April Meeting, 1939

A STATED Meeting of the Society was held, at the invitation of Mr. Philip P. Chase, at the Signet Club, No. 46 Dunster Street, Cambridge, on Thursday, April 20, 1939, at half after eight o’clock in the evening, the President, Kenneth Ballard Murdock, in the chair.

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

The Corresponding Secretary reported the death on March 20, 1939, of the Hon. Marcus Morton, a Resident Member.

The Reverend Palfrey Perkins of Boston, Mr. Morton Peabody Prince of Boston, Mr. Frederick Morton Smith of Hingham, and Mr. Robert Walcott, Jr., of Cambridge were elected Resident Members of the Society; Dr. Ernest Caulfield of Hartford, Connecticut, was elected a Corresponding Member; and the Reverend Arthur Joseph Riley of Brighton was elected an Associate Member.

The chair appointed the following committees in anticipation of the Annual Meeting:

To nominate candidates for the several offices,—the Hon. Robert Walcott and Messrs. Philip Putnam Chase and Allen French.

To examine the Treasurer’s accounts,—Messrs. Matt Bushnell Jones and Stephen Willard Phillips.

Mr. Robert E. Moody read a paper entitled:

The Proposed Colony of Georgia in New England, 1713–1733

THE problems which faced the English nation both at home and abroad after the Treaty of Utrecht were many. At home, unemployment resulting from the return of soldiers from the war and the presence of refugees, crime, the product of unemployment, poverty, and overcrowding of the industrial areas were outstanding evils. In America, the end of the war left still unsolved the problem of colonial defense. Most of the solutions offered involved colonization both as a remedy for unemployment and as a means of defending colonial lands.

Naturally, in all colonial projects available lands and the utilization of their resources by England were prime considerations. British possessions in the New World stretched in a great crescent from Newfoundland to the West Indies. In the North the French still held the St. Lawrence Valley and Cape Breton, and in the South the Spanish were still the masters of Florida. Along the borderlands of these two foreign possessions were two areas which were still destitute of population and which were also weak points in matters of defense. One was the region between the Carolinas and Florida, presently to be granted to Oglethorpe and his fellow trustees. The other was Nova Scotia and the lands as far west as the Kennebec River. After the fall of Port Royal in 1710, Nova Scotia became a military colony, but the remaining lands in this region were unsettled. Due to their location in the heart of the naval stores region it required no stretch of the imagination to fît them into mercantilist schemes for the exploitation of the New World to England’s advantage.

Profoundly interested in both the social and economic problems of the day was Thomas Coram, best known as the founder of the Foundling Hospital in London. But he had other concerns, and much of his lifetime was devoted to other projects. In his young manhood he had been a resident of Taunton, Massachusetts, building ships, and later in Boston he had acted as factor for a group of English merchants. During his years in America, 1693–1703, he had gained not merely considerable knowledge of natural resources, particularly naval stores, but also much practical insight into New England ways. This experience enabled him to speak with some authority on American affairs. As a merchant Coram had become pretty thoroughly imbued with mercantilist ideas and shared the general conviction that naval stores must be obtained in the colonies231 so as to render England less dependent upon the Baltic states, a vital question in time of war, and also to aid in creating a favorable balance of trade. He shared, too, the idea that any portion of the population at home which was not usefully employed might well be transported to a colony where they would produce things important to the nation’s economy and also be a potential market for English goods. Nor should it be forgotten that Coram was instinctively and energetically interested in the welfare of the unfortunate.

Many jobless were to be found among the soldiers returned from the wars and among the refugees, some in England already, and still others in the Palatinate, clamoring for a chance to emigrate. So great a need for man power in America! So great a waste in Europe! Coram’s humane sympathies were aroused, and with creditable zeal he set about making practical plans for colonization.

The plan developed jointly by Coram and a group of officers and disbanded soldiers began as a rather ambitious and optimistic project: ambitious because the territory asked for was so extensive (the bounds were the St. Croix and the Kennebec, the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean);232 optimistic because the petitioners actually proposed that the Crown should back them to the extent of nearly £15,000 in addition to a loan to be paid back in naval stores.233 When this possibility seemed remote, one of the ingenious officers suggested that he had “invented” a way in which a colony of five companies, to be called Nova-Anna, could be settled at no cost to the Crown. This should have appealed to a frugal English monarch. But Sir Isaac Newton, something of an inventor himself, then at the mint office, turned down the proposal, which was, in fact, a suggestion for a type of inflation: the coining of 1,500 tons of copper at an estimated profit of £97,000.234

The Board of Trade can hardly be blamed for having insisted that a practical plan be presented before giving its backing to any scheme. Its insistence that the plan involve no expense to the Crown may seem less wise, but in view of the government’s financial situation it was necessary. But here the Board faced a dilemma. It could not embark on an expensive program of colonization, yet it was reluctant to recommend any more proprietary or charter colonies, the latter of which, particularly, had long been recognized as a dangerous tendency in government. The problem of setting up a new model for the plantations and of altering those already in existence had for some time been a major one, but the Board had not come to any decision on the matter since the defeat by Parliament in 1706 of its bill “for the better Regulation of the Charter and Proprietary Governments in America and for the encouragement of the Trade of the Kingdome and of her Majesty’s Plantations.”235 The subject, however, was not dead, and the necessity of creating a type of government which would answer all requirements made this period a difficult time for petitioners for new governments to get the consent of the Crown for their proposals.

Coram,236 in spite of these obstacles, set himself to the task of evolving a colony with a government which would meet the objections to which the proprietary and charter colonies had been exposed. The expenses of his proposed colony would be met by voluntary contributions from “persons of character.” Such persons, of whom he submitted a list of fifty who had promised their support, would constitute a board of trustees with full power to settle the lands.237 The province itself, to be called Georgia in honor of the King, was to be a royal province, its governor to be the First Commissioner of the Admiralty, then the Earl of Berkeley, who had promised to be one of the trustees. Coram asserted that there were twelve hundred families ready to go in 1717. According to his plans, the trustees were to allot one hundred acres of land to each settler, who after the first seven years was to pay an annual quitrent of twenty-eight pounds of hemp fit for the use of the navy. The active government of the colony was to be in charge of a lieutenant governor appointed from among the trustees by the governor. The trustees were to be the upper house or council; the lower house was to be composed of freeholders chosen annually by the freeholders and other inhabitants. The fishery and mines were to be wholly free. The colony was to be open to foreign Protestants, who, on taking the oath, were to have the same liberties and immunities as other English subjects.238

In furtherance of their ideas the group printed a four-page document239 in the form of a legal brief entitled An Abstract of the Scheme of Government so far as it Relates to the Grantees in Trust for Settling the Land lying between Nova-Scotia and the Province of Maine in New-England, in America. This very rare document deals especially with the “scheme of Profit” in settling the land, though it unfortunately is not very clear in its designation of the beneficiaries of the profits. It seems less philanthropic than Coram’s first draft of the idea. The grantees—that is, the trustees—could strip the land of timber and minerals before granting it to settlers and before any quitrents to the Crown became due. After granting the lands the trustees could collect quitrents over and above those which were due to the Crown. They could also engage in shipbuilding and could erect sawmills for their own profit. In addition, a scheme was proposed for providing the inhabitants with livestock, half the increase going to the trustees, the principal to be made good before a division was made.

The fact that Coram was later a trustee of the southern Georgia brings up the question whether there was any connection between this earlier proposal and the later accomplishment. The general similarity of ideas must not be overstressed in this connection, while the fact that the name Georgia was used in both projects has no significance whatever. But there is evidence of a common origin of the two projects. Coram was a parishioner of Dr. Thomas Bray of St. Botolph’s, Aldgate, London, and often talked his scheme over with him. Bray had spent the year 1700 in Maryland and thought that a colony in the South had better prospects than one so far north in New England. He did not, however, lose interest in Coram’s scheme. Bray was similarly interested in colonizing indigent families and in 1730, shortly before his death, called together a group of men, including Coram and Oglethorpe, to discuss such a plan with them.240 Present-day writers have tended to minimize, if not ignore, Coram’s share in the colonization of Georgia, a position justified by the evidence in the Earl of Egmont’s diary and by Oglethorpe’s outstanding endeavor. But there is reason to credit Coram with a part in the evolution of the idea in its earlier stages.

Coram’s proposals to colonize between the St. Croix and the Kennebec did not go unnoticed. Probably no portion of America was more involved in claims and counterclaims to the title to the land. Signs of plans for its development from England constituted a signal for all the claimants to register their protests and prior claims. At this time the principal protests came from the heirs of Captain Thomas Lake and Major Thomas Clarke, who had piled up an impressive collection of Indian deeds to lands in this region. The heirs were Sir Bibye Lake, Anne, the wife of Increase Mather, Edward Hutchinson, and Josiah Walcott. A claimant under another title was the Reverend Christopher Toppan, who in 1708 had bought some Indian deeds for a song. His claim was prosecuted by Richard Partridge, whose father, William, had in 1716 been given a half interest apparently just for the purpose of getting his help in maintaining the title. Still other claimants were the Duke of Hamilton under a New England Council division and the heirs of Thomas Leverett under a New England Council patent.241

These claims were bitterly protested by Coram, especially those which were based on Indian deeds which, he said with more than a little truth, had been obtained from the Indians after they had been debauched with drink, this being the cause of hostility and war. “The Cobweb Pretensions,” he insisted, should be brushed aside, since settlement would “occasion the imploying & maintaining many of his Majestys Subjects, the supplying his Majesty with Naval Stores from his own Dominions & the Consumption of Great Quantities of the Manufactures of Great Britain.”242 He pointed out that Massachusetts herself had long before recognized the dangers of reliance on Indian deeds by outlawing them within her own bounds. But Massachusetts had never balked at the use of Indian deeds to bolster her own claims and those of her citizens to lands not included in her original charter limits.

The question whether jurisdiction lay with the Crown or with Massachusetts was even more important. In 1691 the Crown, for lack of a better solution, and at the suggestion of Increase Mather, had included Nova Scotia as well as the region between the St. Croix and the Kennebec in the second Massachusetts charter, with the important reservation that grants of land made by Massachusetts between the two rivers must be confirmed by the Crown. Nova Scotia was at that time in the hands of the French, and in 1696, with the fall of the fort at Pemaquid, the remaining territory was practically abandoned by both contending parties. The Board of Trade made frequent efforts to remedy this by instructing the royal governors of Massachusetts to get the General Court to appropriate money for the rebuilding of the leveled fort, but every effort resulted in failure. The cry of the lower house was that the country was waste and desolate and the fort of no importance in defense. The Crown showed no desire to reassume jurisdiction at any time during the wars, being more interested in getting Massachusetts to pay the costs than in taking the responsibility on itself. It is significant, however, that Nova Scotia was detached from Massachusetts in 1713 and made a separate government without protest from that province though the commissions to Massachusetts governors continued to list Nova Scotia as within their jurisdiction right down to the Revolution. As to Massachusetts’ charter claims to the “derelict” lands, Coram insisted that possession had reverted to the Crown because of Massachusetts’ failure to defend the territory during the wars. But as the law officers of the government pointed out later, only a writ of scire facias against the charter and court proceedings could make forfeiture complete in the legal sense.

The leisurely proceedings of the attorney general and the solicitor general, to whom the question of the Crown’s rights was referred, delayed matters for many months. In the end those officers left things up in the air by stating that although the Massachusetts charter gave that government jurisdiction, there was some doubt as to whether the grant to Massachusetts in 1691 was legal since at that time the question of English jurisdiction there had not been settled.243 This hesitant opinion should have encouraged Massachusetts, but apparently that colony did not view the possible confirmation of its right to the whole region between the St. Croix and the Kennebec as an unmixed blessing. The interests of her citizens were wholly west of the Penobscot. What if the English government should insist that Massachusetts undertake the defense of the whole region? Many times the General Court’s struggle against the Crown’s direct orders to rebuild the fort at Pemaquid put Massachusetts in the uneasy position of not being willing to let anyone else have the lands and yet being unwilling to use them herself. This dilemma impelled the offer of Jeremiah Dummer, the Massachusetts agent, to give up all claims east of the Penobscot if the Crown would give Massachusetts the right of granting lands between the Kennebec and the Penobscot without the necessity of seeking the confirmation of the Crown.244 Had this offer been accepted, the eastern boundary of the United States might today be the Penobscot River.

This chance to compromise did not much please the Board of Trade, which, still avoiding the issue as to jurisdiction in the disputed area, reported:

But how far it might be adviseable for your Majty. to enter into any contracts of this nature with the Massachusetts Company, or to do anything that may further confirm their claims, we shall not pretend to say, being daily more and more convinced that great inconveniences do arise from the erecting of Proprietary Governmts., who generally are not able to defend their own lands, and thô there be less to object upon this head to the Massachusetts Bay, then to some other Proprietary Governments, yet we cannot but observe that the people of New England do in many occasions interfere with the trade and benefit that should only accrue to the Mother Kingdom. But if the Petrs. could be induced to settle in any part of Nova Scotia not already granted to any other persons, they might be made very usefull to your Majesty.245

It was now five years since the soldiers had joined in their first petition. What had happened to them in the meantime is not clear. In any event, the complex situation which confronted them was not encouraging. Apparently they were not interested in going to Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, Dummer had been working on a scheme of his own, or, to use the words of Governor Hutchinson, had “raised a bubble from the eastern lands.” All that is known of it is to be found in a letter which Dummer wrote to the Massachusetts General Court in 1720, reporting that he had proposed a scheme to raise hemp and flax on the lands between the St. Croix and the Penobscot.246 The lands were to be granted by charter to a group of undertakers, who included Lord Barrington, Colonel Martin Bladen of the Board of Trade, and several other notable figures.

Being thus strong [he reports] I had no reason to take notice of Coram and friends or to have any apprehensions of what they were doing or capable of doing against me, yet, for quietness sake, I sent them word that, if they would withdraw their petition and give me no more trouble, they should find an account of profit from this undertaking beyond what they could ever expect if it were to be under their own conduct.

Coram acquiesced until he found that the country between the Kennebec and Penobscot was left out, and, angry at the trick, withdrew. The capital of the group was to be £100,000 sterling, £20,000 of which Dummer reserved for Massachusetts with the idea of having trustees manage it for the province. The managers decided to go slowly, however, since the great number of current speculative schemes was so offensive to the government that all had a bad reputation. And no wonder, for while some of them may have been useful and practical, others, such as raising wrecks off the Irish coast, making a wheel for perpetual motion, making salt water fresh, and obtaining oil from sunflower seeds, were not. One of the most amazing was for “an undertaking in due time to be revealed.” It is no wonder that Dummer’s proposed enterprise collapsed when the wreckage of the South Sea Company and John Law’s Mississippi Company stood revealed.

The original petitioners optimistically tried to bolster their position by getting Dr. Charles Pinfold of Doctors’ Commons to prepare a review of the case for them,247 and in this they had the backing of Viscount Townshend. But though Pinfold interpreted a decision of a committee of the Privy Council of December 20, 1720, as giving the Crown a clear-cut right to the lands in question, there was no further action, and the whole matter dropped out of sight in 1724.248

The matter of colonizing New England came up again in 1728. By this time the problem of the King’s woods and the navy’s mast supply had become more acute. The reports of John Bridger, surveyor general, had formed a constant stream of indignant accusations against the wanton waste and willful destruction of these great resources of New England. Aside from the inevitable difficulties inherent in the situation, it may be noted that Charles Burniston, Bridger’s successor as surveyor general, had not been in America during his entire incumbency249 and had no training for the task. The admiralty’s increasing awareness of the commercial and naval disadvantages of England’s dependence on the Baltic countries for masts and naval stores forced attention again upon the mast trees of New England and the lands on which they grew.

The successor to Burniston as surveyor general was David Dunbar, who was commissioned on December 12, 1727.250 He probably owed his appointment to George II himself since he had attracted the latter’s favorable attention. He enjoyed the title of colonel because of a long period of service in the army, during which he was finally commissioned lieutenant colonel. As a member of the Irish Parliament during the reign of Queen Anne he had been useful in defending her policies, and at the succession of the Hanoverians he had attached himself faithfully to their interests, serving them in the Leeward Islands and in Spain.251

While the Board of Trade was considering the subject of instructions for Dunbar, Thomas Coram revived his earlier proposals in a strong memorial dated June 18, 1728. He reviewed the circumstances under which the territory east of the Kennebec had been added to Massachusetts, basing his story upon information gained from Urian Oakes, one of the agents of Massachusetts in 1691, whom he had known personally in Boston. Some of his earlier group were still willing to emigrate, he asserted, and he added:

There are also many Others, able persons of both Sexes, who live in Continual Danger of being apprehended for Criminal practices which by the faults of their Parents or otherwise, They are Constantly repeating Which renders them a Nuisance and a Pest to the publick Especially In & about the Cittys of London and Westminster And they could Gladly be Rescued from their Necessity of Commiting those Crimes, and the Evil Consequences thereof, By volentary engaiging themselves to serve His Majesty a Term of Years in the said Tract of Country now laying wast & Derelict. . . .252

Ten days later Dunbar brought before the Board a proposal to settle in the waste lands of New England a colony devoted to the purpose of providing naval stores.253 Another proposal for settlement at this time came from Daniel Hintze, a Palatine who desired to collect and bring over a group of his fellows. Dunbar followed up his first suggestion with more concrete propositions dealing particularly with some six hundred Irish families who were, he said, destitute in Massachusetts. He also mentioned five hundred Palatine families who were eager for lands.254 These papers were duly considered by the Board of Trade in three reports, the discussion of which extended over the whole of the year 1729.255

During these deliberations the various suggestions were molded into a joint project sponsored by Coram and Dunbar in a memorial dated May 6, 1729. They emphasized that in order to hold the territory between the St. Croix and the Kennebec it was necessary to colonize it. A military colony was not enough. They proposed that a royal colony be erected with a civil government, “not a military charter nor proprietary Government.” The objective stressed was the raising of hemp, a commodity in which all quitrents were to be paid.256

The response of the Board of Trade was favorable, and on May 14, 1729, it recommended to the Privy Council that a new province by the name of Georgia should be created and that Dunbar should be its governor. Though Dunbar learned from Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Southern Department, that the King’s departure for Hanover on May 17 had deferred consideration of the proposed settlement,257 he seems never to have doubted the ultimate outcome of the matter and apparently left England for Boston in the summer of 1729 under the impression that the new province was assured and that he had been given sufficient authority to go ahead with its settlement. He arrived in Boston on September 23.258 His brother Jeremiah had preceded him as his deputy the year before and had sent out agents to investigate conditions in the woods of New Hampshire and Maine.259

When David Dunbar arrived in Massachusetts, all the documentary evidence of his authority which he possessed was his commission as surveyor general and the instructions that were to govern him in that office.260 But so confident was he that he was to be the governor of a province that he began to talk loudly and not too wisely. He became very active in promoting the settlement of his projected colony, and, taking advantage of the fact that there were Irishmen in Boston anxious for lands on the frontier, took about one hundred of them, a number later doubled, to Pemaquid to start work in clearing the lands and erecting houses. Through the good offices of Captain Gyles of Fort Richmond on the Kennebec he took care to cultivate friendly relations with the Penobscot chiefs, giving them presents and assuring them that it was not his intention at the time to extend settlements above the trading post at St. George’s.

