TRANSACTIONS OF THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS
JANUARY MEETING, 1908
A Stated Meeting of the Society was held at No. 25 Beacon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 25 January, 1908, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Vice-President William Watson Goodwin, D. C. L., in the chair.
The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.
The Report of the Corresponding Secretary announced that a letter had been received from the Rev. William Wallace Fenn of Cambridge accepting Resident Membership.
Two gifts of books, which were gratefully accepted, were reported: from the Boston Athenæum, a set of its publications at the charge of the Billings Fund; and from the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, a copy of a facsimile of the first Masonic book printed in the Americas.1
Mr. Julius Herbert Tuttle of Dedham was elected a Resident Member, and Mr. James Kendall Hosmer of Washington, D. C, a Corresponding Member.
The Chairman announced the death of the Hon. John Chandler Bancroft Davis, a Corresponding Member, and spoke as follows:
John Chandler Bancroft Davis, more generally known as Bancroft Davis, one of our Corresponding Members, died in Washington, December 27, 1907, at the age of eighty-five (less two days). He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, December 29, 1822. His father, John Davis, was a distinguished lawyer of Worcester, was twice Governor of Massachusetts, and represented the Commonwealth in both Houses of Congress. One of my earliest recollections of politics is shouting in the streets of Plymouth for “Honest John Davis.” Our associate was one of the ten oldest living graduates of Harvard College, being a member of the Class of 1840.
Mr. Davis’s experience in diplomatic and political life was wide and honorable. From 1849 to 1852 he was our Secretary of Legation in London, where he learned his first lesson in diplomacy and English politics. On his return to America he was the correspondent of the London Times from 1854 to 1861. During two years of this period I was in Europe, most of the time as a student in Berlin, Bonn, and Gottingen. Nearly all my information on American politics came from his valuable letters, which I read regularly without knowing who was their author. In 1869 he was Assistant Secretary of State at Washington, to which city he then removed his residence.
In 1871 Mr. Davis was Secretary of the Joint High Commission on the Alabama Claims, and afterward Agent for the United States at the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva. For this Court he prepared the Case of the United States, a document which alone would have made him famous. He was especially conspicuous, and made himself a benefactor in the cause of peace to his country and to the world, when the momentous crisis arose in regard to the Indirect Claims which threatened to break up the whole arbitration by the withdrawal of England from the Tribunal at Geneva. The courage and skill of Mr. Davis and of Baron Tenterden were believed by competent authorities to have saved the treaty which was before the Tribunal, and to have made possible a settlement of the dispute on a basis which was consistent with the dignity of Great Britain and the rights of the United States. I quote from a recent letter of Mr. Frank Warren Hackett, who was one of the Alabama Claims Commission, published in the Nation of January 31, 1907:
It was the tact and the stamina of Bancroft Davis that actually rescued the treaty from failure. The world may never know how large a measure of credit is due to the sagacity and nerve of both Lord Tenterden and Bancroft Davis. . . . Mutual confidence and unity of purpose enabled the Englishman and the American to work together in preparing a way by which the “Indirect Claims” could honorably be disposed of and the treaty saved. After these two men, upon their own responsibility, had struck hands, it was agreed that Mr. Davis should ask Mr. Adams to take the open and visible step leading to action by the Tribunal. Mr. Adams acted with equal skill. . . . It was this initiative act, the honor of which belongs equally to the respective Agents, that constitutes the crowning merit of Bancroft Davis’s inestimable services to his country (lxxxiv. 102).
Count Sclopis, the President of the Geneva Tribunal, is reported to have afterward said: “It was the Case prepared by Mr. Davis which won the cause.”
Mr. Davis’s subsequent career is well known,—as Assistant Secretary of State in 1873 and 1881; as Minister to Germany in 1874; as Judge of the Court of Claims in 1877; and as Reporter of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1883 till 1902, when he resigned the office at the age of eighty. His most important published works are his volume of Treaties and Conventions Entered into by the United States (1871 and 1873), and the volumes containing his Reports of the Decisions of the Supreme Court.
In 1887 Columbia University conferred on Mr. Davis the degree of Doctor of Laws.
