February Meeting, 1942

A STATED Meeting of the Society was held at the Club of Odd Volumes, No. 77 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston, on Thursday, February 26, 1942, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Kenneth Ballard Murdock, in the chair.

In the absence of the Recording Secretary, Mr. Walter M. Whitehill was designated as Recording Secretary pro tempore.

The records of the December meeting were read and approved.

Mr. Charles Cortez Abbott of Cambridge and Mr. Robert Peabody Bellows of Boston were elected Resident Members of the Society.

Mr. Edmund S. Morgan read a paper entitled “Puritan Tribalism.”

Mr. Morgan also presented by title the following paper:

A Boston Heiress and Her Husbands: A True Story

IN the year 1656 Anna Keayne was the most eligible débutante in Boston. At the age of sixteen she had been “very well and carefully educated,” and furthermore her grandfather had just left her £900 in his will. Although the good people of Boston may have looked with some bitterness upon this dowry—for Robert Keayne had become notorious by his hard bargains—Anna was nevertheless accepted as a respectable member of society. Her grandfather, in spite of his harsh business dealings, had long been a member of the church in good standing. He had attended regularly, taken notes on the sermons, and even begun to write a commentary on the Bible. At the time of his death he had completed three precious volumes of this work, which he declared he would not part with for a hundred pounds. There could be no question that, aside from his too great attention to worldly wealth, he was a good Puritan. His grandchild would be accepted even in the most exclusive and godly circles. Besides, the old merchant had in his will partially atoned for his failings. His neighbors and customers must have been somewhat softened toward Anna by the fund of £120 he had left to the poor and the £300 he had left to the town for the erection of public buildings.625

Anna’s parents could not bear such close scrutiny as her grandparents. Her father, Benjamin Keayne, the only son of old Robert, had made what at first seemed to be a fortunate marriage with Sarah Dudley, daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley and sister of the poetess Anne Bradstreet. But Sarah had turned out to be a shrew, and the match had proved “unhappy and uncomfortable.” Some time after Anna’s birth Benjamin accused his wife of adultery, obtained a divorce, and went off to London,626 leaving her to marry again and to get herself in trouble with the church by “Irregular prophecying in mixt Assemblies.”627 Benjamin never questioned, however, that Anna was his child. Before he departed for England, he placed her in the hands of her grandparents, and they brought her up with loving care and proper discipline. Robert Keayne provided in his will that her education be continued, if necessary, in some godly family to be chosen by his executors, “where she may have hir carnall disposition most of all subdued and reformed by strict discipline.”628 He probably did not mean to imply that Anna was particularly susceptible to the temptations of the flesh. Like all Puritans he assumed that every human being is endowed with a “carnal disposition” which it is part of the business of education to subdue.629 There is no reason to believe that Anna’s character at the time of her grandfather’s death was in any way questionable. In spite of her mother’s shady reputation, she herself was a respectable, wellbred young lady with a fortune of £900—assuredly the best match in town.

Her grandfather, whose love for her was evident to everyone, had given some instructions in his will about her prospective husband. He had advised that she marry “some man truely fearing God,” and had instructed the overseers of his will “to provide some fitt and godly match proportionable to hir estate and condition that she may live comfortably and be fitt to doe good in hir place and not to suffer hir to be circumvented or to cast away hirselfe for want of counsell and watchfullness upon some swagering gentleman or others that will Looke more after the enjoying of what she hath, then liveing in the feare of God and true love to hir.” In order to be sure that Anna should follow the instructions of her guardians, he charged her “that she would not dare to set hir affections upon any in that kind without there advice counsell and helpe.”630 It may seem hard that a girl should have to receive permission from her grandmother, or worse still from the overseers of her grandfather’s will, before falling in love; but such was the custom in seventeenth-century Boston. Children, especially if possessed of sizeable fortunes, were supposed to allow their parents or guardians to make their matches for them.631

The proper man appeared a few months after her grandfather’s death. Edward Lane, a London merchant reputed to be worth £1,800 (a suitor was expected to be worth at least twice as much as his future wife), thirty-six years old and single, arrived at Boston aboard the Speedwell on July 27, 1656.632 It was not long before he was making overtures to Anna’s guardians, and since he seemed to be well qualified in godliness and in worldly goods, Mrs. Keayne gave him permission “to make tryall for the gayning of my Grandchilds affections as to marriage.”633 Thereafter, following a common custom, he sent a friend often to visit Anna and to gain her affections for him. With the friend he sent many pieces of gold for her to assure her of his own affection and at the same time, doubtless, to remind her that he was a man of wealth, worthy to be her suitor. The eloquence of the friend—or of the gold—soon prevailed, and the couple became affianced.634

Hitherto Lane had remained pretty much in the background. Now he stepped prominently into the picture. Mrs. Keayne, thankful for the prospect of having a man in the family once more, decided to hand over to him the job of executing her late husband’s will, for she had scarcely begun the task of carrying out the manifold orders contained in that lengthy document. Since Anna was still under age and since her dowry must be paid from the estate, Lane was easily persuaded of “the great benefitt it would bee vnto me in respect of the securitie of my wiues portion” to take over the task.635 After he had agreed to do so, however, he discovered that, according to the terms of the will, he would lose a part of his wife’s portion if she should die before reaching the age of eighteen. Because of this and other dubious provisions of the will, Lane thought it advisable to have an express agreement drawn up concerning the exact amount due to Mrs. Keayne as the widow, so that the remainder, minus all bequests and legacies, might be entirely his.

For so grave a matter the assistance of an impartial tribunal was necessary. Accordingly Lane and Mrs. Keayne each chose two friends to meet together as an arbitrating committee and decide “what they shall judge just and equal to be payd and receiued by one or other.”636 A week later, after perusing the 158 pages of Robert Keayne’s will, this committee drew up an agreement to which Lane and the widow set their signatures: Mrs. Keayne was to receive a house and land, an annuity of forty pounds, plus four hundred pounds in money; Lane was to have everything else, and he gave bond for a thousand pounds to pay all the bequests and other debts owed by the estate. In addition Mrs. Keayne left all preparations for the coming wedding up to the bridegroom. She agreed to “allow unto the said Edward Lane, the summe of fifty pounds for the more contentfull and comely apparrelling of Anna Keayne the younger [Mrs. Keayne’s name was Anna too] his intended wife together with what he sees meet to lay out for the marriage solemnity that so the said Anna the elder may be freed from all troubles in making provision for the same. . . .”637 With these preliminaries out of the way the stage was at last set for the wedding, which took place on December 11, 1657, under the direction of Governor John Endecott.638 Since church weddings were not allowed, Anna had no chance to display her “contentfull and comely” apparel to an admiring congregation; but if she and her husband followed colonial custom, they invited their friends to a feast after the ceremony. Here Anna was able to show off her new gown, while friends toasted her with “sack-posset” and rum. Perhaps, if the authorities had not been displaying too much strictness lately, there may even have been dancing.

Had Edward Lane been a normal man, the story might have ended here, with the couple living happily ever after. But an ugly rumor soon began to be heard in Boston, and fifteen months after the wedding popular suspicion was confirmed by a petition which Mrs. Lane presented to the Court of Assistants.

To the Honoured Court of Assistants now Assembled at Boston

May it please this Honoured Court to pitty the sad and disconsolate condition of your handmaid, laboring under a bondage, from which reason and religion doth set her free, yet needing and craving the Authority to doe the same.

Your petitioner hath bin deceived in a contract of marriage with Mr. Edward Lane, to whom (upon an essentiall mistake) shee gaue her selfe as a wife, and hath not bin wanting in the duty of that relation, expecting the performance of an husband on his part, wherin he hath been from first to last altogether deficient; which for seaven monthes I bare without imparting my grief to my nearest friends, who then understanding the same; and hoping and desiring more private help, put him upon seeking remedy by physick, which he also attended making use of Mr. Snelling, who practised upon him with forcible medicines, but without successe, so that by the counsell of the overseers of my Grandfathers will (to whom he acknolidged his infirmity) he was advised to seek further help from more physitians; and accordingly he made knowne his case to Mr. Eire, Mr. Clerk, and Mr. Megeke, and hath been under their hands neer seaven monthes. And your petitioner hath by absenting herselfe with his consent, and returning to him through difficulties applyed herselfe to accomodate him. All which notwithstanding the said Mr. Lane hath been and doth continue uncapable of performance of the marriage Covenant: by reason wherof, as also from the sense of the great and manifold inconveniences of the publick notice of it, your petitioner is (tho with shame and affliction) enforced to fly to your justice for succour and reliefe by declaring mee free from the sayd pretended Contract of marriage with Mr. Lane. And by ordering him to repaire the damage and wronge to my person and estate as your justice shall judg meet.

My patient silence in this condition cannot prejudice my cause with your wisdomes which will not think it meet or tolerable, for a woman after just complaint in such case made, to remaine under the power of a pretended husband, and to yield herselfe to bee the subject of vaine experements, to the dishonour of her name, danger of her person and estate which cannot bee prevented but by a present release declared by this honoured Court which is the humble and earnest petition of your handmaid

Anna Lane639

Upon receipt of this document the court sent for Lane and asked him if his wife’s charge were true. “After a considerable pause his answer was that he must speake the truth he could not say he had performed the office of a husband.” Accordingly, after due deliberation, the magistrates declared the marriage to be dissolved.640

It soon appeared, however, that Anna was not the only one who had been deceived. The bequests and debts owed by the estate of Robert Keayne amounted to much more than the value of the estate itself. By the terms of the agreement which he had signed Edward Lane was a loser by more than five hundred pounds. He, too, now sought relief in court, pointing out that he had assumed the executorship because of the marriage. The marriage having been dissolved, he ought therefore to be relieved of the burden and reimbursed for the expenditures he had made.641 The court’s first reaction was to appoint a committee empowered to examine all the evidence and instructed “to make a loving and amicable agreement, if it may be, to mutual satisfaction of the sajd Mr. Lane and Mrs. Anna Keajne, thereby to prevent further trouble to this court.”642

The court did not escape further trouble so easily. The widow Keayne had made a bargain, and like her husband she meant to see that it was kept. She refused to listen to any compromise and presented an answer to Lane’s petition in which she pointed out that Lane had entered the agreement with his eyes open. If the court were to release him from his obligations, she said, it would be plain “to the world that no man or woman of what condition soeuer of sound mind or theire friends so being can make any bargaine, but the Court may vndoe it which I hope will not be asserted, much lesse practised.”643 Mrs. Keayne was saying that business is business, but the court had heard that plea before from the lips of her late husband. To him they had replied, in a fine of two hundred pounds, that business may be business, but it is not justice. They now returned the same answer to her: they discharged Lane from the executorship and ordered the overseers of the will to reimburse him with 650 pounds, plus two years’ rent from most of the houses and lands in possession of the estate.644

Anna Lane now began to regret her action, for it was plain that she was not so desirable a match as she had at first appeared to be. Lane told her that because of deficiencies in her grandfather’s estate her dowry “must fall Short more then twoe therdes.”645 Furthermore, he was slow about returning her personal property, which he may have been keeping as a pledge until his 650 pounds were paid. Lane was naturally somewhat piqued at Anna’s exposure of his infirmity, especially since he knew that “the phycitians that have administred vnto mee can finde no naturall Defect in mee as they have Declared and are still ready to Declare.”646 He continued to take treatments and after a time became convinced that his weakness had ceased. Friends now tried to patch things up, and because of Anna’s uncertainty about her estate she was the more willing to listen to them. Her grandmother later related: “I have severall times found my Daughter in a roome with Mr. Lane and Mr. Cooke to my great greif and have been angry with Mr. Cooke about it; And he hath Led me out and said lett them alone I would have her try him for he is a man; And to Convince me told mee some thing that was so Immodest I cannot write it.”647

The result of these meetings was that on December 12, 1659, two years after their first marriage and nine months after the annulment, the couple went once more to the Governor and asked to be married again. The episode and its sequel were later recalled by Edward Hutchinson:

Edward Hutchinson aged 53 years or Thereabouts sworne saith That when Mr. Edward Lane and Anna his wife Came together the second Time they sent for mee to the house of Leift. Richard Cooke and There they Declared to Mee (I comeing ouer late to goe with them to the Gouernours) that they had been at the governours to Desire to be married againe; but the governour told them that they being seperated by the Court it was not for him to Joyne them together; but if they were both sattisfied that the Cause was remoued That moved the Court to Declare their Marriage a Nullity he said that that Declareation would not make it a Nullity; for it was not man that could part Those god Joyned together Therefore told them they should be well advised and be vpon good Grounds which they sayd they Declared they were. Then he Told them as they said, That it being Their owne act Their first Marriage was good and the Nullity was voyde; And Desired The Lord to blesse them together after which we being together some of vs merrily Jesting with them said They must have made some Tryall or elce they could not soe Declare; They said both of them it may be they had what was That to us vpon our parteing away Capt. Olliver bidding them both good night Mrs. Lane Answered she Questioned not as good a night as any woman In Boston next morning Capt. olliver and my self goeing to visitt them Capt. Olliver askeing her if now she had received sattisfaction so as to be satisfied the Impediment that Mr. Lane had before was remoued; she Answered it was now otherwise with him then before; and she was sattisfied in his sufficiency as a man This is the substance of what I heard and Though I will not be perticular to all the words yett as near as my memory serves it was in these words above or words to the like effect.648

To all outward appearances the whole affair was now patched up. Lane once more became executor of the will, though the agreement between him and the widow Keayne this time provided that she should have simply an annuity of twenty pounds and possession of the new house in Boston. Furthermore, he stipulated that if any more debts appeared “that hath not as yet beene taken notice of,” and beyond the value of the estate, the overseers of the will should take steps to assist him in the payments.649 On this basis the couple lived quietly together for the next four years. Edward became well established as a Boston merchant and attested his prosperity to his neighbors by sporting a London hat with a silver hatband.650 Anna meanwhile demonstrated that this time her marriage was genuine by giving birth to two children, a boy and a girl. The little girl, named after her mother, died at the age of eight months, but the boy, named after Edward, lived until 1680, meeting his death at the age of eighteen in Leyden.651

Early in 1664 Anna sailed for England, on what business is not known, but it was evidently understood in Boston that her husband would shortly follow. Before he could do so, however, he was dead. When Anna returned to Boston two years later, it was with a new husband, also a Bostonian who had been visiting England, Mr. Nicholas Paige. Now once more the rumors began to spread. It was said that Anna had married Paige before Lane had died, for some persons had received letters from Paige before the latter event in which he made mention of his wife.652 Since there were bound to be enemies in Boston of any descendant of Robert Keayne, the grand jury soon got wind of the matter and conducted an investigation which resulted in an indictment against Anna for adultery. Before the trial took place, Anna gave herself away by proposing to the Court of Assistants a question to be resolved by the magistrates: “whether a woman may not have children by a man that is not in the eye of the world accounted her husband and yet not be accounted an adulteresse.”653 The cat was now out of the bag, and in the trial that followed evidence was produced that the boy who bore the name of the late Edward Lane was really the son of Nicholas Paige. Richard Cooke came into court and affirmed that “about two yeares since upon Mrs. Hannah Lanes going for England this deponent was desired to come unto the house of Mr. Edward Lane . . . at which time this deponant did heare Mrs. Lane acknowledge that the Children which She then had had were Mr. Page his Children and not mr. Lanes.”654 The whole truth came to light, however, when the following document, dated December 6, 1663, was brought forth:

To all whom this present writing may concern this is to certify that whereas thear was a marriage between Edward Lane of Boston in the County of Suffolke in New England and Anna Keayne of the said Boston living together sometime, I the said Edward Lane being wholly insufficient through weakness and infirmity never in the least manner to performe the duty or office of a husband to the said Anna nor never knew her carnally: Upon Petition to the Court of Assistance held at Boston March, ’58, The Court upon good considerations pronounced the marriage a nullity wee wear bouth free from each other nine months after upon some considerations wee came to live togather and have so continued togather four yeares but the same weaknes and insuffitiency continuing to this day I thinke it not convenient for her any longer to bare the name of my wife who in truth before God is none. Therefore I utterly disown her and disseize her never more to maintain her or looke at her as any relation to me more then a friend from the date hereof for though we have made one house our habitation yet we have made use of tow beds therefore this is to atest the cause and truth of our seperation as is done by a coppy taken out of the Records As witnes my hand And in part of requitall for that great wrong I have done her I freely give her the pasture which was her Granfathers which lys behind the house of Goodman Pells.655

Confronted with the situation which was now apparent, the magistrates and the jury could not agree whether or not Anna Paige, formerly Anna Lane, should be punished for adultery. The matter was therefore brought before the General Court of the colony, where, as the record reads,

. . . vpon a full hearing of the case, the Court found hir guilty of much wickednes, but vpon a motion from hirself, the Court gaue hir oppertunity to make acknowledgment of such hir great offences which were charged vpon hir, which accordingly she hath donne to the satisfaction of this Court, who doe hereby declare their acceptation of it, so as she make the like acknowledgment in open Court when called thereto; that as the Court hath seene the fruits of her repentance, so it may be declared to others also. The sajd Anna Page came into the Court, and openly made acknowledgment, in like manner, to the Courts acceptance, who ordered that Mrs. Page pay the charge of the witnesses, and so is discharged.656

Apparently the General Court was as puzzled by the case as the inferior court had been; but just as Governor Endecott had decided that Anna’s first marriage had not been truly annulled, the court now must have decided that neither the first nor the second marriage had been truly a marriage. Thus although it was clear that Anna had committed “much wickedness,” the Court was not ready to say that she was guilty of adultery, and so she escaped virtually scot-free.

Having thus come out of danger, she and her husband began to take cognizance of her former estate. Besides the pasture he had granted her in the paper renouncing her as his wife, Lane had assigned her, in a paper dated four days earlier, the mansion house of Robert Keayne “wherein I the said Edward Lane now Dwell.” This grant was made on condition that she make no further claims whatever to his estate.657 Twelve days later Lane, who was evidently a sick man, had made out another paper. Stating that he did not know “what condition he the said Edward Lane may fall into or what Providences as concerning himselfe may fall out in one regard or in an other &c.,” he transferred his property to Richard Cooke and John Wiswall of Boston, merchants, in return for his maintenance and for payments of all his debts.658

Accordingly when Anna and her new husband returned from England, they found Richard Cooke and John Wiswall installed in the possession of most of her grandfather’s property. Now the whole thing became apparent to Anna: it had all been a plot on the part of Richard Cooke from the very beginning. It was he who had persuaded her to marry Lane in the first place, he who had carried to her the pieces of gold and the messages of affection.659 After the annulment it was he who had persuaded her of Lane’s sufficiency and had brought them together again.660 He had even been present when the paper was drawn up in which Lane assigned her the mansion house in return for a resignation of all other claims to the estate. She had been so desperate at the time to free herself that she had not thought of what she was so blithely resigning; and yet twelve days later Cooke, with his accomplice Wiswall, had it all in his own hands, even the rich farm at Rumney Marsh that had been her grandfather’s pride. And then when she returned home from England, Cooke, wearing her grandfather’s big ring and Lane’s hat with the silver band,661 had furnished the principal evidence against her in the trial for adultery. It was only too clear that the whole business had been deliberately, diabolically planned.

She had good evidence of Cooke’s malice toward her now that he had her estate. Several people were ready to report his reaction when he heard that she and her husband were returning from England. On the day when the news reached Boston, Ursula Cole and Alice Tilly both informed Cooke about it and warned him that she was coming to recover her lost property. Cooke had replied that he would see her hanged if she tried to do it.662 John and Mary Mansfield told Anna how Cooke had stormed about the matter, how he had accused her of poisoning her husband, how he had sworn to “vse all the meanes he Could” to have her hanged, and had said that if he failed to get her hanged in Boston, “he had a sonn in Barbadious: that should goe from thence to England: to prosecute the Lawe to hange hir there.”663

The case seemed to be open and shut, and Anna promptly petitioned the General Court to recover from Cooke and Wiswall all the property which Lane had given them.664 She demonstrated that her marriage to Lane had been a conspiracy on the part of Cooke to get her property and her grandfather’s into Lane’s hands so that Cooke might eventually have it for himself. He had known that Lane was impotent and that therefore there could be no heirs; he had also known that Lane was sick and could not live long. He had even offered that fact to her grandmother as a reason for allowing the second marriage. The widow Keayne—who had since become Mrs. Samuel Cole—came into court and testified that Cooke had told her that Lane “was very sickley and would not live aboue Three or four years and Therefore fear not but Lett your Daughter have him and she may Quickley have an other husband.” Mrs. Cole was convinced that Cooke from the very start had “not only Indeavored to ruin my Daughter but mee.”665

Anna rested her case not only on this evidence of conspiracy but likewise on the claim that her second marriage with Lane was not valid because it had never been consummated. Therefore, she said, the contract which depended upon that marriage and which put the estate again into Lane’s hands was likewise invalid. It was “Founded vpon the same mestake of a marriage as the former and upon the same Ground: Cann not bee of aney force to the prejudice of your petetioner.”666

But the General Court was weary of this eternal squabble over Robert Keayne’s property and refused to believe the story which to Anna was so obvious. To her melodramatic pleas the icy reply was given that it was not thought “suiteable to reuive troubles to the Court” in a matter which had already been settled once before.667 Having herself failed, Anna persuaded the overseers of the will to make a similar plea the following year, but they too were denied.668 With this rebuke she gave up the struggle for a while and settled down to a happy and normal life as Mrs. Nicholas Paige. Neither she nor her husband had forgotten the injury which Richard Cooke had done them, but justice was not yet to be had. They would bide their time, and some day, perhaps, the opportunity to recover their lost heritage would come. In the meantime there was no use crying over spilt milk. Nicholas had some capital of his own, and by careful investments and hard work gradually increased it. Before many years passed, he had become one of the leading merchants of Boston and had recouped by his ships and shops as much as he and Anna had lost through the machinations of their enemies.