During the year and a half, 1730–1731, that he was active in Maine he laid the foundations of what might have become, in different circumstances, a settlement of considerable size. At Pemaquid, which he made the center of his operations, he partially rebuilt the fort on its old foundations. He changed the name of the place first to Fredericksburg, in honor of the Prince of Wales, and later to Frederick’s Fort when the Board of Trade objected to the foreign character of the previous name. The fort itself as reërected consisted of a dry stone wall 4½ feet thick at the base, 9 feet high, and 132 feet square, with two bastions extending beyond. The whole was reinforced with strong palisades. Inside were built barracks which at one time housed two hundred persons. At the outset the fort had only ships’ guns, but Dunbar proposed to substitute for them heavier ones from the north and south batteries in Boston, which he said were lying in rubbish, and others from Annapolis whither the original guns of Fort Pemaquid were carried after its demolition.261

For the first lodging of his men Dunbar had the group build “Hurts of Spruce trees.” Later, frames for between thirty and forty houses were erected, two or three of which were roofed when a committee of the General Court took a view of the place in November, 1730.262 Lots thirty feet wide and one hundred feet deep were laid out adjacent to the fort, and convenient streets were made. A road was cleared across the peninsula to New Harbor. As a crowning achievement, Dunbar started to build and may have finished an L-shaped wharf 170 feet long and 40 feet broad, designed to have 15 feet of water at high tide. J. Henry Cartland, in his Twenty years at Pemaquid, describes the remains of an old wharf there and states that one of its foundations was a log frame twenty-two feet square filled with rocks, located eighty-five feet from the banks of the river. Eighty-five feet is just half the reported length of Dunbar’s wharf, so this foundation could very well have been a halfway support. Evidences of this wharf may still be seen. Cartland further states that the wharf which he described was in just the right position to connect with the paved street which was dug up at Pemaquid in 1855. All in all, the layout given in Thomas Wells’s manuscript maps of 1730263 conforms closely to the cellars and pavements at Pemaquid which have excited so much archaeological interest. While Dunbar may have built his houses upon the site of earlier habitations, as he did in the case of the fort, he does not mention any features of this sort, and it is probable that the Pemaquid cellars and pavements were constructed by Dunbar and his men in 1729 and 1730.264 Dunbar mentions the fact that his men burned lime from the shell heaps. He also mentions the availability of clay for bricks.

Thomas Wells’s Map of Pemaquid, 1730

Besides Pemaquid, Dunbar laid out six other towns in the year 1731 between the Sheepscot and St. George’s rivers, which he named for members of the English ministry. He reported results on June 4, 1731, as follows: in Harrington, seventy-six families on forty-acre lots, housed in poor wigwams or cottages; in Walpole, ninety-four families; in Townshend, twenty-five families and many men gone home for their wives and cattle; in Newcastle, nearly one hundred families; in Torrington, some beginnings made from Massachusetts; in Westmoreland, lots in the process of being laid out.265 It must be remembered, of course, that Dunbar had no legal right to give deeds. He gave, however, deeds which involved the payment of a quitrent of one peppercorn if demanded.266 In 1810 William Jones of Bristol, then eighty-six years old, testified that in 1730, when he was six years old, there were at least 150 settlers under Dunbar.267 Such evidence is only vaguely confirmatory, but that Dunbar prosecuted his design with energy there is no doubt.

Such an effort at settlement in this disputed part of New England was bound to excite opposition. Dunbar was faced with a doubly hard problem. In the first place, he was surveyor general of the King’s woods, than which no job in America was more hopeless or more unpopular. On this account alone he was faced with day-by-day opposition, not merely of the lumbermen, a class only exceeded in numbers in New England by the fishermen, but also of certain of the political leaders who, like Elisha Cooke, owned sawmills whose profits depended upon the illegal cutting of trees. But as prospective governor of a colony he was faced with the most bitter opposition of the politicians in general and of the land profiteers. “Any man that behaves anything different from the Crowd, Stinks of the prerogative, this expression is Common with them,” reported Dunbar. The landed interests of some of these men were affected, and, to cap the climax, Dunbar had from the beginning the enmity of Jonathan Belcher, Governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, who arrived in the summer of 1730—a man so jealous of his own position as to be quite unwilling to see his jurisdiction pared down by the erection of a new government east of the Kennebec.

This is not the place to detail Dunbar’s many perplexities and annoyances as surveyor general. But some attention must be given to the efforts of the Massachusetts speculators to maintain their land titles, and to Governor Belcher’s efforts to maintain the full extent of his power.

The claimants to land east of the Kennebec allowed their interests to be represented by a test case, one not based primarily on Indian deeds—the case of the holders of the Beauchamp and Leverett claim under a New England Council patent of March 12, 1629/30. In 1719 John Leverett, the heir to the claim, came to an agreement with Spencer Phips, who held Indian deeds inherited from his adoptive father, Sir William Phips, joining their conflicting interests. Two companies, the Ten Proprietors and the Twenty Associates, were formed, known collectively as the Muscongus Company. In the group were seven members of the Massachusetts General Court, including Elisha Cooke, Adam Winthrop, Oliver Noyes, Stephen Minot, Thomas Westbrook, and Joseph Appleton. The Indian wars had put an end to their plans, but news of Dunbar’s enterprise revived them. Agreeing with their most aggressive member, Samuel Waldo, to give him half their claim of almost 600,000 acres if he could obtain its confirmation from England, they confided their problem into his hands. He sailed for England early in January, 1730, and by April had started the machinery moving against Dunbar. Besides his personal work in influencing the judgment of the authorities, Waldo’s principal task was to prove that the claimants whom he represented had made reasonable efforts to settle the lands granted. His evidence of the reality of such efforts was finally accepted by the authorities.

Waldo’s first arguments were sufficient almost immediately to cause the Board of Trade to order Dunbar to confine his activities to the territory east of the Penobscot. These instructions of April 27, 1730,268 reached him on August 9 by the same ship which brought Governor Belcher. Luckily no letters from Waldo arrived by this conveyance, and Dunbar was accordingly given a breathing space in which to shift his plans. The final decision as to the rights to lands between the Kennebec and the St. Croix was, of course, still pending.

Dunbar and Belcher had some characteristics in common. They were both ambitious—with this difference: Belcher was a royal governor, while Dunbar wished to be one; both were jealous of their prerogatives; both had unusual ability at name-calling, though Belcher’s name for Dunbar—the “Bull-frog from the Hibernian fens”—gave the Governor a slight advantage. Of the two, Dunbar was less of an intriguer, though both studied the art of cultivating the favor of persons of power and influence. Both were overbearing and indiscreet. But in this, too, Belcher had the advantage in that every threat which he made against Dunbar tended to increase his popularity, while Dunbar’s remarks about the disloyalty of the people and what ought to be done about it made his path even more difficult.

The use or even creation of “incidents” as bases of action is familiar in history. An “incident” played into Belcher’s hands immediately on his arrival in Massachusetts. In August, 1730, one Josiah Grover and one John Brown, claiming lands under the famous (and probably forged) deed of 1625 to John Brown of Pemaquid, went down to Maine, ostensibly to build a house. Their story on their return was that they were “exceedingly Insulted & evilly entreated by a number of Irish Men,” and that finally they, with their little schooner and its crew, had been captured by “five or six Irish men Armed with Guns and Clubbs . . . in a hostile Violent Manner.” The “incident” was concluded by the escape of Grover and his company over the side of the vessel into a “canno” while the Irishmen were asleep in the schooner’s cabin.269

There is, however, another version of the story. Captain Woodside of the fort at Winter Harbor said that the whole affair was planned in order to get a pretense for quarreling. Grover’s and Brown’s schooner was ordered to bring away some staves and timber cut by the Irishmen at Frederick’s Fort. Then if anyone claiming the staves should go on board, the persons there were to quit the vessel. Thus it could be made to appear that an illegal seizure of a vessel had been made.270 In this way there would be ground for legal action in a court in which the Irishmen could hope for no aid or sympathy. The ease with which Grover and Brown escaped makes one suspect that the Irishmen were not so belligerent as Grover represented.271

Here was a chance for Governor Belcher to ingratiate himself with the people by defending a popular cause. Maintaining to the attorney general of the province that the incident was an act of piracy, he proposed to make a good thing out of the situation, calling it a “Notorious Assault and Riott.” On order from the Governor, the sheriff of York County, with a force of over thirty armed men, went to Frederick’s Fort, seized some of the inhabitants, apparently with no regard for their particular guilt, and carried them to York where they were jailed. The first trial resulted in a disagreement, but on January 5, 1730/1, four men were convicted and sentenced to fines of from £15 to £20 each and three months’ imprisonment, with costs amounting to £233 14s 6d.272

The manner of this seizure alarmed Dunbar to such an extent that when the General Court decided to send a committee to view the province fortifications, he took this action as a threat to dispossess him. In fact, he had heard reports from high sources, which he interpreted in the light of some remarks of a threatening nature which the Governor had made to him, that the Governor designed to take possession of the fort by force and imprison him if he should be there. There was no reason why the Governor should not make a survey of the fortifications. In fact, his instructions commanded him to do so. But when three of the six active members of the committee in charge of the investigation, Elisha Cooke, Samuel Thaxter, and Spencer Phips, were members of the Muscongus Company as well, is it any wonder that Dunbar expected the expedition to be a military move?273

When the committee arrived, the men in the fort were ready. They refused to allow the committee to land, and the latter had to be contented with a general view of the place from the harbor.274 Dunbar’s frantic appeal to England for help resulted in the immediate issuance of an order in council, November 12, 1730, addressed to Belcher, in which he was commanded not to make any attack on the fort.275

The final blow to Dunbar came in the celebrated opinion of Yorke and Talbot, the law officers of the Crown, August 11, 1731, supporting the Massachusetts claim and stating that upon reconquest in 1710 all ancient rights were restored and those in possession ought not to be disturbed.276 The Privy Council, in accordance with this opinion, on August 10, 1732, ordered Dunbar to quit the lands. The document containing this order, as well as the opinion upon which it was based, was recorded by the Massachusetts House of Representatives.277

When Dunbar finally withdrew, Massachusetts, in spite of Belcher’s pleadings, made no move to send troops to take possession of the fort. The House argued that the fort was a useless burden since the province was already in times of peace supporting three forts and two truckhouses in that country, “some eastward and some westward” of Pemaquid.278 The “some eastward” consisted only of the St. George’s truckhouse.

At last, in November, 1733, the House authorized the Governor, “if he sees cause,” to demolish Fort Mary at Winter Harbor and to move its garrison to Pemaquid.279 In his victory, at least, Belcher showed some magnanimity toward Dunbar’s settlers. “Let other people think as they please,” he wrote to Dunbar, “I shou’d be very sorry to have these inhabitants draw off, for I shou’d look upon it as weakening of the King’s government, a damage to this Province, & to the private proprietors. I am therefore for giving ’em all reasonable encouragement to stay, and I wish the Assembly & the proprietors were of my mind.”280

As to the settlers, some stayed on as squatters, some took out deeds from Waldo and other proprietors, and some moved away. A number of them fought at Louisbourg in 1745. In company with the German settlers brought later by Waldo, these English and Scotch-Irish settlers were the bulk of the inhabitants of Maine beyond the Kennebec before the close of the French and Indian War. As to the land titles, the same fundamental difficulties continued to plague Massachusetts all during the colonial period, and it was not until the nineteenth century that the land disputes around Pemaquid were finally settled.

The province of Georgia in the South was born shortly after the Board of Trade upset Dunbar’s plan, and New England’s Georgia vanished among the might-have-beens of history.

Appendix

Memorial from Colonel Dunbar and Mr. Coram Relating to the Making Some Settlements in Nova Scotia

May it please your Lordships

Pursuant to your Commands, We have read several reports made by your Lordships upon proposels laid before you, for makeing Settlements upon Nova Scotia, as well as on other His Majestys lands laying vast and unpeopl’d to the Eastward of New England. And we haveing maturely and particularly considered with attention the several matters on which your Lordships required our opinion with respect to some proper Settlements necessary to be made in Nova Scotia, and on the large tract of Crowne lands between Nova Scotia, Ending westward at the River St. Croix, and the Massachusets government ending eastward at the river Sagadahock alias Kenebeck, for the better security, advantage and defence of those large territorys, we are humbly of opinion to your Lordships.

That whereas Nova Scotia still remaining under a Military Government, as it has don ever since the Conquest thereof anno 1710, no good or profitable Subjects can hardly ever be prevail’d on to settle themselves on any part thereof, before a Civil Government be erected there, Which we are the more confirm’d in, from the length of time in which the Crowne has been at great expence for maintaing a Regiment of Soldiers there, since the reduction of it; besides the considerable saleries for the Governors thereof, under whose government and Direction we have not heard any Settlements or Improvements have been made; Nor can we judge any will ever be made, until His Majesty shall be most graciously pleas’d to erect a Civil government there.

That as Nova Scotia and the other large tract of Crowne lands adjoyning to it, now laying vast and unpeopl’d between that and the Massachusets, are both together of such great Extent as 450 miles and more in length, We humbly conceive it absolutly necessary for the Service of the King, and the future Security and advantage of His Majestys Northern plantations, that the said tract of Crowne lands, the land and Islands in and between the river Sagadahock, alias Kenebeck, and the river St. Croix, be erected into a Royall Province under His Majestys civil Government (not Military Charter nor propriety Government) with all proper powers and Instructions, separate and distinct from that of Nova Scotia or New England; it being at too great distance from both for any protection or assistance from them or either of them, on any emergency.

That as to the frame of the propos’d Civil Government, and the necessary instructions thereupon, it is most humbly submited to your Lordships better Judgment.

That it will be greatly for the Service of the King, and the advantage of the propos’d Province to begin the settling therof with a good number of Inhabitants together, for their better assisting and comforting each other in their new under-takeing, and to give all possible favour and due Encouragment to all those whether Britains or Foreigners, who shall come to settle there under His Majestys Civil Government, and that a suitable and proper portion of the land be granted and laid out to each of them without fee or reward; They paying such quitrent as herein after proposed; And that no other person or persons whatsoever shall be suffered to inhabit there, nor to have, occupy or enjoy any part of the said land or Islands without paying the like quitrent. And as the Expence of sending a number of familys from England with necessary tools and utencils, armes &c, and subsisting them one year there, will be inconsiderable in proportion to the advantages the Crowne will reap by such Settlement, & would also save the occation of a much greater Expense for maintaining a Military force there for their security and defence, We hope your Lordships will duely consider the same.

We do not finde by any of the reports made by your Lordships upon the proposed laid before you for makeing settlements on any of the said land, That there was intended any greater reserve or advantage to the Crowne than 14-pound weight of water rotted Hemp per annum for every hundred acres, and that to commence at the end of the fourth year, to be doubled the twelveth year, and trebled the twentyeth year, and so to continue for ever at forty two pounds of water rotted Hemp, which at the highest cannot be computed at more than one penny sterling per annum, per acre.

Whatever your Lordships may judge sufficient and reasonable to be reserved to the Crowne as a quitrent, We are humbly of opinion should be received there in good Merchantable Hemp fitte for the use of His Majesty’s Navy; Particularly for to encourage the raising, well ordering, and cureing that Commodity there, after the best manner, for an ample Supply thereof in due time from thence for the use of His Majesty’s Navy and Kingdoms, all which is most humbly submited by

Right Honourable

Your Lordships most obedient servants

David Dunbar

Thomas Coram

London

Y^e 6^th May, 1729

To the Right Honourable, The Lords Commissioners

For Trade and Plantations281

[Endorsed:]	Recd.		May 6^th 1729.
	Read

Mr. William G. Roelker read extracts from a group of letters in his possession written by Benjamin Franklin to Catherine Ray both before and after her marriage to William Greene.

1 Suffolk Probate Records, xxii. 585.

2 Suffolk Deeds, lxxv. 257–258.

3 See Ronald Fuller, Hell-Fire Francis (London, 1939).

4 British Museum, Add. MSS., 30870.

5 Public Record Office, A. O. 13:73.

6 Alexander Gillespie, An Historical Review of the Royal Marine Corps to 1803 (Birmingham, 1803), 191.

7 Id., 193.

8 Cyril Field, Britain’s Sea-Soldiers: History of the Royal Marines (Liverpool, 1924), 156.

9 Gillespie, Historical Review of the Royal Marine Corps, 199.

10 A. O. 13:73.

11 William Hall Gage, 2nd Viscount Gage, brother of the General.

12 A. O. 12:105, f. 103.

13 A. O. 13:73.

14 There are biographical sketches of Arthur Savage and Joseph Domett in E. Alfred Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (London, 1930).

15 A. O. 12:100, f. 323.

16 In preparing this paper I compiled, from readily accessible printed materials, a list of merchants active in the 1780’s. The careers of such merchants were then examined in order to determine the views of each respecting the Constitution.

The present study is not intended to be definitive, but it is believed that a large enough sample has been considered to yield valid conclusions. The records examined disclosed that fifty-three merchants, at least, expressed views on the Constitution. Only three men in this group opposed it: Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, John Lamb of New York, and Charles Pettit of Pennsylvania. Among the fifty who supported the movement for strengthening the general government, twenty-four lived in Massachusetts: Jonathan Austin, Joseph Barrell, Samuel Barret, James Bowdoin, Samuel Breck, George Cabot, Caleb Davis, Stephen Higginson, Nathaniel Gorham, William Gray, Jonathan Jackson, Charles Jarvis, John C. Jones, Jonathan Mason, Perez Morton, Samuel A. Otis, Edward Payne, William Phillips, Joseph Russell, Thomas Russell, Isaac Smith, James Swan, and William Tudor. At critical points John Hancock acted with the majority of his fellow merchants. Among the pro-Constitution merchants of Pennsylvania were Charles Biddle, William Bingham, George Clymer, Tench Coxe, Thomas Fitzsimons Isaac Hazelhurst, Samuel Howell, Mordecai Lewis, Thomas Mifflin, Robert Morris, John M. Nesbit, John Ross, Pelatiah Webster, Richard Wells, John Wilcox, and Thomas Willing. The names of four Rhode Island merchants appear on the list: John Brown, Moses Brown, Nicholas Brown, and Samuel Ward. Connecticut was represented by Roger Sherman and Benjamin Trumbull; New Hampshire, by John Langdon; South Carolina, by Christopher Gadsden; North Carolina, by Hugh Williamson; Maryland, by James McHenry. In the preparation of these lists the following works have been particularly useful: Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1935), Chapter 5; Norman S. B. Gras, The Massachusetts First National Bank of Boston, 1784–1934 (Cambridge, 1937); Robert A. East, “The Massachusetts Conservatives in the Critical Period,” The Era of the American Revolution. Studies Inscribed to Evarts Boutell Greene, Richard B. Morris, Editor (New York, 1939); and the Dictionary of American Biography. In the April, 1787, number of the American Museum (Philadelphia) are petitions in favor of a stronger central government signed by merchants of Philadelphia (313–314) and by merchants of Boston (320–322).

17 “The men of that age [1750–1825], while striking out for themselves a new path in a new country, never fell into the mistake of abandoning practice in favor of theory. . . . If from lack of imagination they went too far in their contempt for theory, at least they understood what they meant. . . .” Henry Cabot Lodge, Life and Letters of George Cabot (Boston, 1878), 10.

18 Born in Lebanon, Connecticut, November 24, 1726, Webster studied theology after his graduation from Yale in 1746. Between 1749 and 1755 he was pastor at Greenwich, Massachusetts, a post which he left to become a merchant at Philadelphia. During the Revolution he supported the American cause and suffered considerably at the hands of the British. He died on September 2, 1795. Dictionary of American Biography, xix. 597. Webster’s most famous essay, A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the United States of North America (1783) led Hannis Taylor to regard Webster as the father of the Constitution and to petition Congress for national recognition of his work. See Hannis Taylor, A Memorial in Behalf of the Architect of Our Federal Constitution (Washington, 1908). Taylor’s exaggerated claims were refuted by Gaillard Hunt in the Nation, December 28, 1911.