Mr. Davis was elected a Corresponding Member of this Society December 20, 1899.
Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis read the following paper:
JOHN HARVARD’S LIFE IN AMERICA, OR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND IN 1637–1638.2
The subject treated in this paper practically deals with the conditions of Harvard’s life for a single year. Even this brief time cannot be restricted within exact limits. We do not know the date of Harvard’s sailing from England. We do not know on what day he arrived in the Colony. The only date in this connection of which we are certain is, alas! that of his death, and for that knowledge we are dependent upon a casual entry in an almanac.3 His name is not mentioned by Winthrop in his Journal and, except for a memorandum found among Winthrop’s papers and published by Savage in the Addenda to the Journal,4 we should not know that the Governor had ever heard of him. In justice, however, to Winthrop it should be added that the mere existence of the memorandum suggests that it was made with intent to incorporate its substance in the Journal, and then by oversight the entry was omitted.
The various contemporaneous publications which mention Harvard’s name, while they speak of him as a scholarly and pious man, add nothing to our knowledge of his life, and it is not until we reach the verbose and pedantic Magnalia of Cotton Mather that we learn from one who wrote sixty years after Harvard’s death, that the disease which carried him off was consumption.5 When Mather wrote, the College had already acquired renown. Increase Mather, the father of the author of Magnalia, was glad, when the occasion came his way, to assume charge of its affairs, and he availed himself of the opportunity to acquire from his Alma Mater the degree of D.D.6 Cotton Mather himself is supposed to have aspired to the Presidency of the College of which he also was a graduate. This testimony to the high estimate of the institution at that time by the Mathers was not perhaps needed, but its recital will bring before us the important fact that the author of Magnalia, when he omitted John Harvard from the list of worthies whose lives he undertook to write, and contented himself with a mere reference to him in his description of the College, must have been conscious of his offence.
A tithe of the diligence which he bestowed in gleaning facts about the lives of the governors, the clergymen of New England, and the Harvard graduates, would have enabled him to preserve upon his pages many facts concerning the Charlestown life of the founder of the College which we should treasure to-day. The only new item concerning Harvard himself to be obtained from Magnalia is that which I have quoted. It must be added, however, that the author states the amount of Harvard’s bequest to the College in pounds, shillings and pence; that he speaks of Harvard as a minister of the Gospel, and that he prints an elegiac poem by John Wilson which, although it contains some errors of statement, is nevertheless helpful.7
For what information Mather gave, let us be thankful, and from that let us turn to what we can positively ascertain from the records, and what we may infer from current history.
Harvard’s presence in England February the sixteenth, 1637, can be demonstrated. On the fifth of May of the same year the will of his brother Thomas, of which he was one of the executors, was duly probated. The will was allowed and power to execute it was conferred upon his co-executor, with a reservation of like power for Harvard “when he should come to seek it.” The inference is plain that he was not on hand to resign the executorship, and the presumption is that this absence was to be explained by the fact that between February sixteenth and May fifth he had sailed for New England.
On the other hand, the Charlestown Records bear testimony to his presence in that place on the first of August of the same year, when he was admitted a townsman.8 It is quite certain that this affiliation with the settlers—a necessary concomitant at that time for the residence in Charlestown of one of his profession—must have been taken promptly after arrival. There was a statute of the General Court then in force which prevented inhabitants of any of the towns from harboring for a longer period than three weeks, strangers who came with intent to reside, except under allowance of certain designated authorities.9 Obviously, newly arrived immigrants would, if their consciences permitted, hasten to put themselves on record as being in sympathy with the governing powers. It is safe, therefore, to assert that Harvard must have arrived at Charlestown in the latter part of July, 1637. Assuming that he sailed early in May, this would make his voyage cover a period of about twelve weeks. This would not have been considered a very long ocean trip in those days. Hence, we may rest assured that this estimate of the time of sailing and arrival is reasonably close, so that the discovery of the name of the vessel in which he sailed and the publication of her log would not alter materially our conception of the dates connected with the voyage. The third of these dates, that of his death, is fixed at September 14, 1638. The entire term of his life in America was, therefore, about thirteen and one-half months.
