries, Inc., November 7 and 8, 1934.

214 Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, iv. 571.

215 See last entry in note 3, page 92, above.

216 The petition of 1744 is found in Petitions to the Rhode Island General Assembly, 1743–1747. vi. 13; that of 1748, in the “Voted Out” folder for 1748, MSS. in the Rhode Island Archives.

217 The only known copy of the broadside is in the Massachusetts Historical Society. The probability is that this broadside was issued from the Newport press of the Widow Franklin. Its date seems to be late in 1742 or early in 1743, for in the statement, under June 7 1742, is a reference to an action of the “last Tuesday of May past.” In other words, no month of May had come and gone at the time of writing since the month of May, 1742. By the next entry in the statement it is also made clear that the date of publication was later than November 19, 1742.

218 Other documents relating to Ann Maylem’s various legal troubles in connection with the estates she administered are found in manuscript in the Rhode Island Archives in: Cases in Equity, 1743, vi, Part ii, throughout; Record of Equity Court Judgments, October, 1743; Petitions, 1768–1770, xiii. 80; Records of Governor and Council folder, 1760–1769; “Petitions Voted Out” folder, June, 1768. From certain of these records it becomes clear that John Maylem had borrowed heavily from three or four individuals and by his untimely death had left his estate in considerable disorder. The inventory of his goods and chattels (Cases in Equity, 1743, Part ii, 35–4, pp. 5–6) shows at the time of his death a comfortable amount of furniture and equipment, appraised at £659, all of which had to be sold for the benefit of his creditors.

219 “A Poem by John Maylem on his birth day 30^th April 1760 being then 21 years of age.” A manuscript copy of this unpublished poem is found in the Du Simitière Collection in the Library Company of Philadelphia. All the manuscript poems referred to in this study are taken from the materials under Maylem’s name in this same collection. The article on Pierre Eugène Du Simitière in the Dictionary of American Biography provides a brief and general view of the life of the Swiss artist who devoted himself from about 1765 until his death in 1784 to the collecting of materials for the natural and civil history of North America which he proposed to write. The later history of these materials, particularly of the collections of papers in the Library Company of Philadelphia and in the Library of Congress, is set out in the excellent bibliography by Victor Hugo Paltsits in volume vi of I. N. Phelps Stokes’s Iconography of Manhattan Island (pp. 233–235). The writers of both these articles acknowledge indebtedness to the monographic study of Du Simitière by W. J. Potts in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, xiii (October, 1889). Du Simitière’s papers are normally, I believe, fair copies of original materials. Presumably the originals from which these copies were made were afterwards destroyed. The Maylem letters here drawn upon, addressed to several different persons, must have been copied from Maylem’s own drafts.

220 Newport Town Council Records, x. 6; Account of estate of John Maylem, dec’d, Mrs. Ann Maylem, Admx., June 29, 1745 (Newport Town Council Records, ix. 76); Ann Maylem, widow, et al., administrators on estate of Rachel Greene, late of Newport, April 5, 1766 (Newport Administrators Bonds, II. 127); Ann Maylem, widow, et al., administrators on estate of William Gubbins, Mariner, dec’d (Newport Administrators Bonds, 11. 209); Francis Gubbins, minor, asked to have his grandmother, Mrs. Ann Maylem, appointed his guardian, August 4, 1766 (Newport Town Council Records, xv. 37). According to the Maylem Bible (see note 2, p. 91, above), Frances (Maylem) Gubbins died February 4, 1750/1.

221 See note 2, p. 91, above, where the entry of the poet’s birth has been given in condensed form. This fuller entry is given as in the text by Dr. Henry E. Turner, in the Rhode Island Historical Magazine, vi. 50.

222 See pp. 110–111, below.

223 Reference will be made later to the praise of Maylem by Joseph Brown Ladd in 1786. There may be quoted at this point, however, the following comment: “His productions bear every mark of a deficient education; but his genius rose superior to every inconvenience.…” Joseph Brown Ladd, The Poems of Arouet (Charleston, S. C., 1786), p. 23.

224 In view of Maylem’s later designation of himself as “farmer” at the time of his enlistment, the assumption may be that part of his boyhood days were spent on a farm, but when, where, or whose farm it was does not appear in the record.

225 In the eighth section of this study is found a list of the unpublished Maylem poems in the Du Simitière Papers in the Library Company of Philadelphia. Miss Polly Turner, “Paphian Goddess,” has succeeded in withholding her identity from me.

226 From the Annals of Trinity Church, Newport, by George Champlin Mason (first series), p. 131, it appears that Catharine Malbone was married to Major Fairchild (“Major,” a Christian name, not a title) on October 28, 1764. A note informs us that Catharine was the daughter of Godfrey and Catharine Malbone, and was born October 21, 1737. She was thus a sister of John Malbone, father of Edward Greene Malbone, the artist.

227 See note 4, p. 95, above.

228 This poem, like the other known unpublished writings of Maylem, is from the Du Simitière Papers.

229 See No. 1 in the list of Maylem’s published works, p. 117, below

230 Massachusetts Archives, French and Indian War Records. For this and other references to the main facts of Maylem’s military career, taken from the Massachusetts Archives, I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Albert Harrison Hall, State Archivist, and Miss Marie J. Hession, Principal Archives Assistant

231 Id.

232 Id.

233 Massachusetts Archives, Military Series, lxxvii. 578

234 For bibliographical description, see No. 2 in the list of Maylem’s published works, p. 117, below.

235 The Conquest of Beau-se-jour, by Colonels Moncton [sic] and Winslow, in 1755.

236 Lieutenant Simon Wade, who signed the letter with Maylem, was an associate in arms of the poet in more than one campaign, and at Fort William Henry both were officers under Colonel Frye. Wade’s record is found in Massachusetts Archives, French and Indian War Records, and in Massachusetts Archives, Military Series, lxxvi. 195, 239, 241, 708, and 709. Thomas Shaw, who seems to have endorsed the letter, was a captain of New Jersey troops present at Fort William Henry. After his release from captivity, he was promoted to a lieutenant-colonelcy and was killed before Ticonderoga on July 8, 1758. See Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives Series), ix. 184–185.

237 For bibliographical discussion, see No. 5 in the list of Maylem’s published works, p. 118, below. The 358 lines of the poem are wrongly numbered 362.

238 See note 4, p. 99, above.

239 MS. in Du Simitiére Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia, whence this piece was printed by Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Literature, i. 432. A list of the Maylem items in the Du Simitiére Papers is given below, p. 110.

240 This period is determined roughly by the dates of the Maylem letters in the Du Simitière Papers, now to be quoted.

241 Du Simitière Papers.

242 Id.

243 Id.

244 Id.

245 Du Simitière Papers.

246 Id.

247 Id.

248 This anonymous poem was reprinted from the Newport Mercury by Carl Bridenbaugh in the New England Quarterly, vii. 325–326, with an interesting note, but without attribution of authorship. Its inclusion in manuscript among the Maylem poems in the Du Simitière Papers and its publication in the Newport Mercury during Maylem’s lifetime in that town seem sufficient warrant for attributing it to Maylem’s pen.

249 Howard M. Chapin, Rhode Island in the Colonial Wars. A List of Rhode Island Soldiers & Sailors in the Old French and Indian War, 1755–1762, p. 100. We learn from Mr. Chapin also that a large company of those who enlisted in Newport in 1762 went upon the West Indian campaign.

250 See pp. 117–120, below, for an account of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century reprints of Maylem’s poems.

251 Ladd, The Poems of Arouet, p. 23.

252 Petitions, x. 82, June 13, 1759

253 See Mason, Annals of Trinity Church.

254 Intruding himself once into the Lodge, they got him drunk—shinn’d his face & play’d the devil with him—as ’tis said.

255 There liv’d in New Port a very miserable object of the name of Bird, who subsisted upon alms she was born y^e night before the great fire in London 1666—& came (as did the subject of this satire) from London—whether they stood in relation to one another or not, is nothing to the purpose, this being Poetica Licentia—’tis to be observ’d however that there never was a greater connection between a couple of guineas, than the resemblance they bore to each other—as every body that knew her will confess she died in the alms house in New Port some short time ago aged 92—a most unreasonable age!—’tis reported he was a blue coat boy & a F—dl—g—tho at present he is in very affluent circumstances.

256 She us’d to go to meeting & sit in the alley opposite the pulpit & a damn’d motley figur [word illegible].

257 a d—d small fellow—

258 a d—d freckled Chap—

259 this word is defaced in the original. (Du Simitière’s note.)

260 this fellow, murder’d several passages in Hudibras, & one Green a great Satyrist in Boston—to adapt them to his matchless Essay which is just as comprehensive as Jacob Behmen—I wish I had a Copy of it.

261 The conquest of Beau-se-jour, by Colonels Monckton and Winslor, in 1756.

262 The more recent biographical studies of New England governors include: Mrs. Napier Higgins, The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon, vols. i and ii constituting a biography of Sir Francis Bernard; Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley; James K. Hosmer, The Life of Thomas Hutchinson, Royal Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; Viola F. Barnes, “The Rise of William Phips” and “Phippius Maximus,” New England Quarterly, i. 271–294, 532–553; C. A. W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall M.P., F.R.S., Governor of Massachusetts Bay, Author of the Letters of Junius; George A. Wood, William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, 1741–1756, A History; Lawrence S. Mayo, John Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, 1767–1775. A good short account of Jonathan Belcher is in Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iv. 434–449. In addition, the Dictionary of American Biography contains sketches of all the New England royal governors except Samuel Allen: Jonathan Belcher, Sir Francis Bernard, William Burnet, Joseph Dudley, Thomas Gage, William Shirley, and Samuel Shute, by James Truslow Adams; Sir Edmund Andros and Sir William Phips, by Viola F. Barnes; the Earl of Bellomont, by Charles W. Spencer; Thomas Hutchinson, by Carl Becker; Thomas Pownall, by Leonard W. Labaree; Benning Wentworth, by Isabel M. S. Whittier; and John Wentworth, by Wayne E. Stevens. For biographical data not otherwise credited in subsequent footnotes, I have usually relied upon the above works.

263 Assumed office, December 20, 1686; arrested and deprived of authority by the insurgents, April 18, 1689.

264 Assumed office, May 16, 1692; departed for England, December 4, 1694; died in London, February 18, 1695.

265 Appointed in 1692, but active governor only from September 15, 1698, until superseded on July 31, 1699.

266 Appointed in 1697; assumed office in Massachusetts, May 26, 1699; in New Hampshire, July 31, 1699; died in office, March 5, 1701.

267 Assumed office in Massachusetts, June 11, 1702; in New Hampshire, July 13, 1702; commissions not renewed in 1715.

268 Assumed office in Massachusetts, October 5, 1716; in New Hampshire, October 17, 1716; left for England, January 1, 1723; commissions not renewed in 1727.

269 Assumed office in Massachusetts, September 17, 1728; in New Hampshire, October 2, 1728; died in office, September 7, 1729.

270 Assumed office in Massachusetts, August to, 1730; in New Hampshire, August 25, 1730; superseded, August 14, 1741.

271 Assumed office, August 14, 1741; sailed for England upon recall, September 15, 1756.

272 Assumed office, August 3, 1757; sailed for England upon recall, June 3, 1760.

273 Assumed office, August 2, 1760; sailed for England, August 1, 1769.

274 Assumed office as acting governor, August 1, 1769, and as governor, March 4, 1771; superseded, May 17, 1774.

275 Assumed office, May 17, 1774; sailed for England during siege of Boston, October 10, 1775.

276 Assumed office, December 13, 1741; superseded, June 13, 1767.

277 Assumed office, June 13, 1767; fled to Boston, August 23, 1775.

278 The places and dates of birth of these men were as follows: Phips: Woolwich, Maine, February 2, 1650/1; Dudley: Roxbury, Massachusetts, September 23, 1647; Belcher: Cambridge, January 8, 1681/2; Hutchinson: Boston, September 9, 1711; Benning Wentworth: Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 24, 1696; John Wentworth: Portsmouth, August 9, 1737.

279 Sir Henry Moore, Bart, (governor of New York, 1765–1769), was born at Vere, Jamaica, February 7, 1712/3.

280 Lewis Morris (governor, 1738–1746), born at “Bronck’s Land,” New York, October 15, 1671; Jonathan Belcher (governor, 1747–1757), born at Cambridge, January 8, 1681/2; William Franklin (governor, 1763–1775), born, probably in Philadelphia, in 1731.

281 Allen, though never in America before his assumption of the governorship, had a considerable stake in New Hampshire, since he had bought the proprietary claims to the province from the heirs of John Mason.

282 Andros had been an officer in a regiment in Barbados from 1666 until about 1672, in which year he was made a landgrave of Carolina. From 1674 until 1681 he was proprietary governor of New York. Burnet had been governor of New York and New Jersey, 1720–1728. Bernard had been governor of New Jersey, 1758–1759.

283 Wood (William Shirley, pp. 35–91) gives a detailed account of Shirley’s years in Boston as barrister, judge of the vice-admiralty court, and advocate-general, before attaining the governorship.

284 Pownall was sent over as secretary to Governor Sir Thomas Osborn of New York in 1753, and upon the latter’s almost immediate suicide, travelled among the colonies. He attended the Albany Congress in 1754 and Braddock’s council of governors in 1755. He was nominal lieutenant-governor of New Jersey from 1755 on, and for some months in 1756 was secretary extraordinary to the commander-in-chief in America, Lord Loudoun.

285 Gage first came to America in 1754 under General Braddock. He became commander-in-chief in 1763 and remained continuously in the colonies until the Revolution, except for a visit to England from the summer of 1773 until the spring of 1774. The article in the Dictionary of American Biography (vii. 87) is incorrect in stating that he left for England in February, 1773. He was in New York as late as the following June 3, as his correspondence shows. Clarence E. Carter, editor, The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, i. 354.

286 See Frederic DePeyster, The Life and Administration of Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont.

287 Acts and Resolves of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, i. 109, 174, 188, 395, 437; vii. 230.

288 Instead of being met upon arrival at Boston by the General Court, leading officials, and citizens, and escorted through the streets to an immediate induction, Gage found, when he reached Boston, May 14, 1774, that a town meeting was in progress, called to consider the news of the Port Bill. “The late Governor Hutchinson, The Cheif Justice, the Commissioners of the Customs, and the Consignies, were either at the Castle, or dispersed in the Country, not daring to reside in Boston. I Went to M^r Hutchinson and remained with him at Castle William till Preparations were made for My Reception in Boston, where My Commission Was read and Published in the usual Forms on the 17^th Ins^t.” Gage to Dartmouth, May 19, 1774, Carter, Gage Correspondence, i. 355. Cf. the account of the enthusiastic reception of Belcher in 1730 as given in the Boston NewsLetter, August 6–13 (reprinted in large part in Sibley, iv. 439–440).

289 The ancestries of most of these men are conveniently summarized in their biographical sketches in the Dictionary of American Biography.

290 Colonial Office Papers 138: 5, pp. 245–246, 250, 254–255; Calendar of Treasury Books, 1685–1689, pp. 1258, 1463; Estelle F. Ward, Christopher Monck, Duke of Albemarle, pp. 273–278.

291 The list, with the years of receiving the bachelor’s degree, is as follows: Oxford: Bernard, 1733 (Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 100); Cambridge: Shirley, 1714 (J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, iv. 67); Pownall, 1744 (id., iii. 389); Harvard: Dudley, 1665 (Sibley, ii. 166–188); Belcher, 1699 (id., iv. 434–449); Benning Wentworth, 1715 (Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue, 1636–1930, p. 175); Hutchinson, 1727 (id., p. 178); John Wentworth, 1755 (id., p. 186).

292 Shute was admitted at the Middle Temple, November 23, 1683. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, iv. 72.

293 T. E. S. Clarke and H. C. Foxcroft, A Life of Gilbert Burnet, pp. 426–428; H. C. Foxcroft, A Supplement to Burnet’s History of My Own Time, pp. 511–512 (autobiographical extract).

294 Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, i. 261.

295 Burnet’s papers in the Philosophical Transactions have the following tides: “On the Icy Mountains in Switzerland” (xxvi. 316); “Observations on the eclipse of the first satellite of Jupiter, in 1723, made at New York” (xxxiii. 162); “Account of a doublebodied child” (l. 315).

296 An Essay on Scripture-Prophecy, Wherein it is Endeavored to Explain the Three Periods Contain’d in the XII Chapter of the Prophet Daniel. With some Arguments to make it Probable, that the First of the Periods did Expire in the Year 1715. [New York], 1724. This remarkable treatise demonstrates that the Kingdom of God was due to arrive in the year 1790. The Yale University Library copy was presented by the author to Samuel Johnson, the first Anglican minister in Connecticut, and later the first president of King’s College (Columbia).

297 Aedis Christi Olim Alumni Odarum. Libri Duo. London, 1752.

298 London, 1764, 1765, 1766, 1768, 1774, 1777.

299 Bibliographies of Pownall’s writings are in the Dictionary of National Biography, and C. A. W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, appendix, pp. 3–6.

300 History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1628–1691 (Boston, 1764); History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1691–1750 (Boston, 1767); History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1749–1774 (London, 1828).

301 Charles Dalton, English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661–1714, i. 37, 75, 115, 119, 168–169.

302 Id., v, part ii, pp. 16–17; Dalton, George the First’s Army, 1714–1727, i. 105.

303 Promoted in 1770. War Office, Army Lists, 1772, pp. 2, 76.

304 For a recent appraisal of Shirley as a military leader see Stanley M. Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America, especially pp. 134–135.

305 J. K. Hosmer, Thomas Hutchinson, pp. 66–68.

306 For example, he wrote Hillsborough, March 27, 1770: “I shall faithfully endeavor to support such person [as might be appointed governor] according to the best of my abilities, and I think it not improbable that I may be capable of doing his Majesty greater service in the Province, even in a private station, than at present.” Id., p. 188. To Richard Jackson he wrote in the same month: “I find my constitution is not strong enough to bear so great a burden [as the governorship], and I hope the next vessel will bring us news of a person of weight and importance appointed to the government.” Id., p. 189.

307 Dudley’s efforts to win the governorship are fully described in Kimball, Joseph Dudley, chap. iv.

308 Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, ii. 367; Sibley, iv. 438–439. In 1745, however, Belcher wrote to Newcastle: “I never sought the government of New England, but it was offered me.” British Museum, Additional MSS. 32,704 (Newcastle Papers, xix), fol. 547. Although he repeated this assertion in the following year (Add. MSS. 32,706, Newcastle Papers, xxi, fol. 292), the independent evidence runs overwhelmingly to the contrary.

309 Belcher to the Board of Trade, June 12, 1731. Acts and Resolves, ii. 633–634. Further light on Belcher’s zeal for office-holding is shed by the letters and memorials with which he and his friends bombarded the British ministers in 1745 and 1746, pleading that the South Carolina governorship be given him after his removal from Massachusetts. Add. MSS. 32,704, fol. 547; 32,706, fols. 235, 292–293, 314–315.

310 In a typical letter to Newcastle in support of Benning Wentworth’s candidacy, Joseph Windham Ashe wrote, November 23, 1739: “I therefore would humbly recommend to Your Grace Benning Wentworth, Esq. one of His Majesty’s council in the said Province of New Hampshire (Now in London) to be made Governor of His Majesty’s said Province. I shall only mention to Your Grace that he was eldest son of the late Lieutenant Governor Wentworth of the said Province and to his capacity and integrity there can be no objection. He has been a very great sufferer by the Crown of Spain, but as to any pretensions he may have to hope for Your Grace’s favour on this account, I must beg leave to refer Your Grace to Mr. Keene who designs to wait on Your Grace in his behalf so soon as his health will permit him to come abroad.” Add. MSS. 32,692, fol. 475.

311 William Tudor, Lift of James Otis of Massachusetts, p. 44; C. A. W. Pownall, Thomas Pownall, pp. 90–91.

312 Charles F. Adams, editor, Works of John Adams, x. 243.

313 Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, ii. 206–208, 392–399; Kimball, Joseph Dudley, pp 157–174; James T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, pp. 93–96, 154–160.

314 Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, ii. 435–440; Hosmer, Hutchinson, pp. 26–35.

315 The assistance of one of my former students, Miss Josephine Cobb, in arranging and summarizing the documents used in this article, entitles her to be credited with coauthorship of this paper

316 Harriet S. Tapley, “The Province Galley of Massachusetts Bay, 1694–1716,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, lviii. 73–88, 153–175.

317 These are now part of the files of the Supreme Judicial Court.

318 Our Publications, xxix. xvii–xciv.

319 Suffolk Files (hereafter cited as S. F.), 10,941; Boston Public Library MSS., 578

320 Waldo Lincoln, Genealogy of the Waldo Family, i. 69.

321 Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, ix. 430.

322 Savage’s account book, S. F. 13,529 (45 and 46); deposition of Francis Lamontais, id., 12,358 (13).

323 Boston News-Letter, March 15–22, 1713/14.

324 Samuel Roads, Jr., The History and Traditions of Marblehead, pp. 42–43.

325 Apparently the Province Galley was secured by two anchors, the cable of one of which overlapped the cable which moored the Dragon. Depositions of Eleazar Ingalls and Peter Stevens, S. F. 12,358 (11).

326 Deposition of Francis Lamontais, id., 12,358 (13). The remainder of the account is from id., 10,921; deposition of Robert Orange, id., 12,358 (12) and 28,863; deposition of John Pittman; deposition of Nathaniel Greenwood, id., 11,153 (5).

327 S. F. 10,647 (5), deposition of Ephraim Landin. Others testified that Savage could have saved the Dragon had he pleased. Id., 9,960.