Anna’s new husband was a bold and likeable man, of generous impulses but shrewd in all his public actions. Though not disposed to reckon overmuch with religious scruples in his commercial dealings, he had sense enough never to offend Puritan sensibilities. He did his best to gain the friendship and respect of his community, especially of those men who seemed best qualified to help him. As a result, each new turn of events found him more firmly established in public favor and personal security. When King Philip’s War threatened the colony’s existence, Captain Paige won esteem by commanding a cavalry troop which helped to whip the savages into submission.669 Later, when Edward Randolph came to enforce the Navigation Acts in Boston, Paige gained the commendations of his fellow merchants by threatening to knock Randolph on the head if the latter attempted to board his ships.670 Before long, however, Nicholas saw that the wind was not blowing in that direction. He and a number of other prominent citizens, including Joseph Dudley (Anna’s uncle), made friends with Randolph so that by 1685 the customs officer was writing letters to Dudley in which he sent his respects to “Mr. Page and his lady.”671

In the ensuing revolutions which rocked the colony Paige played his hand with consummate skill. When the charter was revoked and Joseph Dudley became President of the Council for New England, Nicholas invited him to live at Boston in the house which he and Anna had acquired there. Since Dudley’s own house was in Roxbury, he gladly agreed to live with the Paiges, where his hostess would be his own niece.672 When Andros arrived as Governor of the Dominion of New England, Paige kept in the good graces of that ruler too; but when the people of Boston gathered together to overthrow the tyrant, Paige was on the scene, not exactly assisting the process but apparently not hindering it either.673 While the people called for Dudley’s blood along with that of Andros, they had such confidence in Captain Paige that they placed Dudley in his hands for safekeeping.674 When stable government was finally established under a new charter, Paige had weathered the storm safely. What is more, he had recovered Anna’s property, not only the houses and lands in Boston but the farm in Rumney Marsh as well.

The fact is that the Cookes had not played their cards so well as the Paiges. Elisha Cooke, son and successor to old Richard, had chosen the wrong side in the struggle—as far as worldly success was concerned. He had never made friends with Randolph. Instead he had led the opposition party, the one which favored resistance to Randolph, resistance to Dudley, resistance to Andros, resistance even to the new charter which Increase Mather obtained in 1691. Consequently it had been no great matter for Paige to procure a judgment returning the lands. As soon as the old charter was revoked, the old county courts dissolved, and a new system set up under control of Dudley, the Paiges entered an action against Cooke. The jury was hand-picked by Paige’s friends; the judges were Paige’s friends;675 the result was inevitable: Paige got the lands (August 5, 1686). When the verdict had been rendered, Cooke appealed to the Council, presided over by Dudley, then residing in Paige’s house. The result again was inevitable, and when Cooke appealed to the King in Council, Dudley required him to give bond of a thousand pounds to Paige to prosecute the appeal (November 2, 1686). This was too much, and Cooke had to abandon the case (December 20, 1686). When he tried to reopen it under Andros, he met with a quick rebuff.

After the new charter had been established—over his protest—Cooke tried again, but was nonsuited. As a last resort he introduced a special bill in the General Court (February 26, 1701/02) to allow him to have the case reviewed. At the time when he introduced the bill the governor’s chair was vacant, but before the General Court took any action, Joseph Dudley was made governor. Needless to say, the bill received no further consideration.

In the meantime, since the recovery of the estate, Anna had become the great lady that she must have wished to be when she first married Edward Lane. Paige was now Colonel Paige, with a coat of arms. He had purchased a coach for her and negro servants in livery to attend upon it, a luxury which even the wealthy Samuel Sewall felt himself unable to afford. She and Nicholas moved out to the farm at Rumney Marsh and there lived in regal style, entertaining guests in the most elegant manner. Samuel Sewall, who dined there on November 4, 1690, spoke of the “sumtuous Feast” which he had enjoyed.676 He had already had occasion to admire Anna’s coach, for he had recorded on September 12, 1688: “Rid to Cambridge Lecture, being rainy in the afternoon, Madam Paige invited me, and I came home in her Coach, with Mr. Willard and his wife, and Mrs. Paige’s Boy rid my Horse.”677

Apparently Boston had agreed to forgive Anna for her scandalous past and to accept her as one of the élite. The Mr. Willard to whom Sewall refers was the minister of the Old South Church, which Anna had joined in 1670.678 Although her husband never joined, that fact was not held against him socially, for by the close of the seventeenth century a large proportion of Boston’s leading citizens were in the same category.

Thus by shrewd political maneuvering Anna and Nicholas Paige overcame the social and economic handicaps with which their wedded life began and won for themselves a position of the highest rank in Boston society. Anna lived to enjoy her success until June 30, 1704. When the news of her death at Rumney Marsh reached Boston, it caused the whole colony to pause. Sewall recorded the event: “As the Governor sat at the Council-Table twas told him, Madam Paige was dead; He clap’d his hands, and quickly went out, and return’d not to the Chamber again; but ordered Mr. Secretary to prorogue the Court till the 16th of August, which Mr. Secretary did by going into the House of Deputies.”679

A year before she died Anna had assisted her husband in making a will, the terms of which bring this story back to where it began. The will provided that all the property of Nicholas and Anna, except for a number of small legacies, should be given to their kinswoman Martha Hobbes, who was also to be executrix. The overseers of the will, however, among whom was Governor Dudley, must “Advise and Council this our Executrix in her Mariage with any Person that she may Marry withall And we do hereby leave it as a Solemn Charge upon her and as our dying request that she do take your Advice therein And be very Carefull how she doth dispose of her self in Marryage, And that she match into a good Familly and with one that feareth God, that so neither she and so fair an Estate be not thrown away in her Match.”680

Mr. Thomas H. Johnson communicated by title the following paper:

The Topical Verses of Edward Taylor

EVER since the four-hundred-page manuscript volume of Edward Taylor’s “Poetical Works” was first examined in 1936,681 it has been known that a few of the verses were of special interest to social historians because of the topical nature of the material. The twelve selections here presented comprise all the topical or occasional verses which are sufficiently decipherable to furnish historical and biographical gleanings.682 Eight are elegies, composed between 1671 and 1723: six of them honor colonial magistrates and ministers; one was written on the occasion of the death of Taylor’s wife, and one on that of the death of his sister-in-law. Two selections are in the nature of before his first marriage. The most sprightly and entertaining verse is a college “declamation,” prepared and evidently publicly delivered just before his graduation. The acrostic verses—three of the twelve selections—are very elaborate and are more admirable for their ingenuity than for succinctness or power. The machinery of puns, quibbles, and poetic conceits intrigued the seventeenth-century mind generally, and Taylor was a belated representative of a fashion nearly outmoded at so late a period. The final selection, “Verses made upon Pope Joan,” is a scurrilous and bitter tirade against Romanism. It is possibly the last composition from the pen of this staunch, thoroughly orthodox Congregationalist. Viewed as poetry, all these selections are inconsiderable. But since Taylor is now generally recognized as the foremost American poet before the nineteenth century, the verses perhaps have the importance which always attaches to the poemata of significant writers.

The first three selections were composed while Taylor was an undergraduate at Harvard and are certainly the author’s earliest known attempts at versifying. The last two were composed in Taylor’s old age; though barely legible, and somewhat difficult to follow, they are animated with admirable vigor. These twelve selections occupy the first thirty-five pages of the “Poetical Works” and are here transcribed in the same chronological order which they follow in the manuscript.683

I

An Elegie vpon y^e Death of that holy man of God Mr. Sims,684 late Pastor of y^e Church of Christ at Charlestown in N. Engl^nd who departed this life the 4^th of 12^m An^o Dⁿⁱ 1670/1

[Ah] mee! ah mee! Could Griefe but make a Poet?

[Sur]ge after Surge of Sorrow sure would do it.

[The] Nazarites grow thin; which alwayes stoode

[As] Objects hatefull to Philistick brude.

[Who c]ould not stroy them: for like Sampson they

[Bore o]n their backs proud Gaza’s Gates away.

[Their stren]gth was such. Yet not to frame or make

[Jerus]alem of Gaza’s Gate a Gate.

[They t]imely heav’d it vp to Hebron’s Hill

[And la]tcht it there a Mocking stock to fill

[All] such with tickling jests whose pleasure chose

[To br]eake a jest ore a Philistins nose.

[Philis]tick Gates thus blown vp by y^e aire

[Are] bussles in a Nazarits bush of haire!

[Conquer]d Philistia, (Revenge is Sweet)

[To] give it vent, in Convocation meet

[ ]ggers Spits: Star-Chamber’d many ly,

[At the] white Nazarites her darts do fly.

[Despoil]d of his abundant Grace, & Care

[They in th]e Wilderness them place prepare.

[He in] the Wilderness alures apart

[Deep the]n in bowells speakes vnto their heart

[He’d have] them build his house compleate, compact,

[Measures the]n gave them on y^e mount exact.

[The whic]h they tended, & this Sims (alass

[He ha]th laid down his Square) a Builder was

[As well as] Pillar, & a Builder who

[Both built], & long vpheld the building too.

[ ]

Where [ ]

Althô y^e Doors be firm, & would [abide]

Rift off y^e bars, & down y^e boards will slide

When Posts do faile, y^e Pales & Rales down fall:

And Vinyards so ly common vnto all.

Alass! alass! our Wall grows small, & weake:

Wherein, say you? Our golden Studs do breake

Althô the Watlings last: the hedge, I take

Is very feeble losing of its Stake.

Hereby our Israels glory waxeth thin;

Compared now to what it once hath bin.

Our Motto write in teares that all may View it,

That Predicates our Glory great is FUIT.

When Death Supplants our Plants & Planters so

The whole Plantation drinks a Cup of Woe.

Supplants said I? Soft now, the better Style

Is, it Transplants them to a richer Soile.

Yet oh! alass! We Senseless at their Hearse

Do hardly mourn halfe halfe an hour in verse.

This man of God wrought hard, that now is gone,

Within y^e Quarrie mines hard hearts of Stone,

With Pickaxe, Wedge, & Mawle, Gods Word, before

Christ calld him in to meat; & said, Give o’re.

Before his Grinders Ceast, & Silver Cord

Was loost, or ere his Golden bowle, his Lord

Had broken at y^e fountain, ere ’twas night.

His Almond tree did flowrish all in white.

He did What God said do, &’s gone away

His day thus ore, to meet his Masters pay.

Like to a Shock of Wheate thats fully ripe,

God inned hath this aged Nazarite

The Shushemite, him bore, hugd, dandled, she

Him nurst, & hopt vpon her lap & hee

When Sick indeed, my Head! me head! out cri’de

And laying in her bosom Sweetly di’de,

Whose Death’s great Sorrow should it de our tongue

Age with y^e Swan Would sing his dying Song.

Tristis modulat[ ]

II

An Elegie vpon y^e Death of y^e Worshipfull Fran[cis] Willoughby Esq^e685 Deputy Govⁿour of y^e Masach[usetts] Colony in N: E: who departed at Charlestown 3^d m. [1671]

Begon, begon, my Books, start from my hand,

Stand off: or offer verse vp as you stand:

Bleed tears, mine Eyes; Weep blood, my pen: my heart

Beat vp for Volunteers in e’ry part

To march in Sorrows Regimentall plot,

For Willoughby; Oh! Willoughby IS NOT.

IS NOT’s the burden of my Song by fate,

Being of Willoughby the Predicate.

IS-NOT is not to enter in our eares

Without heart aching Sighs, & Eyes all tears.

But is not Willoughby? Then beat y^e Drum;

Bid Colledge, Churches, Court, & Country run

[ ]

And make a Pa[ ]e mantle for the day,

And fall like Spouts into His grave as pay.

Rise Harvard, rise, Stand vp with Watry eyes,

Vntill a Second Willoughby arise.

Vnworthy We, oh Worthy he! Well may

We as we judge this rightly of him say.

]ull fraught w^th Grace, well fit for	Glory’s shel	F	irmly in glory now enrich	thysel	F
]ich Splendent Gems w^ch do vpon	each squa	R	efulgent Rayes of Sparkling glory	wea	R
] Skillfull Lapidary	will enl	A^y	nd first imboss in Rings y^t weightist	w	A^y
]o man gets Weeds a Palace	to ador	N	o weeds as Posies in o^r hands are	bor	N
]ounting these Sweet enamled Knots	from when	C^e	onspire perfumed gales not worth y^e	sen	C^e
f so, no mervail, Christ when his	bright E	I^e	nthralld in dust his shining Rosies	sp	I^e
]woop down, vp picks them: for hereby	he get	S	weet slips of Grace y^t he in Glory	set	S
]e may assure ourselves y^t	blessed she	W	ithin Christs garden for Christs garm^t	gre	W
n which, his Garden flowers may	clearly sp	I^e	ntails of all their happiness do	1	I
]oe, for ye Flowers in Graces	garden shal	L	eap into bliss to garnish Glory’s	Hal	L
]ook how they thither high as if	they stil	L	ackt room in Grace, or glory’s room would	fil	L
]bserve the Ring of Glory	where in t	O	nely y^e Saints as pales of Gold high	d	O
]pon whose lips in chains of	praises, Vie	V	ncessant Quavers warbling	Hallel	V
]od Spying Willoughby here on	our Strin	G	lister so bright fitter for Glorys	Rin	G
]ath cald him out, & cought him	here beneat	H	ath wrap^t his brows about with glory’s	wreat	H
]ut art thou gone? is Graces flood	to eb	B	right St[reams]? is grace for thee too coarse	a We	B
]et Sure it is, y^t Graces flowers	do 1	Y	onder in glorys Knot most	sparkling 1	Y

But what shall Graces choicest slips be got

[So] prim, & set in Glories flowering Pot?

[And] Graces Garden ever must Supply

[ ]ie bright Palace with her gallantry.

[Nay,] turn thy hand awhile bright glory hence.

[Tou]ch not our seed plots, nor annoy their Fence.

[Le]st that our Garden Wane, for so it shall

[S]carse beare a Single flower t’adorn thy Hall.

[H]e cannot spare of what remains yet any:

The last thou gather’d hast is one for many.

For whom had fervent Pious Prayers prevaild

[H]e yet had stood within our garden, pal’d.

He was our Chiefest Deputy for all,

And now is Deputie in Glory’s Hall.

And hence we may Rejoyce thô mourn: & count

How his greate Gain, doth our great loss Surmount.

Then fruits do drop, it plainly doth appeare,

[Tha]t Summer is Well Spent, & Winters neer.

[Then] Cease my Sobs awhile vntil Ive spent

This Epitaph vpon his monument.

Here lies the Love, Hope, Reverence, & Eye

Of Churches, Court, Colledge, & Countery

Interrd within this dust, which dust shall Arke

His Angell-Peer again, that Divine Sparke,

Return from dust (& dusty be no more)

To bow to him who bled to pay his Score

And [soar]ing vp in milk white Rayment say,

Farewell Deaths Cradle, Welfare Judgment day.

III

My last Declamation in the Colledge Hall May 5, 1671,686 where four Declaim’d in the Praise of four Languages and five upon the five senses. Those upon the Languages Declaim’d in the Language they treated of: and hence mine ran in English

העברי לא אנכי ς̀κ εἰμι έλλην nec sum Latinus.687

But an Englishman.

My Muse, Ye Muses Nurslings,688 doth come

To borrow once of you your ears trust689 Drum,

That with her Tabber stick690 strike up she may,

An English march thereon, and march away.

But if you say, what things men first begin,

Apologies gentlemen-Usher in.691

I say that these you had from Nuncquam-Prius692

For me late Complementing neatly by us.

Yet let no Cross bow black Reflections bend

It was no lift693 y^e other day did lend,

But laide a Scotch694 before my Wheeles so sore,

My Tuckles695 almost brake in tugging’t ore.

But having got it ore, my Muse doth Crave,

That for her Dead yours [sic] ears may be y^e grave.

But if these Still Pots696 onely Catch, & keep,

The perfum’de Distillation, & the Reech697

Which by the heate of Phancy, raisd drops thick

From the Alimbeck of Sweet Rhetorick:

Then woe is me! For no such Flowers grow

Within my Garden; no such Spirits flow

From mine Alimbeck, neither have I skill

To rain such hony falls698 out of my Still.

Could I mint words anew, & had no Stamp,

Had I a Stamp, & yet a Vice did want,

Had I a Vice, & had no Plate to draw

Therethrough, all would not counterpoise a Straw.

But none of these are mine, I cannot mint.

I have no Stamp, no Vice, nor plate to print.

Oh! that my CAN could cask my WILL that I

My Native speech aright might Dignify.

Yet Count I pray what I do miss to Scan

Drops of my WILL that fall beside my CAN

But why Stand I thus Rapping at the Doore

I’le draw the Latch, & in, & rap no more.

Let English then to finde its Worth be presst

Unto the touch of Generalls Speeches test.

Speech is y^e Chrystall Chariot where the minde

In progress rides, Cart rutting of y^e Winde:

Whose Coachman drives Coach & Coach horses there

Rattling along the Mouth in at the eare.

With which our English doth well Comply.

But not designing this, I this pass by.

And say when that our Sparkes Divine design

To have Commerce with other Sparks Divine

Its minute thoughts doth spruice699 in Speech to send

As Angells bright unto an honour’d friend

From whom like Angells it doth much desire.

Speech therefore is their Holy dayes attire.

Now that Speech Wealthi’st is, whose Curious Web

Of finest twine is wrought, not Cumbered

With Knots, Galls, Ends, or Thrums:700 but doth obtain

All Golden Rhetorick to trim the same.

With which our English is as richly dresst

As those last Oracles crackt o’re this Desk:701

Whose Web is of the Purest-finest Twine,

Such Syllables, & Words as well Combine

Not like the Hebrew which made Bithner lay

Hajin as Drum, & Drumstick to afray.702

Transcends the Greek which easily may delude

With Vowells consonant the blinde & Rude.703

Whose Double Consonant too ψ Psi is found

Tort’ring its Tabberstick that makes it sound.

It doth excell the Latine too for they

Make Ach a jack on both sides in their fray.704

What Cases too have these, & how may we

Them Number right, & know twice six they bee.705

One Terminations doth our Epithet

In Number, Gender, & all Cases set.706

Two to each Substantive will be enough

Two fives in other Tongues are found too few.707

Some words of w^ch should you persue their train

With Hue-and-Cry, & them for treason rain708

They’l die before they’l leave the border Stone

Of Singulariter that thrid bare Don.709

Some Strumpet like are pregnant found before

They marri’de are: & these do evermore

Nun-like live single lives, yet generaliter

Do pregnant prove by Abbot Old Pluraliter.710

And as these amble o’re the Cases light,

Some will not set a foot within the Right.711

Some stumbling are found in Casu Dandi712

Some tumble headlong down into Damnandi713

Some tripping stumble at y^e Genetive so,

Recover not untill in Ablativo.714

Some stumbling in one Case leape o’re the fence,

Into Pluraliter’s fat Pastor thence.715

Some Cripples are, & some are monsters strange,

Changing their Sex as their their Numbers Change.716

Some like to light heeld Hares their Sexes Varie

Some are both Hic, & Haec, both Philip & Mary.717

Strange Megrim. Oh this birth becomes a Progeny

Of Heteroclits718 and their Androgyny.

In the most noble Genders none arrive

With us, inferiour to sensatives.719

What cannot unto sensitives arise

What ere they be we rightly neutralize.720

Here should I mount upon the back to pace

Our English Verbs, & run them in the Race

With those of other Tongues at Small Expenses

Over the Lay-Crafft721 of the Moods, & Tenses:

They many would defective leave behinde

Some broken winded, & some out of winde.

But time Declines, I must Declentions leave,

And step into the Loom the Web to weave.

Yet know you by the way this yarn so fine

Described hitherto is single twine.

Which if we double do how doth abound

Our English Tongue with many a rich Compound?

Yea we to make them more significant

Their Handspiks helve with outland Olivant.722

Hence rare compounds. We also Decorate

Outlandish Trist with tags of English plate.

That outland words do end with English Sounds,

Of which our Languague richly doth abound.723

The yarn thus rich, & even spun behold

Our Web more welthy is than cloath of Gold.

Not full of Ends, & Thrums which do ore spread

In Useless Particles the Grecian Web.

Nor is it gaily,724 as some Frizes725 rare,

Whose Leakes with Subauditoes,726 Corked are.

And if occasion serve, we from our Treasure,

Can Duftaile in a Proverb at our pleasure.

And to enrich the same there’s many a pin

Of Outland Twine, compleatly wrought therein.

If we abirding go, we quickly spie

In English dwells a Grecian Progeny.

For Hall was Hatchd, & flew from Ἀυλῆ’s nest

To us, and in our English mode is dresst:727

Onely we animate her with our flap,

By Spiriting the feather in her Cap.728

And so our Lamp will light you by its flame

To Greces famous λαμπω whence it came.729

If a Grammarians Beagles out do run

T’hunt Hebrew Venison i’th’English tongue

Out of the Hebrew Stubble he shall start

The Misers Hare Calld Cash, & breake her heart.730 ק ש

If he afishing go, he angle shall

Out of the Hebrew Fishpond KOL our Call731 ק וֹ ל

Our Colledge Supper too doth easely lie

Encoffin’de up within the Hebrew Pie.732 כּיּ

Our Web thus wrought, rich Rhetorick steps in

As golden Lace a Silver Web to trim.

There’s scarce a Single thrid but doth entwine

A Trope, or Figure in’t to make it fine.

Here lies a Metonymy, there doth sculke

An Irony: here underneath this bulke

A Metaphor; Synecdoche doth reare

And open publickly Shopwindows here.

These and their Offspring their affections spend

Our Lady English to Court, & tend.

Of Swashy733 Figures too there throngs in Store

Her Dressing to Emblanch, & bro[i]der ore.

And first decks words, & sounds: where jiming734 feet

Of measurd stepts in Symphony run Sweet:

Cloathing our English Muse in Poetry:

Whose warbling Melody let them descry,

Whose light Souls in their fingers ends do Caper

And Dance on Ropes with Cur[t]sies to y^e Quaver.735

But still lest Oratories noble Web

Should not with trim[m]ing meet be overspred,

With Epizeuxis736 Lace it laced is,

And trim’d with Chits737 of Anadiplosis.738

Whose Bunches Climax-wise are rinkt & twirld,

And with Anaphoras739 its Frontlet’s purld,

Whose Selvages are of Epistrophe:740

And tasled in the middst with Symploce,741

Epenalepsis742 comes with Crisping pins:

Epanodos743 her welthy Spangles brings.

So all the rest pearlelike are set, & spred

Like to Mosaik Work all ore our Web.

Thus done, the minde each depper744 minute thought

Spruc’t up in English Huswifry, enwrought

With rare Embro[i]derings, and laid with lace

Set out with Silver Chits & Ribbons grace,

Tasled with Rhetorick, doth deck to set

Forth Majesty in e’ry single jet.

Scorning to lower top sayle, or to stand,

As yielding reverence, with Cap in hand

To Latine, Greek, or Hebrew, but now clears

Its right i’th’right hand is as much as theirs.745

But yet some Stumbling Block, before I winde

Up all, I must remove, for feare the blinde

Should breake their Shins thereat. I hope the Wise

Are Wise enough better to pupillize

The Stripplings that Stand at bow peep within

Their Eyes, than t’let them ripple746 here their Shin.

Call not our English, Upstart, Raw, & Bare,

Its neither Sacred Web, nor colledge ware.747

Those Accidentall Jewells onely Venture

To ring the Eare, but not the Essence enter.

