FEBRUARY MEETING, 1933
A Stated Meeting of the Society was held, at the invitation of Mr. Augustus P. Loring, Jr., at No. 2 Gloucester Street, Boston, on Thursday, February 16, 1933, at three o’clock, 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 James Hardy Ropes, a Resident Member and Vice-President of the Society, on January 8, 1933; and of Alfred Johnson, a Resident Member, on January 13, 1933.
The Corresponding Secretary announced the receipt of letters from Mr. Walter Benjamin Briggs and Mr. Robert Earl Moody accepting Resident Membership in the Society; and from Mr. Harold Robert Shurtleff and Mr. Samuel Flagg Bemis accepting Corresponding Membership.
Mr. Robert Ephraim Peabody read the following paper:
A FORGOTTEN CHAPTER OF NEW ENGLAND COMMERCE622
It is my understanding that papers read before the Colonial Society should deal with subjects relating to the early history of Massachusetts. Yet, while keeping this requirement well in mind, I propose to take you in thought to a quite distant part of the world, far away to the southern Indian Ocean. Here, about half way between the Cape of Good Hope and India and about four hundred miles east of Madagascar, lies a beautiful tropical island, the very name of which is hardly known in America today. But one hundred and forty years ago this island was of such importance to the merchants and seamen of Salem, Massachusetts, that many of our local fortunes of today were founded on the commerce between Salem and this place. I refer to Mauritius or, as it was then called, the Isle of France. An island only thirty-six miles long and twenty-three wide, its interior rises in ranges of mountains clothed in dense tropical verdure and capped with fleecy clouds deposited by the perpetual easterly trade-winds, while the lowlands near the shore are suitable for the cultivation of sugar, cotton, and other tropical crops, and the coastline is indented with two good harbors.
As far as is known, the first European to sight this verdant island was the Portuguese navigator Mascarenhas, who discovered it while on a voyage from Portugal to India in 1505. He gave it the name of Ilha do Cerné, and so it appears on the maps of the time. He also discovered the neighboring island now known as Reunion, which he named after himself, Mascarenhas. Apparently the Portuguese made no attempt at settlement at either place, and for nearly another hundred years these islands seem to have been forgotten by Europeans.
In 1598, however, the Dutch admiral van Neck, during a voyage from Holland to Java, sighted the Ilha do Cerné. He made a landing, and finding no inhabitants, took possession for Holland and named the island Mauritius after Maurits of Nassau, the Prince of Orange. The Dutch never made very much of their new possession. From 1664 to 1712 they had a small settlement on the island, but this they abandoned in the latter year.
Meantime, the French had appeared in the East Indies. In 1648, they made their first settlement in Madagascar, while a few years later they began founding their various colonies in India. The Madagascar community did not prosper, however, on account of the unhealthful climate as well as the hostility of the natives; and in 1657 a group from this settlement sailed eastward about four hundred miles to the Ilha do Mascarenhas, which had been abandoned years before by the Portuguese, and took possession of the place for France, naming it the Isle of Bourbon. This small mountainous island proved to be suitable for the cultivation of coffee, which became the principal crop. The commerce of the Isle of Bourbon, however, was hampered by the lack of any harbor. Hence, shortly after the Dutch abandoned the neighboring island of Mauritius, with its two fine harbors, the French took advantage of this circumstance. In 1721, an expedition from the Isle of Bourbon crossed the ninety miles of water to Mauritius, and hoisting the French flag, took possession, giving it the name of Isle of France.
The Compagnie des Indes Orientales, which had a monopoly of French commerce with the East Indies, now found itself with a convenient port at which to water and provision its ships on the voyages between France and India. The French Government, too, soon realized that it had acquired a strategic place at which to base a naval force for the defense of its Indian possessions; as by this time the struggle between France and England for the control of the Indian trade was imminent. Accordingly, in 1734, Louis XV appointed a governor for the Isles of France and Bourbon, with full authority to develop and fortify them.
Mahé de la Bourdonnais, who was selected for the post, had been all his life in the service of the French East India Company, and therefore was well experienced in colonial administration. From the moment he assumed office the two islands entered upon their first real development. The new governor saw that the great advantage of the Isle of France lay in its port. He began the construction of docks, fortifications, and barracks. He started the building of roads connecting the different parts of the island, and endeavored to interest the inhabitants in the cultivation of sugar, cotton, and indigo, for which the lowlands were eminently suited.
De la Bourdonnais, furthermore, induced a number of the leading families of St. Malo to emigrate to the islands by promising them good-sized tracts of land for plantations, while at the same time many negro slaves were brought over from Madagascar to furnish the necessary labor. As a result, the islands began to prosper, and Port Louis, the capital of the Isle of France, became the recognized port of call for the French ships trading between France and India as well as the naval base for the French frigates operating in Indian waters. It was at this period that the French writer, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, was a resident of the Isle of France, and his famous romance Paul et Virginie, as well as his less well known La Chaumière Indienne and Voyage à l’Ile de France, gives excellent descriptions of the island and its life at this time.
De la Bourdonnais continued as governor until 1746 when he returned to France. His successors in office lacked his vigor and enterprise. This absence of strong leadership, together with the tendency of the French East India Company to squeeze all the money possible from its operations without developing anything for the future, hampered the commerce of the colony. Although a settler might own his land, he had to sell all his produce to the company at prices fixed by it and buy all his supplies in the same manner. As a result of this monopolistic policy the planters became discouraged and had little incentive to increase the business of the islands. Moreover, the state of war that existed from 1744 to 1783 made commerce in the Indian Ocean extremely perilous for the French, as the British naval power pretty well controlled the sea routes.
In 1783, however, after a long period of conflict involving many of the nations of the world, peace was restored in Europe. The following year a new French East India Company was formed with a monopoly of the trade of the remaining French possessions in India. But an exception was made to the residents of the Isles of France and Bourbon, who were given the same privilege to trade in India as the company. In addition, private French merchants as well as the merchants of friendly nations were allowed to trade at the Isles of France and Bourbon. As a result, many Frenchmen emigrated to the Isle of France and established themselves in business there. At the same time a host of Parsees, Arabians, Singalese, Chinese, and other Orientals flocked there to trade with the French; and within a couple of years what had been a small agricultural colony was transformed into a thriving entrepôt of Oriental commerce. In other words, Port Louis became a boom town, like the San Francisco of 1849, or the Miami of 1925. Its harbor was crowded with shipping of diverse character, and its docks were piled high with merchandise of every description.
This sudden influx of population was too much for the natural resources of the island, and the prices of foodstuffs and common necessities began to soar. It was at this opportune moment, when supplies on the island were low, that in 1786 a ship appeared in the offing flying a flag never before seen in those waters. On entering the port she proved to be the American ship Grand Turk, of Salem, Massachusetts, with a cargo consisting of butter, cheese, pork, beef, fish, tobacco, iron, beer, candles, and soap — the very things most needed by the islanders. Her cargo met with a ready sale; and thus there began a commerce between the little town of Salem in New England and this distant French outpost in the Indian Ocean which was one of the principal means of establishing Salem’s early preëminence in the trade to the Orient. But to appreciate this development, it is necessary to observe the conditions which brought the Salem ship to the Isle of France in 1786.
Previous to the American Revolution, the shipping of the American colonists had steadily increased, but, owing to the British Navigation Acts, the scope of their trading had been restricted to certain areas. The principal cruising grounds of the New England merchant ships had been the British West Indies, the Spanish Peninsula, the Azores, and the Canary Islands. The eastern seas had been practically unknown to the colonists. The monopoly of trade in the East Indies held by the British East India Company had excluded private American colonial merchants as well as English merchants from this area. When, however, the Revolution made the United States a free and independent nation, American merchants, being no longer British subjects, were free to trade wherever they liked, subject only to the regulations of the particular place with which they traded. Within a short time after the close of the war, American merchant ships were displaying the Stars and Stripes in distant parts of the world where their owners, when British colonists, had never been able to penetrate. On these voyages the only commodities the Americans had to offer in exchange for the merchandise of these remote lands were the simple products of their farms or fisheries, supplemented by rum from the West Indies.
One of the pioneers in this expansion of American commerce was Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem. In colonial times his father had built up a good business between Salem and the West Indies, but after the Revolution Mr. Derby began to look farther afield. Taking advantage of the French government’s decree giving Americans the privilege of disposing of cargoes of American produce at the Isles of France and Bourbon and of loading the commodities of those islands or the East Indies in return, Derby decided to try his luck there. Accordingly, he loaded his ship Grand Turk with a cargo of New England provisions and despatched her on December 5, 1785, for the Isle of France, where she arrived April 22, 1786 — the first American ship, so far as I can find, that ever touched at that island. The Isle of France, as has been seen, was just then entering on its boom period as a result of the free trading privileges allowed it by the mother country, and the rapidly increasing population of the island provided a ready market for the provisions on board the newcomer.
As soon as this cargo was disposed of, the captain accepted a charter from a French merchant of the island to carry a load of ebony wood to Canton, China, and the Grand Turk proceeded thence, being the third American ship to reach China. She returned to Salem in May, 1787, with a cargo of teas and chinaware from Canton, to find her owner already well embarked in trade to the East.
In July, 1786, Derby had finally received word of the Grand Turk’s arrival at the Isle of France in the previous April, and encouraged by the prospects of trade at the island, he began accumulating two more cargoes to despatch to this newly found market. In December, his brig Three Sisters sailed from Salem for the Isle of France, followed a month later by his ship Light Horse, both vessels loaded with homely cargoes of New England beef, pork, potatoes, cheese, flour, and fish. On arrival at the Isle of France in March, 1787, their cargoes met with an even better sale than the Grand Turk’s, as by this time the mercantile population of the island had grown still greater, and the demand for provisions had increased proportionately. Both vessels obtained return cargoes of native-grown sugar and coffee, as well as East India goods.
The results of these voyages stimulated Derby to greater ventures in this trade, and accordingly he decided to send his son, Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., out to the Isle of France to represent the family business at this new entrepôt. Young Derby, a graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1786, sailed from Salem for the Isle of France in December, as master of the Grand Turk, when twenty-one years of age. The cargo consisted of provisions valued at $28,000 and met with an immediate sale on the ship’s arrival at its eastern port in February, 1788. In the meantime young Derby was approached by a French merchant of the island who offered him $13,000 for the Grand Turk. As this was almost twice the amount at which his father valued the ship, he accepted the offer, and with the proceeds he bought two smaller vessels, the ship Peggy and the brig Sultana.
It so happened that just at this time Lord Cornwallis, now the Governor-General of British India, had issued a decree that American vessels should be treated at the British East India Company’s settlements on the basis of the most-favored foreigners; for he had found that the French, Dutch, and Portuguese had thrown open some of their eastern ports to the Americans, and he feared that unless he did the same the English settlements would lose the American trade to their rivals. Learning of Cornwallis’s decree, young Derby loaded his two newly purchased craft with miscellaneous goods for Bombay, and on arrival there sold his cargoes and despatched the Peggy to Salem with the first load of Indian cotton ever sent to America. He himself returned to the Isle of France in the Sultana with a cargo of blackwood.
On young Derby’s return thither in December, 1788, he found that his father’s ship Light Horse had in the meantime reached the island from Salem. Shortly after, his father’s ship Atlantic arrived. In February, 1789, the ship Henry, flying the family colors, also came into port. Thus the young man had four ships and their cargoes to take care of. He managed to sell the provision cargoes of the Light Horse, Atlantic, and Henry at good profit. He then despatched the Light Horse and Atlantic to Bombay, where they loaded cotton for Canton, whence they returned later to Salem with teas. The Sultana was sent to Madras, where she was sold. Young Derby then took passage in the Henry to Calcutta, and there loaded a cargo of Indian goods for Salem. He arrived home in the Henry in December, 1790, after an absence of three years. The profit on his various transactions was over $100,000, a large sum for those days; and through the efforts of this young man the Derbys became one of the leading American mercantile houses trading with the East.
While the Derbys were the pioneers and the principal American house in the trade to the Isle of France, other American merchants soon found that this distant port offered a good market for their products. The Salem ships of the Crowninshields and William Gray followed those of E. H. Derby; while such names as Phillips, Cleveland, Silsbee, Pickman, West, Russell, Gardner, and Endicott appear as captains or supercargoes of the ships in this trade. After a few voyages most of these men set up as merchants themselves.
Although Salem founded and dominated the trade between America and the Isle of France, other American ports soon followed. I find in the Salem Gazette of August 31, 1790, a notice to the effect that in 1789 twenty-three American ships discharged cargoes at the Isle of France — eleven from Salem, five from Boston, three from Baltimore, two from Philadelphia, one from Providence, and one from Virginia.
But while affairs had been prospering in this remote outpost of the southern seas, the mother country had been suffering from increasing internal unrest. Echoes of the French Revolution had filtered through to the Isle of France, but there had been no similar movement in the islands. Of the total population of the Isles of France and Bourbon, estimated in 1790 at about 110,000, eighty-five per cent were negro slaves, and fifteen per cent were whites. The white population, prospering because of the islands’ free trade, consisted of small planters and merchants, many of whom had left France and come there to escape the impending revolution. Other than the governor, there was no nobility or aristocracy in the islands such as the Revolution was aimed against in France. The slaves on the other hand had no Toussaint l’Ouverture to lead them to revolt as in Haiti. But the newly established authorities in France could not be content to let these distant possessions continue their blissful existence. In January, 1790, a French vessel arrived at the Isle of France bringing news of the great power the National Assembly had usurped from the Crown. This aroused some of the younger element in the island to agitate for the overthrow of the governor and for the establishment of a local assembly. The soldiers of the island garrison, learning that their fellows at home had joined the revolutionary cause, seized upon Admiral Macnamara, their commander, and when he tried to escape from his guards, a brawl ensued in which the Admiral was killed. This event seemed to sober the people, for they had no great class struggle against a powerful nobility as in France, and the bulk of the population had no desire to have their island paradise ravaged by revolution. They contented themselves by seizing the governor and sending him home to France, and after they had set up an assembly of their own, modelled after the National Assembly, everything went on quite peacefully. In April, 1792, a French frigate arrived at the island, bringing a new governor, General Malartic, appointed by the National Assembly, who for the next eleven years, by the exercise of the most remarkable tact, governed the islands during the period of the Revolution in France without any bloodshed or destruction whatsoever. In fact, while lives were being taken by the wholesale in France, Admirable Macnamara’s was the only life sacrificed in the Isles of France and Bourbon as a result of the Revolution. Governor Malartic brought with him an Act of the French National Assembly sanctioning the colonial assembly, thus giving that body an official status.
Affairs continued quietly enough in the islands until 1793 when news of the formation of the Jacobin Clubs in France was received. It was not long before the small discordant element in the Isle of France formed a Jacobin Club of their own with the name La Chaumière, and by 1794 their membership had become both so numerous and so powerful that they soon began to rival the constituted authorities. They erected a guillotine in the main square with the intention of using it on those who opposed their views. They arrested M. Vigoureux, the Vice-Governor, who was stationed at the Isle of Bourbon, together with Admiral St. Felix, in command of the naval station, and were planning to seize Governor Malartic and conduct them all to the guillotine when a vessel arrived from France bringing news of the decree of the National Assembly abolishing slavery in all the settlements of the French Republic. This caused an immediate change of opinion in the island, for the events that were at that moment taking place in Haiti showed what would be the miserable lot of the white planter should the black slaves become free and take matters into their own hands. The Jacobins now became as unpopular as they had been popular a short time before; and the news of Robespierre’s downfall reaching the islands about this time, the people released Governor Malartic and the other officials, while the leaders of the local Jacobin Club were put on board a vessel and shipped away to France. The government of the islands then continued as before for about a year, no notice being taken of the home government’s decree for the abolition of slavery.
In July, 1796, however, a French squadron arrived at the Isle of France, bringing two agents of the Directory sent out to take over the government of the colony. The inhabitants received them coldly, and on learning that one of the first acts of the agents was to be the abolition of slavery, they voted in the colonial assembly to recognize only their old Governor Malartic as representing the French government, disregarding the agents of the Directory. The local garrison supported the assembly, and the two agents, finding that their lives were in danger, willingly allowed themselves to be placed on a vessel and sent back to France.
Again the islands remained undisturbed by contemporary political events in France for a couple of years more. But in 1798 the soldiers of the two regiments which had for so long formed the island garrison conceived the idea of taking matters into their hands, claiming that General Malartic and the colonial assembly were ruling the place without any authority from the home government, which of course was quite true. The civil population, learning of this, assembled and armed themselves, as they feared that if the soldiers gained control of the government they might adopt the decree for abolition of slavery. For a time civil war seemed imminent; but at this point Governor Malartic suggested to the ringleaders of the soldiers that he would provide a ship and send the entire garrison back to France if they would abandon their ideas. As most of the soldiers had been long away from home, this proposition looked better to them than fighting a civil war with the inhabitants; and they all went aboard the frigate and sailed away, leaving the Isle of France once more to continue its peaceful existence under the tropic skies.
For four more years the islands continued more or less like an independent country, ruled by General Malartic and the locally appointed assembly without authority from the home government, yet at the same time professing to be a French colony. As a matter of fact, conditions in France had been so upset that little thought, evidently, was given by the authorities to this distant outpost.
In 1803, this condition came to an end. The strong government which had become established in France under Napoleon’s leadership now began to consider the overseas possessions of France, and in September, 1803, General Decaen arrived at the islands as the representative of the new régime. He brought with him a strong garrison, and immediately removed Governor Malartic and dissolved the colonial assembly. The abolition of slavery seems to have been quite forgotten, and since the new administration did not press this point, it received the support of the people. General Decaen now set about restoring and developing the naval station, with the idea of making the Isle of France an important naval base for French operations against the English in India. But these very operations caused the English to cast a jealous eye on the place. In 1806, the English had captured the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, which left the Isle of France as the only enemy naval station on the sea routes to India. Finally, in 1810, while the French fleet stationed at the Isle of France was away in India, an English squadron appeared off the island and captured the place with little difficulty; and from then to the present day it has remained a British colony under its old name of Mauritius.
The neighboring Isle of Bourbon, or Réunion, as it was named after the Revolution, was not considered of sufficient importance to the British to capture, and it therefore still remains a French colony.
While all these political events were taking place in the Isle of France, the merchant ships of the United States still carried on an active trade with the island, although during this period their trade was subject to many ups and downs. The homely cargoes of New England provisions seemed always to meet a ready market; yet some most unexpected profits were made in other articles. One of Elias Hasket Derby’s vessels arrived there with a shipment of plain glass tumblers which cost $1,000 in Salem. There happened to be a shortage of glassware in the island at the time, and the entire consignment was quickly sold for $12,000. Another Derby vessel arrived at the island with a cargo largely composed of common wine from Madeira when there was a shortage of wine at the island, and the cargo was sold for a sum sufficient to load two vessels with cargoes of coffee for Salem, where coffee was then in good demand.
At the same time the trade with the Isle of France was not all so profitable as this. The activities of the Jacobin Club during its short reign of power did much to upset trade, and frequent embargoes were placed upon shipping. In 1793, when most of Europe became embroiled in war, American ships as neutrals enjoyed a certain advantage over their competitors; but on the other hand they suffered from this very fact. The French issued a decree authorizing French men-of-war to capture neutral vessels trading with England or her possessions; the British retaliated by authorizing English men-of-war to seize neutral ships trading with French territories. Thus American ships were constantly subject to capture from one side or the other. Nevertheless, all through this disturbed time American ships continued to trade at the Isle of France, sometimes reaping amazing profits and sometimes losing everything through embargo or seizure. In spite of all these dangers, many American ships carried on quite an active commerce between Bordeaux or Havre and the Isle of France; for evidently the French merchants felt that there was less chance of capture if they shipped their goods in neutral American bottoms.
An excellent account of a voyage to the Isle of France in those days is found in the Biographical Notes of Captain Nathaniel Silsbee.623 He sailed from Salem in 1793 as master of Derby’s ship Benjamin, when he was only nineteen years old. His mate and supercargo were of the same age. On arrival at the Isle of France he found that the Jacobins had just got control of the place and had imposed an embargo on all American shipping in port until it was ascertained whether the United States would side with England or France in the war just declared. For six months the Benjamin was detained. But in the meantime, as a result of the embargo, the price of foodstuffs began to rise, so that Captain Silsbee was able to dispose of his cargo of provisions at a good profit. He took Spanish dollars in payment and awaited the outcome. As the embargo continued, the price of island products fell until finally his dollars could purchase twice as much coffee as when he first received them. At last the news reached the island that America would remain neutral, and the embargo being raised, Captain Silsbee sailed for home with a full lading but with still plenty of dollars left from the proceeds of his outward cargo.
Putting in at the Cape of Good Hope, he met the Salem ship Hope and decided to transfer his homeward cargo to her, and himself return in the Benjamin to the Isle of France. He then invested the rest of his dollars in wine at the Cape of Good Hope, with which he returned to the Isle of France, and after selling his wine, bought another full homeward cargo of coffee and indigo. When nearly ready to sail he learned that the Jacobins expected to seize his ship, since they suspected, without foundation, that the French admiral, St. Felix, whom they contemplated conducting to the guillotine, was going to escape on the Benjamin. Consequently Captain Silsbee slipped out of port during the night, leaving behind a small amount of cargo. The Benjamin arrived back in Salem after an absence of nineteen months, and Captain Silsbee was able to return Derby about five times the amount of the original capital invested in the voyage.
This prosperous trade between Salem and the Isle of France continued during the first part of the Napoleonic Wars, as long, in fact, as the island remained French. But after 1810, when the British flag was hoisted and the Isle of France became Mauritius, its character changed from a commercial entrepôt to a small agricultural colony. After all, its commercial prosperity had been of an artificial character, on account of its being the only French possession in the eastern seas open to private traders. But with the decline of the French power in India, the trade of the Isle of France declined also, and when the British took possession of the island they did not encourage its transit commerce. They bent their efforts more towards the development of their possessions in India and the direct trade with the Orient. There being no longer any basis for an entrepôt at Mauritius, the island fell back on its own commerce, namely, the export of a small amount of sugar, coffee, and indigo, and the importation of the limited requirements of a small agricultural island. The trading population drifted away, and there was no longer the great demand for New England provisions to support the excess population. Thus, although the American ships still sailed the Indian Ocean, they no longer stopped at Mauritius, but continued on to the direct markets of the Orient.
In the early years of our national history we had nothing to export to China or India which those countries especially lacked. We had not begun to manufacture goods for export, and the products of our farms and fisheries were not of interest to the East Indians or the Chinese. But the overpopulated Isle of France gave us a market for our farm products, and the proceeds of our sales at the Isle of France gave us the means to make purchases in the bazaars of Calcutta or the godowns of Canton. Thus the trade between Salem and this little island far away in the Indian Ocean, which lasted only about twenty years — from 1786 to 1806 — was one of the important factors in establishing American commerce with the Orient.
ENGLAND’S TRADE WITH NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK, 1685–1720624
Among the many differences between the American colonies of France and Spain and those of England, not the least striking is the effect that each group had upon the industrial growth of the parent state. The French in Canada and the Spaniards in Spanish America, excluding aliens and Protestants, utilized the labor of resident natives, relying upon it to draw wealth quickly from the land — from the encomiendas and the silver mines of New Spain and Peru, and from the fur-trade of North America. This policy meant that the native peoples, living in a primitive economic state, did not create a great demand for the exports of the mother country. Spain’s preoccupation with easily exploited sources of wealth led to a rigid commercial system which stifled trade in Spanish America — even that with Spain herself; and her colonies failed to halt her own industrial decline. The interest of France in the fur-trade resulted in the underpeopling of Canada, so that by 1754 her settlers in North America were outnumbered fourteen to one by the inhabitants of the English colonies nearby.
England, on the other hand, by pushing back the Indians and by admitting foreigners of all shades of religious belief into her possessions, peopled them with Britons and Europeans who sought eagerly for the manufactured products of the Old World. Partly as a result of this, her trade with her West Indian and American colonies grew from about one tenth of her total external trade in 1662–1669 to approximately one third of the total in 1770. Between 1700 and 1770, the trade of England with America and the West Indies increased about fourfold, whereas her total trade, foreign and colonial, increased only twofold.625
In a general way, the policy of England before 1720 distinguished three classes of commodities involved in her trade with North America. The first included products which England did not buy from or sell to the colonies. Such were horses, many raw food products (cereals, beef, pork, fish), and crude manufactures like beer, flour, bread, lumber, and rum. Some of these commodities England did not buy from the colonies, in order to protect competing producers at home. She did not export such products either because she did not have a surplus, or because they could be produced more cheaply in America. Because they did not enter into her direct trade with the New World, she did not restrict the production or sale of them in the colonies. Even American manufactures in this group did not arouse the hostility of England. They could be produced advantageously in the colonies because the raw material for them was so abundant there, and because the manufacturing processes were so simple as to require but little capital. Many of these products, however, were of vital importance to England, because without them her plantations in the West Indies could have been supported only with great difficulty.
The second class of commodities were those which England desired to sell to the colonies. Among these were many things that the colonists before 1715 could not readily produce themselves — firearms, gunpowder, medical supplies, instruments, books, glass, paper, and various high-grade articles for personal or household use. Since the colonists did not compete in producing these commodities, they were subject only to the restriction that they should be bought through England. There were other manufactures, however, which England wished to market in the colonies and which they gave evidence of being able to produce themselves. Such were coarse woolens, ironware, leather goods, hats, and ships. Colonial manufactures of this type were frowned upon in England, and — with the exception of ships — various measures were taken to check their production for export sale in America.
The third class of commodities consisted of those which were more profitably produced in the colonies than in England — tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, fustic, dyewoods, ginger, copper ore, furs, and naval stores. Parliament by 1722 had directed that these products — which were designated as returns — should not be shipped from a colony to a foreign port. In its simplest form the trade of English America was an exchange of English manufactures for colonial returns. But since the northern and middle colonies produced only a small quantity of such returns, the central problem of their trade was that of converting their raw produce and their crude manufactures into some means of paying for European goods.
During eighteen years, 1698–1717, the English custom-house records estimate that New England imported from England goods having an average value, each year, of £103,500.626 In return the New Englanders exported products valued, on a yearly average, at £37,400, leaving an adverse trade balance of £66,100 annually, or £1,189,800 for the eighteen years. The imports of New York from England during this period had an average yearly value of £34,100, and the annual returns averaged £13,815. The trade balance against the province thus stood at £20,285 on a yearly average, or £365,130 for the whole period.627
These figures, however, do not include several important items in the trade. The value assigned to the colonial imports is that estimated by the English custom-house officials before the goods were exported to America. Consequently, the figures do not take into account the freight charges on the voyage to the colonies, or the profits earned by English exporters engaged in the trade.
During five years, 1710–1714, the vessels sailing from England to New England and New York had each year, on the average, a carrying capacity of 5,534 tons.628 It also appears that in two years the proportion of English owned shipping engaged in this trade amounted to about 60 per cent.629 Freight charges from London to Boston were generally £3 a ton; from England to New York the rates in 1708 were: for goods stowed in the “hole” of the ship, £3 10s; for goods stowed between decks, £4 a ton.630 Had the vessels sailing to the northern ports carried full cargoes, the freights earned by English shipowners would not have exceeded £10,000 a year.
The New England trade was extensive enough to engage some sixty London merchants and to support a New England Coffee House, near Cornhill behind the Royal Exchange.631 Apparently the exporters to New York formed a separate group. There were at least seventeen of them in 1699.632 In some instances London merchants acted as commission agents for colonial traders who supplied the capital and assumed the risks of shipping and of selling in the colonies. Thus, in 1703, Richard Lechmere, a London merchant, bought goods for Deliverance Parkeman of New England, charging a commission of 2½ per cent.633 In other cases, the English merchants shipped on their own account to the northern colonies and sold through resident factors.634 The major part of the New England trade was probably carried on by the independent merchants of Boston who bought in England through agents; whereas the trade of New York seems to have been chiefly in the hands of London exporters operating through factors in the colony.635 Reports from New England stated that the price of English goods there was between 150 and 225 per cent higher than in England;636 while at New York it was commonly said that foreign goods at twice their English prices were considered cheap.637 How much of the excess price went to English merchants for their services as exporters, and how much to colonial merchants as profit, can probably never be known. However, the earnings of English exporters certainly inclined the balance of trade even more heavily against New England and New York.
The native commodities of the two northern areas provided but little in the way of exports to England. Those of New England — in the order of their importance—were whale products,638 ship timber,639 other naval stores,640 and furs.641 New York’s returns before 1705 consisted only of whale products642 and furs.643 After 1705, naval stores deserve notice.644 The native products of the two regions probably did not compose much more than half of the commodity exports which figure in the English estimates of colonial returns.645
Other means of remittance from the northern colonies to England were drawn from their external trade. Such additional returns may be divided into two groups: foreign commodities that are included in the English estimates of commodity returns from the colonies, and invisible items like money and bills of exchange. Perhaps the principal purpose of the external commerce of the northern ports was that of providing them with the means of paying for European goods.
One branch of this external trade — that with Newfoundland — was practically monopolized by New England prior to 1715. The minor exports thence from Boston were tobacco, sugar, pitch, and tar; the major exports, provisions, lumber, and rum.646 In 1691, it was estimated that the settlers of Newfoundland bought 300 tons of provisions and other products annually from New England;647 in 1715, twelve vessels from Boston alone had a carrying capacity of 475 tons.648 According to one English official, the New Englanders compelled the settlers to buy rum; and “unless the planters will take such a quantity of these liquors from them at their rates, they shall have no provisions, which occasions the planters and their servants to be so extravagant that it . . . keeps them in perpetual vassalage and poverty.”649
Boston merchants owned practically all the craft engaged in their Newfoundland trade.650 By 1715, they had established stores and were maintaining resident factors at the island. The supplies from New England arrived in the summer and were exchanged in part for the settlers’ fish.651 The remainder was left with the factors, who sold on credit to the settlers and their servants during the winter — a time of idleness and drunkenness, when the settlers ran into debt and pledged the next season’s catch for payment. It was repeatedly complained that the New Englanders charged exorbitant prices — even as high as three times the first cost of the provisions and rum.652
During the summer months trading vessels came to Newfoundland from England, Ireland, and southern Europe, bringing wines, brandy, linen, Spanish iron, and, above all, coin and bills of exchange. The New Englanders, having obtained the settlers’ fish, sold it to the European vessels, which then set sail for Portugal and Spain. The coin and bills of exchange passed into the hands of the New England merchants, who took them to Boston on the homeward voyage. It is certain that the Bostonians did not carry much of the Newfoundland fish to its final market.653 It was said that they never loaded fish when they could get money or bills, that their vessels returned to Boston in ballast, and that on departing left not a shilling of coin behind.654 One English official estimated that the Newfoundland trade supplied New England with returns which equaled in value the native produce of the region shipped directly to the mother country; without this trade the New Englanders would have been unable to complete their payments for English goods.655
A second branch of colonial trade was also in the hands of the New Englanders — that with southern Europe in fish and timber. Prior to 1715, the fishermen of Massachusetts did not operate at Newfoundland; their fishery off the northern New England coast kept them fully occupied. They had an advantage over the Newfoundland planter in the way they managed their industry. Instead of paying fixed wages to servants (as was the Newfoundland custom) the New Englanders got the utmost from the labor of their servants by allotting them a sixth or a tenth of the season’s catch.656 The best, or merchantable, fish was sorted into two grades: great merchantable, which went to Bilbao and Cales, and little merchantable, for Lisbon and Oporto. At Bilbao, New England cod brought about a piece of eight a quintal more than Newfoundland fish, “because ’tis taken all winter and in cold weather is better cured.”657
Much the greater part of New England’s fish was carried to southern Europe in English vessels, whose owners doubtless procured the fish at Boston or Salem in return for English imports or bills of exchange. Boston was the leading exporting center in 1688; by 1715, nearly all the fish was shipped from Salem.658 In 1700, it was estimated that New England exported 50,000 quintals, about three quarters of which went to Bilbao.659 Boston prices at this time ranged between 12s and 18s a quintal for the Bilbao grades.660 In one year, beginning midsummer, 1714, Salem alone sent 112,000 quintals to southern Europe.661
Since part of the fish was exported in New England ships, the New Englanders earned a small share of the freights and the exporters’ profits. The officials of Massachusetts always insisted that the returns for the fish marketed by the Bostonians in southern Europe took the form of pieces of eight or bills of exchange drawn on London.662 These were then remitted to England and converted into goods for the New England trade.663 The merchants of Boston, wrote Bellomont, “reckon upon 50 per cent by the returns they make for their fish from Bilbao to Boston. And when they return their money from Bilbao to London, and there invest it in goods for Boston, they reckon upon 100 per cent profit.”664 Dudley’s estimate in 1709 that the trade in fish netted Massachusetts £30,000 yearly is conservative.665 Some of the proceeds, of course, may have come to Boston in the shape of prohibited European goods, contrary to the Act of 1663. However, during the period reviewed, England always encouraged and supported the colonial trade in fish with southern Europe; this seems fairly conclusive evidence that its proceeds were returning to the colonies chiefly in the form of English goods.666
The New England trade to southern Europe in ship timber was initiated at the close of King William’s War by a group of London merchants and the leading New Hampshire trader, William Partridge. The latter claimed that for less than £300 New England money he had cleared £1,600 at Lisbon on one lot of such timber.667 The promoters of the trade asserted that the timber was sold for silk and wine which were carried to England and exchanged for English goods for New England. One shipload had allowed Partridge and his partners to send out English manufactures worth £4,000; while two London merchants said that the new trade had enabled them to export £3,000 of English woolens to New England in 1699.668 In order to develop a direct trade in naval stores between New England and England, parliament placed ship timber on the enumerated article list in 1705.669 But there is evidence that this restriction was ignored and that the trade continued as before.670 Dudley estimated in 1709 that lumber and timber sold in Europe netted Massachusetts £2,000 a year.671
By far the most important trade of the northern colonies was that with the British West Indies and with the foreign sugar colonies — Surinam, St. Thomas, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. New England’s leading exports thence were fish,672 lumber,673 horses,674 and provisions;675 those of New York, wheat, bread, flour,676 lumber,677 and horses.678 The major commodity returns were molasses,679 rum,680 and sugar;681 of minor importance, indigo, fustic, ginger, lime juice, lignum vitæ, and cotton-wool.682 All these products except rum served as returns from the mainland to England. Molasses and rum, on the other hand, were used in the fur-trade, in the Newfoundland trade, and for the northern fishery, in each case enabling the northerners to obtain additional returns to the mother country. So complex was the West India trade and so scattered is the evidence pertaining to it that it seems impossible to estimate the revenues which it afforded the northern colonies. Only a general description of the problem may be attempted.