19 Article 1, Sections 8, 10.

20 Article 1, Section 10.

21 Webster originally presented his argument in the form of articles or pamphlets signed “Citizen of Philadelphia.” His articles were collected and printed in 1791 as a volume entitled Political Essays. The most important papers, for this study, are: 1. “An Essay on the Danger of Too Much Circulating Cash” (October 5, 1776)—a plea for financing the war by means of taxes rather than issues of paper currency. 2. “An Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (July, 1779)—an attack upon statutory price-fixing and other legal restraints on trade. 3. “Second Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (August, 1779), in which he proposed to prevent the increase of paper money by means of tax levies designed to raise enough money for new war expenditures. He proposed to leave the existing paper in circulation to pass at the rate of twenty paper dollars to one silver dollar. 4. “Third Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (January 8, 1780). The argument resembles that of the “Second Essay.” Foreign loans should be made only for the purpose of procuring the means of paying the interest on the money borrowed within the United States. Webster again opposed price-fixing. He suggested in this essay the establishment of a federal office of Superintendent of Finance. 5. “Fourth Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (February 10, 1780)—a plan for stabilizing the paper currency, in which Webster opposed either an increase or a decrease in the quantity of paper in circulation. He favored taxation as a means of preventing such increase. 6. “Fifth Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (March 30, 1780)—a criticism of paper currency on the ground that it imposed an unjust levy upon wealth, and another plea for taxation as the proper means of financing the war. 7. “Strictures on the Tender-Acts” (December 13, 1780)—a very strong statement against legal tender paper currency, inspired by an act of Pennsylvania of December, 1780. 8. “An Essay to Examine the True Interest of Pennsylvania with Respect to Paper Currency” (December 13, 1780)—another plea for taxation in preference to more issues of paper currency. 9. “An Essay on the Economy of the Thirteen States” (January, 1781), in which Webster again insisted that taxation was necessary in order to restore the currency. 10. “Dissertation on a Financier-General” (January 24, 1781), in which Webster presented his plan for a superintendency of finance. 11. “A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the United States of North America” (1780)—Webster’s famous plan for a strong central government endowed with independent taxing power as a means of raising assured revenues in order to pay the public debt and avoid the issuance of paper currency. 12. “Sixth Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (March 24, 1783)—an argument for a federal tax on imports as a means of raising money to support the public credit. 13. “Seventh Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (January 10, 1785)—a protest against further issues of paper currency and a plea for payment of the public debt, with safeguards against the enriching of speculators in federal certificates of indebtedness. 14. “Essay on Credit” (February 10, 1786)—an analysis of credit and a defense of the Bank of North America. 15. “A Plea for the Poor Soldiers and Other Public Creditors” (January 2, 1790). 16. “A Review of the Principles and Arguments of the Seventh Essay and of the Plea for the Poor Soldiers” (December 20, 1790). In these last two pamphlets Webster proposed to pay original creditors in full and to pay speculators an average market price of depreciated certificates of indebtedness. Two other essays by Webster are “Remarks on the Address of the Sixteen Members of the Assembly of Pennsylvania to their Constituents” (Philadelphia, 1787); and “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed” (Philadelphia, 1787), reprinted in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, Paul L. Ford, Editor (Brooklyn, 1888). Both essays defend the Federal Constitution of 1787.

22 Political Essays, 235–236.

23 Id., 32.

24 Id., 61.

25 Id., 37.

26 Id., 144, 150.

27 Id., 84.

28 Id., 114.

29 Id., 86, 104, 139, 140, 285.

30 Id., 14, 18, 115, 117, 141, 157.

31 Id., 6, 8, 27–32.

32 Id., 31.

33 Id., 17.

34 Id., 123.

35 Id., 16.

36 Id., 62.

37 Id., 2–3, 60–62.

38 Political Essays, 9–16, 60, 66, 153, 157, 237.

39 Id., 138.

40 Id., 84–85, 149.

41 Id., 407.

42 Id., 257.

43 Id., 40–41.

44 Id., 63.

45 Id., 64.

46 Id., 105.

47 Id., 46–47.

48 Id., 7–8; 27, 49, 145.

49 Id., 60–61.

50 Political Essays, 126–127.

51 Id., 207.

52 Id., 243.

53 Id., 243.

54 Id., 258.

55 Id., 152–157, 231–241, 244–245, 247, 258–268, 272–273, 291.

56 Id., 203.

57 Id., 224.

58 Id., 274, 277, 279, 282, 291.

59 Id., 347, 349, 354.

60 Id., 45, 85, 160; 435, 436, 439.

61 Id., 435–436.

62 Id., 435.

63 Id., 436.

64 Id., 443.

65 Political Essays, 436; see also 422.

66 Id., 447–448.

67 Id., 448–449, 453, 454.

68 Id., 451 456–458.

69 The minute books of the New England Committee are among the Friends records preserved at the Moses Brown School, Providence; those of the Philadelphia Meeting are at the Friends Record Room, 304 Arch Street, Philadelphia.

70 Papers of the Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14 (1774–1778). A valuable history, “The Society of Friends in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1764 to 1782,” was started in The Friend, September 12, 1846 (xix. 404), using largely the official records. But after many instalments it stopped abruptly, unfinished, in the issue of July 10, 1847 (xx. 333), when it had reached a date early in 1775. Consequently only a few of the records here cited were included.

71 Published in 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, iv. 1–278.

72 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, i. 426–427.

73 Id., 439; printed in The Friend, xx. 293. The “few lines” were printed in Philadelphia in 1775 under the tide, The Epistle from the Meeting for Sufferings in London to Friends and Brethren in New England.

74 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, i. 454.

75 See my article, “Intercolonial Solidarity of American Quakerism,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, lx (October, 1936), 362–374.

76 To Dr. Sandiford, Philadelphia, October 8, 1774. Pemberton Papers (MSS., Historical Society of Pennsylvania), xxvi. 165.

77 Id., 162, 167, 171, 173, 175, 180; xxvii. 1, 20, 27, 28.

78 This memorandum (id., xxvn. 21) is as follows:

List of Friends in Boston	No.	Occupation
Ebenezer Pope, wife, & son ab^t 17 years old	3	Taylor, depends on his business, rather low in circumstances
John Pope wife & 2 Children	4	Doctor & Surveyor, in Circumstances
Samuel Pope	1	Scyth Smith Not in needy circumstances
James Raymer & 3 Daughters (Grown up)	4	Tallow Chandler & Grocer in Good Circumstances
John Philips Wife & Daug^r	3	Ship Carpenter, has a house etc. & two apprentices (works Journey work)
Eph. Silsbury, wife, & Daughter	3	ship carpenter, aged & infirm depends on his dayly labour
Nathaniel Low, wife, & 3 Children	5	Blacksmith & at present full of Business
Ezra Curtain wife, & 7 Children	9	Shoemaker, a House & full business
Ezra Collins & Sister	2	Hatter in Good Circumstances
Daniel Silsbury, & 2 sisters	3	merchant. The sisters keep a House of Entertainment
Ann Gillett, (a widow) with Elizabeth Ann & Hannah Orrick & Jane Burn	5	Have a house etc. in a small [ ] of Business. 2 of the Young [ ] go out to sew etc
Sampson Silsbury & wife being cousins married Out
Josiah Goram, wife & 4 Children	6	Mariner

79 Id., xxvii. 20.

80 Moses Brown of Providence.

81 Pemberton Papers, xxvii. 28.

82 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, iv. 148.

83 Jonathan B. Smith to William Phillips, Philadelphia, November 25, 1774. Id., 150.

84 Id., 149 n.

85 The Friend, xx. 252.

86 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, i. 418.

87 Id., 431; printed in The Friend, xx. 292.

88 This particular letter I do not find; but Israel Pemberton did write to Brown shortly before October 19 (Pemberton Papers, xxvi. 177½), and Brown received a letter from Pemberton—perhaps the same one—on November 28 (id., xxvii. 27). The former letter was sent by the hand of James Manning, President of Rhode Island College. “He is a Baptist preacher and with another of them from New England and a committee of their Yearly Meeting here [Philadelphia] last week had a conference with the speaker and other members of the Massachusetts Assembly on the sufferings of that people in their country and on their laws under which they and Friends may be subjected to sufferings.”

89 New England Hist. Gen. Reg., xxx. 377.

90 Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting, at Moses Brown School, 199, 200.

91 Papers of the Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14. The paper is dated Lynn, March 9, 1775, and is signed by Joseph Southwick, James Purinton, Joseph Gaskill, Daniel Newhall, and Isaac Basset.

92 Pemberton Papers, xxvii. 107.

93 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, 11 (1775–1785), 1f.

94 Pemberton Papers, xxvii. 165. The writer had come to Yearly Meeting from his home in Salem but had not had opportunity to go into Boston on his way.

95 The text of the appeal is given in the Minutes of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 10ff. It was drafted by John Hunt, Israel Pemberton, James Pemberton, John Reynell, David Evans, and Anthony Benezet, and subscribed “7th of 6 mo. 1775, John Pemberton, Clerk.” It is not mentioned in the bibliographies of Joseph Smith, Hildeburn, or Evans. A copy, lacking, however, the subscription blank, in the Haverford College Library is reproduced here. Another copy, likewise without the blank, is now in the Yale University Library in the Mason Franklin Collection. This copy, formerly belonging to Charles F. Heartman, is recorded in Sabin (No. 95902) from the title as given in Charles F. Heartman, The Cradle of the United States, ii, No. 950. From the same source it is listed as No. 436 in the unpublished “Supplement to Hildeburn’s Century of Printing,” by Ethel M. Metzger (M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, 1930). The subscription form, recoverable from other sources, was worded as follows (Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 11f.):

“We, the subscribers, in Consideration of the distresses to which many of our fellow subjects in the province of the Massachusetts Bay & the adjacent Provinces, are subjected, thro’ the unhappy commotions now prevailing, being desirous of contributing towards their relief do agree and promise to pay the sums by us respectively subscribed to — of — to be by — paid unto John Reynell of Philadelphia or Samuel Smith of Burlington, Treasurers of the Yearly Meeting of Friends in Pennsylvania & New Jersey, in order that the same may be transmitted at such time and in such manner as the said Yearly Meeting or the Meeting for Sufferings at Philadelphia may judge most expedient to the Committee lately appointed by the Yearly Meeting of Friends in New England to assist, advise, and relieve such who are or may be reduced to necessitous circumstances thro’ the present calamitous state of public affairs there, or to be otherwise distributed to & among such sufferers.

“Witness our hands the — day of the — Month, 1775”

96 Epistle from Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, July 27, 1775. Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 15.

97 Pennsylvania Ledger, July 22, 1775; Pennsylvania Mercury, July 14, 1775; Pennsylvania Gazette, July 12, 1775; Virginia Gazette, July 29, 1775; Newport Mercury, July 31, 1775. Cf. Newport Mercury, July 24, 1775; Essex Gazette (Salem), July 21, 1775. For these references I am indebted to Mr. Arthur J. Mekeel.

98 See letter to John Pemberton from a Quaker correspondent, London, September 11, 1775. Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 59.

99 Letter to Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, August 14, 1775. Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 22.

100 Epistle from New England Committee for Sufferings, September 12, 1775. Id., 28.

101 Letter of David Evans to Israel Pemberton, written en route at New London, November 16. Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 108.

102 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings (November 30, 1775), ii. 48.

103 This is a reference to the prevalence of Continental currency, which Friends objected to using.

104 Letter from Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, November 17, 1775. Id., 38f.

105 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Worthington C. Ford and Gaillard Hunt, Editors, ii. 189. Neither comparison of dates nor any mention by one party of the other indicates that either’s action was in any sense a bargain with the other. Before long most of the Congress were much less well disposed towards conscientious objectors.

106 Meeting at Smithfield, June 30, 1775.

107 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings (July 15, 1775), i. 3.

108 William Rickman to —, New York, August 9, 1775. Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 25.

109 Moses Brown to John Pemberton, Providence, August 29, 1775. Id., 41.

110 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 9; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 27f.

111 Letter from New England Committee for Sufferings to the Meeting for Sufferings in Philadelphia, Providence, November 21, 1775. Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 17; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 49.

112 Printed in The Friend, xxii. 406.

113 A full-length biography of Brown is badly needed. There is an article on him in the Dictionary of American Biography, iii. 146–147. There is also a sketch by Augustine Jones entitled, Moses Brown: His Life and Services (Providence, 1892).

114 Moses Brown Papers, ii. 32.

115 Mr. Allen French has called to my attention what is probably an echo of this interview, told by Moses Brown himself a few years before his death to the biographer of General Nathanael Greene. Greene had been a Friend, a member of Greenwich Monthly Meeting, Rhode Island, but had been disowned in 1773 for his military propensities. He was now on Washington’s staff at Cambridge. “Go to General Greene; he is a Quaker, and knows more about it than I do, was his [Washington’s] answer to Moses Brown, who had been sent to Cambridge upon some business in which the Quakers were particularly interested.” George W. Greene, The Life of Nathanael Greene, i (New York, 1867), 142–143.

116 Moses Brown to Henry Lloyd, Roxbury, December 15, 1775; Brown to Ellis Gray, Providence, January 30, 1776. Moses Brown Papers, ii. 47, 49.

117 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 33; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 75ff.

118 Pemberton Papers, xxix. 2.

119 Episde from Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings to New England Meeting for Sufferings. Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 89.

120 Id., 89; Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 44f.

121 This letter has been printed, much edited, in The Friend, xxii. 412f., and, more nearly accurately, in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, i. 168–174. Its text as given here is from the original in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It was evidently circulated with other documents as a form of report to the contributing meetings in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There is, for instance, a copy in the papers of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14. The manuscript report received by Shrewsbury Quarterly Meeting is preserved at the Record Room at Friends Meeting House, 221 East Fifteenth Street, New York City.

122 See above, pages 51–52.

123 The letter to Howe, his reply, and the letters to Pope and Ramor are copied in the report mentioned above, page 54, n. 4. They are also copied in Minutes of the New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 23ff.

124 The remark is probably: “How many are spending their time and money in vanity and superfluities, while thousands and tens of thousands want the necessaries of life, who might be relieved by them and their distress at such a time as this, in some degree softened by the administering suitable things.”

125 “Watertown, Nov. 27 . . . Friday last, General Howe sent 300 Men, Women and Children, Poor of the Town of Boston, over to Chelsea, without any Thing to subsist on, at this inclement Season of the Year . . .” Boston Gazette, November 27, 1775.

126 See their briefer report in Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 27.

127 Pemberton Papers, xxix. 32. In the same letter Moses Brown remarks: “I think it may be said in justice to the people of that government [Massachusetts] that there is now as little appearance of the Spirit of Persecution of Friends as in any of the Colonies.”

128 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 100f. In the Reynell-Coates Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is John Reynell’s original account book containing the same itemized information under the heading “Dr & Cr Subscriptions received from the monthly meetings belonging to the Yearly Meeting for the relief of the poor Inhabitants of Massachusetts.” The book itself is now marked “Pensilvania and New Jersey Yearly Meeting Stock in account with John Reynell 1762–1783.” I cannot find trace of any record of the individual donations.

129 James Berry of Maryland wrote from Choptank to John Pemberton on August 8, 1775: “Diverse Friends hereaways have for some time past been inclined to give a small matter towards the support of the sufferers in New England but not finding any satisfactory way of conveying it (till the Meeting for Sufferings in Philad^a opened a channel for that purpose) nothing has been done till our last Quarterly Meeting when I was directed to receive the contributions of Friends and to convey it to the Meeting for Sufferings provided it can be joined to the sum raised in your provinces and forwarded therewith.” Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 23.

130 Papers of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14.

131 Of the Boston Quaker families listed in 1774 (see page 42, n. 5, above) the following refugees were, according to the lists, assisted: at Falmouth, Maine, Phebe Pope, Nathaniel Low, wife, and three children; at Salem, Sarah Silsbey; at Lynn, Ephraim Silsbey and wife, Ezra Curtain and wife.

132 Lilley Eaton, Genealogical History of the Town of Reading, Mass. (Boston, 1874), 715–716.

133 MS., Massachusetts Historical Society. There are twenty-one families totaling eighty-two persons on this list. On the back is an account of what the town of Concord provided for them from May 13, 1775.

134 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 38; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 82.

135 Minutes of the Meeting for Sufferings of New York Yearly Meeting (Friends Record Room, 221 East Fifteenth Street, New York City), i. 38.

136 Compare the action in 1781 of the congregation in Chelsea, Mass., in sending money to “the distressed inhabitants of South Carolina and Georgia who are driven out by British troops.” 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, ix. 105–108.

137 According to English minutes preserved in the records of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings (Box 18), this wish was fulfilled by a grant of £500 to the Negro school in Philadelphia, while other money was being applied as late as 1789 to war sufferers in Nova Scotia.

138 Joseph B. Felt, The Annals of Salem (Salem, 1827), 497, 499. Cf. Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (New York, 1911), 152, where he observes: “In Salem the Friends in company with the selectmen of the town went from house to house and distributed their relief through the very streets along which the Quakers had been whipped a hundred years before.”

139 The New England Meeting for Sufferings wrote to Philadelphia in May, 1776, that the distribution had “a tendency to make a good impression on the minds of some who have been prejudiced against Friends.” Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 84.

140 The abbreviations used in the lists are:

B. Baptist	M. Moravian
C. Church of England	P. Presbyterian or Congregationalist
D. Dissenter	P. Presbyterian or Congregationalist
F. Friend	R. Roman Catholic
L. Lutheran	W. Widow

141 “N.B. Those Woomen who have no Occupations put against them, Usualy got their Living by their hand Labour of Various Kinds, now Obstructed & Stopt by the present Troubles &c.”

142 The “child” listed as Mrs. Lopthorn’s is stated to be “aged 59 years.”

143 “Taken Prisoners at Mechias in 6^th M^o 1775 whose allowance is small (1^st of y^e 3^d M^o 1776).”

144 “Those in Malbrow marked * in the Margin were not Vissited Living much dispers’d in the Town, but after due Enquiry of other people who came from Boston & the Select Men the Sums were apportion’d and sent by John Sigane of Boston & Two of the Select Men.”

145 “He freed by his master. She purchased by him, have a house in Boston & paid Taxes per bills shewn us from 1766 to 1772, but have not been favor’d with the publicks support he has 10 children She One of them, all Slaves.”

146 “Those marked * in Reading living scatter’d & remote were after due Examination relieved by sending the Moneys Anex’s to each, by Benj^a Brown a Select Man per Rc^t.”

147 “N.B. All those in Glocester on Cape Ann (a few expected as per the first Lists) are Presbiterians Congregationalist.”

148 “Calls herself a Quaker.”

149 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

150 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

151 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

152 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

153 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

154 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

155 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

156 “Put into the hands of John Beckford, Timothy Pickering, Samuel Holman, Joseph Brown, John Tuesdal and Jeremiah Hacker to deal out agreeable to directions.”

157 “Put into the hands of Robert Hooper Junr. of Marblehead, to deal out according to directions. And it appears likely more than 200 families will receive of these provisions, lodged in these two Towns, the number of poor, & smallness of the quantity to each is such, that an exact account is not required of the persons who deliver’d it, their integrity & faithfulness is not to be doubted.”