True, true, for Age, and Oracles Divine

I honour Adams Tongue, & Javans Shrine,

Above our own:748 but Latine’s upland ground

Wherein no Spring of Oracles is found.

Onely a Sluce is Cut with gray Goose Quills

Wherein an Holy Water Currant drills,

Over that barren soile from Sacred Springs

And Such a trench Such waters in ours brings

And through all Colledges leaves English Satten

And Cloathed bee in Hebrew, Greek & Latine,749

This little doth our arguing impare:

For ancient folk do ancient fashions ware.

By what is said it seemeth very Cleare

That English worth with worthi’st tongues may peare

And go they t’Best-Betrust to Honours Host

Those three’l be rubbed out to pay the Cost.750

But whither wander I? I might expect

A Si Quis up ere this (was it not neckt)

For my Conclusion.751 Wherefore taking leave

I do immediately my Desk bequeath

To whom, I do not say, with large defences

Do Gratify, but gratulate their Senses.752

IV

An Elegy vpon the Death of that Holy man of God Mr. John Allen,753 late Past. of the Church of Christ at Dedham, who departed this Life 25^th 6^m 1671

The Flappering Soule for news inclined quakes

Sits on y^e lippit of y^e eare, & takes

All news that that way passes: & withall

Those dangling Words which from y^e lips do fall:

And as each Puff past with its Packet by,

(Some full of Sorrow, Some all quilt with joy),

One dropt’s its Packet in’t which down did fell

My trembling Soule: & it in Sorrow quell.

For as a Watchman on a Tower, aboue

The Breastwork, should his breastplate mostly prove

If open to y^e foe, is oft thereby

Pepst with the bullets to his heart that fly.

Or as a Rose by morning dew refresht

Dilates its leaves, all garnesht in its best:

And best Perfumes to tend y^e Sunny day

Is by a Lightning Flash, y^t passt that way,

All barbd, & Shrivles vp its leaves. & Why?

Not knowing what to do, to live, or dy.

Ev’n so our Souls vp soaring high appear

Aboue y^e vpper Region of y^e eare

Bedeckt with Cheering hopes, with good news wedded

Are by a Churlish thunder Clap beheaded.

And Shrivled vp in mourners weeds, & feares.

Swim ore the Seas of Grief in briny tears.

And hearing Something Crash, there’s cause to doubt

Another Stud is broke, or Stake pluckt out

Out of its place. Hence Sinking fears ascend

Encountring feeble Hopes: & in y^e end

Inquiring what it was, y^e answer briefs

Destroyd all hope, & drowned Fears with Griefe.

But what’s the matter? Sir, Shew what is done?

Pluck out y^e Plug, & let y^e Causes run.

Alass! alass! alass! & would you know

Go, hugge y^e bussing aire: It will you she.

For there the Echoes of our Griefs appeare

Riding Sedan in Circles far & neer.

But was it meet w^th an Antithesis

To anagrammatize, the Case is this.

The GRACES ALL ON Allen showing bright

Are calld ALL IN to bed & bid Good night

[ ]

Temples for Christ, who builded builders yielding

Of him a testimony full, & just,

Hath Pitcht his Tabernacle in the Dust.

A man of truth, who truthed it in love,

Who loved in peace with man & God aboue,

Hath now laid down (thô late he laid at Sin)

His Gospell Hilts, &’s gone out of the Ring.

How are our Spirituall Gamesters slipt away?

Crossing their Hilts, & leaving of their play?

Leaving the ring to vs who’de need before

We take vp hilts, y^e Fencing Schoole implore.

Are Norton, Newman, Stone, Thompson gone hence?

Gray, Wilson, Shepherd, Flint, & Mitchell since?

Eliot, two Mather’s Fathers first, then th’Son,

Is Buncker’s Woodward’s Rainer’s hourglass run?

With Davenport’s, Sim’s, Wareham’s? Who are gone?754

That Allen now is Called hence? Shall none

Be left behinde to tell’s the Quondam Glory

Of this Plantation? What a bleeding Story

Doth this present vs with? Mine eyes boile ore

Thy gellid teares into this Vrn therefore,

Wherein their Noble ashes are, & know yee

ALL ENd in ALLEN, by a Paragoge.755

Haec maetus additif. E. T.

V

An Elogy vpon the Death of the Re^nd & Learned Man of God Mr. Charles Chauncey756 President of Harvard Colledg in N: Englend Who Depart this Life 20^th 12^m 1671/2 And of his age 80

A Double Acrostick

C	Come weep with me, alas! alas! that Dew	V
H	Hung on our Eyes by Allens Funerall new757	V
A	As yet is Scarce wipt off, but a Relation	N
R	Raising from Chauncey’s Grave an Exhalation	N
L	Like Some bedewing mist from some low plac^e	C
E	(Exhalde, as Sol doth hide [h]is golden fac^e	C
S	Soon’s thresht by th’South winde to a cloud whereby	Y
C	Cold trickling tears run down the low’ring Sky)	Y
H	Held vp so’s fan’de with Sighs till it appears
A	A Cloud of Griefe Dissolv’d in Showers of tears

A Quadruble Acrostick whose Trible is an Anagram	Charles Chauncy
	A Call in Churches

Peace Sobbing Muse, come sum thy loss		Defra^y	A	fter y^ts done, y^e Debts y^t are to pa^y	A
Rare Learnings gone, a Pollyglotta		Choic^e	C	uriously printed in a Silver Voic^e	C
Extract of Greek & Hebrew; Rabbins		la^y	A	ptly enshrined in his Temples Gra^y	A
Scutchions of Arts, & Artificiall Skill			L	ay boxed in his Memory; at Will	L
In Schoolmen oft he Cast a wary Ei^e			I	ntently searching out y^e good therebi^e	I
Dark Questions would inlighten & explain			N	othing but naughtiness he did disdain	N
Each Vertue bright & gift Divine had plac^e			C	arbuncle like to Stud his Crown w^th Grac^e	C
Neat Handmaid to Divinity whose Wealth			H	e did improve vnto o^r living Health	H
These Sweets to That Sweet Hony Devv			V	nto the Hive of Piety he drevv	V
Diffusing all by Pattern, Preaching clear			R	ich Pray’res, & such like thrô his Practice heer	R
Y	ea would in flaming Zeal stoutly advanc^e		C	ouragously against Goliahs Lanc^e		C
	ea, yea, he would not spare y^m Low or High		H	e Smote down Sin, Smiting it Hip & Thigh		H
Ensigns hereof hung in Gods house there bee			E	mbellist Zeale, like Davids shields there See	E
Did many a Call in Churches give y^t this			S	ounds sad; that calls him hence altho to Bliss	S

Chron	Glory’s thy Crown. Who’de fear a Tomb t’enjoy	MDCLVVVVI
Angr^m	Such Royall Chance? Or Such a Chancelry		Charles	Such Ryal Chance
			Chauncy	Such a Chancelry

An Acrostick Chronogram

An. Dⁿⁱ	M	Methinks I se the Churches Swim in Tears
	C	Considering the failing of their Seers.
	L	Let Harvard mourn, Sons of the Prophets weep
	V	Who can forebeare? Your Head is dropt asleep.
	L	Learning hath left your Hall: Your Sun is Set
	V	Will not Such Words Command your Eyelid Wet?
	C	Cast in your minde his Conscience, Cure, & Pains
	L	Laide out vpon you; How his Candle flaims.
	C	Chiefly to Kindle yours, & others Well
	V	With Holy Fire that from the Altar fell?
	V	Were it but meet this Blessed Waite to lay
	I	In Golden Scales Comparative to weigh.
	I	It would no hard thing be for vs to finde
	I	In weighing how he most doth leave behinde.
	I	If Peters Faith, Pauls Preaching, Johns Love Strong,
	I	If Noah’s, Job’s, & Daniels Prayers should come,
	I	Josiahs Spirit, Hezekiahs Heart,
	I	If Davids sevenfold Dayly Quests revert
	I	If that the Tishbites Zeale, who did Destroy
	V	Vile Baals Priests Smiting them Hip, & Thigh.
	L	Lay in Elijahs Mantle Oucht, was not
	V	Vpon Grave Chauncie’s back this mantle got?
	I	If this Elijahs Mantle, as he went.
	V	Vnto the Kingdom filld with full Content
	V	Vnto a man had fallen to inherit,
	V	With double Portion of Elijahs Spirit,
	V	Vnto Such Riches Sweet he should attain
	V	Which would inrich: Then Jordains fordless main
	V	Vnto his Mantle would afford as due
	L	Large Reverence, & lowly Conjues shew
	V	Vnclaspt her Watry Mask that so her Sweet
	I	Imblushing Sands may kiss Elijahs feet,
	I	In greate Obeysence. But alas we Stand
	I	In Tears, & Cry The Char’ots Father and
	I	Just Horsemen of our Israel, but finde
	I	It is too rich a gift to leave behinde
	V	Vp then, & se how he doth Swim in Bliss
	V	Where he in Glorys Throne incrowned is.
	V	Whence while his Clay incoffinde is, doth Cry
	V	Who’de feare a Tomb Such Glory to enjoy?
	V	Who’de feare the Grave? Death’s but the golden Doore
	V	Wherein we must vnto bright Glories shore.
	V	Well, Chauncy, well, thou where thou wouldst be, art.
	V	We Sink in Sorrow judgment, & the Darke.
	I	In middst of all y^e Combat pray do we
	I	Inable vs, oh Lord, to Shine as Hee.

Anagram		Carolus Chancaeus
		Caelo Charus Canus

Quam Caelo Charus Canus? Collectus et ipse	Chron	An^o Dⁿⁱ
In justus legitur qui bene justus erat	agram	M:C CCCCLLLVV[VVI]
		Aetat LVVVVVII[III]

VI

This Dove &

Olive Branch to

you

Is both a Post &

Emblem too758

These for M[y Dove]

Tender & Onely [Love]

Mrs. Elizabeth [Fitch]759

at her father’s house in

N[orwich]

VII

Westfield

27 8^m 1674

These for my truely deare, & Endeared Mrs. Elizabeth Fitch mine Onely Love, in Norwich w^th Care—I had thought that my Muse should have added a Quaver or two vnto your Music but y^t Stage being so thick a Crowded already, there is Scarce any room for it. All therefore y^t She shall doe, shall be onely to take y^e tune, where you left it & answer, as it were an Eccho, back again vnto y^r Song, in this following Ditty.

Were but my Muse an Huswife Good, & could

Spin out a Phansy fine, & Weave it Would

In Sapphick Web, & Cloath my Love therein,

I’de Carde y^e rowls, She Should y^e Phansy Spin.

But I no Rowling Phansy have to run.

Nor She Such Silken Huswifry ere Spun.

Hence Coarse Iambick is y^e finest she

Can weave, my Love arrayed in to bee.

But if in Discontent my Love reply,

Iambicum amasti Cur? & why?

Cause She no Silken Huswife is. Yet thus

She Quavers out her Iambick feet to vs.

That long’d for Web of new Relation, gay,

That must be wove vpon o^r Wedden Day,

(Whose Warfe, & Woofe are thy true Love, & mine

Hearts golden Fleece, spun into finest twine)

Shines like a Web of fulgent gold, all blancht

With folds of Hearts, & pritty Harps hence brancht

Sounding y^e Lisping Musick of their Strings

More pleasant than y^e Virginalls can ring

Enamelled with priviledges bright

With Honours, Duties, & with pleasure right,

And Faithfulness, which Stands like pearls, & Smile

On one another Shining all y^e While.

Yet Cares, & Crosses too amongst these meet,

Like Vineger w^ch Sugar makes more Sweet.

Yet here a richer Veane of Excellence

Darts thro’ this Wealthy Web, & Sparkles. Whence

A Pillar doth of dazzling glory rise

With pious Odours, for a Sacrifice

As bundles of y^e Flaming Sunbeams fly

To glorify whom all Should glorify

Thus Glory darts its Web, & Him Divine

Him with a Direct, That a Reflect Shine.

But yet as Surryps Spoild, grow soure apace

And Vermine breed: So fares it in this Case.

If Duty, Faith, & Love be ragged worn

Then Honours, Pleasures, Priviledges torne,

Ly gasping, & y^e Lisping Musick Deare

The Pritty Harps play, jars, & wounds y^e Eare.

The golden thrids, those Heart Strings (to be briefe)

Chafe, Gaul, & fretting breake, for very Griefe.

Those Hearts Emblancht on Hearts, are Hearts Steept soe

In pickled Woes, y^t bite as Badgers doe.

And thus this golden web is, e’re its done,

As black as Hair-Cloth made, all Snick Snarld run.

And for its glory (y^t Choice Sacrifice)

A Smoke from Hell, as black as Death doth rise.

My Sweet Heart, thus y^e glorious Sparkling fold

Of this rich Web, you clearly may behold:

The Glass of it misvsd will proove its Choice

That’s Excellent whose Fault’s a grievous vice.

It now remains: Let’s Cloath ourselves, my Dove

With this Effulgeant Web, & our pickt Love

Wrapt vp therein: & lets by walking right

Loves brightest Mantle make Still Shine more bright

For then its glory Shall ascend on high

The Highest One alone to glorify.

Which rising will let Such a glory fall

Vpon our Lives y^t glorify them Shall.

Which glory that it may till Death abide

I make my Pray’re, who do myselfe Subscribe

Thine whilst Mine Own: & yet mine Own whilst Thine

Thou being Mine alone, I’m Thine, & Mine.

Edw: Taylor

VIII

A Funerall Poem Vpon y^e Death of my ever Endeared, & Tender Wife Mrs. Elizabeth Taylor, Who fell asleep in Christ y^e 7^th day of July at night about two hours after Sun setting 1689, & in the 39 yeare of her Life760

Part 1

My Gracious Lord, I Licence of thee Crave,

Not to repine but drop vpon y^e Grave,

Of my Deare Wife a Teare, or two: or wash

That Milk White hand in tears that downward pass.

Thou Summond hast her Noble part away:

And in Salt Tears I would Embalm her Clay.

Some deem Death doth y^e True Love Knot vnty:

But I do finde it harder tide thereby

My heart is in’t & will be Squeezd therefore

To pieces if thou draw the Ends much more.

Oh Strange Vntying! it ti’th harder: What?

Can anything vnty a True Love Knot?

Five Babes thou tookst from me before this Stroke.

Thine arrows then into my bowells broake,

But now they pierce into my bosom Smart,

Do Strike & Stob me in the very heart.

I’de then my bosom Friend a Comfort, and

To Comfort: yet my Lord I kiss thy hand.

I Her resign’d, thou tookst her into thine,

Out of my bosom, yet she dwells in mine:

And thou her Precious Soule now Swims in bliss,

Yet while grim Death, that Dismall Sergeant is,

Between y^e Parts Essentiall now remote,

And hath this Stately Tabernacle broke

My Harp is turnd to mourning. Organ Sweet

Is turn’de into y^e Voice of them that weep.

Griefe Swelling girds the Heart Strings where its purst.

Vnless it Vent the Vessell Sure will burst.

My Gracious Lord, grant that my bitter Griefe

Breath thrô this little Vent hole for reliefe.

Part 2

My Dear, Deare Love, reflect thou no Such thing,

Will Griefe permit you at my Grave to Sing?

Oh! Black, Black Thorne! The Girths of Griefe alone

Do gird my heart till Gust of Sorrows groan

And dash a mournfull Song to pieces on

The Dolefull Face of thy Sepulcher Stone

My Onely DOVE, thô Harp & Harrow, loe,

Better agree than Songs & Sorrows doe.

Yet Spare me thus to drop a blubber’d Verse

Out of my Weeping Eyes Vpon thy Herse.

What shall my Preface to our True Love Knot

Frisk in Acrostick Rhimes? And may I not

Now at our parting, with Poetick knocks

Break a Salt teare to pieces as it drops?

Did Davids bitter Sorrow at y^e Dusts

Of Jonathan raise Such Poetick gusts?

Do Emperours interr’d in Verses lie?

And mayn’t Such Feet run from my Weeping Eye?

Nay, Dude lies vpon mee much: & shall

I in thy Coffin naile thy Vertues all?

How shall thy Babes & theirs thy Vertuous shine

Know, or Persue vnless I them define.

Thy Grace will Grace vnto a Poem bee

Althô a Poem be no grace to thee.

Impute it not a Crime then if I weep

A Weeping Poem on thy Winding Sheet.

May be Some Angell may my Poem Sing

To thee in Glory, or relate the thing.

Which if he do, my mournfull Poem may

Advance thy Joy, & my Deep Sorrow lay.

Part 3

Your Ears, Bright Saints, & Angells: them I Choose

To Stough her Praises in: I’le not abuse.

Her Modesty would blush should you profess,

I in Hyperboles her praises dress.

Wherefore as Cramping Griefe permits to Stut

Them forth accept of Such as here I put.

Her Husbands Joy, Her Childrens Chiefe Content

Her Servants Eyes, Her Houses Ornament.

Her Shine as Child, as Neighbour, flies abroad

As Mistress, Mother, Wife: her Walke with God

As Child she was a Tender Pious Bud

Of Pious Parents, Sprang of Pious Blood

Two Grandsires, Gran’ams: one or two, she had

A Father too & Mother, that englad

The Gracious heart to thinke vpon, they were

Bright Pillars in Gods Temple shining cleare

Her Father, & her Mothers Father fix

As Shining Stars in Golden Candlesticks,

She did Obedient, Tender, Meek Child prove

The Object of her Fathers Eye, & Love.

Her Mother being Dead, her heart would melt

When she her Fathers looks not pleasant felt.

His smile Would her enliven, Frown, down pull

Hence she became his Child most Dutifull.

As Neighbour, She was full of Neighbourhood

Not Proud, or Strang; Grave, Courteous, ever good.

Compassionate: but vnto none was Soure.

Her Fingers dropt w^th Myrrh oft, to her power.

As Mistress She order’d her Family

With all Discretion, & most prudently

In all things prompt: Dutie in this respect

Would be y^e meanest in it not neglect:

Ripe at her Fingers Ends, Would nothing flinch

She was a neate good Huswife every inch.

Although her weakenesse made her let alone

Things so to go, as made her fetch a groan.

Remiss was not, nor yet severe vnto

Her Servants: but i’th golden mean did goe.

As Mother, Oh! What tender Mother She?

Her bowells Boiled ore to them y^t bee

Bits of her tender Bowells. She a Share

Of her affections ever made them ware.

Yet never chose to trick them, nor herselfe

In an tick garbs; or Lavishness of Wealth.

But was a Lover much of Comeliness:

And with her Needle work would make their Dress,

The Law of Life w^thin her Lips she would

Be dropping forth vpon them as shee should

Foolishly fond she was not but would give

Correction wisely, that their Soule might Live.

As Wife, a Tender, Tender, Loving Meet,

Meeke, Patient, Humble, Modest, Faithfull, Sweet

Endearing Help she was: Whose Choisest Treasure

Of Earthly things she held her Husbands pleasure.

But if she spi’de displeasure in his face,

Sorrow would Spoile her own, & marr its grace.

Dear Heart! She would his Joy, Peace, Honour, Name,

Even as her very Life, Seeke to mentain.

And if an hasty word by chance dropt in:

She would in Secret Sigh it or’e with him.

She was not wedded vnto him alone

But had his joy, & sorrow as her own.

She, where he chanc’t to miss, a Cover would lay

Yet would in Secret fore him all Display

In meekness of Sweet wisdom, & by Art,

As Certainly would come into the heart.

She laid her neck vnto y^e Yoake he draws:

And was his Faithfull Yoake Mate, in Christ Cause.

As to her walk with God, She did inherit

The very Spirits of her Parents Spirit:

She was no gaudy Christian, or gilt Weed:

But was a Read, Israelite indeed.

When in her Fathers house God toucht her Heart,

That Trembling Frame of Spirit, & that Smart,

She then was vnder very few did know:

Whereof she somewhat to y^e Church did show.

Repentance now’s her Work. Sin poyson is:

Faith carries her to Christ as one of his.

Fear Temples in her heart; Love flowers apace

To God, Christ, Grace Saints, & y^e Means of Grace.

She’s much in Reading, Pray’re, Selfe-Application

Holds humbly vp, a pious Conversation.

In w^ch she makes people [ ]

Which vnto Westfield Church [ ] did disclose

Holy in Health; Patient in Sickness long.

And very great. Yet gracious Speech doth throng:

She oft had vp, An Alwise God Doth this.

And in a filiall way y^e Rod would kiss.

When Pains were Sore, Justice can do no wrong,

Nor Mercy Cruell be; became her Song.

The Doomsday Verses much perfum’de her Breath,

Much in her thoughts, & yet she fear’d not Death.

IX

An Elegy vpon y^e Death of y^t Holy & Rev^d Man of God, Mr. Sam^l Hooker761 Pastor of ye Church of Christ at Farmington, & Son to y^e Famous Mr. Thomas Hooker, who was Pastor of, & began with y^e Church of Christ at Hartford on Connecticut in N: Engl^d, who slept in Christ, y^e 6^th day of November, about one a Clock in y^e morning in y^e 64 year of his age entered vpon, Annoque Dⁿⁱ 1697

Griefe sometimes is a duty, yet when Greate

And geteth vent, it Non-Sense Sobs, doth speake

Cutting off Sentences by Enterjections

Made by y^e force of hard beset Affections.

Should I in mine pass thrô this Hemisphere

And beg of ev’ry Eye a Trickling teare

To wash thy Tombe, Deare Hooker, bright therein,

All would not Drown y^e Griefe that thence doth Spring

Shall thy Choice Name here not embalmed ly

In those Sweet Spices whose perfumes do fly

From thy greate Excellence? It surely would

Be Sacraledge thy Worth back to withhold.

Lord Spare the Flock. Shall brave brave Jon’than dy?

And David’s place be empty? Sling ly by?

Before their heads those Almond Trees are white

And ere they’re mellow’d by old age’s weight?

When Birds new Hatcht ware, as in nest they ly,

Presbytick Down, Pinfeatherd Prelacy

(Young Cockerills, whose Combs soare vp like Spires

That force their Dams, & Crow against their Sires?)

Dost thou withdraw? & now? Where are thy Spurs?

Then to be had? Whose sight would work demurrs.

Where hast thou left thy Strenth, & Potency?

And Congregationall Artillery?

We need the Same, & need it more, & more

For Babel Canons gainst our Bulwark roare.

2 To New England

Alas! alas! New England, go weep.

Thy loss is greate in him: For he did keep

Within thine Orb as a bright shining Sun

To give thee Light, but now his race is run.

And thô his Epicycle was but Small

His Shining Beams did fly to lighten all.