Undoubtedly the northern ports shipped greater quantities of goods to the sugar colonies than they received in return. During six months of 1688, Boston sent 70 vessels of 3,721 tons to the British sugar islands and only 59 vessels of 3,142 tons came in on return voyages.683 In one year, 1715–1716, 70 vessels of 3,102 tons cleared from New York for the British and foreign sugar colonies, and only 49 vessels of 2,058 tons entered return cargoes.684 Moreover, the outgoing vessels were fully laden; those arriving were in part empty. The fact that during these years a fairly large number of the returning vessels brought European goods from the British islands also indicates that the northerners were not able to obtain full commodity returns in West Indian produce. Moreover, many of the incoming vessels imported large quantities of salt. In 1715–1716, 14 vessels of 333 tons brought only salt to New York from the West Indies,685 and 16 vessels of 744 tons imported nothing but salt to Boston in 1688.686 Since most of such salt was taken at the salt deposits by the labor of the ship’s crew, its cost to the northerners was slight; hence it represents only a small value in exchange for the exports of the northern colonies.687
Besides the proceeds from the sale of their produce, the northerners received payment for their services as shipbuilders, shipowners, and merchants. Records of shipments from Boston and Salem to the sugar colonies for eight different periods show a total of 19,500 tons of shipping employed, of which 15,750 tons, or 80 per cent, was Massachusetts owned.688 The total shipping engaged in several recorded voyages from New York to the sugar colonies during two years, 1715–1717, was 3,827 tons; that owned at New York, 2,708 tons, or 70 per cent of the whole.689 When produce was exported in shipping owned by northern merchants, they earned not only the freights, but also the profit of exporter and of importer, inasmuch as they employed agents who disposed of the cargoes either to the planters directly or to retailers in the islands.690
The methods of the West India trade may be illustrated by a typical shipment. In 1699, Ebenezer Brenton of Bristol, Massachusetts, built a sloop, the Society, of 40 to 50 tons. He formed a partnership with two merchants, William Fulton and John Porterfield, who together invested £290 in the cargo and vessel, the total value of the two amounting to £800. The partners loaded a cargo of provisions, and Fulton then accompanied the vessel to St. Thomas, where a sale was arranged. The owners received a small sloop in exchange for the Society, and the cargo was sold at 50 per cent above its prime cost in New England. This profit included apparently both the freight charges to St. Thomas and the other gains of the exporters.691
The northerners took part of their returns from the West Indies in money.692 The owners of the Society received in payment £300 in pieces of eight valued at 5s each.693 As early as 1676 it was complained in Jamaica that the New Englanders were carrying away coin instead of the island’s products.694 Later, in 1702, a vessel bound from Jamaica to New York lost 10,906 pieces of eight and 18 ounces of gold.695 Soon afterward, in 1706, the Board of Trade denounced paper money in Barbados as a likely menace to trade with the northern colonies. Since the importers from the mainland did not always have occasion to take Barbados produce, they had been satisfied to receive money. Should bills of credit form the currency of the island they would drive specie away. The northerners would refuse such bills and, being unable to procure silver, would have to abandon the trade.696
An additional form of returns from the sugar colonies to the mainland consisted of bills of exchange. During eighteen years, 1698–1717, the British West Indies exported to England produce valued at £12,771,000, and purchased English goods worth £5,961,000, leaving a nominal balance in their favor of £6,810,000 — or a yearly average of £378,000.697 From this sum the islands had to pay the freights on shipments from England, provide commissions for English merchants, purchase slaves, and support absentee planters living in England. This fund of credit also enabled them to buy provisions from the mainland by drawing bills of exchange on their London agents. How much of this credit went to the northerners is, unfortunately, not known.698
It appears that there was a marked relationship between the volume of the West India trade of the northern colonies and the volume of their trade with the mother country. In one year New York’s imports from England amounted to one third of similar imports of Massachusetts, whereas New York’s exports to the sugar colonies were about 30 per cent of those from Boston and Salem. These and other facts suggest that the principal service of the northern trade with the sugar colonies was to supply the mainland with returns to England.
The nature of the West India trade is indicated in another way — by the fact that many of the vessels sailing from the northern ports, after delivering their cargoes to the sugar colonies, sailed to Campeche Bay, where they loaded logwood for shipment to England, either directly or by way of Boston or New York. Boston’s imports of logwood grew from 110 tons in six months of 1688 to an average of 1,540 tons a year in 1714 and 1715; New York’s from about 260 tons in 1700 to 482 tons in 1716. This trade yielded a good profit, for the logwood was procured at Yucatan with northern provisions, and the vessels employed were all owned at the northern ports.699
The Dutch island of Curaçao was a considerable importer from Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania, commonly buying £50,000 of provisions a year.700 New York had long been the leader in this trade; in 1698, Randolph noted that fifteen of her vessels had cleared for Curacao alone.701 In two years, 1715–1717, 26 sloops were dispatched from the province with combined cargoes of 746 tons of provisions and 3,500 feet of lumber. Nearly 90 per cent of the ships were New York owned,702 and the profits of the trade apparently went to the New Yorkers, for they acted as importers at Curaçao, maintaining factors there to sell the incoming cargoes and to collect the available returns.703
These consisted chiefly of heavy pieces of eight. The principal commodities exported from Curaçao were cocoanut, lime juice, and dyewoods; and these in such small amounts that the New York vessels came home only partly loaded. Moreover, 25 per cent of them did not take any products at all for the return voyage. Curaçao was a small barren place, its major interest being focused upon trade with the Spanish colonies. Along with Jamaica it served the northerners as a place of deposit for their provisions en route to the cherished markets of Spanish America. The Spaniards often resorted to the island with money, but more commonly the Dutch supplied them with goods at their own settlements. Curaçao regularly employed about fifteen sloops in the region between Porto Bello and Cartagena, whence they had been reputed to have received five million pieces of eight in a single year. The ordinary Dutch provision vessel brought the Spaniard some sixty barrels of flour and fifty barrels of beef and pork. Likewise, from Vera Cruz and Cuba money flowed into the island in payment for foodstuffs, European goods, and slaves.704
The balance of their trade with Curaçao favored the northern colonies to an unusual extent. The merchants of New York asserted that their principal returns consisted of heavy pieces of eight. During King William’s War it was said that the province had grown rich through silver obtained from the Spaniards; in 1708, the Dutch islands were New York’s principal source of coin in the West Indies.705 Rhode Island, according to Governor Cranston, imported from Curaçao only salt, cocoa, and pieces of eight, and was thus able to remit annually about £20,000 in money to Boston in payment for foreign goods purchased there.706
External trade was not the only source of colonial returns to England. For many years it was supplemented by piracy — an evil which yielded the mainland colonies no little quantity of gold and silver. Before 1690, the pirates operated chiefly in the Caribbean. Jamaica was the center of their activities and the treasure of the Spanish colonies their object.707 After 1690, the scene shifted to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, where the pirates fell upon ships carrying gold and silver to the Orient or returning with valuable cargoes.708 Because the precious metals could be disposed of at any place, the pirates were especially on the lookout for treasure-bearing ships. Such outlaws frequently sought the mainland ports, where the great demand for specie made the people warmly receptive to ill-gotten wealth which was liberally spent in shops and taverns or used to refit the marauding vessels for new voyages. An abundance of evidence indicates that in Massachusetts,709 Rhode Island,710 and New York711 the pirates were supported by influential merchants and protected by local officials. Reports generally estimated that pirate crews brought in between £50,000 and £200,000 of treasure at a time. Evidence of seizures, however, indicates more modest sums — between £1,300 and £12,000. The gold and silver taken from Captain Kidd may have been worth £5,000. In the period 1680–1700 the supply of coin in the colonies was far more abundant than after 1700, when England’s campaign against the evil put a temporary check on such illicit gains.
As already suggested, the commodities derived from foreign trade which were reshipped from the northern ports to England did not supply them with a large volume of returns. Of such foreign products, logwood was the most important. In 1717, the Board of Trade estimated that British imports of Campeche logwood amounted to £60,000.712 Jamaica and New England were the principal regions concerned in the trade. Shipments from Boston to England during six months of 1688 amounted to 261 tons; in 1715, to 788 tons of logwood and 644 tons of dyewood not specified.713 New York sent 396 tons of logwood in nine months of 1699, and 487 tons during the year beginning June 24, 1715.714 The London price in 1717 was £16 a ton, the yearly importation then amounting to some 3,741 tons. Banister estimated in 1715 that New England derived £31,250 yearly from the logwood trade — figures that doubtless include shipments direct from Campeche Bay to England as well as those going by way of Boston.715
Sugar ranked second among the re-exports of the northern towns. During sixteen years, 1703–1718, the average yearly shipments to England from New England were 5,988 hundredweight; from New York, 1,333 hundredweight.716 New York’s returns in 1721 included 905 hundredweight of brown sugar valued at £1,245, giving a New York price of £1 7s 4d a hundredweight.717
Very little tobacco was shipped from New England or New York to England. For the period 1703–1718 the average yearly exports were: from New England, 29,131 pounds; from New York, 4,967 pounds.718 Some notion of the other foreign commodity returns may be obtained from a list of New York’s exports in 1721. The estimated values were: indigo, £720, rice £465, cocoanuts, £422, Nicaragua wood, £278, and cotton-wool, £255. Even less important were fustic, ginger, pimento, lime juice and lignum vitæ.719
Among the invisible returns of the northern colonies to England were coin and bullion.720 Banister computed that prior to 1706 New England remitted annually between £18,000 and £30,000 in Spanish money and Massachusetts coin “till all was gone.” In 1715, he thought the sum had decreased to £2,500.721 Several independent reports from New York for the period 1697–1718 asserted emphatically that gold and silver made up the principal exports of the province to England.722
Another invisible item in the exchanges consisted of freights earned by colonial vessels en route to England. Henry Martin noted in 1717 that such colonial shipping was a British import.723 Fragmentary evidence indicates that the earnings of New York and Boston on shipments from those ports to England did not exceed £4,000 a year.724 The northerners also carried West India produce directly from the islands to England. Thus Bellomont in 1699 reported many Boston and New York vessels idle because the failure of the year’s sugar crop had deprived them of the cargoes they usually carried to England, and in 1708 Quarry stated that some Massachusetts ships, disposing of their lumber at Barbados, were freighted there with produce consigned to the mother country.725 The freights earned on such shipments obviously increased the northern purchasing power for English goods.
New England’s returns included yet another invisible item in the balance of exchanges. In 1717, Martin pointed out that one “value is imported and sold to England, which is no part of the value of those public imports, and that is the very ships themselves of New England . . . after their voyages performed hither. These are some of the returns by which they are enabled to pay some part of the balance.”726 New England vessels were regularly built on order of English merchants, it being reported in 1700 that costs of construction there were 40 per cent lower than in England.727 As early as 1676 New England shipbuilders obtained from England yearly orders, in time of peace, for as many as thirty ships.728 William Partridge, according to Bellomont, boasted that in the years 1697–1699 he received £22,000 in England for colonial built vessels.729 An estimate in 1712 states that seventy Massachusetts ships were sold yearly in Great Britain and the West Indies.730 Another estimate in 1715 computed the yearly sale value of all New England built ships at £93,750.731 Martin wrote in 1717: “I know not whether 40 or 50 sail of ships New England built may not be annually sold in England”; and in 1721 an official estimate indicated that most of the vessels constructed in the northern colonies were built on orders from British merchants.732 On the basis of this data it may not be possible to ascertain the yearly value of such vessels as returns; however, it seems clear that they netted New England more than all the other native products of the region together. Ships built in New York apparently were not sold in Britain to a considerable extent before 1717.
A fourth form of invisible returns consisted of bills of exchange drawn in the northern colonies in payment of services performed there by the Crown. Colonial merchants often supplied money or provisions to royal officials in America, receiving such bills payable by one of the departments of the British government. The merchants then used the bills for purchases in England by endorsing them to their English correspondents.
Between 1692 and 1702, a sum of £36,581 was remitted by such bills for the support of English troops at New York. Other payments in the northern colonies at this time were not large — nor afterward, until 1710. Then considerable sums were remitted for provisioning warships, for equipping the expedition against Nova Scotia, for holding the garrison at Annapolis, for supporting the Palatines at New York, and for financing the campaign against Canada in 1711.
During the years 1711–1713, bills of exchange amounting to at least £44,230 were drawn at New York for these various services, and to at least £57,100 at Boston. But all the bills were not honored in England. Governor Hunter at New York drew bills for £22,071 which were rejected at Whitehall — to his own private loss. Another sum of £4,596, in favor of Benjamin Edmonds, a contractor for the Navy Board, had not been paid by November, 1714. In most instances, the losers from nonpayment of such bills were English merchants who accepted them through their correspondents in the colonies. In spite of irregularities in the payment of these bills, they supplied the northern provinces with a large fund of returns during the years 1710–1713.733
Summarizing the remittances of New England and the middle colonies to England, we find that commodity shipments provided payments for only a small part of the exports. Such commodity returns were made up of native products of the northern region — fur, whale oil, whalebone, naval stores, and timber — plus a few southern commodities, notably logwood, along with a little sugar and tobacco. New England ships provided more purchasing power than all the other native products of the area available as returns. Coin, bills of exchange, and foreign products carried directly to England were obtained by the northerners in the West Indies, Newfoundland, southern Europe, and the mainland colonies.734 Before 1702, money had been plentiful as returns, but the decline of piracy after that date seems greatly to have diminished the supply. Meanwhile, Rhode Island and New York continued to obtain heavy pieces of eight at Curaçao. Freights and merchants’ charges did not affect the balance of trade of the northern area as in the case of the southern colonies. The freights, commissions, and profits earned by English merchants importing into the colonies were balanced in part by similar earnings of northern merchants in carrying goods to England and selling them in the English market. British remittances to the colonies by bills of exchange created an important source of purchasing power, especially during the years 1710–1713.
Before 1720, the effect of British colonial policy on the northern colonies had been highly beneficial. They had free access to all markets of the Empire — especially to those of the West Indies, Newfoundland, and the other mainland colonies. New England was allowed to send fish directly to southern Europe — a privilege of the greatest value. Under the shelter of the Navigation Acts the northern merchants carried on a prosperous business as shippers, exporters, and importers throughout the Empire. They were not only permitted to construct ships, but were also able to sell them in England by virtue of the exclusion of foreign-built vessels from imperial trade.
During Queen Anne’s War the northerners enjoyed many other benefits. All the English colonies received the privilege of trading with the Spanish colonies, subject only to trifling restrictions. In the years 1708–1711 England spent £222,000 for naval protection of the trade of New York and New England, supplying convoys without which it could not have endured.735 The Crown also contributed other large sums toward the conquest of Nova Scotia and the expeditions against Canada, projects that aimed to protect the vital interests of New England and New York.
Then, after 1713, Britain frequently supported the New Englanders in conflicts with foreign powers. One such conflict arose with Spain in 1716 when a Spanish raid on the British logwood cutters at Yucatan threatened to ruin their industry. This provoked an official defense of Britain’s position in the trade. The king’s subjects had settled at Yucatan in the decade of the 1660’s, and were therefore protected by subsequent treaties between England and Spain. These allowed England to hold all American territory occupied before 1667, and guaranteed to her all powers she had enjoyed there by either right or sufferance.736
A second conflict arose shortly after the Peace of Utrecht, when the Spaniards seized several northern vessels calling for salt at the island of Tortuda. On one voyage since the peace New England had lost more vessels than during the whole course of the war. Spain, claiming ownership of Tortuda, regarded the New Englanders as intruders. The latter asserted their right of visiting the island by virtue of the Spanish treaty of 1667, which allowed the English to frequent those places in the West Indies where the Spaniards had neither garrisons nor warehouses.737 “Salt,” wrote Jeremiah Dummer, “is used partly for saving provisions, but principally for curing fish, which is . . . the principal branch of returns made from the Continent [of North America] to Great Britain by way of Spain, Portugal, and the Straits, for the great quantities of woolen and indeed all kinds of manufactures, with which they supply themselves here.”738 In response to New England’s appeals, the British minister at Madrid, Mr. Methuen, secured a treaty with Spain, December 14, 1715, which allowed British subjects to gather salt at the island in dispute.739
The logwood controversy, however, was not so easily settled, and it figured in the events leading to Britain’s declaration of war against Spain, December 16, 1718.740 The logwood and the salt trades were vital to New England; hence she profited by the alertness of British diplomacy, backed by all the defensive forces of the Empire.
After 1713, two groups within the Empire were complaining of certain practices of the northerners. The planters of the British West Indies objected to the trade of the mainland colonies with the foreign West Indies — a trade that, it seemed, was reducing the price of sugar and molasses in the British islands, and raising the price of imported provisions. The Board of Trade in 1714 went so far as to suggest a legal prohibition of this trade.741 The other complaints came from the fishermen of western England, who insisted that New England’s trade with the settlers of Newfoundland was undermining the British fishery there. The New Englanders debauched the settlers and their servants with rum; idleness and inefficiency were the result. Besides, English seamen were being enticed away from English ships at the island with offers of better wages on New England vessels. In 1718, the Board of Trade recommended that the settlers be removed from Newfoundland altogether, and that the fishery thereafter be carried on from England.742 Had this been done, and had the foreign West India trade been closed to the northerners, they would have lost two of the most valuable markets for their surplus produce.
These projected attacks on the northern colonies involved serious issues, in view of Britain’s policy of checking the growth of colonial manufactures that would compete with her own wares. Either the northern colonies had to have the freedom of manufacturing for themselves, or they had to have access to all available markets in which they could convert their surplus produce into some means of paying for English goods.
Mr. Morison communicated by title a note on
THE LIBRARY OF GEORGE ALCOCK, MEDICAL STUDENT, 1676
George Alcock, who graduated from Harvard College in 1673, apparently intended to be a physician, as his father and grandfather had been before him. Probably he apprenticed himself to a physician after graduating. In ordinary course he would have come up for his A.M. at Commencement, 1676, and argued a medical quaestio. But on April 19, 1676, he obtained a Harvard diploma,743 went to England, and there died of smallpox on March 3, 1676 /7. The inventory of his estate is in the Suffolk County probate records in Boston. The list of Alcock’s library that it includes has been passed over by students of colonial libraries and reading, because it was assumed to be the library acquired by him in England. But the fact that it is signed by two Roxbury men, John Gore and John Bowles (H.C. 1671), proves that the books had been left there when Alcock went abroad. It is, therefore, the library of a Harvard medical student preparing himself for his second degree and the practice of his profession. In that respect, so far as I know, it is unique for the seventeenth century. Many of the books were doubtless inherited from the student’s grandfather, George Alcock, an alumnus of St. John’s College, Oxford, who emigrated in 1630 and settled in Roxbury as a physician; and from his father, John Alcock (H.C. 1646, d 1667), also a practising physician, who left his books and manuscripts in charge of Jonathan Mitchell, “to be kept for his sons, those two that are desirous to be scholars.”744
What distinguishes Alcock’s from all other New England libraries of the era — excepting that of John Winthrop, the younger — is its strength in medicine, and weakness in theology. Out of some eighty items, only ten or twelve, among them the Bible, Psalter, and Greek and Hebrew Testaments are religious. Most fittingly, Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici is included. Many of the medical works were obsolete, and obviously had been brought over by the owner’s grandfather; but others, like the works of Sennert and Harvey, were the best available at that time. Alcock’s non-professional taste in literature is shown by Don Quixote, and perhaps another work of Cervantes; by works of Justus Lipsius and Lord Bacon, and by classics such as Horace, Homer, Hesiod, and Plutarch. Many of these need no identification; several others such as Scaliger’s De Subtilitate are found in other lists in this volume. These have not been annotated; the curious reader is referred to the index. The identifications are by Mr. Donald H. Mugridge, now of the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress; and I also acknowledge the aid of Dr. Archibald Malloch, Librarian of the New York Academy of Medicine, and of Dr. W. W. Francis, of the Osier Library at McGill University.
An Inventory of the Books of Mr George Alcock (Late of Roxbury Deceased) Which Were Found in His Studie After the News of His Death
|
[£ |
s |
d] |
|
|
Ambros Parry upon chirurgery745 |
15 |
— |
|
|
Ultrafestinus phisic |
03 |
06 |
|
|
More’s Arithmatic746 |
03 |
00 |
|
|
Johnson’s medicament practica747 |
03 |
00 |
|
|
01 |
— |
||
|
Bible |
02 |
6 |
|
|
[C]low upon chirurgery748 |
02 |
6 |
|
|
[S]toa triumphans |
— |
6 |
|
|
Johannes Riolanus749 |
05 |
0 |
|
|
[Gra]ecum testamentum |
01 |
6 |
|
|
Henricus Gutberlieth (mr whitman’s)750 |
|||
|
Leonardus Fustius medicus751 |
12 |
0 |
|
|
Guintherius, (medicus)752 |
05 |
0 |
|
|
Jacobus Hollerius (phisicus)753 |
05 |
0 |
|
|
Schrivelij Lexicon754 |
10 |
0 |
|
|
Don Quixot755 |
03 |
0 |
|
|
Johannes Messuæ756 |
02 |
0 |
|
|
Johannes Farnelius757 |
04 |
0 |
|
|
Lexicon grec and Latin |
08 |
0 |
|
|
Jacobus Veckerus758 |
08 |
0 |
|
|
Gassendus (astronomica) |
06 |
0 |
|
|
Johannes Heurnio759 |
02 |
0 |
|
|
Franciscus Verulan |
02 |
6 |
|
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Critica sacra |
15 |
0 |
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Thomas Wilson (upon divinity)760 |
01 |
0 |
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Cicero |
01 |
6 |
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Riverius (phisicus)761 |
09 |
0 |
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Rider’s dictiona |
08 |
0 |
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Sennertus phisicus762 |
05 |
0 |
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Sennertus chymicus |
06 |
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Sennertus de morb mulierum: |
05 |
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03 |
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Van Helmont763 |
05 |
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6 |
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Sennertus phisicus |
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6 |
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Scroderius medicus764 |
04 |
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Gulielmus Harveus (medicus)765 |
03 |
0 |
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Bartoletus (medicus)766 |
02 |
6 |
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Hæbr Bible |
1 |
00 |
0 |
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Homer’s Iliads767 |
01 |
6 |
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Scaliger de subtilitate |
02 |
0 |
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Bartholinus (anatomicus)768 |
03 |
0 |
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Lipsij sepistolæ769 |
01 |
0 |
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Kecarmanus (phisicus) |
01 |
0 |
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Guastivinus (medicus)770 |
01 |
0 |
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Martinus Rulandius771 |
03 |
0 |
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Ramij opera |
03 |
0 |
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Æginetæ opera772 |
02 |
0 |
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Aristot (Logic) |
02 |
6 |
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01 |
0 |
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Firth (theologus)773 |
01 |
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Farnelius medicus |
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Slegelius medicus774 |
01 |
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Plutarch |
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Plutarch Ethicorum |
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Clavis Homerica |
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Manutij phras |
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Hus — phras |
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6 |
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Castanij destinctiones |
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Petrus Uffenbachius (medicus)775 |
02 |
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Franciscus Titelmannus (dialect)776 |
02 |
0 |
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Sententiæ Ciceronis |
01 |
0 |
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Ursini Catechesis |
03 |
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Aristot. de arte dicendi |
02 |
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Hurnius upon Hyppocrates |
01 |
0 |
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Liddelius (medicus)777 |
03 |
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Hooker’s church discipline |
01 |
6 |
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Smetius |
02 |
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Biggs medicus778 |
03 |
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Richardson’s Logic |
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Barrough medicus779 |
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Horatius |
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Dounham’s Logic |
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Jodocus anatomicus780 |
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Castonij destinctiones |
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Janua Linguarum |
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Fernelius de Lue venerea781 |
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Thesaurus poeticus |
01 |
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Be[h]men signatura rerum782 |
02 |
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Religio medici |
01 |
6 |
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Tho Horn’s manuduction783 |
01 |
0 |
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Lipsij flores784 |
00 |
6 |
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Buxtorfij Lexicon |
08 |
0 |
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Porselius785 |
01 |
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Rami artes |
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6 |
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Hesiodus |
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Bibliotheca scholastica: |
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Flavel786 |
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Introductio ad Logicam |
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Schibleri Logic: |
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Drexellius787 |
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Guintherius (medicus) |
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An old desk and frames |
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old and defaced books and pamphlets not particularly inventoried |
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Summa totalis |
17: |
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These books were Inventoried and apprized 27th of December in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred seventy and seven |
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By us |
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john gore:
john bowles.
The President presented by title the following communication by Mr. Charles M. Andrews:
On page 5 of this volume Professor Kittredge observes that the order of the quotations from Spenser’s poems in Elnathan Chauncy’s commonplace book follows that of the 1611 and 1617 folios of Spenser’s works. He conjectures, therefore, that Chauncy possessed a mutilated copy of one of these editions, which might account for his neglect of the Faerie Queene — as that stands first in the folio — and of the Muiopotmos and the Visions, which stand at the end.
There has recently been presented to the Library of Yale University an edition of Spenser’s works bearing the date 1611. This volume belonged, by tradition, to President Dunster. It became the property of Hannah, the last surviving daughter of Isaiah Dunster, the great-grandson of the president, and by her was given to Captain Joshua Smith of Hanson, Massachusetts, through one of whose descendants it has come into Yale’s possession. The volume is without the original binding, its covers are gone, and the pages, though mostly in good condition, show signs of mutilation and hard usage. It contains the whole of the Faerie Queene and all the lesser poems except Mother Hubberd’s Tale, Virgil’s Gnat, the Ruines of Rome, Muiopotmos, and the Visions, the last four of which are gone from the end of the volume. Portions of the Shepheards Calender and Colin Clout are also missing.
It is a pleasant thought to believe that this may be the very folio from which Elnathan Chauncy copied his quotations, but unfortunately there is reason to think that such is not the case. In the first place, the volume contains the whole of the Faerie Queene, which Professor Kittredge assumes that Chauncy would have used had he had access to it, though that assumption is not conclusive evidence. More significant is the fact that the volume apparently did not contain one of the minor poems, from which, if I read Professor Kittredge aright (above, page 5, note 3), Chauncy did quote. This poem is the Mother Hubberd’s Tale. Now there seem to have been two variants of the edition bearing the 1611 imprint — one brought out in that year, omitting this poem, and the other really brought out in 1612, but retaining the date 1611, in which this poem is included. As the poem reflected on Lord Burghley, whose son, Robert Cecil, was living in 1611, it was intentionally left out of the edition put together and issued in that year. Cecil died May 24, 1612, and in the edition of that year the poem was included. The question therefore arises as to whether the Dunster volume in the Yale Library originally contained the Mother Hubberd’s Tale, or whether it did not. If it did not, then the Yale copy is the edition actually issued in 1611, and Chauncy could not have used it; if it did, then it is the second variant, issued after Cecil’s death, and Chauncy might have quoted from it. There seems to be no way of reaching a final conclusion, as pages are missing in the Yale volume both before and after the place where the Tale appears in the second variant, but such expert opinion as I have been able to obtain favors the original omission of the Tale from the Dunster volume. In that case Chauncy could not have used it.
In the second place, difficulties are encountered when we endeavor to trace Chauncy’s connection with the volume. Assuming that it was originally a part of President Dunster’s library, how did it come into Chauncy’s hands? President Dunster left by will to President Chauncy, who succeeded him in 1654, “such mathematicke books as hitherto I have lent him . . .”;788 certain books of Divinity to Jonathan Mitchell and to Mrs. Dunster; and “the other two moyties” of his library, to his sons, David and Jonathan, “to be delivered unto them as they shall have need of any particular books.”789 As this folio descended in the Dunster family, it is hard to account for its presence in the Chauncy family. It might have been left behind by the president when he departed from Cambridge, and after his death in 1659 have been returned by President Chauncy to Mrs. Dunster. During that period Elnathan Chauncy might have used it and have made from it the generous and extended extracts that appear in his commonplace book, but I think that the evidence shows otherwise. I believe that Chauncy had at his disposal another copy, either the second variant of the 1611 edition or one of the 1617 folios. If so, Yale has a copy of the rare first variant and there must have been in the Massachusetts Bay Colony two editions of Spenser’s poems before 1654.
1 Another signature is partly discernible. It reads: “Elnath: Ch[ ].”
2 This page is not numbered. The first numbered page, “4,” is really page 5. The last numbered page is “64.” In referring to the manuscript I follow Chauncy’s numbering and continue it throughout the volume (263 pages in all, plus the unnumbered page).
3 Throughout this article, brackets indicate letters or words lost by wear and tear of the paper or by fading of the ink.
4 This same page also exhibits the signature “Israel Chaun[c]y” in a large sprawling hand. I do not think this is the signature of Elnathan’s brother and classmate Israel. Probably it was written by the later Israel (A.B. Harvard 1724), into whose hands the volume doubtless fell. To this Israel I ascribe also the grotesque pen-drawing of a man’s face which adorns the centre of the page.
5 Spare Minutes: or Resolved Meditations (4th ed., 1635).
6 ms., p. 237.
7 ms., p. 118.
8 ms., p. 129.
9 The back of the unnumbered page that contains Elnathan Chauncy’s signatures, etc., as just described.
10 Page torn away at top and part of left-hand margin.
11 By a slip of the pen w, instead of n, is included between the vertical lines. In the fifth line the reading all this is uncertain.
12 The verso of the second leaf. This leaf is also mutilated.
13 The page is torn away irregularly at the upper left-hand corner.
14 The word quite is written above the line to replace honour is (which is cancelled).
15 I. e. hence.
16 ms., p. 22.
17 Further confirmation is afforded by the change of honour is to quite in the elegy on Dunster (see above, p. 4, note 3).