328 Of these, 118½ quintals were Colonel Legg’s; 312 came from Hill’s sloop, 110 from Martin’s sloop, 251½ from Masefield’s sloop, 311 from Waters’s sloop, and 224½ had been brought by land from Cape Anne. Id., 11,153 (3); 13,529 (16–17).

329 Concerning the fish, see id., 11,084; 11,151; 11,153; 13,259.

330 Id., 11,151 (15). Phillips bought ten quintals on his own privilege and sold it for $8 a quintal. He thought Savage could have done the same if the fish had been as good.

331 Id., 11,151 (3).

332 S. F. 10,941 (2); 13,529 (19).

333 S. F. 13,529 (9).

334 Id.,11,037 (1, 2, 3).

335 “Observations taken from our orders to Captain Arthur Savage and from his proceedings in the Province Galley,” id., 13,529 (34). The original is in the Knox Papers, Maine Historical Society.

336 Edward M. Saunders, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wiswall, a Loyalist Clergyman of New England and Nova Scotia; William A. Calnek, History of the County of Annapolis, pp. 633–634.

337 S. F. 10,941 (1, fol. 4).

338 S. F. 10,941 (1, fol. 4).

339 “Observations,” id., 13,529 (34).

340 Account Book, June 9, id., 13,529 (45 and 46).

341 Wiswall’s Journal, in “Observations,” id., 13,529 (34).

342 Letter to Tidcombe, June 25, id., 13,529 (27).

343 Account Book, id., 13,529 (45 and 46).

344 Wiswall’s Journal, in “Observations,” id., 13,529 (34)

345 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 4).

346 S. F. 13,529 (31), letter to Oulton and Waldo, September 13, 1714.

347 Wiswall’s Journal, in “Observations,” id., 13,529 (34).

348 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 4).

349 Id., 13,529 (31), letter to Oulton and Waldo, September 13, 1714.

350 Id., 13,529 (35), deposition of Phillips.

351 Id., 11,151 (12); deposition of Peleg Wiswall, id., 11,151 (5).

352 Id., 13,529 (30), letter written from Mataro, August 27, 1714; letter to Shallet and Crowe, August 27, 1714

353 Id; 13.529 (30).

354 Papers of the Castilian Club on the War of the Austrian Succession, Nos. 24, 25.

355 S. F. 13,529 (35), deposition of Phillips.

356 Account Book, id., 13,529 (46).

357 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 5).

358 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 6).

359 Wiswall’s Journal, in “Observations,” id., 13,529 (34).

360 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 6).

361 S. F. 13,529 (32), letter to Crowe and Spikeman, October 20, 1714.

362 Id., 13,529 (35), deposition of Phillips.

363 Id.

364 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 6).

365 Id.,10,941 (1, fols. 6, 7).

366 Id., 13,529 (52).

367 Id., 10,941 (1, fol. 7).

368 Id.

369 S. F. 10,941 (1, fol. 7).

370 Account Book, id., 13,529 (46).

371 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 77 (Sewall’s Diary).

372 S. F. 12,343.

373 S. F. 13,529 (33).

374 Menzies arrived in Rhode Island, December 24, 1715 (Boston News-Letter, January 9–16, 1715/16), and in Boston, January 4, 1715/16 (5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 70).

375 S. F. 11,150 (5).

376 These suspicions were in part based on the accusations of Jonathan Caswall. See his letter from London, February 29, 1715/16 (read April 13, 1716).

377 On this point Savage later remarked: “Their insipid pun upon the word Savage discovers them to be as low and poor in their wit as they are now in trade and business.” S. F. 12,343 (3).

378 “Observations.” The quotation here is from the original in the Knox MSS. at the Maine Historical Society. It differs slightly from the copy in the court files.

379 Id., 13,529 (34).

380 Records of the Superior Court, 1715–1721 (MS.), pp. 152, 204, 186, 40 (in that order);S. F. 12,343 (twelve papers which have to do with the breach of orders case); Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, 1680–1720, p. 721; Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, i. 132; ii. 180.

381 Records of the Superior Court, 1715–1721 (MS.), pp. 5, 142, 159, 193, 204, 209, 220; id., 1700–1714, p. 309.

382 See Savage’s list of his complaints, S. F. 12,343.

383 Acts and Resolves, i. 19.

384 Acts and Resolves, i. 72–76 (chap. 33, 1692–3, disallowed August 22, 1695); 283–287 (chap. 9, 1697, disallowed November 24, 1698).

385 Id., pp. 370–372 (chap. 3, 1699–1700).

386 J. Franklin Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, p. 318.

387 Dummer’s position was concurred in by the king’s attorney-general, Mr. West. In a report to the Council of Trade and Plantations, June 20, 1720, on admiralty jurisdiction, West argued that wherever the common law is in force, the people must have protection against illegal extension of admiralty power. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, American & West Indies, 1720–21, pp. 53–55.

388 Boston News-Letter, August 27–September 3, September 9–16, 1716.

389 Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, xiii. 9.

390 Possibly it was a notice stating their side of the case.

391 S. F. ii, 150 (10).

392 Records of the Superior Court, 1715–1721 (MS.), p. 202. Smith protested to Governor Shute concerning his arrest (Cat. St. Pap., Col., Amer. & W. I., 1719–20, pp. 25–29) and later was suspended by him from his position as advocate-general. By way of revenge, according to John Bridger, Surveyor-General of the King’s Woods (a position for which Smith had been an applicant), Smith went home loaded with complaints against the governor (id., pp. 178–179). These complaints may, in part at least, be found in Smith’s anonymous pamphlet Some Considerations on the Consequences of the French Settling Colonies on the Mississippi (London, 1720). In a reprint of this pamphlet published by the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio in 1928, the editor states that internal evidence discredits Smith as the author, since the latter was judge of the admiralty court of South Carolina, while the author of the pamphlet shows intimate knowledge of New England. In reality, of course, Smith meets precisely all the conditions for authorship laid down by internal evidence. A copy of this pamphlet is in the Boston Public Library. A reply to it, Copy of a Letter by a Gentleman in New-England, to his Friend & Correspondent at London, containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet Entitled, Some Considerations (Boston, 1720), is in the John Carter Brown Library. I am indebted to Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr., of the Harvard Law School for his detailed references to the 1934–35 Report of the John Carter Brown Library, which discusses both these pamphlets.

393 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 226.

394 Jameson, Privateering and Piracy, p. 318. Smith, in the “Abstract of a Letter concerning the Officers of Admiralty in N,” contained in his pamphlet noted above, vigorously attacked the integrity of Judge Menzies, he implied, was subservient to the governor. He argues that the governor should be divested of his power as vice-admiral.

395 S. F. 12,343; 10,941 (3 to 12).

396 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 170.

397 Boston News-Letter, November 26–December 3, 1716. According to Savage’s advertisement a “Lion of Barbary” was to be exhibited by William Nichols, who was Savage’s servant (S. F. 11, 171, 11, 236).

398 S. F. 11,150(10).

399 S.F. 11,150 (13).

400 S.F. 11,150 (12).

401 S.F. 11,150 (2).

402 Records of the Superior Court, 1715–1721 (MS.), pp. 202–203.

403 See above, pp. 78–86.

404 William Walwyn published Some Considerations tending to the undeceiving those, whose judgements are misinformed (1642) and The Power of Love (1643). John Lilburne wrote copiously on the topic. John Goodwin wrote Theomachia (1644) and other tracts. Henry Robinson published Liberty of Conscience (1643) and numerous other pieces on this theme. For the attribution of the Walwyn tracts, see William Haller, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, i. 121–127; for that of the Robinson tract, see Sir Charles H. Firth’s short essay in English Historical Review, ix. 715–717.

405 The idea of the progressive revelation of religious truth is expressed in the writings of Thomas Goodwin, Roger Williams, Milton, Cromwell, Ireton, Henry Robinson, and others. An article by Arthur S. P. Woodhouse, “Puritanism and Liberty” (University of Toronto Quarterly, iv. 395–404), and another article by the same writer (id., pp. 483–513) are of more than usual interest in connection with the substance of the present topic. The quotation from Robinson given in the text is taken from the edition published by William Haller, Tracts, iii. 166.

406 Haller, Tracts, ii. 157.

407 Haller, Tracts, ii. 299.

408 The idea of the separation of Church and State was quite new at this time. Charles Borgeaud, The Rise of Modem Democracy in Old and New England, p. 156; George P. Gooch and Harold J. Laski, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, p. 73.

409 Puritan ministers on both sides of the Atlantic were interested in the conversion of the Indians. In several New England tracts, e.g., [Thomas Shepard], The Day-Breaking, if not the Sun Rising of the Gospel with the Indians in New-England (London, 1647), the matter is discussed. Mayhew and Eliot were at work among the Indians by 1646, and this tract was published in April of that year, only a few months before the Bahama broadside. The movement came to a head in 1649 when parliament incorporated the so-called New England Company, the purpose of which was to promote missionary work among the Indians of that region.

410 Charles H. Firth, editor, The Clarke Papers, i. l–li, lx–lxiv.

411 Id., p. lxii.

412 Id., pp. lxii–lxiii.

413 Id., pp. 301–302.

414 Samuel R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, p. 411.

415 Joseph R. Tanner, English Constitutional Conflicts of the Seventeenth Century, p. 145.

416 Pride’s Purge, December 6, 1648, in which the Presbyterian element was expelled from parliament. Thereafter the Independents, formerly a minority, became the sole possessors of power.

417 H. F. Russell Smith, Harrington and His Oceana, pp. 40–49.

418 Charles H. McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy (p. 104), supplies a passage which is pertinent comment at this point: “By the ‘logic of events’ the new idea was slowly but surely borne in upon the minds of [seventeenth-century] Englishmen that Parliament was a real lawmaking organ. Times of crisis, of course, hastened this process. Emergencies arose that required prompt action [italics mine]; existing laws were inadequate; no rule was in existence to be ‘determined’; there was no time for a fiction; a rule must be made. Such a crisis confronted the Long Parliament. It was met by an assumption of power wholly unusual. The acts of the Long Parliament, legal and illegal, justifiable and unjustifiable, did much to habituate the minds of Englishmen to a legislative assembly.” The provision in the Articles and Orders for emergency action is a pointed contemporary illustration of the process to which Professor McIlwain refers.

419 The intellectual connection between the ideas of Levellers and radical Independents on the one hand and the republican theories of Harrington on the other still waits to be explored. Harrington’s theories are much more intimately related to the fabric of English progressive economic and political thought at this time than a reading of H. F. Russell Smith’s study would lead one to suppose.

420 Gooch and Laski, English Democratic Ideas, pp. 308–311.

421 Henry Robinson, England’s Safety in Trade’s Encrease (London, 1641), pp. 25–28. Page 28 is misnumbered “34.”

422 Id., pp. 25–28.

423 Firth, Clarke Papers, i. xi.

424 Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, p. 334; Theodore C. Pease, The Leveller Movement, p. 300.

425 The writer is informed by Dr. James A. Williamson that the Earl of Warwick had a hand in this enterprise. See also James A. Williamson, Short History of British Expansion, i. 212–213. The Spaniards took Old Providence, off the Central American coast, in 1641; but in 1647 the Bahama settlers applied the name “Providence” to one of the islands of the Bahama group, which thereupon became New Providence.

426 In 1675, Major John Fenwick, an old Cromwellian who had obtained a grant of land in West New Jersey, and was then preparing to colonize, issued at London a broadside advertising the nature of the community he proposed to set up there. Some of his provisions are so similar to those outlined in the Articles and Orders that Fenwick’s proposed arrangements may well be indicated here. Politically, he contemplated a republican form of government, with “a Governor and 12 Council to be Chosen every year, 6 of the Council to go out, and 6 to come in; whereby every Proprietor may be made capable of Government, and know the Affairs of the Country, and Privileges of the People.” The application of the principle of rotation in office is unmistakable.

Fenwick also proposed cultivation of the land in common for a limited term of years. This proposal seems to be similar to, though more fully explained than, the scheme outlined in the Articles and Orders: “First, 10,000 Acres being pitch’d Upon, and divided according to every mans Propriety; then Lots shall be cast, and when every one knows where his Lot lies, there being also a place Chosen and set out for a Town or City to be Built, in which every Purchaser must have a Part, by reason of Delaware River for Trade. Then every one must joyn their Hands, first in Building the Houses, and next in Improving the Land, casting Lots whose Houses shall be first built, and whose Land first Improved: And as the Land is Improved so it shall be for the Use of all the Hands and their Families which are joyned in this Community, until the whole 10,000 Acres be Improved; Then every one to have his own Lot to his own Use: And so this Method to be used till the Country be Planted. If any like not this Method, they may be left to Improve their Propriety alone.” The complete text of the broadside issued by Fenwick is found in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vi. 86–88.

427 Our Publications, xxxi. 29. Nathaniel White (H. C. 1646) returned to Boston in the summer of 1650 from a visit to the Bahamas. He brought with him a cargo of Brazil wood, produce of the islands, which the Eleuthera men had sent to the college as a “pledge of thankfulness … to bee disposed of … as a stock for your Colledges use.” The wood fetched a price of £124. The best account of the episode is by Samuel E. Morison, “The Strange History of the Eleuthera Donation,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin (June 19, 1930), pp. 1067–1072. See also Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 39–43.

428 In a broadside parliamentary proclamation dated January 23, 1646/7, one reads that the legislature is concerned with regulating in some degree the exportation of servants to the colonies in America. It is stipulated that the names of such persons as are to be transported must be registered in the customhouse, and that certificates must be returned to England within one year, giving notice by the governors of colonies concerned that the servants have disembarked in the colonies. Servants are not to be spirited away from England, and apprentices are not to be urged to desert their masters. These are some of the aspects of the traffic in transported persons; the items in the Articles and Orders refer to still others of this unlovely business. The broadside is listed in Thomason Tracts under the date cited above; its caption is Die Sabbathi 23 Ianuarii 1646.

429 Inherited, it would seem likely, from the internal rules and regulations in force among guilds and business corporations.

430 On the fusion of powers in the old English government, see McIlwain, High Court of Parliament, passim. Lilburne expounded the theory of the separation of powers in pamphlets published in the spring of 1648. The words of T. C. Pease on this phase of the Levellers’ thought (Leveller Movement, pp. 241–242) are apposite: “[The Levellers] no longer designed that Parliament should be a supreme constituent body free of all restraint from lesser authorities and subject to reversal only by the people. Advancing a step further with their doctrine that the Parliament must be subject to law, they suggested the possibility of an inferior court’s sitting to review actions of the High Court of Parliament manifestly contrary to the law of England. The doctrine of Lilburne left Parliament supreme as a legislature, but erected beside it a judiciary bound by the known law, but nevertheless capable of checking the legislature if it passed the bounds of that law.”

431 William A. Shaw, Select Tracts and Documents Illustrative of English Monetary History, 1626–1730, pp. 49–50. Very little of a biographical nature concerning Robinson is known, and that little we owe to Dr. Shaw, who wrote the pioneer article on this interesting London merchant for the Dictionary of National Biography. There is a brief but good discussion of Robinson’s importance in Haller, Tracts, i. 64–65.

It would be desirable to have a thorough study dealing with this seminal figure in economic and religious thought. An effort ought to be made to determine his intellectual relationship to contemporaries like John Goodwin, William Walwyn, and Roger Williams on the one hand; and the extent of his influence, if any, on William Petty and James Harrington, his literary successors, on the other. Undoubtedly his influence radiated in many directions, just as the sources of his ideas are not confined to one place or a few writers. He read Montaigne: so much is certain.

432 Dr. Shaw is satisfied that “Robinson is doubtless the author of many works beside these,” of which the authenticity is certain (D.N.B.). The list printed above follows that given by Shaw, although Professor Haller has lately entered an objection to the attribution to Robinson of An Answer to Mr. John Dury (Tracts, i. 65, note 53). One may query whether The Waste Land Improved (1653) is by Robinson. It sounds in part as though it might be.

433 England’s Safety in Trade’s Encrease, A2 recto (Huntington Library copy).

434 Id., B1 recto.

435 England’s Safety, p. 13. The expression “people of good report and ranke” is a periphrasis for “rich Puritans,” the very sort of folk the Bahama enterprise was seeking to attract.

436 Id., p. 45.

437 Id., pp. 45–46.

438 Id., pp. 13–18.

439 England’s Safety, p. 19.

440 Id., p. 20.

441 Id., p. 46.

442 Our Publications, xxvii. 130–156.

443 Report of the Record Commissioner of the City of Boston, x. 70 (April 25, 1681).

444 Diary of Samuel Sewall (5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 213), entry for May 14, 1688. Moody, also well known as a scrivener, was in Boston as late as 1706 (id., vi. 175). He died in Dedham in 1720.

445 Mass. Archives, cxxix. 144a (Boston “Valuation List” of August 27, 1688).

446 Samuel Sewall’s ledger (MS. at New England Historic Genealogical Society), fol. 97, entry for October 8, 1701. Sewall’s daughter Elizabeth attended Samson’s school.

447 Suffolk County Probate Records, xxvii. 69 (will, dated June 1, 1727). Gatchell died before February 12, 1727/28. He was in Boston as early as October 19, 1722, when he married Elizabeth Calfe (Boston Records, xxviii. 106).

448 The entries under the dates December 22 and 29, 1670, and November 27, 1671, in Boston Records, vii (pp. 57, 63), indicate that he served a second time as usher in the public school, from March 1, 1669/70, to March 1, 1670/71.

449 I am convinced that the name should be Natstock, not Ratstock, as given in my earlier list. See my Public Schools of Colonial Boston, 1636–1775, p. 8, n 37.

450 Sewall’s ledger, fol. 71; Peter Burr’s account book (MS. at Massachusetts Historical Society); Boston Records, xxix. 226 (August 6, 1698).

451 Our Publications, xxvii. 136, n 8, line 4, should read “January 6, 1670/71” instead of “January 11.”

452 In view of the fact that Richard Henchman died at the age of seventy on February 15, 1724/25, I do not believe that he matriculated at Harvard with the Class of 1697.

453 Our Publications, xxvii. 142, n 35, line 7: “xi” should read “xiii.”

454 Id., p. 144, n 48, line 2: “xx” should be deleted.

455 Id., p. 154, n 101, line 1: “May 4, 1769” should read “March 13, 1769.”

456 This was Peter Pelham, Sr., not Peter Pelham, Jr. See my Private Schools of Colonial Boston, pp. 26 n, 27, 29 n, 31 n, 32, 35. Our Publications, xxvii. 146, n 55, line 6: “May 30, June 13, 20, 27” should be deleted.

457 This Samuel Holyoke (bap. May 18, 1729, d. July 24, 1784) was not the one who graduated from Harvard in 1734. See my Private Schools of Colonial Boston, p. 41, n 54.

458 This was Vere Ross. Our Publications, xxvii. 152: note 86 should be added to note 88.

459 This was William Dall, Jr., b. December 22, 1753.

460 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (cited hereafter as Mass. Records), i. 358–360. In 1636, the colony held a fast, partly because of the lack of grain. In the same season, candid, crotchety Lion Gardiner, when consulted about fortifications, said: “… I thought no forraigne potent enemie would doe them any hurt, but one yt was neare, they asked me who that was & I said it was Capt. Hunger threatened them most.…” Lion Gardiner, Relation of the Pequot Warres (Acorn Club Publications, No. 4), p. 7.

461 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 1–4.

462 See the letter from Hugh Peter to Winthrop, probably written in April, 1639, in 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 200–201.

463 Mass. Records, i. 326; John Winthrop, Journal (Hosmer ed.), ii. 19.

464 See, for example, Lord Say and Sele’s letter to Winthrop, July 9, 1640, in 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 297–303.

465 Winthrop, Journal, i. 333–335; ii. 11; Mass. Records, i. 239; Frances Rose-Troup, “John Humfry,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, lxv. 293–299.

466 Mass. Records, i. 303–304, 307; Winthrop, Journal, ii. 6.

467 Hugh Peter, especially, set forth this possibility; see his letter to Winthrop in 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 200–201.

468 Winthrop, Journal, i. 127–128, 274–275, 300–301.

469 Id., ii. 24.

470 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 25.

471 Endecott’s objections are all embraced in a long letter to Winthrop, 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 138–141.

472 This was cited by Winthrop (Journal, ii. 25–26) as the “main reason … privately intimated.”

473 Id.

474 William D. Chappie, “The Public Service of John Endecott in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” Essex Inst. Hist. Coll., lxv. 403–447.

475 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 26.

476 Mass. Records, i. 332.

477 Winthrop, Journal, ii, 31–32; Thomas Lechford, Plain Dealing (Trumbull ed.), pp. xxxvi, 109.

478 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 32.

479 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 35. He does not indicate in his letter who the others sailing with him were.

480 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 31.

481 Id.

482 Hugh Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy (London, 1660), pp. 101–102; almost the same words appear in The Case of Mr. Hugh Peters (London, 1660), p. 3, and in his petition, printed in the Seventh Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Part i, pp. 115b–116.

483 Before the agents left the Bay Colony, Emmanuel Downing, failing to bid them farewell in person as he had intended, wrote a letter which was delivered to Hugh Peter by the younger Winthrop, wherein he gave legal advice relative to the charter difficulties. Cf. 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 58, 59.

484 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 25. J. B. Felt’s denial of this object of the mission (Ecclesiastica History of New England, i. 434) is refuted by Winthrop, by the work of the agents in England, and by Hugh Peter’s statements. Edward Johnson, writing in 1652, said that Peter and Weld, “so soon as they heard of the chaining up of those biting beasts, who went under the name of spiritual Lords,” returned to England where “what assistance the Gospel of Christ found there by their preaching, is since clearly manifested.…” Wonder-Working Providence (Poole ed.), p. 224.