He was in Person neat, of lesser Sise,

With Ruddy Looks, & with quick rowling eyes,

His Head a Magazeen of Wisdom rich,

With Spirits fan’d from foggy Vapours which

Do Reason cloud: a Fine Spun Fancy, Quick,

Producing Notions brave, & Rhetorick.

A Son of Such a Father, whose name Flew

Like Sweet Perfume o’re Englands Old, & New.

A Son, thô youngest, yet y^t did inherit,

A noble portion of his Fathers Spirit.

Wise, Pious, Prudent, had a Strong, Cleare Head,

That entertaind y^e Strength of what he red.

Grave, not Morose, Courteous, yet did Command

A Distance due, & by a gentle hand.

Not Verbous, yet his lips would oft distill

Brave Apophthegms, Facete Wit, & Skill.

In Councill Choice, deliberate, & full.

In Disputation Acute. Home, not Dull

Meek as a Lamb, yet as a Lion, hee

Could put on Majesty, if needs must bee.

Keen in Rebukes yet Candid, Corrosive

Where Cases calld, would to y^e bottom rive.

A True Peace-Maker, Farmington may say,

Offt in y^e fire, & Flame of others fray

Cala[ ]y-Gem like quencht it, & as fring’d

With Salamanders Woole, he was not Sindg’d.

He Steady was: Not on, & Off. His Minde

John Baptist like’s no Reed Shook with y^e Winde.

Concocted not, thô neatly minced Slops,

A mess of Windmills, or of Weather Cocks.

Not Esau like selling his choiceffree S[ ]age

Then left his Birthright for a bowl of Pottage.

He, & y^e best of Queens we thus describe’m

Agreeing in one Motto Semper idem.

A Box of Jewells, String of Pearls bright, High.

Of Heavenly Graces a Sweet Spicery.

Humble, & full of Selfe abasement, thô

Such Excellency did in him e’re flow.

A Rich Divine: a Pastour very choice

Dispensing Grace, with a Sweet piercing voice

(Like to y^e Still Small Voice Elijah heard)

That rended Rocks, & Satans Intrest marr’d.

In Prayre Sweet, y^e musick of which String

Celestiall Wealth vnto y^e Earth would bring

Like little Paul in Person, Voice, & Grace

Advancing Christ & Sinfull things out race.

The Sacred Writ with joy he did attend

And Scriptures dropt even at his fingers end.

A Weighty Preacher: never notion Sick.

An Angel in a Golden Candlestick.

He had y^e knack of Preaching: & did dart

Christs fiery Shafts into y^e flinty heart;

Till it was broken: Then y^e Smarting wound

Would dress with Gilliads Balm to make it sound.

The Gospell [ ] well he knew

Barjona was; & Boanerges true.

Great Gregry, its said, did Peters Coffin Wrest

Wide ope, & found his Keyes in’t. (Oh! well Blesst)

But Hooker bravely handed Aaron Rod

Christ’s own Choice Keyes, & gently, & for God.

A Loving Husband; tender Father, who

With Pious, Rich Discourse, y^t was well Spic’d

With Gospell Grace, to bring them vp to Christ.

And holy Councill on them he would shoure

With Death Bed Charges till his dying hour.

But seing Death Creep on his Fingers ends,

And on his Hands, & Arms bespeake his Friends

Thus, Saying, They are Dead, you see and I

Have done with them: warm cloaths thereto apply,

But Death admits no check mate. Out he poures

His Soul on Christ. On him they weep May showers.

But art thou gone, Brave Hooker, hence? & Why?

What, wast thou weary of thy Ministry?

Or weari’d out by thy fed flock? Alas!

Or did the Countrey’s Sin it bring to pass?

He was a Samuel in his place, & breath

Let Israel do him honour at his Death.

Mourn, mourn, New England, alas! alas!

To see thy Freckled Face in Gospell Glass:

To feele thy Pulse, & finde thy Spleen’s not well:

Whose Vapors raise thy Pericordium t’swell:

Do suffocate, & Cramp thee & grow worse

By Hypochondrick Passions of the purse

Affect thy Brains toucht with y^e Turn, till thou

Halfe Sick of Preachers falst, & Gospell Plow.

Such Symptoms say, if nothing else will ease,

Thy Sickness soon will cure thy sad Disease.

For when Such Studs, as Stop, & Scotch y^e Way

Of thy Declensions are remov’d thy bay,

Apostasy wherewith thou art thus driven

Vnto y^e tents of Presbyterianism

(Which is refined Prelacy at best)

Will not stay long here in her tents, & rest,

But o’re this Bridge will carry thee apace

Into y^e Realm of Prelates arch, y^e place

Where open Sinner vile vnmaskt indeed

Are Welcom Guests (if they can say y^e Creed)

Vnto Christs Table, While they can their Sins

Atone in Courts by offering Silverlings.

Watch, watch thou then: Reform thy life: Refine

Thyselfe from thy Declentions. Tend thy line.

Steeples ware Weathercocks: but Turrits gain

An Happiness vnder a Faithfull Vane.

And weep thy Sins away, lest woe be nigh.

For Angells with thy Lots away do high.

Part 3 To Connecticut

Mourn, mourn, Connecticut, thou’st lost a Gem:

A Carbuncle, (& thou hast few of them)

Is fallen from thy Crown, a Sun full bright

Is set, bidding thine Horizon good night.

Mourn Hartford, mourn; a bud of thine is gone:

A Gem that grew on thy Foundation Stone

(Not Stone’s,762 but Hooker’s who did in thee Shrine

In Light, Life, Line, & Gospell Discipline)

Who griev’d to see thee warpt from thy foundation

And leave thy first Love thus, & Education.

Of all thy Sons thou hast not Such another

To Stay thy Head, & heart from ill recover.

Part 4

Alas poor Farmington, of all y^e rest

Most Happy, & Vnhappy, Blesst vnblesst:

Most Happy having Such an Happiness:

And most vnhappy losing of no less.

Oh! mourn, & weep, remember thou y^e Call

Thy Prophet gave thee to’t before his fall.

Oh Daughter of my people, that last text

Gird thee with Sackcloth. Wallow thee perplext

In ashes. mourn thee lamentably

As for an onely Son, weep bitterly,

For loe, y^e Spoiler suddenly shall come

Vpon vs. And his Sermon being done

The motive to y^e Call, y^e Prophesy

Had an accomplishment before your eye.

For he much Spent desired you to Sing

A Psalm while he refresht & rested him.

Which done he prayed over you intent,

Dismist you with a blessing briefe, & bent

Vnder y^e Spoiler down, y^t Suddenly

Assaulted him, & gave discharg thereby

Vnto his pulpit of all right of Claim

For ever after in this man of Fame.

He bowing goes vnto a neighbours, whence

After a while he rideth home from thence

Betook him to his dying Bed perfum’d

With prayers to God, & Charges he assum’d

And laid his friends & Wife & Children vnder

While five dayes run, & Illiak pains did thunder.

That Hooker now by this Sharp tyranny

Forcing things back y^t should go on, should dy.

Lord grant it ben’t an Omen of o^r Fate,

As shewing our apostate following State.

Then mourn poore Church, thy Prophets race is run

As for a Father, or an onely Son.

After three tens, & Seven years were past

Vnder thy rocky hill by him, at last

He thus doth leave thee. Search into thy Sin

Repent, & grieve that ere thou grievedst him.

Or rather, God in him, lest Suddenly

The Spoiler still should on thee come & stroy.

Lord art thou angry with y^e Flock, y^t thou

Dost slay their Shephard? Or dost disallow

The Fold, & lay it Common that thou smite

Down dost y^e shory y^t vpheld it right?

Shall angling cease? & no more fish be took?

That thou callst home thy Hooker with his Hook?

Lord, Spare y^e flock: vphold y^e fold from falling.

Send out another Hooker of this Calling.

Part 5. To y^e Family Relict

Thou mourning Family, what shall I say?

Shall Passion, or compassion o’re me Sway?

It is a day of Griefe. Tears are a Dress

Becoming vs, come they not to excess.

Then keep due measure. Should you too much bring

Your too much is too little far for him.

Thou mourning Widdow!763 oh! how Sad? how Sharp?

Poor bleeding Soule! how turned is thy Harp

Into y^e Voice of mourning? Organ Sweet

Into y^e bitter Voice of them that weep.

But yet cheere vp: New England layes her head

To thine, to weep with thee over thy Dead.

Thou may’st therefore Spend fewer tears of Sorrow

Out of thine own, thou dost so many borrow.

Christs Napkin take, Graces green Taffity

And wipe therewith, thy Weeping, watry eye

And thou shalt See thy Hooker all o’re gay

With Christ in bliss, adorn’d with Glories Ray.

And putting out his shining hand to thee,

Saying, My Honey, mourn no more for mee.

That Love wrongs both y^t wills mee with thee hence.

But joy to see my joy, & Glory mence.

In Faith, Obedience, Patience, walk awhile

And thou shalt Soon leape o’re y^e parting Stile.

And come to God, Christ Angells, Saints, & Mee.

So we in Bliss together e’re shall bee:

When we did wed, we such a mortall took.

And ever from that day for this did look

Wherein we parted are; & one should have

Griefe, I o’re thy, or thou over my grave.

The Lot is cast on thee. I first must go

And leave thee weeping o’re my Grave in woe.

But Stay thy Sorrow: bless my Babes. Obey.

And soon thou shall with mee enjoy good day.

And as for you his Buds, & Blossoms blown,

Stems of his Root, his very Flesh, & Bone,764

You needs must have great droopings, now y^e Tree

Is fallen down y^e boughs w[h]ereof you bee.

You have a Father lost, & Choice one too.

Weeping for him is honour due from you.

Yet let your Sorrows run in godly wise

As if his Spirits tears fell from your eyes.

Strive for his Spirit: rather Christ’s, than His

To dwell, & not his Flesh, yourselves to bliss.

Its pitty these in him conjoyn’d, vp grew.

Together, should be parted here in you.

Plants of a Noble Vine, a Right, Right Seed.

Oh! turn not to a Strange Wild vine or Weed.

Your Grand sire were a Chiefe Foundation Stone

In this Blesst Building: Father was well known

To be a Chiefe Good Builder in y^e Same

And with his might did ever it mentain.

Your Grandsire’s Spirit thrô your Father breathd

In Life, & on you, as his Life he leav’d.

Striving to breath into your hearts his Spirit

As out of him it passed, to inherit.

Ben’t like Such babes as parents brains outpull

To make a Wassill Bowie then of y^e Skull.

That Pick their Parents eyes out, & y^e holes

Stuff vp with folly: as if no braind Souls.

You are of better form than this Sad guise

Yet beare this Caution: Some apostatise

And strive your Sires, & Grandsires Life, & Line

Thrô you their Flesh, & blood may brightly shine.

Imminde your Father’s Death bed Charge & aime.

You are his Very Flesh, & Blood, & Name.

The NAME of HOOKER precious in our story

Make you more precious, adding to its Glory,

At the Bright flaming Sun of Righteousness,

With a Celestiall Light, e’re burning fresh.

A Cabbinet of Vertue, ever brave.

A Magazeen of Counsill, Weighty, Grave.

A Treasury of Grace, th’Imbroideries

Of th’Holy Ghost in Heart, & Life here lies

A Temple bright of Piety in print,

To glorify y^t God that dwelled in’t.

A Stage of War, Whereon y^e Spirits Sword

Hew’d down y^e Hellish foes y^t did disturb:

A Cage whose bird of Paradise therein

Did sing Sweete Musick forth to glories King.

A Silver Trumpet of y^e Temple bright

Blown by an Angell of Celestiall light

A Temple deckt, & with all graces spic’de

For God the Father, Spirit, & for Christ.

A Golden Pulpit Where an Angell Choice

Preacht Zions Grace with Sinai’s thundering voice.

An Oratore of Prayre, which, rapt vp, hopt

Vp Souls to Heaven, Heaven down to Souls oft knockt.

Were there a Metempsychosis, we say

Greate Hookers Soule, Sure, nee possest this Clay.

Elijah’s Mantle, & y^e dust y^t fell

Of th’ Charriot, & y^e Horse of Israel.

Scarce ever dust more glorious made for bliss

With glorious Grace, or better vsd than this,

That here now Stript of all that Wealth, & Station

Doth lie, yet firmly holds its high Relation.

And here we leave it, till y^e last Dayes Shoute

Breaking its Coffin brings it glorious out.

And wipe those drops wrung from thy Winding Sheet

Brave Sir off from our Eyes, that weeping keep,

With thy White Lawn thou wearst in Glory Gay,

Charming our Griefe therewith, Amen we say.

His Epitaph

A turffe of Glory, Rich, Celestiall Dust,

A Bit of Christ here in each Cradle thrust

An Orb of Heavenly Sunshine: a bright Star

That never glimmerd: ever Shining faire.

A Paradise bespangled all with Grace:

A Curious Web o’relaid with holy lace

A Magazeen of Prudence: Golden Pot

Of Gracious Flowers never to be forgot

Farmingtons Glory, & its Pulpit Grace

Lies here a Chrystallizing till y^e trace

Of Time is at an end & all out run.

Then shall arise & quite outshine y^e Sun.

X

An Elogy vpon y^e Death of My Hon^d Sister in Law M^rs Mehetabel Woodbridge,765 wife of the Rev^d Mr. Timothy Woodbridge, Pastor of y^e first Church in Hartford, who departed this life 20^th day 10^m 1698

That Griefe, Deare Sister, ore thy Coffin’d Clay

So stobs my Heart, so Stuffs my Lungs, y^t they

Want room within their Warehouse t’work, & so

Were not mine Eyes their Cupping Glasses to

Draw out that Fog, my Spirits would before

The Cordiall Aire drawn thrô y^e Vitall Doore

Could them revive, faint quite without reliefe.

Choakt with y^e Rising of y^e Lungs thrô Griefe.

Mine Eyes do hatch their Moisture into Pearles

Mater-perlarum like, within their Shells.

And Stud thy Coffin with them, quilted ore

With Wealthy Vertues decking thee before.

Let ev’ry one an answer to mee bring

That hath a Teare to wash a Sorrow in

Whether we have not ground to make our Eyes

An Altar at this Tomb to Sacrifice

A Flood of Tears vpon? Its rare to see

Such precious Dust as Coffin’d here have wee.

Choice Dust indeed! Dust drilld thrô Choisest pipes

Into this Vrn: Oh! how this Dust invites

Our Eyes to Weeping? Oh! its dust y^t Came

Out of y^e Quarys three bright Pairs of Fame

Thy Grandsires Hains,766 & Willis,767 Brightsom Stars

Connecticuts first, & Choice Governours

And their Choice Mates, thy Grandams, did so shine

Bedeckt with beams of Grace, & Life Sublime

That their Rich Graces shining bright was such

That would, if possible, make grace to Grutch768

In other pious Souls, when they should finde

Their Brightest Graces left so far behinde.

Modesty while thy Fathers Eyes boile ore,

His Griefe into thy ashes, having Store

Forbids my pen, that honour due to thee

To vtter thence. Yet this to say its Free

From’s Prim Rose hee to Almond age did Stand

And Exercise a Magistratick hand,

In Pious wise. But oh thy Mother Ruth769

Now Dead, of her my pen is free in truth

To draw her Shine vpon thy Dust, She were

A Magazeen of Graces bright, & Cleare.

Which on thee dropt in Life & as it fled

Perfuming of thy Dust here Coffined.

But view y^e mortall Frame aright, While as

It tween y^e Cradle, & y^e Coffin was.

The Picture of her Mother in’t she grew

A Gentlewoman neate, accomplishd, true;

Quick, Witty, Lovely, Prudent, Grave discreet,

Kinde, Modest, Affable, & yet would keep

A Distance due becoming of her place

And parentage, adorned with a Grace.

A Bride Successively to Levites three770

Attending them becoming that degree.

Her Inward man a Storehouse of rich ware.

Of Sanctifying Grace, y^t made all fair.

God-Glorifying Shines hence role in Christ.

Adorning of her Life all over spic’d

With Grace, Prayre, Holy Reading, Meditation

Rich Good Discourse. Of Holy Conversation

An Humble Soule, a Gracious Christian, Meek

A Loving Wife, a Tender Mother Sweet,

Obedient Daughter, Sister very Deare

A Prudent Mistress, Good Neighbor here.

An Huswife very good, & very neate

In all Relations comely, & Compleate

Made Mother Sixteen times, Eleven Stems

Have Stemd y^e Currant to y^e Realm of Gems

Have shot y^e Gulph before her, to rejoyce

Her landing in y^e Port of Paradise.

Five of her Buds behinde her here survive,

To keep her Vertues, & her Life alive.771

On whom her Mothers blessing, dying, fell.

Them to enrich with Wealth y^t doth excell.

Her last Babe brought Deaths Charriot to her Doore:

In which before she entred, she boyld ore

With Gracious breathings, dropping vpon all,

That came a nigh her with her death bed Call.

That Christ should dy for Sinners! dy for such!

Was on her Heart; it did affect her much.

And in greate Faith fain would have pray’re convay

Her Soule to Christ out of her Tent of Clay.

Come, one more Pray’re, & Then.—said shee as thô

She should be where she would bee. Ending so

At last while all by, sunke in Sorrows deep,

She entred in Death’s Chariot in a Sleep.

XI

A funerall Tear dropt vpon y^e Coffin of [that holy man of] God, Doct^r Increase Mather, Teacher of y^e North Church in Boston & pro tempore President of y^e Colledg at Cambridge772

Nigh Sixty years ago I wept in verse

When on my Shoulders lay thy Fathers herse773

And now thy Learning & thy piety

Do loudly call for mourning poetry.

Should Silence now be hid our Sorrows big

To get a vent would breake thy Coffin lid.

Is not [en]during t’smoothred ly in Chest

Which pleasant were while the Same [is] possest

All fitting then for Christs rich gospell worke

The w^ch then thou [ ]

But now all Silenced be! tho then [ ]

Thy pulpits empty: now [ ]

It’s full of Sorrow & of Sorrows guise

And hearts are filld with sorrows sorrows rise

Thy Learning & thy pious life so vext

[ ]

And nowhere thee, & in thee [ ] their vice

Didst wickedly, & wretchedly Scorn Christ

Making thyselfe their Maypole M[ ] game

Like Swine y^t in y^e [ ] wall w^thall profane

Oh! hell black tribe markt out for hell these bee

Such are y^e fruites of y^e curst dogberry tree.

Choosing Romes filthy Whore their godless gay

Whose Sacrifice was made a Maypole play.

[ ] Christ hence & all his holy Laws.

And choosing Flora with her whorish Cause.

Who made thee black by their more black aspects

Who for Romes pagan Whore here Christ reject

Who sing this harlots song: & dance her tunes

Hell[ ] of Doom

Hell claims such for her own should they should die

The Court accepts her plea, nor can’t deny.

She’d draw her plea still higher & still Christ

Still on on justice if denide, Vnjust

It would complain of Heaven too hereby

Guilty of theft & woefull robbery

To think of Such acts, makes y^e Heavy Heart

To tremble & for feare to makes a start

Hence Passion, & Compassion fighting Strive

Whether of y^m two should dy or w^ch Survive

Such things as these did make thee often Sob

But Cutler’s774 Cutiery gave th’killing Stob.

[ ] consider Sure Christ word stands true

Even it, or else thyselfe shall Surely rue.

And seeing Gods word is true, repent & dread

Mans frothy brains can’t Helmet thy proud head

Christs wounded Saints & Churches have their stings

Which ere’t belong will make Sinners within

To Smart: repent then e’re it be too late

Lest then eternally smart in y^e horrid Lake.

Who found their faith on Man either greate or Small

They found on Sand, their building soon will fall.

Vpon their Heads at last, tho’ they indeed

Have filld their heads with much & better Speed

But thou deare Sir chose not y^e World to seek

But didst resolve a better game to keep

Didst rather choose to run a better race,

Than Hide-&-Seek, but oft & always chose

A Breath at Barly breaks or Prison base

Of Gospell games w^ch is an Heavenly race

When other many thro’ some vgly vice

Like Soure Skegs Fell off from Jesus Christ

When many left Christ holy word thou stondst fixt to’t

Which makes my gray goose quill commence thy poet

Whom many Christ Sweet [ ] much disprise

And did with pagan Rome her Sacrifice

Vnto y^t Whore y^t gave her Whorish stuffe

To Such base pranks as made Grace Cat[ ]ush

But thou thy peoples joy, thy pulpits glory

Thy Country Happiness, thy Happy story

When y^t o^r Church [ ]

[ ] sadle and didst ride

Vnto White Hall,775 & of o^r gracious King

Didst gain a New one & home with thee bring.

Thou with thy pen hast playd Christ intrest Deare:

And hast recorded his blesst doings here.

For future ages to behold y^e Same

And hast Embellished his blessed Name.

But now Deaths Cickle hath thee reapt, Christ Corn,

Whom by bright Angells art to’s Granry born.

Away to Heavens Palace there to Sing

Sweet Hallelujahs vnto Christ our king

With glorified Saints & Angell bright

In Davids Michtam all in glorious white

And in this State I end my mournfull Story

And End my notes y^t leave thee in Endless glory.

XII

Verses made vpon Pope Joan776

An English Priest with’s femall brother went

And here y^t brother lay in; out then sent

Vnto y^e Priest, his father, Gilbert namd,

The child vp grew, soon learning good obtaind

A promp disputant grew: was men beside

In [ ] in inky pig Sty & abide

Did still therein a Certain time & will

And now broke out his sharpend wit y^t still

Acts quickly shew y^mselves & out do Crawle

Will not lie hid vnder a monkish cawle

Gilbert y^e Name is purely Masculine

But Natures nature markes it for a Feminine

But be it Hic or Haec its dads delight

And for an Epicene we still it write.

But Gilbert is masculine y^t Cheate we see

Is hood winckt with y^e name tho’ He or She

Time will disclose y^t Secret with its roofe

When nature’s not conceald vnder a moofe777

But let y^e babe a pullet be as still

It soon will shew if’t be a Cockrill

But what’s designd of knavery to bee

We leave y^e Case itself & say judge yee.

In Athens grindlestone she sharpend her wit

And so to play y^e knave shes much more fit

She tarries not at Athens but doth soon

Takes vp her trugwheles & so jogs to Rome.

And here a glorious name obtains even then

Not so much ’mong y^e Vulgar as with learned men

And here an English learnd man doth peare

Here a glory greet her Leo in den

She’s judgd full learned by y^e clergy men

Yea Gilbert is held to be such by th’imperiall Voice

And so is hipt in Peters Chair in a trice

And proovs as arch as any of them all

And John the Eighth is now her coment all

Now Jack & Jin is now the Common theme

The Popedom now’s a filthy Epicene.