18 There are extracts from the following (the non-Spenserian Sidney poems I italicize): The Shepheards Calender, Mother Hubberds Tale, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, Astrophel, The Dolefull Lay of Clȯrinda, A Pastorall Æglogue (by Lodowick Brysket), An Elegie (by Matthew Roydon), An Epitaph, Another of the Same, Prothalamion, Amoretti, Epithalamion, Daphnaïda, The Ruines of Time, The Teares of the Muses, Virgil’s Gnat, The Ruines of Rome. The Dolefull Lay is claimed for Spenser by some scholars of repute: see F. I. Carpenter, A Reference Guide to Edmund Spenser (1923), p. 131. A few brief passages from The Faerie Queene are included in Chauncy’s extracts from Robert Allot’s anthology, England’s Parnassus (ms., pp. 60–62).
19 The Mourning Muse of Thestylis, supposed to be by Lodowick Brysket.
20 Between Epithalamion and Daphnaïda.
21 Error for your.
22 The Shepheards Calender, April, vv. 37–45.
23 Read heydeguyes.
24 The Shepheards Calender, June, vv. 25–32.
25 Prothalamion, vv. 1–4, 20–21, 173–174.
26 See W. C. Ford, Broadsides, Ballads &c. Printed in Massachusetts, 1639–1800 (M. H. S. Collections, lxxv); John W. Draper, A Century of Broadside Elegies.
27 Error for this.
28 The Shepheards Calender, December, vv. 140, 143–144.
29 Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, vv. 23–28.
30 Cleveland, pp. 51–53.
31 ms., p. 62.
32 Major John Wright.
33 Godfrey of Boulogne: or The Reeouerie of Ierusalem (2d ed., 1624).
34 Some of the extracts, however, are from “A Letter directed to the Author” prefixed to Bulwer’s treatise and signed “R. Mason.”
35 Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia (1st ed.), p. 17.
36 Id. pp. 39–40.
37 Niccols, Englands Eliza, in the 1610 edition of A Mirrour for Magistrates, p. 806.
38 George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes (1635), p. 235.
39 Fairfax, Godfrey of Bulloigne (2d ed., 1624), p. 71.
40 Cleveland, p. 28.
41 Cleveland, p. 40 (“Periwigg’d the Phrase”).
42 Beaumont, Psyche (1648), p. 21 (“its way”).
43 [Stephen Jerome,] The Arraignement of the Whole Creature (1631), p. 7.
44 Charles Herle, Wisdomes Tripos (1655), p. 13.
45 John Stephens, Satyrical Essayes Characters and Others (1615), pp. 163, 236, 275, 305, 374.
46 Sig. ***3, If. 2 ro.
47 Sibley, ii. 81.
48 Not to be confused with Eirenæus Philalethes, i.e. George Stirk (or Starkey), A.B. Harvard 1646. See our Publications, xxi. 123–125, 132–146.
49 This word is omitted in the ms.
50 Of the Magnetick Cure of Wounds, § 11 (A Ternary of Paradoxes, p. 8).
51 Anthroposophia Theomagica (1650), p. 30.
52 Id., p. 45.
53 Magia Adamica: or The Antiquitie of Magic and The Descent thereof from Adam downwards, proved. Whereunto is added a perfect, and full Discoverie of the true Cœlum Terrae (1650), sig. B4, lf. 2 vo-lf. 3 ro. Wrongly ascribed in the ms. to “eugenius philalethes his man mouse.”
54 Id., p. 86.
55 The Man-Mouse, sig. A2.
56 Id., p. 2.
57 Id., p. 4.
58 Id., p. 18.
59 Id., p. 52.
60 Workes, 1636 (1633–36), 4 volumes. Vols, ii and iii in the Harvard College Library have the autograph of Mather Byles on the title page.
61 See A. C. Potter, Catalogue of John Harvard’s Library (in our Publications, xxi. 190–230), Nos. 17, 34, 156, 240, 243.
62 Catalogus, pp. 15, 70, 64.
63 ms., p. 118.
64 ms., pp. 126–128. The Flower of Fidelity (1650), by John Reynolds, merchant of Exeter.
65 ms., p. 129.
66 “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”
67 Sibley, ii. 141.
68 ms., pp. 221, 220, being pp. 43–44 from the end of the volume. A contemporary outline of a sermon “By mr Elnath: Chauncy. — 12. day of feb. 1670” is preserved in a manuscript in the Harvard College Library (MS. Am. 566). It is not in his handwriting, though the script resembles his in many ways.
69 It occupies pp. 231–225 and the first half of p. 224 (or pp. 33–39 and the first half of p. 40, if we count from the end of the book), and is a part of the matter written in after reversing the volume.
70 “De candidatis bonarū artium in hisce comitiis.”
71 Samuel Willard (A.B. 1659) received a Master’s degree at some time. If the ordinary term of three years only had elapsed, his A.M. would have been granted in 1662. In the Triennial of 1674 Willard’s name occurs without the A.M.; so also in that of 1682; but in the Triennial of 1698 he appears as “Samuel Willard Mr Socius.” It is clear, then, that Willard received his A. M. out of course, in some year after 1674 but before or in 1698. Thus the year 1662 remains Masterless. Mr. Albert Matthews has helped me here by excluding Willard from 1662.
72 The Rev. Richard Blinman writes from England to Increase Mather on August 14, 1677: “Mr Elnathan Chancey is like to return to N. E., who hath had advantages from his 2 brothrs here for the practice of physick. I believe he is truly Godly, & hath gained a good estimation here, with the better sort, that know him.” Mather Papers, 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., viii. 330.
73 Note ardentibus miscopied for ardenter, habent for habeant, crepedine for crepidine,ὀμως for ὄμως, perigrinam for peregrinum, removeretur for remuneretur, and in particular ὁπον for ὅπου, τήχνη for τέχνη, and the vox nihiliκτιθος (for κτῆσις or κέρδος), — the last three errors all occurring in one brief quotation.
74 Note especially “Quod ad primi gradus candidates spectat, sex vobis obtulimus, ad numerū Hydriarum aquâ repletarū in nuptiis canæ Galitææ;, de quibus spei non nihil affulsit, fore ut virtute Christi mirificâ, vinum optimum et exhilarans aliquando exhauriendum esse” [error for sit].
75 The programme of Quaestiones for 1655 notes an Oratio Demegorica by John Angeir, who graduated in 1653; that for 1663 notes an Oratio Gratvlatoria by Nathaniel Collins, who graduated in 1660; that for 1664 notes an Oratio Gratulatoria by Israel Chauncy, Elnathan’s brother, who graduated in 1661 (Sibley, i, 323; ii, 53, 72). “Sr Clark (Senior Bachelour),” the Records inform us, “made” the oration when the Corporation dined Governor Burnet in 1728 (our Publications, xvi, 565). This was William Clark, A.B. 1726. For other orators, see “Orations” in index, id., p. 959.
76 Cicero, De Legibus, iii, 3, 3, 8: “Regio imperio duo sunto, iique praeeundo, iudicando, consulendo, praetores, iudices, consules appellamino: militiae summum ius habento:. . . . ollis salus populi suprema lex esto.”
77 For primatum the ms. abbreviates to primaȝ.
78 Cf. Lactantius, iv, 12, 6: “[Iesus] Latine dicitur salutaris sive salvator.” Philippians, iv: 21: “Salute every saint in Christ Jesus.”
79 i Corinthians, iv: 1: “Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.”
80 Daniel, ix: 23: “Thou art greatly beloved” (Vulgate: “vir desideriorum es,” a literal translation of the Hebrew idiom). So also in x: 11, 19.
81 Acts, xvii: 11: “These were more noble [εὐγενέστεροι] than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether these things were so.”
82 Matthew, xi: 30: “For my yoke is easy [iugum enim meum suave est], and my burden is light.”
83 Virgil, Aeneid, iii, 83: “Iungimus hospitio dextras.”
84 Tacitus, Annales, xii, 47: “in amplexus eius effusus.”
85 Cicero, ad Atticum, v, 15, 1: “Nihil exoptatius adventu meo, nihil carius.”
86 Pausanias, viii, 41, 5: [Ἀπόλλων] ἐπωνυμίαν ἔλαβεν Ἀλεξίκακος, ἀποτρέψας καὶ τούτοις τὴν υόσον. Cf. ii, 11, 2 (ἀποτρόπαιοι θεοί) Plato, Legg., 845 B (θεῶν ἀποτροπαίων ἱερά); Xenophon, Hellenica, iii, 3, 4 (θύοντες καὶ τοῖς ἀποτροπαίοις καὶ τοῖς σωτῆρσι).
87 ii Chronicles, xi: 14, 16.
88 ms.,vester.
89 Cicero, pro Murena, xxviii, 58: “firmamentum ac robur.” So also in his oration for the Manilian Law, iv, 10.
90 Miscopied removeretur in ms.
91 Ruth, ii: 12: “The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.”
92 Psalms, xxxiv: 2, 3: “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.”
93 Revelation, xii: 6: “And the woman fled into the wilderness (εἰς τὴν ἔρημον).” Cf. xii: 14.
94 Revelation, xii.
95 Cf. Cicero, Ad Familiares, xiii, 50, 2: “ut M.’ Curium sartum et tectum, ut aiunt, detrimento . . . conserves.”
96 Revelation, xii: 15: ἵνα αὐτὴν ποταμοφόρητον ποιήσῃ.
97 Id., xii: 14: “And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness.”
98 Lucina is called “dea auxiliaris” in Ovid, Metamorphoses, ix, 699.
99 Virgil, Eclogues, i, 6: “Deus nobis haec otia fecit.”
100 Isaiah, xxvi: 1: “Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.”
101 Ephesians, iii: 17, 18: “That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints,” etc.
102 So in MS. Miscopied for τὸ περισσὸν μέτρον or τὸ ὑπερπερισσὸν μέτρον or τὸ ὑπερπερισσεῦον μέτρον. Cf. Romans, v: 20 (ὑπερπερίσσευσεν ἡ χάρις).
103 ii Chronicles, xx: 26: “They assembled themselves in the valley of Berachah; for there they blessed the Lord: therefore the name of the same place was called, The valley of Berachah, unto this day.”
104 Martial, v, 60, 1: “usque . . . et usque.”
105 Cf. Livy, iii, 38; xxvi, 7; xxxi, 22.
106 Miscopied ardentibus. The ms. also has desideremus for desideramus.
107 Virgil, Aeneid, ii, 583: “memorabile nomen.”
108 Pliny, vii, 32, 119: “Rursus mortales oraculorum societatem dedere Chiloni Lacedaemonio tria praecepta eius Delphis consecrando aureis litteris.”
109 See Genesis, ix: 9–12.
110 Shaddai, “sufficient,” “mighty.”
111 These are the Greek words used by the Septuagint (“70 Interpretes”) to translate the Hebrew term. The second is miswritten παντακράτωρ in the ms. here, but is given correctly just below. The ms. has ἴκανος for ἱκανός.
112 Hebrews, vi: 18, 19: “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.”
113 “In portu navigare” is a proverbial phrase for “to be safe” (Terence, Andria, iii, 1, 22).
114 Plato, Phaedo, 77 E: Ἄλλ' ἴσως ἔνι τις καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν παῖς, ὅστις τὰ τοιαῦτα φοβεῖται. τοῦτον οὖν πειρώμεθα πείθειν μὴ δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον ὤσπερ τὰ μοπμολυκεῖα.
115 ms.,habent.
116 Cicero, ad Familiares, ii, 12, 3: “Satis gloriose triumpharam.”
117 Horace, Satires, ii, 6, 25–26: “Bruma nivalem Interiore diem gyro trahit.” Our ms. has die for diem and perhaps Nivali for nivalem.
118 Virgil, Georgics, iii, 442–443: “Horrida cano Bruma gelu.”
119 Cicero, De Senectute, xi, 38: “sensim sine sensu.”
120 Virgil, Georgics, i, 78: “Lethaeo perfusa papavera somno.”
121 For redivivam the ms. has redivivū.
122 Matthew, xix: 28; Titus, iii: 5. The ms. omits iota subscript.
123 Virgil, Aeneid, ii, 169–170: “Ex illo fluere ac retro sublapsa referri Spes Danaum.”
124 Ovid, Metamorphoses, i, 10: “Nullus adhuc mundo praebebat lumina Titan.”
125 ms.,παραλλογὴν.
126 James, i: 17: “Ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν φώτων, παρ’ ᾧ ούκ ἔνι παραλλαγὴ ἤ τροπῆς ἀποσκίασμα.”
127 Hebrews, xiii: 8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.”
128 Ezekiel, xxvii: 25: “Cadent in corde maris.”
129 ms., crepe[d]ine.
130 Cf. ii Corinthians, iv: 4: “Τὸ μὴ αὐυάσαι τὸυ φωτισμὸν τοῦ εὐακκελίου τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ.”
131 Cf. Odyssey, xi, 14–19.
132 Livy, xxxix, 26, 9: a remark of Philip V of Macedon’s — “Nondum omnium dierum solem occidisse” (E. K. Rand). Cf. Isaiah, lx: 20: “Non occidet ultra sol tuus et luna tua non minuetur, quod Dominus erit tibi in lucem sempiternam.”
133 Virgil, Aeneid, i, 207: “Durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis.”
134 Anthologia Palatina, ix, 75. The usual text reads:
Κἤν με φάγῃς ἐπὶ ῥίξαν, ὅμως ἔτι καρποφορήσω
ὅσσον ἐπισπεῖσαι σοὶ, τράγε, θυομένῳ.
The Latin version that follows (“Rode . . . erit”) is that of Bothe (see Dübner’s edition, ii. 15). The ms. has hin for hinc.
135 Plutarch, Caesar, 38. Florus, iv, 2, 37: “Quid times? Caesarem vehis.”
136 Matthew, viii: 27: “What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!”
137 Psalms, cxxi: 4: “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
138 Matthew, xiv: 24: “The ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves.”
139 Cf. Matthew, xiv: 27: “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.”
140 Job, xxvi: 7: “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” The orator translates the Hebrew belīmah by non aliquid; the Vulgate has “appendit terram super nihilum” (G. F. Moore).
141 ms.,fracta.
142 Genesis, iii: 14–15: “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, . . . I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel (tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius).”
143 Cicero, de Finibus, iii, 22, 74: “Sed iam sentio me esse longius provectum quam proposita ratio postularet.”
144 In the ms. there is an asterisk (shaped like an x) before quia and another after faciam. Perhaps the scribe meant that the sentence should be rearranged as follows: “de re nostra pauca dicturus sum. Nolite, quaeso, res magnas aut novas in novo orbe exspectare, sive de rebus publicis sive de Academia nostra verba faciam, quia dixit nobis Dominus, ‘Ne quaeratis vobis grandia; ecce inducam malum,’ &c. Dicam de utraque libere.”
145 Jeremiah, xlv: 5: “Et tu quaeris tibi grandia? Noli quaerere, quia ecce ego adducam malum super omnem carnem, ait Dominus.”
146 Cf. Martial, iv, 27: “Ecce iterum nigros corrodit lividus ungues.”
147 See the anecdote in Cicero, ad Atticum, ii, 19, 3: “Ludis Apollinaribus Diphilus tragoedus in nostrum Pompeium petulanter invectus est: ‘Nostra miseria tu es magnus’ miliens coactus est dicere.” Cowley makes an interesting use of the same anecdote in his Discourse by way of Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell (Essays, p. 67, Works, 7th ed., 1681): “We must begin the consideration of his greatness from the unlucky Æra of our own misfortunes; which puts me in mind of what was said less truly of Pompey the Great, Nostra Miseria Magnus es.” The passage printed in capitals and that printed in capitals and small capitals seem to be distinguished in the ms. by somewhat larger script.
148 ms.,minutilus.
149 Luke, vii: 22: “To the poor the gospel is preached.”
150 Juvenal, x, 22: “Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.”
151 This seems to be an allusion to Bishop Hall’s satirical romance (Mundus Alter et Idem Siue Terra Australis antehac semper incognita longis itineribus peregrini Academici nuperrime lustrata, Authore Mercurio Britannico, 1605). The orator remarks that “we have many names of cities and towns of Old England, but merely the names; and not a few names of vices — would they were names only! But I fear that what has been common talk (quod quorundam sermone jactatum est) may be regarded by you as ascertained fact, so that you will say of the new world that it is mundus alter el idem.” Place names derived from vices are a feature of Hall’s romance. Thus one of the districts in his Terra Australis is Pamphagonia (Glutton-land, from παμφάγος, “all-devouring”); another is Yvronia (Drunkard-land, from ivrogne); still another is Lavernia (from Laverna, the Roman goddess of rogues and thieves).
152 M8., perigrinam.
153 Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, i, 2, 4: “Honos alit artes omnesque incenduntur ad studia gloria.”
154 The Greek stands thus in the ms.,κτι coming at the end of a line. What the orator wrote can only be conjectured. The sense seems to require, “Where there is no profit, there is no art.” Obviously ὁπον is miscopied for ὅπου and τήχνη for τέχνη. For κτιθος (a vox nihili) one might conjecture κτῆσις or κέρδος.
155 Juvenal, iii, 164, 165: “Haut facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi.”
156 Martial, via, 56: “Sunt Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones Vergiliumque tibi vel tua rura dabunt.”
157 Persius, Prologue, 10–11: “Magister artis ingenique Venter.”
158 Acts, xvii: 21: “For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or hear some new thing.”
159 See Joshua, ix: 3–6, 9, 12, 13.
160 Ezekiel, xviii: 31: “Make you a new heart and a new spirit.”
161 Plutarch, De Liberis Educandis, 7, ii, p. 4 F: “εὔωνον ἀμαθίαν διώκοντες” The ms. reads poro and vocet.
162 John, ii: 1–10.
163 Livy, xxvii, 28: “Prima spes . . . affulsit.”
164 So ms. for sit. The grammar is wrong, but the sense is clear.
165 Cicero, Ad Atticum, xiii, 21, 7: “propenso animo.”
166 Cf. Quintilian, i, 6, 32: “Rogat boni consulas, id est, bonum iudices.”
167 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lxxi. 248–250.
168 For biographical treatments of Josselyn, see the account by Edward Tuckerman prefixed to his edition of New England’s Rarities (Boston, 1865); the article by Gordon Goodwin in the Dictionary of National Biography; an article by the present writer in the Dictionary of American Biography; and the account by Moses C. Tyler in his History of American Literature during the Colonial Period, i. 180–185.
169 Much biographical information concerning Henry Josselyn can be derived from such works as: Documentary History of the State of Maine — The Trelawny Papers, in, and the Farnham Papers, vii; J. P. Baxter, George Cleeve of Casco Bay (1885); C. W. Tuttle and J. W. Dean, Capt. John Mason, the Founder of New Hampshire (1887); Province and Court Records of Maine, i, ii.
170 Josselyn, New-England’s Rarities (Boston, 1865), 32. All subsequent refernces are to this edition.
171 Id., 35.
172 Josselyn, Two Voyages to New-England (Boston, 1865), 164. All subsequent references are to this edition.
173 Arber, Term Catalogues, i. 112. The title-page of the work reads: New-England’s Rarities Discovered: In Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of that Country. Together with The Physical and Chyrurgical Remedies wherewith the Natives constantly use to Cure their Distempers, Wounds, and Sores. Also A perfect Description of an Indian Squa, in all her Bravery; with a Poem not improperly conferr’d upon her. Lastly A Chronological Table of the most remarkable Passages in that Country amongst the English. . . . By John Josselyn, Gent.
174 Samuel Fortrey (1622–1681), a clerk of the deliveries of the ordnance in the Tower of London, was the author of an essay published at Cambridge, England, 1663, with the title, England’s Interest and Improvement. Consisting in the increase of the store, and trade of this Kingdom. (Reprinted and edited by J. H. Hollander, Baltimore, 1907.) Josselyn was his half-uncle by marriage, Fortrey having married Theodora, daughter of Torrell Josselyn, son of Sir Thomas Josselyn by his first wife. There is a notice of Fortrey by Edwin Cannan in the Dictionary of National Biography.
175 New-England’s Rarities, 39.
176 Philosophical Transactions, 1670, p. 1151.
177 See J. A. Gillespie, The Influence of Oversea Expansion on England to 1700. Columbia University Studies in History, etc., xci; also C. S. Duncan, The New Science and English Literature in the Classical Period (1913).
178 In a note prefixed to the second edition of the Two Voyages the publisher makes this comment: “You are desired by the Author to correct some literal faults, which by reason of the raggedness of the Copy have been committed. G. Widdows.” Does this “raggedness” imply haste in composition?
179 The collection of such passages from the Two Voyages includes these: pp. 11, 13, 27, 115, 132–133, 137, 158, 161, 162.
180 Id., 49.
181 Id., 159.
182 Id., 150–153.
183 Analysis of the structure of Josselyn’s Two Voyages to New England.
The first voyage, 1638–39, pp. 5–29.
- Josselyn crosses the Atlantic. 5–13.
- Notes on the cost of articles to provision intending settlers. 20–24.
- In Maine. 20–24.
- Prepares to depart from New England. 24–27.
- Returns to England. 27–29.
The second voyage, 1663–1671, pp. 30–164.
- Apologia to the incredulous. 30–31.
- Crosses the Atlantic and arrives in New England. 31–36.
- The metes and bounds of New England; its natural products, stars, seasons, and a description of the country. 36–49.
- The plants, trees, shrubs, and vegetables of New England. 49–66.
- The animals, their species and habits. 66–75.
- The birds. 75–81.
- The fish. 81–90.
- The snakes, reptiles, and insects. 90–96.
- The Indians: their customs, number, government, etc. 96–115.
- A second apologia.
- The English settlers in New England. 115–117.
- The discovery of New England. 117–118.
- A description of the southern country of New England (i. e., modern New York). 118–120.
- Note on New Haven colony. 120.
- Note on Connecticut colony. 120–121.
- Note on Rhode Island colony. 121.
- Plymouth plantation. 122.
- Description of Massachusetts Bay colony: form of government, social customs. 122–140.
- Diseases to which the English in America are subject. 141–144.
- A further note on the trees and plants of New England. 141–146.
- Note on the cattle and poultry of the country. 146–149.
- Takes ship for Maine. 149.
- Note on New Hampshire province and its rightful proprietor. 150.
- The land, the people and the rightful lord of Maine. 151–156.
- Note on Sagadahoc, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. 156–158.
- Social customs of the Maine coast. 158–162.
- Josselyn leaves for England by way of Boston.
184 A typewritten note inserted in the copy at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
185 Entry-card of the Library of Congress.
186 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxviii. 260–261.
187 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1669–1674, no. 150.
188 Id., no. 439.
189 Id., no. 512.
190 Id., no. 512.
191 Id., no. 512.
192 Id., no. 651.
193 Id., no. 687.
194 Id., no. 1247.
195 Id., no. 1279.
196 Id., no. 1397.
197 Id., no. 1420.
198 Calendar, 1669–1674, no. 150, 150-ii, no. 439, no. 184, no. 753, no. 512.
199 J. P. Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, ii. 210–213.
200 R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, ii. 196–197.
201 Lorenzo Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, ii. 129–135; L. R. Paige, History of Cambridge, pp. 150–156; V. L. Oliver, History of the Island of Antigua, 3 vols, (cited here as “V. L. Oliver”; see next note); J. H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts, pp. 183–188; article by Gordon Goodwin in D. N. B., chiefly drawn from Paige and Appleton, incomplete and unsatisfactory; The Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of the American Loyalists, 1783 to 1785, being the Notes of Mr. Daniel Parker Coke, M.P., one of the Commissioners during that Period (H. E. Egerton, ed.), pp. 227–228 (cited here as “Coke, ed. Egerton”); C. H. Van Tyne, The Loyalists of the American Revolution, pp. 36–38 (largely from Sabine); E. Alfred Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts, their Memorials, Petitions, and Claims, pp. 225–226 (cited here as “Jones”).
202 V. L. Oliver (see last note) is by far the fullest authority for the trees of the Oliver (and Freeman) families, for their wills and legal transactions, and for many contemporary notices. The sequel will show my debts to this rare and splendidly produced work. The material on Thomas Oliver’s pedigree is in n. 318 ff., 346 ff.
203 Facsimile in V. L. Oliver, ii. 318; whence the details about Richard and Robert, including those about arms and crest. Mr. Robert D. Weston, of Cambridge, has been good enough to inform me that Burke, in his General Armoury, assigns this shield and crest to Oliver of Exeter, County Devon; the shield, but a different crest, to Oliver of Musbury, County Devon, Bristol, and Wollescote Hall, Stourbridge, County Worcester; a variant of the shield to Oliver of Croomhill, Kent; and the shield, exactly, to Ollivier of Alderney. “It looks,” adds Mr. Weston, “as if your family of Olivers came originally from the Channel Islands.” The actual kinship of our Thomas Oliver with any of these families still remains to be proved. In any case, there is everything to show that he had none with the clan of Peter, C. J., (and Andrew), who perhaps owned and, at any rate, used quite a different coat of arms. See other evidence in my text.
204 See V. L. Oliver in Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, v. 158–160; and H. S. Grazebrook in id., pp. 322–325. See too W. Ensign Lincoln, Some Descendants of Stephen Lincoln, Edward Larkin, Thomas Oliver of Bristol, Esq., etc. (1930). This Thomas Oliver died in 1557. Mr. Lincoln has been good enough, in answer to inquiries, to confirm the view that no kinship with the Olivers of Antigua is yet established.
At this point the author would express his best thanks to all the ladies and gentlemen mentioned in these notes; and also, for much aid and encouragement, to Mr. Walter B. Briggs of the Harvard College Library, to Mr. Frank W. C. Hersey, and to Professor James H. Ropes.
205 Anne Oliver’s second husband was to be Isaac Royall, of the well-known clan; and their daughter Penelope, who married Col. Henry Vassall, was thus aunt by marriage of Elizabeth Vassall, first wife of Thomas Oliver. For Oliver’s befriending of Penelope after the Revolution, see p. 63 below.
206 See Stark, p. 183; also S. A. Drake, Our Colonial Homes, who describes the house at length. It was razed in 1900, but a bronze tablet, in what is now Edward Everett Square, marks the site.
207 Annual Report, Boston Cemetery Department, 1904, pp. 68, 85, 160. Legend states that his slaves were so ignorant of the uses of the wheelbarrow that they bore them upon their heads to carry the soil.
208 V. L. Oliver, ii. 346.
209 Not as Sabine states (p. 129), at Dorchester. The Dorchester town records specify Antigua (V. L. Oliver, ii. 351).
210 The ms. Faculty Records, in the Harvard College Library, and the indexes now in preparation, I have seen through the kindness of Mr. Tufts and Mrs. Shipton. Oliver is listed as coming from Dorchester; his birthdate is given as “Jan. 5 1733/4”; his age at admission as “15½.” A marginal note states that he was among the “pupils of Mr. Hancock,” a tutor present at that meeting. According to the Harvard Quinquennial Catalogue (1930, p. 167), the names of students were listed during the freshman year according to the precedence of their parents; the exact basis for determining this order is not known.
211 Faculty Records, i. 297–298. For details in regard to the cost and distribution of Judah Monis’ Hebrew Grammar, see the Publications of this Society, xvi. 625–632, 640.
212 Faculty Records, i. 312–313.
213 Publications of this Society, xvi. 817. Oliver was “intitled” to this “exhibition” because he came from the town of Dorchester. That Thomas received an exhibition is singular because it seems to indicate that his father was, though perhaps only temporarily, in financial difficulties. Quite apart from that, however, the fact that it was granted so soon after the imposition of the fine indicates that his offense could not have been regarded as serious.
214 The pedigree (attested by affidavit) of the painting was furnished to the Art Museum by Mr. F. W. Bayley, of Boston, who has obliged me with some further information. The owners are traced down from Mrs. Penelope Royall: — Elizabeth Vassall, who became Mrs. Charles Russell; her daughter Elizabeth Russell; two Charles Russell Degans, father and son; and Miss Elizabeth Degan. From her Mr. Bayley had the picture. He sold it to the Museum in 1929, and it is in the Archibald Cary Coolidge Collection, purchased from the fund bequeathed by the late Professor Coolidge of Harvard. It is here reproduced by the courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, xi. 4, there is a letter from the Rev. John L. Anderton, of Chislehurst, England, stating that he owned a miniature of Thomas Oliver (his grandfather), which was possibly by Copley; but I have found no further reference to it.
215 Coke, ed. Egerton, p. 227.
216 By the courtesy of the Rev. C. Leslie Glenn, Rector of Christ Church, I have been allowed to reproduce Oliver’s signature, to verify birthdates from the church Register, and to extract the details in the text from the ms. volume: Copies of letters and other papers relating to the Episcopal Church at Cambridge in New England, mdcclx. The church’s archives break off with the Revolution, and do not begin again until 1795. There is another signature, on a receipt of 1775(?), in the Boston Public Library, for the discovery of which I am indebted to Miss Swift, of the Treasure Room.
217 See, for an elaborate analysis, Justin Winsor, in Library of Bibliographical Contributions, i no. 4. The lines in question are attributed in six copies to Stephen Sewall (H. C. 1761); but in Sewall’s own copy, and in two more, to Thomas Oliver.
218 Vital Records of Cambridge, n. 292. For the birthdates of the daughters, see id., i 526, and Christ Church Register. For the date of the wedding, see E. Harris, The Vassalls of New England, p. 62. It took place in Trinity Church, Boston: see Boston Records, xxx. 397. Elizabeth Vassall was “born at Cambridge, Sept. 12, 1739; married Thomas Oliver of Dorchester, June 11, 1760. She died in England previous to 1808.” Thomas Oliver, remarks Harris, was “ever distinguished for his amiable and gentlemanly graces” — doubtless a family tradition.
219 See a well-known passage in the Letters and Journals of Mrs. General Riedesel (1867), pp. 139 ff. In 1778, she was in Cambridge among the captured European troops, and was quartered “in one of the most beautiful houses of the place, which had formerly been built by the wealth of the royalists.” She pictures, from recent hearsay, the “seven” allied families, who had once had “farms, gardens, & magnificent houses,” and who visited one another “for music and the dance”; but they had gone, leaving “all their houses desolate except two,” when “alas! this ruinous war severed them.”
220 Coke, ed. Egerton, p. 227; he is here speaking of the period of his official appointment, 1774.
221 Jones, p. 225, names as a son of our Thomas Oliver one Peter Oliver, physician and surgeon at Salem. But “Thomas” is here an erratum for “Andrew”; see Stark, p. 190.
222 S. F. Batchelder, Bits of Cambridge History, p. 147n. (This immense sum is hard to credit; but the reference is from Antigua Records for 1763, communicated by V. L. Oliver.) The article on Colonel Henry Vassall (pp. 114–233) is a vivid and fully documented account of these tory clans and their way of life. See too Mrs. Mary I. Gozzaldi, “Elmwood and its Owners,” in Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings for 1920 and 1921, pp. 41–45. “They had their chariots and horses, their negro slaves . . . they spent their days like the landed gentry of England of that time, or like the West Indian planters among whom many of them were born.” See too 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, x. 41, paper by E. L. Pierce on the Diary of John Rowe, of Boston: “Rowe records festivities at several of them — at Col. Thomas Oliver’s (Dec. 9, 1766; Feb. 22, 1768; Aug. 17, 1769), where were the Brattles, Temples, Vassalls, Byards, Phippses, Van Homes, Edward Winslow, and Richard Lechmere.”
223 Coke, ed. Egerton, p. 228, gives the estimates of Richard Vassall and of Richard Lechmere as to the value of Elmwood in the market in the year 1774, before the troubles; they think it would then have sold for £2500. They assess the household property which Oliver was then forced to leave behind at £250 or £300 (he brought away much linen and plate); and make guesses at the worth of his carriages and horses, also confiscated. These Cambridge loyalists all testify on oath to the Commission about themselves and one another. In his Memorial of 1783 (Jones, p. 225), Oliver states that the stone of Elmwood came from Connecticut, and the glass from England (some of this glass is still shown).
224 Paige, p. 407.
225 Boston Gazette, May 3, 1773.
226 Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, i 173.