158 1,008 lbs. beef were distributed to 38 persons.

159 “Independent.”

160 “Omitted in the other Acc^t.”

161 Printed, in substance, in The Colophon, New Series, III, No. 4, 531–557.

162 Essex Institute Historical Collections, viii. 215–224; x. 73–104.

163 Editorial in the Boston Sunday Globe, February 17, 1929.

164 Essex Institute Historical Collections, viii. 168–174.

165 Scribbled on the title page is the following: “p^r 1s 2d J. G. hunc librum vendicat.” On the verso of the title page Green has written a list of the symbols and abbreviations used in his manuscript. In printing, only those that can be readily reproduced in modern type have been retained.

166 When he was teaching school at Roxbury.

167 Nehemiah Walter, minister of the church at Roxbury.

168 This is written on the verso of the second leaf, which is unnumbered. On the recto there is a business memorandum in a later hand.

169 Edward Green, captain of the Eagle.

170 Thomas Johnson of Cambridge, who married Green’s sister Elizabeth.

171 Samuel Champney (d 1695), whom Green’s mother married as her second husband.

172 Zechariah Hicks, who married Green’s sister Ruth.

173 Joseph Hicks, who married Green’s sister Bethiah.

174 Bethiah Green Hicks.

175 This sentence was inserted by Green at a later time.

176 Antigua.

177 Green’s memorandum: “Y^s letter I have not sent.”

178 Son of John Vassall of Jamaica, formerly of Scituate, Massachusetts. He stood at the head of the Class of 1695.

179 William Brattle did become minister of Cambridge in 1696.

180 Nathaniel Williams, Henry Flynt, Nathaniel Hunting, and Joseph Baxter of the Class of 1693.

181 Walter Price of Salem, a merchant in later life. He was captain in the fight with the Indians at Haverhill, August 29, 1708.

182 Richard Saltonstall of Haverhill, later a representative and colonel of militia.

183 Nathaniel Saltonstall, brother of Richard, college butler until 1697, subsequendy librarian.

184 John Hubbard of Ipswich, later minister at Jamaica, Long Island.

185 Simon Willard, son of the Reverend Samuel Willard, vice-president of the college.

186 Habijah Savage of Boston, apothecary and commander of the fort at Pemaquid.

187 Alfred Noyes of Boston, physician, politician, promoter of Long Wharf, and owner of fishing vessels.

188 Thomas Phipps of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

189 Timothy Lindall of Salem, merchant and councillor.

190 Jonathan Law, chief justice of Connecticut, 1725–1741, and governor, 1742–1750.

191 Ezekiel Lewis, master at the Boston Latin School and merchant.

192 Thomas Blowers, minister of Beverly.

193 Thomas Little, physician and clerk of courts at Plymouth.

194 Ephraim Littie, minister of Plymouth.

195 John Perkins, physician of Ipswich.

196 Jedediah Andrews of Hingham, minister of a Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.

197 John Robinson of Dorchester, minister of Duxbury.

198 Joseph Mors of Medfield, minister of Dorchester Village (Canton).

199 Nicholas Webster of Newbury, preacher and physician at Manchester and Gloucester.

200 Green’s memorandum: “this I had thoughts of sending but afterwards repented me &c.”

201 Percival Green (A.B. 1680, A.M. 1683), minister of Wells, Maine. He died July 10, 1684.

202 Elijah Corlett, a graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and master of the Cambridge Grammar School from its foundation about 1641 to his death on February 25, 1686/7.

203 Nehemiah Walter (A.B. 1684), at this time studying at the college, often served as a substitute for Corlett. John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, iii. 295.

204 “The successors of Mr. Corlett were generally young men fresh from college.” Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1877), 369. No Hastings is mentioned in his list, and the only college graduate of that name was John Hastings (A.B. 1681).

205 The bracketed words are crossed out in the original manuscript.

206 John Hancock (A.B. 1689), minister of Lexington, 1698–1752, grandfather of the patriot.

207 A.B. 1680; a physician of Cambridge.

208 He married a sister of Joseph Green’s mother and lived in Boston. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. 414⁷.

209 Apparently Joseph’s blacksmith brother. Paige states (History of Cambridge, 569) that he was living in 1691.

210 A.B. 1668; a merchant of Boston and a member of the governor’s council.

211 A.B. 1689; a man of means who later lived in England.

212 A.B. 1689; he was learning the mercantile business in 1691.

213 A brother of Thomas and William Brattle.

214 A.B. 1686; later chief justice of the province.

215 A.B. 1687; later agent of the province and the college in London and secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

216 The wife of Jonathan Mitchel (A.B. 1687).

217 Benjamin Wadsworth, later president of the college.

218 The bracketed words are crossed out in the original manuscript. Green’s predecessor was Thomas Barnard (A.B. 1679), whose description of the school in 1681 is given in Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 174–175.

219 Thomas Doolittle, A Treatise concerning the Lord’s Supper. The earliest Boston edition, which is described as the nineteenth edition, was published in 1700.

220 A Companion for Communicants: Discourses upon the Nature, the Design and the Subject of the Lord’s Supper (Boston, 1690).

221 Samuel Williams, ruling elder.

222 Pages [145–146] are missing.

223 William Brattle, his college tutor.

224 Nathaniel Ingersoll, ordained deacon in 1691 and the first innholder of Salem Village.

225 A Daniel Andrew was one of those who on July 21, 1697, as “Attornies for the people of the Village” addressed a remonstrance to the arbitrators appointed to settle the controversy between Parris and the Salem Village church that continued after his active ministry had ended. Samuel G. Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion in New England (Roxbury, 1866), ii. 159.

226 Nicholas Noyes, minister of Salem; John Hale, minister of Beverly; Joseph Gerrish, minister of Wenham, Jonathan Pierpont, minister of Reading; and Nehemiah Walter, minister of Roxbury.

227 Green characteristically fails to mention his first triumph for charity and peace following his ordination. On November 25, 1698, the church, at his instance, unanimously received back into full communion the three seceding members who had raised the faction against his predecessor. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ii (Boston, 1867), 506–507, where other extracts from the church records are given.

228 Green’s diary begins on March 4, 1699/1700, with a characteristic entry: “Quiet & rainy. Heard small phebe and other birds sing. I was at home partly reading & pruning my orchard.”

229 “On the death of Mr. Hale, some difficulty appears to have arisen in the church, the nature of which is not defined.” Edwin M. Stone, History of Beverly (Boston, 1843), 221.

230 Printed, in substance, in Harold R. Shurtleff, The Log Cabin Myth (Cambridge, 1939).

231 Coram claimed credit for the passage of the Act of 1704 to encourage the making of tar and pitch in the colonies. Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, vi. 172.

232 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America and West Indies (1712–1714), §§357, 364, 460 (June and August, 1713); Nova Scotia Papers (Gay Transcripts, Massachusetts Historical Society), I. 117–121.

233 Col. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §§385, 390, 448, 459.

234 Id., §§629, 633, 634, 635, 640.

235 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, iv (New Haven, 1938), 385–390.

236 Proposals of Coram not discussed here may be found in Cal. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §§629, 633, 634, 635, 640; Documentary History of Maine, ix. 342–348.

237 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §460; Nova Scotia Papers, i. 117–121 (August 19, 1713).

238 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1716–1717), §577; see also §§412, 528, 567, 582; Journal of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations (hereafter cited as Board of Trade) (1715–1718), 235.

239 The date is probably 1718. A copy is in the Boston Public Library.

240 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, lvi. 29.

241 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §§643, 656, 672, 673, 677; (1716–1717), §§249, 291, 303, 305, 315, 340.

242 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1716–1717), §599; Documentary History of Maine, ix. 357–361; Nova Scotia Papers, i. 749.

243 Board of Trade (1715–1718), 321–322, 323, 351; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1717–1718), §§308, 383.

244 Board of Trade (1715–1718), 352–354; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1717–1718), §458.

245 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1717–1718), §543.

246 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ii (Boston, 1767) 244–245.

247 Doctor Pinfold’s State of the Case of the Petitioners, for Settling His Majesties Waste Land, Lying between Nova Scotia, and the Province of Main in New-England, in America. It is dated March 17, 1721. A copy is owned by the Boston Public Library.

248 Board of Trade (1722–1728), 90, 93, 114, 119, 124.

249 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §501.

250 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1726–1727), §§820, 841.

251 Dunbar to Lord Wilmington, February 5, 1738/9. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part IV, 282–283.

252 Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 88. The complete text of Coram’s memorial is given in id., 76–91.

253 Board of Trade (1722–1728), 418.

254 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §6281; Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 99–101.

255 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §§630, 631, 665; Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 101–115.

256 C.O. 217/5:108–109.

257 Report on Canadian Archives (1894), 68.

258 Documentary History of Maine, x. 440–441.

259 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §483.

260 Id; §§133; 234i, 365 iii.

261 Documentary History of Maine, x. 455, 459, 465; xi. 31; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §3531 (1730), §402.

262 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 79.

263 Colonial Office, Maps and Plans, 180, 181 (Public Record Office).

264 For the discoveries at Pemaquid, see Warren K. Moorehead, “The Ancient Remains at Pemaquid, Maine,” Old-Time New England, xiv (January, 1924), 133–141.

265 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §217.

266 Order of Both Branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts to Appoint Commissioners to Investigate the Causes of the Difficulties in the County of Lincoln; and the Report of the Commissioners Thereon (Boston, 1811), 145. Waldo took over the peppercorn idea in his deeds subsequent to Dunbar’s leaving Pemaquid. Some of the deeds are to be found in Knox Papers, l. 21f. (Massachusetts Historical Society), and in the Maine Historical Society’s manuscripts.

267 Commissioners’ Report, 144.

268 Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 125–130. Dunbar’s advertisement for settlers in the Boston Gazette, August 17, 1730, gives no hint of a change of plans. He felt that it was necessary to broach the matter to the prospective settlers by degrees. Cal. State Paps., Col. (1730), §402.

269 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 44–47; Massachusetts House Journals, ix. 272; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §§6i, 12, 12 iii.

270 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 63–65. It should be mentioned that Woodside had been in difficulties with the Massachusetts House. Executive Records of the Council (MS., Mass. Archives), xv. 54–55; Massachusetts House Journals, x. 100–101.

271 Cf. Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea-Power (Cambridge, 1926), 262.

272 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §§73, 300, 301.

273 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 67–70; Massachusetts House Journals, ix. 282, 289.

274 The committee’s report is in Documentary History of Maine, xi. 70–85. Two original manuscript copies, signed by the members, are in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Miscellaneous Papers, iii. 16–18.

275 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 66–67.

276 Id., 112–128.

277 Massachusetts House Journals, x. 387–403; xi. 117.

278 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 134–135; 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 422–425; Massachusetts House Journals, xi. 174, 257–258, 281.

279 Massachusetts House Journals, xi. 322, 329; Acts and Resolves, xi. 759; 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 396.

280 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 327; see also 318–321, 324–328, 331–338.

281 C.O. 217/5: 108–109.

282 The Society has, with Mr. Frost’s permission, issued and distributed amongst the members a broadside containing A Considerable Speck, one of the poems, hitherto unpublished, which Mr. Frost read on this occasion. The broadside was printed from the first font of type cut and cast by Mr. Dard Hunter, Jr., and on paper made by Mr. Dard Hunter, Sr.

283 On December 17, 1936, Mr. Mood spoke before the Society on “The Genesis of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Historical Ideas.” Some of the material dealt with was afterward used in his essay, “Turner’s Formative Period,” printed (pages 5–39) in The Early Writings of Frederic Jackson Turner (Madison, 1938). Though based in part on the essay of 1938, the present paper is essentially a new piece of work.

284 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xv (September, 1931), 93; xix (September, 1935), 101–103. I have also consulted the data on the population of Wisconsin in the Census of 1870.

285 “History of the ‘Grignon Tract’ on the Portage of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers,” State Register (Portage, Wisconsin), June 23, 1883. My thanks are due the late Joseph Schafer, who kindly supplied me with a photostat copy of this, the earliest writing by Turner.

286 “The History of Fort Winnebago,” Collections, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xiv (Madison, 1898), 65–102.

287 On Veblen’s beginnings, see the earlier chapters in Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America (New York, 1934).

288 Official transcript of the record of Fred Jackson Turner at the University of Wisconsin.

289 Frederick J. Turner, “Problems in American History,” The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner (Madison, 1938), 76. This volume also contains a chronological list of all Turner’s works, compiled by Everett E. Edwards, and an introduction by Fulmer Mood.

290 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xix (September, 1935), 101–103.

291 Official transcript of the record of Fred Jackson Turner at the University of Wisconsin.

292 William F. Allen, Essays and Monographs (Boston, 1890), 8. D. B. Frankenburger’s memoir in this volume gives the fullest account of Allen’s life. The Dictionary of American Biography has a sketch.

293 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1881–1882 (Madison, 1882), 49.

294 The syllabus was reprinted to form a part of Methods of Teaching History, G. Stanley Hall, Editor (Boston, 1886), 323–336.

295 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1884–1885 (Madison, 1884), 8, 10. Hereafter specific references will not be given to the University of Wisconsin catalogues when the context supplies sufficient information to run down the source.

296 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xv (September, 1930), 89.

297 Printed in the University Press (Madison), 14 (35): 4 (May 26, 1883).

298 University Press, 15 (39): 12 (June 21, 1884). This oration was awarded the Lewis prize.

299 “An Act to Provide for a System of Common Schools,” Statutes of California Passed at the Sixteenth Session (Sacramento, 1866), 400–401.

300 Reuben Gold Thwaites. A Memorial Address (Madison, 1914), 38.

301 Id., 18.

302 This textbook by Alexander Johnston (1849–1889) was the first really successful, scholarly work of the kind. Editions, revised from time to time, were published in 1879, 1880, 1882, 1890, 1892, 1898, 1907, and 1910.

303 This forms part of his History Topics. See Hall, Methods of Teaching History, 330–336.

304 Syllabus of American History, 61.

305 Nation, xli (1885), 54.

306 Id., xxxii (1881), 280.

307 The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), 25.

308 For a contrary view, see Wirt A. Cate, “Lamar and the Frontier Hypothesis,” Journal of Southern History, i (February, 1935), 497–501.

309 History of America, 386–387.

310 Hall, Methods of Teaching History, 282. The London edition of Doyle’s work was reviewed by Allen in the Nation, xxii (May, 1876), 296.

311 The Colonies, 1492–1750, ix.

312 Dr. Edward L. Hardy graduated from the University of Wisconsin with the degree of B.L. in 1893. During his last two years he elected courses in American history with Turner and accumulated an extensive file of notes recording the opinions of the lecturer. In April, 1940, Dr. Hardy, with marked generosity, presented these to me. On going through them again lately, I noted a reference by Turner to the maps in Doyle’s History of America in Dr. Hardy’s notes on the course on American Economic and Social History which he had in 1892–1893.

313 Nation, xx (1875), 226.

314 Id., xxxii (1881), 151.

315 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1888–1889 (Madison, 1889), 14.

316 Proceedings, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xxxvi (Madison, 1889), 52–98.

317 Id., 97–98.

318 Outline Studies in the History of the Northwest, 6.

319 “Little Known Fragments of Turner’s Writings,” Fulmer Mood, Editor, Wisconsin Magazine of History, xxiii (March, 1940), 329–330 (the quotation is from the editor’s Introduction). One of the “fragments” here reprinted is the article on Wisconsin, first published in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (xxiv. 616–619), and reprinted in the tenth edition (xxxiii. 861–862).

320 Official transcript of advanced courses taken by Frederick J. Turner at Johns Hopkins University.

321 Early Writings of Turner, 198.

322 Richard T. Ely, An Introduction to Political Economy (New York, 1889), 39–41.

323 Ely, Introduction to Political Economy, 41.

324 Id., 42–50.

325 Id., 53–54.

326 Ely, Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society (New York, 1903), 21 and n. 1. In the Philadelphia edition of List the scheme of stages is found on page 72.

327 Francis A. Walker, Political Economy, Advanced Course (2nd ed., New York, 1887), 44–53.

328 Ely’s popularization of this concept of stages gave it wide currency. Note, for example, its influence on his pupil, Charles J. Bullock, in Bullock’s Introduction to the Study of Economics (Boston, 1897), Chapter ii, “The Growth of Foundational Industry.” Bullock had studied at Wisconsin under Ely. Through the medium of Elementary Principles of Economics, together with A Short Sketch of Economic History (New York, 1904, and later editions), both by Ely and George R. Wicker, the concept reached an immense audience on both the high school and college levels. Book ii, “The Natural History of a Society,” in Albion W. Small and George M. Vincent, An Introduction to the Study of Society (New York, 1894), comes pretty close to the idea. Ely and Small were at Baltimore at the same time.

329 Of course, to take over, however critically, any a priori scheme or concept is to run a grave risk. The Listian sequence of stages is today firmly embedded in Turner’s great essay, and today the Listian concept can be asserted to be, as a universal rule, a fallacious idea. It is one component element in Turner’s essay that will not now stand the test of inspection.

330 Proceedings, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, xxxv (Madison, 1888), 16.

331 On Gannett, in addition to the sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography, see Simon N. D. North, Henry Gannett, President of the National Geographic Society, 1910–1914 (Washington, 1915).

332 Scribner’s Statistical Atlas, Fletcher Hewes and Henry Gannett, Editors (New York, 1885), vii (hereinafter cited as Atlas). Hewes was apparently responsible for the editing of the text; he had compiled other works earlier. Fittingly, the work was dedicated to Francis A. Walker.

333 Atlas, Plates 7–10.

334 Id., Plate 11.

335 For the text of the essay, see id., xxxvii–xl; for the maps, see id., Plates 12–17.

336 Id., Plates 15–17.

337 Early Writings of Turner, 195.

338 Atlas, xii–li.

339 Id., Plates 54–57.

340 Id., xxiii–xxiv.

341 In its first edition this work (published by the American Book Company) was issued as one of the National Geographic Monographs (1, Number 3). It was republished the following year (1896) by the National Geographic Society, Washington. It was used by Turner in his classroom teaching for many years. When I studied the history of the West as a Harvard undergraduate in 1919–1920, I was required to have the substance of this essay completely at my command. As the scientific study of physiography developed, Turner kept pace with it and made use of new findings. The paragraph in the text can be rounded out by the following quotation: “I have generalized from the report of N. M. Fenneman, Physiographic Divisions of the United States (Association of American Geographers Annals, xviii, 261–353), and A. K. Lobeck, Physiographic Diagram of the United States (Madison, Wis., 1922). . . . An older, and still useful, analysis is J. W. Powell, ‘Physiographic Regions of the United States. . . .’” Frederick J. Turner, The United States, 1830–1850: The Nation and Its Sections (New York, 1935), 2, n. 2.

342 The original MS. is in the Harvard College Library.

343 “Problems in American History” (1904), The Significance of Sections in American History (New York, 1932), 9.

344 Atlas, xliii–xliv. and Plate 22.

345 Atlas, xliv.

346 United States Census Office, Eleventh Census, 1890, Census Bulletin No. 12. Population of the United States by States and Territories, 1890 (Washington, 1890), 5. For a republication of the substance of this discussion, including tables, map, and text, see Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890. I. Population (Washington, 1892), xl–xliv.

347 Early Writings of Turner, 198–199.

348 United States Census Office, Eleventh Census, 1890, Extra Census Bulletin No. 2. Distribution of Population according to Density: 1890 (Washington, 1891), 1–2.