And thus we see how popedoms natures vary

As Cleveland778 tunde it out of Philip & Mary

And as y^e lustfull Sparrow here wee see

Haec Aquila an Eagle he or shee

Bishops, Priests, Deacons Will-fill Consecrated

Temples & Altars raisd Mass Celebrated

She sacraments administers also,

Temples & Churches Consecrated shew

She Crowneth Kings, doth mighty Nobles dubs

The backs of Such she Stately claps & rubs.

Sends gifts to Kings, most consecrated toys

And most ridiculous to wise mens Eyes.

Holds out her Stinking toes to them to kiss

And Such as other popes did, so doth this

This Female Father big with Child soon grew

She now big bellid was, yet known by few.

This female Father hood of Popedom had

As Cockery y^t had for her his tred.

And on her secretly within her nest

That matter was performd as was held best.

This Cockrill was sly shewd not his wings

Nor shewd his Spurs nor Cockscumb but out brings

His manly instrument y^t did y^e deed

But did enclosit vp as all did Speed.

Gilbert indeed w^ch is his proper theme

Is quickly evidencd an Epicene.

For her y^e lustfull Sparrow doth agree

With Aquilla an Eagle Hee or She.

The Greeks vse genders onely three. We know

The Roman tongue hath five & so

His Fatherhood can in no wise Spare Such

A gender as y^e Gendering pope vse much.

Resolve me Sir, & if your Headship can

Which sutes you best y^e Woman or y^e Man

The Common gender sutes y^t gendring pope.

And such is [ ] Sir, a well twist rope.

The Common Gender necessarily

Doth with y^e pope in best of all comply.

Your Chastity pretended out did thrust

Such Sorrowfull Words of Gregory pope full just

When y^t his fish pond sends him for fish,

A many Babies Sculls, a vsuall dish

Whereon he burst out & it thus was turnd

Its better far to marry than lust burn’d.

The Common Gender you make vse of most

As y^t w^ch best delights your ghostly ghosts

Your Popedom in dad Gilbert prooves with child

It brake its prison, So your game is Spoild.

In his processioning from the Vatican

To th’Lateran, between Old Nero’s whelp out ran

His very Guts & so this bastard Spawn

Not far from those then: a pope whence its fawn

His belly broke & out rowld y^e bastard [ ]

And in this Childing place is raisd a Cross

That doth commemorate this Popedom loss.

And in this Childing place where In’s brought bed

It is recorded th’pope doth never tread

And now old Sir, whether you laugh or frown

You ware her Cleaning on your triple Crown

Pope Jone’s hard travell did he after bare

The glorious Stoole calld y^e Porphory Chair

The Spurs & Comb are signs y^t often faile

A surer note is found lying in y^e taile

And hence y^e youngest deacon’s made y^e toole

To tunn y^e bird even at y^e Porphory Stoole

Fit for to ware y^t triple Crown so gay

And Canning him lest that he be or may

A Pullet prove & lay another Egge in th’popes warm bed

[ ]

In Peters Chair & where he [ ] found

And now he’s found by feeling he is round

Surrounded is, & forthwith is Crownd

Such [ ] matters popish [ ]

Do stuff religion with worse than Scoggins jests.

The Editor communicated by title the following paper by Mr. Peter Oliver:

The Boston Theatre, 1800

THE variety of entertainment proffered the Boston public in 1800 by the management of the resident theatrical company ranged from Romeo and Juliet to such anonymous eccentricities as Mother Pitcher, or The Lynn Fortune Teller. Early in January Giles L. Barrett, the manager, could have been heard as Shylock—“A Daniel come to judgment. Yea a Daniel!”—and a few weeks later as Wolsey bidding a long farewell to all his greatness. From these heights of tragedy came the inevitable descent into melodrama, followed, happily, by a rise again into comedy with the lighter and more frivolous strains from the songsters and comedians.

While, despite the music by Dr. Arnold, the Chorus of Moors from Colman’s Mountaineers,

The sun is sunk and from afar

See the pale bright evening star,

Soon the wolf begins to prowl. . . .

leaves one today with slight regret at having been born too late to enjoy a performance of this once popular favorite, a later song in the same play sounds more attractive:

Think you your tawny Moor is true, pretty Agnes,

If I wish for ought but you, this it is dear Agnes,

Tis to hear the music tinking

While the lusty wine I’m drinking

Nothing more dear Agnes.

Tink-a-tink the music goes,

While the gugling liquor flows.

Gugling gugling, glug-a-glug

Glug-a-glug, dear Agnes

Glug-a-glug, dear Agnes.

Nearly all the many songs of John O’Keefe and William Shield are good; some are still remembered, such as “Amo Amas I Love a Lass” with its

O how bella

My puella.

and its chorus:

Rorum Corum Sunt Divorum

Harum Scarum divo

Tag-rag-merry-derry, periwig, and hat-band

Hic hoc horum, gentitivo.

It is no wonder that The Agreeable Surprise, by the same two, was still popular in 1800 though it had been playing steadily since 1781. O’Keefe, in his recollections, says that the great Macklin, on the first night, said it was the best farce in the English language except The Son-in-Law (also by O’Keefe), and though this comment comes perhaps from a prejudiced source, O’Keefe was a modest man.

There is room for one more quotation, Lingo’s song from Act I of The Agreeable Surprise, which in the performance in Boston on March 28, 1800, was sung by Mr. Villiers:

1. Such beauties in view I

Can never praise too high

Not Pallas’s blue eyes

Is brighter than thine;

Not fount of Susannah,

Nor gold of fair Danae

Nor moon of Diana,

So clearly can shine;

Not beard of Silenus,

Nor tresses of Venus,

I swear by Quae Genus,

With yours can compare;

Nor Hermes Caduces,

Nor flower-de-luces,

Nor all the nine muses,

To me is so fair.

Chorus What posies and roses

To noses discloses;

Your breath all so sweet

To the tip of your lip;

As they trip, the bees dip;

Honey sip, like choice flip

And their Hybla forget

2. When girls like you pass us,

I saddle Pegasus,

And ride up Parnassus

To Helicon’s stream.

Even that is a puddle,

Where others may muddle,

My nose, let me fuddle

In bowls of your cream.

Old Jove, the great Hector

May tipple his Nectar,

Of gods the Director

And thunder above;

I’d quaff off a full can

As Bacchus or Vulcan

Or Jove, the old Bull can

To her that I love.

Chorus What posies and roses

To noses discloses. . . .

Thus, more or less for ninety evenings between January and the end of the year 1800, the public took some of its pleasure.

On those ninety evenings were given ninety full-length plays—comedy, tragedy, and what was a little ambiguously called “drama”; eighty-odd secondary pieces, ballad operas, masques, pantomimes, and farces; and some twenty-five less imposing performances designed to mark special occasions: eulogies, monodies, and dirges on the late George Washington during January and February, masonic entertainments and olios, and a few specially advertised popular songs such as Mrs. Rowson’s Standard of Liberty and Paine’s Adams and Liberty, which were announced for October 30 in honor of the birthday of President John Adams.

The Boston theatre in 1800 differed little from that of New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Each city boasted its own company, which usually performed three nights a week until spring (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were the favorite nights). There would be occasional special performances in town in the summer and fall, but during most of that time the companies were on tour, reopening at home towards the end of October.

The Philadelphia company covered Baltimore, Annapolis, Norfolk, and Alexandria, while the troupe at Charleston, though playing in that city during the winter and at nearby Sullivan’s Island in the summer, found time to put on a half dozen or so performances in Savannah. The New York company did not go on tour in 1800, though both it and the Boston company had played in Connecticut in previous years. A wave of piety, however, engulfed the Connecticut legislature in this year 1800 with the result that theatrical performances were banned under penalty of a fifty-dollar fine, half of which “shall go to the suer.”

In 1800, from May 19 until the end of June, the Boston company was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where they seem to have performed about once a week. On the Fourth of July most of the players were in Boston again for a special performance of Inkle and Yarico, and a week later, on July 11, they opened the Portland season with Lovers’ Vows and The Widow and the Riding Horse. Here they stayed till the twentieth of August, presenting the thrice weekly performances they were wont to give in Boston, the last of which, Bunker Hill, was described in the Portland Oriental Trumpet as having been played “to an overflowing house.”

Thence they departed to Providence where the announcement that the theatre would open on September I appeared two days before, and where on September 8 the tragedy The Gamester and the farce The Jew and the Doctor were advertised as the last “before the return of the Company to Newport.” The details of the Newport season are scant. A notice of The Battle of Hexham, announced for Wednesday, September 17, said that the days of performance were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The notice for Wednesday, October I, pointed out that this was the last week.

But as early as the end of August a number of the company had forsaken the road to put on a sort of interim season at the Haymarket Theatre in Boston before the formal beginning of the winter season at the Federal Street Theatre. Performances were given once or twice a week until October 22, which was announced as “positively the last night.”

Since October, 1799, the Boston company had been under the management of Giles L. Barrett, an Englishman who had come to this country in 1796 and had played first in America in Boston during the first days of the Haymarket Theatre. He went the following year to New York to join the John Street Company but seems not to have been particularly successful, for in January, 1799, he informed the public in a newspaper advertisement of his intent to open a school of fencing. However, on the return of John Hodgkinson from Boston to join William Dunlap at the new Park Theatre in the fall of that year, Barrett repaired to Boston, and in the Independent Chronicle for October 14, referring to himself as “the sole manager of the Boston Theatre,” he announced that “neither pains nor expence will be spared” to assure the success of the coming season. A few minor troubles plagued him early. On October 25 he was forced to advertise that “on no account [was] a Segar to be smoked in the Theatre”; and a few days later he expressed his hope “that no gentleman will take offence at being refused admittance behind the scenes.”

But the season seems to have opened that fall auspiciously. The craze for Kotzebue was well started. His Count Benyowski was played on October 28, and before the end of the year there were two performances of The Horse and the Widow, at least one of The Stranger, and, in December, four of the favorite, Pizarro. On January 1, 1800, the last year of the century began with William Whitehead’s tragedy, The Roman Father, together with William Bates’s popular pantomime, Humours of Gil Bias, and a monody on the death of Washington as additional attractions.

The criteria by which theatrical entertainments were then judged differed somewhat from those of today. It was not required, in order that a play might entertain, that it be written the moment before its production, though some of the plays put on in 1800 had just been written and were produced then for the first time. While the play most often given in Boston that year was Thomas Morton’s Speed the Plough, in which “What will Mrs. Grundy think?” fell first on American ears—a play only written in 1798; and while the mighty Kotzebue was the playwright who, by a wide margin, led the list as far as popularity was concerned, with four performances of his Pizarro, three each of False Shame and The Stranger, two of The Wise Men of the East, and single presentations of Count Benyowski, Lovers’ Vows, Self Immolation, and Sighs; still the general run of the repertoire had long since been accepted by the theatre-going public and did not need the element of novelty to sustain it. George Lillo’s tragedy, George Barnwell, had served faithfully from 1731 to be given four times again in 1800; and if O’Keefe, Charles and Thomas J. Dibdin, George Colman, Jr., Thomas P. Lathy, Morton, Arthur Murphy, John T. Allingham, and many of the other playwrights were contemporaries, still Bostonians saw that year a play by Molière and three by Shakespeare, while most of the plays of Mrs. Centlivre, Colley Cibber, Matthew G. Lewis, Samuel Birch, Isaac Bickerstaffe, David Garrick, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan that were offered had stood the test of a quarter of a century or longer.

Compared with such old favorites as these, the plays of Kotzebue, so far as the details of their plots and action were concerned, were indeed novelties, yet their pattern was apparent and simple and of an ancient popularity. His comedy was really comedy and his tragedy bare and unrelieved tragedy, intended to be very sad—and no doubt on the whole accepted as such—though from its almost complete dissociation from reality it occasionally became unintentionally humorous. When Kotzebue’s heroes and heroines died, as they almost invariably did, they died decisively by being strangled, stabbed, sacrificed on some heathen altar, poisoned, or plunged into some roaring cataract.

The lighter pieces in the theatrical fare of 1800 were peopled with princes and obles disguised as beggars or rustics. And when a villain plotted his villainy, it was a safe assumption that, for the audience’s comfort, behind some secret panel the hero or heroine or their guardian angel could be observed to be listening.

Boston, as has been said, had a number of first nights in 1800, notably of plays by Kotzebue and O’Keefe. It also saw a number of plays by American authors. Daranzel, or The Persian Patriot, by “a gentleman of Boston” (David Everett), was given two performances, with the magnanimous promise of the author that if there were a third, the profits should go to the author of the best eulogy of Washington. Also given twice were William Brown’s West Point Preserved, Thomas Pike Lathy’s Reparation, and the anonymous Mother Pitcher, or The Lynn Fortune Teller. There were single performances of John Daly Burk’s Bunker Hill (that “rather discredited” play, as Odell calls it), Brown’s The Times, or A Scarcity of Cash, Lathy’s New England Captive, or The Dey of Algiers Outwitted, and David Humphreys’ Widow of Malabar.

Also new to the audience were the various special performances in connection with the death of Washington and such popular spectacles as The American Volunteers (three performances) and The Constellation, or America Triumphant. There was novelty, too, in the occasional evenings of music hall or vaudeville entertainment given either by members of the resident theatrical company, such as Mr. Bates or Mr. Villiers, or, as on one occasion in December, by outsiders, Messrs. Maginnis and Robinson.

Whatever the choice of plays and the acting may have lacked, there was compensation in the magnificence of the spectacles provided when the plots permitted—and sometimes regardless of whether they did or not. The production of Everett’s Daranzel, or The Persian Patriot, with music by von Hagen, included “the storming of a citadel” and the “destruction of the Persian fleet.” Morton’s Columbus included a scene of sacrifice in the Temple of the Sun and “the explosion of a volcano.”

Pizarro, given on March 7 “with Audin’s new scenery,” piled Ossa on Pelion. Act I was laid in “a magnificent pavilion with a distant view of the Spanish camp”; the first scene of Act II was “a bank surrounded by wild woods and rocks”; the second showed “a procession to the Temple of the Sun and a solemn sacrifice.” Later scenes presented “distant views of the Peruvian camp,” wild retreats among “the stupendous rocks,” dungeons in the rocks, triumphal processions, and a forest hut “in a dreadful storm with lightning and thunder.” The second scene of Act V showed “a torrent falling over a precipice bridged by a fallen tree”; and the newspaper advertisements promised the prospective patron that in this scene he would see “Rolla tearing the tree from the supporting rock as the Spaniards crossed, to dash them into the cataract.” This simple piece concluded with “the funeral procession of Rolla, and a solemn dirge.”

On another occasion, at a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII there was inserted after the coronation of Anne an episode showing “the mode and manner of delivering the usual challenge given by the Champion of England, on Horseback on the Stage.” The Rival Queens had in Act II “the entry of Alexander the Great into Babylon”; and the afterpiece that same evening, Oscar and Malvina, contained “the ancient broadsword combat; Oscar’s leap from the tower 18 feet high; the death of Carroll on the bridge; and the conflagration of his whole camp.”

There is a tempting sound to all this. One would like to have seen “the English fleet standing out to sea at moonlight” in Act II of The Widow of Malabar and the procession of Brahmins conducting Mrs. Whitlock as Etimora “to the funeral pyre of her husband.”

That the spectacles were not all solemn splendor, however, is suggested by the dance of the savages in Robinson Crusoe and by Harlequin in The Garden of Love causing “a withered tree to grow flowers and fruit.” The Temple of Fortune779 first played on January 13, showed “Harlequin’s whimsical transformation into one of the celebrated dancing dogs, and a view of an Inn Yard in which he leaped through the window of a post chaise.” Songs and “comic interludes” were plentifully interspersed in the bills. There were numerous chances to hear Mr. Simpson sing “A Twizzle and a Fizz,” or to see Billy Bates as “a Drunken Buck returning from a frolic,” or to behold the “grand and lofty tumblings, flipflops and sumersaults” of the celebrated Mr. Robinson and Mr. Maginnis. On December 24, after a performance of Kotzebue’s Sighs, Robinson gave his imitation of birds, and the same night Maginnis danced “the much admired Spanish Fandango blindfolded over 13 eggs, playing the castanets.”

Despite frivolous interludes, however, this was a serious theatrical company, conscientiously engaged in the business proper to it. Nor was it, by the standards of that time, mean fare that it offered to its public. Besides Henry VIII, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo and Juliet, there were The Country Wife, The School for Scandal, She Stoops to Conquer, and The Rivals. And while the year 1800 regarded Kotzebue as the equal of Shakespeare (indeed a New York paper proclaimed him Shakespeare’s successor), and while such tragedies as several of those by Arthur Murphy performed that year have been described fairly enough as “among the worst that have ever obtained any reputation,” others of the tragedies are not to be despised, and many of the comedies, farces, and ballad operas would be considered adequate and delightful entertainment by most critical standards. Bickerstaffe’s Thomas and Sally, or The Sailor’s Return (this, bear in mind, with music by Dibdin), Garrick’s Bon Ton, or High Life above Stairs and The Lying Valet, Townley’s High Life below Stairs (embellished with a mock minuet by the drunken servants who are the characters), Thomas John Dibdin’s The Jew and the Doctor, Mrs. Siddons’ Quarter of an Hour before Dinner, Fielding’s Mock Doctor (from Molière), Sheridan’s pantomime, Robinson Crusoe, O’Keefe’s Poor Soldier and Highland Reel, both with the charming music of Shield—all these and many more of the productions of that year would do credit to any theatrical season.

During the first half of the year, up to the summer season, Barrett, the manager, took most of the better parts for himself. He was the Shy-lock and the Wolsey; he was Norval in Douglas, Rolla in Pizarro, Horatius, savior of his country, in The Roman Father, Captain Absolute in The Rivals. Mr. and Mrs. Powell and Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock divided the other desirable rôles with Mr. and Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Graupner.

Mr. Bates—“Billy Bates”—sometime of London, more recently of Philadelphia and New York, was apparently equal to almost anything and was the backbone and strength of the harlequinade as Harlequin in the several performances of Harlequin’s Wishing Cap, Harlequin Salamander, and Harlequin Dr. Faustus. The full company consisted of the six couples, the Barretts, the Dickinsons, the Harpers, the Powells, the Simpsons, and the Whitlocks, assisted by Mrs. Graupner, Miss Ellen Westray, and Messrs. Kedey, Coles, Bates, Lathy, Munto, and Usher.

On March 10 Mr. Villiers appeared as Simplicus in The Deserter of Naples, and from then on he was conspicuous in musical rôles. Master Bates and Miss Bates first appeared in the Fourth of July production of Inkle and Yarico at the Haymarket, as did Mr. Maginnis (acrobat and tumbler) and Mr. Downie; and in the afterpiece, Harlequin Dr. Faustus, “a young lady” (so described in the newspaper notices, but not otherwise identifiable) was the miller’s wife. On August 18, in The Busybody, Messrs. Dikes and Moore joined the company. During the spring and summer Mrs. Barrett, like her husband, seems to have done pretty well for herself, playing, among other parts, Portia, Lydia Languish, Floranthe in The Mountaineers, Zaphira in Daranzel, and Cora in Pizarro.

But in the fall the Barretts were gone, and it was Charles E. Whitlock who, in the Independent Chronicle, made the announcement on October 27 that “the theatre will open this evening” with the favorite comedy Speed the Plough. And as a natural result of displacing Barrett as manager, Whitlock—and his wife—took over the best parts, for such seems to have been the manager’s privilege if he was an actor.

Whitlock had come to America a few years before from London, where he had attained some success due apparently to the attractiveness of his wife, Eliza, the youngest daughter of the famous Kemble family and the sister of Mrs. Siddons. She as a young girl had met him when she was playing in Bath and had married him in 1785. He was the manager of the Newcastle circuit of theatres and a partner of Joseph Munden. After their marriage she attained some fame in London. In this country she came first to join Wignell and the Philadelphia company. Her first appearance in Boston was on October 3, 1796, in the title rôle of Southerne’s Isabella.

When Boston’s winter season opened, there were several newcomers: Mr. Jones as Percy, Mr. Pikes as Sir Hubart, and Miss Field as Berthia in Mrs. More’s Percy, Earl of Northumberland (October 30), and in the afterpiece that same night, O’Keefe’s The Poor Soldier, Mrs. Jones,780 the most notable addition to the cast that year, as Nora. A Mr. Parsons joined the company a few days later, and on November 3 Mr. Barnes appeared as Snatch in The School for Scandal.

Whitlock had competition to meet during the fall and early winter of 1800, as is seen from Messrs. Robinson’s and Maginnis’ advertisement of their third night of separate entertainment at the Haymarket Theatre on December 16. Apparently they were cutting seriously into Whitlock’s business at the Federal Street Theatre, for on the twenty-third Maginnis advertised alone, and Whitlock’s announcement of Sighs a day later offered the added attraction of Mr. Robinson.

The last performance of the year at Whitlock’s theatre was on December 29 when George Barnwell and Knight’s The Turnpike Gate were given, followed by Mr. Robinson with his imitations of birds and acrobatics.

So ended the year, one important for many things outside the theatre: for our undeclared war with France; for the rapidly approaching climax of our affairs with the Barbary pirates; for the rising of the star of Napoleon, which had just begun to be apparent in this country; and for the New Deal in American politics that dealt out Adams and the New England conservatives and dealt in Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans. And the year was notable also if only for the fact that in that year, in Boston, people concerned themselves for the first time, as they have not ceased to do, over the possible significance of the state of mind of that terrific lady, not young then, and yet today, after one hundred and forty years, no older—Mrs. Grundy.