485 William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Ford ed.) ii. 164–171.

486 A. C. Flick, editor, History of the State of New York, ii. 40–46.

487 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 33.

488 E. B. O’Callaghan, editor, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, I. 568; “Afschriften der Depêches van de Nederlandsche Gezanten in Engeland aan de Staten Generaal der Vereenigde Nederlanden,” Add. MSS. 17677 W, fols. 5–6 (British Museum); Felt, Ecclesiastical History, i. 468–469.

489 Hibbins’s name is variously spelled “Hibbins,” “Hibbens,” “Hibbons.” The materials from which the above facts are derived are found in: Second Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, pp. 41, 44, 53, 55 ff.; 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 200–201; Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, i. 187; article on Ann Hibbins in the Dictionary of American Biography.

490 Samuel R. Gardiner, editor, Report of Cases in the Courts of the Star Chamber and High Commission (Camden Society Publications), pp. 260, 264; 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 235–239; 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 10; A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised, pp. 517–518.

491 For an account of the troubles in Holland in which Hugh Peter was concerned, see my article, “The New England Way in Holland,” New England Quarterly, vi. 747–792.

492 For references to Hugh Peter’s economic activities, see Winthrop, Journal, i. 165, 168 178; ii. 23; 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 93, 97–98; vii. 200–201.

493 Mass. Records, ii. 225, 259, 271; Winthrop, Journal, ii. 28–29.

494 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 23.

495 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 138–141.

496 The Root and Branch Petition, December 11, 1640. Cf. Samuel R. Gardiner, editor, The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (3d ed.), p. 138.

497 George L. Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578–1660, pp. 300–305, 341–342.

498 Charles M. Andrews, British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622–75 (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series xxvi, nos. 1–3), pp. 16–23.

499 Journals of the House of Lords, iv. 187b (cited hereafter as L. J.).

500 Id., iv. 188a.

501 If Hugh Peter consulted Charles I, “with whom,” as Peter wrote later, “I dealt about my New Eng: busines and was 3 or 4 tymes with him,” it was probably with regard to this phase of the agents’ efforts. Cf. 7th Report, Hist. MSS. Comm., Part i, p. 116.

502 Journals of the House of Commons, iii. 207 (cited hereafter as C. J.). A good example of the restraints which had been imposed upon vessels sailing for New England is found in the case of John Winthrop, Jr., who was delayed in 1643 when he set out with men and supplies to establish an ironworks in New England. Cf. 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., viii. 36–37.

503 Doubtless the agents early undertook, as they were charged, to satisfy the colony’s irate creditors, but the records do not indicate what progress was made.

504 Winthrop, Journal (Savage ed., 1826), ii. 342.

505 Henry C. Shelley, John Underhill, pp. 153–156.

506 Mass. Records, ii. 28.

507 Winthrop, Journal (Hosmer ed.), ii. 70; Mass. Records, ii. 27.

508 It is uncertain who gave this sum. Winthrop mentions it (Journal, Savage ed., 1826, II. 342); and the General Court, in returning thanks to the chief benefactors in September, 1642, mentions the three large gifts as those of “Mr. Willobie, Mr. Houghton, & Mr. Andrews.” Mass. Records, ii. 27.

509 Winthrop, Journal (Hosmer ed.), ii. 71; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxvi. 63.

510 See Bradford, Plymouth, ii. 32–38, 64–73, 294–300.

511 Mass. Records, ii. 32; Winthrop, Journal, ii. 70 (the amount as stated here was £500).

512 Bradford, Plymouth, ii. 330–342. Sherley wrote to his Plymouth partners on June 14, 1642: “Mr. Andrews hath sealed an acquitance also, and sent it to Mr. Winthrop, whith shuch directions as he conceived fitt, and, as I hear, hath given his debte, which he makes 544^li unto the gentlemen of the Bay. Indeed, Mr. Welld, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Hibbens have taken a great deale of paines with Mr. Andrews, Mr. Beachamp, & my selfe, to bring us to agree, and to that end we have had many meetings and spent much time aboute it. But as they are very religious & honest gentle-men, yet they had an end that they drove at and laboured to accomplish (I meane not any private end, but for the generall good of their patente).” The arrangements were not completed nor the money received in Massachusetts until 1643. See Mass. Records, ii. 39.

513 Bradford, Plymouth, ii. 330–334. Weld wrote of this matter later: “There was about Five hundred pounds due from Newe Plymouth plantation to three Londoners which wee procured to bee given to the Bay to whome it was paid (as M^r Winslowe knowes) but itt never came into our hande, only one of the three refusing to give his share, Brother Peters and I were bound to pay him One hundred and Tenn pounds for his part, which not coming from thence [Massachusetts] att the tyme the Bond expired wee were driven to pay out of our owne purses, after y^e Accompt was made vpp, and are out of the money still.” Weld to Steele, January 2, 1649/50, Rawlinson MSS. (Bodleian), c. 934, fol. 5; reprinted in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxvi. 64.

514 Massachusetts Archives, iii. 4; C. 2, 34.

515 New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xlv. 162–163; George Sherwood, American Colonists in English Records (1st series, 1932), pp. 38–39. Weld wrote later that Bridges’s gift to the college “was paid vs in wollen cloath; but when it was about to be sent; we received order from ye Governour & Trustees of ye Coll. to pay it to Alderman Oldham in London, for so much rec’d in N. Engl: by Mr. Sparrowhawk for ye vse of ye Colledge. So we paid that 50l to him & received his acquittance.” Of the £20 for “clothing of the poore,” Weld said, “we sent 50l to Mr. Hooker, & as much to Mr. Simes, to distribute, & ourselves sent ye rest according to ye trust.” Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fol. 29b.

516 Publications of this Society, xv. 175.

517 Weld recorded later that some donors “laid out for Utensills for the Colledge by theire [the college overseers’] desires as pewter, bras, Ironware, lynnen,… Bookes to supply theire Library.… others gave some cloth woollen and lynnen, all which was sent with directions, some gave publique Faith bills, for which wee laid downe as much ready money as the bills procured, and accounted for.” Weld to Steele, January 2, 1649/50, New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 62–64. is impossible to learn whether these gifts are included in or are in addition to the items of Weld’s imperfect accounts.

518 Thomas Carte, The Life of James, Duke of Ormond, i. 279–378.

519 Id., ii. 52; John Borlase, History of the Irish Rebellion (copy revised by the author, in Stowe MSS., 82, British Museum), pp. 19–34.

520 Borlase, History of the Irish Rebellion, pp. 19–34.

521 Report of the Council for Ireland, November 15, 1641, in John Nalson, An Impartial Collection of the Great Affairs of State (London, 1682–3), ii. 737; The Last Newes from Ireland of the Rebel Papists (London, 1641), unpaged; A True Coppy of a Letter from Ireland (London, 1641), pp. 1–2. Sir Philip Warwick wrote (Memoirs of the Reign of King Charles I, p. 199) that “in one week they [the Irish] massacred very near one hundred thousand persons, men, women, and children.” Probably less than one third of that number of English people were in Ireland in 1641. See also A True and Credible Relation of the Barbarous Crveltie and Bloudy Massacres in Ireland, 1641 (London, 1642), pp. 1–8.

522 C.J., ii. 462–463, 467 ff.

523 Borlase, History of the Irish Rebellion, pp. 38–39.

524 Id., pp. 25, 52; Carte, Ormond, ii. 1–50; Warwick, Memoirs, pp. 199–200; John Turbervill to John Willoughby, January 29, 1641/2, Trevelyan Papers (Camden Society Publications), iii. 216–217.

525 A Continuation of the Passages in Parliament, No. 5, February 7–14, 1641/2, p. 38; Rushworth, Historical Collections, iv. 553, 556–557, 564–565.

526 Henry Scobell, A Collection of Acts and Ordinances (London, 1658), pp. 26–35; A Perfect Diurnall, February 21–28, 1641/2, p. 6; Carte, Ormond, ii. 305–306.

527 [Hugh Peter], A True Relation of a Voyage for Ireland (London, 1642), p. 3. Peter’s pamphlet was, in effect, an official account of the entire expedition.

528 Charles H. Firth and Robert S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–60, i. 9–12.

529 Peter, True Relation, p. 4.

530 I have gathered the names of men connected with the expedition from a variety of sources. See especially Peter, True Relation, p. 4; C. J., v. 191; L. J., vi. 155b; ix. 165a; Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, i. 9–12; Scobell, Collection of Acts, p. 27.

531 C. J., iii. 133–134; New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xl. 168–169.

532 Peter, True Relation, p. 4; A Relation of the Svndry Occurrences in Ireland of the Additionall Forces by Sea (London, 1642), unpaged.

533 The author, at least, has found no indication of either disapproval or approval by Massachusetts leaders either in 1642 or later.

534 For accounts of the Forbes expedition, see, in addition to references cited above, The Last and Truest Intelligence from Ireland (London, October 17, 1642); Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica (Dublin, 1772), ii. 194–212; Edmund Hogan, editor, The History of the Warr of Ireland by a British Officer; Mary Hickson, Ireland in the Seventeenth Century.

535 A Perfect Diurnall, No. 15, September 19–26, 1642.

536 The Weekly Intelligence from Several Parts of this Kingdome, October 10–18, 1642, reported (p. 10) that the five captured ships had been sent “all at the charge of his Holynesse for the defence and support of the Catholick cause.…” See also, A Continuation of Certain Speciall & Remarkable Passages, No. 15, October 10–14, 1642; Special Passages and Certain Informations from Severall Parts, No. 10, October 11–18, p. 85.

537 L. J., v. 397a.

538 Both of Forbes’s letters sent by Peter to parliament were published as advertising sheets for the undertakers. See A True Copie of Two Letters Brought by Mr. Peters, this October 11, from my L. Forbes from Ireland (London, 1642).

539 True Copie of Two Letters, pp. 5–6.

540 The imprint reads: “London. Printed by Lvke Norton, for Henry Overton, in the Yeare mdcxlii.”

541 True Relation, p. 19.

542 See, for example, C. J., iii. 91; a committee of parliament was appointed in 1643 “to prepare a Declaration, to set forth, That the Rebellion in Ireland, and this in England, spring from one Head; and are managed with concurrent Counsels to one End; for the utter Overthrow and Extirpation of the Protestant Religion.…”—and this was done just after a committee had been appointed to prevent the spread of “false rumors”!

543 Samuel R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (London, 1893), i. 67–76.

544 “Our militant Evangelists,” wrote a Cavalier, “Dr. Bayes, Dr. Downing, Mr. Marshall and Sedgwicke, whose consciences start out of the way at a white surplesse, but never boggle at garments rolled in blood.” “An Honest Letter” (1642), T. W. Webb and John Webb, Memorials of the Civil War as it affected Herefordshire, i. 180 n.

545 Speciall Passages, No. 18, December 6–13, 1642, pp. 152–153.

546 Id.

547 The True and Originall Copy of the first Petition which was delivered by Sir David Watkins, Mr. Shute, M. Peters (London, 1642), unpaged.

548 Id.

549 Gardiner, History of the Civil War, i. 75.

550 Id.

551 True and Originall Copy of the first Petition.

552 Gardiner, History of the Civil War, i. 75.

553 Mercurius Aulicus, April 2–9, 1643, p. 170. As this news-sheet was radically royalis in its bias, its reports must be accepted with great care. I have been unable to check this particular account against any other contemporary relation; this account is accepted because Aulicus’s stories of this sort usually have a basis in truth, and this particular one, in view of foregoing circumstances, seems credible.

554 Id., pp. 170–171.

555 Id.

556 Id. John Saltmarsh, later Hugh Peter’s fellow-chaplain in the army, preached the same ideas at this time. Cf. A Peace but No Pacification (London, 1643).

557 XIV Articles of Treason and Other Misdemeanors Exhibited to Isaac Pennington (Oxford, 1643), pp. 2–3.

558 Increasing attention to Hugh Peter in royalist pamphlets is evidence of his part in urging on the war. For his pains, he was impeached for high treason by the king. Cf. An Answer to the Articles against Master Calamy, Master Martiall, Master Burton, Master Peters (London, 1642).

559 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 201.

560 Peter, True Relation, p. 15.

561 Certain Informations, No. 3, January 30–February 6, 1642/3, p. 2.

562 Charles Deane, editor, “Records of the Council for New England,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1867, pp. 61, 7.1–73, 85; Beer, Origins of the British Colonial System, p. 45.

563 C. J., ii. 949.

564 Id.; Certain Informations, No. 3, January 30–February 6, 1642/3, p. 22.

565 See Weld’s accounts in Publications of this Society, xiv. 121–126 (reprinted from Mass. Archives, lviii. 3–4); New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxix. 179–182 (reprinted from Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 19–21); Weld, “Innocency Cleared,” Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 26–30 (reprinted in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 64–70). The writer of XIV Articles of Treason Exhibited to Isaac Pennington (said by Thomason to have appeared March 30, 1643) states (pp. 2–3): “… I cannot thus passe by Mr. Peters, a man that hath done so much good for us, especially by his indefatigable pains in every parish in London to find out those our many Babes borne out of the estate & Covenant of Grace (though by this Malignant [Edward Dobson] called Bastards) and conveyed dilligently to New-England, by whose meanes the obiects of our owne vilenesse are taken away from our perpetuall remembrance.”

566 Mass. Archives, lviii. 3–4; Publications of this Society, xiv. 121–126.

567 This assumes a transportation cost of £6 a child, which was a common rate for those days. Actually, the agents contracted with shipmasters at the rate of £5 a child. See Weld, “Innocency Cleared,” Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 27b–28 (New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 66).

568 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 96. Were the “other passengers” whom the governor mentions Irish refugees transported by means of the children’s fund?

569 Mass. Records, ii. 45, 89, 141.

570 £150 went towards a house for President Dunster of Harvard College (id., pp. 70, 84), and £50 was allowed John Winthrop, Jr., for expenses incurred in England on behalf of the colony (Winthrop Papers, i. 159, MSS., Massachusetts Historical Society). More of the children’s fund was spent for soldiers to go with Captain Cook to Providence in 1643 (Mass. Records, ii. 45), and a portion of the funds was later paid to Captain Richard Davenport “in pt of what the country stands indebted to him, for the Castle” (id., p. 164). In addition, some appears to have been pocketed by Emmanuel Downing and Nehemiah Bourne (Mass. Archives, c. 5b; Mass. Records, ii. 89, 141). Evidently the General Court used the children’s fund as a convenient way to avoid unpopular taxes; if any of the moneys thus misapplied were replaced, I have found no record of it.

571 Mass. Archives, c. 5b; Mass. Records, ii. 89, 141; 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 59–60.

572 Mass. Archives, lviii. 5.

573 Certain Informations, No. 3, January 30–February 6, 1642/3, p. 22.

574 C. J., ii. 949.

575 Id., pp. 987, 998; L. J., v. 632b; vii. 75a–b; Mass. Archives, lx. 23; Mass. Records, ii 34; Winthrop, Journal, ii. 96. Students of constitutional problems of British colonial policy might well note the early official use herein of the word “kingdom” as applied by parliament to “New England,” i.e., to Massachusetts Bay. Employed before exigencies of civil war led parliament to assume complete control of colonial affairs by the creation of the Warwick Commission, the word suggests parliamentary recognition of Massachusetts Bay as a separate realm analogous to Scotland and Ireland and associated with England only by relation to an identical Crown. Evidently Weld and Peter, as instructed by Massachusetts magistrates, were taking pains not to compromise “charter liberties” or the constitutional position of the colony.

576 C. J., iv. 337 (November 10, 1645).

577 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 246.

578 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 516.

579 Mass. Archives, lix. 13.

580 William Hubbard, “A General History of New England,” 2 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., ii. 374.

581 Reprinted in Samuel E. Morison, The Founding of Harvard College, pp. 420–447. As to the authorship of this pamphlet, see Worthington C. Ford’s critical study in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xlii. 259–266; Morison, Founding of Harvard College, pp. 304–305. It seems “almost certain,” according to Mr. Morison, that Dunster “had the leading hand in compiling” the part of the pamphlet which refers to Harvard College, although “he did not actually write it.” In the portion which deals with the Indians, the numerous references to Salem experiences (pp. 2, 3, 4) and that to Agamenticus (p. 9) suggest Hugh Peter’s influence. Again, in the last part, the pamphlet’s preoccupation with material affairs—fishing, cloth-making, the fur-trade, shipbuilding, and the West Indies trade; the comparison of New England’s climate with that of Holland; the reference to the poor children, and the praise of New England’s morality (“… one may live there from yeare to yeare, and not see a drunkard, heare an oath, or meet a beggar”)—all these show traces of Peter’s hand in the pamphlet. The reference to New England’s morality, although an idea common at the time, is almost exactly like one of Peter’s later expressions in The Case of Mr. Hugh Peters by His Own Hand (London, 1660), pp. 2–3.

582 New Englands First Fruits, p. 1.

583 Id., p. 17.

584 See Andrew McF. Davis’s articles, “The First Scholarship at Harvard College,” Proc. Amer. Antiq. Soc., n.s., v. 129–139; “The Lady Moulson Scholarship at Cambridge,” id., viii. 274–280.

585 Davis, “The First Scholarship at Harvard College,” id., v. 133.

586 Weld’s accounts show £231 for the college, including Lady Moulson’s gift. Mass. Archives, lviii. 4; Publications of this Society, xiv. 121–126. He also reported various other sums for educational purposes, but the accounts are so confused and incomplete that it is impossible to determine the exact amounts. See also Hutchinson Papers, Mass. Archives, ccxl. 58.

587 Weld, “Innocency Cleared,” Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fol. 29b (New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 68).

588 Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fol. 29 (New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 68).

589 No records arc available to show the date or the circumstances of Mrs. Peter’s excommunication or the date of her return to England. Opposite her name in the MS. Records of the First Church at Salem, 1629–1736, p. 7, is written “Excom.” Weld’s letter, which is quoted below in the text, is the only proof that she was in England at this time although there is proof that she was there later.

590 Thomas Weld to the General Court, September 25, 1643, New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 39.

591 Thomas Weld to the General Court, September 25, 1643, New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 39. Weld added a postscript saying: “m^r Peters consented to this l’er but is not in Lon. at the p^rsent coming away of the ship.”

592 Hugh Peter had published a reprint of his little catechism, Milk for Babes, and Meat for Men (London, 1641) and an introduction to The Advice of That Worthy Commander, Sir Ed: Harwood, Collonell (London, 1642), called “The Life and Death of Collonell Harwood”; but neither of these pamphlets was primarily of a polemic nature.

593 Benjamin Hanbury, Historical Memorials Relating to the Independents, ii. 18–39; Williston Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, pp. 134–135.

594 The copy in the British Museum is marked by Thomason “June 15, 1643.” It is possible, even likely, that Weld collaborated with Peter in preparing the introduction.

595 Weld, however, did: in 1644, he was induced by Presbyterian plotters to edit, with additions, Governor Winthrop’s manuscript account of New England’s Antinomian troubles. The book, by emphasizing Congregational intolerance in New England, jeopardized the Independents’ political aspirations in Old England and placed Weld in a difficult position. See C. F. Adams, Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (Prince Society Publications), pp. 60–63; Thomas Edwards, The Third Part of Gangraena (London, 1646), preface; Thomas Hooker to Thomas Shepard, September 17, 1646, Mass. Archives, ccxl. 100–101.

596 Peter’s introduction to Richard Mather, Church-Government and Church-Covenant Discussed.

597 See Worthington C. Ford’s comments in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xlii. 264–266.

598 The True Constitution of a Particular Visible Church, proved by Scripture (London, 1642), and A Modest and Clear Answer to Mr. Ball’s Discourse of Set Forms of Prayer (London, 1642). Cf. Hanbury, Historical Memorials, ii. 154–166.

599 Such as An Answer to W. R. (London, 1644), and A Short Story of the Rise, Reign and Ruine of the Antinomians (London, 1644).

600 Mr. Challenor His Confession & Speech Made Upon the Ladder before his Execution on Wednesday the Fifth of July, 1643 (London, 1643), pp. 3–5; see also Gardiner, History of the Civil War, i. 157–158.

601 Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, i. 165.

602 See the committees chosen for sequestration and the levying of money, id., i. 113–115, 148–150. See also C. Thomas Stanford, Sussex in the Great Civil War and Interregnum, pp. 64–65; R. Almack, editor, Papers Relating to the County of Kent (Camden Society Publications), pp. 16–17; Victoria History of Sussex, i. 523–524.

603 Commissioners of Sussex to Hugh Peter, Lewes, July 15, 1643, New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxix. 371–372. The commission suggests that a similar one for Kent existed, but it has not been located.

604 Edwards, The Third Part of Gangraena, p. 105.

605 Id., pp. 76–77.

606 XIV Articles of Treason, p. 4.

607 A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus (Oxford, 1643), pp. 6–8.

608 Sir William Dugdale, A Short View of the Late Troubles (Oxford, 1681), p. 566.

609 Id., pp. 72–73.

610 Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus, p. 13.

611 Reliquiae Baxterianae, p. 34. The truth of the charge is well demonstrated by the action of parliament on August 9, 1643, in ordering the divines of the Westminster Assembly who resided in the Associated Counties to go home and “stir up the People … to rise for their Defense.” C. J., iii. 199.

612 Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, i. 220–221.

613 Deposition of Hugh Squier, New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxviii. 414.

614 Clarendon Papers (Bodleian), 16109.22, fol. 128. The instructions are reprinted in full in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxix. 372.

615 Certain Informations, No. 47, December 4–11, 1643, p. 370; L. J., vii. 154a, 155a.

616 Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow (London, 1751), p. 368.