227 Jones, p. 225. The wording of Jones’s summary suggests a verbatim extract from the original.
228 Coke, ed. Egerton, p. 227.
229 A copy of his commission is in the Book of Commissions, Archives Department, State House, Boston. The text is quoted in the Publications of this Society, ii. 307–308. The gentlemen “took the oaths necessary to qualify themselves for a seat on the Council, being appointed by a mandamus from His Majesty.” I find no evidence for the rumor (quoted by Stark, p. 184, and mentioned in D. N. B.) that Thomas was appointed by the lung by mistake (“the King thought he was appointing Peter Oliver, a much more active man in the politics of the time”). Hutchinson’s remark, quoted above, at once disproves and explains the “rumor.”
230 Details about pay from Oliver’s personal sworn evidence, Coke, ed. Egerton, p. 227.
231 Text of Massachusetts Government Act in S. E. Morison, Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, pp. 100–101; and note: “unlike the other Colonies, where the Council or Upper House was appointed by the royal Governor, the Council of Massachusetts-Bay was annually elected by the whole legislature (General Court). Consequently it reflected the opinions of the whig majority.”
232 See, for details, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxviii 61–62; figures from Boston Gazette of Sept. 12, 1774.
233 No. 3702, p. 2. The Narrative is quoted by Sabine (ii. 130–133), but with many mistakes, and without the prefatory note; and (apparently from Sabine) both by Stark (pp. 185 ff.) and by V. L. Oliver (ii. 349–350).
234 This paper is given as in the Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1774. It is quoted in the Massachusetts Gazette (see last note); by Sabine (pp. 133–134); by Paige (pp. 155–156); and by V. L. Oliver (ii. 350). A copy, in an eighteenth-century hand, is in the Treasure Room of the Boston Public Library, and Mrs. E. C. Jeffrey was good enough to put me on the track of it. It is not in Oliver’s hand; and, besides, it is in holograph, whereas Oliver signed, with his own addendum, a paper presented to him. (I have found no trace of the original document.) The scene was staged as one of the pageants of Elmwood on June 14, 1930, under the auspices of the Cambridge Y. M. C. A.: and this copy was reproduced in the programme. The Lieut. Governor and “Mistress Oliver” were played by Mr. and Mrs. Truman D. Hayes; there were servants, and a delegation of five patriots.
235 Quoted at length by Paige, pp. 151 ff.
236 Justin Winsor, in Narrative and Critical History of America, vi. 115, states that “Joseph Warren, in Boston, heard of the tumult and hastened to the spot. His influence prevailed, and the sun went down without the shedding of blood.” See also R. Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, pp. 352–353, on the “Powder Alarm.” The patriot Warren was called to Cambridge to “prevent an immediate outbreak”; he found himself there at 8 a.m. on September 2, “in the midst of the excited multitude”; used “his influence efficiently to prevent a collision with the troops”; watched the “patience, temperance, and fortitude” (italics mine) of the “freemen” as they forced “obnoxious officials” to resign; and judged that if the troops had come from Boston, “not a man would have returned.” The “temperance” displayed against Oliver speaks for itself; there were 4000 against one. Neither Oliver nor the Gazette, however, refers to Warren’s presence.
237 Diary, i. 321.
238 In some modern works Oliver is described as having remained during this interval (Sept., 1774 to March, 1776), “civil governor” of Massachusetts. Sabine and Stark call him “Governor Oliver.” But Mr. Allen French, of Concord, has kindly given me a mass of cumulative evidence which he thinks is conclusive that Oliver remained Lieutenant Governor. This evidence includes, inter alia, (1) the description of him as Lieutenant Governor in General Howe’s List of Persons leaving Boston with the troops in March, 1776; and also in the List of American Sufferers according to their several Ranks (in the Shelburne Papers now in the W. L. Clements Library at Ann Arbor); (2) the title given to him in the Gay transcripts (see next note); (3) a letter of Lord George Germain to Gage, April 18, 1776, saying that he was superseded by Howe and adding, “It is not his Majesty’s intention to make any alteration, for the present, in regard to the Government of the Province of Massachusetts.” I may add that Oliver is always called “Lieutenant Governor” by Hutchinson and by the Commissioners of 1783–4.
The error seems to have arisen from an entry in Paige, p. 619 n.: “When Governor Gage returned to England, Pemberton says in his ms. Chronology (in the M. H. S. Library) under date of Oct. 10, 1775, ‘Sir William Howe succeeds to the military department, and is now Governor of Boston only’”; the inference being that Oliver was “civil governor.” But, as Mr. French points out, Pemberton may only have meant “that on Gage’s recall Howe was given command in his absence.” 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.” In his commission there is a provision that if the Governor should die or be absent, Oliver should act in his place with full authority. This, then, he would have exercised for about five months.
239 Publications of this Society, iii. 387. In C. M. Andrews’ Guide to Materials for American History in the Public Record Office (i. 128), among the petitions and memorials to the Secretary of State, is an entry: “from Lieut.-Gov. Thomas Oliver and president of council of Massachusetts, regarding sufferings in Boston. July 18, 1776.” This was apparently submitted after Oliver reached England.
240 Coke, ed. Egerton, pp. 227–228. The introduction by the Editor, the late Professor H. E. Egerton, of Oxford, is of absorbing interest. He makes clear the nature of the Commission, their qualifications, their difficulties, and their principles in reporting and recommending. The investigation into “loyalty” was “the cornerstone, the groundwork of the whole” (p. xxx). There is a lifelike account of the characters, ranks, and disasters of the claimants (pp. xlii ff.).
241 Mr. French has kindly furnished me with abstracts of two Oliver manuscripts in the Public Record Office pertaining to the events of this period. One (C. O. 5: 769, pp. 297 ff.) is a letter to an unknown recipient under date of March 10, 1776, in which he declares that he is under embarrassment whether to proceed with the army or to embark for England. He has decided, however, that since room on an available ship for England is limited, he will go to Halifax and thence to England. The other (C. O. 5: 769, pp. 302 ff.) is a letter to Lord George Germain, dated at Halifax, April 21, 1776. In it he tells of his difficulties in providing quarters for the refugees. He has received his Lordship’s instructions, which he is unable to carry out; and as there is nothing for him to do in Halifax, he is going to England.
242 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proa, xviii. 266.
243 For the following references by Hutchinson, see Diary ii. 17, 21, 61, 66, 67, 83.
244 A. Kingsley Porter, Elmwood (privately printed, 1930), pp. 1–2. The author, the present holder, was good enough to permit quotation (hence also the details about the later occupants, and the passage from J. R. Lowell).
245 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xv. 132.
246 Sabine, EC. 134–135; he does not give, nor do I know, his source. In 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xix. 216–217, there are allusions, quoted from the Diary of Samuel Quincy, formerly Solicitor-General of the Massachusetts Province, to certain affairs in Ireland. On Dec. 28, “Lieutenant-Governor Oliver called on, and presented me with a commission from the Court of Chancery in Ireland to examine witnesses in his cause with Lucas and others.” On Dec. 30, Oliver calls again to tell Quincy “the nature of the evidence.” On Jan. 15, 1777, various Commissioners, including Peter Oliver, C. J., go with Quincy to Sir William Pepperell to take the deposition of Isaac Royall; and there is a dinner at T. Oliver’s. This business is not further explained, except by a reference in Hutchinson’s Diary, (letter from Peter Oliver, Jr., to Elisha Hutchinson, n. 410, July 27, 1784): “Lieu’ Gov. Oliver and his family are going to live in Ireland. His eldest daughter Mary is to be married ere long.” The plan to migrate seems to have gone no further; it does not appear at what date the Olivers settled in Bristol.
247 Stark, pp. 137, 142.
248 Entry from V. L. Oliver, i. 260 ff.; and abridged pedigree (many details also given of Freeman wills and estates).
249 Trees abridged from V. L. Oliver.
250 Sabine, i. 135.
251 Jones, Loyalists, p. 224 (entries from Audit Office and elsewhere).
252 This affair is told, in detail, by S. F. Batchelder, Bits of Cambridge History, pp. 197–198.
253 V. L. Oliver, ii. 346ff., gives: the text of the two inscriptions (the first of which was kindly copied for me by my friend, the late Mr. J. H. Fowler, of Clifton, who also verified the coat of arms on the stone); the note from the Gentleman’s Magazine; and the text of the will (quoted as “P. C. C. Wynne”), of which a summary is given by Jones, p. 226.
254 Speeches of Josiah Quincy, pp. 367–368.
255 Gooch and Laski, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, p. 227.
256 See Heinrich Lammasch in the American Journal of International Law, x. 689 ff., and Quincy Wright in id., xviii. 764 and note 46; also A. Vanderpol, La Doctrine Scolastique du Droit de Guerre. For reference to this last work I am indebted to Professor J. S. Reeves of the University of Michigan.
257 Winthrop’s Journal (Hosmer ed.) ii. 39; Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 85.
258 For a more exhaustive examination of Williams’ views on war, see James E. Ernst, The Political Thought of Roger Williams, pp. 100 ff.; H. L. Osgood in Political Science Quarterly, vi. 211.
259 Ernst, p. 100; 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 264, 284.
260 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 439.
261 I have examined over thirty Puritan sermons, for the most part Artillery Election sermons, in the John Carter Brown Library, the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the library of Harvard College. Thanks are due to those in charge of these collections for permission to use these rare and valuable works. Special mention should be made of a single volume at the Massachusetts Historical Society which contains the Artillery Election sermons for 1728, and 1732 to 1740 inclusive. In citing individual sermons, I have indicated the library where they are to be found, jcb standing for John Carter Brown Library, mhs for the Massachusetts Historical Society, and hcl for the library of Harvard College.
262 Military Duties, Recommended to an Artillery Company (jcb).
263 War is Lawful, pp. 8–9 (mhs). There is an interesting account of Samuel Mather and his writings by Albert Matthews in our Publications, xviii. 206–229.
264 The Expediency and Utility of War . . . considered (1759), p. 15 (mhs).
265 The Necessity of a Well Experienced Souldiery (preached 1675), p. 8. The reference is to an 1839 reprint in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
266 Expectanda (1691), pp. 12 ff. (jcb).
267 Id. pp. 19–20.
268 Ib., p. 22.
269 The Right Method of Safety (1704), p. 10 (hcl).
270 Expectanda, p. 16.
271 The Knowledge of God Securing from Flattery (1705), p. 39 (hcl).
272 Soldiers Counselled and Encouraged (1741), p. 17 (mhs).
273 Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution, p. 15.
274 The Necessity of a Well Experienced Souldiery, p. 8.
275 Expectanda, p. 75.
276 The Scriptural passages, respectively, are: Luke 3:14; 7: 1–10; Acts 10.
277 The Glories of the Lord of Hosts, and the Fortitude of the Religious Hero (1740), p. 28 (mhs). In a note on pp. 6–7 of this sermon there is a useful list of previous Artillery Election sermons.
278 Abraham in Arms; or the first Religious General with his Army engaging in a War (1678), pp. 3–4 (jcb). For the sources of Grotius, see Lammasch in the American Journal of International Law, x. 692 and Vanderpol, as above, pp. 51, 297.
279 The Lord a Man of War (1735), p. 24 (MHS).
280 Martial Wisdom Recommended (1737), p. 16 (MHS).
281 The Origin of War examin’d and applied (1733), p. 21 (MHS).
282 Id., p. 15.
283 The Art of War Lawful and Necessary for a Christian People, pp. 6 ff. (JCB). I have examined only a few of the sermons of this period. Doubtless many such passages could be found. For the importance of the clergy in the revolutionary movement, see Alice M. Baldwin, New England Clergy.
284 Plymouth Colony Records IX. 3 ff.
285 A. Vanderpol, pp. 51 ff.; Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacts (Classics of International Law), ii. 171 ff., and Introduction, xxxvi.
286 Vanderpol, pp. 130 ff.
287 The Origin of War examin’d and applied, p. 22.
288 Souldiers Counselled and Comforted (1689), p. 29 (jcb). This is not an Artillery Election sermon.
289 The Soveraign Efficacy of Divine Providence (printed for Samuel Sewall, 1682), p. 27 (jcb).
290 Oliver Peabody, An Essay to revive and encourage Military Exercises (1732), p. 25 (mhs).
291 William Williams, Martial Wisdom Recommended (1737), p. 27 (mhs).
292 For references to this controversy, see Charles P. Keith, Chronicles of Pennsylvania, II. 897 ff.; The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (Smyth ed.), I. 361 ff., and n. 336 ff.; Pennsylvania Colonial Records, v. 158 ff.
293 Tennent, The late Association, pp. 17–18. I have used a copy printed at Philadelphia in 1748 by William Bradford, and now in the John Carter Brown library. In the same collection is a treatise by William Currie entitled, A Treatise on the Lawfulness of Defensive War. It is a reply to a Quaker answer to Tennent.
294 Plymouth Colony Records, IX. 3 ff.
295 Id., x. 26, 428.
296 Id., p. 56.
297 Id., p. 76.
298 New Haven Colonial Records, 1653–1665, p. 8.
299 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 79, 88.
300 Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), I. 129 ff.
301 Id., pp. 136 ff.
302 Winthrop’s Journal (Hosmer ed.), i. 196.
303 On the Cotton code, see F. C. Gray, “Remarks on the Early Laws of Massachusetts Bay,” in 3 Mass. Hist. Soc. Col., VIII. 191–237; W. H. Whitmore, A Bibliographical Sketch of the Laws of the Massachusetts Colony from 1630 to 1686; W. C. Ford, “Cotton’s ‘Moses his Judicials,’” in 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., XVI. 274–284.
304 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 137.
305 Winthrop, i. 151; Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 147.
306 Id., pp. 174–175.
307 Winthrop, I. 196.
308 Notice the statement in the preface to the Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, reprinted from the copy of the 1648 edition in the Henry E. Huntington Library (1929): “. . . about nine years since wee used the help of some of the Elders of our Churches to compose a modell of the Iudiciall lawes of Moses with such other cases as might be referred to them, with intent to make use of them in composing our lawes, but not to have them published as the lawes of this Jurisdiction: nor were they voted in Court.”
309 Massachusetts Colony Records, I 222; Winthrop, I 262.
310 J. J. Currier, History of Newbury, Mass., p. 56.
311 Boston Records, III. iv.
312 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 262.
313 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 208.
314 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 279; Winthrop, I. 323–324.
315 Thomas Lechford, Note-Book (1885), pp. 237–238.
316 3 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., III 88–90.
317 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vi 26–27.
318 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 292–293.
319 Id., p. 320.
320 Id., p. 340.
321 Id., p. 346; Winthrop, ii. 48–49.
322 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 344.
323 C. F. Adams, Antinomianism, p. 225.
324 On the authorship of this pamphlet, printed in Cambridge, Mass., in 1663, see my note in the American Historical Review, xxxvii. 267–269.
325 New Haven Colonial Records, i 12.
326 Id., ii. 518 (“Newhavens Case Stated”).
327 Winthrop, ii. 161.
328 See my “John Cotton and the New Haven Colony,” in the New England Quarterly, iii. 82–94.
329 The First Book of Records of the Town of Southampton, pp. 18–22.
330 For this suggestion I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews.
331 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 187–192.
332 Id., pp. 171–187.
333 Winthrop (Savage ed., 1825), I 322.
334 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., VIII. 191–237.
335 Lechford, Note-Book, p. 237.
336 See Albert Matthews, “The Name ‘New England’ as Applied to Massachusetts,” in the Publications of this Society, xxv. 382–390.
337 J. T. Adams, Founding of New England, p. 211.
338 The manuscript of this letter is at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
339 David Loggan, Oxonia Illustrata (Oxford, 1675).
340 Mather refers to this custom in the Magnalia (edition, 1853), ii. 21.
341 The splendor of the entertainments on such occasions is illustrated by the following: “I have sent you here inclosed warrants for four brace of Bucks and a Stag; the last Sir Arthur Manwaring procured of the king for you, towards keeping of your Act, i have sent you a Warrant also for a brace of Bucks out of Waddon Chace; besides, you shall receive by this Carrier a great Wicker Hamper, with two jowls of Sturgeon, six barrels of pickled Oysters, three barrels of Bologna Olives, with some other Spanish commodities.” Christopher Wordsworth, Social Life at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century, p. 285.
342 This was the Encaenia, the survival of the literary and musical performance with which the Sheldonian Theatre was opened in 1669. Repeated annually on the Friday before the Act, there soon developed a tendency to confuse the two. J. Wells, The Oxford Degree Ceremony, pp. 31–32.
343 The Terrae filius of this year must have lived up to tradition if the sub-title of his printed essays is an indication of their contents — More Burning Work for the Oxford Convocation. Wordsworth, p. 298.
344 The following is an eighteenth-century account of Terrae filius.
It has, till of late, been a custom, from time immemorial, for one . . . to mount the Rostrum, at Oxford at certain seasons, and divert an innumerable crowd of spectators . . . with a merry oration in the Fescennine manner, interspers’d with secret history, raillery, and sarcasm, as the occasions of the times supply’d him with matter.
If a venerable head of a college was caught snug a-bed with his neighbour’s wife; or shaking his elbows on a Sunday morning; or flattering a prime minister for a bishoprick . . . the hoary old sinner might expect to hear of it from our lay-pulpit the next act. Or if a celebrated toast and a young student were seen together at midnight under a shady myrtle-tree, billing like two pretty turtledoves, to him it belong’d, being a poet as well as an orator, to tell the tender story in a melancholy ditty, adapted to pastoral musick . . . .
Notwithstanding what some wise heads have thought to the contrary, I cannot see the great unreasonableness of such publick licenses as these at particular seasons: For why should a poor undergraduate be call’d an idle rascal, and a good for nothing blockhead, for being perhaps but twice at chapel in one day, or for coming into college at ten or eleven a clock at night, or for a thousand other greater trifles than these; whilst the grey-headed doctors may indulge themselves in what debaucheries and corruptions they please, with impunity, and without censure? Methinks it could not do any great hurt to the universities, if the old fellows were to be jobbed at least once in four or five years for their irregularities, as the young ones are every day, if they offend.
Indeed, some of my predecessors have us’d the old gentlemen too roughly, and run their christian patience quite out of breath. One of these academical pickle-herrings scurrilously affronted the learned president of St. John’s college (in defiance of the statue de contumeliis compescendis) by shaking a box and dice in this manner, Facta est alea, doctor, Seven’s the main, in allusion to a scandalous report handed about by the doctor’s enemies, that he was guilty of that infamous practice, and had lost great sums of other people’s money at dice. . . .
Several such indignities as these having been offer’d to the grave fathers of the university, (the reverend the heads and governors of colleges and halls) they winc’d like so many gall’d horses, and said to one another, Gentlemen, these are no jests; if we suffer this, we shall become the sport of freshmen and servitors; let us expel him, for an example to others not to take such freedoms with their superiors.
And Terrae-Filius was accordingly expell’d almost every act. Yet for all that, some body was still found upon these occasions, endow’d with christian courage enough to rebuke wickedness in high places, at the expense of infamy and nakedness; the usual consequences of incurring ecclesiastical displeasure! Nicholas Amhurst, Terrae-Filius: or, the Secret History of the University of Oxford (London, 1726), pp. 1–4.
345 The manuscript of this letter is in the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.
346 An account of the last services in the wooden meeting-house of the Old South Church, erected in 1669, was printed in the New England Weekly Journal of March 3, 1729. It is not a little curious to find the pastor of the church referring to it as the “fourth Church,” when it was the Third Church. It is possible that he regarded the First Baptist Church, founded in 1665, as the “third” Church, which indeed it was, historically considered.
347 Michael Spaher, An Exact Survey of the Microcosmus, or Little World; being an Anatomy of the bodies of Man and Woman. . . . London, 1670. The title, somewhat modified appears in the Term Catalogues for 1675 and 1702.
348 Edward Wells (c 1665–1727), A New Set of Maps, both of Ancient and Present Geography . . . Together with a Geographical Treatise . . . particularly adapted to the Use and Design of the said Maps. 2nd impression. In Term Catalogues, 1708.
349 Probably an advance copy of his circular letter, dated April 10, 1729, asking for facts. W. C. Ford, Massachusetts Broadsides, p. 77.
350 The Reverend Samuel Newman (d 1663), of Rehoboth, author of the so-called Cambridge Concordance.
351 The Reverend Noah Newman (d 1676).
352 Capt. Joseph Prince (d 1747): cf. our Publications, xix. 332, note 2.
353 John Senex (d 1740).
354 Jonathan Belcher (H. C. 1728).
355 See Benjamin Rand, Berkeley’s American Sojourn (1932).
356 Dr. Alexander Hamilton, a visitor at Cambridge, August 15, 1744, refers in his Itinerarium to “some curious editions of the classics, presented to the college by Dean Barklay.” Hart edition (1907), p. 174. They were undoubtedly destroyed in the fire of 1764.
357 President Thomas Clap, valuing Berkeley’s benefaction at £400, wrote of these volumes as being “the finest Collection of Books that ever came together at one Time into America.” The Annals or History of Yale College (1766), p. 38.
358 Stratford.
359 Clap says (p. 37) that the “Descriptions and Conditions” in the first deed were not “perfectly adapted to the State of the College.”
360 Apparently the only measure taken by the Trustees was to vote that the Rector “at the Cost of this College order suitable Boxes to be made for the Reception of the Revd Dean Berkeley’s Collection of Books.” Franklin B. Dexter, Ed., Documentary History of Yale University, p. 305.
361 Jared Eliot (d 1763), Yale 1706, clergyman and physician, F.R.S.
362 For further information about Jenner see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlvii. 437—444; 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 474; vii. 10; 3 Coll., iii. 99; iv. 144; 4 Coll., vii. 10, 104, 334, 340 f., 344, 350, 355 ff., 359; facsimile of signature and seal, 4 Coll., vii. plate 7.
363 Fordyce, History of the Bishoprick of Durham, p. 761.
364 Venner’s Insurrection; see New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg. XXXVI. 407.
365 3 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., IV. 128.
366 Id., p. 144.
367 The Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), i. 257–258.
368 Palfrey had evidently seen this copy. Cf. History of New England, I. 584 n1.
369 Transcription, with notes, of MS. Rawlinson C 934, folios 32 to 38 verso, from a photostat furnished by the Bodleian Library. The first line if each entry reproduces the original. Then follow the fuller titles so far as found, with notes.
370 This entry was substituted for another crossed out.
371 The name of the author has been crossed out in the original ms.
372 The manuscript contains no number 177.
373 The manuscript shows signs of emendation; the number may originally have been “6,” changed to “4,” because of the number of the gospels, by some one who did not know the full nature of the book.
374 Figures which may represent the price have been crossed out.
375 As Weld did not number his books, numbers beginning with 201 have been assigned to them.
376 “& Proverbs” crossed out.
377 Crossed out.
378 Following this, crossed out, is “Withers on 1 Psal.”
379 The title “Swan Song” was a great favorite in subtitles for works written not long before the author’s death.
380 Although this space is left blank in the ms., it seems clear that Dod was meant as the author.
381 The list ends on folio 38 verso of the manuscript
382 Transcription, with notes, of a paper preserved in the archives of Middlesex County, from a photostat furnished by the Register of Probate, Cambridge. The list is in two columns, unnumbered. For convenience, numbers beginning with 396 have been assigned the entries.
383 The reading may be “Heads.”
384 Other miscellaneous items included in this inventory are:
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An Old Bedstead |
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an old chest |
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a Brass hetchell |
lb |
s |
dd |
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5 old chairs |
02 |
00 |
00 |
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A Cupboard for Books |
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a Table |
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A Cupboards Head, |
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Silver clasps for a Bible |
00 |
02 |
06 |
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Twenty Acres of Land Lying at the Neck, valued att |
200 |
00 |
00 |
385 This section of the inventory, constituting the second page of the ms., is written in another hand.
386 See New England Quarterly, v. (January, 1932), 35–54.
387 John G. Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 41.
388 Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston, p. 5.
389 7 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., viii. 373.
390 Id., p. 560.
391 5 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 285; Cotton Mather also notes this meeting in his Diary. Editions of A New Version of the Psalms of David, Fitted to the Tunes Used in Churches, by N. Brady and N. Tate, were printed in New York in 1710 and 1725, and in Boston in 1713 and 1720.
392 For example see:
Thomas Symmes, The Reasonableness of Regular Singing or Singing by Note. In an Essay to Revive the True and Ancient Mode of Singing Psalm-Tunes. Boston, 1720.
Thomas Walter, The Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained or an Introduction to the Art of Singing by Note. Boston, 1721. Of this Evans says that in it appears the first music printed in bars in the United States. It was advertised by the Boston News-Letter for February 13, 1720/21, as “Now in the Press.”
Thomas Walter, The Sweet Psalmist of Israel, “a sermon preach’d at the Lecture held in Boston, by the Society for promoting regular & good singing,” etc. Boston, 1722.
John Tufts, A Very Plain and Easy Introduction to the Art of Singing Psalm-Tunes. Boston, 1721.
Peter Thacher, John Danforth, and Samuel Danforth, Cases of Conscience about Singing Psalms, Briefly Considered and Resolved. Boston, 1723.
Cotton Mather, A Pacificatory Letter. Boston, 1723.
Josiah Dwight, An Essay to Silence the Outcry that has been Made in Some Places against Regular Singing. Boston, 1725.
393 7 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., viii, 693. See also Mather’s letter to Thomas Bradbury, July 1, 1724. Id., p. 797.
394 7 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., viii. 606, 608, and 624.
395 The following census of copies is given through the courtesy of Mr. Thomas J. Holmes, Librarian of the William Gwinn Mather Library, Cleveland:
- 1. American Antiquarian Society.
- 2. John Carter Brown Library.
- 3. Harvard College Library.
- 4. Matt B. Jones, Boston, Mass.
- 5. Massachusetts Historical Society.
- 6 and 7. New York Historical Society (2 copies).
- 8. New York Public Library.
- 9. Lemuel A. Welles, Esq., New York City.
- 10. Yale University Library.
396 J. A. Stoughton, Windsor Farmes, p. 77.
397 E. C. Smyth, “Jonathan Edwards,” Andover Review, xiii. 5 n; see also S. E. Dwight, Life of President Edwards (1829), p. 17.
398 See note on Lily’s Latin grammar, Publications of this Society, xxvii. 24.
399 Dwight, Edwards, p. 18.
400 J. S. Clark, Historical Sketch of the Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, p. 181.
401 These figures are based on a comparative analysis of works of American writers as they are set forth in Evans’ American Bibliography.
402 Andover Review, xiii. 4.
403 Id., p. 5.
404 Edwards Collection, Yale University, No. 26. Cited as Ed. mss., Yale.
405 T. D. Woolsey in Memorial Volume of the Edwards Family Meeting at Stockbridge, Mass. (1871), p. 31. But see also S. E. Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony, p. 207.
406 Woolsey, p. 31.
407 Dwight, Edwards, p. 30.
408 F. B. Dexter, A Sketch of the History of Yale University, p. 14.
409 Dwight, Edwards, p. 32.
410 This is the Port Royal Logic, written by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole and first published, in French, in 1662. This book is one of the products of the Port Royalists, remarkable as teachers and text-book writers, that survived the attacks levied against them by the Jesuits.
411 In 1714, the Trustees received at Saybrook at one time over 700 volumes to add to the very slender library, the result of Jeremiah Dummer’s assiduous solicitations among his English friends. In 1718, the library contained some 1300 volumes, but in their transfer to New Haven at least a fifth were lost or destroyed. As Edwards was at Wethersfield until 1719, he could not have had easy access to them. See Dexter, Sketch, pp. 14, 19, 100; Papers of the New Haven Historical Society, iii. 240; E. Oviatt, Beginnings of Yale, p. 367.
412 Woolsey, p. 32; Oviatt, Beginnings, pp. 422–424.
413 Dwight, Edwards, p. 100.
414 Ed. Mss., Yale, No. 5; Dwight, Edwards, p. 703. The reference is to modesty in writing.
415 Dwight, Edwards, pp. 702–703.
416 Deciphered by Upham, 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xv. 515.
417 “Jonathan Edwards’ Last Will,” Bibliotheca Sacra,xxxiii. 438 ff.
418 J. R. Trumbull, History of Northampton, ii. 65–66.
419 New England Quarterly, i. 234.
420 Ed. Mss., Yale, No. 11.
421 Colman Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
422 Ed. Mss., Yale, No. 26.
423 Dwight, Edwards, p. 251.
424 New England Quarterly, i. 232.
425 Joseph Pynchon (H. C. 1726), preacher and doctor.
426 Papers of the Connecticut Valley Historical Society, ii. 2.
427 Waterston Autographs, i. m.h.s.
428 Ed. Mss., Yale, No. 24.
429 Dwight, Edwards, p. 94.
430 For convenience, I designate the reverse side of the envelope, on which the first entries were made, page A; the obverse, page B; the beginning of the bound pages, 1, 2, etc., as Edwards himself numbered them.
431 Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia (1738).
432 Error for 1735.
433 This refers, I think, to the library of the Hampshire Ministers’ Association, housed probably by one of the Springfield ministers.
434 The dates, and the pages on which they were entered, might roughly be stated thus: 1720?–1726, pp. A and B; 1726–1736, pp. 1–4; 1736–1746, pp. 5–15; 1746–1757, pp. 15–43. The last date, on page 42, is January 13, 1757.
435 The items are tabulated together with the volume and page in Edwards’ Works (1829) where they appear. The key is as follows:
- Affec. Religious Affections, Vol. v.
- Bible. Notes on the Bible, Vol. ix.
- Crea. End in Creation, Vol. iii.
- Faith. Justification by Faith Alone, Vol. v.
- Messiah. Types of the Messiah, Vol. ix.
- Mind. The Mind, Vol. I.
- Misrep. Misrepresentations Corrected, Vol. iv.
- Observ. Miscellaneous Observations, Vol. vii.
- Qual. Qualifications for Full Communion, Vol. iv.
- Prayer. Union in Prayer. Vol. iii.
- Redemp. History of Redemption, Vol. iii.
- Remarks. Miscellaneous Remarks, Vol. vii.
- Sin. Original Sin, Vol. ii.
- Trinity. Observations on the Trinity (Smyth, ed., 1880).
- Will. Freedom of the Will, Vol. ii.
436 Clark, Congregational Churches in Mass., pp. 181–182.
437 An Unpublished Essay of Edwards on the Trinity (1903), pp. 39 ff.
438 Dwight, Edwards, p. 550.
439 S. Hopkins, Life and Character of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 43–14.
440 F. H. Foster, A Genetic History of New England Theology, p. 48.
441 Andover Theological Library, Edwards Mss.
442 Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743), Scottish author of the treatise, noted in its day, Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (1747), a book which combats Berkeley and Malebranche as tending to Pantheism. See A. V. G. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, p. 347.
443 Thomas Chubb (1679–1746) is not referred to by name, but a good part of Freedom of the Will is directed against his deistic writings.
444 Considering that Edwards’ later writings were directed against deism, I think that he must have known something about other deists: Charles Blount, Charles Leslie, John Toland, Anthony Collins, William Woolston — for he often asked Erskine to give him more information about books that were appearing on the subject, and he probably scanned the magazines for such works particularly.
445 Mentioned in the Catalogue, but not crossed off. But Law was a very important figure in a field that could not escape Edwards’ attention.
446 “Notes on the Bible,” Works (1830), ix. 176.
447 Catalogue, p. 26.
448 Id., p. 34. Though it was a palpable imitation of Fénelon’s Télémaque, I suspect that Edwards thought of it as a story of travel.
449 Id., p. 36.
450 This is crossed off (page 2). The volume went into an eleventh edition in 1726. See Evans, i.
451 In 1714, Steele proposed a Life which he never carried out. See G. A. Aitken, Life of Richard Steele, ii. 29.
452 The Ladies’ Library was “written by a lady” [Mary Wray, granddaughter of Jeremy Taylor and wife of Sir Cecil Wray?] and published by Sir Richard Steele in three volumes, 1714. The set was not in Yale at that time. Possibly one of Edwards’ sisters who had been “sent . . . to Boston to finish their education” (Dwight, Edwards, p. 17) brought it home.