Appendix

Theatrical Performances in Boston, 1800

Federal Street Theatre

January	1		The Roman Father		William Whitehead
			Humours of Gil Bias		William Bates
			Monody on the Death of George Washington
	3		London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell		George Lillo
			Humours of Gil Bias		Bates
			Monody on the Death of George Washington
	6		The Merchant of Venice		William Shakespeare
			The Harlequin Salamander
	8		Wild Oats, or The Strolling Gent		John O’Keefe
			The Harlequin Salamander
	9		Douglas		John Home
			Monody on the Death of George Washington
			Preparations for a Cruise, or The Boston Sailor		Mr. Bates, from O’Keefe’s The Positive Man
	10		The Castle Spectre		Matthew Gregory Lewis
			The Harlequin Salamander
	13781		Blue Beard, or Female Curiosity		George Colman, Jr., music by Michael Kelly
			Harlequin’s Wishing Cap, or The Gift of Fortunatus
			The Prodigal		Francis Godolphin Waldron, from Aaron Hill
	15		The Prodigal		Waldron
			Blue Beard, or Female Curiosity		Colman, Jr.
			Harlequin’s Wishing Cap
	17		Count Benyowski		August Frederick Ferdinand von Kotzebue
			Harlequin’s Wishing Cap
	20		Pizarro		Kotzebue, music by Alexander Reinagleand Raynor Taylor
			Bon Ton, or High Life above Stairs		David Garrick
	22		Five Thousand a Year		Charles Dibdin
			High Life below Stairs		James Townley
	24		The Prodigal		Waldron
			Five Thousand a Year		Charles Dibdin
			The Adopted Child		Samuel Birch, music by P. A. von Hagen
	27		Pizarro		Kotzebue
			The Horse and the Widow		Kotzebue
	29		Daranzel, or The Persian Patriot		David Everett, music by von Hagen
			The Ghost		Susannah Centlivre
	31		The Battle of Hexham, or Days of Old		Colman, Jr., music by Samuel Arnold
			The Devil to Pay, or Wives Metamorphosed		Charles Coffey and John Mottley, from Thomas Jevons
February	3		The Mountaineers		Colman, Jr., music by Arnold
		The Constellation, or America Triumphant
	5	Daranzel, or The Persian Patriot			Everett, music by von Hagen
		The True Born Irishman			Charles Macklin
		John Codline Returned
	6	The World As It Goes
		Shakespeare’s Seven Ages
		Eulogy to the Memory of General Washington
	7	Bunker Hill			John Daly Burk
		The Spoiled Child			Dorothy Bland Jordan from Mme. de Genlis782
	10	Pizarro			Kotzebue, music by Reinagle and Taylor
		The Old Maid			Arthur Murphy
	11	The Roman Father			Whitehead
		Monody on the Death of George Washington
		Masonic Olio
	13	Be Merry and Wise
		Eulogy to the Memory of General Washington
	17783	Columbus			Thomas Morton, from Thelwel’s Incas, music by von Hagen
		The Jew and the Doctor			Thomas J. Dibdin
	19	The Secret			Edward Morris
		The Waterman, or The First of August			Charles Dibdin
	21	The Secret			Morris
		The Padlock			Isaac Bickerstaffe music by Dibdin
	24	Bunker Hill			Burk
		The Constellation, or America Triumphant
	26	False Shame			Kotzebue
		The Waterman, or The First of August			Charles Dibdin
	28	False Shame			Kotzebue
		The Irishman in London			William Macready, Sr.
March	3	Lovers’ Vows			Kotzebue
		The Village Lawyer			Macready, Sr., from the French of Charles Lyons
	5		False Shame	Kotzebue
			The American Volunteers
	7		Pizarro	Kotzebue, music by Reinagle and Taylor
			The American Volunteers
	10		Henry VIII	Shakespeare
			The Deserter of Naples
	12		Reparation, or A School for Libertines	Thomas Pike Lathy
			Thomas and Sally	Bickerstaffe
			The American Volunteers
	14		The Rival Queens, or Alexander the Great	Thomas Holcroft
			Oscar and Malvina784	Music by William Shield
	17		The Rivals	Richard Brinsley Sheridan
			Inkle and Yarico	Colman, Jr., music by Arnold
	19		Reparation, or A School for Libertines	Lathy
			The New-England Captive, or The Dey of Algiers Outwitted	Lathy
	21		Agnes of Bernauer	Murphy
			The Highland Reel	O’Keefe, music by Shield
			Ode to the Memory of the Late General Washington
	24		The Widow of Malabar	David Humphreys, from the French of Lemierre
			The Maid of the Oaks	John Burgoyne
			Harlequin Indian
	28785		Next-Door Neighbors	Elizabeth Simpson Inchbald
			The Agreeable Surprise	O’Keefe, music by Arnold
			Robinson Crusoe	Sheridan
	31		Every One Has His Fault	Mrs. Inchbald
			An Occasional Address	Anthony Pasquin
			No Song, No Supper	Prince Hoare, music by Stephen Storace
April	4		The West Indian	Richard Cumberland
			Robinson Crusoe	Sheriden
	7		The Married Man	Mrs. Inchbald
			Hob in the Well	Colley Cibber
			Robinson Crusoe	Sheridan
	10		Such Things Are	Mrs. Inchbald
			Harlequin’s Medley
	14		Henry II, or The Fall of Fair Rosamund	Thomas Hull
			The King and Miller of Mansfield	Robert Dodsley
			The Life and Death of Harlequin
	15		Self Immolation	Kotzebue
			The Times, or A Scarcity of Cash	Brown786
	16		The Wrangling Lovers	William Lyon
			St. Patrick’s Day	Sheridan
	18		West Point Preserved	William Brown
			Mother Pitcher, or The Lynn Fortune Teller
			A Masonic Address
	21		The Spanish Barber	George Colman, Sr., from Beaumarchais, music by Arnold
			The Garden of Love, or The Wounds of Cupid Healed by Hymen	Audin
			The Mayor of Garratt	Samuel Foote
	23		Next-Door Neighbors	Mrs. Inchbald
			Modern Antiques	O’Keefe
	25		West Point preserved	William Brown
			Mother Pitcher
	28		A Bold Stroke for a Husband	Hannah Parkhouse Cowley
			Botheration	W. Coulton

Summer Season at The Haymarket

July	4	Inkle and Yarico	Colman, Jr., music by Arnold
		Harlequin Dr. Faustus	From The Necromancer by Woodward
August	18	The Busybody
		Harlequin Dr. Faustus	From The Necromancer by Woodward
	25	The Country Girl	Garrick, from Wycherley
		Harlequin’s Invasion	Garrick, music by George Gillingham
September	4	London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell	Lillo
		The Horse and the Widow	Kotzebue
		The King and Miller of Mansfield	Dodsley
	8	The Wise Man of the East	Kotzebue
		The Spoiled Child	Mrs. Jordan
	11	Next-Door Neighbors	Mrs. Inchbald
		The Deaf Lover	Frederick Pilon
		The Virgin Unmasked	Henry Fielding
	15	The West Indian	Cumberland
		The Sailor’s Reprisal	From Tobias Smollett
	18	The Wise Man of the East	Kotzebue
		The Sailor’s Ballad of Lovely Nan	Charles Dibdin
		The Sailor’s Reprisal	From Smollett
	22	Speed the Plough	Morton
		All the World’s a Stage	Isaac Jackman
	25	Speed the Plough	Morton
		The Lying Valet	Garrick
October	6	She Stoops to Conquer	Oliver Goldsmith
		The Mock Doctor	Henry Fielding, from Molière
	14787	Animal Magnetism	Mrs. Inchbald
		Set a Beggar on Horseback, and He’ll Ride to the Devil788
		Harlequin Medley
	17789	Speed the Plough	Morton
		A Beggar on Horseback	O’Keefe
	22	The Rivals	Sheridan
		The Examination of Dr. Last	Foote
		The Village Lawyer	Macready, Sr., from the French of Lyons

Fall Season of 1800—Federal Street Theatre

October	27	Speed the Plough	Morton
		Rosina	Frances Moore Brooke, music by Shield
	30	Percy, Earl of Northumberland	Hannah More
		The Poor Soldier	O’Keefe, music by Shield
		Adams and Liberty	Thomas Paine790
	31	Speed the Plough	Morton
		Rosina	Mrs. Brooke, music by Shield
November	3	The School for Scandal	Sheridan
		The Adopted Child	Birch, music by von Hagen
	5	The Natural Son	Cumberland
		The Highland Reel	O’Keefe, music by Shield
	7	Douglas	Home
		The Village Lawyer	Macready, Sr., from the French of Lyons
	10	Sighs	Kotzebue
		The Agreeable Surprise	O’Keefe, music by Arnold
	12	Sighs	Kotzebue
		The Jew and the Doctor	T. J. Dibdin
	14	Speed the Plough	Morton
		The Mock Doctor	Fielding, from Molière
	17	The Stranger	Kotzebue
		The Ghost	Mrs. Centlivre
	19	The Castle Spectre	Lewis
		The Lying Valet	Garrick
	21	The Stranger	Kotzebue
		Miss in Her Teens	Garrick
	24	The Birthday	T. J. Dibdin, from Kotzebue, orchestral accompaniments by Victor Pelisier
		The Waterman	Charles Dibdin
		Preparation for a Cruise, or The Boston Sailor
	26	The Stranger	Kotzebue
		The Purse, or The Benevolent Tar	James C. Cross, music by William Reeve
	28	The Castle Spectre	Lewis
		A Quarter of an Hour before Dinner	“Rev. J. Rose”
December	1	Aurelio and Miranda	James Boaden
		The Deuce Is in Him	Colman, Sr.
	3	The Country Girl	Garrick, from Wycherley
		The Padlock	Bickerstaffe, music by Dibdin
	5	London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell	Lillo
		Fortune’s Frolic	John Till Allingham
	8	The Mountaineers	Colman, Jr., music by Arnold
		Fortune’s Frolic	Allingham
	10	Romeo and Juliet	Shakespeare
		The Spoiled Child	Mrs. Jordan
	12	The Votary of Wealth	Joseph George Holman
		Rosina	Mrs. Brooke, music by Shield
	15	The Votary of Wealth	Holman
		The Padlock	Bickerstaffe, music by Dibdin
	17	The Mountaineers	Colman, Jr., music by Arnold
		Fortune’s Frolic	Allingham
	19	The Votary of Wealth	Holman
		All the World’s a Stage	Jackman
	22	The Grecian Daughter	Murphy
		The Turnpike Gate	Thomas Knight
	23	Babes in the Wood	Maginnis
		“The Venetian Moore on the Slack Wire”
	24	Sighs	Kotzebue
		Mr. Robinson’s “imitation of Various Birds Egg Hornpipe, Antipodean Whirligig,” etc.
	26	The Country Girl	Garrick
		The Turnpike Gate	Knight
		Mr. Robinson’s Imitations
	29	London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell	Lillo
		The Turnpike Gate	Knight
		Mr. Robinson’s Imitations791

The Editor communicated by title the following paper by Mr. John E. Alden:

John Mein: Scourge of Patriots

I

DURING the tense months of 1775 which preceded the nineteenth of April there appeared in Boston a small volume entitled Sagittarius’s Letters and Political Speculations, inscribed, with tongue in cheek, “to the very loyal and truly pious Doctor Samuel Cooper.” While there is no record of Boston’s reception of the work, which reprinted articles and extracts that had first appeared in the London Public Ledger, it undoubtedly created a minor sensation at the time, comprising as it did a scathing attack upon Bostonians in general and the leaders of the patriot faction in particular.

As with any pseudonymous piece of literature the authorship of which is not specifically admitted by its writer, there must ever remain a certain degree of doubt as to who actually wrote these Letters. None the less, there need be little question that their author was one John Mein, a Scotch bookseller who had been in business in Boston from 1764 to 1770.792

It is true that upon the first appearance of Sagittarius’ letters in London in the Public Ledger they were for a brief time attributed to various persons. Notable among these was William Knox, Under-Secretary of State for America since 1770.793 It is obviously to Knox, for instance, that the following squib from the London Public Advertiser for Friday, May 6, 1774, refers:

It is a strong proof, says a correspondent, of the extreme good-nature of Lord Dartmouth, that he suffers his secretary to publish, under the signature of Sagetarius a thousand inflammatory falshoods, to justify and promote the present violent and unjust measures, to which his Lordship, both in judgment and feeling, is so much averse.

This statement, however, brought forth a denial which appeared in the same newspaper on Saturday, May 28:

The letters signed “Sagittarius” published in the Ledger, having been imputed to a gentleman in a public office by persons in respectable situations, as well as by anonymous writers in the newspapers, in justice to the author of those letters, as well as out of deference to the public opinion, we are authorized to assert that none of the letters signed “Sagittarius” were written by that gentleman, and that he never saw any of the papers intitled “State Papers” published in the Ledger until he read them in that newspaper.

This denial, however, was not enough for Problematic, who on May 31, 1774, addressed a letter to the Public Ledger in which he stated that the “State Papers” incorporated in Sagittarius’ essays must of necessity have come from Knox’s office, and that, notwithstanding the printed assertion that Knox had nothing to do with them, the latter was assuredly responsible for their publication. Unfortunately, Problematic was unaware of the fact that all the “most secret papers,” as they were called, came, not from the archives of the Plantations Office, but from Governor Hutchinson’s convenient Collection of Original Papers Relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusets-Bay, which had been published in Boston in 1769.

It was only in July, in the issue of the Public Ledger for the eleventh, that a correspondent calling himself Minos identified Mein as Sagittarius, though by description rather than by name. Although Minos’ letter is long, the violence of its epithets provides a colorful introduction to the man.

Anecdotes of the Writer of Letters Signed Sagittarius and of such Paragraphs Denominated Political Speculations, as relate to the Americans

The hero of this letter has no claim to public notice but what arises from his uncommon depravity. He is a Scotchman, and was a pedlar, until the load on his back having aggravated the soreness of an inveterate itch, he quitted this erratic employment, and, with a few old books, transported himself to Boston in New England, where he kept a stall, there called a huckster’s shop.

In this humble station he was not only industrious, but servile and apparently honest; qualities which procured him the compassionate notice of his superiors, and a recommendation for credit to an eminent bookseller of Paternoster Row [i.e., Thomas Longman]; who, confiding in the alledged honesty and industry of our stallman, entrusted him with a large supply of new, instead of old books; in consequence of which he took a shop, and became a bookseller and circulating library keeper. But this elevation was too great and sudden for the intellects of our pedlar, who soon verified the old proverb, that “a beggar on horseback will ride to the devil.” Forgetting his origin, his obligations, and himself, he became not only prodigal, conceited, arrogant, lazy and profligate, but in the progress of his infatuation, set himself up as a free-thinker, and, assisted by the Dictionaire Philosophique, &c., openly ridiculed the Christian religion. At this period, the Commissioners and Officers of the new created Board of Customs arrived in Boston, and the splendid emoluments annexed to their respectable employments, so allured our hero, that he determined to relinquish every other pursuit, and sacrifice every object, to obtain an office in the revenue; and so strong was his phrensy on this subject, that, to promote the success of his wishes, he would doubtless have betrayed even the Son of God; not from fear, like the first Judas, but from a more heinous depravity. This crime, indeed, was not wanted, either by Governor Bernard or the Board of Customs, and, therefore, at the beginning, he could only prove his servile devotion, by an unremitting attention to the duties of pimp, flatterer, emissary, lyar, and scandal monger to the Junto, from whom he expected preferment. But at length, to strengthen his claims by the most scandalous sacrifices and services, he confederated with a Scotch printer in setting up a news-paper, to be wholly employed in propagating falsehoods, to serve the cause of his party, traducing certain private characters, slandering the people of America, and misrepresenting their measures; and the manner in which this paper was conducted soon gained him an ample portion of public detestation, but without the expected advantage; for his ignominy and baseness of character were so notorious, that even the men to whom he had been so meanly and dishonourably subservient, were ashamed to countenance or gratify his wishes.

During this time, a considerable number of books had been sold, and the money squandered in drinking and other prodigal excesses; whilst the benevolent creditor, instead of remittances, was amused with fraudulent excuses. At length, however, he was undeceived, and Mr. Hancock, of Boston, was commissioned to secure the few remaining effects, by legal means; in consequence of which the printing press was sold by execution, the slanderous news-paper abolished, and our hero compelled to cross the Atlantic, and seek refuge in London, where, as the only satisfaction left an injured creditor, the carcass of our hero was imprisoned, until the late Act of Insolvency enabled him to elude the payment of his just debts, amounting to more than 2000£. Since this discharge from confinement, our hero, actuated by his former desire of subsisting in idleness, at the public expence, has again become a ministerial writer and place-hunter, and, lest his former scandalous services in America should be thought insufficient, has again devoted himself to the propagation of slander, and zealously undertaken, by every foul expedient, to excite hatred between the people of Great Britain and the people of America, and for this execrable purpose have the letters of Sagittarius been written, which, but for the ignorance of many of your readers, would never have been honoured with the smallest notice, as they consist of old petitions, memorials, letters, answers, &c. copied, with mutilations, from Hutchinson’s History of the Massachusets Bay, and accompanied with malevolent misrepresentations and silly remarks, often repeated, in different words. But so far are these productions from having required, or discovered, abilities in the writer, that a journeyman taylor, with his shears, and the book I have just mentioned (which, en passant, was feloniously secreted by our hero in taking the benefit of the Insolvency Act) might furnish materials for an hundred other letters of Sagittarius, and thereby continue that imposition, under which you have been led to reprint those stale unimportant fragments, and to dignify them with the title of State Papers; all which many of your readers ignorantly believed Sagittarius himself to have laboriously copied from state records in the public offices, and from thence some have referred the letters of Sagittarius to Mr. Knox, and others to Mr. Mauduit, a circumstance which affords but an ill compliment to the abilities of those gentlemen, or to the discernment of your readers.

The political speculations relative to America (written likewise by our hero) are not indeed the work of shears, but result from the depravity of an assassin, and the invention of a liar; they consist of the most impudent falsehoods (which a knowledge of the names and circumstances of individuals in Boston has enabled the writer more plausibly to invent) and the language in which they are conveyed would disgrace even the mouth of a drunken fish-woman.

Such, Mr. Printer, have been the actions of Sagittarius; and such is the man, who, after defrauding the most indulgent of creditors, has been almost incessantly, though falsely, reproaching the people of America with neglecting to pay their debts; who, after stiffling every emotion of shame, resisting every dictate of conscience, and violating every principle of duty, of honour, and of gratitude, has, with unprovoked malice, not only slandered the most spotless and respectable private characters, but licentiously aspersed the whole people of Massachusets Bay with the opprobrious names of smugglers, rebels, and traitors.

It is some time since accident enabled me to discover these later employments and misdemeanours of our hero, but though I could not but feel some indignation, as well as much contempt, from the discovery, I was yet averse from the task of holding him out to public view, knowing that contamination must necessarily result from handling so foul an object. But at length, that sollicitude which nature gave me, and which I hope always to preserve, for the success of the virtuous and discouragement of the vicious, has overcome all other considerations; for, at least, human justice is interested in exposing the crimes of such a wretch, and preventing his success; and all good men should at least hope that no minister will ever be found in this country so insensible to the difference between good and ill desert, so regardless of the consequence of evil example, and so fearful of public censure, as to favour the pursuit, or gratify the wishes of this miscreant.

Before I conclude, Mr. Printer, give me leave to express my concern, that your paper has been debased by the letters and paragraphs in question. A frequent repetition of such foul outrageous slander, must eventually destroy the force of merited satire; and every blessing resulting from our boasted freedom of the press, will naturally cease, after such outrageous abuses of it.

Minos

One can only speculate as to the identity of the author of this curious mixture of truth and libel regarding Mein, an excellent example of eighteenth-century political journalism and diatribe. Two days later (July 13, 1774) what may be Mein’s own reply to Minos’ attack appeared in the Public Ledger over the signature “Truth.” It is noteworthy that Truth does not deny the identification of Mein as Sagittarius, but simply describes and justifies the latter’s conduct:

The intemperate language made use of by your correspondent Minos must throw a discredit on those fictitious anecdotes which he would wish to be believed. His whole letter teems with malice, and is a composition of scurrility, misrepresentation and falsehood. The scurrility and falsehood shall be treated with comtempt—the misrepresentations replied to.

The case of the person alluded to by Minos is a singular proof of the baseness and villainy which have, at all times, actuated the factious confederacy at Boston. Because this person refused to join their unwarrantable combinations, and to aid the circulation of their slanders, he was marked out as an object of destruction. Several ringleaders of the confederacy undertook journies through Massachusets and the neighbouring provinces to ruin his trade, and they also reviled him in their advertisements, for many months, stiling him an enemy to the country.

Finding the measures of the confederates but too successful, and his trade daily sinking, all his customers being threatened with ill usage, if they continued to deal with him; in justice to himself he laid before the public the deceitful conduct of his persecutors, and proved from the port entries at Boston, that the confederates against importing, had, during the course of a twelve month, imported more than a hundred cargoes of goods of almost every denomination; and this detection was the more severe, as they, at the same time, were trumpeting forth to the rest of the colonies their great virtue and strict adherence to the agreement against importing.

Such an unexpected conviction roused the fury of the confederates, and as they could not justify their conduct, they were determined to destroy the person who had exposed them. His house, shop, and offices were repeatedly attacked, the windows and window-frames demolished, and such large stones thrown in as to endanger the lives of those within. At last, more than thirty of the confederates, among whom were one of the present select-men of Boston, assaulted him in the street in the open day, with an intention to murder him, which is confirmed by more than twenty depositions, sworn to before a justice of peace, with the province seal annexed to them.

The confederates in a few minutes amounted to many hundreds, and though by the assistance of the main guard he escaped with life, yet he received a dangerous contusion on the belly, and another large one under the left shoulder blade from a stroke with a spade, aimed at his head by the select-man above-mentioned, who came behind him to give the finishing blow, but happily the stroke only took his shoulder. . . .

Having missed their . . . [quarry] those very men who had assaulted him went to a justice of the peace, and swore a breach of the peace against the man whom they had assaulted; the select-man being one of that number, though he had given the wound in the back himself. This may be thought a very extraordinary instance of perjury; but the Boston confederates are well accustomed and long practiced in such villainy, and can readily procure all sorts of evidences.

At the same time, when this attempt was made, another body of the confederates broke into his house, forced the doors, demolished all the windows and frames, and robbed the house of two guns, which one of the thieves has to this day.

This villainous attempt obliged him to come to England; and it was not to be expected, that when his enemies were the appraisers and purchasers of his effects, that the creditors could be paid. And the Boston advocate, Minos, with great charity, brings the distresses in which this person was involved, by the malignity and persecution of his constituents, as charges against him. Every effort to vindicate the Boston conspirators must prove unsuccessful, their wicked conduct having left their agents no tenable ground; and such attempts to defend them will, as in this case, only cover them with additional infamy.

Truth

The writer of the above letter would be glad of a personal interview with Minos, and for that purpose has left his name with the publishers.

Not till the issue of the Public Ledger of September 24, 1774, is Mein actually cited by name as being Sagittarius—and even then his name is misspelled.

The writer of the letters signed Sagittarius, (one Maine, a rank Scotchman) was some time since a petty-fogging bookseller at Boston in America, from which town he escaped on board a vessel bound to England to avoid the merited punishment of being tarred and feathered for his mal-practices. He was scarcely landed on British ground before he was arrested for debt, and thrown into the King’s Bench prison, from whence he was lately released on condition of prostituting his pen to the service of Government, from which he enjoys a salary. Such are the miscreants employed to write against the injured Americans; to vilify the best characters in this free land; to misrepresent the most stubborn facts and authorities, and to give a colour to those arbitrary steps, and persecuting temper, which has long marked the counsels and actions of the present abominable administration.