About four weeks after his arrival, on the thirtieth of August, 1637, a Synod was held at Cambridge—or Newtown, as it was then called. We are told that “all the teaching Elders through the Country were present, and some new come out from England, not yet called to any place here.”10 The meeting is described as having been “peaceable and concluded comfortably in love.” We may infer from the stress put upon these words that this conclusion was probably unexpected. Harvard was at that time “new come out from England,” and it is quite certain that he could not then have been called to any place here. The statement that some of those similarly situated with himself were present at the Synod is practically equivalent to saying that he was there. No newly arrived clergyman whose health and circumstances permitted could have failed to avail himself of the opportunity to meet there the assembled pastors of the Colony, and to hear them discuss the doctrinal points which were disturbing themselves and their congregations. It necessarily follows that he must at that time have seen the spot with which his name has since become so conspicuously associated. His route from Charlestown to Cambridge would have been by the path called in the early Cambridge Records “the Way to Charlestown.” If we accept President Wadsworth’s location within the Yard of the lot granted by the town to the College, which was said in the town records to be north of the “Way to Charlestown,” we must reach the conclusion that Harvard’s path, if he came to Cambridge to the Synod, led him through the Ox Pasture to the Common—or if he were to cover the same ground to-day, directly through the heart of the College Yard into Harvard Square by way of the Johnston Gate.11 Cambridge was described by a contemporaneous writer as like a “bowling green,” and we can fancy the pleasure which he derived from contemplating the beauties of the scene, as he strode or rode along,—for he probably came over from Charlestown either on foot or on horseback, and perhaps as he looked around his mental vision conjured up a future College there. The site had not then been selected, but it was voted a few weeks thereafter that it should be Newtown, showing that attention had already been turned that way.
If by any unfortunate chance he was prevented from visiting Cambridge on the occasion of the Synod, still, he must have seen the little village on the second of November of that year, when he and four others, at a session of the General Court at that place, were admitted as freemen, and as the record goes on to state “took the freeman’s oath.”12 Four days after this event Harvard and his wife were admitted to membership in the Charlestown Church,13 thus completing the essential acts on his part for admission to the elect in Massachusetts by becoming successively—townsman—freeman—churchman.
Having taken these preliminary steps, he could now attend to his own affairs with a reasonable assurance of being let alone. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that he disappears from public notice until the next spring, and although we know absolutely nothing of what he was doing during that period, it may be assumed that his first efforts were put forth toward providing a permanent residence in Charlestown for himself and his wife. It is not known when he became associated as a colleague with Zachariah Symmes, the pastor of the Charlestown Church, but it is not unlikely to have followed promptly the various steps which he had taken to identify himself with the town and the church.
In April, 1638, he had become sufficiently well known to his fellow-townsmen to receive at their hands an appointment as one of a committee of six who were “desired to consider of some things tending toward a body of laws.”14 His selection upon such a committee as this indicates that he had not yet succumbed to the inroads of the disease which carried him off a few months thereafter, and also helps to define his position upon a question which was then puzzling the brains of those who were administering the affairs of the Colony.
I have spoken of his official relations with the Charlestown parish as though it were positively known that such relations existed. As a matter of fact, there is no contemporaneous entry in the Church records which refers to Harvard’s connection with the parish as teaching elder or clergyman. In 1789, the then pastor of the Church made an entry to that effect.15 This accords with the statements of contemporary authors, and its place in the parish records gives it a quasi official character. Frothingham quotes apparently from the town records the phrase “Sometime Minister of God’s word here,” applied to Harvard.16 The learned author of Magnalia quotes an elegy from the pen of the Rev. John Wilson—a clergyman who was settled over the First Church in Boston at the time when Harvard was in Charlestown—which was addressed “to the most pious and reverend John Harvard, borne from the sacred desk at Charlestown to the skies.”17
This makes it sure that Harvard was settled over the Charlestown parish at the time of his death, and renders it probable that he preached in the Great House originally built for Winthrop, but sold by him for £10 to the town for a meeting-house.18
The statement is made that Harvard was allotted land and that he built a house in Charlestown, and Frothingham distinctly asserts that he participated in the allotments of 1637–1638.19 It happens that the folio in the Book of Possessions at Charlestown, which through index entries is known to have contained a record of Harvard’s estate, is missing.20 It is the only folio in the book that is gone, and since it is of more value to the world than all the rest of the book, we can only wonder at the unlucky chance which should have selected that particular leaf for destruction. Notwithstanding the loss of this desirable source of information, the Book of Possessions furnishes abundant evidence that Harvard was a land-owner, and not only that, but it is plain that his holdings of real estate were extensive. We gain this information through the definitions of the boundaries of the property of others. Harvard’s name appears in the Book of Possessions upwards of twenty times as an abutter. His widow figures five or six times in a similar way, sometimes as Widow Harvard, sometimes as Mrs. Ann Harvard.