617 L. J., x. 135–154; Rushworth, Historical Collections, vii. 963; C. J., iii. 531, 570; iv. 8.

618 “… I haue very strong thoughts to speake with the Duitch Governor, & lay some way there.… Why should wee not make some league with them? who are very probable to bee more then ordinary good or bad neighbors.” Hugh Peter to Governor Winthrop, 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 200–201.

619 Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York, i. 567–568; see also id., ii. 150–151; “Afschriften der Depêches,” Add. MSS. 17677 W, fols. 5–6 (British Museum).

620 History of the State of New York, ii. 50–51.

621 Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York, i. 564–566; ii. 135; “Afschriften der Depêches,” Add. MSS. 17677 W, fols. 7–12.

622 Charles H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England, pp. 312–313. 371–373.

623 Id., p. 371.

624 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 33; History of the State of New York, ii. 47. In 1644, when trouble with the Dutch was renewed with considerable heat, Edward Winslow suggested that the colonies commission Hugh Peter again to deal with the Dutch, but evidently nothing came of the suggestion. Cf. Winslow to John Winthrop, August 6, 1644, New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxix. 237.

625 Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, i. 331–333. The ordinance was passed November 2, 1643.

626 Id.; see also Winthrop, Journal, ii. 163.

627 Id., pp. 186–187, 290–295; Beer, Origins of the British Colonial System, pp. 347–348.

628 Beer, Origins of the British Colonial System, pp. 329–330, 349 n; Andrews, British Committees, pp. 18–23.

629 As Hugh Peter was in Holland from before the time of the Warwick Committee’s appointment until the following March (1644), he could have had no part in the negotiations for the Narragansett charter.

630 For a description of the troubles between the Bay Colony on the one hand and the Narragansett Indians, the Gortonists, and the Williamsites on the other, see John G. Palfrey, History of New England (Boston, 1860), ii. 112–140.

631 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 53–54; Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 116–117.

632 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 81; Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 120–121.

633 See the dispute over this point between Charles Deane and Colonel Aspinwall in 1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 39–41, 399–406; vi. 41–77. A careful reading of the ordinance creating the Warwick Commission shows that ten names were necessary. See also Herbert L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, i. 354.

634 Cf. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, i. 143–146; Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, iv. 221–225.

635 Mass. Records, iii. 49; Roger Williams to Major Mason, 1 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 275–293; Thomas Aspinwall, “The Narragansett Patent,” 1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 41–77.

636 Parliament rewarded Peter with £100 and “a Study of Books, to that Value”; the books were the remains of Archbishop Laud’s library. Cf. C. J., iii. 421, 469, 544; L. J., vi. 458b, 476b, 499b. Thomas Shepard attempted—without success, it appears—to obtain the books from Peter for Harvard College. Cf. Shepard to Peter, December 27, 1645, American Historical Review, iv. 105–107.

637 Endecott to Winthrop, April 22, 1644, 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 147.

638 Thomas Edwards (The Second Part of Gangraena, London, 1646, p. 84) chid Weld and Peter for their delay. Master Weld halts, wrote Edwards, “between Giles Cripplegate and New England, between Master Walker and the money for the poore childrens sending over to New England.…” See also id., pp. 289–290.

639 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 108.

640 Mass. Records, ii. 138.

641 Winthrop, Journal, ii. 222.

642 Mass. Records, iii. 48. Evidently William Hibbins, who had returned to England temporarily, was also associated with Pocock and his colleagues. Cf. id., ii. 185.

643 Mass. Archives, cvi. 4a; Mass. Records, ii. 137.

644 From the agents’ viewpoint this would have been impossible; parliament granted for a specific purpose the right to collect the money and the license to transport the children, and the funds could not have been applied for another design in England without grave risk of scandal.

645 Giles Firmin expresses the attitude of Massachusetts in a letter from England to John Winthrop, July 1, 1646: “Mr. Peters hath done very much service since hither hee came. I could wish hee did not too much countenance the Opinionists, which wee did so cast out in N. England. I know he abhorrs them in his heart, but hee hath many hang vpon him, bejng a man of such vse.” 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 276–277. Thomas Weld appears not actually to have advocated a policy of toleration, but he acquiesced in the system of the Independent party, of which he was a constant member.

646 For an account of this juxtaposition, see Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, pp. 262–313.

647 See note 5, p. 215, above.

648 For evidences of misappropriation of college moneys, see Mass. Archives, ccxl. 58; Mass. Records, ii. 70, 200, 205.

649 The money which Lady Armine granted for conversion of the natives was not applied for that purpose until 1647. Mass. Records, ii. 189.

650 At the colony’s order, Weld, Peter, and Hibbins purchased (in 1642) cloth to the value £150 from Pocock and engaged to pay for it in six months. The colony sold the goods at a profit but neglected to reimburse Pocock. Peter and Weld paid £100 out of money that they collected in England, but the remaining £50 went unpaid until 1656, much to Pocock’s irritation. See his letter to Thomas Weld, London, April 1, 1646, Mass. Archives, iii. 4; to Hugh Peter, London, May 26, 1651, id., c. 34. See also Mass. Records, ii. 82, 262; iii. 144, 247–248, 255, 291; iv. 66; Mass. Archives, iii. 160, 325, 366; c. 35a, 50.

651 Thomas Weld, “Innocency Cleared,” Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fol. 26b (New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvx. 64–70).

652 Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, i. 423.

653 Mass. Records, ii. 141–144.

654 Edwards urged with great vehemence that Hugh Peter be called to account for the money embezzled from the poor children’s fund and from the other begging enterprises. Cf. The First Part of Gangraena (3d ed., London, 1646), pp. 40–42; The Second Part, pp. 84, 289–290.

655 See the act creating the Society for Promoting the Gospel in New England (the so-called New England Company) in Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances, ii. 197 ff.

656 “Records of the United Colonies of New England,” Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, ix. 192; Ebenezer Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 174–177.

657 “Wee are begging all England ouer for N. E. Wee hope it may come to some thing.” Hugh Peter to John Winthrop, Jr., July 17, 1649, 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 113. As will be seen below, by the next year Peter’s attitude was altered.

658 Steele to the Commissioners of the United Colonies, April 7, 1651, Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 193; Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 175.

659 Commissioners of the United Colonies to the New England Company, New Haven, September 10, 1651, Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 195; Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 177–178.

660 Mass. Records, ii. 162; iii. 79; Ezekiel Rogers to John Winthrop, Sr., on Weld’s behalf, November 9, 1647, 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 26–27; Weld to Winthrop, 1648, 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., i. 365–367; Weld’s earlier accounts (1645) were probably those referred to as among the elder John Winthrop’s papers in 1649, but they have since been lost. Cf. Mass. Records, iii. 179.

661 Mass. Archives, lviii. 3–6; Publications of this Society, xiv. 121–126. Weld evidently sent another copy of his report, dated April 21, 1647, which was attested and signed by “Natha: Duncan Aud^r” and returned to him. This is probably the copy in Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 19–21, with other papers of Weld. The second copy is published in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxix. 179–182. It checks exactly with the copy in the Massachusetts Archives except in the matter of the date, and that is only eleven days later.

662 See the copy in the Massachusetts Archives, reprinted in the Publications of this Society, xiv. 123–126. The copy sent to England has not been discovered.

663 Thomas Weld to William Steele, Gateshead, January 2, 1649/50, Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 5–6 (New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 62–64).

664 Id.

665 The MS. copy is in Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 26–30; it is printed inaccurately in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvi. 64–70.

666 This is further proof that the attacks against the agents in England were of Presbyterian origin.

667 Weld, “Innocency Cleared,” Rawlinson MSS., c. 934, fols. 26–27 (New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxix. 65).

668 Id., p. 70.

669 Letter from the New England Company to the Commissioners of the United Colonies, London, February 18, 1653/4, Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society Publications), i. 287; Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 311–312; Plymouth Colony Records, x. 118.

670 See William Steele’s letter to the Governor and General Court of Massachusetts, London, February 14, 1653/4, chiding the colony for causing these dissensions in the Confederation. Mass. Archives, x. 202–204; Plymouth Colony Records, x. 431–433.

671 Id.

672 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 432–433.

673 Id., p. 160; Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 424.

674 Mass. Records, ii. 189; iii. 106.

675 Hutchinson Papers, i. 287–290; Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 311–312; Plymouth Colony Records, x. 118.

676 See his letter to John Winthrop, Jr., July 17, 1649, 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 113.

677 See these and later pamphlets published to further the work of Indian conversion, 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., iv. 1 ff. In a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., in 1654, Peter wrote: “Here is 900l per annum for the Indians, I wish it were imployed for the English poore there.” 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 115–116.

678 Hutchinson Papers, i. 288; Plymouth Colony Records, x. 118; Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 311–312.

679 Hutchinson Papers, i. 291.

680 George P. Winship, The New England Company of 1649 and John Eliot (Prince Society Publications), p. 17.

681 Id.

682 “… pd. Mr Weld, old debt—£0061 18 7.” Mass. Archives, c. 50.

683 Peter to John Winthrop, Jr., June 4, 1654, 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 114–115.

684 Edwards, First Part of Gangraena, p. 53.

685 They did not even consider him the fountainhead of their thought, but regarded him as one among many “judicious” divines. To an English correspondent who asked if Calvin had not definitely settled a certain point, Thomas Shepard replied: “I have forgot what he hath wrote and myself have read long since out of him” (Works, John Albro, editor, Boston, 1853, i. 326). Thomas Hooker did not hesitate to point out in a sermon that Calvin “casts a different construction” upon some words of Scripture, and to insist upon his own interpretation (A Comment Upon Christs Last Prayer in the Seventeenth of John, London, 1656, p. 157).

686 Institutes, iii. xxi, 2.

687 John Preston, Life Eternall, or, A Treatise of the Knowledge of the Divine Essence and Attributes (London, 1631), p. 94.

688 John preston, The New Covenant, or the Saints Portion (London, 1629), p. 503.

689 Id., p. 111.

690 The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1643), p. 11.

691 Id., p. 191.

692 Works (Cambridge, 1626), p. 278.

693 Works, i. 14.

694 Marrow, A₃ verso.

695 Institutes, iii. xxiii, 12.

696 Id., ii. ii, 1.

697 Works, p. 21.

698 Marrow, p. 198.

699 Institutes, iii. xxi, 1.

700 Marrow, p. 131.

701 Id., p. 118.

702 Institutes, i. iii–vi.

703 Marrow, p. 24.

704 Id., p. 2.

705 Marrow, p. 1.

706 Id., p. 117.

707 Preston, New Covenant, p. 556.

708 Shepard, Works, i. 329.

709 Shepard, Works, ii. 283.

710 Works, pp. 107–112.

711 The Holy State, Bk. ii, Chap. x.

712 Cf. “A Graine of Mustard Seed,” Works, pp. 637 ff.; “A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration Whether a man be in the estate of damnation,” id., pp. 356 ff.; “A Case of Conscience,” id., pp. 423 ff.

713 Works, p. 32.

714 Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, chap. vi.

715 Marrow, pp. 101–103.

716 Life Eternall, p. A6 recto.

717 New Covenant, p. 317.

718 Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, pp. 73–102.

719 Works (Alexander B. Grossart, editor, Edinburgh, 1862), i. 100; for interconnections of the group, see Grossart’s introduction, id., i, passim.

720 I should by no means wish to contend that Perkins, Ames, and Preston were the sole authors of the theory of the covenant. While these Englishmen were in the vanguard of the movement, they were probably not so much leaders of thought as indications of a spontaneous evolution among Calvinists of the period, brought about by the necessities I have outlined. There seems to have been a group of theologians in Germany in the late sixteenth century who used the idea, though there is no evidence that they had any influence in England. Sibbes could write as early as 1623, on the supposition that the reader was already familiar with the covenant doctrine: “It supposeth a reader grounded in the knowledge of the nature and properties of God, of Christ and his offices, of the covenant of grace, and such like” (Preface to Ezekiel Culverwell, Treatise of Faith). The Covenant of Grace was, of course, an old catchword in theology, which is legitimately derived from its frequent mention in the Bible. It had served to characterize the general scheme of redemption; more concretely, it had been used to signify an agreement of a sort with God, entered into by believers at their baptism. Richard Hooker had employed it as both Anglican and Puritan in the sixteenth century would probably have understood it when he said that baptism implied “a covenant or league between God and man,” wherein God bestows remission of sins, “binding also himself to add in process of time” sufficient grace for the attainment of life hereafter (Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, v. lxiv, 4). But though Hooker calls it a league and speaks of the covenant as God’s “binding” Himself, he does not stress the contractual nature of the agreement. The special quality of the Puritan emphasis upon the covenant does not, so far as I can tell, seem to derive from historic theology at all. Instead, in the background of Preston’s thought, lies the common-law conception of the covenant, the idea of a formal agreement of legal validity, a promise or contract under seal. Whether this school took the notion from the law consciously or unconsciously I cannot yet say, though I suspect that they knew what they were doing. A later English writer on the covenant, who constantly cites Ames, Preston, and Cotton for his authorities, explicitly acknowledges the influence of the law. He declares that “our Lawyers … have given us Presidents” for defining a covenant; and in countering the attack of an opponent he says: “We will referre it to the Common Law, whether this way of reasoning will hold or no” (Thomas Blake, Vindiciae Foederis, London, 1653, pp. 38, 377). It is enough to remember that the Puritans, in their controversy with the Crown, were steeped in the law, and it is no wonder that sooner or later they should be found busily reinterpreting theology in accordance with legal habits of thought. Hence it is quite plausible that many Puritans of the first decades of the seventeenth century should begin simultaneously to seize upon the idea of covenant and to stress it in their accounts of Calvinistic theology. William Ames taught the elements of the doctrine at Franeker. Among his students was a Dutchman known to history as Cocceius, who became the founder of a school which took the covenant as its central doctrine, and which, throughout the seventeenth century, disturbed the theological peace of Holland almost as much as did the Arminians. Without dwelling too long upon the fascinating history of the idea, we may sum up the situation in some such fashion as this: from its inception in England, as illustrated in the work of Perkins and Preston, the doctrine had a sort of triple life—in England it continued to be preached by various theologians, particularly by the Independents; in Holland it became the particular doctrine of a faction denominated in histories of theology as the Cocceian, or the Covenant, or the Federal School; and in New England it became a fundamental tenet, a doctrine that completely modified what otherwise would be called Calvinism, and became the starting point for many intellectual developments, not only theological, but also ecclesiastical, political, and philosophical. The chief seventeenth-century English documents on the subject, in addition to the works of Perkins, Ames, Preston, and Sibbes, are, chronologically: John Downame, The Christian Warfare, 1604, 1611; [Anon.], The Covenant between God and man plainly declared, 1616; George Downame, The Covenant of Grace, 1631; John Ball, A Treatise of Faith, 1631; Tobias Crisp, Christ Alone Exalted, 1643; James Ussher, A Body of Divinity, 1645; John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, 1645; Thomas Blake, Vindiciae Foederis, 1653, The Covenant Sealed, 1655; Edward Leigh, A System or Body of Divinity, 1654, A Treatise of Religion and Learning, 1656; William Allen, Discourse on the Nature, Ends and Differences of the Two Covenants, 1673 (preface by Richard Baxter); John Owen, The Doctrine of justification by Faith, 1677; William Strong, Discourse of the Two Covenants, 1678; Daniel Williams, Gospel Truth Stated and Vindicated, 1692. The Westminster Confession has some features of the doctrine rather covertly introduced, which fact helps to explain why it could be adopted without reservation by the Cambridge Synod in 1648. In the last half of the seventeenth century the covenant doctrine replaced other forms of Calvinism among English Calvinists, until in the eighteenth century all Calvinists—Ridgely, Doddridge, Watts—are nothing but Federalists. Though the idea and philosophy of the covenant run through almost the entire output of the first generation of New England authors, the principal works devoted to it are: Peter Bulkley, The Gospel-Covenant, 2nd ed., 1651; Thomas Cobbett, A Just Vindication of the Covenant, 1648; John Cotton, The Covenant of God’s Free Grace, 1645, The Grounds and Ends of the Baptisme of the Children of the Faithfull, 1647, Of the Holinesse of Church-Members, 1650, The New Covenant, 1654, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, 1659; John Davenport, The Power of Congregational Churches, 1672; George Phillips, A Reply to a Confutation, 1645; Thomas Shepard, The Sincere Convert, 1640, The Sound Beleever, 1645, The Church-Membership of Children, 1663. No one work of Thomas Hooker is especially devoted to the covenant, but the theory recurs in all his sermons, and he gives it even more prominence than do the other divines.

721 New Covenant, p. 351.

722 The Gospel-Covenant, or the Covenant of Grace Opened (2nd ed., London, 1651), p. 27.

723 New Covenant, p. 38; the innovation of this theology upon the theology of Calvin becomes apparent when its interpretation of Biblical texts is compared with his. Calvin, for instance, finds no such proposal of terms in Genesis, xvii, but only a statement of the permanence of God’s promises (Institutes, ii. viii, 21; x, 9) or the institution of the sacraments of circumcision and baptism (id., iv. xvi, 3; xvii, 21–22).

724 Sibbes, Works, i. civ.

725 John Cotton, Christ the Fountaine of Life (London, 1651), p. 35.

726 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. 86.

727 Id., p. 133 (cf. id., pp. 38, 112–113, 120); Preston, New Covenant, pp. 352–353, 357; Hooker, The Saintes Dignitie (London, 1651), p. 104; Cotton, The Grounds and Ends of the Baptisme of the Children of the Faithfull (London, 1647), p. 38; Shepard, Works, iii. 521.

728 Cotton, Grounds and Ends, p. 32.

729 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. 47; cf. p. 28.

730 New Couenant, p. 316.

731 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. 276.

732 Id., p. 314.

733 The Way of Life (London, 1641), p. 415. Cf. Hooker, The Application of Redemption (London, 1659): “Its Gods usual way so to deal not that he is tyed … to this manner of dealing upon necessity, but that he hath expressed it to be his good pleasure so to dispense himself” (p. 337).

734 Preston, New Covenant, pp. 330–331.

735 Id., p. 364.

736 Id., p. 105.

737 Works, vi. 6.

738 Preface to Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. B1 recto. Bulkley, in the text of this volume, finds God committed by His covenant not only to mercy, but to insuring both the success of the Massachusetts Commonwealth—“The Lords end in taking us into covenant with himself, is to make us a happy and blessed people.…” (p. 194)—and the material prosperity of individuals within the covenant: “for any one to say, I feare I am none of Gods people, because I prosper in the world, is all one as if he should say, I feare the Lord intends me no good, because he makes good unto me the blessings which he hath promised in his Covenant” (p. 299). Cf. John Ball, A Treatise of Faith (London, 1632), pp. 63–64, 351, 363; Thomas Cobbett, A Just Vindication of the Covenant (London, 1648), p. 40.

739 Preface to Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. B1 recto.

740 Preston, New Covenant, p. 321.

741 Shepard, Preface to Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. B2 verso.

742 Preston, New Covenant, p. 32.

743 A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (3rd ed., London, 1671), p. 6.

744 Shepard, Works, iii. 31–37; it should be noted that by “reason” Shepard carefully points out that he does not mean reason as it is corrupted by sin, but “right” reason. However, he can pronounce with perfect certainty the rules of right reason by which to test the rationality and so the validity of a moral law (pp. 37–41).

745 Id., p. 42.

746 Hooker, Christs Last Prayer, p. 422.

747 Consequently the Federal theologians of Holland were among the earliest adherents of Descartes.

748 New Covenant, p. 46.

749 Sibbes, Works, i. 204–205.

750 Cotton, Christ the Fountaine, p. 33. On another occasion Cotton paraphrases “the Philosopher” to this effect: “Miracula sine necessitate sunt multiplicanda” (Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared, London, 1648, pt. i. 42); though the providence of God is not always predictable, yet “there is a settled order and constancy in that instability, as there is in the motions of the Heavens and heavenly bodies” (Briefe Exposition upon the Whole Book of Ecclesiastes (London, 1654, p. 66).

751 Sibbes, Works, i. 225.

752 Marrow, pp. 40–41.

753 The New Creature (London, 1633), p. 97.

754 Life Eternall, p. 33.

755 Sibbes, Works, i. 197.

756 Preston, New Covenant, p. 118.

757 Hooker, The Soules Exaltation (London, 1638), pp. 27–28.

758 Hooker, The Soules Humiliation (London, 1638), pp. 59–60.

759 Christ the Fountaine, p. 174.

760 Marrow, p. 170; probably as a result of his teaching, Cocceius particularly stressed the evolutionary theory, and in Holland more energies were devoted to this aspect of the doctrine than in New England.

761 Id., pp. 38–42, 170 ff.; cf. Sibbes, Works, vi. 4.

762 Gospel-Cavenant, p. 118.

763 Hooker, Saintes Dignitie, p. 105.

764 Life Eternall, p. 57.

765 New Covenant, p. 155.

766 Id., p. 446.

767 Life Eternall, p. 55; he instances Alexander Polyhistor, Josephus, Cyril, “Chaldee Historians,” Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Xenophon, “The Tables of Ptolomy, lately found.” Cf. George Phillips, A Reply to a Confutation (London, 1645): “The Argument from humane authority is as easily rejected as propounded, though otherwise much good use may be made of their writing” (p. 119).

768 Thomas Hutchinson, A Collection of Original Papers Relative to the History of Massachusetts Bay (Prince Society Publications), i. 79 ff.

769 A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (London, 1648), pt. i, pp. 50, 79, C3 recto.

770 Preston, New Covenant, p. 390.

771 Preston, Life Eternall, pt. ii, p. 84.

772 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, pp. 323–324.

773 Soules Exaltation, p. 8.

774 The Covenant of Gods Free Grace (London, 1645), p. 18.

775 Gospel-Covenant, p. 321.

776 Preston, New Creature, p. 23.

777 Preston, New Covenant, p. 477.

778 Cotton, Christ the Fountaine, p.32.

779 Cotton, The Covenant of Gods Free Grace, p. 18.

780 New Creature, p. 23.

781 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. 182.