453 From which he quotes in the Catalogue, p. 35.
454 Edwards, p. 601 and note.
455 For a full discussion of the matter, see my article “Jonathan Edwards and the ‘Young Folks’ Bible,’” New England Quarterly, v. 37–54.
456 Dwight, Edwards, p. 185.
457 F. B. Dexter, “Early Private Libraries in New England,” in Proceedings, American Antiquarian Society, n.s., xviii. 145, quotes Mellen Chamberlain as saying that “before 1700 there was not in Massachusetts, so far as is known, a copy of Shakespeare’s or of Milton’s poems.” See, however, Albert Matthews’ views on this subject in the Nation (N. Y.) lxxxvii. 624–625, 650. He points out that Paradise Lost was quoted three times by Cotton Mather in the Magnalia in or before 1700.
458 Letters from New England (Prince Society), pp. 68, 78.
459 W. C. Ford, The Boston Book Market, p. 44. For invoices of books sent to booksellers in Boston, 1682–1685, see T. G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, pp. 218–237. He also lists (pp. 115–117) nearly twenty-five booksellers in Boston between 1672 and 1700, so there were plenty of channels to buy books.
460 Elizabeth C. Cook, Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, pp. 13–14.
461 7 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii. 368. This was an amazingly large library. See also J. H. Tuttle, “The Library of the Mathers,” Proceedings, American Antiquarian Society, n. s. xx. Wright says (p. 126) that it was the best.
462 Revolutionary New England, p. 35.
463 J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 31.
464 This is peculiarly interesting in view of the fact that “in Connecticut in 1698, [lawyers] were legislated against in company with drunkards, keepers of disorderly houses and other people of ill fame.” Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 39.
465 H. B. Parkes, “New England in the Seventeen Thirties,” New England Quarterly, iii. 401. He quotes from the News-Letter of March 30, 1739.
466 Id., p. 401.
467 The Boston Gazette appeared in 1719. James Franklin maintained in his Courant office a library for the use of writers. How great the circulation was is not recorded. Wright, Literary Culture, p. 187.
468 Cook, Literary Influences, p. 13.
469 Wright, Literary Culture, pp. 82–95. See the early volumes of Evans for chronological lists of early Americana.
470 Travels in New England and New York, iv. 323.
471 Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 32. Public libraries did not appear for a century. The Redwood Library was established in Newport in 1747 and the New York Society Library in 1754. But these of course were in the nature of literary society libraries, as was the Philadelphia library founded by Franklin and others in 1731. There were parochial libraries formed between 1698 and 1730 through the efforts particularly of the Reverend Thomas Bray, of London, founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Thirty of these were established in Maryland, and others in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But these were intended for ministers and not for the layman. See “Public Libraries in the U. S. A.,” Report of the Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Pt. I. (1876), 32 n. For the Boston “Town Library” (1653), see Wright, Literary Culture, p. 43; and Publications of this Society, xii. 116–135.
472 The library of the Reverend John Williams, of Deerfield, is the only one mentioned by Sheldon (History of Deerfield, I. 465) as existing in the town, and it was inventoried in 1729 at the time of Williams’ death. Its contents of 190 volumes often parallel the items of Edwards’ Catalogue.
The library of Edwards’ grandfather Stoddard (see Trumbull, Northampton, ii. 65–66), inventoried in 1728, has been already mentioned. Col. John Stoddard, Anthony’s younger brother and a man of wealth, wide influence, and fine intelligence, died in 1748, and, although his estate was valued at more than £35,000 Trumbull (Northampton, II. 177), makes no mention of any books among the items of interest in the inventory.
473 See F. B. Dexter, in Proceedings, American Antiquarian Society, n. s., xviii. 135–147. Some of the libraries discussed are, however, of the seventeenth century.
474 The inventory of the estate of Michael Perry, Boston bookseller (1700) is given in the appendix of Dunton’s Letters and similarly in W. C. Ford’s Boston Book Market.
475 Catalogue, p. A. I assume that this refers to Addison’s drama, although it might refer to Cato’s Letters, which appeared in the London and later in the British Journal by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, reprinted in four volumes in 1724.
476 One fifth were from him; the rest were contributed by Steele, Newton, Kennett, Andros, Nicholson, Blackmore, Woodwood, Bentley, Whiston, Halley, and Yale. See Wright, Literary Culture, p. 184, whose information is taken from President Clap’s MS Catalogue of early accessions to the Yale library.
477 Wright, Literary Culture, p. 184.
478 Over a thousand volumes.
479 Four hundred volumes.
480 Wright, Literary Culture, pp. 186–187. But six English authors of note had been republished from the American press before 1730 (although there were, between 1639 and 1729, 132 printers located in 22 places throughout the colonies, of whom 69 were in Boston): one work each from Wither, Bacon, Steele, Swift, and Defoe; four from Bunyan. Evans, i.
481 F. I. Carpenter, “The Radicalism of Jonathan Edwards,” New England Quarterly, iv. 629 ff.
482 “The Royal Society of London and Its Influence upon Scientific Thought in the American Colonies,” Scientific Monthly, xxiii. 336–355, 448–469.
483 Italics mine.
484 See page 100, above.
485 The text given here is from a copy in one of Newman’s letter-books in the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.
486 See C. H. McIlwain’s introduction to Wraxall’s Abridgment of the Indian Affairs.
487 E. Salone, La Colonisation de la Nouvelle-France, p. 256.
488 Order of May 21, 1696: Archives des Colonies (hereafter abbreviated AC.), B19:118vo. (All archives cited in footnotes are in Paris.)
489 Letters Patent of May 12, 1678. Pierre Margry, Editor, Découvertes et Établissements des Français, i. 337. (Hereafter referred to as “Margry.”)
490 King to La Barre, August 5, 1683, Margry, ii. 310.
491 La Salle’s memoirs, in Margry, ii. 359; iii. 17.
492 Minister of Marine to De Cussy, March 4, 1684, Margry, ii. 377; La Salle’s commission, April 14, 1684, Margry, ii. 382; orders to La Barre, same date, AC., B11:40.
493 See Henri Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, p. 303; Margry, v. 14; Denonville to Minister of Marine, August 25, 1687, AC., C11A:9:61; Denonville’s memoir of 1688, AC., C11A:10:100.
494 See note 2 on page 227.
495 Frontenac and Champigny to Minister of Marine, October 26, 1696, AC., C11A:14:119; royal memoir to Frontenac and Champigny, April 27, 1697, AC., B19:234vo.
496 Letters of king and of minister, May, 1697, quoted in Margry, iv, introduction, p. iv.
497 Minister of Marine to Frontenac and Champigny, April 27, 1697, AC., B19:234vo.
498 Louise P. Kellogg, The French Régime in Wisconsin and the Northwest, pp. 251–252; Margry, vi. 55–58.
499 Le Sueur’s memoir, 1697(?), is in Margry, vi. 59–61.
500 See note 1, above. See also abstract of a second memoir by Le Sueur, of which the original is not in the archives, AC., C11A:120: no page number.
501 Letter of Argoud to Minister of Marine, December 10, 1697, Margry, iv. 19–21, and accompanying memoir, id., pp. 21–43.
502 Minister of Marine to Argoud, December 14, 1697, Archives de la Marine (hereafter abbreviated AM.) B2; 122:430.
503 Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732, pp. 48–60.
504 AC., C11A; 125: piece no. 78 (printed in Margry, vi. 66).
505 Memoir to Frontenac and Champigny, AC., B20:71vo.
506 Minister of Marine to Iberville, June 4, 1698, Margry, iv. 49. The last sentence indicates that the selection had been made in May.
507 Mémoire pour servir d’instruction au Sieur d’Iberville, July 23, 1698, AC., B20:111vo (printed in Margry, iv. 72).
508 The documents are for the most part printed in Margry, iv.
509 Mémoire de la Coste de la Floride et d’une partie du Mexique, AC., C13A:1: 155 (printed in Margry, iv. 308); Iberville to Minister of Marine, June 29, 1699, Margry, iv. 116; Iberville to Minister of Marine, August 11, 1699, AC., C13A: 1:101 (printed in Margry, iv. 328).
510 Orders to Iberville for second voyage, September 22, 1699, AC., B20:259vo (printed in Margry, iv. 348).
511 Minister of Marine to Iberville, August 12, 1699, AM., B2:137:78.
512 Journal of Iberville’s second voyage, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Français, Nouvelles Acquisitions 9296:7 (printed in Margry, iv. 395–431).
513 Relation of Sagean, Archives du Service Hydrographique (hereafter abbreviated ASH.), 672: cahier 3 (printed in Margry, vi. 95–162); Minister of Marine to Desclouzeaux, April 7, 1700, AM., B2:147:8vo; and ASH., 672: cahier 4 (printed in Margry, vi. 162–166).
514 Memoir of Iberville, undated, ASH., 672: cahier 4, piece 2.
515 Juchereau de Saint-Denys, Mémoire pour l’établissement d’une Colonie au Mississippy, AC., C13B: 1: no page number; concession to Juchereau, June 4, 1701, AC., B22:264vo (printed in Margry, v. 351); Minister of Marine to Iberville, July 20, 1701, AM., B2:155:105 (printed in part in Margry, iv. 487).
516 Memoir of Iberville, ASH., 672: cahier 4, piece 2.
517 Salone, Colonisation de la Nouvelle-France, pp. 174–176; Minister of Marine to Bégon, July 20, 1701, AM., B2:155:105.
518 Documents on negotiations to secure the cession of Pensacola by Spain are in Margry, iv. 541–574; discussion in William E. Dunn, Spanish and French Rivalry in the Gulf Region, 1678–1702, pp. 205–215. Selection of the Mobile River site was indicated in instructions to Iberville, August 27, 1701, AM., B2:152:156.
519 Memoir of Iberville, undated, abstracted in AC., C13C:2:54.
520 Memoir of Iberville, June 20, 1702, AC., C13C:2:43 (printed in Margry, iv.593).
521 Minister of Marine to Duguay, April 30, 1704, AM., B2:175:277.
522 Minister of Marine to Iberville, January 30, 1704, AM., B2:174:254vo.
523 Minister of Marine to Bienville and La Salle, February 13, 1704, AC., B25:10vo; and to Iberville, same date, AM., B2:174:374.
524 No detailed history of the infancy of the colony has been published. Peter J. Hamilton’s Colonial Mobile, Pierre Heinrich’s La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, 1717–1731, and N. M. Surrey’s The Commerce of Louisiana during the French Régime, 1699–1763, all contain material on the early years. An unpublished doctoral thesis by the writer of this paper, entitled The French in Louisiana, 1699–1712, covers in considerable detail the period indicated.
525 Projet sur la Caroline, 1702 or early 1703, AC., C11A:20:224; plan of March 17, 1703, AM., B4:25:362; projet, undated, AC, C13A:1:445; Iberville to Minister of Marine, June 26, 1704, AM., B4:26:482; memoir of 1705, AM., B4:29:213.
526 Conditions sous lesquelles le Roy a accordé à, M. D’Yberville ses vaisseaux, August 29, 1705, AM., B4:29:217; instructions to Iberville, November 3, 1705, AM., B4:29:219. The accounts of Iberville’s raid on the island of Nevis are in AM., B4:31.
527 Order appointing De Muy governor, May 1, 1707, Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS. Clairambault, 951:119.
528 Instructions to De Muy, June 30, 1707, AC., B29:248vo; Minister of Marine to De Muy, id., 258vo.
529 Correspondence of Minister of Marine with Bégon, May and June, 1707, AM., B2:197:756, 1010, 1424; with Rémonville, June, 1707, id., 1113, 1272, 1541.
530 See note 1, on page 234.
531 Artaguiette to Minister of Marine, May 25 and August 18, 1708, AC., C13A: 2:317 and 327; letters of N. LaSalle to Minister of Marine, September 12, 1708, id., 193; May 12, 1709, id., 395; June 20, 1710, id., 519, etc.
532 Census of August 12, 1708, AC., C13A:2:225.
533 Artaguiette to Minister of Marine, August 18, 1708, AC., C13A:2:327.
534 Artaguiette’s letter cited in note 6, p. 235; letter to Minister of Marine, August 6, 1709, AC., C13A:2:53, and June 20, 1710, id., 541; also letter of January 10, 1711, id., 633.
535 Minister of Marine to Bégon, October 17, 1708, AC., B30:49; to Lempereur, October 24, 1708, id., 51; and to Duché, November 9, 1708, id., 61.
536 Minister of Marine to Bégon, September 4, 1709, AC., B30: 199; and February 19, 1710, AM., B2:220:614.
537 Correspondence of Minister of Marine with Bégon, May and June, 1710, AM., B2:221:663, 896, 1023, 1233, 1332.
538 Marginal comments on abstracts of letters from N. La Salle, May 12, 1709, AC., C13A:2:439; and from Bienville, August 20 and September 1, 1709, id., 415.
539 Memoir of Artaguiette, May 12, 1712, AC., C13A:2:803; Tivas de Gourville to Minister of Marine, June, 1712, AC., C13A:2:737. These two documents are printed in translation in Mississippi Provincial Archives, ii. 60 and 67.
540 Minister of Marine to Crozat, June 5, 1712, AC., B34:C122vo; Cadillac to Minister of Marine, June 29, 1712, AC., C13A:2:675.
541 Id.; and Cadillac to Minister of Marine, August 14, 1712, AC., C13A:2:687.
542 Letters Patent of September 14, 1712, AC, A22:1 (printed, among other places, in Publications of Louisiana Historical Society, iv. 13–20).
543 See note 1 above.
544 Memoir of king to Cadillac, December 18, 1712, AC., F3:68:65.
545 Memoir of January 2, 1712, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Mérnoires et Documents, Amérique, 24:13.
546 Our Publications, xvii. 70–71, 221.
547 The Bunch of Grapes Tavern, kept by Rebecca, widow of Francis Holmes.
548 The Independent Corps of Cadets, or, as it has been more popularly known, the First Corps of Cadets, dates back to 1741, when Governor Shirley commissioned Benjamin Pollard to be “Captain of a Company of 64 young Gentlemen,” to be enlisted by him in the Province. Samuel K. Lothrop, Monstrat Viam (1841), pp. 10–11.
The New-England Weekly Journal, however, twice makes mention of these earlier cadets referred to by Walker, once on this same occasion of Governor Burnet’s inauguration. In the issue of July 22, 1728, it says: “the Company of Young Gentlemen Cadets in their Order and Gaiety” escorted the Governor to Dr. Cooke’s, and after firing three volleys “exercis’d their Arms with their wonted beauty and exactness before they were dismiss’d.” Again, in the issue of October 14, 1728, in describing the celebration of the anniversary of George II’s coronation it says: “the Company of Cadets being in Arms waited on His Excellency, our Governour, attended by several of the Gentlemen of the Council, &c. and conducted them to the House of Mrs. Holme’s . . . .”
Neither of these quotations makes clear the exact nature of this military organization. Possibly it, like the group of similar name in the Shirley administration, was intended primarily to serve as a military escort or bodyguard to the governor. In this connection it is an interesting fact that the Pollard who is named later on in this diary as the captain of these Cadets is the same person who was commissioned by Shirley in 1741 to organize the company. Furthermore, Walker states, on a later occasion when the Cadets appeared, that the picture of Governor Burnet was painted on their ensign. I find, however, no further reference to the Cadets by that name in the newspapers before Shirley’s time.
549 Having the governor stay temporarily at Cooke’s — on the west side of Cooke’s Court, now Chapman Place — was regarded by some impartial observers as a politically unwise arrangement. Dr. William Douglass, the Boston physician, wrote on April 22, 1728, to Cadwallader Colden, of New York: “The committee appointed to provide lodgings for the governor in the interim, until the Province House be refitted, have ordered Dr. Cook’s house for that end. Dr. Cook is my good friend; but pardon me if I express to you as my very good friend, the opinion of the gentlemen here who are of no party. I wrote you formerly that the two noted parties here are the Dudleys and Dr. Cook’s, and so inveterate the one against the other, that the being with either may give a jealousy of bad consequence; but if used with the same respect, or kept at the same distance, will make everything easy, and they will bid upon one another for the governor’s interest and advantage. It is my opinion, (pardon my forwardness of duty to his Excellency) that if Mr. Burnet did write to the lieutenant governor to have a few rooms in the Province House fitted up for his reception (the family perhaps not coming so soon) would answer the end of giving umbrage to no party.” 4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 183–184. Cooke was paid £60 from the Province treasury for the use of his house. Acts and Resolves, xi. 370.
550 This entry is an echo of the feuds long current in King’s Chapel, which are related at length in H. W. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i. The Reverend Henry Harris had since 1709 been the assistant to the rector, the Reverend Samuel Myles. As the leader of the anti-Checkley faction in denunciation of High-Church and Jacobite principles, he had by his aggressiveness gained the hostility of a large portion of the parish, as well as of the rector. Appointed, however, by the Bishop of London and drawing his salary as “lecturer” from a royal bounty established by William III, he had in a sense occupied an independent position. As soon as Myles’s death became imminent early in 1728, Harris began pulling wires to get the prospective vacancy for himself. In a letter which he wrote to the Bishop of London, who, though not claiming the right of presentation, did claim the right to license the incumbent, Harris described his supporters as “the most considerable Gentlemen” and “persons of the greatest wealth and honor in our church.” Historical Collections Relating to the American Church, iii. 246, 248. (There is irony in Walker’s comment on the Harris faction since he himself was a member of the Checkley group, and was one of the Checkley majority elected to the Vestry in March, 1728.) At the same time the High-Church party in the chapel, “being but a few though very noisy,” unwilling to await Burnet’s arrival before acting — “having a prejudice to the name Bishop Burnet” — had taken steps to secure a curate, who should succeed to the prospective vacancy. At a subsequent meeting of the congregation on March 13, 1727/28, after Myles’s death, they put through a vote that General Nicholson and Thomas Sandford, a London merchant, be empowered to present a clergyman for institution. They also took control of the church stock, to be used, so the opposition stated, “to defray all charges in compassing their designs.” Harris and his group, besides proposing to send remonstrances to England, suggested an immediate appeal to Burnet, but this was abandoned for the moment on the ground that he would refuse to meddle in any local affairs until he had officially assumed the governorship. Apparently they wasted no time in presenting their grievances to him once he had taken office.
The following entries from Walker’s diary dealing with the disputes in King’s Chapel, supplement, and at the same time are in the main verified by, the official records published by Dr. Foote:
“[Feb. 6, 1727/8] In ye afternoon at ye Kings Chappell ye Reuerend Mr Saml Myles, ye minister (he being very much Indispos’d wth a Cancerous humor In his breast its Thought by ye phisicians he Can’t Subsist here long in yer opinion) desir’d ye Congregation to meet, to send for a Curate ye Clerk by his desire mention’d it, on Sunday last, ye Congregation met & as some say ye most In Number ytt Euer appear’d at a Church meetting (mr Henry Harris thare, ye warning was read, mr Autchmuty paraphars’d on it much Talk on’t & division about itt, ye meetin divided mr Harris’ party was for adjourning it ye major [party] was not for, so those for, Harris Church Warden Thomas Phillips went away out off ye church. [Marginal note: After Harris Church Warden Philips, ye churchwarden, w[h]o took Book, & most off Harris’ party went out of ye church abrubtly from assembly] The major part staying ware much supris’d & sundry off ye went out] Those ytt Remain’d being a great majority staid & proceded to act Choosing a moderator mr Ino Jekill, mr Gibbins Clerke, and Voted to send for a Curate, according to mr Myles desire (Voted to send to his Excellency Generl Nickolson & mr Thomas Sandford merchtt In London or in ye absence of one to ye othr To seek out or gett a man well affected to the present Establishment In State & Church of a good life & Conversation, & voted 1001 year sterlin for his Salery, & 20£ Sterlin for his passage, & In Case of mr Myles decese, they likeing him he might Succeed him Choose a Comitte to write to ye all Gentlemen to get one Messr Jekill, Craddock, Eastwick, Chickley Barns . . .
“Monday [March] 11a Vestry & very dirty at noon mr Harris & mr Jekyll had high words In ye Kings Chappel Harris Toucht Jekyls nose & Told him he did not Take him by ye nose, (If he shou’d strike him it was 20l fine & his Ears Cutt Harris wanted the Parochal Library d[elivere]d to him ytt was at mrs Myles) I hear Ino Checkley said it want a Vestry & had protest against it (Philips, Church warden & sundry others went out . . .
“Wednesda 13 The Congregation of ye Kings Chappel mett here at 3 Clock In ye afternoon A great assembly or number Thare. mr Harris Thare he read his licence In Latin, & mentioned his being an assistant to Carry on ye Servis wth mr Myles, Harris urg’d he was ye minister now mr Myles was deceas’d & mr Gifford as register of ye Church affairs, Write & read to ye Congretn Wether mr Harris ye minister of ye Kings Chappel here shou’d not vote with ye Congregatn to go on busines, it was not allowed a proper & fair proposall by a great majority. When mr Harris Cou’d not obtain ytt he Went out of ye Church with many others (ye Congrega Ware of ye Opinion he was but assistant & not ye minister & Expects he’d continu so & Officiate still ye Servis of that Congregation (mr Autchmuty made a long discourse for mr Harris, saying ytt if any man Shou’d Come into ye Church & Cut down a pillar or other mischeif in ye Church none man but mr Harris Cou’d prosecute him butt mr Harris, according to ye law, so he wou’d insinuate by ytt saying he was ye only minister, however ytt had no Effect, yn was Wrote & rote & read to ye Congregatn ye Reuer mr H. Harris ye minister of Kings Chapel, here might with ye Congrega: vote, ytt was rejected, then mr Harris & many others went out of ye Church after ytt Philips Church Warden propos’d yt We stay till Gouerr Burnet Came ytt was rejected or wethr ye Congregatn wou’d refer it to ye Bishop of London ytt refus’d too, yn we proceeded to go on & read 10, paragraph & Voted 9 of them Viz. 1 was to send to” [entry not completed]
551 The Reverend Timothy Cutler, rector of Christ Church, Boston, and from the first a strong opponent of Harris.
552 The older brother of William Dummer, the Lieutenant Governor, and of Jeremiah, the agent.
553 The renewal of the controversy between governor and legislature over the matter of the governor’s salary continued throughout Burnet’s administration. Burnet communicated the text of this instruction to the House of Representatives on July 24. Its terms aroused stubborn opposition, but Burnet consistently refused the repeated requests from the House that it be allowed to adjourn without complying. He informed them on September 4, 1728: “I can only again assure you, that unless His Majesties Pleasure has its due Weight with you, your Desires have very little with Me.” Journals of the House of Representatives, viii. 311.
554 John Gibbs, son of the John Gibbs, painter and stainer, who died in 1725.
555 To get the General Court away from the prejudice of Boston, where a mass meeting had adopted and ordered published a “unanimous declaration” against fixing a salary upon the governor, Burnet, on October 24, adjourned the Court to Salem “where,” as he said, “prejudice had not taken root.” Hutchinson (ii. 316–317) relates that Burnet jokingly remarked that the name of a place might work a charm, and that for that reason “he was at a loss whether to carry them there [Salem] or to Concord.”
556 In celebration of George II’s birthday.
557 The Royal Exchange Tavern, kept by Luke Vardy.
558 This is in all probability the flag of some local infantry company or regiment. Howard M. Chapin, Esq., the authority on such matters, informs me that it is the only description of a colonial infantry flag in use in the first half of the eighteenth century that has come to his notice.
559 Walker originally wrote “feuer & flux” instead of “coma.”
560 Cf. our Publications, xiv. 221, for another account of Burnet’s funeral in which there is a slight difference in detail. The cost of the funeral, which was borne by the Province, amounted to £1097 11s 3d. Acts and Resolves iii. 431.
561 George Burnet, the Governor’s steward.
562 Suffolk Probate Records, Book 27 (1728–1730), pp. 337–348.
563 The spelling “gouff” follows an old Scottish form, perhaps indicating the pronunciation at the time. The word is said to be derived from the Dutch “kolf,” a club, another sidelight upon the probable origin of the game in Holland.
564 The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Edition of 1836), pp. 267–268.
565 Mr. M. A. DeW. Howe, in his Boston Common (page 8), has discussed Mr. Canavan’s argument.
566 “In the ‘New English Tutor’ a print is given of ‘The Pope or Man of Sin’ which was originally beyond question a cut used to illustrate the signs of the zodiac in an almanac, for it is exactly like them with the exception of the addition of a tiara to the otherwise naked figure. To utilize the zodiacal lines and letters radiating from the body, [Benjamin] Harris added a key or explanation which replaced Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Scorpion, etc., with Heresy, Disorder, Malice, Murder and Treachery, etc., and which called on the ‘Child’ to ‘behold that Man of Sin, the Pope, worthy thy utmost Hatred.’ This print was reproduced in the Primer of 1737, but no key was added, so that the ‘Child’ must have been not a little puzzled to know what the rays and letters meant.” Paul Leicester Ford, The New-England Primer (1897), p. 50.
567 Ford, The New-England Primer, p. 29.
568 The imprint on one of these is “Boston: Printed for the Booksellers, 1750,” and on the other, “Boston: Printed by John Green, for the booksellers. 1750.”
569 Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (1874), i. 149 (Archæologica Americana, Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, vi).
570 See Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser for December 10 and 17, 1759, for warnings against spurious editions of Ames’s Almanac.
571 “In those days also saw I the Jews that had married women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab: and their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people. And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves.” Nehemiah, xiii: 23–25.
572 Samuel Webster, A Winter Evening’s Conversation upon the Doctrine of Original Sin (Boston, 1757).
573 Charles L. Nichols, “The Boston Edition of the Baskett Bible,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s., xxxvii. 24–42.
574 I wish to acknowledge assistance and advice received from the Reverend Dr. A. F. Nolte, of Harlingen, from Professor J. A. C. F. Auer, of the Harvard Divinity School, and from Dr. P. C. Molhuysen, of the Royal Library at the Hague.
575 Hastings Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, i. 21–22. As “Master” and “Doctor” were interchangeable terms in medieval universities, the Ph.D. was equivalent to the M.A. in England and usually required no more study and training than the English B.A. Cf. the diploma of Jeremy Dummer (A.B. Harvard 1699) for the Ph.D. at the University of Utrecht, which was copied into the Harvard College Records, and is printed in our Publications, xv. 305–308.
576 Cf. J. Gardner Bartlett’s list in our Publications, xxv. 14–23; and S. E. Morison, English University Men Who Emigrated to New England before 1646 (1932).
577 See Dictionary of National Biography; Foster, Alumni Oxonienses; Henry Martyn Dexter, Congregationalism As Seen in Its Literature.
578 Magnalia (1702 ed.), Book iii. 143.
579 Burtchaell and Sadleir, Alumni Dublinenses, p. 653.
580 Andrew Clark, Register of the University of Oxford, ii (ii) (Oxford Historical Society Publications, xi), p. 330.
581 As Clark explains (p. 329), the matriculation records of the university are wanting for over two years, 1613–1614, and the name of Thomas Parker is found in the Subscription Book, “which does not mention the College from which the Subscribers matriculated.” Subscription followed matriculation, and on the same day.
582 Album Studiosorum Academiæ Lugduno Batavæ (1875), p. 117.
583 For William Ames, see our Publications, xiii. 64–68; xxv. 70–83; and G.D. J. Schotel, De Academie te Leiden (1875), chapters iv, v.
584 Ed. 1702, Book iii. 144.
585 See our Publications, xxv. 62, 75 n ff; and Abraham Kuyper, Jr., Johannes Maccovius (Leyden, 1899).
586 Fur Prædestinatus (London, 1651), pp. 2–3. Quoted and wrongly attributed to Archbishop William Sancroft in the Dictionary of National Biography, the Cambridge History of English Literature, and J. B. Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, iii. 426 n. It was merely a translation, possibly by Sancroft, of a satirical anti-Calvinist tract in three parts, by Hendrik D. Slatius, entitled Den Ghepredestineesden Dieff (The Hague and Antwerp, 1619–1622). There is an English translation called The Predestinated Thief; or a Dialogue between a Calvinistic Preacher and a Thief condemned to the Gallows, etc. (London, 1814).
587 They were printed as Theses Theologiæ de traduetione hominis peccatoris ad vitam, quas ad disputandum proponit Thomas Parkerus, Anglus. Fran. 1617. I take this title from W. B. S. Boeles, Frieslands Hoogeschool (Leeuwarden, 1878), i. 45. They are also printed in Ames’s Disceptatio de Circulo Pontifico (Amsterdam, 1658), pp. 74–93 (copy in M. H. S.), and in Guilielmi Amesii Opera (Nethenus ed., Amsterdam, 1658), v; and the Synod’s report on the theses is found in Nethenus’ introduction to Volume i. A complete account of the controversy by J. Heringa is printed in Kist and Royaards’ Archief voor Kerkel. Gesch. (Leyden, 1831), iii. 503–664, a reference which I obtained from Hugo Visscher, Guilielmus Amesius (Haarlem, 1894), p. 49. My own account is largely obtained from Abraham Kuyper’s life of Maccovius (Leyden, 1899), pp. 26–30, 54, 86–89, 92, 135–137.
588 Kuyper (Maccovius, pp. 89, 135 n) points out that both Ames and Maccovius were Scholastic in their training and point of view; Ames being a disciple of William Perkins, and Maccovius of Keckermann. Hugo Visscher, on the other hand, asserts that Ames’s defense was purely out of personal friendship. Since Parker’s Theses are printed as Ames’s in Volume v of his works, edited by his disciple Nethenus, it can hardly be doubted that Ames approved them.
589 Kuyper, Maccovius, pp. 92–93.
590 See the titles printed under Parker’s name in the Catalogue of the British Museum.
591 Magnalia (1702 ed.), Book iii. 146.
592 The Visions and Prophecies of Daniel Expounded. . . . By Thomas Parker, sometime of Newbery in Berkshire, and now Pastor to the Church at Newbery in New-England. London, 1646, 156 pp. Copy in Boston Public Library.
593 The Copy of a Letter Written by Mr. Thomas Parker, Pastor of the Church of Newbury in New-England, to His Sister, Mrs Elizabeth Avery, Sometimes of Newbury in the County of Berks, Touching sundry Opinions by her Professed and Maintained (London, 1650), p. 13. Copy in Boston Public Library.
594 2 Proc. Mass, Hist. Soc., XLIX. 361–386; reprinted in Harold Murdock, The Nineteenth of April, 1775, chapter i.
595 The Descent of Comfort Sands (1886), p. 45.
596 The Cambridge University records show, however, that it was not he but his cousin, Roger Kenyon, afterwards Court Physician at St. Germain, who graduated at that University.
597 Fourteenth Report, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Appendix, Part iv. 166.
598 George Morey, born at Norton, Massachusetts, December 18, 1750, was the son of George and Mary (Hodges) Morey. He matriculated at Harvard College, December 18, 1772, and graduated in 1776. He was ordained a Congregational minister at Walpole, November 19, 1783, and died there, July 26, 1829.
599 The earlier part of the diary, January, 1771, to December 18, 1772, refers to the period during which Morey prepared for college.
600 Possibly Benjamin Guild (H.C. 1769; tutor 1776–1780) and Daniel Newcomb, of Norton (H.C. 1768).
601 Jean Jacques Burlamaqui. A commonly used book by him was Principes du Droit Naturel (Geneva, 1748). English editions, in two volumes, with the title The Principles of Natural Law, appeared in 1748–1752 and 1763.
602 William Kneeland (H.C. 1751; tutor 1754–1763) was a physician in Cambridge at this time.
603 Joannes Wollebius. His Abridgment of Christian Divinitie (London, 1650) was long in use by Harvard students.
604 Shirts.
605 During the concentration at Cambridge after April 19, 1775, and throughout the siege of Boston, the colonial troops used the college buildings as headquarters. The students dispersed late in April. In September, 1775, they were notified that instruction would be resumed in Concord. On June 21, 1776, “the students were again assembled within the College walls, after a dispersal of fourteen months.” Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 169.
606 Probably a book by either Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), professor of philosophy at Edinburgh, or James Ferguson (1710–1776), British astronomer.
607 Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (1933), chapters v–vi.