349 Id., 4.

350 Official transcript of advanced courses taken by Frederick J. Turner in Johns Hopkins University.

351 Letter from Wilson to Turner, Middletown, Connecticut, August 23, 1889, in the Harvard College Library.

352 I am under obligation to Dr. Eric F. Goldman of the Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, who called my attention to this material and assisted me in other ways in settling specific points relating to Turner’s period of study at Baltimore. Dr. Goldman’s student, Thomas W. McElhiney, kindly permitted me to make transcripts from his notes of the seminar discussions.

353 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar, 420.

354 W. Stull Holt, Editor, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 1876–1901: As Revealed in the Correspondence of Herbert Baxter Adams (Baltimore, 1938), 156; Johns Hopkins Half-Century Directory, 1876–1926, W. Norman Brown, Editor (Baltimore, 1926), 363. Other historians who completed their work on the same day were Charles H. Haskins, John M. Vincent, and James A. Woodburn.

355 Holt, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 158–159. Turner had received twenty-five copies of the published work by December 9.

356 Id., 168–169, 173–174.

357 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar (December 4, 1891), 622.

358 Johns Hopkins University Circulars, No. 4 (April, 1880), 47–48.

359 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar (October 31, 1884), 66.

360 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar, 139.

361 Id. (October 15, 1886), 160.

362 Id. (October 14, 1887), 29.

363 Ely’s teaching on economic rent is brief and clear. See his Introduction to Political Economy, 215–216.

364 Early Writings of Turner, 185–186.

365 Walker, Political Economy, 193, 211.

366 George W. Pierson, “The Frontier and the Frontiersman of Turner’s Essay,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, lxiv (October, 1940), 449–478.

367 Walker, Political Economy, 193.

368 Id., 193–218.

369 Francis A. Walker, Land and Its Rent (Boston, 1883), 21.

370 Id., 22.

371 Walker, Land and Its Rent, 23.

372 Id., 25–26.

373 Id., 45–47.

374 Id., 140.

375 Id., 41.

376 Early Writings of Turner, 82–83.

377 Proceedings, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, xxxviii (Madison, 1891), 93.

378 The edition was small, and the book soon went out of print.

379 J. Franklin Jameson, The History of Historical Writing in America (Boston, 1891), 141–142.

380 Dial, x (August, 1889), 71.

381 Early Writings of Turner, 236–237.

382 Holt, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 145.

383 For bibliographical details, see Early Writings of Turner, 236–240.

Wisconsin Magazine of History, xxii (December, 1938), 216.

384 Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science, ii (Philadelphia, 1892), 782–783.

385 James A. James and Albert H. Sanford, American History (New York, 1909). In a letter to me Professor James states that this book “was, I think, the earliest text for schools to make use of the Turner viewpoint.” The book was not submitted to Turner in manuscript, Professor James adds.

386 For the inception of the plan, see Proceedings, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, xxxvi. 47.

387 Transactions, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, viii (Madison, 1892), 288–298.

388 Here Turner followed the gracious custom of his predecessor, Professor Allen.

389 Collections, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xii (Madison, 1892), 299–334.

390 Id., xiv (Madison, 1898), 341–393.

391 J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States in the Formative Period, 1775–1789, by Graduates and Former Members of the Johns Hopkins University (Boston, 1889), 67.

392 Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913), 5.

393 Orin G. Libby, The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787–8 (Madison, 1894), iii–vii.

394 Collections, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xiii (Madison, 1895), 293–334.

395 Id., 334.

396 Id., 335–374.

397 Id., 363.

398 I have reprinted the 1894 “Frontier” essay, with introductory remarks, in “Little Known Fragments of Turner’s Writings,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, xxiii (March, 1940), 330, 338–341. Why Turner allowed this useful essay (as well as his Ægis article of 1892) to drop out of sight is a minor mystery. He seems to have had little concern over being misunderstood by those who were to come afterward. Until the recently published chronological bibliography of Turner’s writings by Dr. Edwards (Early Writings of Turner, 234–268) it was quite impossible to trace the unfolding of his scholarship.

399 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington, 1894), 6.

400 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin for 1891–1892 (Madison, 1892), 98.

401 Trent was of Virginian birth, had done postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins, and was the author of English Culture in Virginia (1889) and Life of William Gilmore Simms (1892).

402 William P. Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Régime: Washington, Jefferson, Randolph, Calhoun, Stephens, Toombs, and Jefferson Davis (New York, 1897), vii–xv.

403 Max Farrand, “Frederick Jackson Turner at the Huntington Library,” Huntington Library Bulletin, Number 3 (February, 1933), 159.

404 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1896 (Washington, 1897), i. 281–296.

405 Id., 283.

406 Id., 287.

407 For bibliographical details, see Early Writings of Turner, 239.

408 Id., 239–250 (entries for the years 1895–1905).

409 For a statement of Libby’s views on this subject, see his article, “A Plea for the Study of Votes in Congress,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1896, i. 323–334.

410 Id., 323.

411 Id., 332.

412 Id., 332 and n.1.

413 Ulrich B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights. A Study of the Political History of Georgia from the Revolution to the Civil War, with Particular Regard to Federal Relations (Washington, 1902), 5.

414 See Everett E. Edwards, “A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips” [Introduction by Fred Landon], Agricultural History, viii (October, 1934), 196–218.

415 His American Diplomacy (New York, 1915, and four subsequent editions) developed from this branch of his teaching.

416 Holt, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 276.

417 Woodrow Wilson to F. J. Turner, Princeton, January 21, 1902, in Harvard College Library.

418 This anecdote comes to me from Professor Wilbur C. Abbott.

419 Huntington Library Bulletin, Number 3, 160–162.

420 The helpful Introduction by Professor Avery Craven reveals how Turner worked and composed his manuscript.

421 For an account of the literary project that Fish had in hand, see his The American Civil War, vii–viii.

422 The project was outlined by Phillips in the Preface to Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1929).

423 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xix (September, 1935), 96–97.

424 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1909 (Washington, 1911), 165–172.

425 Id., 165.

426 Mr. Potter, to whose studies and interest all later concern with the John Harvard donation is indebted, retired as the Harvard College Librarian in 1936. The Library has continued, however, to secure as far as possible copies of the books whose titles were identified. A list of some seventy such additions will be found below in the footnote on page 355; but there remains a list of desiderata, nearly twice as long, representing the items still lacking at the Library. Most of the books regarded as replacements of the original donation have been classified as a separate category with a shelf list of their own, and many of them have stood together in a separate show case in the old Treasure Room in the main building of Widener Library.

The substance of this paper is included in a more popular article, “What Happened to John Harvard’s Books?” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, xli (November 18, 1938), 241–248.

427 “A Few Notes concerning the Records of Harvard College,” Bibliographical Contributions, Justin Winsor, Editor, No. 27 (Cambridge, 1888). The list, without identifications, was published in Thomas G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620–1730 (New Haven, 1920), 265–272, and in our Publications, xv. 158–166.

428 In his list Potter used the designation “(Cat. 1723)” to indicate items that he identified in this way. This symbol may now be added to his printed list in the following instances, confirming or correcting his titles and editions: Nos. 26, 44 (should be Geneva, 1625), 50, 55 (also Poitiers, 1619, f^o), 81 (should be 4^o), 111a (the edition in English), 163b (should be Basel, 1611), 196 (should be 4^o), 222 (should be edition of 1547, for which “1647” in the Catalogue is an obvious error), 227b. The dates in Potter’s list should be further corrected in these items: Nos. 8b (1620 for 1630), 72d (1572 for 1568), 143a (1599 for 1589), 174a (1570 for 1574), 198a (1618 for 1628), 199 (1629 for 1627). The asterisk used by Potter to mark items of which copies are in the Harvard College Library may now be added, owing to more recent accessions, to the titles and editions which he names under Nos. 1, 2, 6a (Volumes 3 and 4), 13, 16, 18, 23a, 24a (Antwerp, 1616), 29b, 29d (Venice, 1617), 30d, 31, 33, 42, 46a, 46e, 48b, 48d, 48e, 48g, 48j, 51a, 54, 59, 60, 62a, 62c, 62f, 62h, 70, 72a, 75b, 75c, 90 (London, 1593), 91 (London, 1633), 94 (Frankfort, n.d.), 106, 108a, 109b, 114, 116, 117, 126, 134, 140, 143b, 156, 162, 163b (Basel, 1603), 169 (London, 1638), 172, 174, 183a, 184b, 189a, 191e, 195, 198a, 205, 208, 210, 220, 222 (Lyons, 1547), 234, 237, 242b, 245, 246 (London, 1618), 247, 250.

429 This striking difference between ancient and modern library practice is rarely mentioned or thought of today. Burnett H. Streeter thinks the custom goes back to the days of chained books. The Chained Library (London, 1931).

430 Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xx. 287, 288. The original manuscript of this list is in the Boston Public Library.

431 This similarity was noted by Andrew McF. Davis (Bibliographical Contributions, No. 27, 7), but he drew no deductions from it. The list was printed by him in id., 14.

Of course some coincidences between contemporary libraries in New England are to be expected. I have attempted to compute the number of titles in the John Harvard list that are also found in three other lists of the period. The library of Thomas Jenner, left by him in America in 1649 and bought in 1651 for the use of John Eliot by the Corporation for Propagation of the Gospel in New England (the New England Company) had 200 titles (our Publications, xxviii. 113–136), of which not more than 40 are in the John Harvard list. The library left in America by Thomas Weld (1595–1662) and similarly disposed of at the same time as Jenner’s (id., 136–156) contained 195 titles, of which about 32 may be the same as titles in the John Harvard list. A smaller and earlier library, owned and housed in various places in the colony from its presentation in 1629 until it was burned in the Town House fire in Boston in 1711, was that given the Massachusetts Bay Company by William Backhouse and the Reverend Samuel Skelton. About a dozen of the John Harvard titles may be included in its 52 entries. Proc. Am. Antiq. Soc, xx. 271.

432 The date at which the two lists were copied into the Record Book is not known. Mr. Morison thinks it was probably after 1667, when the new library laws called for a catalogue. The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, 1935), 264. The handwriting is not that of President Dunster, as was formerly thought, but it has not been identified. Bellingham’s gift may have been made in 1642, when the magistrates and elders gave to Harvard College from their libraries books to the value of £200 (id., 263); or by bequest at his death in 1672, when, according to the inventory of his estate, he had at his house in Boston a library of books worth £30. Mellen Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, 1624–1824 (Boston, 1908), i. 427.

433 Sibley has written on the bookplate: “This book belonged to the Library before the fire Jan. 24, 1766 [sic].”

434 Proc. Am. Antiq. Soc., xxxiv. 2–4, 14–19.

435 Our Publications, xvi. 522. On the recovery of nearly seventy of the duplicates thus disposed of, see my article, “My Professor’s Closet,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, xxxix (December 4, 1936), 297–301.

436 Our Publications, xvi. 570.

437 Id., 728.

438 Id., xxviii. 381–461.

439 Or perhaps a similar work of the same title by Ravisius Textor.

440 Of this total, $291.18 is to be reimbursed from the savings bank deposit belonging to the Martha Rebecca Hund Fund.

441 Printed in John Adams, Works, ix. 641–643, and Hezekiah Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America (New York, 1876), 107–108.

442 E. Francis Brown, Joseph Hawley, Colonial Radical (New York, 1931), 154.

443 Hawley to Gerry, February 18, 1776, in James T. Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry, 1 (Boston, 1828), 161.

444 Id., 160.

445 2. Samuel, i: 20.

446 The material for this paper has been obtained from the following sources:

Derby business papers, Essex Institute.
Edward B. Allen, Early American Wall Paintings (New Haven, 1926).
George C. Mason, Reminiscences of Newport (Newport, 1884).
Article by Joseph Northam in the Newport Daily News, December 31, 1895.

447 Our Publications, xxxii. 505–514.

448 Frederick M. Kimball, “Corné and Tomatoes,” Canco (the trade journal of the American Can Company), v (April, 1939), 6.

449 The substance of Mr. Murdock’s remarks is printed in Appalachia, vii (June, 1941), 344–354.

450 Political Register and Impartial Review, ix (London, 1771), 81–83.

451 Id., 81.

452 The first biographer of Wilkes to use the American letters was John Almon. In his Correspondence of the Late John Wilkes (5 vols., London, 1805), Almon printed four letters from the Sons of Liberty. Two recent biographies, Raymond Postgate, That Devil Wilkes (London, 1930), and O. H. Sherrard, A Life of John Wilkes (London, 1930), have quoted these and other American letters from the Wilkes papers in the British Museum. All these letters were printed by Worthington C. Ford in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 190–215.

Two other American letters to Wilkes are available in print: from the Sons of Liberty, November 4, 1769, in John G. Palfrey, “William Palfrey,” Library of American Biography, 2nd Series, vii (Boston, 1845), 358–362; from William Palfrey, March 13, 1770, describing the Boston Massacre, in 1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 480–483.

453 Printed in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 196–197.

454 John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1768).

455 Palfrey had sent Wilkes copies of the Boston Evening Post, which began on February 6, 1769, to publish a series of letters containing a “full answer to the Farmer’s.” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 196–197.

456 George Hayley, Palfrey’s commercial correspondent in London and Wilkes’s brother-in-law.

457 Copy by Anna R. Palfrey, corrected and endorsed by John G. Palfrey: “Original given by J. G. P. to Mrs. [George] Ticknor May 15, 1873.”

458 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 200–202.

459 Palfrey had sent Wilkes a copy of a deposition by Sampson Toovey, clerk to James Cockle, Collector of Customs at Salem, stating that Cockle received bribes and shared them with Governor Bernard. Wilkes published this, with a short introduction, in the London Daily Advertiser and Morning Chronicle, July 22, 1769.

460 Hancock’s sloop Liberty was condemned in 1768 after several months of litigation. See Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, lv. 239–284.

461 Printed by permission of the Harvard College Library. Excerpts from this letter are printed in Library of American Biography, 2nd Series, vii. 365n.

462 Eliot visited Wilkes on September 14 and 20, 1769. Anna Ticknor, Samuel Eliot (Boston, 1869), 32.

463 In his letter of July 26 Palfrey had written: “The society of the friends of Liberty have directed me to forward you two Turtles. . . . They are now in fine order, one weighs 45 lb., the other 47, making in the whole 92 lb. which is the Massachusetts patriotic number.” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 206.

464 John Glynn (1722–1779), London politician and lawyer, who took the lead in defending Wilkes in numerous suits.

465 Palfrey’s draft bears no date. However, the supplement to this letter, printed in i Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 480–483, indicates that it was written on March 5, 1770.

466 John Jeffries (1745–1819), after graduating from Harvard in 1763, studied medicine in England for several years. At first an ardent patriot, he lost the respect of the radicals by testifying for Captain Preston in October, 1770. During the war he moved to England where he subsequently became famous for the first crossing of the Strait of Dover by air.

467 The passage in brackets is canceled in Palfrey’s draft.

468 Lieutenant Colonel William Dalrymple.

469 Ebenezer Richardson.

470 “Knight of the Post” was a term of contempt for a perjurer or one who got his living by giving false evidence.

471 One paragraph, describing the Richardson affair in words similar to those above, is here omitted.

472 Wilkes’s term in the King’s Bench Prison ended on April 18, 1770.

473 Copy by Anna R. Palfrey, endorsed by John G. Palfrey: “Copy of a letter of which I gave the original to Miss Arnold.”

474 Wilkes was sworn in as alderman on the day of his release from prison.

475 Palfrey’s draft is undated. The two paragraphs describing Governor Hutchinson’s character were printed in Library of American Biography, 2nd Series, vii. 368–372.

476 Colonel James Otis (1702–1778).

477 John Temple (1732–1798), Surveyor General of the Customs.

478 Henry Temple, second Viscount Palmerston (1739–1802).

479 See page 414, n. 3, above.

480 James Murray (1713–1781) was President of the Council of North Carolina before he moved to Boston in 1765.

481 These Boston and Marlborough merchants had aroused considerable animosity by their violations of the nonimportation agreement. See Publications of this Society, viii. 98n.; xix. 226, 226n, 232, 233n.

482 Charles Churchill (1731–1764), English poet.

483 Arthur Lee of Virginia (1740–1792).

484 Numerous pamphlets were printed in England and America in 1770 claiming to contain the complete love letters of the Duke and Lady Grosvenor. At a trial on July 5, 1770, at King’s Bench, Lord Grosvenor was awarded £16,000 “for a criminal conversation between the Defendant and the Plaintiff’s wife.”

485 Palfrey had been in England from February 3 to April 3, 1771.

486 John Sawbridge (1732–1795), Sheriff of Middlesex, who five times returned Wilkes as duly elected to Parliament in defiance of the House of Commons.

487 Unidentified, but not Charles Churchill, the poet.

488 Mr. George G. Wolkins has written two valuable articles on the exploits of Captain Daniel Malcom: “The Seizure of John Hancock’s sloop Liberty,” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, lv. 239–284; and “Daniel Malcom and Writs of Assistance,” id., lviii. 5–84.

489 C.O. 5:849.

490 Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, No. 76273.

491 Litigation was Captain John’s favorite pastime while on shore. During the twenty years 1750–1770 he was frequently suing somebody or being sued. Writ after writ is to be found in the files of the Superior Court of Judicature.

492 The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., Franklin B. Dexter, Editor (New York, 1901), i. 39.

493 Superior Court of Judicature, No. 90105.

494 “The War of the Regulation occurring in North Carolina . . . has often been regarded as a part of the general revolutionary movement. In reality it was rather a ‘peasants’ revolt’ against the hard conditions then prevailing; and most of the ‘regulators’ were tories a few years later. Professor Bassett, whose detailed article in the American Historical Association’s Reports (1894, pp. 141–212) is by far the best study that has yet been made, says (p. 211): ‘This investigation leads to the view that the Regulation could have no direct connection with the Revolution. I can see no continuity of influence. The Regulation did not make the later struggle inevitable.’ Although, as Professor Bassett states, there is no direct connection between the War of the Regulation and the American Revolution, and although most of the regulators were tories, these disturbances were doubtless influential in adding to the general spirit of unrest which was rising throughout the continent.” Edward Channing, A History of the United States, iii (New York, 1920), 122n.

495 Colonial Records of North Carolina, viii. 583.

496 State Records of North Carolina, xix. 843–845. The expedition ended on June 21, when Governor Tryon left to sail for New York.

497 The name of a fierce swashbuckler in the dramatic burlesque, The Rehearsal (1671), by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

498 Colonial Records of North Carolina, ix. 236–237.

499 Id, 300.

500 Id., 351.

501 Id., 618–619.

502 Boston Gazette, February 14, 1774.

503 Waldo’s letter to the Lords of the Treasury (T.I. 525, f. 119) is dated November 21, 1776, and is addressed to John Robinson, formerly one of the Commissioners of the Customs in Boston. Waldo had come to England after the burning of Falmouth, Maine, by the British in October, 1775. In the destruction of the town he lost his dwelling house and its contents, his distill house, and his storehouse, not to mention the customhouse, which was his own property. Treasury In-letters, 525, f. 125 (Public Record Office).

504 T.I. 525, f. 117.

505 Benjamin B. Thacher, Traits of the Tea Party; Being a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes (New York, 1835), 130–133.