782 Works, i. 266.

783 Id., p. 137.

784 Works, vi. 24–25.

785 Marrow, pp. 56–57, 60–61, 63, 219.

786 Life Eternall, p. A7 recto.

787 Id., p. 15.

788 The Saints Qualification (London, 1633), p. 129.

789 Id., p. 222. How far the covenant thought had strayed from pristine Calvinism is nowhere better illustrated than in the contrast between Preston and Calvin on this very question of the “remains.” What Preston says every man can know by nature Calvin says has at best been barely guessed by only the wisest of philosophers, and even their glimmerings are of no value, because they are overwhelmed in a mountain of falsehoods. “Human reason, then, neither approaches, nor teaches, nor directs its views toward this truth, to understand who is the true God, or in what character he will manifest himself to us” (Institutes, ii. ii, 18). Calvin does grant that in secular realms—civil polity, domestic economy, mechanical arts, and liberal sciences—reason is capable of discovering good principles. But his explanation for this ability indicates the immense gulf between his thought and Preston’s: the achievements of reason in any of these respects result from the talents possessed by occasional individuals, and these are temporary gifts bestowed here and there by God, not instances of an inherent ability still remaining in the soul (id., ii. ii, 12–17). Calvin is arguing for the utter incapacity of nature, relieved by occasional grants of power bestowed at the mere pleasure of an arbitrary sovereign. Preston is arguing for an innate and universal capacity in nature to achieve some good things in and by itself, even though the capacity is imperfect and cannot reach to the attainment of salvation. Cf. Hooker, Application of Redemption (p. 142): “The Lord hath left in thee the remainder of many natural abilities, hath lent thee the help of many common Gifts and Graces, which by Art and Education have grown to some ripeness.” Hooker goes as far as to assert that in the human will, considering it “merely as it ariseth from the power of those natural principles whereof its made,” there exist certain principles “which were at the first imprinted upon it,” and which naturally incline it “to close with God …” (id., p. 369).

790 The Cuppe of Blessing (London, 1633), p. 10. Cf. Calvin: “Are all our industry, perspicacity, understanding and care so depraved, that we cannot conceive or meditate anything that is right in the sight of God? … In the estimation of the Holy Spirit … such a representation is consistent with the strictest truth” (Institutes, ii. ii, 25).

791 Cuppe of Blessing, pp. 12–13.

792 Preston, New Covenant, p. 565.

793 Works, i. 409.

794 Survey, pt. i, p. 44.

795 Works, iii. 177. Cf. Cotton, A Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle Generall of John (London, 1656): “Though the Law of Nature was more dimly and darkly known, Moses Law was but a new draught of the Law of Nature in innocency. Heathen law givers, Philosophers, and Poets have expressed the effect of all the commandements save the tenth” (p. 234).

796 Preston, Saints Qualification, p. 130.

797 Id., p. 182.

798 Preston, Life Eternall, pp. 4–5.

799 Preston, Life Eternall, p. 15.

800 Shepard, Works, i. 10.

801 Id., iii. 178. The best revelation of the Puritan attitude toward the study of natural science that I have been able to discover among the writings of early New Englanders occurs in John Cotton’s Gods Mercie Mixed with His Iustice (London, 1641, pp. 113–134), in a discourse on the feasibility of predicting fair weather from the aspect of the sky at sunset or sunrise. He expounds the meteorological theories of the time, but reminds his listeners that these theories are utterly incapable of establishing with scientific accuracy a necessary connection between a red sky and the subsequent weather. “Every man that observes them to bee evident, yet findes them not alwaies certain: And those that are best able to discerne the reason, and the naturall causes, are not able to say, that the event hath and will alwayes follow.” This reflection leads to the conventional Puritan insistence that the providence of God rather than natural causality is to be accounted the reason for the behavior of phenomena, and Cotton declares that even if the signs were invariably followed by the correct effect, “and the reason were evident,” the whole business is not of such importance that a man should busy himself with it overmuch. He inveighs against those who spend time in the study of “philosophy” when they should be occupied with their salvation: “It is the nature of hypocrisie to bee very quick sighted in points of nature, but very dull and heavy in matters of Religion and grace.” Yet Cotton is far from intending hostility to natural science as such, for he immediately goes on to say that if nature is studied in subordination to religion, if the natural world is viewed, not as an end in itself, but as a symbol of the spirit, like “a mappe and shadow of the spiritual estate and soules of men,” there need be no inhibition upon such investigation. “It is not utterly unlawful for men to make observation of the estate of the weather, and face of the sky; our Saviour doth not reproove it in them, but onely reprooves this, in that they were better skilled in the face of the sky, and signes of the weather, then in the signes of the times … He rejects not such kind of conjectures, there is a workmanship of God in them, nor doth hee mislike the study of nature.” In this sense, Cotton can assert: “To study the nature and course, and use of all Gods works, is a duty imposed by God upon all sorts of men; from the King that sitteth upon the Throne to the Artificer” (Briefe Exposition upon Ecclesiastes, p. 23).

802 Preston, Saints Qualification, p. 152.

803 Id., p. 225. It should be noted that the idea of the Law of Nature being written in the heart sufficiently to render men inexcusable is good Calvinist doctrine (Institutes, ii. ii, 22–25); but in Calvin natural knowledge of natural law serves only this use. It is of no validity for any further regulation of life, and it is incapable of formulating an ideal of righteousness; it merely exists to make men know they have fallen short of something which they cannot even conceive.

804 Id., pp. 224–225.

805 Preston, New Covenant, p. 62.

806 Preston, New Creature, p. 129.

807 Id., pp. 95–96.

808 Soules Exaltation, p. 29.

809 Preston, Life Eternall, p. 21.

810 Preston, Life Eternall, pp. 46–47.

811 Preston, Cuppe of Blessing, p. 13.

812 Shepard, Works, iii. 96–97.

813 Hooker, Application of Redemption, p. 556.

814 There is no suspicion of the legal imputation theory in Calvin; cf. Institutes, ii. i, 7–8.

815 Marrow, p. 67.

816 Preston, New Creature, p. 19.

817 Saintes Dignitie, p. 29.

818 Works, i. 344.

819 The entire direction of this argument—the enlarging of natural abilities to provide a fulcrum for the lever of moral incitement—had been condemned by Calvin in so many words. He held that all the Fathers except Augustine committed precisely this error for the same reason. They attributed to the reasoning faculty more power toward the pursuit of virtue than was proper, because otherwise “they supposed it impossible to awaken our innate torpor” (Institutes, ii. ii, 4). From the heights of spiritual intensity upon which Calvin dwelt, he could afford to spurn all such devices for the coddling of faith.

820 Cotton, Way of Life, p. 229.

821 Preston, New Covenant, p. 102.

822 Hooker, Saintes Dignitie, pp. 4–5.

823 Cotton, Covenant of Gods Free Grace, p. 12.

824 Preston, A Sermon Preached at A Generali Fast Before the Commons-House of Parliament (London, 1633), p. 281.

825 Cotton, Way of Life, pp. 347–348.

826 Shepard, Works, iii. 128. It was in the tangle of this argument that Mrs. Hutchinson tripped and fell, and consequently denounced the law and works and called upon the regenerate to live by grace alone. And it was by the doctrine of the covenant that she was found in error and excommunicated by the Church of Boston: “If any therefore accuse the Doctrine of the Covenant of free grace, of Antinomianisme.… and if they commit any sin, they plead they are not bound unto the Law … The children of the Covenant of grace will onely tell you, that they are free from the Covenant of the Law, but not from the Commandment of it” (Cotton, The New Covenant, pp. 134–135).

827 How strained the reasoning became at this point to distinguish the conditional covenant from Arminianism is illustrated by the argument of Peter Bulkley:

“The grace of the Covenant is free notwithstanding the condition, because we doe not put any condition as antecedent to the Covenant on Gods part, whereby to induce and move the Lord to enter in Covenant with us, as if there were any thing supposed in us, which might invite and draw him to take us into Covenant with himselfe; but onely we suppose a condition antecedent to the promise of life, which condition we are to observe and walke in; and in the observation thereof to expect the blessing of life which the Covenant promiseth” (Gospel-Covenant, p. 383).

The difference between the Federal theory and Arminianism, therefore, hinges upon the fact that in the covenant theory good works are not the cause, but the accompaniment of salvation. In the twentieth century, when theology has become a wearisome desert, this difference may seem to be a mere quibble over words, but to the first generation in New England it involved the fundamental problems of philosophy and of life: “Where we finde the promise of life made unto good workes, wee must not looke at them as workes of the Law, but as workes and fruits of Faith … These kind of promises … are … not casuall, but declarative, making manifest who be those true believers … In these promises workes are not set as the causes of our salvation, but as evidences and signes of those that do believe unto life” (id., p. 384).

828 Works, vi. 8.

829 Preface to Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. A2 verso.

830 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. 315.

831 Cotton, Covenant of Gods Free Grace, pp. 19–20.

832 Preston, New Covenant, pp. 434–435.

833 Works, ii. 31.

834 Preston, Saints Qualification, p. 223.

835 Hooker, “The Poore Doubting Christian,” in The Saints Cordials (London, 1629), p. 361.

836 Hooker, Saintes Dignitie, pp. 82–83.

837 The Soules Implantation (London, 1637), p. 77.

838 In many passages describing the extent to which an unregenerate man may go in the work of preparation, some of these writers passed beyond any limits that could be reconciled with Calvinism. In New England clearly the most extreme was Thomas Hooker, who with great eloquence magnified the possibilities of a man’s producing in himself the receptive frame of mind, bringing himself to be “willingly content that Jesus Christ should come into it” (Soules Implantation, p. 34), and dared to assert that he who could force himself to the point of readiness would certainly receive grace in time. “It is onely in the way to be ingrafted into Christ; but so that undoubtedly that soule which hath this worke upon it, shall have faith poured into it” (Soules Preparation, London, 1632, p. 155). “If ever you thinke to share in the salvation that Christ hath purchased … if you would have him dwell with you, and doe good to you, either prepare for him, or else never expect him … Christ is marvellous ready to come, only he watcheth the time till your heart be ready to receive and entertaine him … If the soule be broken and humbled, he will come presently” (Soules Implantation, p. 47). It is probably significant, therefore, that John Cotton’s regard for consistency was more circumspect, and though he, no less than Hooker, argued that unregenerate man was responsible for his own state, he could not admit that before some experience of faith a man could undertake even to put himself in readiness: “for our first union, there are no steps unto the Altar” (New Covenant, p. 54). “There is no promise of life made to those that wait & seek in their own strength, who being driven to it, have taken it up by their own resolutions” (id., pp. 196–197). Yet even in denying the possibilities of natural preparation, Cotton prefaces his remarks: “Reserving due honour to such gracious and precious Saints as may be otherwise minded” (Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, p. 35). Under the circumstances this may very possibly be a reference to Hooker, and the difference of opinion between Hooker and Cotton on this important issue may throw some light upon the reasons why Hooker led the migration to Connecticut rather than remain in Massachusetts where Cotton had become installed as the principal interpreter of dogma. However, Thomas Shepard was in agreement with Hooker, and his Sincere Convert was attacked by Giles Firmin for demanding too much of natural man before grace (Shepard, Works, i. clxxxvi; cf. id., i. 160–163, 173; iii. 308).

839 Shepard, Works, ii. 57.

840 Hooker, The Christians Two Chiefe Lessons (London, 1640), p. 64.

841 Shepard, Works, ii. 224.

842 Bulkley, Gospel-Covenant, p. 313.

843 Id., p. 316; cf. pt. iv, passim.

844 Preston, New Creature, pp. 30–31.

845 The Saints Daily Exercise (London, 1630), p. 35.

846 Works, i. 199.

847 Way of Life, pp. 11–12.

848 Winthrop, Journal (Hosmer ed.), ii. 239.

849 Survey, pt. i, p. 50.

850 Cotton, New Covenant, p. 34.

851 Gospel-Covenant, p. 346.

852 Id., pp. 219–220. There can hardly be any doubt that the development of the covenant theology is in some fashion connected with the amplification of the social compact engineered by the lawyers and parliamentarians with whom the Puritans were associated in the struggle with the Crown. It is impossible to tell, without further research in the lives of such men as Preston and Sibbes and their associates, whether the political theory was the father of the theology, or the theology of the theory. It is clear, however, that the two ideas were developed pari passu. Certainly, in expounding the theological covenant the writers were constantly illustrating it by the analogy of the political, once more revealing the extremely legalistic cast of their minds.

“The Covenant which passeth betwixt God and us, is like that which passeth between a King and his people; the King promiseth to rule and govern in mercy and righteousnesse; and they againe promise to obey in loyalty and faithfulnesse.…” (id., pp. 345–346). “Such a covenant there is usually in all well governed Common-wealths, unlesse the King comes in by way of Conquest and Tyranny, but in well settled Commonwealths, there is a Covenant and Oath between Prince and People” (Cotton, Christ the Fountaine, p. 34). From the political point of view this theology was a strategic assistance to parliament; it made God a constitutional monarch, so that James and Charles might feel no indignity in becoming such a ruler as well.

853 Hooker, Survey, pt. i, p. 69.

854 Hooker, Survey, pt. i, p. 78.

855 Cotton, Covenant of Gods Free Grace, p. 22.

856 Cotton, Way of Life, p. 357.

857 Works (Reginald Heber, editor, London, 1851), ix. 67.

858 Id., pp. 67–68.

859 Cotton, Way of Life, p. 113.

860 Id., p. 477.

861 Preston, Life Eternall, pp. 100–102.

862 Preston, Life Eternall, pp. 68–69.

863 Works, iii. 35.

864 Christs Last Prayer, p. 110.

865 Printed in Hermann F. Clarke and Henry W. Foote, Jeremiah Dummer, Colonial Craftsman and Merchant, pp. 101–127.

866 Sewall’s Diary contains references earlier than those found in the official records— March 8, 1685/6: “Mr. [Samuel] Nowell begun with Prayer, and I, by mere accident being left, was fain to conclude” (5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 125); March 14, 1686/87: “Capt. [William] Gerrish [the moderator] begun and ended with Prayer (id., p. 170); May 21, 1688: “No Prayer” (id., p. 214).

867 The invitations are in the selectmen’s minutes. The other records, which show that the minister in question actually did officiate, appear in the minutes of the town meetings.

868 Eliphalet Adams was an assistant to Benjamin Colman, August, 1701–February, 1704.

869 The selectmen voted, May 2, 1771, to invite Andrew Eliot.

870 The selectmen voted, May 7, 1746, to invite William Hooper.

871 The selectmen voted, April 27, 1739, to invite Joshua Gee.

872 The selectmen voted, April 27, 1745, to invite Thomas Foxcroft.

873 The town clerk did not indicate which Samuel Checkley it was in 1753 and 1765. Samuel Checkley, Sr., ordained November 22, 1719, died December 1, 1769; Samuel Checkley, Jr., ordained September 3, 1747, died March 19, 1768.

874 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 9.

875 Id., p. 303.

876 The selectmen voted, March 5, 1772, to invite John Lathrop.

877 5 Col. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 474.

878 Id., vi. 275.

879 Id., p. 254.

880 The selectmen voted, June 1, 1764, to invite Samuel Checkley, Jr.

881 Id., p. 309.

882 The selectmen voted, March 24, 1786, to invite Samuel Stillman to offer a prayer at the meeting of April 1, 1786. The records do not indicate whether he accepted the invitation.

From 1638 until 1770, the ministers who preached the election sermons of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company were Congregationalists. This tradition was broken in 1770 by Samuel Stillman.

883 Samuel Parker, rector of Trinity Church, offered the prayer at the meeting of April 7, 1788, being the first of his denomination to do so. He was also the first Episcopalian to preach an election sermon (1791).

884 Tucker and Gilbert were two of his shipmates.

885 Travels and Works of Captain John Smith, Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley, editors, i. 6.

886 “The two and twentieth day of August, there died Captaine Bartholomew Gosnold, one of our Councell: he was honourably buried, hauing all the Ordnance in the Fort shot off, with many vollies of small shot.” “Observations Gathered out of A Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie of Virginia,” id., p. lxxi.

887 Cf., in addition to the quotation from Percy, Wingfield’s “A Discourse of Virginia,” id., pp. lxxv–lxxvi.

888 Id., pp. 89–90.

889 The map is reproduced in id., 11, facing p. 384.

890 “Captaine Bartholomew Gosnold, the first mover of this plantation, hauing many yeares solicited many of his friends, but found small assistants; at last prevailed with some Gentlemen, as Maister Edward maria Wingfield, Captaine John Smith, and diverse others, who depended a yeare vpon his proiects, but nothing could be effected, till by their great charge and industrie it came to be apprehended by certaine of the Nobilitie, Gentrie, and Marchants, so that his Maiestie by his letters patent, gaue commission for establishing Councels, to direct here, and to governe and to execute there.” Thomas Studley, “The Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia.” Arber and Bradley, John Smith, i. 89–90.

891 New England Quarterly, iv. 448–459; Old-Time New England, xxiv. 135–141.

892 Forum, lxxxv. 142.

893 i. 28 (1904 ed.).

894 British Colonial Policy, 1754–1765, p. 161.

895 The Colonial Period of American History, i. 437.

896 Charles E. Banks, “Religious ‘Persecution’ as a Factor in Emigration to New England, 1630–1640,” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., lxiii. 136–154.

897 Democracy in America (1898 ed.), i. 15, 32.

898 Quoted by Herbert L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, i. 276.

899 “Capitalistic and Socialistic Tendencies in the Puritan Colonies,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1920, p. 235.

900 Religion and Capitalism in the Seventeenth Century, p. 113.

901 Quoted by E. A. J. Johnson, “The Economic Ideas of John Winthrop,” New England Quarterly, iii. 248.

902 Wonder-Working Providence, J. Franklin Jameson, editor, p. 35.

903 Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (1903 ed.), i. 211–212. See De Tocqueville’s comment on this, Democracy in America (1898 ed.), pp. 59–60.

904 For a recent discussion, see Robert B. Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, pp. 69 ff.

905 American Historical Review, xl. 217–231.

906 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 45.

907 See H. L. Osgood, “The Political Ideas of the Puritans,” Political Science Quarterly, vi. 1–28, 201–231; H. D. Foster, “The Political Theories of Calvinists before the Puritan Exodus to America,” American Historical Review, xxi. 481–503; and A. J. Carlyle, “The Sources of Mediaeval Political Theory and its Connection with Mediaeval Politics,” id., xix. 1–12.

908 Robert C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop, ii. 440.

909 William MacDonald, Select Charters Illustrative of American History, p. 73.

910 Political Science Quarterly, vi. 21.

911 Our Publications, xxviii. 67–86.

912 Clifford K. Shipton, “A Plea for Puritanism,” American Historical Review, xl. 460–467.

913 Claude H. Van Tyne, Causes of the War of Independence, p. 358.

914 Herbert Agar, The People’s Choice, pp. 34, 93.

915 C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period, p. 67.

916 xxxiii. 34–35; xxxiv. 310–311. Mr. Henry Williams (id., xlix. 182) corrected from it a mistake made by Savage and Sibley. Mr. Williams calls the book a “Journal or Church Record.”

917 Several of these have already been printed in my Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (i. 126–127) and in my Puritan Pronaos, pp. 47–49, 51.

918 Our Publications, xxxi. 47–48.

919 The best accounts of Seaborn Cotton’s life and pastorate are in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, i. 286–293, and Joseph Dow, History of Hampton, N. H., i. 356–365.

920 This was a common practice of students in the seventeenth century. In an autobiographical fragment, the Hon. Robert Boyle writes: “Yet did he at idle hours write some few verses, both in French and Latin, and many copies of amorous, merry, and devout ones in English.” Thomas Birch, Robert Boyle (London, 1744), p. 31.

921 Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, i. 115.

922 I have collated the facetiae in Cotton’s book with the 1640, 1641, and 1654 editions in the Harvard College Library, and with the cumulative reprint of 1874, entitled Facetiae, Musarum Deliciae, etc. Dr. Raymond P. Stearns kindly collated them with the 1645 and 1650 editions in the British Museum. Every one of Cotton’s nineteen extracts are found in the 1640 edition, and in the same sequence that he copies them; but several are not to be found in any of the later editions, where, moreover, the order is different. This proves that it was the 1640 edition to which Cotton had access.

923 The remaining pages start with the back of the book, reversed.

924 Continued from pp. [53–54] of the manuscript (see below, pp. 333–336), which should be read first.

925 Written over “skill” crossed out; the version in Joseph W. Ebsworth, The Roxburghe Ballads, has “skills.”

926 Three lines of the Roxburghe copy here omitted.

927 “But now I’m come too late to kiss her, which were it not in vain” (Roxburghe).

928 “Gerhard’s” (Roxburghe).

929 This unidentified poem is in handwriting A′.

930 The rest of the poem was copied at a different time.

931 Cotton wrote “Ραλμερ”

932 Thomas Manton, A Practical Commentary, or an Exposition on the Epistle of James (London, 1651).

933 Edward Elton’s folio exposition of Colossians was first published in 1620 and again in 1637; I find no commentary of his on Corinthians.

934 Matthew Barker (1619–1698), a well-known Puritan divine, whose most important work was Natural Theology (1674).

935 Zacharius Ursinus, Opera Theologica (Heidelberg, 1612; Hanover, 1634), or his Corpus Doctrinae Orthodoxae sive Catechetiarum (Geneva, 1612, englished by “Henrie Parrie,” London, 1617, etc.).