608 Above, pp. 37–66.
609 Above, p. 61.
610 The Journal and Letters of Samuel Curwen of Salem, G. A. Ward, Ed. (1844), p. 59.
611 Id., pp. 195–196.
612 Id., p. 223
613 Id., p. 223.
614 Id., p. 225.
615 Id., p. 225.
616 Id., p. 235.
617 Id., p. 237.
618 Above, p. 61.
619 So he generally spelled his name, although his descendants called it Waldron. The most extended notice of him is in the Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society, viii. 332–352.
620 John Scales, History of Dover, N. H. (1923), p. 325.
621 New Hampshire Province Deeds, ii. 94b, 95a (“True coppies” of originals brought into court, June 28, 1664), mss., N. H. Historical Society, Concord.
622 The material for this paper has been largely drawn from the original business documents and letters of Elias Hasket Derby in the Essex Institute at Salem. The information regarding the history and politics of the Isle of France has been mainly taken from The History of Mauritius or the Isle of France (London, 1801), by Charles Grant, Viscount de Vaux. David McPherson’s Annals of Commerce (London, 1805) has been used for references to the commercial history of the East Indies in the eighteenth century.
623 Essex Institute Historical Collections, xxxv. 1–79.
624 Material for this article was collected while the writer served as fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation. The manuscripts used in the Public Record Office, London, are the Colonial Office Papers, cited as C.O. Quotations have been modernized. Statements of value are in sterling, unless otherwise noted. The chronology used is that adopted by the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies (cited as Cal. St. Pap., A. & W. I.). Three branches of New England’s external trade — with the Wine Islands, with Canada, and with Africa — did not, at this period, affect seriously the problem considered in this paper. The trade of New England and New York with the other mainland colonies of North America is discussed in my article, “The Economic Relations of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, 1680–1715,” Journal of Economic and Business History, iii. 185–209.
625 G. L. Beer, The Old Colonial System, i. 15; David MacPherson, Annals of Commerce, iii. 508.
626 A list of exports from England to New England in 1715 included silk, tin, iron, woolens, linen, earthenware, leather, paper, copper, brass, lead, wood, hair, paint, oil, powder, coal, chalk, pots, kettles, spices, drugs, muslins, calicoes, “cum multis aliis.” “The Trade of New England as it Now Stands,” C.O. 5:866, no. 52.
627 Estimates of yearly exports and imports are found in C.O. 390:5. These statistics can be used only to indicate general trends, and must not be taken literally. Commenting on the records of this period, Lipson says: “The statistics of foreign trade are extremely defective. The custom-house ledger, showing the total exports and imports, was not adopted until 1696. Moreover, the returns, even when available, are based on official, not real values, and so do not afford a correct view of the trade in any year at the current market prices. But this defect is an advantage in one respect; it enables comparisons to be made over long periods on the basis of a uniform standard of prices, so that it is possible to measure the rise or fall in the volume of trade without the disturbing factor of changes in the price level.” E. Lipson, The Economic History of England, ii. 189.
628 Report on vessels sailing from England to the colonies, Christmas, 1709, to Christmas, 1714, C.O. 388:18, no. 22.
629 In ten months of the years 1686 and 1688, of 40 vessels sailing from England to Boston, 27 (1,773 tons) were English owned, and 13 (1,063 tons) were owned in Massachusetts. All the vessels (425 tons) exporting from England to Salem in 21 months of the years 1714–1716 belonged to England. Massachusetts Shipping Returns, C.O. 5:848. In two years after June 24, 1715, 20 vessels (1,110 tons) sailing from New York to England were owned in the province, as against 23 vessels (1,665 tons) owned in England. New York Shipping Returns, C.O. 5:1222.
630 W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 369–370; memorial of Nicholson, Perry, and Lodwick, entered June 10, 1708, C.O. 5:1121, p. 162.
631 For a list of 41 merchants trading to New England in 1714, see C.O. 5:752, no. 7.
632 For a list of merchants trading to New York, see Cal. St. Pap., A. & W. I., 1699, p. 59.
633 Weeden, i. 370. Samuel Sewall’s correspondents in England, 1686–1700, were John Ive and John Love. 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i. 32–33, 34, 44–45, 77, 89, 116, 137, 237. In 1687, Sewall, Eliakim Hutchinson, and Peter Sergeant were buying from John Richardson, a Bristol merchant, on the commission basis. Id., i. 65. John Higginson, of Salem, in 1699 purchased £100 of drapery directly from a London draper. 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vii. 211.
634 Sewall in 1685 sold a parcel of goods in New England for William Sellen, London merchant. The Boston sale price was £48 3s, from which Sewall deducted a commission of £2 8s — nearly 5 per cent. Sewall was evidently loath to sell on commission for English merchants. 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soe, i. 30.
635 Petition of August 28, 1718, C.O. 5:1051, no. 83, signed by C Lodwick, J. Paice, T. Pitt, R. Jeneway, J. Lloyd, J. Bayeux.
636 Dudley to Board of Trade, March 1, 1709, C.O. 5:865, no. 22; G. Lee to Sir Stephen Fox, October 30, 1712, C.O. 5:751, no. 83; Banister’s Essay on the Trade of New England, 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 67. John Higginson wrote from New England to his brother Nathaniel, October, 1699: “In the last war time, all East India goods were extremely dear. Muslins of the best sort, plain, striped, and flowered, were sold for £10 per piece, and some more.” 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, VII 209.
637 Bellomont to Board of Trade, October 17, 1700, C.O. 5:1045, no. 1; James du Pre to Board of Trade, October, 4, 1710, C.O. 5:1050, no. 3. See also C.O. 5:1051, no. 19.
638 In 1687, Randolph stated that whale oil shipped from Massachusetts to England amounted to 200 tons a year. In 1709, Dudley reported the quantity at 800 tons, and the imports England received in the three years, 1721–1723, averaged about that amount. Dudley’s figures make it appear that the Boston price was £6 5s a ton. Weeden i 43; C.O. 5:865, no. 22; list of England’s imports from New England, 1721–1723, C.O. 390:5, no. 50.
639 After 1689, there was generally in force a contract between the Royal Navy and an English merchant for a regular supply of New England masts. The contract of 1689–1696, with Samuel Allen, called for one shipload yearly to the value, in England, of £2,190. Contract of August 9, 1689, C.O. 5:924, no. 1 (ii). Allen sold his rights to Isaac Taylor. In 1700, John Bridger made proposals to save the Navy £11,723 yearly on the contract Taylor held then. Taylor was supplying four shiploads annually. Bellomont to Board of Trade, C.O. 5:931, no. 3. A third contract, 1708–1713, required three shiploads annually, the payment for one year (in England) amounting to £6,060. This contract — with Francis Collins — ran for five years. Godolphin to Bridger, May 31, 1708, C.O. 5:864, no. 230. Between Christmas, 1712, and Christmas, 1717, England imported 145 New England masts, the yearly value of which in England probably did not exceed £6,000. An account of lumber and timber exported from Europe and the colonies to England, C.O. 390:8, H. The sums paid for these masts, however, did not all go to the colonies. English merchants always held the contracts, and employed their own ships in the trade, thereby earning the freights. In 1715, it was estimated that timber worth 50s in the colonies cost between £6 and £7 a ton in England, the freight charges on such a quantity amounting to £4. S. Sheaf to Board of Trade, May 18, 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 36. Lumber exports from New England to England, 1712–1717, averaged 171 tons a year. C.O. 390:8, H.
640 Between 1700 and 1704, New England sent only 67 barrels of pitch and tar to England. After the bounty went into effect, the figures were (in barrels):
|
Tar |
Pitch |
Turpentine |
Resin |
|
|
October, 1706 |
6,191 |
647 |
1,145 |
90 |
|
March, 1708 |
2,190 |
2,275 |
1,924 |
68 |
|
March, 1709 |
120 |
1,890 |
1,333 |
124 |
|
November, 1710 |
1,410 |
2,111 |
1,525 |
338 |
|
February, 1712 |
712 |
1,194 |
1,631 |
none |
|
January, 1713 |
none |
none |
None |
none |
See letters of John Bridger, October 24, 1706, March 13, 1708, March 27, 1709, November 27, 1710, February 2, 1712, January 10, 1713, C.O. 5:864, nos. 76 (ii), 224, C.O. 5:865, nos. 28, 59, C.O. 5:1091, no. 68, C.O. 5:898, no. 27.
641 Randolph, in 1687, noted the decline of the New England fur-trade. Weeden, i. 437. Dudley, in 1709, estimated the value of furs exported from New England at £1,000 yearly. C.O. 5:865, no. 22.
642 Partial statistics indicate the following exports of whale oil from New York: June 8, 1698, to December 23, 1699, 54 barrels; June 25 to September 25, 1700, 18 tons, 228 barrels; June 25, 1715, to June 25, 1716, 344 barrels. Board of Trade to House of Lords, February 5, 1702, C.O. 389:17, p. 327, and C.O. 5:1222. During two years, Christmas, 1720, to Christmas, 1722, whale oil and fins exported from New York to England had an estimated value (at New York) of £1,232. At this time they represented only six per cent of the native products of New York shipped as returns to England. C.O. 390:5, no. 51.
643 Beaver exports from New York were (number):
|
1687 |
14,062 |
|
1692–1693 (March to March) |
6,240 |
|
1693–1694 |
11,180 |
|
1694–1695 |
13,360 |
|
1695–1696 |
9,703 |
|
1696–1697 |
10,830 |
|
1697–1698 |
5,414 |
|
1698–1699 (June to June) |
14,455 |
|
1699–1700 |
15,352 |
New York custom-house report, C.O. 5:1048, no. 67 (i). Bellomont stated in 1700 that the beaver trade had “sunk to little or nothing.” The London price of beaver had fallen to 5s a pound, only 3s of which went to the New York merchant, for he had to pay on every skin a provincial export duty of 9d and charges of 12d in England, in addition to 3d for freight. Bellomont to Board of Trade, November 28, 1700, C.O. 5:1045, no. 18. The New York merchants wrote in February, 1705, that the peltry trade was “so diminished as scarce worthy of regarding.” Petition to Cornbury, C.O. 5:1048, no. 105 (i). Captain Samuel Vetch wrote to the same effect in his “Canada Survey’d,” received July 25, 1708, C.O. 323:6, no. 64. For two years, 1721 and 1722, the New York total value of beaver exported to England is given as £8,878 16s; of all other furs and skins, as £4,717 12s, the two items representing £13,697 10s. Since the total value of the native products of New York shipped as returns during these two years was £18,656, the fur-trade accounted for 73 per cent of such returns. Account of exports and imports to and from New York, from Christmas, 1720, to Christmas, 1723, dated July 18, 1724, C.O. 390:5, no. 51.
644 From June 8, 1698, to December 23, 1699, exports of naval stores were: turpentine, 20 barrels; from March 25 to December 23, 1699, 2 hogsheads and 164 barrels of turpentine; from June 25, 1700, to 1704, none. C.O. 389:17, p. 327. Pitch and tar were not exported to England during the years 1700–1704. Board of Trade to House of Lords, November 27, 1707, C.O. 389:19, p. 52. During the year June 24, 1715, to June 24, 1716, the exports were: pitch, 1,253 barrels; tar, 318 barrels; turpentine, 1,505 barrels; tar and pitch not differentiated, 1,623 barrels. C.O. 5:1222. During the five years, Christmas, 1712, to Christmas, 1717, New York’s yearly average exportation of lumber and timber was: pipe and hogshead staves, 204 hundredweight; barrel staves, 55 hundredweight; heads for hogsheads, 7 hundredweight; large masts, 6½ (number); masts, middle, 11. C.O. 390:8, H. During the two years 1721 and 1722, the New York value of lumber and timber exported was only £226 3s in total returns of native products amounting to £18,656. C.O. 390:5, no. 51.
645 In 1709, Dudley estimated the yearly exports of Massachusetts to England as follows: tar and gums, £5,000; whale oil, £5,000; furs, £1,000, total, £11,000. These estimates do not include New Hampshire ship timber, which probably accounted for £5,000 more. The total returns from New England, as given by the English custom-house records, 1709, were valued at £29,559. C.O. 5:865, no. 22. In 1715, Captain Banister estimated the New England exports as follows: naval stores, £6,250, furs, £3,750, whale products £13,125, total £23,125. Apparently these figures likewise do not include New Hampshire timber. The British records evaluate the total returns of New England in 1715 at £66,555. Banister to Board of Trade, July 15, 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 53. A complete table of New York’s returns, 1721 and 1722, giving both quantity and value of products, shows that the native products of the province exported during the two years were worth £18,656, the value of all the commodity returns from the province coming to £35,248. Thus native products represented only 53 per cent of the commodities shipped directly from New York to England during those years. C.O. 390:5, no. 51.
646 Each year England sent a naval squadron to Newfoundland, the commanders of which reported on the state of the fishery. Their reports agree as to the products supplied by New England. The reports are as follows: 1691, Captain Hawkins, C.O. 1:68, no.92 (i); 1691, Captain Crawley, id., no. 94 (i); 1694, Captain Hogg, id., no. 101 (i); 1698, Captain Norris, C.O. 194:1, no. 126 (i); 1699, Captain Leake, id., no. 150; 1700, Captain Fairborne, C.O. 195:2, p. 390; 1701, Commodore Graydon, C.O. 195:3, pp. 5–7; 1702, Captain Leake, id., p. 116; 1706, Commodore Underdown, C.O. 194:3, no. 169 (i); 1707, Commodore Underdown, C.O. 194:4, no. 35 (i); 1708, Commodore Mitchell, id., no. 76 (i); 1710, Captain Aldred, id., no. 142 (i); 1711, Commodore Crow, C.O. 194:5, no. 8 (ii); 1712, Sir N. Trevanion, id., no. 16 (i); 1713, Captain Leake, id., no. 59 (i); 1715, Captain Kempthorn, C.O. 194:6, no. 10 (i).
647 Report of Captain Hawkins, 1691, C.O. 1:68, no. 92 (i).
648 C.O. 5:848.
649 Report of Commodore Graydon, March 13, 1701, C.O. 195:3, p. 6.
650 C.O. 5:848.
651 George Larkin to Board of Trade, August 20, 1701, C.O. 195:2, pp. 449–450; Captain Tavener to Board of Trade, March 19, 1714, C.O. 194:5, no. 35.
652 Report of Commodore Graydon, March 13, 1701, C.O. 195:3, pp. 2–3; report of Captain Kempthorn, October 6, 1715, C.O. 194:6, no. 10 (i); Kempthorn to Burchet, 1715, C.O. 194:5, no. 99 (ii).
653 Of fourteen vessels that left Massachusetts for Newfoundland in 1708, nine returned to New England, two went to Barbados, one to Bideford, one to Oporto, and one to Avero—the ship bound for Oporto being owned at that place. C.O. 194:4, no. 76 (iii). Ten vessels (all New England owned) exported from New England to Newfoundland in 1698. Seven returned to New England without cargoes of fish, two carried 1,450 quintals to Jamaica and Barbados, and one carried 500 quintals to Oporto. C.O. 194:1, no. 126 (i).
654 Captain Norris to Board of Trade, November 13, 1698, C.O. 194:1, no. 126 (i). He wrote: “Those of New England never exercise the fishing trade [at Newfoundland] but most commonly dispose their cargo for money and bills which makes 25 per cent to them at New England, but if they cannot get them, they buy refuse fish and go to the West Indies.” See also report of Captain Fairborne, 1700, C.O. 195:2, pp. 391–392; report of Graydon, C. O. 195:3, p. 7; report of Larkin, C.O. 195:2, p. 450; report of Leake, April 25, 1702, C.O. 195:3, p. 116; report of Trevanion, 1712, C.O. 194:5, no. 16 (i).
655 Report of James Jackson; February 2, 1706, C.O. 194:3, no. 116. Jackson said that to debar the New Englanders from their Newfoundland trade would make it impossible for them to pay debts of £100,000 which they owed to England. For a general discussion of this phase of New England’s economic activity, see R. G. Lounsbury, “Yankee Trade at Newfoundland,” New England Quarterly, iii 607–626.
656 C.O. 194:5, no. 99 (ii); report of Leake, C.O. 195:3, p. 120.
657 Bellomont to Board of Trade, November 28, 1700, C.O. 5:1045, no. 18.
658 In the 16 months between May, 1686, and September, 1688, 32 vessels sailed from Boston to southern Europe with cargoes of fish. Twelve of these belonged to New Englanders, the other twenty to English merchants. All but four sailed for Bilbao. C.O. 5:848.
659 C.O. 5:1045, no. 18.
660 Id.
661 C.O. 5:848.
662 Petition for re-establishment of Massachusetts mint, 1686, C.O. 1:60, no. 88 (v); address of the Governor, Council, and Assembly of Massachusetts to the Queen, August 28, 1713, C.O. 5:751, no. 85 (i); Dummer to the Queen, 1713, C.O. 5:866, no. 6 (i).
663 Sewall’s transactions with southern Europe indicate that his agents there sold fish for him and remitted the proceeds, usually by bills of exchange, to his correspondent in England. See six items for the period 1687–1700, in 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i. 64–65, 66, 92–93, 122, 220, 234.
664 C.O. 5:1045, no. 18.
665 C.O. 5:865, no. 22.
666 A treaty between England and Spain, December 14, 1715, provided that goods imported into and exported from Spain by British subjects were not subject to higher duties than Spanish traders were obliged to pay. British Foreign and State Papers, i. 628.
667 Bellomont to Board of Trade, June 22, 1700, C.O. 5:861, no. 45.
668 Petition of William Crouch, Joseph Tatem, Henry Phillips, and other London merchants, 1700, C.O. 5:861, no. 29 (i); Journal of Board of Trade, May 6, 1700, Cal. St. Pap., A. & W. I., 1700, pp. 229–230; Partridge to Board of Trade, C.O. 5:862, no. 29.
669 3 & 4 Anne, c. 9.
670 J. Smith to John Usher, November 2, 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 74 (i); Board of Trade to Stanhope, August 3, 1715, C.O. 5:752, no. 11.
671 C. O. 5:865, no. 22.
672 Salem in one year, 1715–1716, exported 445 hogsheads and 202 quintals of fish to the British West Indies, and 75 per cent of the vessels sailing thither from Boston in 1715 carried shipments of fish. C.O. 5:848.
673 Most of the lumber sent to the British islands came from northern New England. The chief products were boards, staves, shingles, and hoops. Nearly all the vessels leaving Boston for the British West Indies carried lumber, i. e., 289 of 308 vessels of whose cargoes I have itemized accounts. Id.
674 In six months of 1688, Boston sent 270 horses to the British islands. They appear in 35 per cent of the cargoes from Boston during 1715. In the year after midsummer, 1715, Salem exported 39. Id.
675 Wheat, flour, bread, biscuit, beef, pork, bacon, peas, oats, Indian corn, cheese. These foodstuffs made up only a small part of the cargoes from New England to the British islands, although they seem to have been more important before 1690 than afterward. In six months of 1687, provisions are listed in two thirds of the shipments from Boston to the British Indies, but by 1715 only small quantities were so exported. (Id.) Some notion of the relative importance of the products shipped from New England to the sugar colonies may be derived from Thomas Banister’s estimates of the trade of New England in 1715. The following figures include all exports (except to the Wine Islands), not only those to the sugar colonies: provisions, £18,750; fish, £187,500; lumber, £31,250; horses, £25,000; onions and fruit, £1,250; beer and cider, £4,375; soap and candles, £6,250; wine, £2,500; small articles, £6,250. Banister to Board of Trade, July 15, 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 53.
676 During the year after June 24, 1715, New York shipped 1,911 tons of provisions to the British islands in vessels of 2,600 tons, and 450 tons of provisions to the foreign sugar colonies. C.O. 5:1222.
677 New York, in the year 1715–1716, exported 193,000 feet of boards to the British islands; to the foreign sugar colonies, 84,000 feet of lumber. Id.
678 New York’s exports in the year 1715–1716 were to the British islands, 169 horses; to the foreign sugar colonies, 86. Id.
679 Before 1712, the British islands exported, one year with another, about 280,000 gallons of molasses to all the other British colonies. Accounts of exports from the British West Indies to the colonies, C.O. 390:6, pp. 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 51, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 66, 73–74, 87, 89, 104, 117. Massachusetts imports of British molasses fell from 156,000 gallons in six months of 1688 to 72,000 gallons in the year 1716. C.O. 5:848, and A. Cuming to Cockburn, March 2, 1717, C.O. 5:866, no. 111. New York took 36,000 gallons of British molasses in one year, 1715–1716. In 1716, Boston imported 105,000 gallons of foreign molasses; New York, 16,000 gallons. C.O. 5:1222, and C.O. 5:866, no. 111.
680 Before 1712, the British islands exported yearly, on the average, about 325,000 gallons of rum to all the English colonies. Massachusetts in one year, 1716, took 113,000 gallons of British rum, and New York about 72,000 gallons. Imports of foreign rum into New York and Boston in 1715–1716 amounted to about 3,500 gallons for each town a year. C.O. 390:6, passim (see preceding note); C.O. 5:866, no. 111; C.O. 5:1222.
681 The sugar exported from the British islands to the other English colonies before 1712 may have amounted to about 13,500 hundredweight yearly. C.O. 390:6, passim. Sugar re-exports from the mainland to England, 1703–1716 were: from Massachusetts, a yearly average of 5,988 hundredweight; from New York, yearly average, 1,333 hundredweight. C.O. 390:5, no. 47. Boston’s imports of British sugar in 1716 amounted to 792 hogsheads; of foreign sugar, 364 hogsheads. C.O. 5:866, no. 111.
682 Boston in 1716 imported from the British islands 502 bags of cotton-wool, 6 barrels of indigo, 19 barrels and 14 bags of cocoa; from the foreign colonies, 83 bags of cotton-wool, and 10 barrels of indigo. C.O. 5:866, no. 111. Other returns from the sugar colonies were very slight. C.O. 5:848, and C.O. 5:1222.
683 C.O. 5:848.
684 C.O. 5:1222.
685 Id.
686 C.O. 5:848.
687 Sewall’s sailing orders to Nicholas Bowe, master of the Endeavor, November, 1687, read, “if you cannot near fill up the ketch [at Antigua], you may leave the freight money in the hand of Thomas Marshall, to be sent home upon some good bottom. . . . And then you may proceed for salt to [Tortuga] and there take in lading of good fair small salt free from shells and mother [sic], and bring it home with you.” 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. i. 66–67.
688 The records in the Massachusetts Shipping Returns are as follows: Boston to the British West Indies, May 18 to September 29, 1686, March 25 to September 29, 1687, March 25 to September 29, 1688, January 1, 1715, to January 1, 1716; Salem to the British West Indies, June 24, 1714, to June 24, 1716; Boston to the foreign sugar colonies, January 1, 1715, to January 1, 1716; Salem to Surinam, June 24, 1714, to June 24, 1716. C.O. 5:848.
689 New York to British West Indies, June 24, 1715, to June 24, 1716; New York to the foreign sugar colonies, June 24, 1715, to June 24, 1717. C.O. 5:1222.
690 In the years 1687–1692, Sewall sent five shipments to the West Indies, ordering the ship’s captain to make sale. These vessels were of course New England owned. 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i. 4, 66, 74, 78, 114. Between 1686 and 1692, Sewall also consigned twelve shipments to his agents in the West Indies, giving instructions as to the form in which the proceeds were to be returned. Id., pp., 3, 4, 37, 46, 90, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 133–134. To one agent at Antigua, Nathaniel Barns, a “loving friend,” Sewall in 1689 mentioned “many merchants that have made considerable consignments to you.” Id., pp. 109–110. When consigning goods to Joseph Sergeant at Jamaica in 1691, Sewall admonished him: “Keep your N. E. principles.” Id., pp. 115–116. Writing to his agent, Eliakim Mather, at Jamaica, in 1691, Sewall said: “Stay . . . where you are, if can enjoy God’s word on the Sabbath from some good Minister.” Id., p. 117. Other agents of Sewall were: at Barbados — John Pilgrim, Nathaniel Thair, Nathaniel Green, William Adams, Conrad Adams, James Taylor; at Antigua — John Keech. John Higginson wrote at Salem in August, 1700: “For correspondents in Barbados, have had business with Mr. William Adams and his brother Conrad Adams. William served his time in this town with Major Browne; has now married a good fortune in Barbados, and understands business well, and is a faithful man. His brother Conrad lived some time in this town, is now at Barbados, a worthy man. . . . Here is one John Bradstreet, son of Doctor Samuel Bradstreet, about 24 years old, who served his time with Moses Byfield and Mico; who has an estate in Jamaica, and who is going this fall to settle there, whom I would commend to you. . . .” 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vii., 219. One duty of the agent was to collect debts. Sewall on three occasions directed that this be done for him. 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i 74–75, 154, 247.
691 Narrative of William Fulton, March 27, 1700, C.O. 5:861, no. 32 (x); bill of lading and sailing orders for the Society, September, 1699, C.O. 5:860, no. 73 (xxiii); articles of sale, October 27, 1699, C.O. 5:861, no. 32 (ix).
692 Sewall directed his selling agents in 1688 and 1691 to sell for ready money and to remit in part in specie. 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i. 78, 117. In April, 1687, he acknowledged receipt of 300 pieces of eight. Id., pp. 46–47. Higginson wrote in 1700 that pieces of eight, sugar, and logwood were the returns from Jamaica to Massachusetts. 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vii. 220.
693 C.O. 5:860, no. 32 (ix).
694 An account of the present state of Jamaica, January 1, 1676, says: “It is the interest of this island that the trade of Ireland and other places should be encouraged, on purpose to disappoint those of New England, who never brought us any servants, or would take off any of our goods, but in exchange for their fish, peas, and pork, carried away only our plate and pieces of eight.” C.O. 138:2, pp. 94–95.
695 Deposition of L. Heddings, 1702, C.O. 5:1048, no. 5.
696 Board of Trade to House of Commons, November 27, 1707, C.O. 389:19, pp. 391–392.
697 C.O. 390:5.
698 Five items in Sewall’s Letter-Book (6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i. 74, 112, 114, 115, 133) for the period 1687–1692, direct his agents in the West Indies to secure bills of exchange. Four of the orders directed that the bills be sent to Edward Hull, London. Sewall wrote to Hull, October, 1692, “Mr. William Adams sends me from Barbados that he has ordered you a bill of fifty pounds.” Id., p. 137. Sewall used these bills for purchases in London.
699 C.O. 5:848; New York exports to England, June 8, 1698, to September 25, 1700, C.O. 390:17, p. 327; C.O. 5:1222.
700 Report of Board of Trade, entered January 19, 1710, C.O. 324:9, pp. 423, 425.
701 Randolph to Board of Trade, August 25, 1698, C.O. 323:2, no. 129.
702 C.O. 5:1222.
703 Report on colonial trade with Curaçao, etc. (1707), sent to Board of Trade by Hunter, January 19, 1710, C.O. 5:1122, p. 153.
704 Report of Mr. Holt on trade of Curaçao, received December 15, 1709, C.O. 388:12, no. 63 (xvi).
705 Quarry to Board of Trade, May 30, 1704, C.O. 323:5, no. 51; Cornbury to Board of Trade, July 1, 1708, C.O. 5:1049, no. 96; address of the Governor, Council, and Assembly of New York to the Queen, February 22, 1709, C.O. 5:1049, no. 99 (i).
706 Cranston to Board of Trade, December 5, 1708, C.O. 5:1264, no. 92 (ii).
707 Violet Barbour, “Privateers and Pirates of the West Indies,” American Historical Review, xvi. 542, 555–557.
708 H. L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, i 527.
709 Report came that after the sack of Vera Cruz in 1683, which yielded 960,000 pieces of eight, one of the principal ringleaders headed for Boston with his share of the spoil. (Cal. St. Pap., A. & W. L, 1681–1685, p. 458.) An observer wrote about this time of the arrival of a French privateer. “The Bostoners no sooner heard of her off the coast than they dispatched a messenger and pilot to convoy her into port in defiance of the King’s proclamation. The pirates are likely to leave the greatest part of their plate behind them, having bought up most of the choice goods in Boston.” (Id., p. 678.) At Jamaica, Governor Lynch picked up the rumor that pirates had enriched Boston to the extent of £80,000. (Id. p. 598.) Governor Cranfield of New Hampshire reported (id., pp. 680–681): “Most of the English plate-ships that have come into Boston during the last two years [1682–1684], though they pretended to have recovered their goods from wrecks, have robbed the Spaniards of the greater part of it. . . . It is well that their government is almost at an end, or Boston would have been the receptacle for the pirates in these western parts.” It was found that one of the most notorious of the pirate ships was “fitted and protected by the godly New England independents.” (Id., p. 760.) When an English agent seized the ship, he encountered threats against his person and delays at law. One protector of the pirates “received clandestinely great quantities of their gold, silver, jewels, and cacao.” (Id., pp. 684–685.) In Randolph’s judgment the operating of the Massachusetts mint and the incentive given pirates to bring their silver to Boston were simply two aspects of one iniquity. (Id., 1689–1692, p. 47.) Massachusetts also saw much of the adventurers to the Red Sea. One of the most celebrated — Captain Tew — ended his first voyage in the province. The owners of another vessel, that of Captain Wake, lived in Boston. (Id., 1696–1697, pp. 259–260.) When the pirate Bradish was captured in that town, he had £3,000 or so of money in his possession. (Id., 1699, pp. 132–133, 191.) The inventory of Kidd’s effects disclosed 1,111 ounces of gold and 2,353 ounces of silver. (Id., p. 375.) Bellomont referred to gold and jewels taken from a fourth pirate, Gillam, whose ship had come from Madagascar, where it was reputed to have taken plunder worth £2,000,000 sterling. (Id., p. 553.) A party of pirates returning to Boston in 1704 brought in about £10,000, of which £4,684 in gold and silver was seized by the provincial officials.
710 Randolph wrote in 1696 that Rhode Island had “now become a free port for pirates from all places.” (Randolph to Board of Trade, August 17, 1696, C.O. 323:2, no. 6 (i).) Tew had come from the Red Sea in 1694 with £100,000 in silver and gold: his share of this booty, £12,000, had enriched the people. (Cal. St. Pap., A. & W. I., 1696–1697, p. 214.) A bit later, Randolph found conditions unchanged. Eight pirates, lately from Madagascar, had arrived with great stores of money and East India goods. At the approach of an English warship, six of them fled to Boston. Two were captured and about £1,400 in silver and gold taken. (Id., 1697–1698, p. 256.) Another informant wrote at the time that pirates had been on the coasts of New York and Rhode Island, bringing in £200,000 in gold and East India merchandise. (Id., p. 216.) Numerous reports asserted that pirate ships were readily fitted out in Rhode Island. (Brenton to Board of Trade, March 30, 1703, CO. 5:863, no. 14a; Cal. St. Pap., A. & W. I., 1699, pp. 487, 553.) We hear of Captain Hore taking his prizes to the colony, and of a Captain Want leaving his money there. (Id., 1697–1698, p. 456; 1696–1697, p. 260.) Bellomont told of other pirates who were visiting the Rhode Islanders. The men went ashore during the day and spent their gold “very liberally.” The ship Adventure, reported to have had a large sum of money, was sunk by its pirate crew, whereupon the men landed with the spoil and dispersed along the southern New England shore. The governor of Rhode Island managed to get between £2,500 and £3,000 of this money. (Id., 1699, pp. 133, 256.) For a long time one of the standing complaints of English officials against Rhode Island was that the colonists, from the governors down, encouraged and protected pirates, and thereby the colony was improperly enriched. Id., 1697–1698, p. 582; 1699, p. 544.