506 Dartmouth mss., Patshull House, Wolverhampton, Shropshire.

507 Dartmouth mss.

508 Letters of a Loyalist Lady (Cambridge, 1927), 70–72.

509 Boston Evening-Post, December 5, 1774; Massachusetts Gazette, December 8, 1774; Massachusetts Spy, December 8, 1774.

510 The imprint reads: “London Printed for Rob^t Sayer & J. Bennett, Map & Printseller, No. 53, Fleet Street as the Act directs 31, Oct^r 1774.”

511 The imprint reads: “Printed for Carington Bowles, at his Map & Print Warehouse, No. 69 in St. Paul’s Church Yard, London. Published as the Act directs, Oct. 12^th, 1774.” The print was Number 306 in Bowles’s series of folio mezzotints.

512 The imprint is the same except for the date, June 2, 1775.

513 Two months later the London Chronicle, December 17, 1774, contained a news item confirming this expectation: “The Exciseman who was tarred and feathered at Boston and lately arrived in England has obtained a pension of 200£ per annum.”

514 R. T. H. Halsey, The Boston Port Bill as Pictured by a Contemporary London Cartoonist (New York, 1904), 93.

515 I first became acquainted with this print through the copy of it in Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia. My thanks are due to Charles L. Chandler, Esq., of Philadelphia for his kindness in securing a photograph of the print for me. I have subsequendy come across a copy of the print in the Harvard College Library.

516 The explanation of the scene given below the engraving is as follows: “Le 25 Janvier 1774 la populace irritée pénétra sans armes dans sa maison. Il blessa plusieurs personnes à coups d’épée: mais les Bostoniens, modérés jusques dans leur vengeance, le saisirent, le descendirent par la fenêtre dans une charrette; ensuite il fut dépouillé, goudronné, emplumé, mené sur la place publique, battu de verges, et obligé de remercier de ce qu’on ne le punisait point de mort: puis on le ramena chez lui sans autre mal.”

517 The Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759–1762, 1764–1779, Anne L. Cunningham, Editor (Boston, 1903), 261.

518 Massachusetts Gazette, February 3, 1774.

519 The complete report of Major Eyre is in the Parkman Transcripts, Massachusetts Historical Society.

520 The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Peter O. Hutchinson, Editor (London, 1886), i. 164.

521 Boston Gazette, January 31, 1774.

522 T.I. 510, f. 49.

523 Dartmouth mss.

524 Massachusetts Gazette, December 8, 1774.

525 Id., December 16, 1774.

526 Dartmouth mss.

527 Dartmouth mss.

528 Hutchinson Diary, ii. 100–101.

529 See pages 440–442, above.

530 Admiralty Office 13:79 (Public Record Office).

531 War Office 12:11616 (Public Record Office).

532 The word in the original is unexempted.

533 A.O.13:75.

534 Malcom’s case is entered under the head of “Persons receiving Allowances under a General Minute of the Board dated the day of but whose Claims are not set forth by Memorial or supported by Voucher.” He is put down as having a “present allowance” of £100, and his “profession” is given as surveyor of the customs.

535 A.O.12:105, f. 141.

536 A.O.13:75.

537 W.O.12:11616.

538 W.O.25:3101.

539 To purchase certain books from the Matt B. Jones collection as a memorial to Mr. Jones.

540 To purchase certain books from the Matt B. Jones collection as a memorial to Mr. Jones.

541 Printed in substance as “Origins of the Colonial Idea in England,” Proceedings, American Philosophical Society, lxxxv (September 30, 1942), 448–465.

542 Francis N. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions (Washington, 1909), iii. 1849.

543 Id., 1870, 1877.

544 New England Council, id., 1827, 1834; Maine, id., 1625, 1627; Connecticut, id., i. 529, 536; Rhode Island, id., vi. 3211, 3221.

545 See the Introduction by Charles M. Andrews in Beverly W. Bond, The Quit-Rent System in the American Colonies (New Haven, 1919), 14–17.

546 Lyttleton, His Treatise of Tenures, Thomas E. Tomlins, Editor (London, 1841), 153; Melville Egleston, The Land System of the New England Colonies (Baltimore, 1886), 14. Other reasons are suggested in Viola Barnes, “Land Tenure in English Colonial Charters of the Seventeenth Century,” Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews (New Haven, 1931), 4–40; George L. Haskins, “The Beginnings of the Recording System in Massachusetts,” Boston University Law Review, xxi (April, 1941), 299–302.

547 Cf. Charles H. Atherton, “Address,” Collections, New Hampshire Historical Society, iii. 153, 156–157.

548 Cf. Edward P. Cheyney, “The Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent,” American Historical Review, xi (October, 1905), 29–35.

549 A partial list of these writers may be found in Richard B. Morris, Studies in the History of American Law (New York, 1930), 106, n. 2.

550 “Fuit agrée per touts que si terre soit alledge d’estre en Kent, serra presume d’estre Gavelkind, si non que le contrary soit prove.” Browne v. Brokes (1659), 2 Siderfin, 153. “Touts terres in Kent sont suppose destre Gavelkind.” Wiseman v. Cotten (1661), 1 Siderfin, 135, 138. See also Robinson on Gavelkind, Charles I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, Editors (London, 1897), 44. Cf. Lord Hale’s opinion in Randall v. Writtall (1673), 3 Keble, 214, 216.

551 It should be pointed out that, contrary to the opinion of some, gavelkind was frequently an incident of free and common socage. Cf. Theodore F. T. Plucknett, review, New England Quarterly, iii (July, 1930), 575: “In discussing the famous manor of East Greenwich and the question of gavelkind, we miss the one simple and conclusive answer, viz. that the charters expressly define the tenure as socage; and socage is not gavelkind.” The answer is neither simple nor conclusive; see Charles I. Elton, Tenures of Kent (London, 1867), Chapter xv.

552 Further discussion of the social and economic implications of this is given in my article, “The Beginnings of Partible Inheritance in the American Colonies,” Yale Law Journal, li (June, 1942), 1280–1315. The medieval background is detailed in John E. A. Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England: The Jutes (Oxford, 1933), 19–30. See also George C. Homans, “Partible Inheritance of Villagers’ Holdings,” Economic History Review, viii (November, 1937), 48–56.

553 William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston, 1912), ii. 41–43.

554 Letter to Samuel Bloommaert, one of the directors of the West India Company, Collections, New York Historical Society, 2nd Series, ii. 352.

555 The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts Reprinted from the Edition of 1660, William H. Whitmore, Editor (Boston, 1889), 51, Titles 81, 82. See also The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, 1648, Max Farrand, Editor (Cambridge, 1929), 53–54, and below, page 487.

556 It was repealed in 1789. Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts, 1788–1789 (Boston, 1894), 395–396. For fee tail estates, see below, page 486, n. 2.

557 Studies in the History of American Law, 107–108.

558 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, i (New Haven, 1934), 86n.–87n.; Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Introduction to Records of the Suffolk County Court, 1671–1680, our Publications, xxix. lxvii–lxviii. See also Professor Chafee’s article, “Professor Beale’s Ancestor,” Harvard Legal Essays Written in Honor of and Presented to Joseph Henry Beale and Samuel Williston (Cambridge, 1934), 39, 56.

559 There is some confusion in the records and the early authorities as to whether the rules of partible inheritance extended to a fee tail in Massachusetts, or whether primogeniture prevailed. In Baker v. Mattocks, Quincy, 69 (Mass., 1763), the court construed the province statute of 1692 as not extending to estates tail, thus holding that the common-law rule of primogeniture prevailed. Cf. The Charter and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1814), 230–232. Earlier in the century, however, the court reached an opposite result in two cases. See Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 100–101. Yet in 1723 the Council passed a declaratory resolve that the statute of 1692 did not apply to estates tail. Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, v (Boston, 1924), 279. The real difficulty is that the statute of 1692 refers explicitly to fee simple estates. The earlier enactments, in 1641 and 1660, in providing for descent to all children, make no distinction between fee simple and fee tail estates. Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51 (Titles 81, 82), 201. Morris (Studies in the History of American Law, 102) has concluded that partible descent existed as to fee tail estates during the seventeenth century. It is noteworthy that Plymouth enacted in 1685 that “all Lands heretofore Intailed, and that shall be Intailed hereafter, shall descend and enure as by the Law of England the same ought to do.” William Brigham, The Compact with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth (Boston, 1836), 299. This parallel might tend to weigh in favor of the view that in the Bay Colony rules of partible inheritance applied to estates in fee tail, since no contrary enactment exists. But the use of the words “fee simple” in the 1692 statute equally supports an opposite view. The question must remain an open one until more evidence than the enactments comes to light.

560 For full discussion of these and other incidents, see especially Robinson on Gavelkind, Book ii; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 39–44, 73–104; Nellie Neilson, “Custom and the Common Law of Kent,” Harvard Law Review, xxxviii (February, 1925), 482–498.

561 That is, among the living children of a deceased son by right of representation.

562 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51, Title 82.

563 Id., 51, Title 81.

564 Laws and Liberties of 1648, 53–54.

565 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 201; The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts Reprinted from the Edition of 1672, William H. Whitmore, Editor (Boston, 1887), 158.

566 Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, John Noble, Editor, ii (Boston, 1904), 97 (1640); Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, i (Salem, 1916), 62 (1647), 91 (1647), 173 (1654), etc.

567 See above, page 485, n. 3. The grant to Bradford and his associates in 1629 was not as of East Greenwich. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, iii. 1844. Prior to that their patent was from the Plymouth Company, which had received its charter in 1606 with an express mention of the Kentish manor. Id., iii. 3783, 3789. However, the leaders of the colony no doubt thought the tenure unchanged by the Bradford grant, since in the Code of 1636 they specifically mention East Greenwich. Brigham, Compact and Charter, 43, 51, 54.

The Plymouth laws of 1671 include a provision similar to the 1660 law in Massachusetts: that is, children take without distinction between males and females in cases of intestacy. Brigham, Compact and Charter, 281–282. In the revision of 1685 the daughters are expressly excluded and do not take unless there are no sons; again, the double portion is reserved to the eldest son. Id., 299.

568 Laws and Liberties of 1648, 17–18. There had been no earlier provision with regard to dower, as can be seen from the preamble to the title “Dowries” in this enactment: “Forasmuch as no provision hath yet been made for any certein maintainance for Wives after the death of their Husbands. . . .” The earlier provision in 1641 was of a very general character and was clearly “uncertain.” Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51, Title 79.

569 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, Nathaniel B. Shurdeff, Editor, ii (Boston, 1853), 281: amendment to 1647 law to strike out the clause “a third part of her husbands money, goods, & chattels, reall & personall.” For the 1692 statute, see Charter and General Laws of Massachusetts Bay, 230. The effectiveness of the amendment is perhaps open to question. Cf. Records of the Court of Assistants, in. 91: “. . . by A third part for the wife to be ment a third part of the whole.” This declaration was made in 1656 by Governor Endecott. See also Records of the Court of Assistants, iii. 208, where a committee was appointed by the court “to lay out the peticon^r hir Just thirds as the law directs.” (Italics mine.) Curiously enough, the excision in 1649 was voted at the same session (May 2) at which Endecott was elected Governor. Massachusetts Records, ii. 265.

The widow very often got a great deal more than her common-law third, but not in any definite proportion. This was particularly so when there were minor children to bring up. See Essex Probate Records, passim.

570 Brigham, Compact and Charter, 43. In practice, in Massachusetts Bay, the widow might get more if the allotted third was manifestly inadequate. The court had power to assign to her such part as should seem just and reasonable. Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51 (Title 79), 201. The administration and settlement of estates in individual cases amply bear out this proposition. Cf. the Plymouth practice of relieving the widow when the husband by will deprived her of “reasonable allowance for her subsistency.” Brigham, Compact and Charter, 281.

571 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 35 (Title 11), 45 (Title 53) — 1641.

572 Id., 35, Titles 10, 11.

573 On this distrust of the English land system, see my article, previously cited, in Boston University Law Review, xxi. 301–302.

574 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 35, Title 10: “All our lands and heritages shall be free from all fines and licences upon Alienations, and from all hariotts, wardships, Liveries, Primerseisins, yeare day and wast, Escheates and forfeitures, upon the deaths of parents or Ancestors. . . .”

Two points deserve special notice in this title. In the first place, a license to alienate was not necessary if a tenant held gavelkind land. Elton, Tenures of Kent, 74. This strengthens my position that gavelkind did not obtain in Massachusetts. In the second place, relief and primer seisin never attached to land held of the King in free and common socage. Lyttleton’s Tenures, 153. No doubt the colonists did not know this. At the same time, it is doubtful whether they had ever had to meet the obligations as socage tenants of the lord of East Greenwich.

In connection with the prohibition against forfeiture, mention should be made of the reply of the Massachusetts General Court to the objection by the Attorney General that persons condemned were in Massachusetts allowed to make wills: “. . . wee conceive it to be according to our patent; and if its originall, viz^t, that of East Greenwitch, according vnto which, as wee conceive, notw^thstanding the fathers crime, yet the children are to possesse the estate.” Massachusetts Records, v. 199. We cannot tell from this assertion whether the General Court actually thought the incident of gavelkind prevailed in Massachusetts, or whether the answer to the Attorney General was merely a legal argument which they hoped would stick. Thomas Hutchinson, writing a hundred years later, was surprised: “They strangely supposed that socage-tenure included all the properties and customs of gavelkind.” History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, Lawrence S. Mayo, Editor (Cambridge, 1936), i. 377. Cf. below, page 497.

575 Of general interest in this connection are Robinson on Gavelkind, Book I, Chapters ii, iii, and Elton, Tenures of Kent, 53^ff. Of more specific interest are Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederick W. Maitland, History of English Law (Boston, 1895), ii. 268, and Howard L. Gray, English Field Systems (Cambridge, 1915), 337. The relation of such customs to the Massachusetts law of partible inheritance is reserved for discussion elsewhere. See above, page 485, n. 1.

576 Those of 1606, 1609, and 1612. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, vii. 3783, 3789, 3790, 3796, 3802, 3804.

577 Those of 1663 and 1665. Id., v. 2743, 2745, 2761, 2763.

578 Those of 1664 and 1674. Id., iii. 1637, 1638, 1641.

579 Those of 1664 and 1674. Id., v. 2533, 2534, 2546.

580 See Virginia Colonial Decisions, Robert T. Barton, Editor (Boston, 1909), i. 58, 163; John S. Bassett, “Landholding in Colonial North Carolina,” Law Quarterly Review, xi (April, 1895), 154, 164; Colonial Laws of New York, i (Albany, 1894), 114; Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 80, n. 2. In Rhode Island, whose charter of 1663 contained the East Greenwich clause, primogeniture prevailed except during the period 1718–1728. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, John R. Bartlett, Editor, iv (Providence, 1859), 238, 417; Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 80.

581 See above, page 484, n. 6.

582 Robinson on Gavelkind, 38–39.

583 Id., Book I, Chapter v; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 112; First Report of the Real Property Commissioners (London, 1829), Appendix ii. 228 (examination of Mr. John Bell, K.C.).

584 Lord Coke, writing in the reign of James I, observes that in a great part of Kent land was descendible to the eldest son. Coke on Littleton, 140b. The disgavelling acts and the persons whose lands were affected are listed in Robinson on Gavelkind, 67–71. See also the entries under “Disgavelled lands” in the Index to Elton, Tenures of Kent.

585 See previous note.

586 The best account is Edward Hasted, History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, i (Canterbury, 1797), 383–385.

587 The charters, together with other pertinent documents, are collected in Auguste van Lokeren, Chartes et documents de l’Abbaye de Saint Pierre (Ghent, 1868), i, ii. See below, n. 9.

588 Examples may be found in William Somner, Treatise on Gavelkind (London, 1660), 172–187. Cf. Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England, 24–26.

589 War conditions have prevented my examining photostats of these court rolls, but Professor Viola F. Barnes of Mount Holyoke College, who has worked with them, has kindly informed me that there is no evidence in them of the existence of gavelkind. Cf. Essays Presented to C. M. Andrews, 33.

590 Domesday Book (London, 1783), i. 12b, under “Levesham.”

591 Placita de Quo Warranto (London, 1818), i. 356.

592 Printed in John Kimbell, An Account of the Legacies, Gifts, Rents . . . of the Parish of St. Alphege, Greenwich (London, 1816), 183–209.

593 Id., 206.

594 Robinson on Gavelkind, 73–75; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 236ff.

595 These charters may be found as follows: that of Edgar, in van Lokeren, Chartes, i, No. 38; that of Edward the Confessor, in id., No. 124, and in Benjamin Thorpe, Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici (London, 1865), 357–361; that of William II, in van Lokeren, Chartes, i, No. 159; that of Henry I, in id., No. 170; that of Stephen, in id., No. 215. These and other documents, in abstract, are calendared in John H. Round, Calendar of Documents Preserved in France (London, 1899), i. 500–505, and, in part, in Henry W. C. Davis, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum (Oxford, 1913), i, Nos. 141, 323. The charter of William the Conqueror, printed in van Lokeren, Chartes, i, No. 156, and in Kimbell, Legacies of Greenwich, 13–16, is unquestionably a forgery. See Davis, Regesta, 38.

A word must be said on a point raised by Davis when he asserts (Regesta, 38) that the manor of Greenwich was held by the Bishop of Lisieux of the Bishop of Bayeux in 1086. His authority for this is the entry in Domesday Book, i. 6b, which includes “Grenviz” under the holdings of the Bishop. It is to be noted, however, that these lands are specified as belonging to Earl Harold and Brixi in the time of Edward the Confessor, whereas we know that at the Conquest the manor of Greenwich was appurtenant to Lewisham and in the hands of the Abbot at Ghent. That this was the manor of Greenwich with which we are concerned seems plain from references in the charters of Henry I (“manerium suum . . . de Gronewic”) and Stephen (“maneria sua de Gronewic et Lieuesham”). The charters of William II and Henry I speak of it as having been held by the Abbot in the time of Edward the Confessor. Since Lewisham belonged to the Abbot at the time of Domesday (Domesday Book, i. 12b), we can only conclude that the manor remained appurtenant to Lewisham and belonged to the Abbot rather than to the Bishop. Just what is meant by “Grenviz” in the holdings of the Bishop is a point which must remain open. It was not until considerably later that the word “East” was prefixed to Greenwich. For our purposes, however, the important thing is that the manor of Greenwich was held in free alms before the Conquest and was certainly again held in free alms after the charter of William II. The possible doubts as to its tenure from 1066 to 1091 do not affect the conclusions as to gavelkind and frankalmoigne.

596 By the statute 1 Henry V, c. 7 (Statutes of the Realm, ii. 172).

597 Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, i (London, 1655), 974–977; Calendar of the Charter Rolls, 1341–1417, 469, 479, 482. Cf. confirmation by Henry VI in Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1422–1429, 222.

598 Thomas Rymer, Foedera (Hague ed.), vi, ii, 161.

599 The general rule is emphasized clearly in an early case in the time of Henry III relating to a manor held by the Priory of Christchurch in frankalmoigne from a time before the Conquest. It was held that lands held by such an ancient spiritual tenure were not subject to the customs of gavelkind. Robinson on Gavelkind, 74.

600 “Le custome est solement suspende par reason del prerogative, car maintenant que cest ceo vient in auter maines ceo discendre come gavelkind arrere.” Wiseman v. Cotten, 1 Siderfin, 138. However, it was only the custom of descent which remained in abeyance. Robinson on Gavelkind, 62–63. I am grateful to Professor Roscoe Pound for helpful discussion on this point.