936 Probably the last-named work in the preceding note. It ran to over 1,100 pages.

937 William (“Painful”) Perkins, A Case of Conscience, the Greatest That Ever Was, came out as early as 1592, and is also included in some editions of his Armilla Aurea or Golden Chaine.

938 Calvin wrote ten or twelve commentaries on the Epistles.

939 William Ames’s famous Medulla Theologiae, or Marrow of Divinity.

940 John Cotton, Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle Generall of John (London, 1656; 2d ed., 1658), may be alluded to, or some manuscript sermon in the son’s possession.

941 This paragraph is written in a different ink and in a slightly older handwriting.

942 This paragraph is written in a different ink from the preceding.

943 They are written in handwriting B.

944 These lines are written at the foot of the page, reversed.

945 The first four paragraphs are in handwriting A′.

946 This paragraph is in a different ink and a later hand.

947 This is in handwriting A′ or A″.

948 This is in handwriting A′ and is almost illegible.

949 This is in handwriting A′ and is almost illegible.

950 This is in handwriting A′ and is signed “Seaborne Cotton.”

951 This is in handwriting A′.

952 This is in handwriting A′.

953 A word is inserted here, possibly “Junior.”

954 The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, Albert Feuillerat, editor (cited hereafter as Works).

955 Cotton omits the first words, “Here now have you,” and “Lady” after “deare,” inserting “here you have”; and he takes other liberties with the text.

956 Arcadia, dedication; Works, i. 6–7.

957 Works, i. 21.

958 Several broadside copies are known; for the list, see the reprint in Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 563–566, whence the tide has been obtained. Mr. Ebsworth assigns 1660 as the probable date. The same ballad is paraphrased in Henry Bold, Poems Lyrique, Macaronique, Heroique (London, 1664), pp. 105–110.

959 These four lines are not in the Roxburghe version, but resemble that of Henry Bold, “Song lxvi. A Mock” (Poems Lyrique, p. 107):

Nor did I fear, though at my Bosome, all at once,

Such Darts did move;

She that receives, A thousand Sheaves,

She can no more, but Love.

960 Cotton’s note for his own benefit. The next four lines precede the previous four, as they do in Henry Bold’s version (p. 106):

But yet, my fore acknowledgment, shall testifie,

Thou hast no Craft,

To bend thy Bow, Against a Foe,

That aim’d, to catch the shaft;

961 This stanza resembles more closely the Roxburghe than the Henry Bold version, although some of the lines are transposed.

962 “Divines” appears in the Bold but not in the Roxburghe version.

963 “The Young-Man’s Answer; or, his Dying Breath, Lamenting for his fair Cordelia’s Death,” is the tide of this reply. It appears on the same broadside as “The Love-Sick Maid” and is reprinted in Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 565. It is not found in Henry Bold’s Poems.

964 “Where slumber hath no power to close the eye” (Roxburghe).

965 Three lines of the Roxburghe version are omitted here.

966 Continued on page [1]; see above, p. 326.

967 Arcadia, i. vii, 4; Works, i. 50.

968 Arcadia, i. viii, 3; Works, i. 53–54.

969 Arcadia, i. xiii, 6; Works, i. 90. Prose quotations from the Arcadia continue through p. [78]. I have copied only the beginings of the longer passages.

970 Arcadia, ii. ii, 4; Works, i. 156.

971 Id.

972 Arcadia, ii. xi, 7; Works, i. 164.

973 Arcadia, ii. xi, 6; Works, i. 218–222.

974 Arcadia, i. xiii, 6; Works, i. 91.

975 Arcadia, iii. iv, 5; Works, i. 375. This group of extracts continues through p. [86].

976 Patri Reverendissimo Honorabilissimo et Chiarissimo is the suggestion for expanding these initials made by our associate Edward Kennard Rand, who has kindly helped me establish the Latin text.

977 Operaeque is called for.

978 Another copyist’s mistake; should be poenitet.

979 Doubtful. The comparison of parental counsels to the contents of Pandora’s box is one of those compliments that might have been better expressed.

980 Juro is called for.

981 Obedientissimus Filius?

982 This line and the letter that follows are in the same ink, and in Seaborn Cotton’s earliest hand.

983 Numerous pen flourishes follow.

984 Title from Roxburghe Ballads, vi. 228, where an undated broadside copy is reprinted.

985 “Upon his Face he lay along, hard by a Chrystal River” (Roxburghe).

986 “Song” (Roxburghe).

987 “Wo worth her face, her comly grace!” (Roxburghe).

988 “Her splendid Rays cuts off my days” (Roxburghe); Cotton’s line is at the end of the next stanza in the Roxburghe version, which he omits.

989 “You chrystal Streams that sweetly glide, be partners of my Mourning” (Roxburghe).

990 “Meadows wide” (Roxburghe).

991 Cotton omits here two stanzas of the Roxburghe version.

992 “Who hath my Death conspired” (Roxburghe).

993 “Thus I perceived him near his Death” (Roxburghe).

994 The Roxburghe version concludes here.

995 Facetiae, Musarum Deliciae, ii. 38; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 116.

996 Facetiae, ii. 17; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 126.

997 Facetiae, ii. 17; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 129.

998 Title from Facetiae, ii. 97; also in Witts Recreations (1640), No. 138; (1641), No. 117; (1645), No. 111; (1650), No. 129; (1654), No. 129.

999 Facetiae, ii. 314; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 163; also in edition of 1654, among “Fancies & Fantastickes,” with title “Another.”

1000 Facetiae, ii. 18; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 164.

1001 Facetiae, ii. 106; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 165; (1641), No. 143; (1654), No. 168.

1002 Facetiae, ii. 44; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 168(2); (1641), No. 147.

1003 Facetiae, ii. 300; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 206 (here reproduced in facsimile); (1641), page 1 of “Fancies and Fantastickes.”

1004 Facetiae, ii. 112; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 211; (1641), No. 176.

1005 Facetiae, ii. 113; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 213; (1641), No. 178.

1006 Facetiae, ii. 139; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 216; (1641), No. 182.

1007 Facetiae, ii. 118; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 238; (1641), No. 200; (1654), No. 230.

1008 Facetiae, ii. 126; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 279; (1641), no. 239; (1654), No. 272.

1009 Facetiae, ii. 23–24; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 298.

1010 Facetiae, ii. 25; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 345. Measure for Measure, iv. 1.

1011 Facetiae, ii. 26; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 462.

1012 Facetiae, ii. 60; Witts Recreations (1640), No. 467; (1641), No. 494; in Francis Davison, Poetical Rhapsody (1602), no. 190, where it is called “Madrigal I. To Cupid,” and the lines are arranged differently. In Hyder E. Rollins’s edition of this latter work (ii. 118–120), it is shown that this madrigal is translated from the Rime of Luigi Groto (1541–1585).

1013 Facetiae, ii. 61–62; Witts Recreations (1640), no. 467; (1641), No. 497.

1014 Title from broadside of c. 1670–87 reprinted in J. W. Ebsworth, The Bagford Ballads, ii. 471–474. A copy not listed by Ebsworth is in the Pepys Collection, iii. 325, at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Cf. Bibliotheca Lindesiana. Catalogue of a Collection of English Ballads of the XVII^th and XVIII^th Centuries, No. 388. The first two lines are quoted in Elnathan Chauncy’s commonplace book.

1015 “E’er I from thee will part, my turtle-dove” (Bagford).

1016 Two stanzas of the Bagford version are here omitted, and the next stanza there is as follows:

Then let me go with you,

heart, love and joy;

I will attend on you,

and be your boy:

If you will go to sea,

I’ll serve you night and day,

For here I will not stay,

if you go hence.

There are eight more stanzas which Seaborn does not copy.

1017 Title from Westminster Drolleries, Both Parts, of 1671, 1672, J. W. Ebsworth, editor, Appendix, pp. x–xi; the poem, without the title, is also in John Cotgrave, Wits Interpreter: Or, Apollo and Orpheus (1655), pp. 103–104.

1018 These vital records have been printed in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxiii. 35.

1019 P. [146] is blank.

1020 P. [148] is blank.

1021 Seaborn’s younger brother, John Cotton (H.C. 1657), was ordained pastor of the church in Plymouth on June 30, 1669. See our Publications, xxii. 144.

1022 These were also printed in New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg., xxviii. 35.

1023 This entry and that for the ninth child are in a younger hand than that for the eighth. The record of the birth of the eleventh child and that of the death of his wife were entered separately.

1024 This was entered later than the above deaths, and is in Seaborn Cotton’s oldest handwriting (A″), as are the remaining entries on p. [174].

1025 Beginning with this entry the handwriting is that of John Cotton (C).

1026 The last volume published before his death carried his work into the year 1799.

1027 The book was first reprinted by the Bradford Press, New York, 1868 (99 copies); next by Samuel Adams Drake in his Bunker Hill, Boston, 1875; then by William Abbatt in Number 8 of his Extra Numbers of the Magazine of History, 1909. All these follow, properly, the second edition. Both the 1775 editions are extremely rare.

1028 General Sir William Howe’s Orderly Book, B. F. Stevens, editor (London, 1890), p. 41.

1029 Army List for 1775, p. 181. A searcher in the Lists should notice that the Marines, whether on regular or half pay, are not in the general lists of army officers. Perhaps that is why Drake and Abbatt missed Clarke.

1030 A complete set of Army Lists would doubtless allow one to follow John Clarke pretty well, though names sometimes disappear and reappear very strangely. The letter to me from the Admiralty is dated August 27, 1930.

1031 Mr. Abbatt seems to ascribe the name of the author to the cataloguer, not to the book itself. I have not had the volume in my hand. Mr. Abbatt apparently set a research worker to hunting in the British Museum. As I shall show, while the fact he was looking for was there, where I found it, both he and I should have searched first in the Admiralty records, now in the Public Record Office, London.

1032 The First Year of the American Revolution, chapters xv and xvi.

1033 Allen French, General Gage’s Informers, p. 98.

1034 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xii. 83; cf. id., p. 81, where Farnsworth writes of the fight at Hog Island.

1035 Clarke, Narrative (2d ed.), pp. 4–5.

1036 id., pp. 3–4.

1037 Percy was on duty at Roxbury.

1038 The list of casualties differs somewhat from the official list sent over by General Gage, by the vessel in which Clarke probably sailed, the Cerberus. For example, in the Fifth Regiment Clarke gives Major Mitchell as wounded, while Gage does not, and omits Harris, who was wounded and was in Gage’s list. As the despatches were sealed, Clarke of course had no access to them on board ship, nor did he correct his list by them afterward. He disagrees with the official total.

1039 Gage issued a list of promotions on June 25, and presumably sent it with his despatches of that date, also by Clarke’s ship. It is in Howe’s Orderly Book (pp. 20 ff.), but is not in the official despatches. The fact that it is not in Clarke’s first edition makes it seem as if the book had been rushed into print. Again Clarke’s list differs somewhat from the official one

1040 Clarke, Narrative, p. 18.

1041 The Command in the Battle of Bunker Hill, p. 43.

1042 From a letter, dated July 5, 1775, by an officer in Boston, quoted in Detail and Conduct of the American War. Americans believed that Warren’s coat was sold in Boston. Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, p. 519, quoting Jane Belknap Marcou, Life of Jeremy Belinap, p. 93.

1043 Clarke, Narrative, pp. 31–32.

1044 This can be found, not only in manuscript in the British Museum, but also in a modern manuscript copy in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

1045 These three passages (which can also be found under their proper dates in Graves’s despatches in Ad. 1: 485 in the Public Record Office) I take from his MS. “Conduct” in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 14,038). This is numbered twice; the references are pp. 82 or 47v, 119 or 68, 120–121 or 68v–69. They can also be found in the transcript in the Massachusetts Historical Society under the dates of June 8 and 14. The “8” is, however, an error for “7,” and the admiral gives it correctly in his second entry.

1046 Graves’s despatches and his “Conduct” show that the Cerberus arrived from England on May 25, and that her return voyage was delayed in order that she might carry the account of Bunker Hill. As Gage’s despatches were dated June 25, the ship doubtless sailed on the next fair wind

1047 Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 41.

1048 Cf. my First Year of the American Revolution, p. 96. Yet notice that the casualty list of Bunker Hill contains the name of a Volunteer in the Royal Artillery. Was he of old standing?

1049 Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 78, under date of August 28. Note that a Volunteer had no other title. On Gage’s Bunker Hill list the Volunteers are all “Mr.,” except for “Lieutenant Alexander Campbell, on half-pay.” He was “late [of] Barre’s,” a unit that I cannot identify.

1050 Ad. 1: 485: 447–448, 451–452; or in Ad. 1: 5307, not paged, June 7 and 8.

1051 The captain of the Cerberus reported to Lord Dartmouth on August 2. Dartmouth to Gage, August 2, C.O. 5: 92.

1052 The answers to Wilkins’s and Clarke’s petitions are to be found in Ad. 2:1169: 10, 274. I find little more about Clarke in the muster-book of his ship, the Falcon (Ad. 1: 8014), except the dates of his reporting for duty, and the fact that he was of Portsmouth. It is to be noted that Clarke, though a second lieutenant, was given first lieutenant’s half-pay, as was Wilkins in 1775, though on the previous occasion Wilkins received only the half-pay of his grade. Further, Wilkins does not again appear in the Army Lists, either on half-pay or as restored to duty. Yet promotion in the Marines during the Revolutionary War was very rapid, as is shown in the Army Lists, proving that trained men were much wanted.

1053 Both Gage and Graves feared an attack on Charlestown, and Gage did not feel that he was quite safe in Boston till he had disarmed the inhabitants, late in April.

1054 Our Publications, vii. 94–122, 125 note.

1055 The Reformado, p. 9. These “monuments” of Queen Elizabeth were erected in many English churches after her death. Cf. our Publications, vii. 102–105.

1056 If the latter, it might have come about as follows: the Puritans were given to bestowing biblical names on their children; a Puritan in England was satirically or derisively called “Brother Jonathan”; the early settlers in New England were mostly Puritans, and so the nickname followed them across the Atlantic.

1057 For this extract I am indebted to Mr. Allen French, who tells me that the letter was written to Humphrey Palmer of Providence, R. I.; and that Allen and Palmer “were not soldiers (at least at this stage of the war) but merchants established in a general business in Cambridge and Providence.”

On the same date (March 17, 1776) William Heath wrote: “In the morning the British evacuated Boston; their rear guard, with some marks of precipitation. A number of cannon were left spiked, and two large marine mortars, which they in vain attempted to burst. The garrison at Bunker’s Hill practised some deception to cover their retreat. They fixed some images, representing men, in the places of their centinels, with muskets placed on their shoulders, &c. Their immoveable position led to the discovery of the deception, and a detachment of the Americans marched in and took possession.” Memoirs, p. 43

This extract was not quoted in my original paper for the obvious reason that it is not relevant to the term under discussion since Heath failed to give the label. But it corroborates the presence of the images and so is pertinent. My guess is that Heath considered the label “beneath the dignity of history,” or else did not have sufficient sense of humor to record an epithet then regarded as uncomplimentary.

1058 Literary Diary, ii. 2. Quoted in my former paper, but repeated here for comparison with Allen’s letter.

1059 Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, v. 218–219, No. 5329. This volume, edited by Dr. Mary Dorothy George, covers the years 1771–1783. Both the prints between which No. 5329 is placed are dated March 1, 1776. Mrs. George says (pp. xix–xx, 218–219): “1776 is noteworthy for two of the few anti-American satires, one a crude and ill-timed print on the American entrenchments near Boston (No. 5329), which incidentally illustrates the fact that at the beginning of the war Putnam was the best known (in England) of the American commanders.… The artist appears to have been ignorant of Washington’s appointment, 15 June 1775, as commander-in-chief. He took over the command of the troops round Boston on 3 July 1775, superseding not Israel Putnam (appointed fourth major-general June 1775) but Artemas Ward…. One of the few satires hostile to the Americans, cf. Nos. 5401, 6288.” The size of the print is 8 × 9⅝. Through the courtesy of Mr. Allen French it is here reproduced from a photograph, probably the only one in this country.

Mrs. George kindly writes me: “I think it extremely likely that No. 5329 was prepared at the end of 1775 for publication early in 1776. I have run across instances of prints dated with the year only where I suspect this to be the case—but this is only conjecture. The allusion to Putnam also suggests an earlier date than March 1, 1776; but the only thing we can say with certainty or truth is that it was published before news of the evacuation of Boston.” She adds that this allusion to Jonathan is “the only one that have run across, and I have now dealt with prints in this collection up to the end of 1792.” To a similar effect Professor Leonard W. Labarce, who called my attention to the above book, writes: “I take it the print was made either very late in 1775 or early in 1776. Certainly before news reached England of the evacuation. From this it seems clear that the term Jonathan for a New Englander had become sufficiently well known in England before the Boston evacuation for it to be used in a print intended for public sale. This, of course, simply goes to confirm your theory of a fairly wide use of the term much earlier than any important service of Trumbull to the Revolutionary cause.” In 1880, Nathaniel H. Morgan wrote: “The phrase ‘we must consult Brother Jonathan,’ used by Gen. Washington when he first took command of the army at Cambridge, was so often uttered by him afterwards, that it became a by-word among his staff, and spread through the army and the country.” Early Lebanon, p. 85. On his way from Virginia to Cambridge Washington passed through Hartford, but he and Trumbull did not then meet. Their correspondence, which began in July, 1775, was of slight importance until the spring of 1776. Leaving Boston on April 4, 1776, Washington went to New York by the “shore line,” and the two men met on the eighth at Norwich. Cf. 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., ix. 517–518; x. 1–11.

1060 Here the satirist appears to have made a slight slip and should have said “Liberty or Death.” On December 27, 1775, when preparations for storming Quebec that night were made but had to be postponed because “the weather cleared away serene and bright,” Isaac Senter, the surgeon of Arnold’s expedition against Canada, wrote: “For a mark of distinction each soldier was ordered to procure a fir sprig, and fix it in front of their caps, whereby they might be discriminated”; and again on December 31, the day of the actual assault: “To discriminate our troops from the enemy in action, they were ordered each officer and soldier to make fast a piece of white paper across their caps from the front to the acmé of them.” “Journal,” Bulletin of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, i. 32, 33. In a letter dated Quebec, May 14, 1776, to a friend in Glasgow, the anonymous writer said: “The rebels had slips of paper pinned to their caps, with the words Liberty or Death! wrote on them.” Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, ii. 57. In 1897, a writer, describing the dress of the Virginia riflemen under Morgan who served in Arnold’s expedition, said: “On the part of their shirts covering the breast are the words of Henry ‘Liberty or Death.’” Essex Institute Historical Collections, xxxiii. 253. Patrick Henry’s famous words— “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”—are said by William Wirt (cf. M. C. Tyler, Patrick Henry, pp. 128–133) to have been uttered before the Virginia Convention in March, 1775; but the phrase “Liberty or Death” had doubtless for a decade been a commonplace on the lips of Americans, since the last two lines in Act ii, Scene iv, of Addison’s Cato, acted and published in 1713, read:

“It is not now a Time for aught

But Chains, or Conquest; Liberty, or Death.”

1061 A song printed in the Royal Gazette (New York) of October 3, 1778, contains the line, “And Jonathan felt bold Sir.” The letters and squibs of the period frequently allude to the Americans as “feeling bold,” and the Loyalists appear to have regarded it as a huge joke; but the exact significance of the phrase is obscure. Perhaps an extract from “Observations on the Government account of the late action near Charles Town,” which appeared in an English magazine soon after the battle of Bunker Hill, may give a clue to the origin of the phrase. The writer, it need scarcely be pointed out, was friendly to the Americans:

“But, ‘this action has shewn the superiority of the King’s troops.’—Has it indeed? How?—‘Why they (with a proportion of field artillery, and with the assistance of ships, armed vessels, and boats, and with the encouragement of certain and speedy reinforcement if necessary) attacked and defeated above three times their own numbers.’—What three times their own numbers? Of whom, pray? Of French or Spanish Regulars?—No, of the Americans—Of the Americans! What, of these dastardly, hypocritical cowards, who (Lord Sandwich knows) do not feel bold enough to dare to look a soldier in the face!” Almon’s Remembrancer, 1775, i. 135.

1062 In the War of 1812 “Uncle Tim” was a frequent target for ridicule by the Democratic press. Cf. “All Tories Together,” our Publications, x. 139–140

1063 The Boston Independent Chronicle, the Philadelphia Aurora, and the New York Argus.

1064 During the Revolutionary War Americans evidently did feel “injured” by “Jonathan,” and certainly they did not “glory” in “Yankee” until after April 19, 1775. In a letter written from Boston in 1777 by William Gardiner of Gardiner, Maine, there is an allusion to “a Joe Bunker justice.” Boston Transcript, November 12, 1910. The first line of “A New Song,” printed in the Massachusetts Centinel of July 11, 1787 (p. 131), reads: “Huzza, my joe-bunkers! no taxes we’ll pay!” I do not know exactly what the term means. The expression “a leather-button Curse” is new to me, and its meaning escapes me.

1065 In the Annual Report of the Street Laying-out Department for the Year 1896 (p. 279) it is stated that the name of King Street, Boston, was changed to State Street in 1784; but there is an allusion to State Street on August 28, 1782, and another to “State Street now so called” on March 25, 1783. Boston Records, xxv. 190–191; xxvi. 303. Evidently the new name was used colloquially before it was officially adopted; but there could hardly have been a State Street in this country before July 4, 1776. The name of Long Lane, Boston, was changed to Federal Street in 1788 (id., xxxi. 179); and there could hardly have been a street of that name before 1787. The verb “to burke” originated on January 28, 1829, which was the very day on which William Burke was executed. The word “boycott” first appeared in the autumn of 1880. But it is seldom that a word can be traced to its very birth.