711 For a time New York was the leading resort of pirates. Governor Fletcher openly patronized them. He issued commissions to many of the most active, and allowed them to come safely into New York with their spoil. His critics said that he received $100 a man in return for the protection and immunity granted. Two members of the Council, William Nichols and Nicholas Bayard, exposed themselves to charges of taking money for acting as intermediaries between Fletcher and the pirates. (Cal. St. Pap., A. & W.I, 1697–1698, pp. 224, 228, 467, 562, 586–587.) Many were the evidences of coin brought in by the outlaws. The ill-fated Tew (so the rumor ran) visited Rhode Island and New York with £100,000. He became a favorite with Fletcher, received a commission from him, and fitted out his ship at New York for another voyage to the Red Sea. (Id., 1696–1697, p. 260; 1697–1698, pp. 326, 456, 587.) A pirate ship, the Jacob, with 65 men on board who had shared $1,800 each, sought Governor Fletcher’s protection. The reports affirmed that Nichols received 1,000 pieces of eight for his influence with the governor, and that Fletcher got 100 pieces of eight from each pirate. After the arrival of the ship, Arabian gold pieces became “pretty common” in the province. (Id., pp. 480, 562, 584–585; 1699, p. 23.) A party of pirates from New York, after taking four ships, “returned thither to share the plunder with the governor’s connivance.” (Id., 1697–1698, p. 365.) A correspondent from Bombay found that the outlaws “carry their unjust gains to New York, where they are permitted egress and regress without control, spending such coin there, in the usual lavish manner of such persons, as might convince the Government that they came not well by it.” (Id., p. 114.) In 1698, pirates who had been to New York were thought to have had £200,000 in gold and East India goods. (Id., p. 216.) At this time one of the councillors, Thomas Willett, dispatched a barrel of money and plate from New York to Long Island for safe-keeping when threatened by Bellomont’s searches. (Id., pp. 493–494.) Next came news that a pirate ship at Cape May was being unloaded of its rich cargo of East India goods and money by sloops from New York. And soon afterward Bellomont wrote: “A great ship has been seen off this coast any time this week; ’tis supposed to be one Maise a pirate, who has brought a vast deal of wealth from the Red Sea.” (Id., 1699, pp. 266, 335.) Likewise, New York’s trade to Madagascar became very profitable. In 1698, when four vessels were ready to leave on the African voyage, Bellomont tried to induce the New York Council to require a bond of £2,000 for each ship as a safeguard against its trading with pirates. But the Council resolutely opposed this, and the ships left without restraint. (Id., 1697–1698, p. 282.) For a time the Madagascar trade engrossed the interest of many New York merchants. In 1700, three vessels were expected back, and others were fitting out for the voyage. Great estates had been made by selling wine, rum, and ammunition to the pirates; the margin of profit seemed incredible. One vessel, owned by Messrs. DeLancey and Hackshaw, returned in 1699 with about 60 passengers who had paid 12,000 pieces of eight and 3,000 lion dollars for their passage. This ship also brought treasure that Bellomont believed worth £50,000. The colony was flushed with gold, and the shipowners had been able to defy the government. Three other ships were on the way: when they arrived the province would abound with ready money. (Id., 1697–1698, pp. 270, 403; 1700, p. 106; 1704–1705, pp. 140–141; 1699, pp. 281, 335, 360–361, 402–403.) Piracy reached to the very heart of local politics. The Council under Fletcher shared his attitude; when the pirate ship Jacob arrived, the councillors advised that the men be permitted to come ashore, since the province was “exhausted in men as well as money” and therefore “nothing could be worse than to drive these men to other ports.” For his exertions against pirates Bellomont brought upon himself the charge of having kept £100,000 out of the province in less than a year. He met much opposition from his first Council, and aroused the wrath of the New York merchants. Among the councillors who profited by the contact with pirates were Bayard, Philips, Willett, DeLancey, Minvielle, Nichols, Smith, and French. The five first named were removed from office early in Bellomont’s campaign against illegal trade. Id., 1697–1698, pp. 211, 480, 487, 512; Nottingham to Board of Trade, July 29, 1702, C.O. 5:1047, nos. 62 and 63 (i-iii).
712 Board of Trade to the King, September 25, 1717, C.O. 137:46, no. 27.
713 C.O. 5:848.
714 C.O. 389:17, p. 327; C.O. 5:1222.
715 Banister to Board of Trade, received July 15, 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 53.
716 C.O. 390:5, no. 47.
717 Id., no. 51.
718 Id., no. 47.
719 Id., no. 51.
720 In 1686–1688, Sewall made four remittances to England, amounting in all to 1,000½ ounces of silver, Mexico, pillar, and Seville, and 7 ounces of gold dust. 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, i. 30, 79, 85–86, 92. In October, 1693, he sent to John Ive 23 Spanish pistoles, 1 small piece of Arabian gold, 10 broad pieces of gold, and £3 in English silver crowns. (Id., i. 137.) Another shipment, in June, 1700, consisted of 4 Arabian gold pieces, 1 double pistole, 2 single pistoles, 1 louis d’or, 5 guineas, and one broad piece of Charles I. Id., i. 237.
721 C.O. 5:866, no. 53.
722 New York merchants to Cornbury, ca. February, 1705, C.O. 5: 1048, no, 105 (i); Nanfan to Board of Trade, June 9, 1701, C.O. 5:1045, no. 20; Quarry to Board of Trade, May 30, 1704, C.O. 323:5, no. 51; address of the Governor, Council, and Assembly of New York to the Queen, October, 1708, C.O. 5:1049, no. 99 (i); New York merchants to Board of Trade, ca. 1718, C.O. 1051, no. 67.
723 Martin was Inspector-General of the Customs. See his discourse on the balance of England’s trade, C.O. 390:12, pp. 32–33.
724 John Higginson, writing at Salem to his brother Nathaniel in August, 1700, said: “here is much shipping, freight very low, and it is a query whether you had better not ship upon freight, than either hire or own vessels. The factor here may always have freight when he can provide it.” 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soe, vii. 218.
725 Bellomont to Board of Trade, October 24, 1699, C.O. 5:860, no. 73; Quarry to Board of Trade, January 10, 1708, C.O. 323:6, no. 62. J. Higginson wrote in August, 1700: “Barbados, Jamaica, Virginia, and other places in the West Indies are very proper to be made use of in making returns for England, of their commodities, the more advantageous than direct from hence [Salem]. For instance, molasses has been this year at 12d a gallon, besides the charge of cask, etc., in Barbados; and much molasses which has been shipped of hence for England, cost here 2s a gallon, besides other charges of commission, cooperage, etc. The freight from Barbados [to England] being much the same as from hence, I judge it more advantageous to have returns of that kind from Barbados, than from New England; sugar and cotton are much the same.” 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vii., 219.
726 C.O. 390:12, pp. 33–34.
727 Bellomont to Board of Trade, November 28, 1700, C.O. 5:1045. no. 18.
728 V. S. Clark, History of Manufacturing in the United States, i 95.
729 Bellomont to Board of Trade, April 23, 1700, C.O. 5:931, no. 2.
730 Dudley to Board of Trade, April 8, 1712, C.O. 5:865, no. 92.
731 C.O. 5:866, no. 53.
732 Clark, i. 95.
733 This subject is treated more fully in my article, “British Payments in the American Colonies,” English Historical Review, xlviii. 229–249.
734 J. Higginson wrote in August, 1700, of trade at Salem: “Our principal commodities are dry merchandise, cod-fish fit for the markets of Spain, Portugal, the Straits, also refuse dry fish, mackerel, lumber, horses and provision for the West Indies; the effects whereof mostly return for England. . . . Considering that money is of late grown so exceeding scarce amongst us, . . . the making of returns for England by the way of Barbados, Leeward Islands, Bilbao, Oporto, Cadiz, and Isle of Wight would be more easy and safe than direct for England; and it’s probable, more advantageous; because, money being so scarce, and returns direct, difficult to be got, debts must be contracted to procure money, which will be hardly got in; whereas, a man may sell more goods, and better get in his debts more speedily and certainly, for barter of goods for those markets, than direct.” 3 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vii, 218, 220.
735 Estimate of expense of British warships engaged in defense of the colonies, C.O. 390:5, no. 46.
736 Banister’s “Essay on the Trade of New England,” 1715, C.O. 5:866, no. 67; report on French and Spanish trade in North America, sent to the Board of Trade by R. Harris, December 27, 1714, C.O. 388:17, no. 86 (ii); Board of Trade to the King, September 25, 1717, C.O. 137:46, no. 27.
737 Banister’s Essay, C.O. 5:866, no. 67; address of the Governor, Council, and Assembly of Massachusetts to the Queen, August 28, 1713, C.O. 5:751, no. 85 (i).
738 Memorial of October 13, 1713, C.O. 5:866, no. 7.
739 Board of Trade to the Queen, January 15, 1714, C.O. 5:913, pp. 464–7; heads of additional instructions for Mr. Methuen, proposed by Board of Trade, January 17, 1715, C.O. 389:25, pp. 73–74; treaty of 1715, Brit. State Papers, i. 628.
740 Craggs to colonial governors, December 24, 1718, C.O. 324:33, pp. 202–204.
741 Board of Trade to the Queen, February 9, 1714, C.O. 5513, pp. 469–471.
742 Board of Trade to the King, December 19, 1718, C.O. 195:6, pp. 416–464.
743 His diploma bearing that date, the oldest known Harvard diploma, is printed in Sibley, Harvard Graduates, ii, 420 (where there is a short sketch of Alcock’s life), and is reproduced in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, xxxv. 807.
744 Sibley i. 125.
745 Ambroise Paré (the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth century): The Workes of that famous chirurgion A. Parey translated out of Latine and compared with the French by T. Johnson. London, 1634, and later editions.
746 Sir Jonas Moore: Arithmetick. London, 1650, and later editions.
747 Johannes Jonston (Polish physician and traveller): Idea Universæ Medicinæ Practicæ libris VIII. Amsterdam, 1644, and later editions.
748 William Clowes, surgeon of Queen Elizabeth; the title would suggest that this was the first edition (London, 1588) of his principal work, A Prooved Practise for all Young Chirurgians.
749 Either the elder (1538–1605) or the younger (1580–1657) Jean Riolan; if the former, either his Universæ Medicinæ Compendium (Paris, 1598), or his Chirurgia (Leipsig, 1601; English translation, 1657); if the latter (the more eminent), probably his Encheiridium Anatomicum et Pathologium (Paris, 1648, and many later editions).
750 Hendrick Gutberleth: Pathologia, hoc est doctrina de humanis affectibus, physice et ethice tractata. Herborn, 1615.
751 Probably Leonhard Fuchs: Methodus seu Ratio Compendiara preveniendi ad veram medicinam. Paris, 1541, and later editions. Gutberleth is now remembered for his magnificent botanical drawings, but in his time he was a very popular medical writer.
752 Joannes Guinterius, Andernacus (Johann Winther), a famous sixteenth-century editor of Galen; probably his De Medicina Veteri et Nova (Basel, 1571), an attempted reconciliation of the schools of Galen and Paracelsus.
753 Jacques Houllier; his Omnia Opera Practica were published in folio in Paris in 1612, but since the price in the inventory does not indicate this to be a folio, it was probably his popular De Materia Chirurgica (1544, and later editions), or his De Morborum Internorum Curatione (Venice, 1562, and later editions).
754 Cornelius Schrevelius (Schrevel): Lexicon Manuale Græco-Latinum et Latino-Græcum. Leyden, 1654, and many later editions. This book was still being used by Harvard students in the early years of the nineteenth century.
755 Thomas Shelton’s translation, published by Ed. Blount in 1612 and 1620.
756 The traditional “three books of Mesue,” which formed “the common textbook of pharmacology and therapeutics in the Middle Ages”; they were probably Latin compilations of the tenth and eleventh centuries, given, for the sake of prestige, the name of Joannes Mesue Damascenus, the Arab Yuhanna ibn Masawayh (c 777–857). There were several sixteenth-century editions.
757 Jean Fernel (of Amiens, professor of medicine at Paris): Universa Medicina. Frankfort, 1574, and many later editions.
758 Jacob Wecker, physician of Basel and Colmar; probably his Practica Medicinæ Generalis (Basel, 1585).
759 Jan van Heurne, physician and professor of medicine at Leyden, author of Notes and Commentaries on various Hippocratic works; probably either his Praxis Medicina; Nova Ratio (Leyden, 1590), or his Institutiones Medicinæ (Leyden, 1592).
760 Thomas Wilson (1563–1622), Puritan preacher of Canterbury; perhaps his Christian Dictionarie (London, 1612), “one of the earliest attempts made at a concordance of the Bible in English.”
761 Possibly Charles Etienne de la Rivière, physician and printer of Paris (d 1569), but more likely Lazare Rivière (1589–1655), professor at Montpellier, whose complete works in folio went through twelve editions between 1663 and 1738. The work listed here was probably the latter’s Praxis Medica (Paris, 1640, and later editions), or his Institutiones Medicæ (1655, and later editions). Lazare Rivière is said to have plagiarized extensively from Sennert.
762 Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), the most authoritative medical writer of his time. Alcock’s library doubtless included the following: Hypomnemata Physica (Frankfort, 1636); De Chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis Consensu ac Dissensu Liber (Wittenberg, 1619); Institutionum Medicinæ: libri V (Wittenberg, 1628); Liber IV Practicæ; Medicinæ: de Mulierum et Infantium Morbis (Wittenberg, 1632); Epitome Institutionum Medicinæ et Libr. de Febribus (Wittenberg, 1634).
763 J. B. van Helmont, the “chemist” extraordinary of the seventeenth century. His Ortus Medicinæ (Amsterdam, 1644) was translated into English in 1662 as Oriatrike or Physick Refined.
764 Probably Johann Schroeder, whose Pharmacopœia Medico-chymica (Ulm, 1641) was translated into English in 1669.
765 Since there was no collected edition of Harvey’s works until the eighteenth century, this was probably the immortal Exereitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Frankfort, 1628, and many later editions).
766 Probably a mistake for Bartholinus, for whom see note 5, below.
767 Doubtless Chapman’s translation, which bore this plural form of the title.
768 There was a whole family of distinguished Danish physicians by this name, beginning with Caspar Bartholinus the elder (1585–1629), who Latinized his name of Jasper Bertelsen. This book was probably one of the numerous works of Thomas Bartholinus (1616–1680), son of Caspar, and “the most famous of the family”: perhaps his Historiarum Anatomicarum et Medicarum Rariorum Centuria (Amsterdam, 1654), or his De Pulmonum Substantia et Motu Diatribe (Copenhagen, 1663).
769 Justus Lipsius, of Louvain, “un des savants les plus prodigieux du seizième siècle”; from the wording of the title in the inventory, this is perhaps his Epistolæ Selectæ ad Belgas (1605). All his other collections of letters, and there are many such, have the form epislolarum.
770 Giulio Guastavigno (professor of medicine at Pisa): Libri Locorum de Medicina Selectorum. London, 1616, and later editions.
771 Probably the elder Martin Ruland (1532–1602), who published a general treatise, Medicina Practica Recens et Nova, at Strasburg in 1567. The younger Martin Ruland (1569–1611), a physician of Regensburg and Prague, also wrote medical works.
772 The seven books of Paulus Ægineta, a Byzantine Greek (625–690). There were various Latin and Greek editions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; from the price quoted here, this may well have been a small octavo edited by Guinterius (see note 5, p. 352, above) in 1589.
773 Perhaps William Firth: A Saint’s Monument, or the Tomb of the Righteous. London, 1662. This is based on a sermon preached at the funeral of the wife of Lord Willoughby of Parham, well known in the early history of the British West Indies.
774 Paul Marquart Slegel (Schlegel), of Hamburg, author of numerous dissertations on particular diseases, of which a collection may have been made.
775 Peter Uffenbach, physician of Frankfort-on-Main, translator, editor, and author of various medical, and especially pharmacological, works; this is perhaps his collection, Dispensatorium Galenochymicum (Hanau, 1631), or his own De Venenis et Mortiferis Medicinis.
776 Franciscus Titelman (Capuchin friar, d 1537): Compendium Dialecticæ ad Libros Logicorum Arist. (Paris, 1542), or De Consideratione Dialectica (1534).
777 Duncan Liddel, a Scottish M.D., professor at the University of Helmstadt in Brunswick. This is probably his Ars Medica (Hamburg, 1608), dedicated to James I.
778 Noah Biggs, who described himself as Helmontii Psittacus, and who published at London in 1651 a book with this extraordinary title: Matæotechnia Medicinæ Praxeωs: the vanity of the craft of physick; or a new dispensatory, wherein is dissected the errors, ignorance, impostures, and supinities of the schools, in their main pillars of purging, bloodletting, etc. With an humble motion for the reformation of the Universities, and the whole landscap of physick, and discovering the terra incognita of chymistrie to the parliament of England.
779 Philip Barrough (Barrow; licensed as a chirurgeon by Cambridge University in 1559): Method of Physicke, containing the causes, signs and cures of inward diseases in man’s body from head to foot. London, 1590. The seventh edition appeared as late as 1652.
780 Jobst or Jodocus was the first name of Willichius Resellianus (1501–1552), whose Commentarius Anatomicus appeared in 1544.
781 See note 1, p. 353, above; this was Fernel’s posthumous De Luis Venereæ Curatione (Antwerp, 1579).
782 Jacob Boehme, the famous German mystic. J. Ellistone produced a translation of this work (London, 1651) under the following title: Signatura Rerum, or the Signature of all Things, shewing the sign and signification of the severall forms and shapes in the creation, and what the beginning, ruin, and cure of everything is.
783 Thomas Home (Master of Eton): Manuductio in Ædem Palladis. London, 1641, and later editions.
784 See note 6, p. 354, above; either his Flores Totius Philosophiæ (Magdeburg, 1599), published by Lipsius during his lifetime, or the posthumous Justi Lipsii Flores ex eius operibus decerpti (Antwerp, 1616).
785 Since no Porselius or Perselius is to be discovered, the query arises, particularly since Don Quixote is on Alcock’s list, whether this may not have been Cervantes’ Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda, of which an English translation was published in 1619.
786 Probably John Flavel, the ejected Presbyterian (1630–1691), four of whose many works had appeared by the time Alcock went to England; perhaps either Husbandry Spiritualized (London, 1669), or Navigation Spiritualized (London, 1682). Otherwise, the Tractatus de Demonstratione Methodicus et Polemicus (Oxford, 1619) of an earlier and most precocious John Flavel (1596–1617).
787 The Bavarian Jesuit, Jeremias Drechsel (Drexel), writer of devotional and Scholastic manuals. The hcl has his Orbis Phaëthon (Cologne, 1631) with signatures of Edward Pelham and Joseph Sewall (A.B. 1707), and his Aurifodina Artium et Scientiarum Omnium (Antwerp, 1638).
788 Jeremiah Chaplin, Life of Henry Dunster, p. 307.
789 Id., p. 305.
790 The substance of this paper provided the basis of a communication to this Society at its meeting in April, 1930. For important contributions to its present expanded form acknowledgments are due to Mr. Samuel Eliot Morison. I gave him a rough draft, with a list of the books then identified, for use in writing his Tercentennial History of Harvard College. He personally verified the list, added many new titles thereto, made more extensive transcripts of the title-pages, and furnished various editorial comments.
A discussion of the seventeenth-century curriculum as a whole, which might be expected in an introduction to this list of books, is rendered unnecessary by the exhaustive treatment of that subject in Mr. Morison’s Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century. His chapters on studies and exercises at Harvard in that century not only give the first detailed account ever written, but they also far surpass corresponding chapters in any of the numerous histories of European universities.
Readers of the following pages will note: (1) that I am more inclined than Mr. Morison to believe that the curriculum was planned primarily (though not exclusively) for the education of the future ministers of the colony; and (2) that i suggest that the plan was derived, directly or indirectly, from St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana. This view he will doubtless characterize as far-fetched, but I propose it as at least a possibility.
791 Now printed as Volumes xv and xvi of our Publications.
792 Reprinted in Old South Leaflets, No. 51. The material on the college is dated 1642, and that date is used here in references to this source. Quotations given here are from the original edition. I have rearranged in tabular form, with some explanatory words, the section on the programme of studies (see p. 362). The course for the A.B. degree in 1642 was three years in length and continued so until 1654, when it was extended to four years. (Our Publications, xxxi. 280–282.) The four-year scheme is embodied in the College Laws of 1655, together with considerably increased entrance requirements in Greek, and a more extended examination for the A.B. degree than in 1642.
793 Printed in 1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xiv. 207–215; reprinted, from another and earlier copy, in our Publications, xxxi. 327–343. Quotations given here are from the latter version.
794 Printed (with some errors) in L. F. Snow, The College Curriculum in the United States (1907), pp. 34–35; and in Colyer Meriwether, Our Colonial Curriculum (1907), pp. 55–56; reproduced in illustration facing p. 365.
795 In 1723, the Overseers were, for various reasons, moved to a critical survey of the instruction then being given at the college. On August 9, 1723, they appointed a committee to bring in a list of questions or “articles of visitation” on which the inquiry was to proceed. Eight questions were formulated by the committee, and these were approved by the Overseers on September 30. The first was: “Wt are the Stated Exercises Enjoyned the Students, and how attended by them.” To this the Tutors (Flynt, Prince, and Welsteed) replied that the stated exercises were “generally the same which they formerly have been.” Thereupon the Overseers voted (October 9): “That the Tutors of the College draw up a particular account of the present Stated Exercises Enjoyned the Students, and lay it before the Overseers at a future meeting.” This vote contains the exact title of College Paper No. 31 in Volume I, which is in the handwriting of Tutor Flynt. Evidently this paper is a preliminary draft of the official reply which was finally signed by Flynt, Prince, and Welsteed, and handed to the Overseers, probably shortly after October 9. This document has not been found, but fortunately it was copied (with the signatures) by President Wadsworth in his diary on March 15, 1725/6, with the comment, “Twas given in some few years before to ye overseers.” “Some few years before” could not have been earlier than 1723, since Nathan Prince, who signed as one of the Tutors, was not appointed until that year. This, as just noted, was the year of the Overseers’ inquiry. These facts fix the date. For the text of Wadsworth’s copy, see our Publications, xxxi. 455–456.
796 Our Publications, xv. 189 (the College Laws of 1642–1646).
797 This requirement was modified in 1655 to require ability “to read extempore the Pentateuch, and the New Testament into Latin out of the Originall Tongues” (Our Publications, xxxi. 334.) It appears in the College Laws as late as 1734. The student’s ability to read the Bible in Latin on his entrance to college was of course assured by his long and varied preparatory course in that language. For the details of this training, see below, and our Publications, xxvii. 21–29.
798 Nonnus (c 400 A.D.), a Greek poet, wrote, besides many poems on classical subjects, a paraphrase of St. John’s Gospel in Greek hexameters. A copy is in the Harvard College Library.
799 James Duport (1606–1679), appointed regius professor of Greek at Cambridge in 1639, paraphrased in Greek verse the Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Proverbs, and other books of the Old Testament. He also wrote poems in Greek on many other subjects, hcl has a copy of his version of the Psalms; bpl (Prince), his versions of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. In view of the suspicion of pagan authors then existing among Puritans — reflected in the provision of the Laws of 1655 that “in the teaching of all Arts such Authors bee read as doe best agree with the Scripture truths” — we may assume that “practice in poësy” was based on versified selections from the Bible rather than on other subjects treated by Nonnus and Duport. These writers are not mentioned again in the sources for our period, and no copy of their works which I have found contains a Harvard signature of the seventeenth century.
800 “Trestius,” as New Englands First Fruits has it, is a misprint for “Trostius.” Martin Trost (1588–1636), professor in various German universities — finally at Wittenberg — published in 1622 an edition of the Syriac New Testament, and a year later a Syriac Lexicon. Copies of each have been found, but none have been identified as belonging to a Harvard student. The study of Syriac is not mentioned after the programme of 1642.
801 William Dugard (1606–1662; headmaster of the Merchant Taylors School, London), Rhetorices Elementa, published shortly before 1660; Thomas Farnaby (1575–1641), Index Rhetoricus, 4th ed., London, 1646. Farnaby maintained a private school in London and elsewhere.
802 The New Logic was compiled (c 1687) by William Brattle (Tutor 16857–1697) from Anthony Legrand, Institutio Philosophiae secundum principia D. Renat: Descartes (London, 1680); and A. Arnauld and P. Nicole, Logica, Sive Ars Cogitandi (London, 1674 — The Port Royal Logic). Copies of both the Institutio and the Ars Cogitandi are in hcl and bpl (Prince). The remaining titles in this Account are to be found in the list by authors, below.
803 The list of 1726 gives official standing to most of the books mentioned in 1723; but it adds no new titles. It differs from that of 1723 in the following particulars:
- 1. Study of Latin and Greek grammar, not mentioned in 1723, is prescribed in 1726. Evidently the first year of the college course had descended nearly to a review of preparatory school studies; it was much below the standard of 1642.
- 2. Isocrates and Homer, mentioned in 1723, are dropped from the official list of 1726; the study of Greek is limited to grammar, the New Testament, and the Catechism.
- 3. Hebrew, which is listed for both freshmen and sophomores in 1723, does not appear at all in 1726. This is a curious oversight, since Judah Monis was appointed instructor in Hebrew in 1722, and his MS. Hebrew grammar and the Hebrew Psalter were both in use at that time.
- 4. Arithmetic, not mentioned in 1723, is listed for the senior class in 1726, thus continuing the practice of 1642.
- 5. There are several minor differences in phrasing, some statements being more exact in the earlier, some in the later list.
804 This assumption turned out later to be nearly correct, in spite of the fact that the actual date is 1723. Dugard’s Rhetorices Elementa and Farnaby’s Index Rhetoricus must be excepted since none of the copies thus far examined contain seventeenth-century student signatures. The importation of these books about 1680 is recorded, however, in the Boston booksellers’ lists, and probably they were in use at Harvard as early as that date.
805 New Englands First Fruits, p. 12.
806 This organization is suggested by St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine (Book I, ch. 1, 1), which furnishes a striking parallel to the Harvard programme of 1642: “There are two things on which all interpretation of Scripture depends: The mode of ascertaining the proper meaning, and the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained.”
The clear-cut medieval division of liberal learning into the seven liberal arts and the three philosophies was either unknown to, or had been abandoned by, many of the writers of this period. The seven liberal arts of medieval tradition included the trivium – grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The three philosophies were natural (physics), rational (metaphysics or theology), and moral (ethics), By the seventeenth century the advancement of learning had resulted in the development of new subjects, and more comprehensive classifications of the field as a whole were necessary. The older subjects were retained, but often in new relations. These new classifications appear in several of the volumes in our list. Thus, Alsted (see p. 383, below, Cursus Philosophici Encyclopaedia, 1620) classifies the whole body of liberal learning as “philosophy,” which in turn is treated under four “praecognita” and twenty-three “disciplines.” These last include “Septem Artes Philosophiae Poeticae” – lexica, grarnmatica, rhetorica, logica, oratoria, poetica, and mnemonica, “quas memoriae causa dividimus in Trivium, et Quadrivium.” Alated places the four mathematical branches of the medieval quadrivium with seven other subjects under the head of “Undecim Scientiae Philosophicae Theoreticae.”
William Ames (Technometria, 1646, see p. 385, below) mentions six arts. Three of these are general – logic, grammar, and rhetoric; three are special – mathematics (geometry and arithmetic), physics (cosmography, astronomy, geography, optics, and music), and theology. Philosophy, according to Ames, has seven parts, and some of these are included under the six arts: oratory (including poetry), cosmography, optics, music, architecture, economics, and politics.
Christopher Scheibler (Philosophia Compendiosa, 1623), after rejecting several current definitions of philosophy, concludes: “Est igitur Philosophia scientiarum & artium liberalium comprehensio. . . . Philosophia dividitur in artes liberals seu Logicas, & scientias.
“Artes logicae sunt. . . . Logica. . . . seu Dialectica, Rhetorica, Grammatica, & ut quibusdam placet, Poetica,
“Scientia. . . est speculativa vel practica. . . . [Scientiae speculativae] sunt Metaphysica, Physica & Mathesis. Ad Mathesin autem pertinent, turn scientiae purae, ut sunt Geometria & Arithmetical turn impurae, ut sunt Astronomia, Geographia, Musica & Optica. . . . [Scientiae practicae]sunttres:Ethica, Politica & Oeconomica.”
The notebook of William Partrigg (Partridge), H.C. 1689, gives a different view: all ordinary acquired knowledge is either philology (grammar—Latin, Greek, Hebrew—rhetoric, and poetry) or philosophy (logic and “all Arts and Sciences”). The arts and sciences include practical philosophy (ethics, politics, and economics), speculative philosophy (metaphysics the science of being, and metaphysics the science of quantity, i.e., geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, geography, optics, and music), and physics.
All this is a long way from the medieval conception of the seven arts and the three philosophies, and it suggests caution in accepting any theory of the organization of the early Harvard curriculum. With due reservation, therefore, I suggest that the theory underlying the programme of 1642 was directly or indirectly derived from St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine. Without arguing the case at length, I call attention to certain remarkable similarities. The programme as a whole seems clearly to justify the traditional view that it was organized primarily, though not exclusively, for the training of ministers. One phase of this training was mastery of the Bible. Mastery of the Bible, according to St. Augustine, includes (1) ability to interpret the meaning, and (2) ability to make known the meaning when it is ascertained.
Ability to interpret, he says, involves much auxiliary learning; e.g., the knowledge of the original languages in which the Scriptures are written, history, chronology, natural science (“the situation of places, and the nature of animals, trees, herbs, stones, and other bodies”), the mechanical arts, medicine, agriculture, navigation, and astronomy (but not astrology). Logic, according to St. Augustine, “is of very great service in searching into and unravelling all sorts of questions that come up in Scripture”; while the science of number, with its unchanging laws, may lead us to “the unchangeable truth above it.” In short, “whatever has been rightly said by the heathen we may appropriate to our uses.” All this is to be employed in the most careful interpretation of the Scriptures (On Christian Doctrine, Book iii). It is not difficult to find a large part of the programme of 1642 in this outline—the study of the Biblical languages, natural science (physics and “the nature of plants”), history, logic, and mathematics and astronomy. The required private reading of the Bible twice daily; the translations from the Greek and Hebrew texts; the “Theoretical! observations of the Language and Logic and of the Practicall and spirituall truths” which the student was expected to make; and the chief examination for the A.B. degree — a test of the candidate’s ability to “read the Originalls of the Old and New Testament into the Latine tongue and to resolve them Logically” — all indicate the use of these auxiliary studies for the definite purpose of interpretation.
Similarly, ability to expound the Bible involves a knowledge of rhetoric, a study of styles of speech, and an ability to defend one’s interpretation in debate. “It is the duty, then, of the interpreter and teacher of Holy Scripture, the defender of the true faith and the opponent of error, both to teach what is right, and refute what is wrong. . . . The work that I am speaking of ought to be undertaken by one who can argue and speak with wisdom, if not with eloquence, and with profit to his hearers.” St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book IV, chaps. iv and v,
Under this heading the programme of 1642 presents rhetoric, exercises in “style,” declamations, disputations, repetition of sermons, and “commonplaces.”
807 In reading this summary we must recall that throughout the seventeenth century – and much later – the freshman entered college trained to read, speak, and write Latin with ease, and with an elementary knowledge of Greek. No other subjects were required. The standard entrance requirement in Latin was (1) the translation of Cicero, Virgil, “or such like classical author” at sight, (2) the writing of Latin prose and verse, and (3) oral composition in prose and in verse. Both writing and speaking were to be “suo ut aiunt Marte,” i.e., by the student’s own unaided efforts. This probably means that he was not to use the phrase-books, collections of proverbs, and other helps so plentifully provided for “unballasted wits” in those days.
Thus trained, the freshman could listen understandingly to the lectures, read the text-books, take notes, write declamations, conduct disputations, and converse with his fellow-students in Latin. Latin was the language of practically all the books used in college except those in Greek, Hebrew, “Chaldee,” and Syriac; and by the Laws of 1655 students were not to use English in the college, unless “called thereunto in the public exercise of oratory or the like.”
The entrance requirement in Greek was, in 1642, merely ability to “decline perfectly the paradigmes of Nounes and verbes in ye Greeke tongue” (our Publications, xv. 24–25). Further training in Greek was carried on throughout the three years of the college course, culminating in declamations in Greek and (in 1655) in translations from the Bible (Old Testament) “out of Hebrew into Greek,” and of the New Testament “out of English into greeke.” In 1655, the entrance requirements were increased. The candidate for admission must be “Competently grounded in the Greeke Language; so as to be able to Construe & Grammatically to resolve ordinary Greeke, as the Greeke Testament, Isocrates, & the minor poets [Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, Bion, Moschus, Theognis, Pythagoras, Solon, and others] or such like. . . .” We may doubt whether this high standard was maintained in succeeding years. In 1723 and 1726, a large part of the freshman year was spent in reviewing the Greek “Classick Authors Learnt at School.” For details of the college preparatory course see Nathaniel Williams’s account of the Boston Latin School in 1712, with Professor Murdock’s notes thereon, in our Publications, xxvn. 21–29. This article throws a flood of light on the Harvard entrance requirements at this time, since the Boston Latin School was in effect a preparatory school for Harvard. In brief, its course of seven years was almost wholly devoted to the study of Latin and Greek, with abundant practice in composition in prose and in verse in both languages.