601 Elton, Tenures of Kent, 157; Coke on Copyholds, s. 31. Put more graphically, the question is this: If A held Blackacre in Sussex as of the manor of Dale in Kent, and gavelkind prevailed at Dale, would Blackacre descend according to the customs of gavelkind? Apart from Elton and Lord Coke, there seems to be no explicit authority on the point. An early case, Anon. (1552), Dalison, 12, pl. 21, speaks of gavelkind as a custom which “runs with the land and is by reason of the land.” Robinson on Gavelkind, 55, 61, is explicit to the effect that gavelkind customs cannot be imposed on lands which had never been subject to them. Not even the King, he says, could do this.

What happened if an ordinary subject tried to vary a mode of descent is seen in another early case, Anon. (1560), Dyer, 179b, pl. 45. There it appeared that a man was seised in fee of borough-English lands after the statute of 27 Henry VIII, c. 10. He made a feoffment to divers persons in fee to the use of himself and of his heirs male of his body according to the course of common law. It was held on his death, however, that the youngest son should take by descent. Notice also a case in Y. B., Trinity, 26 Henry VIII (1534), 4, pl. 19, where a man seised of gavelkind lands made a gift in tail to hold of himself by knight’s-service. It was held the land nevertheless remained partible.

Finally, we have a statement in Wiseman v. Cotten, 1 Siderfin, 138: “Si Gavelkind terres sont tenus dun Sn̄ry que est tenus in Chivalry et puis ils Escheate, Issint que sont tenus in Chivalry ore il dit que le Gavelkind Custome est destroy, Mes ceo fuit deny par Twisden Justice (que est bien Conusant in les Leys de son pais).” The implication of this passage is not only that gavelkind is inherent in the land itself, and not merely a technicality of tenure, but also that land held of a superior holding is not affected by the customs of descent of that holding. Twysden’s knowledge of Kentish customs is undeniable. From this it may be argued that lands which normally descended according to common law would not become changed as to the descent when held of a manor which was itself subject to gavelkind. The plausibility of this contention is heightened by the ensuing remarks on the number of tenements held as of the manor of East Greenwich; or rather, its plausibility is heightened for those who may still insist that gavelkind attached to the manor of East Greenwich.

602 See above, page 489.

603 Rymer, Foedera, vii, ii, 156.

604 Select Charters of Trading Companies, 1530–1707, Cecil T. Carr, Editor (Selden Society, London, 1913), 51, 54.

605 Sir John H. LeFroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas (London, 1877), i. 550, 551.

606 Patent Rolls, 20 Charles II, pt. iii. I am grateful to the officials of the Public Record Office in London for checking this reference.

607 Robert M. Martin, History of the British Colonies (London, 1835), i. 38.

608 The number of these grants is too great to make possible any systematic list. See, however, the printed Calendars of the Patent Rolls for the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth (to 1560); Archaeologia Cantiana, xix (1892), lii (1940); Abstracts of Wiltshire Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward A. Fry, Editor (London, 1901), i. 3, 12, 40, 41, 59, etc.; Abstracts of Inquisitions Post Mortem Relating to London, George S. Fry, Editor, I (London, 1896), 200, 206, 221, etc.; Thomas Madox, The History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (London, 1769), i. 621; Owen Manning, History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, i (London, 1804), 357.

609 Quoted by Cheyney, American Historical Review, xi. 30. See also Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1598–1601, 517.

610 In the early years of Edward VI’s reign the socage grants show an increasing favoritism for the manor of East Greenwich. Forty-nine grants are made as of this manor, whereas those of other manors are much less numerous: e.g., five as of the Honour of Hampton Court; four as of Stalbridge, Dorset; three as of Stokenham, Devon; two as of Woking, Surrey, etc. See Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1548–1549; Viola F. Barnes in Essays Presented to C. M. Andrews, 10, n. 8.

611 American Historical Review, xi. 33–34.

612 See the instructions for the sale of lands in statute 35 Henry VIII, c. 14 (Statutes of the Realm, iii. 972–973); Letters and Papers foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, Editors, xix, i (London, 1903), 167–168, Section 5.

613 For example, the cut granted to the New River Company in 1619 was given as of the manor of East Greenwich. Select Charters of Trading Companies, 106, 113. So, too, the grant to the Yarmouth Saltmakers in 1636 (id., 148, 155) and the Bedford Level reclaiming project in 1663 (statute 15 Charles II, c. 17, Statutes of the Realm, v. 501). During the Interregnum the forfeited estates of various delinquents and the property of abolished bishops and deans were vested in trustees to be held as of the manor of East Greenwich in free and common socage. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (London, 1911), i. 881, 1018, 1150; ii. 83, 201, 592, 639, etc.

614 It is noteworthy how nominal the rents or other payments were in some of the charters for the British colonies. In Massachusetts Bay, for instance, it was one-fifth of the gold or silver discovered (Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, iii. 1849); in Pennsylvania, in addition, two beaver skins (id., v. 3037); in Maryland, two Indian arrows (id., iii. 1671); in Bombay, £10 (Select Charters of Trading Companies, lii, n. 4).

615 Wiltshire Inquisitions Post Mortem, i. 386.

616 Id., 209.

617 Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, iii. 1669, 1671; v. 3035, 3037.

618 Id., ii. 765, 771.

619 Charter to William Penn and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1879), 174, 231–232.

620 Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 108–111, has collected some of these. He attaches considerable weight to such expressions.

621 Morris (id., 108) considers the reference to East Greenwich in the Plymouth Code of 1636 as an expression of conviction that gavelkind had been brought over by the charter. The Plymouth law says: “That inheritance do descend according to the comendable custome of Engl, and hold of Est. Greenwich.” Brigham, Compact and Charter, 43. It is hard to see why this law is susceptible to that one interpretation. For one thing, gavelkind was never known as the “custom of England”; it was known as the common law of Kent at best. For another, “hold of Est. Greenwich” would seem merely to emphasize the tenurial aspect of landholding. The “Forme of Evidence” for particular holdings in Plymouth bears this out: “to A.B. his heires and assignes forever, The said lands to be holden of his Ma^tie and his successors as of his Mannor of East Greenwich,” etc. Id., 54. Cf. id., 279. The same would seem to apply to the reference to East Greenwich in the habenda of Massachusetts deeds, e.g. Suffolk Deeds, xiv (Boston, 1906), 69, 70. But see Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 109.

622 See, for instance, Massachusetts Records, v. 199; 6 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 428; and above, page 488, n. 7. Cf. Collections, Connecticut Historical Society, v. 427. Such arguments are to be contrasted with the sober preamble to the 1692 Statute of Descents, which gives quite a different explanation for the persistence of partible inheritance: “Whereas estates in these plantations do consist chiefly of lands, which have been subdued and brought to improvement by the industry and labour of the proprietors, with the assistance of their children, the younger children generally having been longest and most serviceable unto their parents in that behalf, who have not personal estate to give out unto them in portions, or otherwise to recompense their labours. . . .” Charter and General Laws, 230.

Occasionally in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, partible inheritance, whether in or outside of Kent, was termed gavelkind. Elton, Tenures of Kent, 53–54. Reference has already been made (above, page 489, n. 1) to the existence of partible inheritance outside of Kent. However, the association of gavelkind with Kent on the part of the colonists when the argument of English precedent is made shows that they were not using the word in its loose sense of “partibility.”

623 Note the letter of William Harris, the Rhode Island planter, printed in Collections, Rhode Island Historical Society, x. 249–250.

624 Aspects of this general question are treated by Julius Goebel, Jr., “King’s Law and Local Custom in Seventeenth Century New England,” Columbia Law Review, xxxi (March, 1931), 416–448, and by George L. Haskins in Boston University Law Review, xxi. 281–304, and in Yale Law Journal, li. 1280–1315.

625 The will, which occupies 158 pages of the first volume of the Suffolk County Probate Records, is printed in Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, x. 1–54.

626 See three letters printed in Suffolk Deeds, i (Boston, 1880), 83–84.

627 Records of the First Church of Boston (copy in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society), 25.

628 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, x. 21.

629 See my article, “Responsibilities of a Puritan Parent,” More Books, xvii (April, 1942), 141–159.

630 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, x. 19, 21.

631 See More Books, xvii (March, 1942), 87–105.

632 New England Hist. Gen. Reg., i. 132.

633 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 213.

634 Files of the Suffolk County Court, No. 2233, paper 43.

635 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 212.

636 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 6.

637 Chamberlain MSS., M.H.S., iii. 179 (November 24, 1657).

638 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 62.

639 Massachusetts Archives, ix. 32.

640 Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, iii (Boston, 1928), 67–68.

641 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 8.

642 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in Neiv England, iv, Part i, 370 (May 28, 1659).

643 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 213.

644 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv, Part i, 392 (October 18, 1659).

645 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., October, 1666, M.H.S. (printed in Mellen Chamberlain, A Documentary History of Chelsea (Boston, 1908), ii. 63).

646 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 8.

647 Id., No. 2233, paper 43.

648 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., March 12, 1665/66, M.H.S. The extraordinary manner of this second marriage probably accounts for the fact that no record was made of it in the book of records.

649 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 5.

650 Id., No. 26733 (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, II. 12).

651 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 74, 79, 80; New England Hist. Gen. Reg. xxiii. 266–269.

652 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, papers 33, 35.

653 Id., No. 2233, paper 33.

654 Id., No. 2233, paper 44.

655 Id., No. 2233, paper 17.

656 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv, Part ii, 309.

657 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 10.

658 Id., No. 2233, paper 7.

659 Id., No. 2233, paper 43.

660 Id.

661 Suffolk Files, No. 26733 (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, ii. 12).

662 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, papers 39, 40, 41.

663 Massachusetts Archives, xxxix. 67.

664 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., October, 1666, M.H.S. (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, ii. 62–64).

665 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 43.

666 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., October, 1666, M.H.S.

667 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv, Part ii, 327.

668 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 107 (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, i. 649–650).

669 New England Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvii. 284.

670 Edward Randolph, Robert N. Toppan, Editor, iii (Prince Society, Boston, 1899), 70–73.

671 Id., iv. 12–14.

672 On June 2, 1686, it was voted in Council “that Mr. Paige have five pounds a quarter for his attendance on the President.” “Dudley Records,” 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xiii. 243.

673 Toppan, Randolph, ii. 90n.

674 Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley (New York, 1911), 52.

675 See the edicts issued by Dudley and the Council providing for courts and juries 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xiii. 232–237. The details of the ensuing litigation, with many of the documents in the case, may be found in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, i. 635–668; ii. 1–84.

676 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 333.

677 Id., 225.

678 An Historical Catalogue of the Old South Church (Boston, 1883), 7.

679 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 109.

680 Suffolk Probate Records, xx. 166–169.

681 Edward Taylor (ca. 1645–1729), a graduate of Harvard College in the Class of 1671, was minister at Westfield from 1672 until his death. The manuscript volume is in the Yale University Library, and transcription and publication of these verses are now possible by the generous permission of the Library. For a brief account of Taylor, see John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, ii (Cambridge, 1881), 397–412. Much of the best poetry has been published in The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, Thomas H. Johnson, Editor (New York, 1939), in which (pages 221–228) there is a full description of the manuscript.

682 The sole omission is that of two brief Latin elegies on the death of President Chauncy of Harvard College. They appear on the flyleaf of the volume, so mutilated as to make clear reconstruction impossible. For Taylor’s English elegy on the same theme, see the fifth selection, below.

683 All manuscript line-spacings as well as the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are exactly rendered. Words, phrases, and lines which are undecipherable or worn away are indicated by, or conjecturally supplied within, brackets.

684 Zechariah Symmes was born in Canterbury, England, on April 5, 1599. He was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and emigrated to Charlestown in 1634 in the same ship with Anne Hutchinson, whom he later reproved for “the corruptness and narrowness of her opinions.” Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, Lawrence S. Mayo, Editor (Cambridge, 1936), ii. 373. In December, 1634, he became teacher, and in March, 1636, pastor of the Charlestown church, and he held the latter post until his death on February 4, 1670/71. By virtue of that position he became, in accordance with the General Court’s order of September 27, 1642, a member of the first Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and he remained an Overseer throughout his life. Zechariah Symmes of the Class of 1657 was his son. Taylor was a senior at the time of Symmes’s death.

685 For Francis Willoughby, Deputy Governor of Massachusetts Bay from 1665 until 1671, see Isaac J. Greenwood, “The Willoughby Family of New England,” New England Hist. Gen. Reg., xxx (January, 1876), 67–78.

686 The early curriculum at Harvard required students to improve their rhetoric by delivering an oration or “declamation” at regular intervals during their four undergraduate years. These events took place at nine o’clock on Fridays and were so arranged that each student spoke at least once a month. After 1655 the requirements were modified, undergraduates declaiming bimonthly. Some of the declamations have been preserved, and this of Taylor’s is one of the most entertaining. It is unique among the declamations thus far brought to light in that it is composed in poetical form. Yet its frivolous and playful spirit was not uncommon to such occasions.

Taylor could not resist a pun, and his display of superficial learning has both the charm and the tediousness of much that still passes for undergraduate wit. Later on Taylor learned to govern his exuberant delight in figurative, involved language; and mere cleverness gave way to controlled harmonies. But the mood of the declamation was light and would have been judged only as oratory. Doubtless it am used the President and Fellows, as well as the less nimble-witted students who would admire the facile display.

I am indebted to Dr. Nabih A. Faris, Curator of Arabic Manuscripts and Literatures at Princeton University, for assistance in establishing the Hebrew readings; and to Dr. Floyd C. Harwood, Chairman of the Latin and Greek Departments, Lawrenceville School, for his suggestions regarding the most appropriate renderings of the Latin quibbles and puns. For sources about the Harvard curriculum in the seventeenth century, see Samuel E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), i. 139–280.

687 “I am not Hebrew, I am not Greek, neither am I a Latin.”

688 Taylor, addressing his classmates, employs the term nurslings in its seventeenth-century literal meaning of alumni: all students of a school or college, whether of the past or present, not necessarily graduates. It is significant that he refers to the Puritan institution as one nourished by the muses.

689 The eardrum is figuratively conceived as trussed: that is, drawn tight or stretched firmly during the period of attentive listening.

690 Here used figuratively to mean the air current striking the tympanum. The spelling follows an obsolete form.

691 That is, an apology for or defense of his subject is due if he speak the things with which men usually introduce a subject; the apology will perform the duty of a gentleman usher to the body of his remarks. At Harvard, as at the English universities, each fellow had a sizar—a poorer student earning part of his own education—to serve him as secretary and valet. The term gentleman usher, however, is figurative; it was not applied to any university or college function. An usher was an undermaster or teaching assistant.

692 “I say that such an introduction you have ‘never before’ had from me, lately attempting some complimentary speech for us.” The meaning is not entirely clear. These two lines, taken with the succeeding four, might imply that Taylor had been asked or had expected at some earlier date to declaim in some class exercise in which he was heckled during his speech.

693 Help in raising up.

694 A block placed under a wheel to prevent slipping.

695 Error for truckles: that is, pulleys. The whole sentence seems to mean that the duty imposed on the speaker was one in which he received no aid, and if he succeeds in performing adequately, he will do so with the prestige that accrues under a handicap.

696 Pots in which perfumes and cordials are kept or prepared.

697 The word is often used by Taylor to mean sweet odor; it is not in the New English Dictionary, where the last recorded entry in which reek means perfume is dated 1599.

698 A rare substitute for honeydew.

699 To make trim or neat: spruce.

700 Taylor seems to mean that English is relatively free from the particles, dots, and markings attached to letters frequently used in Hebrew and Greek. These are all weaving terms: Taylor had been brought up in or near Coventry, Warwickshire, a center of the English weaving industry. He often enriched his poetry with such native, homely terms.

701 Evidently Taylor had been preceded at “this Desk” by the declaimers in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

702 The Hebrew equivalent for the English h (pron. āch) is now usually transliterated ‘ain or ‘ayin. The Hebrew beginner’s grammar in use at Harvard in the seventeenth century was Johann Buxtorf’s Epitome Radicum Hebraicarum et Chaldaicarum. In it the transliteration is given ajin, and the symbol, formed vaguely like the Greek psi (on which Taylor puns two lines below), looks something like a drumstick lying across the edge of a drum, thus ע. In the possession of Lewis S. Gannett, Esq., of New York City, a Taylor descendent, is a copy of Victor Bythner, Lyra Prophetica Davidis Regis sive Analysis Critico-practica Psalmorum . . . ad Calcem Addita Est Brevis Institutio Linguae Hebraeae et Chaldaeae (London, 1664). The copy bears Taylor’s autograph on the flyleaf and seems clearly to account for these two lines. The brief introduction to Hebrew grammar which Bythner appends to his analysis of the Psalms spells the aspirate ghajin.

703 That is, careless students might be confused by the fact that certain initial vowels in Greek (e.g. aspirates) should be given the value of consonants. To be sure, students of Greek in the seventeenth century would not have been aware of the correct linguistic laws, but they would have been taught the fact by rule of thumb.

704 The letter h in Latin has the kindred but weaker aspirate value of our h, taken over from the Greek. Initially, however, the Latin h was totally silent in the vernacular forms which emerged as Old French and Italian. Ignorance of the fact might result in a sort of “cockney” dialect. The English h in the Teutonic part of the language comes from an original surd guttural, a k, which first became a guttural spirant (as ch in German and Scotch) and then weakened to a mere aspiration.

705 Latin nouns are declined in the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative cases.

706 That is, case endings are almost totally absent in English nouns. See the preceding note.

707 Most English words form plurals simply by adding s.

708 Arraign.

709 A reference to the Latin fifth declension, in which only res and dies have plurals. Singulariter and pluraliter were the words used instead of singular and plural to head paradigms in early textbooks.

710 For example, castra (second declension) is declined only in the plural, but with a singular meaning. Its syntax requires a plural construction. It is probable that Taylor had castra in mind, for it was commonly used in seventeenth-century textbooks to demonstrate the point.

711 For example, filia and dea (feminine, first declension) have a dative and ablative in -abus to distinguish them from the masculine forms of the substantives (filiis and deis).

712 “In the [irregular] dative case.”

713 “Into the accusative.”

714 The usual Latin textbook expression for “in the ablative.” Some nouns, for example, domus (second or fourth declension), would be recognized by the ablative, domo.

715 For example, vis, which is regular in the plural but irregular in the singular.

716 Copia means supply or plenty in the singular, troops in the plural. Locus is masculine in the singular, neuter in the plural.

717 Coniunx (conjunx): husband, wife, spouse. Lepus (hare) is usually given in its masculine form, but it takes a feminine adjective when it means a feminine hare. It was a common textbook example in early grammars.

718 In grammar a heteroclite is an irregularly inflected noun.

719 That is, in English, nouns regularly follow actual (i.e. sensitive), not grammatical, gender.

720 That is, treat them as neuters.

721 The craft or art in which a thing is made to lie in relation to something else. Cf. “the lay of the land.”

722 The meaning probably is: “We helve [furnish a handle to] their handspikes, made of foreign [outland] elements [olivant: oliphant or ivory].”

723 “We also adapt foreign words to English by giving them native spellings and pronunciations, thus increasing the richness of our tongue.”

724 Galls (provincial English) are imperfections. Taylor is either coining a word or using a dialectical form by substituting an adjective for the substantive.

725 A frieze is a thick, warm woolen cloth used for rough outer garments.

726 The rare transitive verb subaud (Lat. sub + audire) means to supply mentally, as a word or an ellipsis. Taylor is coining a substantive.

727 A false etymology. The Greek αὐλή, a hall or court, is cognate with air, aura, and asthma, and from it is derived New English aula (a court or hall). But New English hall is of Germanic origin.