1066 John Harriott (1745–1817), of whom there is a notice in the Dictionary of National Biography, had a varied and interesting career in several parts of the world. Recollections of events of half a century earlier must always be received with caution, if not suspicion. Harriott says that he came to Boston in 1765 in the Mary, commanded by “Captain D——n,” thus providing three tests as to the accuracy of his memory. A list of “Port Arrivals—Immigrants” from March 16, 1763, to August 14, 1769, is printed in Boston Records, xxix. 245–317. “Captain D——n” must have been one of the following: Ephraim Dean, James Dean, John Dean, William Dean, William Devers on, William Deverson, Jr., George Diamond, Thomas Dimond, — Doan, Nathaniel Doan, Seth Doan, John Dunn, Nathaniel Dunn, Richard Dunn. This embarrassment of riches makes it impossible to say which of the fourteen it was under whom Harriott served as second mate. But the name of Harriott’s vessel gives the clue. The following Marys arrived in Boston in 1763–1769: sloop Mary, Chars. Andrews, from Connecticut, October 17, 1763 (p. 251); schooner Mary, Theop^a Simonton, from New York, May 14, 1764 (p. 256); ship Mary, William Devers on, from London, June 25, 1764 (p. 257); schooner Mary, Caleb Hopkins, from Martinico, July 23, 1765 (p. 267); and schooner Mary, Thomas Mitchel, from Newfoundland, October 28, 1765 (p. 272). Thus only one Mary was a “ship,” only one Mary came from London, and only one Mary was commanded by “Captain D——n:” namely, the Mary, William Devers on, which entered June 25, 1764. The Boston Evening-Post of Monday, June 25, 1764, stated that “Last Saturday Evening arrived here Capt. Devers on in 9 Weeks from London”; and in the issue of July 2 was advertised the sale of books “Just Imported in the Mary, Capt. Deverson.” Though the Mary arrived Saturday evening, June 23, it would probably have been a violation of the Sabbath to allow her passengers to land, and her entry was not recorded until Monday the twenty-fifth. That was Captain William Deverson’s first and only voyage with the Mary; but he arrived here on September 11, 1765, with he ship Thomas and Samuel from London (p. 270); on February 4, 1766, with the ship Britannia from London (p. 275); and with the same ship on September 23, 1766, October 16, 1767, and September 23, 1768 (pp. 284, 298, 308). And he was also here with the Britannia in July, 1771. Id., xxiii. 92–95. Thus Harriott was correct as to the names of the ship and its captain, and was only one year out in the date of his voyage. Captain William Deverson was from “the old country,” and so would have particularly enjoyed retailing jokes at the expense of New Englanders.

1067 Several naval officers named Montagu (Montague) served in American waters in the eighteenth century. This one, Mr. Alien French tells me, was the Hon. William Montagu (1720?–1757), younger brother of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, the latter of whom in 1763 was given the opprobrious nickname of “Jemmy Twitcher.” Cf. Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., lxii. 180 note 1. Not wholly accurate is the notice of Captain Montagu in the Dictionary of National Biography, where it is stated that, getting into difficulties with Sir Peter Warren in the West Indies, he was in the Eltham “carried to New England, where, after he had been seven months under arrest, he was promoted by Warren to the post-ship Mermaid on 23 May 1745.” Warren did sail for Boston, having sent word to his wife (who was an American) to meet him there, but on the way he was intercepted and informed that the expedition against Louisbourg had already sailed, and so he changed his course and made directly for Canseau. Cf. Francis Parkman, A Half-Century of Conflict, ii. 103. After the capture of Louisbourg, Montagu was dispatched to carry the news to England, and thereafter remained in European waters; nor, so far as I can ascertain, was he ever on the Halifax or any other American station.

1068 Struggles through Life (3d ed., London, 1815), i. 138–146. This work went through the following editions: London, 1807 (in two volumes); London, 1808 (second edition, in two volumes); Philadelphia and New York, 1809 (in two volumes, from the second London edition); London, 1815 (third edition, in three volumes). The story is told in the seventeenth chapter of the first volume of the 1815 edition, which fills pp. 135–155, and is not found in any of the earlier editions, in each of which the chapter contains only about two pages. In it are also allusions to “Jonathan,” “our Brother Jonathans,” and “Brother Jonathan” (i. 149, 152, 153).

1069 This story in one form or another can be traced from 1674 to 1931.

1070 Struggles through Life, i. 15, 20, 23, 30, 119, 162–171; ii. 113, 347; iii. 33.

1071 E.A. Kendall Travels, i. 315–316.

1072 Out of 444 graduates in 1642–1700, there were 10 Jonathans, of whom certainly two (Jonathan Mitchell of 1647 and Jonathan Burr of 1651) and perhaps a third (Jonathan Ince of 1650) were born in England. There was no Jonathan in 1652–1674, the fourth of that name being Jonathan Russell of 1675. Out of 1,289 graduates in 1701–1750 there were 29 Jonathans, or 1 in 44 also.

1073 Kendall, Travels, i. 312–313; cf. p. 157.

1074 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1598–1601, p. 425.

1075 Records of the Virginia Company, i. 269, 337, 409, 430, 509.

1076 D. W. Prowse, History of Newfoundland, p. 132. The writer of the letter was Sir George Calvert, who had been created Baron Baltimore the month before.

1077 Boteler’s Dialogues (1929), p. xiii.

1078 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1625–1626, p. 493. Apparently this, too, was in the expedition against Cadiz. It is not quite clear whether there were two vessels of the name in that expedition or only one vessel.

1079 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxii. 407.

1080 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America and West Indies, 1574–1660, p. 367.

1081 American Magazine, i (November, 1743), pp. 107–111.

1082 A Match for a Widow: or, the Frolics of Fancy. A Comic Opera, in Three Acts. As performed at the Theatre-Royal, Dublin. London, 1788. “SCENE, the Castle and Village of Bloomingdale,” presumably Ireland. For knowledge of this play I am indebted to Mr. Charles E. Goodspeed, who sold me a copy about twenty years ago. There is a copy in the Boston Public Library.

1083 The author goes on to say that Daly and others “earnestly recommended and urged me, instead of confining it to an after Musical Piece, to extend the design to a compleat Comic Opera by the assistance of new characters and an under-plot”; that “in the course of the week I again presented you, and read the Opera in its present state”; that it was then “transmitted to Mr. [Charles] Dibdin in London, who embellished it with his harmony”; and that “with the ornament of new scenery and dresses, and the then musical strength of your company, you in the spring of 1786, gave it a fair trial before an Irish audience.”

1084 A Match for a Widow, p. 12.

1085 In 1762, there were two Joseph Atkinsons in the British Army. One was commissioned an ensign in the Eighty-Sixth Regiment of Foot on June 26, 1761, and a lieutenant in the same regiment on May 17, 1762; but he left the regiment, and presumably the army, on December 9, 1762. That Eighty-Sixth Regiment is not to be confused with another regiment of the same number, raised in 1793. British Amy Lists, 1761, p. 152; 1763, pp. 152, 241; R. Trimen, Regiments of the British Army, p. 131; J. S. Farmer, Regimental Records of the British Army, p. 200.

Of the other Joseph Atkinson (1743–1818), who was the author of A Match for a Widow, the Dictionary of National Biography says that he “served in the Army until he obtained a captain’s commission,” which doesn’t tell us where he served and is slightly inaccurate, since he remained in the army four and a half years after obtaining his captaincy. (Besides the references in that work, there are glimpses of Atkinson in Lionel Stevenson’s The Wild Irish Girl: The Life of Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan.) Atkinson’s rank in the army dated from March 4, 1762, when he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Eighty-Sixth Regiment of Foot, which, raised in 1759 and disbanded in 1763, was stationed in Senegal, Africa. In 1763–1768 he was on half-pay, but on February 4, 1768, he was commissioned a lieutenant, and on May 25, 1772, a captain in the Forty-Sixth Regiment of Foot, which was stationed in the West Indies in 1762–1764, on the American continent in 1764–1767, and in Ireland in 1767–1776. Early in 1776 the Forty-Sixth Regiment embarked from Ireland; arrived on the coast of North Carolina early in April; landed at Cape Fear; on June 1 sailed with the expedition against Charleston; passed the Charleston bar, but could not capture the capital and so reëmbarked and proceeded to Long Island, New York. At the end of 1776 Atkinson sold his commission, as appears from an entry dated December 24: “46th. Regiment.—Hon. Lieut. Chetwynd, 52d. Regiment, to be Captain vice Atkinson, by Purchase 23d. Dec., 1776.” Kemble Papers, i. 429. By mistake, owing to the slow communication between New York and London, Atkinson’s name is in both the London and the Dublin editions of the 1777 Army List, but in one copy of the latter that I have seen the name has been run through with pen or pencil. British Army Lists, 1763, p. 152; 1765–1768, under “Half-Pay…. Regiments, See. Reduced or Disbanded, 1763”; 1769–1777, p. 100; R. Cannon, Historical Records of the British Army, pp. 17–25; Farmer, Regimental Records, p. 140. Whether after leaving the army Atkinson remained for a while in New York or returned immediately to Ireland is unknown; and, though he may have been in New England before 1776 or between 1776 and 1785, there is no evidence that he ever was.

1086 i Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., iii. 131–150.

1087 Journal (Savage ed., Boston, 1853), ii. 24.

1088 The Founding of New England, p. 453.

1089 For the history of the Winthrop Papers, see the preface to Winthrop Papers, 1 (Boston, 1929).

1090 It afterwards became mine.

1091 Students of Winthrop’s Journal will remember that the precise dates of the different entries are not always easy to determine. So far as can be discovered, the reference to the ravages of the mice was written about December 15, 1640.

1092 The Greek New Testament lacks a title-page, but at the foot of the last page (229) some former owner has written “Aurelia Allobrogum, Excudebat Petrus de la Roviere. M D C X.” Aurelia Allobrogum is a very ancient name for Geneva. Dictionnaire de Géographie Ancienne et Moderne, pp. 134, 554–556.

1093 See the letter of Margaret Winthrop to John Winthrop, Jr., who was then in London, ca. December, 1630, Winthrop Papers, ii (Boston, 1931), p. 321.

1094 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 2–20.

1095 See above, p. 311.

1096 Printed in Essex Institute Historical Collections, lxxii. 1–42.

1097 Arthur M. Schlesinger, “The Colonial Newspapers and the Stamp Act,” New England Quarterly, viii. 63–83.

1098 Article by “A Son of Liberty,” reprinted in the Boston Post-Boy, March 24, 1766, from A Providence Gazette Extraordinary, March 12. The writer had in mind pamphlet publications as well as newspapers.

1099 Letter to Richard Jackson, February 18, 1767, Bernard Papers (Sparks MSS., Harvard College Library), vi. 14.

1100 “No Seeker” in the Boston Evening-Post, March 30, 1767, quoting the “Lines of a celebrated Writer.”

1101 Issues of August 17, 24, 1767.

1102 Letter to Richard Jackson, September 14, 1767, Bernard Papers, vi. 47. “The proceedings in the newspapers are precisely the same as those preceding the former disturbances,” Bernard had written Lord Shelburne, August 24, 1767. British Papers (Sparks MSS.), i. 74.

1103 A good example was the article by “M. Y.” in the Boston Gazette, September 14, 1767.

1104 The series appeared originally in the Pennsylvania Chronicle from December 2, 1767, to February 15, 1768.

1105 Letter of December 5, 1767 (Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., lxxii. 3). Dickinson and Otis had been fellow-members of the Stamp Act Congress.

1106 Bernard to John Pownall, January 9, February 8, 1768, Bernard Papers, vi. 59–60, 89.

1107 Representation to Privy Council, January, 1774, The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence and Illustrative Matter, 1760–1770, Edward Channing and A. C. Coolidge, editors, p. 266.

1108 See valedictory editorials of Edes in the Boston Gazette, January 1, 1797, and September 17, 1798, quoted by Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872, pp. 165–167.

1109 Thomas Hutchinson, History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, iii. 167.

1110 Entry of September 3, 1769, The Works of John Adams, C. F. Adams, editor, ii. 219.

1111 Letter to Shelburne, March 5, 1768, Bernard Papers, vi. 273.

1112 Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 295.

1113 See the list in William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, i. 445 n., and Harry A. Cushing’s identifications in The Writings of Samuel Adams, i–ii, passim.

1114 Statement to Privy Council, Barrington-Bernard Correspondence, p. 266. During the years 1767–1770 Josiah Quincy, Jr., used the signatures “Hyperion,” “An Independant,” and “An Old Man” in the Gazette. The manuscript copy of some of his pieces contained the significant direction to the printers: “Let Samuel Adams Esq. correct the press.” Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Jun., pp. 11–13, 18–29. Though active earlier, John Adams declared on June 22, 1771, that he had not written in the newspapers for two years. Works, ii. 282.

1115 Letter of September 30, 1769, Letters of James Murray, Loyalist, Nina M. Tiffany, editor, pp. 161–162.

1116 Letter of July 18–19, 1768, Letters to the Ministry (Boston, 1769), pp. 44–46.

1117 This statement is quoted by “Tacitus” in the Boston Gazette, December 21, 1767. Others, of whom James Murray was typical, thought the two sets of contributors equally objectionable. Letters, p. 162. On occasion the Evening-Post’s independence also proved a source of annoyance to the radicals. Thus “Tacitus,” in the article just cited, referred to “that Emblem of Light and Purity, the Evening-Post, printed by those sweet, harmless, lovely Lambkins Tommy and Johnny Fleet, who are wholly ignorant that by this Conduct their Paper may be fitly compared to the Lanthorns, … which tho’ they give some Light, yet … ‘ray out, Abundance of Darkness.’”

1118 Unsigned article in Boston Evening-Post, December 7, 1767.

1119 Letter of May ii, 1768, The letters of Governor Hutchinson and Lieut. Governor Oliver, &c. (London, 1774), p. 27. See also id., pp. 30–31.

1120 William Tudor, The Life of James Otis, of Massachusetts, p. 450 n.

1121 Josiah Quincy, Jr., Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay between 1761 and 1772, S. M. Quincy, editor, pp. 248–250; E. F. Brown, Joseph Hawley, Colonial Radical, pp. 63–67.

1122 Quincy, Reports, 244–246; New-Hampshire Gazette, October 16, 1767.

1123 Hutchinson in time came to believe that the disbarment had had the unfortunate effect of driving Hawley into the arms of the extremists. In a vain effort to repair the fancied damage he secured Hawley’s reinstatement in the fall of 1769. Brown, Joseph Hawley, pp. 67–68, 118, 121.

1124 That the writer was Joseph Warren seems beyond reasonable doubt. See Quincy, Reports, p. 271, and Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, p. 40 n. With much less evidence Wells (Samuel Adams, i. 175) assigns the authorship to James Otis.

1125 The House adopted the reply by a vote of 39 to 30. On the whole incident, see Quincy, Reports, pp. 270–275; Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts, from 1765 to 1775; and the Answers of the House of Representatives to the Same, Alden Bradford, editor, pp. 118–119; Boston Gazette, March 7,1768; Bernard, Letters to Ministry, pp. 8–10; Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 186–187.

1126 Quincy, Reports, pp. 263–270.

1127 Hutchinson and Oliver, Letters, p. 9; Bernard, Letters to Ministry, pp. 10–12.

1128 Boston Gazette, March 21, 1768.

1129 Bernard, Letters to Ministry, p. 51; Quincy, Reports, p. 305. Bernard informed Hillsborough that on the day before the session the Boston Gazette, August 22, 1768, threatened publicly to expose Hutchinson’s “private Life and Conversation” if he renewed his charge. If such an article appeared, it was in a supplement no longer extant. A letter in that issue from “W.,” however, denounced Hutchinson (without naming him) for supposedly accepting a salary from home; the printers corrected this false report in their next number

1130 Quincy, Reports, p. 309

1131 Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, i. 145–147; ii. 57–58; John Adams, Notes, 1770, MS., Massachusetts Historical Society

1132 The Massachusetts Gazette, though issued from two different presses, adopted a system of consecutive numbering, beginning with No. 177 as a sort of continuation of the Massachusetts Gazette, and Boston News-Letter. When the arrangement lapsed, the News-Letter reverted to its earlier title, and the Boston Post-Boy lengthened its name to the Massachusetts Gazette, and Boston Post-Boy. On this whole matter, see Albert Matthews, “Bibliographical Notes on Boston Newspapers, 1704–1780,” our Publications, ix. 430–432, 470–471, 484–493.

1133 As early as October 5, 1767, “Anonymous,” writing in the Boston Gazette, had warned Draper: “Thy Paper will never gain the better Circulation if too frequently thou art made a Cat’s paw to Individuals, or a Party in judging thy Superiors.” By 1769 popular disapproval was assuming the form of muscular violence.

1134 “Journal of the Times,” April 14, 1769, in Boston Evening-Post, June 12, 1769.

1135 Letter to Hillsborough, September 17, 1768, Bernard, Letters to Ministry, p. 52. This article, headed “READER, ATTEND!,” bitterly arraigned the course of the royal officials and urged that, in theory, such acts had broken the compact between the colonies and the mother country and had dissolved the connection between them.

1136 Letter to Hillsborough, October 14, 1768, id., pp. 72–75.

1137 Through his privileges as a member of parliament Alderman William Beckford of London had secured copies for the agent of the Council, William Bollan, who transmitted them to Boston. Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 226–230; Bernard to John Pownall, April 12, 1769, Bernard Papers, vii. 280–282. The pamphlet was titled Letters to the Right Honourable The Earl of Hillsborough from Gov. Bernard, General Gage, and the Honourable his Majesty’s Council.

1138 Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759–1762, 1764–1779, Anne R. Cunningham, editor, p. 190. The account in the Boston Gazette (August 7) began: “Tuesday last embarked on board his Majesty’s Ship the Rippon, sir Francis Bernard of Nettleham, Bart., who for nine Years past, has been a Scourge to this Province, a Curse to North-America, and a Plague to the whole Empire.”

1139 Tudor, James Otis, pp. 360–366, 474–475; Boston Post-Boy, September 11, 1769. For the later indictment of Bernard and the commissioners by a grand jury of Suffolk County for “slandering the inhabitants of the town of Boston, and of the province of Massachusetts Bay,” see Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 262–263. The pamphlet publication, which presently appeared from the press of Edes and Gill, bore the title: Letters to the Ministry from Governor Bernard, General Gage, and Commodore Hood. And also. Memorials to the Lords of the Treasury, from the Commissioners of the Customs. With Sundry Letters and Papers.

1140 Boston Gazette, September 11, 25, 1769; Samuel Adams, Writings, i. 380–386.

1141 The series began in the New-York Journal on October 13, 1768, and lasted till September 14, 1769. The question of the “Journal’s” authorship is probably insoluble. Bernard doubtless got as near the facts as any later investigator is likely to when he informed Hillsborough on February 25, 1769, that the “Journal” was “composed by [Samuel] Adams & his Assistants among which there must be some one at least of the Council.…” Bernard Papers, vii. 148. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews for information in regard to the “Journal.”

1142 Boston Evening-Post, February 6, 1769. For allegations of seduction and attempted rape, see, for example, the “Journal” for April 30, May 16 and 17, June 14, and July 5, 1769, in the Evening-Post, June 26, July 17, 31, and August 14, 1769.

1143 The Virginia Resolves, dated May 16, 1769, were printed in the Boston press on June 8 and were commented on in the “Journal” on June 16 (in the Evening-Post, July 31).

1144 Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 225. The Evening-Post, printing the first installment on December 12, 1768, sought to sustain its professed independence of parties with the statement: “…. if any of the Facts shall appear to have been misrepresented, a Place shall always be open to any Gentleman who shall think proper to correct them.”

1145 Letter of January 26, 1769, Charles M. Andrews, “Boston Merchants and the Non-importation Movement,” our Publications, xix. 196 n. Hutchinson concluded the account of the “Journal” in his history with the sentiment: “This lying for the sake of truth may as well be excused in the cause of liberty, as in that of religion, though, as has been long since observed, it is a scurvy trick at best.” Massachusetts Bay, iii. 225.

1146 Letter to Hillsborough, February 25, 1769, Bernard Papers, vii. 148–150.

1147 Printed also in the Boston Gazette and the Boston Chronicle, May 29.

1148 In due course the “Journal” directly replied to Murray, reiterating at length the substance of the earlier charges. See the “Journal” under the dates June 3, 8, and 9, in the Boston Evening-Post, July 31, 1769.

1149 It was printed in the Boston Evening-Post, December 11, 18, 1769. The items for July 25–30 had appeared in the issue of October 2.

1150 The Boston Gazette, March 12, 1770, observed that the friction between the townsfolk and the military had continued to grow after the “Journal” ceased to appear.

1151 Murray, Letters, p. 162.

1152 The cut, made by Paul Revere on March 9, originally showed “5 Coffings.” See E. H. Goss, The Life of Colonel Paul Revere (4th ed., Boston, 1904), i. 75–77. One of the victims, Patrick Carr, did not die until two days after the Boston Gazette appeared. The next issue (March 19) displayed in a black frame a single coffin, marked “P. C.”

1153 Accounts of Mein may be found in our Publications, xix. 227–230; Charles K. Bolton, “Circulating Libraries in Boston, 1765–1865,” id., xi. 196–200; Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763–1776, pp. 159–178; Thomas, History of Printing, i. 151–154; ii. 59–61.

1154 Proposals for Printing a New Weekly Paper, called The Boston Chronicle, dated October 22, 1767.

1155 See “Americus” in Boston Gazette, January 18, 1768, and Edes’s statement in id., January 25. Mein was haled into court where, he later said, James Otis “bandied about the Liberty of the Press as the Salvation of America” and accused him (Mein) of endeavoring by violence “to shutt up that great Source of freedom.” Papers Relating to New England (Sparks MSS.), iii. 45, 47; Adams, Notes. “Populus” (Samuel Adams?) took the same line as Otis in the Boston Gazette, February 1. Mein’s burst of temper cost him nearly £100 sterling at the hands of the court.