808 Compare with this the requirements for graduation, and the account of the first Commencement in New Englands First Fruits: “Every Schollar, that on proofe is found able to read the Originalls of the Old and New Testament into the Latine tongue, and to resolve them Logically . . . is fit to be dignified with his first Degree” (p. 16). “The Governour . . . and others . . . were present, and did heare their Exercises; [among which was] Hebrew Analasis, Grammatic all, Logicall, & Rhetoricall of the Psalms. . . .”
809 The exact scope of this subject is not known. Did the students of the 1640’s memorize and recite answers to a series of questions? If so, what catechism? In what language? Did they use the Westminster Catechism after its approval in the Cambridge Platform of 1648? Whose was the “Greek Catechysm” so insistently inquired after by the Overseers in 1723 – Calvin’s? Nowell’s? Harmar’s Greek version of the Westminster Catechism? Was the exercise perhaps an exposit ion on a word or a phrase of some catechism, after the manner of Samuel Willard’s two hundred and fifty sermons on the Westminster Catechism? These questions have yet to be answered.
810 Diary of Samuel Sewall (5 Coli. Mass. Hist, Soc., v. 4): “July 1, 1674. Sir Thacher Common placed, Justification was his head. He had a solid good piece: stood above an hour, and yet brake of[f] before he came to any use [i.e., application].”
811 Professor William James objected strongly to the extraction from these stacks of the books on philosophy and psychology, and their orderly arrangement on separate shelves: “When I hunt there for a book on philosophy I find dozens of other interesting ones on all sorts of subjects, and I shall never see them if our books are classified.” My belief is that many odd associations of ideas in James’s writings may be traced to his hunting in “the Dump,” where Hegel, Hottentots, and Arctic explorations might be shelved side by side.
812 See p. 418, below.
813 Cf. Foster Watson, English Grammar Schools to 1660 (1908), pp. 435–437. See also id., p. 467, on which are listed no less than 118 writers of books of this type.
814 Professor Morison examined also the collection of George A. Plimpton, Esq., the library of the Union Theological Seminary, and the John Winthrop collection in the Society Library in New York, but without result. The Winthrop collection contains several copies of books in this list, with undated signatures of Wait Winthrop (Class of 1662) and John Winthrop (A.B. 1700).
815 Many others, among the several thousand volumes examined, might have been added to the “possibles,” and a much larger number could have been placed in a fourth group as “suspects.” These last contain no Harvard signatures; but all of them were almost certainly imported before 1700, and they are either duplicates of those in the accepted group, or treat the same subjects. Unfortunately I have kept no record of these, but their number certainly exceeds that of the accepted list. Even if these are included, however, the number of survivors thus far known is but a small fraction of the total number which must have been owned by the 465 A.B.’s and the approximately 100 non-graduates of the seventeenth century. A modest estimate of ten to twenty books a student yields a total of 6,000 to 12,000 volumes for this period. Some of these will doubtless appear on further search, but in view of the treatment usually accorded to old text-books we must conclude that the great majority have returned to the dust with the ministers whom they made “literate” for the churches.
816 Supporting evidence later appeared from many sources, including Watson, English Grammar Schools to 1660; Colyer Meriwether, Our Colonial Curriculum; Professor E. T. Campagnac’s scholarly editions of John Brinsley’s Ludus Literarius (1627), and Charles Hoole’s New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole (1660); the indispensable catalogue of John Harvard’s Library, by our associate Alfred C. Potter (our Publications, xxi. 190–230); the study of Dissenting Academies in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Irene Parker (1914); and especially the much more detailed account of these academies by H. McLachlan (English Education under the Test Acts, 1931). There is a suggestive resemblance between some of these academies and Harvard in their programmes of study; and often the text-books used are identical. Charles Morton (1627–1698), B.A. Oxford, 1649, who came to Harvard about 1687 and became vice-president of the college, was the founder and head of an academy at Stoke Newington, 1675–1686.
817 Ninety-seven men have each autographed but one of the surviving volumes; the remaining eighty-one, two or more volumes each. Particular note must be taken of seven men, each represented in six or more of these books: John Barnard, ten; Joseph Browne, ten; Joseph Cooke, ten; John Leverett, eight; Cotton Mather, no less than twenty-six; Increase Mather, six; Nathaniel Mather, fourteen.
The total number of autographs (including duplicates) recorded in the list below is nearly four hundred. But this takes account of only one example of each signature in each book; the actual number is far greater, since many men wrote their names three or four times in a single volume. Cotton Mather favored posterity with no less than twelve autographs in one small book, which also contains several other Mather signatures. Probably 1,000 signatures of our 177 seventeenth-century students can be found in the volumes here listed.
This extraordinary collection of early Massachusetts autographs deserves a study in itself. The inscriptions include much besides the signatures. Like students of other places and times, Harvard students of the seventeenth century often used the fly-leaves and margins of their books for entries of various kinds. Many of these are here reproduced. Warnings against stealing the book, or requests to return it to the owner if it is found or borrowed, appear in varied forms: “Steal this Booke if you dare,” writes Charles Chauncy in his copy of Florus. John Poole puts it more mildly; “Hic libel’ meus est, si quisquis forte requirit Nomen subscriptum perlege quaeso meum.” John Eliot expresses the idea in a slightly different way:
“Si quaerit lector quis possidet istum
Nomen subscriptum perlegat ille meum.”
A more emphatic form which appeared several times in books not included in this list runs thus;
“Hic libel’ est meus
Testis est Deus
Si quis furatur
Per collum pendatur.”
Other inscriptions vary from grave to gay: Joseph Browne identified nearly all of his books by “Lege, Intellege, Vive, J.B.”; John Barnard notes in his copy of Brochmand’s Theologiae Systema: “Lege, Lege, deliberate Lege; praemium munificium ea persolvet.” Nathaniel Clap, having been given a copy of the Hebrew Old Testament by Increase Mather, characterizes that gentleman as “Benevolentissimus, Reverendissimus et Doctissimus.” Someone (perhaps Elisha Cooke) writes in a copy of the Greek New Testament that “Samuel Aspinwall is a knave”; and in an Isocrates owned by the Reverend Samuel Mitchell (A.B. 1681; Fellow and Tutor) some irreverent youth records his opinion that “Samuel Mitchell is a long-legged Catt.” “Every man at his best estate is altogether vanity,” is inscribed in Bartholin’s Enchiridion Physicum, owned by Nathaniel Saltonstall. Joseph Cooke, however, connects Keckermann’s very dry Logic with more cheerful thoughts:
“Call for a Tankard
My Cloths at pollards
Get some Pisado: Clarett
buy a grater. Some Lime-juice.”
818 The reasons cannot be given here for each case; one example must suffice. A copy of Isocrates contains only the undated signature of Joseph Webb (A.B., 1684). But the volume is accepted as a “probable” and Webb ‘s name is included in the index because (1) Isocrates, presumably read in preparation for college, was also presumably reviewed in the freshman year; (2) this presumption is supported by the College Laws of 1655, by the Particular Account of 1723–1726, and by four other copies of Isocrates, each owned by two or more Harvard men of that period; (3) Webb’s signature (again undated) appears in two other books, each of which is definitely dated by one of his contemporaries in college. We may infer that he wrote these signatures during his college years.
819 According to the Quinquennial Catalogue there were no graduates in 1644, 1648, 1672, 1682, 1688.
820 The seven classes not represented in the index of signatures below are those of 1643, 1645, 1646, 1652, 1654, 1658, and 1673. These number only twenty-eight men, all told.
821 AAS. American Antiquarian Society.
BA. Boston Athenaeum.
BPL. Boston Public Library.
HCL. Harvard College Library.
MHS. Massachusetts Historical Society.
Yale. Yale University Library.
822 This bookplate has been removed from the volume, and is now in the aas collection of bookplates.
823 The title-page in several of these Hebrew Bibles reads “Pentateuch,” but they contain the whole Old Testament. There were separate title-pages for the other parts or books.
824 BFBS, no. 5084; Zedner, p. 96. These abbreviations refer to the British and Foreign Bible Society’s Historical Catalogue of Printed Bibles, and to the Catalogue of Hebrew Books in the Library of the British Museum (1867), compiled by J. Zedner.
825 BFBS, no. 5099; Zedner, p. 97.
826 BFBS, no. 5118; Zedner p. 99.
827 BFBS, no. 5117.
828 BFBS, no. 5124.
829 BFBS, no. 5127; Zedner, p. 100.
830 BFBS, no. 4653.
831 BFBS, no. 4692 B, which calls it the “first edition of the LXX printed in England.”
832 BFBS, no. 6192.
833 BFBS, no. 524.
834 One can only guess at the text used in this subject. It is not improbable that it was a rather elementary catechism in Latin, such as Alexander Nowell’s Christianae Pietatis Prima Institutio. His three Latin catechisms—the smaller (1572), the middle and the larger (both 1570) — were the most widely used school manuals for religious instruction in England in the seventeenth century. The one named above is the middle catechism; it was translated into English by Thomas Norton in 1572, and into Greek by William Whitaker in 1573. The Greek version was frequently used as a reader, introductory to or parallel with the Greek New Testament, and it may be the Greek Catechism referred to in the list of 1723. In its Latin form it would have been suitable for the Saturday morning exercise named in the Order of Studies of 1642. One might expect that it would be supplanted by the Westminster Catechism upon the publication of that document in 1647 and its adoption in the Cambridge Platform of 1648. However, no copy of either catechism identified with Harvard in the seventeenth century has been found.
If “divinity catechetical” was of a more advanced type. Buchan’s Institutiones Theologiae (1625) may have been used as a text. It is in the catechetical form. Two copies have been identified, and four others, not autographed, are in HCL.
835 Latin does not appear as a separate subject at Harvard until 1723, and then only as a review of Virgil and Cicero in the freshman year.
836 Lily’s Latin Grammar was the text prescribed by English law for use in grammar (i.e., preparatory) schools of that time.
837 See also Bibles in Latin in the list by authors.
838 There is no evidence that these classics were used as texts in any college classes, although several are dated during the owner’s college residence. The practice of reviewing Cicero in the freshman year may have been begun as early as 1654 when the four-year course for the A.B. was introduced. Hence certain books from the last years of the preparatory school may also have been used in college.
839 The books by Camden are also known as the Westminster Greek Grammar.
840 See also Bibles in Greek in the list by authors.
841 President Dunster, in a letter to Ravis (1648), speaks of using Ravis’s Orthographiae Hebraeae Delineatio, and “yor Hebrew sheet Grammar, wth yor Conjugutionall, Hebrew Table.” Ravis’s “Hebrew sheet Grammar” may have been included in his Generall Grammar. Dunster refers also to notes on Udall, sent to him by Ravis. J. Chaplin, Life of Henry Dunster, pp. 271–275.
842 Udall’s Key of the Holy Tongue may well have been the Hebrew grammar earliest in use at Harvard, but Schiekard’s Horologium seems to have been the favorite from about 1660 to 1722. No less than five copies arc in the dated list, and several others are in the libraries examined.
843 No student’s copy of this version has been found. It is one of the four texts suggested, but not explicitly named, in the Order of Studies of 1642.
844 Geography as a study first appears in the list of 1723; but it may well have been introduced before 1701. The elaborate work of Heylyn could scarcely have been used as a text; however. The texts of Patrick Gordon and Morden, of which several unautographed and undated copies are in HCL, were more probably the ones chosen.
845 No seventeenth-century student’s dated copy of any arithmetic has been found. Arithmetic must, however, have had a place in the programme since it is mentioned explicitly in all editions of the College Laws throughout this period in connection with the requirements for the A.M. degree.
846 Phrase-books and models were constantly used in exercises in prose and verse, and in the composition of declamations and disputations.
847 A very full treatment of the technique of disputation is given in Keckermann, Opera Omnia, I. chap. vii. There is an English version of this in Colyer Meriwether, Our Colonial Curriculum, chap. vii.
848 Heereboord’s Meletemata was probably used in this connection, since it is devoted mainly to specimens of disputation in metaphysics. logic, ethics, and physics.
849 Peter Hobart.
850 Stiles’s letter and Hutchinson’s reply are printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxvi. 162–164.
851 Pp. 174 and 176.
852 History of Massachusetts-Bay, iii. 174–176.
853 xvii. 175–176
854 Sydney George Fisher asserted in 1898 that “One number of the Gazette contained Franklin’s famous ‘Speech of Polly Baker’” (True Benjamin Franklin, p. 139); but in 1905 the late Albert H. Smyth, a better authority, wrote: “The mystery surrounding the authorship and first publication of the ‘Speech’ remains an impenetrable mystery. The style is altogether Franklinian, and the story seems unquestionably to have been written by him, but I have searched The Pennsylvania Gazette in vain for it. It is not there.” (Writings of Benjamin Franklin, x. 464 note.) Jefferson reached Paris on August 6, 1784, and Franklin left Passy on July 12, 1785. In a letter dated January 12, 1819, Jefferson related the following story of the Abbe Raynal which, he asserted, “The Doctor told me at Paris:”
“The Doctor & Silas Deane were in conversation one day at Passy on the numerous errors in the Abbe’s Histoire des deux Indes, when he happened to step in. After the usual salutations, Silas Deane said to him ‘The Doctor and myself Abbe, were just speaking of the errors of fact into which you have been led in your history.’ ‘Oh no, Sir,’ said the Abbe, ‘that is impossible. I took the greatest care not to insert a single fact, for which I had not the most unquestionable authority.’ ‘Why,’ says Deane, ‘there is the story of Polly Baker, and the eloquent apology you have put into her mouth, when brought before a court of Massachusetts to suffer punishment under a law, which you cite, for having had a bastard. I know there never was such a law in Massachusetts.’ ‘Be assured,’ said the Abbe, ‘you are mistaken, and that that is a true story. I do not immediately recollect indeed the particular information on which I quote it, but I am certain that I had for it unquestionable authority.’ Doctor Franklin who had been for some time shaking with unrestrained laughter at the Abbe’s confidence in his authority for that tale, said, ‘I will tell you, Abbe, the origin of that story. When I was a printer and editor of a newspaper, we were sometimes slack of news, and to amuse our customers, I used to fill up our vacant columns with anecdotes, and fables, and fancies of my own, and this of Polly Baker is a story of my making, on one of those occasions.’ The Abbe without the least disconcert, exclaimed with a laugh, ‘Oh, very well, Doctor, I had rather relate your stories than other men’s truths.’” Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. P. L. Ford, x.121 note.
855 Gentleman’s Magazine, XVII. 194.
856 This is the earliest reference to the custom of bundling, though not mentioned by that name, that I remember to have seen. Under the name of tarrying the Reverend Andrew Burnaby, who travelled in this country in 1759 and 1760, described the custom in his Travels (1775), pp, 83–84.
857 Gentleman’s Magazine, xvii. 211.
858 Fitz John Winthrop (1639–1707), Governor of Connecticut. “L. Americanus” was astray in his genealogy. Paul Dudley married Lucy, daughter of John (1648–1708) and Elizabeth (Norton) Wainwright, of Ipswich, and had several children, all of whom died in infancy. Paul Dudley’s sister Ann married John Winthrop (1681–1747; H. C. 1700), F.R.S., who was a son of Fitz John Winthrop’s brother Wait Winthrop (1642–1717).
859 Gentleman’s Magazine, xvii. 295.
860 Gentleman’s Magazine, xviii. 332.
861 The records, preserved in Mass. Archives, LVIII, have been reproduced by Mr. F. Apthorp Foster in the Publications of this Society, XIV. 2–43. My paper is merely a footnote to Mr. Foster’s.
862 Listed by Stephen Hall. See our Publications, xiv. 30.
863 The Delphin editions: a set of Latin classics for the use of the dauphin (“ad usum delphini”), son of Louis XIV.
864 I have been unable to locate an edition which could have been used at the time of the fire.
865 A fourth Book was published at Deventer in 1678.
866 For Monis, see above, p. 457.
867 This was the latest work by Wigglesworth, and one likely to have been read by students of 1763–64. The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter, July 28, 1763, announces that it was “This Day Publish’d.”
868 An attempt at a partial solution of Mr. Davis’s “Bibliographical Puzzle” (our Publications, xni. 2–15).
869 William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings (1869), I. 155.
870 “The Author of this Paper now at Edinburgh” (Review, VI, London No. 70).
871 The letter is reprinted in Earl Stanhope’s History of England (1872 ed.), ii. 292–293.
872 A complete list of the variants is attempted below:
|
News from the Moon |
Review, Vol. VII, No. 14 (Tuesday, May 2, 1710, Edinburgh) |
Review, Vol. vii, No. 15 (Saturday, April 29, 1710, London) |
|
P. 1, l.7: for |
by |
by |
|
P. 2, l. 5: their court |
one of their courts |
one of their courts |
|
P. 2, ll. 20–21: with several |
with the several |
with the several |
|
P. 2, l 27: & |
and |
and |
|
P. 3, ll. 2–3: the Drunkard |
a Drunkard |
a Drunkard |
|
P. 3, l. 9: Streets |
Street |
Street |
|
P. 3, ll. 16–17: There are Strict Laws, any Taylor making [sic] |
[same] |
[same] |
|
P. 3, l 18: & |
and |
and |
|
P. 3, l. 19: Transgress |
transgress |
trangress |
|
P. 4, l. 20: panting |
Painting |
Painting |
|
P. 4, ll. 23–24: One said. that’s at me |
One said, d . . . m the Dog, that’s at me |
[same as Edin.] |
|
P. 4, l. 28: That’s such |
That such |
That such |
|
P. 5, l. 1: L— |
L—d |
L—d |
|
P. 5, ll. 4–5: it was far |
far was it |
far was it |
|
P. 5, l. 5: the poor Author |
the poor Author |
tht poor Author |
|
P. 5, l. 12: had bespoke |
bespoke |
bespoke |
|
P. 5, l. 16: ones Eye-sight |
one Eye-sight |
one Eye-sight |
|
P. 5, ll. 29–30: along the Streets |
about Streets |
about Streets |
|
P. 5, l. 30: such Cases |
such Gases |
such Cases |
|
P. 6, ll. 7–8: Prince Nobility |
prime Nobility |
prime Nobility |
|
P. 6, l. 9: D—’s |
Dog’s |
Dog’s |
|
P. 6, l. 11: begins |
began |
began |
|
P. 6, l. 14: your Neighbour |
my Neighbour |
my Neighbour |
|
P. 6, ll. 20–21: Lordship, and if |
Lordship, you Dog, and if |
Lordship, you Dog and if |
|
P. 6, l. 27: in order to sent |
in order to send |
in order to send |
|
P. 7, l. 1: That — has |
That Dog has |
That Dog has |
|
P. 7, l. 7: was made for |
was for |
was for |
|
P. 7, l. 27: & |
and |
and |
|
P. 7, l. 29: & |
and |
and |
|
P. 8 [omitted] |
C. Did you make it for a Representer, or Character-Coat? T. Yes Sir. |
[same as Edin.] |
|
P. 8, l. 31: Their Guilt |
Their own Guilt |
Their own Guilt |
|
P. 8, l. 35: to the 114 Gentlemen |
to 114 Gentlemen |
to 114 Gentlemen |
|
P. 8, l. 39: Every one |
Every Man |
Every Man |
873 The conjecture is presumably that of J. Hammond Trumbull.
874 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, lvii. 340.
875 Our Publications, xni. 14.
876 See the reproduction opposite p. 461.
877 The first of these works is in my own possession; the others are in the Harvard College Library.
878 Title-page reproduced in facsimile, showing the ornaments, in Andrew McF. Davis, Colonial Currency Reprints, ii. 415.
879 Facsimile reproduction, showing ornaments, in id., i. 367.
880 Mr. Davis’s conjecture, id., ii. 18.
881 Facsimile reproduction of title-page, showing ornaments, in id., ii. 3.
882 Davis (Colonial Currency Reprints, n. 41–42) conjecturally ascribes the authorship to the Reverend Edward Wigglesworth. Facsimile of title-page, showing ornaments, in id., ii. 19.
883 First page, showing ornaments, reproduced in facsimile in id., ii. 97.
884 First page, showing ornaments, reproduced in facsimile in id., ii. 245.
885 See the illustration opposite, where the lines in the original by which the signature has been crossed out are not reproduced.
886 Andrew Craigie, by the way, advertises his own wares in the Boston NewsLetter of May 27, 1756.
887 For his autograph, see Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, II. 271.
888 Boston News-Letter, February 5, 1756 (p. 3, column 2).
889 John Franklin’s ownership, if this really is his autograph, may — since the autograph appears not on a fly-leaf but on the page which contains the half-title of Vol. VI and the beginning of its preface—date from 1709 or 1710. The Preface ends with the words “Edinburgh. Printed in the Year MDCCIX.” The final number (153) of Vol. VI is dated March 18, 1710, which means not 1710/11, but 1709/10.
890 Dictionary of American Biography; New England Historical and Genealogical Register (XI. 19), gives 1733.
891 Our Publications, xiii. 3.
892 American Bibliography, i. 302.
893 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, lvii. 340.
894 Our Publications, xiii. 3, note I.
895 Id., pp. 12–13.
896 It is reprinted in full in Colonial Currency Reprints, n. 266–270; the number of the Review from which it is taken is reprinted in our Publications, xni. 6–10. I have used a photostat of News from the Moon kindly furnished me by the New York Public Library, the fortunate possessor of the only known copy.
897 April 29 (No. 15) in the London issue; May 2 in the Edinburgh issue.
898 The impeachment of Sacheverell in 1710 was one of the worst blunders on the part of the Whigs and one of the causes of their loss of power in that year. Sacheverell’s famous sermon of November 5, 1709, had taken the extreme High Tory attitude toward the Dissenters, as Defoe had pretended to do in his Shortest Way. But although Sacheverell had been offensive enough in setting forth “the Heinous Malignity, Enormous Guilt, and Folly of this Prodigious Sin of False Brotherhood,” and in his remarks on “such wilely Volpones” had quite clearly aimed at a great Whig minister, to allow him to become a martyr was bad judgment, as the Whigs discovered too late. For accounts of the episode, see Lecky’s England in the Eighteenth Century (American ed.), i. 55ff.; C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 379–381.
899 That is, pretending, as he had done in The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), to be one of the extreme Tories, whose ecclesiastical policies he detested.
900 Nos. 9–12, 14.
901 No. 12.
902 “The Whiggs and all the Party may by this time see the ill Consequences of the Doctrine advanced by them of the Original of Government’s being from the People, and their chief Writers, such as Hoadly, the Review, Kennett &c. ought to be punish’d with the utmost Rigour for maintaining such arguments as give the People a Power of taking up arms, when they shall think fit. If these Gentlemen could have been found out they had without all doubt felt the Effects of their Doctrine. The Mob would have either torn them in Pieces, or made them undergo very great Disgraces.” Hearne’s Collections, Oxford Historical Society, ii. 355.
See also Hearne’s diary for April 10, 1710 (ii. 371), in regard to an alleged slander against Dr. Sacheverell which “the scandalous, abominable, Author of the Paper call’d ye Review has most maliciously asserted and publish’d in Print.”
The force of the two passages cited above is increased when we remember Hearne’s very low opinion of Sacheverell as a person. His diary for October 11, 1710 (III. 65), shows that he regarded Sacheverell as a “conceited and ignorant and impudent” man, “who, whatever good he may accidentally produce, is certainly a Rascal & Knave himself.”
903 Sacheverell’s famous sermon (The Perils of False Brethren, both in Church and State, delivered November 5, 1709, and published in the same year) was inscribed to the Lord Mayor, who was said, though he denied the fact, to have urged its publication.
904 Review, No. 13 (London issue), April 25, 1710.
905 Id.
906 “Their last . . . Shift has been to tamper with the Publishers and Dispensers of it [the Review]. . . . We have now . . . put it into Hands, that will not be bias’d, terrify’d, or any way prevail’d upon to keep it back; and from henceforward, this Paper will be publish’d by Mr. Baker, as is printed at the Bottom in the usual Place.” (Id.)
907 My colleague Mr. Theodore F. M. Newton, who is engaged upon what bids fair to be the definitive study of Defoe’s Review, has given me valuable help here. He it was who pointed out the significance of the “114” men, a nice little mystery which I could not have solved for myself.
908 According to the work of the same title for 1708, the civil government in that year was composed of the same number of men (pp. 686–688); the same source for 1711 gives the number as only ninety-seven (pp. 360–362). Chamberlayne’s Angliae Notitia: or, the Present State of England for 1707 gives a total of 113 (pp. 644–648).
909 There is a possibility that the allusion to the “114” may have been instantly recognizable, especially with the help of the expression “Common Council,” to Defoe’s readers. Among numbers that were familiar enough to be political rallying cries one recalls the “Forty-Five” that Wilkes made famous. Then there is the toast to “The Massachusetts Ninety-two,” which was drunk (as the thirty-third toast) at a dinner in Philadelphia, in 1769, to commemorate Paoli’s birthday. (Our Publications, xxvi. 191.) And probably other instances could be collected.
910 The Boston Public Library has an almost complete set of the Review, except Vol. in. There are a few selections in George A. Aitken, Later Stuart Tracts, pp. 221–280. A complete facsimile reprint of the work is proposed by the Facsimile Text Society.
911 Our Publications, xiv. 213ff. Those who find the explanation of the “character” too meagre as given here are referred to that earlier article, and especially to pages 232–236. For still further details see: for bibliography, Gwendolen Murphy, A Bibliography of English Character-Books, 1608–1700 (1925); for texts, Henry Morley, Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (1891); Gwendolen Murphy, A Cabinet of Characters (1925; with a good introductory essay); David Nichol Smith, Characters from the Histories and Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century (1920; with a good introductory essay on the Clarendon type of character); for the classical roots of the character, G. S. Gordon, “Theophrastus and his English Imitators,” in English Literature and the Classics (1912).
912 The catalogue of the British Museum records a “fourth edition, corrected,” in 1679. A “5th edition, corrected” (1699), was entered for publication (Arber, Term Catalogues, iii. 128, 162). The Harvard College Library has the edition of 1665.
913 Reprinted in full in our Publications, xiv. 233.
914 Introduction (p. xli) to A Life of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, by T. E. S. Clarke and H. C. Foxcroft (1907).
915 Italics mine.
916 The varied manifestations of the character in this period are not well represented in any volume of selections. See, however, Gwendolen Murphy’s Cabinet of Characters, especially pp. 237–334; and the Harleian Miscellany and Somers Tracts, passim (see index). Halifax’s Character of a Trimmer and his other works have been admirably edited by Miss H. C. Foxcroft in two volumes (London, 1898).
917 The device did not originate with Addison. Edward Ward’s London Spy (1698–1700) makes less skilful use of the same method.
918 The technique of John Dunton in his Letters from New England is at times essentially like Addison’s in the Tatler, No. 158. Observe how Dunton (see our Publications, xiv. 237) takes Thomas Fuller’s abstract character of “The Good Merchant” (1642) and changes it to “Mr. Heath”; and how he takes Fuller’s remark that justice to the buyer is a fundamental necessity in all trading, the neglect of which is “worse than open felony” because it is to “rob a man of his purse and never bid him stand,” and makes it read: “and I have heard him say [italics mine] that such a Cozenage is worse than open Felony; because they rob a man of’s Purse, and never bid him stand.”
919 Italics mine.
920 Gwendolen Murphy, Bibliography of Engli sh Character-Books, p. 73.
921 These are, respectively, Nos. 39, 52, and 53 in Enigmaticall Characters (1658).
922 In A Brief History of the Times . . . in a Preface to the Third Volume of Observators (1687). It is fair to say, however, that L’Estrange goes right on in the words quoted on p. 484 of this article.
923 Cf. also Spectator, Nos. 46, 567, and 568.
924 Lives, G. B. Hill, ed., ii. 95
925 A Brief History of the Times.
926 Thomas G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, pp. 184–185.
927 Diary, ii. 227 (7 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vii).
928 Id., p. 74.
929 Cotton Mather frequently used the word “character” (in one or more of the meanings pertinent to this investigation) in his Diary: see, for example, ii. 73 (May 16, 1711), where he resolves as he may have occasion to give “the Character” of a certain man who has injured him, still to treat him with goodness. See also id., p. 561 (October 20, 1718), where he proposes to preach a funeral sermon on the Reverend Thomas Bernard, of Andover, “and add his Character in the close of it.” And, especially, see id., p. 562 (October 20, 1718), where, reviewing his own publications to see “how many Persons of Worth, a gracious God has employ’d . . . [his] poor Pen, publickly to exhibit unto the World, with an Advantageous History, or Character of them,” he finds “no less than One hundred and fourteen men (whereof more than Four-score stand in the Church-History,) and above twenty Women; besides many more, who have more transiently and occasionally had an honourable Mention made of them.”
930 Reprinted: Boston, 1692; London, 1694; Boston, 1741 (fifth edition). See J. L. Sibley’s bibliography (No. 29) in Harvard Graduates, iii. 53.
931 The Ladies Calling by the Author of the Whole Duty of Man (1673). For further information about this book, which John Dunton also made use of, see our Publications, xiv. 240, note 4.
932 His Government of New England Churches appeared in 1717.
933 A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States (1907 ed.), p. 211.
934 Letter to Robert Wodrow, September 17, 1715, Diary, ii. 327.
935 Id., 659. For many other entries see index, s.v. Small-pox.
936 Herbert L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, in. 174–175.
937 See Worthington C. Ford, “Franklin’s New England Courant,” Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, lvii. 336–353.
938 Manuductio (1726), pp. 44–46, as quoted by Kenneth B. Murdock, Selections from Cotton Mather, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.
939 Clyde A. Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, pp. 90–94.
940 Id., p. 95.
941 I d., pp. 102–103.
942 Id., p. 92.
943 It is possible that the words, “Letters, Postscripts, News, Dialogues” were chosen with intention and refer more or less definitely to certain publications. That would, of course, make the advertisement more objectionable. Duniway (pp. 90–91) has some interesting remarks on that sort of propaganda in what purport to be advertisements.
944 For the whole passage see Davis, Colonial Currency Reprints, ii. 118.
945 Davis Colonial Currency Reprints, p. 133.
946 Id., pp. 130–132.
947 “A very abusive Creature,” wrote Cotton Mather (Diary, ii. 397) on February 2, 1717, “in whom the three parts of the Satanic Image, Pride, Malice, and Falsehood, are very conspicuous, must be pittied and pray’d for. [Ι. Κολμαν].” The brackets are Mather’s.
948 Davis, Colonial Currency Reprints, i 407.
949 The whole passage (id., 411–412) is extremely important: it helps to define the conservative type and by implication suggests the commercially unsubstantial and slightly disloyal nature, as the writer saw it, of the liberals.
950 Cotton Mather (Diary, ii. 607) calls him “one who has been and would still have been the greatest Hinderer of good, and Misleader and Enchanter of the People, that there was in the whole House of Representatives” (March 16, 1721).
951 Davis, Colonial Currency Reprints, ii. 16.
952 Id., pp. 97–107.
953 For example, the “Common Council” of London was just near enough to the Governor’s Council in Massachusetts, and the “114” men who composed the City government of London were just near enough to the 119 men who constituted the House of Representatives in Massachusetts in 1721–1722, to be hardly actionable but decidedly spicy.
954 In reading the proof of this memoir I welcome the opportunity to add another word. The Pulitzer Prize for the best book on American history produced in 1932 was awarded, posthumously, to Frederick Jackson Turner for The Significance of Sections in American History — a collection of essays of the same nature as those which made up The Frontier in American History. The award may be regarded as a recognition not only of this particular volume, but also of the distinguished total contribution of its author to American history.