728 That is, we do more than merely aspirate initially: we place the letter h at the beginning of the words. Such false etymologies were commonly taught long after Taylor’s day. His metaphors, however, are by no means dull.

729 The etymology here is correct. Lamp is derived, through Latin lampas, from the Greek λάμπας.

730 Hebrew qash, stubble. The pun is complicated but was probably not obscure to his audience.

731 In modern Hebrew, qul, but in the texts of the seventeenth century, kol: the imperative of the verb speak or say. The etymology is preposterous, but the pun makes good sense.

732 An entertaining pun. The Hebrew p (cf. Greek phi) was transliterated in early texts phe and had a value sometimes p and sometimes f. It was even then known originally to mean mouth. These lines are the sole indication I know of that seventeenth-century undergraduates at Harvard were sometimes fed pie for supper!

733 Provincial English: swaggering.

734 The colloquial adjective jemmy means spruce, neat, smart. It may have been Taylor’s intention to adapt the word here and give some such meaning.

735 The whole figure conveys a surprisingly lyric touch to Taylor’s concept of poetry.

736 In rhetoric, an immediate or almost immediate repetition of a word, involving added emphasis.

737 Clearly some kind of decoration for dress is intended, but such a meaning is not recorded in the New English Dictionary.

738 In rhetoric, a repetition of a word, especially the last word, of a clause at the beginning of the next.

739 In rhetoric, a repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive clauses.

740 In rhetoric, a figure in which several successive clauses or sentences end with the same word or affirmation.

741 In rhetoric, a repetition of one word at the beginning and of another at the end of successive clauses. It is a combination of epanaphora and epistrophe.

742 In rhetoric, the repetition or resumption of a figure, especially of one by which the same word or phrase is repeated after one or more intervening words, or on returning to the same subject after a digression.

743 In rhetoric, a recapitulation of the chief points or heads in a discourse.

744 Dapper?

745 The general idea is clear enough though the three metaphors complicate the image, and the third is structurally obscure. Taylor says that English is not inferior to the other three languages: it (1) will not lower topsail to them or (2) yield reverence “with Cap in hand,” but (3) proves its right to be accepted as a tongue of equal dignity and power.

746 Obsolete: to scratch or break slighty; graze.

747 “It is neither the language of the Bible [i.e., Hebrew and Greek] nor that used in college.” Latin was not only the language of the school texts then in use but of all recitations and, theoretically, of all informal conversation as well.

748 Hebrew was universally looked on before the nineteenth century not only as the sacred language of the Old Testament but as the parent tongue of all languages. It was therefore considered linguistically of great importance.

749 Taylor seems to mean that Latin was never a sacred language. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek; but Latin has been the source by which the Testaments have been transmitted from the days of the Vulgate. Latin also has been the language of most of the Biblical commentators and, together with Hebrew and Greek, of all textbooks.

750 “And if they compete on their individual merits for honors, English will take first place.”

751 Though the implication here is that Taylor expects to be quizzed or heckled, it is likely he is speaking facetiously, in keeping with the tone of the whole declamation. There is nothing here that would call for an answer. Of course the weekly disputations gave an opponent the chance to question the respondent. But no formula beginning Si quis (“If anyone wishes to question. . . .”) was therein followed.

752 As the tide states, those declaiming on the four languages were to be followed by “five upon the five senses.” Apparently the speakers declaimed in the order named.

753 John Allen (Allin), a graduate of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, emigrated to Dedham in 1637 and was ordained pastor of the church there two years later. He was one of the more notable figures among the first generation of colonists: he assisted John Eliot in missionary work among the Indians; drafted the reply to Dr. Robert Child, the Remonstrant, in 1646; and served as an Overseer of Harvard College from 1654 until his death on August 25, 1671. His sons John and Daniel graduated from the college in 1643 and 1675, respectively.

754 John Norton of Boston (d April 5, 1663), Samuel Newman of Rehoboth (d July 5, 1663), Samuel Stone of Hartford (d July 20, 1663), William Tompson of Braintree (d December 10, 1666), John Wilson of Boston (d August 7, 1667), Samuel Shepard of Rowley (d April 7, 1668), Henry Flint of Braintree (d April 27, 1668), Jonathan Mitchel of Cambridge (d July 9, 1668), John Eliot of Newton, son of the Apostle to the Indians (d October 13, 1668), Richard Mather of Dorchester (d April 22, 1669), Eleazar Mather of Northampton (d July 24, 1669), Benjamin Bunker of Malden (d March 3, 1670), William Woodward of Dedham (d June 26, 1669), John Rayner of Dover (d April 20, 1669), John Davenport of New Haven (d March 15, 1670), Zechariah Symmes of Charlestown (d February 4, 1671), John Warham of Windsor (d April 19, 1670). Gray remains unidentified.

755 The addition, by growth or accident, of a nonsignificant letter or syllable to the end of a word (e.g., agains-t, amongs-t).

756 For the best account of Chauncy, see Morison, Harvard College in the seventeenth Century, i. 320–339.

757 John Allen, the subject of the preceding elegy, who died August 25, 1671.

758 These words are written inside a crude drawing of a dove holding an olive branch with which Taylor decorated this page of his manuscript.

759 Taylor’s first wife, whom he married on November 5, 1674, was Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend James Fitch of Norwich, Connecticut. She died on July 7, 1689, in her thirty-ninth year, and in 1692 he married Ruth Wyllys, daughter of Samuel Wyllys of Hartford. Though the “posy-ring” verses are undated, they doubtless were composed about the same time as the decasyllabic couplets, dated October 27, 1674, which follow (No. VII).

760 The impersonal quality of these lines gives no clue to the husband’s sensitiveness, nor do they suggest his authentic talent as a poet. Among his “Sacramental Meditations,” under date of this very Sunday, is an extraordinarily beautiful poem of seven stanzas written on the occasion of his wife’s death. Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, 144–145, and Introduction, 14.

761 Samuel Hooker of Farmington, Connecticut, was a worthy but not distinguished son of the famous Thomas Hooker of Hartford. He was a classmate (H. C. 1653) of Taylor’s father-in-law, Samuel Wyllys. Ordained to his pastoral office in July, 1661, he remained at Farmington till his death. For a biographical sketch, see Sibley, Harvard Graduates, i 348–352.

762 A pun on the name of Thomas Hooker’s close friend and colleague at Hartford Samuel Stone (1602–1663).

763 Mary (Willett) Hooker, daughter of Captain Thomas Willett of Plymouth, later of Swansea and subsequently of New York, of which city he was the first mayor. She survived her husband and married the Reverend Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook in 1703.

764 Samuel Hooker was the father of nine sons and two daughters, one of whom, Mary, was the wife of the Reverend James Pierpont of New Haven and the mother of Jonathan Edwards’ wife Sarah.

765 Mehetabel (Wyllys) Woodbridge, born ca. 1658, was the second daughter of Samuel Wyllys of Hartford and an elder sister of Ruth Wyllys, Taylor’s second wife.

766 John Haynes, third governor of Massachusetts Bay (1635–1636) and first governor of Connecticut (1640).

767 George Wyllys, successively magistrate (1639), deputy governor (1641), and from 1642 till his death in 1645 governor of Connecticut.

768 An earlier spelling for grudge; now dialectical.

769 Ruth (Haynes) Wyllys, second daughter of Governor John Haynes.

770 Mehetable (Mabel) Wyllys first married (ca. 1676) the Reverend Daniel Russell of Charlestown. He died on January 4, 1678/79. The next year she married the Reverend Isaac Foster of Hartford, a classmate of Taylor and a close friend of her deceased husband. Foster died on August 20, 1682, at the age of thirty. She then married (ca. 1684) Foster’s colleague and successor in the Hartford pastorate, Timothy Woodbridge, who survived her by some thirty years. He married again shortly after her death.

771 Taylor’s verses are the only known source for the information that she bore sixteen children in the twenty-two years between 1676 and 1698 and died in childbirth on December 20, 1698. The five “Buds” here spoken of as surviving her—one each by her first two marriages and three by her third—all lived to maturity and were married.

772 Samuel Sewall noted in his Diary (iii. 389) that when Taylor died in 1729 he was “entirely enfeebled . . . longing and waiting for his Dismission.” This elegy, written upon the occasion of Increase Mather’s death on August 23, 1723, was undertaken when Taylor was approaching eighty. His handwriting is all but undecipherable, and much of the content is difficult to follow. The purport seems to be that Mather, in Taylor’s eyes, had been a champion of orthodox Congregationalism to the last, fighting courageously, under handicaps, against increasing heterodoxies.

773 Richard Mather died on April 22, 1669, while Taylor was an undergraduate at Harvard College. Mather was an Overseer of that institution at the time. Samuel Mather, a grandson of Richard, was a classmate of Taylor at college, and it may be that others of the class besides Taylor also acted as bearers.

774 Timothy Cutler, rector of Yale from 1719 to 1722, led “the Connecticut Apostacie” in the latter year by openly avowing adherence to the Church of England. In view of the fact that his defection from Nonconformist principles was considered to be not a sudden conversion but a carefully timed public statement of long-held private beliefs, his act, to men like Mather and Taylor, seemed open treachery.

775 This refers to the years (1688–1692) Mather spent in England, negotiating for the renewal of the colony charter.

776 The so-called “Pope Joan” was a legendary female Pope of the ninth century, usually placed between Leo IV (847–855) and Benedict III (855–858). She was said to have been born either in England or in Germany of English parents, and to have fled with a Benedictine monk to Athens, disguised as a man. On his death she is supposed to have gone to Rome under the alias of Joannes Anglicus, where she entered the priesthood, received a cardinal’s hat, and finally ascended the papal throne under the title of John VIII. The accounts have it that she died in childbirth during a papal procession. This myth was widely circulated from medieval times down through the seventeenth century. Taylor could have received the account from any of several authors who circulated the story.

Though undated, the verses bear every mark of late composition. They occupy the final pages among the topical poems, the handwriting suggests the author to be advanced in years, and the substance and thought are at times quite difficult to follow.

777 Muff?

778 Much satirical verse which John Cleiveland (1613–1658) never wrote was attributed to him till long after his day. The precise reference has not been identified.

779 Part of Harlequin’s Wishing Cap, or The Gift of Fortunatus.

780 Odell says she was the Wallacks’ sister. Annals of the New York Stage, ii. 247.

781 At the end of this performance there was a display of fireworks, as was the case on January 17 and on February 6 and 13. On February 6 the set pieces included “A Playing Fountain, The State-House at Annapolis, The Boston State-House, Emblems of Free Masonry, A Monumental Tribute to superior Worth, and the Arms of the United States.”

782 Also ascribed to Isaac Bickerstaffe, Richard Ford, Prince Hoare, and others.

783 The performances given on this date were originally scheduled for February 14.

784 A pantomime taken from the poems of Ossian.

785 These performances were originally scheduled for March 26. The postponement caused the cancellation of two plays by Arthur Murphy that had been announced for the twenty-eighth: Agnes of Bernauer and The Citizen.

786 Described in the announcement as “a gentleman of Boston,” he was probably not William Brown, author of West Point Preserved, also performed in Boston this season.

These performances were originally announced for August 21.

787 These performances were originally announced for October 13.

788 “A dramatic proverb in two acts.”

789 These performances were originally announced for October 16.

790 Later known by the name of Robert Treat Paine, Jr.

791 There are records of a program of entertainment by Messrs. Maginnis and Robinson at the Haymarket Theatre on December 16, advertised as their third such, and of another by Maginnis alone, at the same theatre, on December 30.

792 While Mein returned to England in November, 1769, advertisements of his Boston firm appeared in the Boston Chronicle as late as June 25, 1770.

793 Ironically enough, Knox’s Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed has also been ascribed to Mein.

794 “Books Printed at Boston and Cambridge before 1775,” Isaiah Thomas MSS., American Antiquarian Society.

795 Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (2d ed., Albany, 1874), i. 152–154; ii. 59–61, 230.

796 Charles K. Bolton, “Circulating Libraries in Boston, 1765–1865,” Publications of this Society, xi. 196–200.

797 Charles M. Andrews, “The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement,” id., xix. 159–259, particularly 227–230; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution (New York, 1918), Chapter iv, and “Propaganda and the Boston Newspaper Press, 1767–1770,” Publications of this Society, xxxii 396–416, particularly 411–416.

798 Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses and Guild-Brethren, 1701–1760, Charles B. Boog Watson, Editor (Edinburgh, 1930), 138.

799 Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses, 1406–1700 (Edinburgh, 1929), 346; Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses, 1701–1760, 138.

800 Boston Gazette, October 22, 1764; Thomas, History of Printing in America, I. 152–153.

801 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 153.

802 Boston Gazette, October 22, 1764; Boston Evening Post, October 22, 1764.

803 See the articles on John Glas and Robert Sandeman in the Dictionary of National Biography and that on Sandeman in the Dictionary of American Biography.

804 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 152, n. 1.

805 Henry H. Edes, “The Places of Worship of the Sandemanians in Boston,” Publications of this Society, vi. 109–134, particularly 131, n. 3.

806 The Sandeman-Barrell Papers, in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, throw much light on the personal affairs of the Sandeman family in America at this time.

807 See Williston Walker, “The Sandemanians of New England,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1901, i. 131—162.

808 Samuel A. Drake (Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, 107) identifies the site as the north corner of what is today the junction of Franklin and Washington streets, but the wording of the advertisement indicates that the site may rather have been one or two doors north of Franklin Street. Mein remained in business at this address until sometime between July 29, 1765, and September 2, 1765. In the Boston Gazette of the latter date his advertisement states that his bookstore was then “opposite to the West End of the Town House,” i.e., in Cornhill. He remained here but a few weeks, however, for his newspaper advertisements show that sometime between September 23 and October 7, 1765, he moved his shop to “the second Door above the British Coffee-house, North Side of King-street,” the premises recently occupied by the firm of Rivington and Miller.

809 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 152–153; ii. 230.

810 J. G. Sandeman, The Sandeman Genealogy (Edinburgh, 1895), 15, 21.

811 Rivington, as sole owner, had opened the London Book Store on February 8, 1762. Boston Gazette, February 8, 1762. Subsequent newspaper advertisements show that his partnership with Miller began at some date between April 26 and July 19 of that year.

812 Boston Evening-Post, November 4, 1765. The account given there of Miller, “lately from Edinburg,” says: “He was a young Gentleman of an amiable Character enobled with Friendship; and therefore much lamented by all his Acquaintance of the same happy Disposition.”

813 No advertisement of the firm appeared in Boston newspapers after February 18, 1765.

814 The Massachusetts Historical Society possesses an apparently unique copy of this Catalogue of Mein’s Circulating Library. It has been reproduced in its series of Photostat Americana.

815 For a more extensive discussion of Mein as publisher, see John E. Alden, “John Mein, Publisher: An Essay in Bibliographic Detection,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xxxvi (Third Quarter, 1942), 199–214.

816 This partnership concerned only the printing business. The London Book Store continued to belong to Mein alone.

817 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 151.

818 Boston Records Commissioners’ Reports, xxix. 286.

819 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 150.

820 Edward A. Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (London, 1930), 206–207.

821 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 151.

822 Boston Records Commissioners’ Reports, xxix. 286.

823 Ezra Stiles MSS., Yale University Library.

824 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 101964, f. 73: “An Inventory of sundry goods attach’d by Joseph Otis, Deputy Sheriff, March 1st, 1770, being taken as the Property of John Mein, late of Boston, Bookseller.”

825 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xxxvi. 211–214.

826 Sparks MSS., Harvard College Library, Papers relating to New England, iii. 46. The quotation is taken from Mein’s notes in explanation of the terms “Muddlehead” (Otis) and “Pieces from Salem” used in satirical descriptions of certain Boston leaders which appeared in the Boston Chronicle of October 26, 1769.

827 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 101491, f. 134.

828 Professor Schlesinger tentatively identifies Populus as Samuel Adams. Publications of this Society, xxxii. 411, n. 3.

829 As a Boston business man Mein was early accepted, at least for a while, as a respectable citizen, being chosen constable in town meeting on March 10, 1766. This was, however, the only elective office he held while in Boston. Boston Records Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 164.

830 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 89428.

831 John Adams, Miscellaneous Legal Memoranda (photostat), Massachusetts Historical Society.

832 George Mason to Joseph Harrison, Boston, October 20, 1769. Sparks MSS., New England Papers, III. 40.

833 John Mein to Joseph Harrison, Boston, November 5, 1769. Id., 51.

834 Elizabeth Cuming to Elizabeth Smith, Boston, October 28, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

835 Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Anne R. Cunningham, Editor (Boston, 1903), 194.

836 John Mein to Joseph Harrison, November 5, 1769. Sparks MSS., New England Papers, iii. 51.

837 Elizabeth Cuming to Elizabeth Smith, Boston, October 30, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers.

838 Thomas Hutchinson to Lord Hillsborough, Boston, November 11, 1769. Sparks MSS., New England Papers, III. 53.

839 James Murray to Elizabeth Smith, November 12, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers.

840 Massachusetts Gazette, November 24, 1769; January 15, 1770.

841 James Murray to Elizabeth Smith, November 12, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers.

842 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 101964.

843 Hancock Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

844 John Hancock to Thomas Longman, Boston, May 18, 1770. John Hancock His Book, A. E. Brown, Editor (Boston, 1898), 94.

845 Thomas Longman to John Hancock, London, January 3, 1770. Hancock Papers.

846 John Robinson, Commissioner of Customs in Boston, best remembered for his brutal attack upon James Otis, which was not unlike that of Mein upon Gill.

847 Hancock Papers.

848 There is no reason to believe that Mein returned to Boston early in 1770, particularly in view of a letter from Mein to James Murray, dated London, January 25, 1770, which is in the J. M. Robbins Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. In his “Propaganda and the Boston Newspaper Press, 1767–1770” (Publications of this Society, xxxii. 415), Professor Schlesinger assumes that it was Mein who directed the continued campaign in the Boston Chronicle against the signers of the nonimportation agreement. Professor Schlesinger is evidently following the statements of Mr. Bolton, in his account of Mein’s circulating library, who draws the conclusion that because Mein was sued in the Boston courts he was himself present. Mein’s case, however, was obviously conducted for him through powers of attorney left with Fleeming. It may also be pointed out that Professor Andrews is obviously in error when he states (Publications of this Society, xix. 230) that Mein “left New England permanently some time after 1771.”

849 A copy of this affidavit is included among the Hancock Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. William Palfrey, Hancock’s chief clerk and agent, returned from London to Boston on May 9, 1771. Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 215.

850 J. M. Robbins Papers.

851 Id.

852 Charles Steuart, erstwhile cashier and paymaster of the Board of Customs in Boston.

853 It is probable that the “last years bounty” was the result of a similar memorial from Mein which is listed by Charles M. Andrews in his Guide to Materials for American History in the Public Record Office, 11 (Washington, 1914), 178, under Treasury Papers, In-Letters, 1770.

854 I am indebted to Professor Verner W. Crane of the University of Michigan for photostatic and microfilm reproductions of Mein’s contributions to the Public Ledger, from the files in the British Museum.

855 Thomas, History of Printing in America, 154.

856 Public Ledger, March 15, 1774.

857 Sagittarius’s Letters, 116–117.

858 The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself, John Bigelow, Editor (Philadelphia, 1905), ii. 547–556; The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Albert H. Smyth, Editor (New York, 1907), i. 164–166.

859 J. M. Robbins Papers.

860 Norton Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.