Tradition has not challenged this contemporary identification of Mein as Sagittarius. On the verso of the title page of the John Carter Brown Library copy of the Mein and Fleeming edition of William Knox’s anonymous Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed, for instance, there is a note, written in an eighteenth-century hand, describing Mein as the author of Sagittarius’ letters. Isaiah Thomas listed the Boston edition of the letters with the same attribution,794 and all later bibliographers have followed him. There is likewise nothing in the letters which makes it implausible that Mein wrote them, and there is everything to indicate that he did. Sagittarius draws upon an intimate knowledge of Boston and its inhabitants, referring to incidents immediately involving himself. The point of view is that indubitably held by Mein. On grounds of both external and internal evidence, then, he may be accepted as the author of Sagittarius’s Letters and Political Speculations.

II

Who, then, was this Scotchman, pictured in such violent hues in the columns of the Public Ledger?

No full account of John Mein has ever been published although various facets of his life and activities have on occasion been touched upon. Isaiah Thomas has described him briefly as a bookseller and publisher.795 A more recent writer has pointed out that it was Mein who introduced the first circulating library in Boston.796 There have been discussions of the opposition to the nonimportation movement of 1769 which he carried on in the columns of his newspaper, the Boston Chronicle;797 and in other places there are scattered references to his many and varied undertakings. Yet when all the ascertainable facts about him are assembled, the result is still fragmentary.

The earliest record of Mein is his enrollment on December 3, 1760, as a burgess and guildsman of Edinburgh “in the right of [his] father John Mein, Sclater, Burgess and Guildsman.”798 Even at this time he is described as a bookseller. Mein’s father had in turn been a burgess in the right of his father John, likewise a slater, who was the son of George Mein, “tenant in Essiltown,” and had been enrolled in 1666 as an apprentice to Andrew Cassie, “his majesty’s mason.”799

What motives, if any, other than the plausible one of ambition and enterprise brought Mein to Boston cannot be said. He appears to have arrived on Thursday, October 18, 1764,800 a passenger aboard the ship George and James, Robert Montgomery master, seven weeks out of Glasgow.

There also arrived on the George and James the celebrated Robert Sandeman, the disciple of John Glas, whose daughter he had married and whose religious principles he had espoused. Who the other Scots were who are described by Isaiah Thomas as accompanying Sandeman “on a visit to this country with a view of settling here”801 is not fully known, for Sandeman alone was considered important enough to have his name chronicled in the contemporary press.802 Presumably, however, one of them was James Olifant, active as a follower of Glas; and another, James Cargill, elder of the Glassite congregation back in Dunkeld.803 Isaiah Thomas also believed that “a type founder by the name of Mitchelson” arrived in the same vessel.804 Since Mitchelson was a leading member of the Sandemanian church in Boston,805 in addition to being later an employee of Mein, this is reasonable enough. It is very possible that the group also included Sandeman’s nephews Robert and George, sons of his brother William; they were, at any event, in this country shortly afterwards.806

Despite the fact that Mein came to New England in the company of this Sandeman group, there is no evidence that he shared their peculiar religious views and practices.807 For had he done so, there is little doubt that his political foes would have used his relation with such a popularly distrusted religious body as capital against him. Minos, as quoted in the Public Ledger, alone raised the issue of religion. Mein was called many vile things in Boston by those to whom he was anathema, yet no one there seriously questioned his orthodoxy in religion.

After his arrival in Boston Mein did not wait long before setting himself up in business. On November 19, 1764, there appeared in the Boston Gazette an advertisement announcing a shop conducted by Mein and Sandeman in Marlborough Street, “nearly opposite to Bromfield’s Lane.”808 Here might be purchased books and pamphlets, including those by Robert Sandeman, as well as Irish linens and “excellent bottl’d Bristol beer near two years old.”

There is some question as to which member of the Sandeman family Mein’s partner was. Isaiah Thomas, in speaking of Mein, asserts that the latter, when he came to America, was “in company with Mr. Sandeman, a kinsman of Mr. Sandeman of the same Christian name who for a short time was the partner of Mein,” and in another instance speaks of the partner as a nephew of the preacher.809 It is true that Sandeman’s nephew Robert was in America with his uncle during this period. But in 1764 the younger Robert was only eight years old. It is more likely that the relative in question was the other nephew, George, although he was only nine years older than his brother.810 It appears from extant letters written by George Sandeman that he was a person of volatile and uncertain temperament, a problem to his elders. This may readily account for the fact that the partnership was dissolved before many months had elapsed. Sometime between April 11, 1765, when the last advertisement for the Mein and Sandeman shop appeared in the Massachusetts Gazette, and June 17, 1765, when Mein’s name appears alone in the Boston Gazette, the partners had separated. After the latter date the linen goods which had earlier figured in the advertisements were no longer mentioned; obviously this had been Sandeman’s interest in the shop.

Prior to the arrival of Mein the chief bookshop in Boston had been the London Book Store in King Street, run by James Rivington and William Miller.811 Rivington himself was living in New York, and Miller, his Boston partner, died on October 31, 1765.812 Before that, either because of Miller’s illness or because of financial difficulties, the Boston branch of Rivington’s business had been given up.813 Mein then took over the shop, retaining its name. His first advertisement appeared in the Boston Gazette of October 7, 1765. At this shop, furthermore, and in the same month Mein opened the earliest circulating library in Boston, the catalogue of which was advertised in the Massachusetts Gazette of October 31, 1765, as “this day published.”814 Available to Boston readers were some twelve hundred volumes imported from Edinburgh and London and covering all fields of knowledge.

In issuing his catalogue Mein entered upon still another phase of his Boston career, that of publisher. Since Mein himself was not a printer, he had to turn to someone else for the actual work of printing. On the basis of typographical evidence it appears probable that it was William M’Alpine, a fellow Scot living in Boston, who was responsible for printing not only the catalogue but the other works published by Mein before 1767 as well.815

In 1766, further extending his activities, Mein entered into partnership with John Fleeming, another Scotchman.816 Fleeming, who had, according to Isaiah Thomas, been “brought up to printing” in Scotland,817 had arrived in Boston on August 20, 1764,818 and had become associated with M’Alpine.819 He may, indeed, have been the joint printer of the books published by Mein which came from M’Alpine’s press. That Fleeming’s migration bore some relation to the coming of Robert Sandeman to Boston is very possible. For one thing, M’Alpine’s mother-in-law was named Elizabeth Glass,820 a fact which suggests a relationship with John Glas, Sandeman’s father-in-law. In addition, the new firm of M’Alpine and Fleeming promptly published Sandeman’s Some Thoughts on Christianity (Boston, 1765), the earliest of the preacher’s works to appear in America. After entering into partnership with Mein, Fleeming “made a voyage to Scotland, there purchased printing materials for the firm, hired three or four journeymen printers, and accompanied by them returned to Boston,”821 arriving on October 31, 1766, on the snow Jeany, Archibald Orr master, from Glasgow.822

It is impossible to say what the earliest work issued by Mein and Fleeming was. It may have been an edition of Four Dissertations on the Reciprocal Advantages of a Perpetual Union between Great Britain and her American Colonies which Mein advertised prominently in the Boston Gazette of January 12, 1767, and elsewhere. No such edition has survived, however, if it was ever actually published by them. Of those works issued by Mein and Fleeming which still exist two dispute priority: their Massachusetts Register for 1767 and an edition of James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women. Although Evans, in his American Bibliography, ascribes to the former the date 1766, assuming that, as with almanacs, it was printed in the autumn before the year for which it was compiled, it was advertised in the Boston Gazette on February 2, 1767, as “this day published.” Further proof that it was not printed until about this date is found in a letter from Mein to Ezra Stiles, June 18, 1767, in which Mein describes this first number of the Register: “Being the first attempt, and very much hurried, (the whole being collected, printed, and published, in the space of a few Days, about the end of January last) a number of omissions and mistakes unavoidably happened.”823

It is possible to get some idea of the Mein and Fleeming printing shop from an inventory taken of it in 1770, when it comprised two printing presses, with seven frames of type, including some sixty-five cases.824 It was an active and enterprising establishment. In addition to twenty-six publications commonly attributed to Mein and Fleeming during the years 1767–1769 it has been possible, through careful scrutiny of contemporary sources, to ascribe to the firm some sixteen other titles, among them the first American editions of The Vicar of Wakefield and A Sentimental Journey.825

As a natural outgrowth of their printing activities Mein and Fleeming also began the publication of a newspaper, the Boston Chronicle, a prospectus for which was issued on October 22, 1767, and the first issue of which appeared on December 21. Edited by Mein, it gained a considerable reputation, continuing to appear till the June following Mein’s flight to England in November, 1769.

It was not long after starting this newspaper that Mein got himself into difficulties in which his violent and truculent temper came to the fore. In the Boston Gazette of January 18, 1768, there appeared the following letter:

Salem, January 7, 1768

Messieurs Edes and Gill,

Be pleased to insert the following in your Paper, and you’ll oblige your humble Servant,

Americus

When I read the Proposals, for publishing the Boston Chronicle, I tho’t on the Plan with Satisfaction, hoping thereby much good would accrue to America in general, and to this province in particular; with Pleasure I also noted the judicious Advice given Messi’rs Mein & Fleeming by their Friends of Taste. It runs thus:

“We suppose you intend to study your own Interest; if you would do it effectually, be of no Party, publish and propagate with the greatest Industry whatever may promote the general Good. Be Independent—Your Interest is intimately connected with this noble Virtue—If you depart from this, you must sink from the Esteem of the Publick, to the partial Praise of a Party, who, when their Purposes is serv’d or defeated, may perhaps desert you, and then how can you expect that those whom you have revil’d will support you”—To which at that Time they answer’d.—“Whenever any Dispute claims general Attention, the arguments on both Sides shall be laid before the Publick with the utmost Impartiality.”

But to the Surprize of many, how are they fallen off from their own Purposes, and the excellent Caution of their Benefactors—Instead of giving impartial Accounts concerning Affairs at Home, and the unhappy Disputes lately arisen between the greatest Men of the Nation; they have made Choice of, or printed under Cloke of being taken from the London Papers, the most infamous and reproachful Invectives, that ever was invented against the worst of Traitors to their King and Country, and who are these that are thus censur’d? why, men held in the highest esteem and veneration in the British Parliament. Patriots & friends and Deliverers of America from Oppression. He who nobly vindicated her Cause, almost against the whole Senate, who cast behind him all Lucre of Gain, when it came in Competition with the Good of his Country, and sacrific’d his Family-Connections and Interest to the publick Welfare. He that through real Infirmities hardly stood, (not to cover his politic Schemes and Ambition as his Enemies would insinuate) but stood though tottering, and in the Cause of Liberty made that heroic Speech before the august House of Commons, in Opposition to the Stamp-Act, sufficient to eternize his Fame, and ought to be written in Letters of Gold to perpetuate his Memory. Could the Sons of America be ingrateful, or countenance the greatest Falsities, rais’d only to prejudice their best Friends and Benefactors—God forbid! Let that Dishonor stain with the blackest Infamy the Jacobite Party—And though Invectives should be daily thrown out, let us keep our Integrity to the Confusion of our Enemies; who, for a long Time have exerted their Power to shake the Props of our Constitution, and bring a free people into Bondage, thereby to satisfy their more than common Avarice, &c.

The author of this attack upon Mein’s choice of extracts from London papers was, Mein believed, the younger James Otis.

Jimmy is fond of dating his pieces from Salem, being the town where he has the fewest adherents, and he is suspected from good authority of being the author of the abusive piece in Edes and Gill against me when our Chronicle was first published, which obliged me to call on the printers, and on their refusal to name the authors to ask them one after another to take a short walk; and on their declining it to cane the first of them I mett, which has already cost me about £100 St.826

The consequences of this attack upon Mein’s editorship and politics are best seen in Edes’s own account of the affair in the Boston Gazette of January 25, 1768:

From the Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday last

Mr. Draper

I have heard an incorrect Account of a Difference between Messirs Edes and Mein, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter: If Mr. Mein has been guilty of an insolent Attempt to break in upon the Liberty of the Press, it is just he should be exposed, and treated with due Contempt: If he is innocent, it is cruel to Propagate such a malicious Representation of his Impudence and Affectation: If therefore by Publishing this you can influence the Parties concerned to give a true State of the Matter, you will oblige a great Number of your Readers who are anxious to know the whole of the Affair, besides your humble Servant.

Just. Pacis

The foregoing lays me under an Obligation to communicate to the Public the Affair between Mr. Mein and myself. I am very sorry any Difference has happened; but I have the Satisfaction to think myself altogether blameless in what was published, and in my Treatment of Mr. Mein when he applied to me to know the Author. The following is submitted to the impartial Public, as a true State of the Fact.

In consequence of a piece signed Americus, published in the last Monday’s Gazette, Mr. Mein came to our office between 4 & 5 o’clock the same afternoon, and there being a number of persons present, he desired to be spoke with in private, accordingly I withdrew with him to another room—when he said, I suppose you know what I am come about. I told him I did not. Well then, said he, I am come to demand the author of the piece you printed against me; and if you will not tell me who he is, I shall look upon you as the author, and the affair shall be decided in three minutes. In reply to which I said, Mr. Mein, above all persons in the world, I should not have thought a Printer would have ask’d such an impertinent, improper question; and told him that we never divulg’d authors; but if he would call on the morrow between 9 & 10 o’clock, being then very busy, I would let him know whether I would tell the author or not,—and added,—if we have transgress’d the law, it is open, and there he might seek satisfaction. He said he should not concern himself with the law, nor enter into any dispute; but if I did not tell the author, he should look upon us as the authors, and repeated it, the affair should be settled in three minutes. I then ask’d him, if what he said with regard to settling the affair in three minutes, was meant as a challenge or threat? which he declin’d answering, but said he would call at the time appointed, and then departed.

Accordingly the next morning, I was at the office precisely at 9 o’clock, where I found Mr. Mein, who immediately after my entrance, and saying your servant, ask’d whether I would tell him the author of the above piece or no. I told him I would not. He then said he should look upon me and Mr. Gill as the authors. I told him he might and welcome. I then ask’d him what he meant by saying the last night he would settle the affair in three minutes, whether as a challenge or threat? He answered, if I would take my hat, and take a walk with him to the southward, he would let me know. I told him I was not to be at every fellow’s beck, and did not regard him. He then said, I shall look upon you as the author. I reply’d, you may. Your servant, and your servant.

B. Edes

It must be admitted that in Edes’s straightforward story of this encounter Mein’s vague threats of violence appear at a disadvantage. The incident and the publication of this article did not help matters along. On the following day Mein met John Gill, Edes’s partner, possibly in the street. A brief picture of the ensuing fray emerges from the summons served upon Mein as its consequence:

John Mein at . . . Boston on the twenty sixth day of January last in the evening . . . with force & arms, to wit, with a large club made an assault upon . . . John Gill and then & there gave the said John Gill two violent blows . . . upon the back part of the head of the said John Gill and beat, wounded and evil intreated the said John Gill in so grievous a manner that his life was dispaired of and other enormities the said John Mein did committ upon the said John Gill against the peace of our Lord the King.827

The importance of the incident and of the trial which ensued lies in its revelation of the extent to which the lines were already drawn in Mein’s relation to Boston politics. Edes and Gill represented the local patriots; Mein was ranged in tory opposition. The difference of opinion originally centering about the publication of an extract from a London newspaper criticizing Pitt quickly reached more general proportions, foreshadowing Mein’s involvement in the nonimportation movement in 1769.

Among those to seize upon the affair in its broader implications was Populus, writing in the Boston Gazette of February 1, 1768.828

Messieurs Edes & Gill,

Please to insert the following.

The Freedom of the Press has been deservedly esteemed an important Branch of our Liberty. We hold it dear, and look on all those as our Enemies who endeavour to deprive us of it. The Dispute therefore between Messieurs Gill and Mein, cannot be looked upon barely as a Dispute between two private Persons, but is of the highest Importance to the Community. If we suffer the Printers to be abused, for resolutely maintaining the Freedom of the Press, without discovering our just Resentment against those who endeavour to force them from their Duty, we shall soon find the Press shut against us—For it cannot be expected that one or two Men who will be subject to the Malice of the publick Enemies, bear to be bruised, and run the Hazard of being assassinated, if the Public, whose Cause they are fighting, do not zealously patronize their Cause. The People in this Province, and this Town in particular, must for the foregoing Reasons, be justified in their general Disapprobation of, & Disgust to Mr. Mein, for his late Spaniard-like Attempt upon Mr. Gill, and in him, upon the Freedom of the Press. And what renders Mr. Mein still more inexcuseable, is the generous Treatment he has received from this People. What Man ever received greater Encouragement in the Business of a Bookseller than he? . . . Could any Man desire to be treated with more Politeness and Friendship than he has been since he came amongst us.829 And what Return has he made to the beneficent Publick? Notwithstanding his pompous Introduction—Have not his Papers been poor and unentertaining? Has he not discovered his Enmity to this Country, by villifying her great and firm Friend, the illustrious Mr. Pitt, under God and the King, the Saviour of Britain, and the Redeemer of America? When justly reproved for deviating from his first Plan, he, instead of reforming, as was expected, endeavoured to suppress the Liberty of the Press, that no further public Notice might be taken of his Misconduct. I would now ask Mr. Mein, what he expects from the Public, and what he thinks the Public expect from him. What Treatment he would have given the Man who used him as he has used Messirs. Edes and Gill? And what he thinks will be the just Reward of his own Presumption?

Populus

The issue of freedom of the press was again raised when the case was argued in court on April 19, 1768.830 John Adams made some notes on the trial, from which it appears that James Otis served as attorney for Gill and that Robert Auchmuty represented Mein.831 The fact that Auchmuty, later to be a Loyalist refugee, defended Mein indicates that the latter was already associated with the tory element in Boston. That the argument likewise followed political lines is seen in the caption Adams gave to his notes: “Gill vs. Mein: News Paper—Jacobite Party.”

Mein, testifying before the court, asserted in defense of his unfavorable account of Pitt that he thought it “odd that Edes and Gill should desire him to be of no Party. Pitt is a fallen Angell, and given up by his Partizans, since he dwindled into a Lord.” While Auchmuty, in pleading Mein’s cause, emphasized the insults cast upon Mein, Otis asserted that Gill was “assaulted for carrying on a Paper in the Course [of] his Business.” The term “Jacobite” was applied to Mein, and the phrase “liberty of the press” again invoked. At the conclusion of the trial Mein was found guilty and fined £130. Both Mein and Gill, however, appealed the case to the Superior Court of Judicature, which upset the judgment of the lower court to the extent of finding for Gill only £75.

Mein’s fortunes did not meet another crisis until the following year, 1769, when his personal and editorial opposition to the nonimportation movement of that year brought upon him public opprobrium and, eventually, physical assault. For his refusal to sign and to conform to the nonimportation agreement organized by patriotic Boston merchants who sought to nullify the force of the Townshend Acts Mein’s name was publicly blacklisted. In retaliation, Mein began on August 17, 1769, to publish manifests secured from the customhouse which purported to show that the signers of the agreement were not living up to their word. The controversy continued to wage hotly in the pages of the Boston Chronicle and the Boston Gazette.

Mein’s Boston career finally reached its climax on Saturday, October 28, 1769. In the Boston Chronicle for Thursday, October 26—which was not, however, published till two days later—Mein had written still another attack upon the “Well Disposed Merchants,” a phrase by which Mein caustically described the Boston patriots in question. The article roused popular resentment towards Mein to a new pitch of wrath and indignation. Already in ill favor, Mein had had to go about armed with pistols. According to George Mason, only a few days before this “two persons who resembled . . . [Mein] pretty much were attacked in a narrow alley with clubs, and would in all probability have lost their lives if the mistakes had not been timely discovered.”832

Late that Saturday afternoon, between four and five o’clock, Mein and his partner Fleeming were walking up King Street, presumably on their way home from Mein’s bookshop to their lodgings above their printing shop in Newbury Street. One can readily imagine the scene which ensued, the streets full of people busy with their Saturday afternoon shopping. A large crowd of enraged citizens had collected in King Street, including among others William Molineaux, Edward Davis, Captain Samuel Dashwood, Captain Duncan Ingraham, and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Marshall, several of whom had been referred to unpleasantly by pseudonyms in the Boston Chronicle article.

According to Mein’s own account of the incident, “The principal people in town [were] among them, encouraging them, and even a selectman, Jonathan Mason, one of the very gravest personages in the town. This mob was preconcerted, and the shops on both sides King street, filled with people waiting for me.”833 Many carried canes. It was Edward Davis who first struck at Mein with his stick. At this Mein drew his pistol, which he cocked and held in readiness while he turned his face to the crowd, walking backwards up the street in the direction of the guardhouse. Elizabeth Cuming, visiting Mrs. Kent, “confined this three weeks with the roomitz” to her house in King Street, heard “a violent skreeming Kill him, kill him,” and looked out the window to see the mob as it slowly pursued Mein in his retreat.834

Thus harried by the crowd, Mein threatened to shoot the first person who touched him. At length reaching the guardhouse, where officers and sentries were ready to protect him, Mein started up the steps. At this point Thomas Marshall, who had stopped at the shop of one Waldo and furnished himself with a spade, ran up and struck Mein, who had supposed himself now safe, on the back. The blow cut through Mein’s coat and waistcoat and made a wound of about two inches’ length on his left shoulder.

According to Mein’s own account, Fleeming then fired a pistol shot.

Mr. Fleeming, who was at a little distance, on seeing . . . [Marshall] coming up, run to us also, but before he came near Marshal had made the blow and was running off; however Fleeming struck at him with a stick he had in his left hand, which just touched Marshal’s back. Fleeming having missed his blow reeled forwards, and in endeavouring to recover himself, grasping his hand close, a pistol he had in his right hand accidentally went off, but the ball went into ground & did no harm.

Unfortunately, Mein’s explanation—like many another alibi—is almost too elaborate to be credible. All other evidence suggests that Mein himself fired the shot in question. Elizabeth Cuming, like Mein in popular disfavor for persisting in importing goods from England for her linen shop, was sympathetic to Mein and could have had no desire to malign him. None the less, still watching from her window vantage point, she observed that before running inside the guardhouse he “fired a pistel he had in his hand, loded only with powder.” Likewise in the account of the affair published in the Massachusetts Gazette of November 2, it was said that “having got safe into the Entry Door” of the guardhouse, Mein “fired off his Pistol, which tore the Sleeve of a Soldier’s Coat; but whether with a Bullet or only a Wad we cannot say.” This account was widely reprinted, even in the London Chronicle for December 19, 1769. John Rowe put down in his diary for October 28 that Mein “got into Ezek^l Price’s office & from thence fired a Pistol & wounded a Grenadier of the 29th Regiment in the Arm.”835

Having missed their prey, the mob, by this time numbering between one and two thousand persons, proceeded to vent their wrath on a person named George Greyer, accused of having given information about smuggling to British customs officers. This unfortunate man was tarred and feathered and carted through the streets of the town. As the crowd passed along Newbury Street in the direction of the Liberty Tree, they went by Mein and Fleeming’s printing office. At this point a gun was fired from an upper window by a young lad connected with the shop. When, however, the mob broke into the shop, they found no one there, but two guns were discovered and carried away.