1156 Mein’s memorial to the Treasury, quoted by Andrews. “Boston Merchants,” our Publications, xix. 228 n.

1157 Francis Green’s characterization, reprinted in the Boston News-Letter, September 21, 1769.

1158 Boston Gazette, August 14, 1769.

1159 Mrs. Christian Barnes, in a letter from Marlboro in June, 1770, referred, as a matter of course, to the “Well Disposed Commity.” Murray, Letters, p. 176. Even the Boston Gazette, March 5, 1770, alluded to the “several ‘Well disposed’ Counties in this Province.”

1160 Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 259. For reasons that will appear presently, only the first installment was published.

1161 Papers Relating to New England, iii. 45–47.

1162 Letter of November 21, 1771, to Peter Timothy, Charleston, S. C., Writings, ii. 65. The merits of Mein’s contentions are canvassed in Schlesinger, Colonial Merchants, esp. p. 170.

1163 The principal charge against Hancock can be easily disposed of. He had infringed the spirit, not the letter, of the agreement by allowing some of his ships to carry prohibited goods as freight. This practice was not expressly proscribed until July 26, 1769. On September 6, he sent appropriate instructions to his London correspondents. Massachusetts Gazette, July 31, 1769; John Hancock His Book, A. E. Brown, editor, p. 166. For Mein’s chief articles against Hancock, see the Chronicle, August 21, 28, September 4, 18, October 9, 1769. The quotation above is from the issue of October 26.

1164 The pamphlet, entitled State of the Importations from Great Britain into Boston, from Jan. 1769 to Aug. 17, 1769, was twice reissued the next year with appendices of importations to January 1, 1770, and from January 1 to June 19. In a letter, July 1, 1770, to Mein, then in London, Fleeming declared that the popular rage excited by the appearance of the last edition had caused him on June 30 to take refuge in Castle William. Papers Relating to New England, iv. 5. A writer in the New-Tort Gazette and Weekly Mercury, October 15, 1770, refers to a further “Pamphlet of Entries at the Port of Boston” for the period July 7 to August 14.

1165 Issue of September 4, 1769. For a similar attitude, see “Civis” in the New-Hampshire Gazette, July 6, 13, 1770.

1166 Andrews, “Boston Merchants,” our Publications, xix. 250–252. For a sharp exchange of letters between the Boston and New York committees in regard to Mein’s accusations, see the New-York Journal, August 9, 1770, and the Boston Evening-Post, September 10.

1167 Murray, Letters, pp. 159–161.

1168 A Boston item of November 20 in the New-York Journal, December 14, 1769, sourly characterized the appointment as pay for Mein’s “impertinent, grossly abusive and false publications.”

1169 Letter of George Mason to Joseph Harrison, October 20, 1769. Papers Relating to New England, iii. 40.

1170 Letter of Mein to Joseph Hanson, November 5, 1769, id., p. 51; Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, iii. 258–261; Rowe, Diary, p. 194; Boston Evening-Post, October 30, 1769; Matthews, “Bibliographical Notes,” our Publications, ix. 480–481 n. Mein’s temporary absence marked no truce in the warfare on the “Well Disposed,” a fact which may in part perhaps be explained by Hudson’s statement in Journalism in the United States (p. 128) that Mein was aided in his editorial labors by Samuel Waterhouse, a customs officer, and Joseph Green, a Boston wit of repute. He may also have had other helpers. In an allusion to William Burch, one of the customs commissioners, the Boston Gazette, September 11, 1769, reported “certain Knowledge” that “Shylock Burch” wrote “the Impertinence that Mein exhibits in his Paper.” Green was probably responsible for the proposal (Chronicle, January 18, 1770) that non-marriage, with its threat of depopulation, be substituted for non-importation as a weapon against England, himself to act as chairman of a committee for storing females: “If any man should refuse to deliver up his wife or daughter upon such an interesting occasion, he must be deemed AN ENEMY TO HIS COUNTRY.”

1171 Boston Chronicle, November 9, 1769; also Boston Evening-Post, November 13.

1172 Facsimile in Narrative and Critical History of America, Justin Winsor, editor, vi. 78.

1173 Vote of January 23, in the Boston Evening-Post, January 29, 1770

1174 Judgments were eventually assessed against Mein totaling over £2,612 with costs and damages. His financial tribulations are set forth in Murray, Letters, pp. 169–174; John Hancock His Book, p. 74; and Bolton, “Circulating Libraries in Boston,” our Publications, xi. 198–200. John Adams, in the “Novanglus” papers (1774), perverted the facts in describing Mein’s difficulties in Boston. See his Works, iv. 30.

1175 The tombstone, as noted above, gives August 27, 1717, as the date. John Phelps, Family Memoirs, gives August 15. A memorandum by Charles Phelps in his own hand gives August 16, which is Old Style for August 27, 1717.

1176 The date April, 1764, is given as the time of the arrival of the Phelps family in Marlborough. This is to be found on the gravestone of Timothy Phelps, son of Charles Phelps, in the abandoned burying-ground in Marlborough, Vermont. The town of New Marlborough was chartered by New Hampshire on April 17, 1764, in the name of Charles Phelps and his associates. Benjamin H. Hall, History of Eastern Vermont, p. 97.

Subsequent to the order of the King in Council fixing the Connecticut River as the eastern boundary of New York, Phelps applied to that Province for a charter for this town, but there is no record that he ever obtained it. His petmon was originally filed October 15, 1766 (New York Land Papers, xxi. 183, 185), and was renewed March 16, 1772 (id., xxxi. 48). The petition was finally granted by the Governor and Council on June 15, 1772, but no patent was taken out. For this information I am indebted to our associate, Mr. M. B. Jones.

1177 Phelps, Family Memoirs, p. 10.

1178 Id.

1179 Id., p. 11.

1180 Hall, History of Eastern Vermont, pp. 206–208.

1181 Id., pp. 243–244.

1182 Our Publications, xxv. 51–52.

1183 Heath Papers (MSS., Massachusetts Historical Society), v. 279.

1184 A communication of his to the Massachusetts Council, July 29, 1779, is printed in our Publications, xxv. 54–57.

1185 Phelps, Family Memoirs, pp. 9–10.

1186 Id., p. 15.

1187 Id., p. 11.

1188 Dorothy Phelps, the judge’s daughter, wife of Jonathan Warner of Hadley.

1189 Public Papers of George Clinton, v. 311–312.

1190 For information regarding this excessively rare pamphlet, I am indebted to Mr. Jones.

1191 Public Papers of George Clinton, viii. 44.

1192 See Appendix, below.

1193 Quoted in Hall, History of Eastern Vermont, p. 483.

1194 The original MS. is in the Library of Congress.

1195 This proposal is said to have been made in view of the partition of Poland of 1772.

1196 In my opinion the most illuminating discussion of the existence of land-jobbery by both parties in the New Hampshire Grants is to be found in The Vermont Settlers and the New York Land Speculators, an 188-page pamphlet printed in 1894 by Reuben Clark Benton, a native Vermonter

1197 The election figures given herewith are taken from the World Almanac, 1937.

1198 See Hiland Hall, Early History of Vermont, p. 444, for a statement of the bearing of the admission of Vermont into the Union upon the prospective choice of the permanent seat of the Federal Government. See also James B. Wilbur, Ira Allen, ii. 1–2.

1199 A summary of the case of Vermont, then an applicant before Congress for admission to the Union, dated May 1, 1782, and prepared by James Madison of Virginia, then in Congress, is found in Madison’s Papers, i. 122. It is also in Hiland Hall, Early History of Vermont, pp. 406–408.

1200 For an account of the distribution of the $30,000 paid by Vermont to New York as a condition of the latter’s withdrawal of all claim to Vermont lands, see Hiland Hall, Early History of Vermont, pp. 506–511. There were seventy-six claimants who shared in the total, the sums varying from $2,655.03 to $9.98, most of the claims being small. Most of the original claimants were dead when the distribution finally occurred, April 23, 1799.

1201 Our Publications, xvii. 2–111.

1202 Id., xxviii. 37–66.

1203 It is a thin folio, bound in green cloth with back and comers in black leather, and on the front cover is pasted a piece of black leather, on which is printed in gold letters the title. Of Amasa Walker (1799–1875), who was Secretary of State of Massachusetts in 1851–1853, there is a sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography; and of Robert Lemon (1800–1867), to whom “the suggestion of forming and publishing the ‘Calendars of State Papers’ is due,” there is a sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography.

1204 The extracts in this paragraph quoted from Mr. Elton’s paper are from our Publications, xxviii. 52, 57–58, 59.

1205 After May 14, 1774, the only meeting of the Council under the Province charter of 1691 recorded in the documents here printed took place on June 9, 1774; but as Oliver did not become lieutenant-governor until August 8 following, he of course was not present at that meeting. The Mandamus Council, as these documents show, met on August 31, 1774, and on July 17, 20, October 9, 25, 26, 28, and 30, 1775. Why there was no meeting of the Council between August 31, 1774, and July 17, 1775, is explained in Oliver’s letter to Dartmouth of December 9, 1774: “General Gage has no doubt acquainted Your Lordship that since the 2d of September, the Province has been in such a state of confusion, in which the People have so far put an end to all law and order, that the direction of Government has been rather in the line of a General than that of a Governor. And as the forms of a Council under these circumstances, and the Prejudices of the People would only tend to encrease their violences, and add to his difficulties and embarrassment; upon these reason I presume he has avoided calling one.” Thus instead of reassuming his seat in the Council “as soon as he got into Boston” in September, 1774, Oliver did not do so until July 17, 1775. It is not surprising that after the lapse of a decade Oliver’s memory, if indeed he used the exact words attributed to him, should have been slightly at fault.

1206 In his discussion of that point, Mr. Elton remarks that some writers call him “Governor Oliver,” and goes on to say: “It is probable, however, that between Gage’s departure on October 10, 1775, and Oliver’s on March 17, 1776, the latter was acting Governor, although officially entitled ‘Lieutenant Governor.’” It is not “probable” but certain that such was the fact. In the years 1694–1771, because either of the absence from Massachusetts or of the death of the governor, five lieutenant-governors became acting governors, and, oddly enough, each of them served twice in that capacity. William Stoughton was acting governor from December 4, 1694, to May 26, 1699, and again from July 22, 1700, to his death on July 7, 1701; William Tailer, from November 9, 1715, to October 5, 1716, and again from June 11 to August 10, 1730; William Dummer, from January 2, 1723, to July 19, 1728, and again from September 10, 1729, to June 11, 1730; Spencer Phips, from September 15, 1749, to August 7, 1753, and again from September 25, 1756, to April 4,1757; and Thomas Hutchinson, from June 3 to August 2, 1760, and again from August 2, 1769, to March 14, 1771, when he himself became governor. A lieutenant-governor never (except, as in the case of Hutchinson, through a new commission) became governor; and when serving as acting governor was never addressed as “His [or Your] Excellency,” but always as “His [or Your] Honor.” Cf. our Publications, xvii. 48, 49, 51, 52, 61, 68, 71, 72, 76, 82, 85, 92, 109, 110. And now a sixth must be added to the list of acting governors, for on October 25, 1775—Gage having departed on the tenth—Oliver took the usual oaths that “he would faithfully perform the duties of Lieutenant Governor & Commander in Chief of the Province, according to his best skill and judgment”—just as if nothing had happened! Certainly Oliver played the game to the bitter end. His salary as lieutenant-governor continued to be paid up to October, 1782. The words “according to his best skill and judgment,” or some slight variation of the words, are found in the oaths taken by Hutchinson, November 26, 1761, on becoming lieutenant-governor, again, August 2, 1769, on becoming acting governor, and for a third time, March 14, 1771, on becoming actual governor; by Gage, May 17, 1774, on becoming governor; and by Andrew Oliver, March 14, 1771, on becoming lieutenant-governor. Cf. our Publications, xvii. 84, 86, 87, 95.

1207 Here Mr. Lemon has underlined “September” and has written in the margin: “sic q Nov^r.” The correct date is November 27,1774: see p. [9], below

1208 The following note is in the hand of Mr. Lemon: “These were Draft Instructions, proposed by the Board of Trade on the 20th of May, which were referred to the Privy Council on the 25th of that month, and agreed to and reported on the 1st of June following; the only alterations in the Names being that of John Erving Senior instead of John Irwin, and the substitution of John Erving Junior for the last name William Clicking.”

1209 Here is written in the margin: “see ante,” a reference to p. [5], above.

1210 Mr. Lemon has appended the following note: “The letter r. has been added to several names apparently at a subsequent period.”

1211 Here is written in the margin: “sic q versus.”

1212“A short note dated 2^d September, begging the Governor, on no consideration, to send out any Troops.”

1213 Oliver’s letter is, according to Mr. Lemon, “in several parts, corrected & interlined.”

1214 Gage had left Boston on October 10.

1215 Here “Commander in Chief” of course refers to Oliver under his commission as lieutenant-governor.

1216 Here Oliver refers to Howe as “Commander in Chief” because Gage on his departure was succeeded by Howe as commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America.

1217 This word is here used in its obsolete sense of “grateful appreciation or acknowledgment (of a service, kindness, etc.); a feeling or expression of gratitude.” Cf. our Publications, xvi. 870.

1218 Again the title refers to Oliver under his commission as lieutenant-governor.

1219 That is, as lieutenant-governor under his commission as such.

1220 The fleet from which the Mt. Vernon so narrowly escaped was undoubtedly the French, under the command of Admiral Bruix, which was sent from Brest into the Mediterranean in the spring of 1799 to support Napoleon in Egypt after Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile. However, without going into the eastern Mediterranean at all, Bruix returned to Brest on August 13, 1799, so that this must have been his fleet that the Mt. Vernon met off Cape St. Vincent on July 28.

1221 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 300–307. I have also had the benefit of the notes taken by our associate, Clifford K. Shipton, in preparing a sketch of Hugh Hall for Volume VI of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates. The Hall arms and crest here reproduced are: arms—silver semy of crosslets and three talbots’ heads sable, the tongues gules; crest—a talbot’s head erased sable, the tongue gules.

1222 This was probably Joseph Parsons of the Class of 1697, who was dismissed from the ministry in 1708, and was in business in Boston until 1717. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iv. 366–368.

1223 He wrote to President Leverett, February 28, 1717, requesting letters “to some of y^e Royall Society, or South Sea Company”—an odd alternative.

1224 Letter to President Leverett, August 2, 1717. Letter-Book, p. 29.

1225 London, 1710–11. The set is noted in the 1723 Catalogue of the Harvard College Library, p. 71.

1226 In a later letter to Benning Wentworth (p. 142), Hall writes, “I could have been Content to have Drank your health in … Cytron Water Punch.” In the inventory of the estate of Lieutenant-Governor John Montgomery of New York, at the New York Public Library, are several dozen pints of citron-water, which sold at about £2 8s a dozen.

1227 Apparently there was quite a market in Boston for broken cannons and other scrap iron, as later letters show (p. 266). To John Cabot, Hall sent “Six barrells of Select Old Iron” in 1720 (p. 222) and solicits in return “Good Refuse Cod and Polluck Fish” (p. 221).

1228 Williams had formerly been minister of a Congregational church in Barbados. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iv. 182–183.

1229 Alice Morse Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days, pp. 102–103. Both children took dancing and writing lessons from Increase Gatchell.

1230 Doubtless the father of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.

1231 At this period the term “Union flag” was used in America to mean a flag having the union of the two crosses in the canton. See George H. Preble, History of the Flag of the United States of America (2nd ed., Boston, 1880), p. 197. Cf. the use of the phrase “Grand Union Flag,” meaning a flag with a union in the canton, not with the union as the design of the field.

1232 For a discussion of Hopkins’s flags, see “The Signal Instructions of Esek Hopkins,” by William Davis Miller, in The Correspondence of Esek Hopkins, pp. 7–15.

1233 Cf. W. G. Perrin, British Flags, Their Early History, and Their Development at Sea, pp. 117–120.

1234 Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England, pp. 21, 22, 45; see also Plutarch’s Cicero, chap. v.

1235 Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Edmund C. Burnett, Editor, ii. 49–50. Presumably “Gribelin” should be “Gobelin.”

1236 John C. Miller, Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda, p. 108.

1237 Cf. extract from Pennsylvania Packet, September 22, 1787, in Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, John B. McMaster and Frederick D. Stone, Editors, p. 125.

1238 Richard F. Upton, Revolutionary New Hampshire, p. 215.

1239 A biographical sketch of Wilson can be found in Dictionary of American Biography, xx. 326–330. His writings have been published as follows: Works of James Wilson, Bird Wilson, Editor, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1804); Selected Political Essays of James Wilson, Randolph G. Adams, Editor (New York, 1930), which contains a good bibliography of Wilson’s writings and speeches; Works of James Wilson, James DeWitt Andrews, Editor, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1896). B. A. Konkle, author of James Wilson and the Constitution, is projecting a complete Life and Works.

1240 Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, pp. 631, 682.

1241 Id., p. 511.

1242 L. H. Alexander, “James Wilson, Patriot, and the Wilson Doctrine,” North American Review, clxxxiii, p. 3, 5, 8, 10, 16.

1243 L. H. Alexander, “James Wilson, Patriot, and the Wilson Doctrine,” North American Review, clxxxiii, p. 5.

1244 Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, i. 175.

1245 Id., ii. 215–217.

1246 Works (Andrews edition), i, Introduction.

1247 Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, ii. 53.

1248 Works (Bird Wilson edition), i. 443, iii. 390.

1249 Id., i. 211.

1250 “A gangrened wound must be amputated with the knife, lest the healthy part of the body be corrupted also.” Ovid, Metamorphoses, i, 190–191; Works (Bird Wilson edition), i. 466, ii. 351.

1251 “The Law is the foundation of the liberty which we enjoy. We are all slaves to the law, in order that we may be free.” Cicero, Pro Cluentio, 146.

1252 Cicero, De Legibus, ii, 23; Plato, Laws, 624, 659, etc.

1253 Cicero, De Oratore, i, 199; Works (Bird Wilson edition), i. 32; Cicero, Brutus, 53; Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, 28.

1254 “The mind, soul, purpose, and idea of the State depend upon its laws.” Cicero, Pro Cluentio, 146.

1255 “What tribe or race of men is there that does not have an intimation of immortality, without formal training?” Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i, 16.

1256 “What is holier or more protected by every article of faith, than any individual citizen’s household?” Cicero, Pro Domo, 41; Tacitus, Germania, 21.

1257 “Let me assure you, each of you receives a greater heritage in these same goods from the law and from legislation than from those persons by whom these very goods have been left by will.” Cicero, Pro Caecina, 26.

1258 “In every class of mankind, and especially in the most untutored, there is at work a mighty and marvellous process of nature.” Cicero, De Oralore, iii, 50.

1259 Works (Bird Wilson edition), ii. 288, i. 85, ii. 234; Homer, Iliad, xviii, 497.

1260 Aristotle, Politics, iv, 9; Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law (Sir Frederick Pollock, Editor), chap. iii.

1261 Cicero, De Republica, Book iii (fragment), in Lactantius, Institutes, vi, 10.

1262 Miller, Sam Adams, p. 267; see also Selected Essays of Wilson, p. xxxv.

1263 “I think that, if our allegiance to the gods were annulled, faith and the society of mankind and that primarily excellent virtue, justice, would disappear.” Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i, 4.

1264 Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (2d ed., London, 1765), p. 70; Ulpian, Digest, l, 17, 32; Justinian, Institutes, i, 5. For this idea, even in Tudor England, see Albert F. Pollard, Henry VIII, ii. 234.

1265 Aristotle, Ethics, 1102 a, 5; William A. Dunning, History of Political Theories, i. 68.

1266 “According as each man perceives most clearly the kernel of every fact, and is able with the greatest acumen and speed to explain its principles, so he may be properly regarded as the wisest and soundest of all.” Cicero, De Officiis, i, 5.

1267 De Jure Naturae et Gentium, i, 6, 10–11.

1268 Aeschylus, Supplices, 370–375; Livy, v, 48; Thucydides, v, 105; Dio, i, 5; Suetonius, Caligula, 22 (perhaps); Marcus Aurelius (Loeb Classical Library), pp. 357, 365, 367. Wilson quotes a great deal from memory, and often gives a free rendering of the original.

1269 Politics, iv, 7 (1293 b).

1270 “So I prescribe, so I order it; let my will take the place of explanations.” Juvenal, Satires, vi, 223 (hoc for sic; sit for stet).

1271 Works (Bird Wilson edition), i. 210.

1272 “Nothing is more welcome to the Godhead of the universe than councils and gatherings of men which are united by the sanction of the law.” Cicero, Pro Balbo, 13, Somnium Scipionis, 3.

1273 Marcus Aurelius (Loeb Classical Library), p. 137.

1274 Cicero, De Republica, iii, 2, De Fato, 28; Lactantius, Institutes, i, 6. The phrase is adapted by Wilson as is so often the case.

1275 Cicero, De Officiis, i, 15, iii, 23, i, 22; De Amicitia, 87.

1276 Tacitus, Germania, 12; Cicero, De Officiis, ii, 41.

1277 Cicero, De Republica, ii, 41; Tacitus, Annals, iv, 33.

1278 Tacitus, Germania, xi.

1279 Metamorphoses, ii, 13–14.

1280 Ars Poetica, 191.

1281 Livy, viii, 23; Herodotus, vi, 108.

1282 Cicero, De Officiis, i, 17, De Legibus, iii, 1.