In the meantime certain members of the mob which had attacked Mein had gone to Richard Dana, a justice of the peace, and had sworn out a warrant for the arrest of Mein “for having put innocent people in bodily fear.” According to Mein, in his letter to Harrison already quoted, “Their plan was to get me into the custody of the officer, and, it being then dark, to knock [him] on the head; and then their usual sayings might have been repeated again: that it was done by boys and negroes, or by nobody.”

Having taken refuge in the guardhouse, Mein hid in the garret while Sheriff Cudworth and a constable, accompanied by Samuel Adams and William Molineaux, came in search of him, armed with the warrant just sworn out. After Adams and Molineaux had given up looking for him, Mein, disguised in the uniform of a soldier, was able to slip out of the guardhouse and escape to the residence of Colonel Dalrymple. From this last refuge he went on board His Majesty’s schooner Hope, at anchor in the harbor, where he stayed for a few days before transferring to the man-of-war Rose, the captain of which, Caldwell, had offered Mein the use of his own stateroom and cabin.836

Mein’s situation in Boston had now become so dangerous that he could hardly remain there longer. In a postscript to a letter written by her sister Ame to Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, Elizabeth Cuming at this time observed: “Mr. Mein tis thought has secreted himself on Bord the Rose for the people are so exasperated they would sertenly kill him if he appered.”837 To be sure, the warrant sworn out against him was returned to Justice Dana, “there being plenty of witnesses that Mr. Mein was first assaulted with great violence.” But when Mein in turn wished to prosecute his assailants, he was warned that “if he appeared abroad he should be made a sacrifice.”

At this point Mein applied to Governor Hutchinson for armed protection which would enable him to remain in Boston. Hutchinson, wisely preferring not to compromise further his already difficult position, refused to furnish it.838 In addition, Hutchinson thought it “advisable for . . . [Mein] to forbear prosecuting his complaint for some time.”

There remained only one course for Mein: to leave Boston. With his partner, John Fleeming, Mein left powers of attorney to conduct his business affairs and to sell out his effects. Bearing letters from Governor Hutchinson for Lord Hillsborough and from his friend James Murray to the latter’s sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, then visiting in England,839 Mein sailed from Boston on November 17 aboard the schooner Hope, on which he had first taken refuge. The vessel arrived at Halifax the following Friday, November 21, and was reported off Spithead about the middle of the following month.840

Mein’s motives in going to England were, to be sure, not entirely those of personal safety, as was ingenuously and frankly admitted by James Murray, who stated that Mein hoped “to make . . . [the] mischievous Intentions [of the Boston patriots] turn out to his Emolument. . . .”841 Mein’s hopes of profit were, however, ill fulfilled. His business affairs in Boston had for some time been in a precarious state. Although between May 13, 1765, and February 9, 1769, Mein had bought from Thomas Longman, the London bookseller, books and merchandise worth almost £2,100, he had paid but £419 on account. In a similar manner Mein was indebted to Messrs. Wright and Gill of London, from whom he obtained supplies of stationery, to the amount of £303.842

In an attempt to make collections upon their accounts both Longman and Messrs. Wright and Gill gave John Hancock a power of attorney. To be sure, on the verso of the title page of the John Carter Brown Library’s copy of William Knox’s Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed, already mentioned, the statement is made by the unknown annotator that “Mr. Hancock, on account of . . . [Mein’s] publishing this and other pieces, bought up . . . [Mein’s] English debts, and, making a sudden demand upon honest Mein, with which he could not instantly comply, brought on his ruin.” There is, however, no apparent basis for such an interpretation of Hancock’s rôle. The initiative in the matter came from Longman himself, who, on July 22, 1769, wrote Hancock asking him “to act . . . [on his behalf] in the most adviseable manner in this unfortunate affair.”843 On the other hand there can be no doubt that Hancock was most willing to make full use of this opportunity to embarrass a political opponent, and on March 1, 1770, an attachment was served upon the Mein and Fleeming printing shop in Newbury Street. Apparently, however, some compromise was arranged, for Fleeming continued to publish the Boston Chronicle and to put out books with his own imprint. Not satisfied with the steps which he had taken in Boston, Hancock also suggested to Longman that he get further security of Mein in London.844

Upon his arrival in London in December, 1769, Mein called upon Longman and informed him that he had made arrangements for terminating his business in Boston and that he would pay Longman when this was done.845 As well he might have been, Longman was skeptical about Mein’s ability to liquidate his debt promptly. In an undated letter, apparently written in February, 1771, Longman wrote Hancock as follows:

. . . in pursuance of your advice in a former favour, that I should endeavour to get further Security in London, I immediately arrested Him, in hopes of His haveing some Friends that would appear in His behalf, in consequence of which I had the honour of a Visit from M^r Commissioner Robinson846 who assured me that to His knowledge He knew Mein’s Effects were much more then would satisfy not only me, butevery other Creditor, and that when they were sold his friends would take care to bid them in such a manner, that my whole Debt should be discharged. . . .847

On the basis of the above letter it is probable that Mein was arrested shortly after Longman received Hancock’s letter of May 18, 1770.848 He did not fail to seek release from debtor’s prison. In the letter of February, 1771, already cited Longman went on to report that Mein had “got a hearing in the Court of Kings Bench and endeavoured to obtain His Discharge by a most false and Villanous Affidavit (a Copy of which I hope to get conveyed to you by Mr. Paulfry)849 but without success.”

Mein’s affidavit, which is dated November 20, 1770, and is addressed to the judges of the Court of King’s Bench, opens as follows:

John Mein late of Boston in New England Bookseller & printer but now a prisoner in the Kings Bench prison maketh oath and saith that he this deponent carried on the business of a Bookseller and printer in the Town of Boston for several years with great success and benefit to himself whereby he gained a comfortable Support and maintained and employ’d several useful people in the different branches of his business. . . . And this deponent further saith, that . . . Hancock with an intent . . . to distress him the more wrote home Letters to the Plaintiff Longman who resides and is a Bookseller in London importing that the aforesaid Hancock would willingly accept of a power of Attorney from the Plaintiff Longman to whom this deponent was indebted as the Plaintiff Longman alledges in the sum of one thousand six hundred pounds or thereabouts in order to seize or attach the effects of this deponent in Boston aforesaid as he has been inform’d and believes. . . .

In substance the affidavit, which incorporates letters from Fleeming and other Boston citizens, is an assertion of Mein’s good faith and of the earnestness with which efforts were being made in Boston to satisfy Hancock’s demands.

How long Mein remained in prison is not known. On the back of a letter written by him to James Murray on February 2, 1772, is the notation, apparently in Murray’s handwriting, “Kings bench.”850 In any event, final judgment against Mein was secured by Hancock in the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature in January, 1772, after the case had dragged on for almost two years. Whether Mein’s release came through the benefit of the Insolvency Act, as asserted by Minos in the Public Ledger, or whether he was freed in order to become a writer on behalf of the British government, as claimed by an anonymous writer in the same newspaper, cannot be said.

In the meantime Mein had also petitioned the government for compensation for his sufferings at the hands of the Boston faction as a loyal subject of the King. On July 1, 1771, Mein wrote his friend James Murray a note which begins: “I have just finished the Memorial. I have made the alteration you spoke of to me. I am exceedingly obliged to you for the favour of delivering it.”851 On the back of Mein’s letter is a draft of a letter from Murray to John Robinson, the Secretary of the Treasury, dated July 2, 1771. It reads:

M^r Murray of Boston presents his Compliments to M^r Robinson and begs the favour of him to lay before the Lords of the Treasury the inclosed Memorial of M^r Mein. The propriety of the prayer of it can be certified by Sir Francis Bernard, M^r Commissioner Robinson and M^r Steuart,852 now on the spot.

M^r Murray further begs M^r Robinson to put their Lordships in mind of the Expediency of renewing their last years bounty853 to M^r Mein. His Services & Sufferings and fortunes he has fallen from point him out a just object of Compassion to an administration

qui humani nihil alienum putat.

III

After his flight from New England Mein did not again achieve public notice until the early months of 1774, this time as the probable author of the letters signed “Sagittarius” published in the columns of the London Public Ledger. Unfortunately there exists no complete file of this newspaper, and accordingly all of Sagittarius’ contributions to it are not now available, invaluable as they are as examples of anti-American propaganda of the pre-Revolutionary period. The study of Mein’s writings must, as a consequence, be based upon the essays and paragraphs found in extant issues of the Public Ledger and upon those of the essays that were reprinted in Boston in 1775.854 Each source supplements the other. Although the Boston edition contains forty-four of a total of sixty-two essays, the extant files of the newspaper itself furnish but thirty-one items. Of these only thirteen were duplicated in the Boston reprint.

It is not possible to say precisely when Mein first began writing for the Public Ledger. However, the earliest of the letters now to be found in the files of that paper is the one in the issue of February 25, 1774, and there is but one document preceding this one in the Boston reprint of the letters, in which the arrangement can be assumed to be chronological. The last letter found in both the extant Public Ledger files and in the Boston reprint is the one dated July 23, 1774. Thus within a period of six months there was a group of over sixty items which provide a comprehensive example of ministerial propaganda designed to shape British public opinion during a period when important measures regarding America were being discussed in Parliament.

That Mein, in writing for the Public Ledger, was indeed in the pay of the ministry of Lord North appears more than likely. He had, of course, received some sort of bounty from the government while still in prison, and that in return for further compensation he turned his pen to such use is but plausible. Moreover, however intensely he disliked Boston and its patriots, Mein was hardly the man to contribute to the newspapers for the simple pleasures of invective, and there is every reason to accept Isaiah Thomas’ statement that in London Mein “engaged himself under the pay of the ministry, as a writer against the colonies.”855 The letters of Sagittarius represent, indeed, the ministerial point of view and can be best interpreted as journalistic attempts to create or at least formulate a public opinion sympathetic to measures under consideration in Parliament.

As will be remembered, the first half of the year 1774 witnessed a marked change in British policy towards the American colonies, and particularly towards the unruly town of Boston. However great a prank the Boston Tea Party may seem from the distance of over a hundred and fifty years, at the time it had a far different effect upon the government at home. Following on the heels of the burning in June, 1773, of the Gaspee, the pitching into Boston Harbor of the East India Company’s tea became in England a revelation and a symbol of the utter lawlessness and insubordination of the Bostonians. Franklin, as agent of Massachusetts, had not helped its cause by the most questionable ethics of his transmission to the Massachusetts General Court of the famous Hutchinson letters which had recently come to light.

While it is true that Lord North and the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, did not favor the coercive measures subsequently entered upon, the government undertook a course of rigorous action. On March 7, 1774, the King sent a message to both houses of Parliament, accompanied by reports from royal officials in America regarding events there, particularly the Boston Tea Party. A week later the Boston Port Bill was introduced, the aim of which was to close Boston Harbor to shipping as a punishment for the town’s conduct. After the passage of this act on March 25, still another bill, one for “the better regulating government in the province of Massachusetts Bay,” was brought in, designed to alter the charter granted the colony by William III. Despite protests and petitions from colonials and their friends the bill was in turn passed, to be followed by still a third, which provided that trials for capital offenses should be held in England rather than in the colony. These three acts, so drastic in their effect upon the colony, provide the background of contemporary events against which the Sagittarius letters were written, a week-by-week, if not day-by-day, attempt to justify through journalistic means the measures embarked upon by the government.

Mein’s propaganda follows the general lines of all propaganda: the praise of one’s partisans and, more especially, the criticism of one’s foes. In this case the praise is for the government, as is exemplified in this fulsome encomium of Lord North:

Lord North was placed in his present station in the most factious times; by his temper, moderation, and firmness, he quelled and totally defeated faction, and gave stability to government which it had not enjoyed during many former administrations. Though the nation had no foreign wars, yet our circumstances were more alarming: we were divided at home; our eastern and western settlements were going to wreck. . . . After four years struggle, the scene now brightens upon us. . . . After these cogent and striking proofs, is it to be imagined that his Majesty, who has enjoyed more real peace and happiness within these few last years than during all the former part of his reign, will part with a minister who has done more real service to the kingdom, than any other, nay than all others for centuries back?856

But praise, for a variety of reasons, seems to furnish less profitable substance for propaganda than criticism and invective, and it is to the latter that the greater part of Mein’s essays and paragraphs are devoted. These are set on three different planes: of erudition, journalistic description, and personal diatribe verging on slander.

Mein’s erudition, to be sure, was more illusory than real. Approximately a third of Mein’s contributions to the Public Ledger were devoted to accounts of episodes in the history of Boston. His method was simple but apparently effective. Selecting relevant incidents from the annals of Massachusetts Bay, Mein showed how historical events made imperative the government’s measures curbing the colony, which from early days had been a hotbed of sedition and insubordination. While the alteration of the Massachusetts charter was under discussion in Parliament, Mein produced evidence showing how misused and falsely interpreted the charter had been. One has but to cite a final paragraph from the letter of March 21, 1774, where, after summarizing events in the governorship of John Winthrop, Mein ends by pointing an appropriate moral:

It is evident . . . that in the most early days of our colonies there were offenders and growing evils, and that the letters patents or charters granted them were even then suspected to be contrary to the law and customs of England. After one hundred and fifty years conviction, it is now surely time to apply the proper remedies; forbearance and affection on our part, have hitherto only roused, in Massachusetts, presumption and defiance; and though our Navy will bring the rebellious Bostonians to speedy submission, yet, till their charter is vacated, and another given them, more suitable to our constitution, every other expedient will be only temporary.

With the modification of the colony’s charter a fact as a result of the Regulatory Act, other historical incidents were evoked to discredit the colonists, to prove them disloyal, hypocritical, and treacherous.

A feature of Mein’s historical essays was the inclusion of many “State Papers,” which readers were expected to believe came from the archives of the Plantations Office in London. In view of this, as has been seen, Problematic took the papers to be proof that William Knox was Sagittarius, since he alone would have access to such files. Minos was more astute, insisting that the documents came from no more recondite a source than. Thomas Hutchinson’s History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. The fact is, indeed, that these historical articles were culled in part from the History, and, in greater measure, from the Collection of Original Papers Relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, published in 1769 as a companion volume to the first two volumes of the Governor’s History. One has merely to go from the letters to the Papers to find the documents which Mein appropriated to his use. Although frequent adaptations were made, the “State Papers” owe their origin to Hutchinson’s volume and not to laborious burrowings in dusty archives by Mein.

Less ambitious but more immediate and colorful, on the other hand, were Mein’s journalistic accounts of events in Boston, some taken from his own experiences there, others based upon letters from friends and other correspondents, describing the temper and character of the people of the town. As might be expected, the burden of such essays and paragraphs is that strong coercive measures alone could restore the colony to its rightful and subordinate place in the British empire. This, for instance, is the crux of the letter with which the Boston pamphlet opens, where, after insisting how unruly the Bostonians have become, Mein ends by asserting that “there appears now no other remedy to the disease, but the correcting hand of the supreme legislature.”

While Mein avenged himself in such terms upon the Boston citizens in general who had made life so miserable for him, he was in addition able, in a series of slanderous attacks in which his propaganda reaches its lowest level, to single out for scorn and invective those particular persons who were especially obnoxious to him. That John Hancock was attacked with acrimony is hardly surprising because of his rôle as a leader of the Boston nonimportation movement, and more particularly because of his part as attorney for Longman and for Messrs. Wright and Gill in their suits against Mein. Mein’s description of Hancock is one that it would be difficult to surpass as an example of journalistic libel:

When . . . [Hancock] was in London about twelve years ago, he was the laughing stock and the contempt of all his acquaintances. . . . He kept sneaking and lurking about the kitchen of his uncle’s correspondent, drank tea every day with the housemaid, and on Sunday escorted her to White Conduit House . . . but his old schoolfellows and intimates know that though nature had bestowed upon him a human figure, she had denied him the powers of manhood. The girl was therefore in perfect safety.

In view of Thomas Marshall’s physical assault upon Mein in that memorable fray of October 28, 1769, he could hardly escape Mein’s wrath.

. . . [Marshall] had the honour, a few years ago, to be Lieutenant Colonel of the Boston militia, whose ragged figures and awkwardness far outstrip our city train bands. At that time an English gentleman in Boston had a curiosity to obtain a list of certain toasts, which were given in the Council chamber on His Majesty’s birthday, and, having some knowledge of this warlike tailor, sent a card to him, requesting a copy of the toasts in writing. The answer of this tailor, soldier and select man, is exactly as follows:

“Collo. Marshall’s compliments on Mr. — to let him know he can’t give a sortin list of the tosts that pasd at the Councell board not being their abufe 15 minits, but heard, say, vizt, the King, the Queen and royal familey; onion between Great Britain and hur colloneys; His Majestys ministers of state; the governor and provence. when the gards and regiment and train of artillery war dismis after the firings the Capt. marched their respektifs companys to their own houses whare they provided sonteel dinners for their officers and other jontlemen of the town.”

Such are the great abilities and learning of the mighty men of Boston.

If this letter is not a complete fabrication of Mein’s fancy, there can be little doubt that Mein himself was the “Englishman” and that he was seeking the information for his newspaper, the Boston Chronicle.

While Mein had no personal score to settle with Benjamin Franklin, the latter, as the Massachusetts agent, was likewise the object of Mein’s attacks. To Franklin he devoted at least four letters or paragraphs, while passing references to him in unflattering terms are frequent, as, for instance, when Mein observed that “The threats of an old factious agent, who vomits out his venom in the newspapers, are utterly contemptible; he owes his safety not to his innocence, but to the levity of our laws.” Some of Mein’s essays on Franklin attribute to the latter certain pseudonymous letters and paragraphs in the newspapers. In the essay of March 12, for instance, Mein, apparently with good reason, identifies Fabius, addressing Lord Buckinghamshire, as Franklin. And when Mein ascribed to Franklin the “Speech intended to be delivered by the Bishop of St. Asaph in the House of Lords,” he opened a problem of authorship not yet settled. His reasons for such an attribution are at least picturesque, whether or not plausible:

It is . . . more probable, that the intended Speech is the fruits of the midnight labours of the great and loyal Doctor Franklin. . . . The reasons for imputing this intended speech to Doctor Franklin are, that it contains all that low cunning which so peculiarly marks his writing; that affected moderation; that feigned regard for peace; that compassion for the madness of Britain in refusing to humble her neck to the feet of the Bostonian rebels; that grave impudence, which always places America in the light of a separate, independent, powerful State; that false prophecying, which croaks out threatenings of ruin to our peace, commerce, and kingdom, if the smallest tax is laid on his darling America; and that foolish assurance, which promises us more wealth and power, and permanent greatness, than the world ever saw, if we will only fall down and worship his rebellious constituents.857

At least two of Franklin’s editors are in disagreement on the question of his responsibility for the tract under discussion, Bigelow asserting that he was its author and Smyth denying it.858 Obviously there was no doubt in Mein’s own mind.

The last contribution to the Public Ledger which can with assurance be attributed to Mein is dated July 23, 1774. Why was his work brought to an end? Was it simply because the measures in behalf of which he was writing had been passed and his ends achieved? Or was it because the growing certainty of the identity of Sagittarius weakened the influence his articles and essays had carried? Did he perhaps continue to write on behalf of the government under another name or in other forms? Unfortunately these are questions far more easily raised than answered.

How effective Mein’s career as propagandist was must likewise remain uncertain. At least the measures on whose behalf he wrote were passed by Parliament. His essays were manifestly widely read and discussed, if one may judge from the comments they evoked, and several of the articles were considered of sufficient interest to be reprinted in the London Chronicle. But, as with all propaganda, there remains the problem of whether public opinion is changed or merely crystallized by the expression of previously inarticulate ideas. It is more likely that Mein’s essays expressed rather than created public opinion.

With the disappearance of Sagittarius’ name from the columns of the Public Ledger we lose sight of Mein. True, there is a letter written by him to James Murray in Boston, dated London, January 11, 1775.859 But, interesting as it is for the political views expressed, it gives no clue to Mein’s occupation at the time. His financial troubles seem to have outlived his public career, for on September 4, 1783, John Pitcairn, an Edinburgh lawyer, was still concerned with Mein’s unpaid debts, and addressed Samuel Eliot, the Boston merchant, then in London, as follows:

I received yours of the 25^th ult^o & am much obliged to you for the relation you give of John Meins affairs and for your attention to our Interest. Good M^r Kincaid died 21^st Jan^ry 1777 leaving an only son Alex^r Kincaid who also died 5^th Dec^r 1777 after appointing Trustees to conduct his Business for behoof of his two Cousins Mark & Cha^s Kerrs who are both in the Army, as the Trustees act with limited powers they cannot answer Foreign orders without having security for them in Britain, in other respects the Business goes on as formerly, we take Bills on London at 2 mo. and allow 5 per cent discount.

We will be much obliged to you that you take the most effectual measures to bring John Meins effects in your possession into Cash for behoof of M^r Kinkaids Estate. If any further powers are necessary be so good as write me, however as there will be no opposition I suppose what you have will be sufficient. When you have brought the matter to a period be so good as give me a State and a remittance for the neat proceeds.860

Mein’s debts to the Kincaid estate undoubtedly dated from his first years in Boston, almost twenty years earlier. It is regrettable that no indication is given as to the nature of “Meins effects” in Eliot’s possession, and how they came there.

In summarizing Mein’s life and activities it can hardly be said that he was either a great or a good man. Yet it must be admitted that he was unquestionably a more significant figure than has previously been realized. As a publisher he contributed more to the history of printing in America than has been hitherto known, responsible as he was for the first American editions of The Vicar of Wakefield and A Sentimental Journey. His opposition to the nonimportation movement of 1769, it is agreed, was influential in the breakdown of the intercolonial agreements. Whatever weight it may have carried, his anti-American propaganda in the Public Ledger aroused interest and argument, and certainly as a spokesman of the British ministry of the period he wrote essays of importance.

As a man, however much his misfortunes may have been the result of circumstance, it must be admitted, in view of the violence of his temper and his willingness to distort the truth, that Mein did not always present too admirable a figure. None the less, as a person of considerable intellectual ability and literary skill, who had the unfortunate habit of choosing the unpopular side of a controversy, he deserves to be remembered, a rebel against rebels.

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.