Through these descriptions the general location of the property can be identified and in some cases its character is evident. Some of it was in Mystic field, some in Water field, some in East field, some in Line field, i.e. in a field adjoining the Cambridge line. Some of it was in the Mystic marshes. The various grants or purchases, for we have no evidence how the property was acquired, comprised woodland, arable land, meadow and marshes. In one of these abutting descriptions describing the adjoining land is this phrase: “120 acres of land, more or less, situated in Waterfield, bought of Mrs. Harvard, and entered before in her name.” In another, the words are: “Ten acres firstly appertaining to Mr. John Harvard.” It is, therefore, evident that, however acquired, whether by grant or by purchase, Harvard must have had a good deal of land within the limits of Charlestown. As to the house in which he lived, we have this to guide us. In January, 1697, Judge Sewall spent the night in Charlestown, and he records the fact that Mrs. Shepherd told him that the house in which he slept was built by John Harvard.21 Mrs. Shepherd was the wife of the clergyman then settled over the Charlestown parish. Her say-so would not necessarily be final in determining whether Harvard had ever lived in the house, were it not that she acquired the property from Mrs. Thomas Allen. Mrs. Allen was Harvard’s widow, and Allen had himself been settled over the Charlestown parish, having probably succeeded Harvard in his functions as clergyman or teacher, as he certainly did as husband of Ann Sadler, Harvard’s widow. He is undoubtedly the Allen whose name appears in the records of the College as having paid £200 to Eaton, and with whom a committee was appointed by the College in 1643 to effect a final settlement of the bequest.22 Unquestionably this sum was from Harvard’s estate, of which he was executor or administrator. The line of evidence that connects Harvard with the house in which Sewall slept is therefore fairly direct, and is not open to dispute. The site of the house is well known. The assertion that Harvard built it may perhaps have been an interpolation of Sewall’s, although there is no special reason for this suggestion. The statement is not in itself improbable. Immigration was active at that time. There were not enough houses to accommodate those who arrived. The advice given by Higginson, writing from Salem a few years before, was still applicable:
No man hath or can have a house built for him, unless he come himself or else sends servants before to do it for him.23
The one chance that intervenes to throw a possible doubt upon Harvard’s having built his house, is that he might have purchased it. The colonists were a restless set and transfers of houses are of frequent record. The missing folio in the Book of Possessions would probably have settled this question.
A landholder and a householder—we might perhaps have doubted whether the victim of pulmonary consumption in the fall of 1638 would in the winter of 1637–1638 have been strong enough to build a house, were it not for the quotation from the record to which I have already referred, which shows that his fellow-townsmen considered him in the latter part of April, 1638, in fit condition to serve upon a committee, the importance of which can only be estimated by an examination of the politics of the Colony at that time. As briefly as may be let us review the facts which led up to the political conditions at the time of Harvard’s arrival. Let us see who was then in power and who it was that was to be opposed by this committee who were “to consider some things tending towards a body of laws for the Colony.”
When Endicott came over here with his group of emigrants, he came as a member of the Church of England, with no intimation that the hostility to the formalities of the church which prompted this emigration would lead to separation from the Mother Church. He was at the head of affairs in the Colony and may perhaps properly be termed Governor of the Colony, although the Governor of the Company was at that time in London.
When Winthrop arrived he brought with him the Charter and a commission which placed him at the head of the Colony as well as of the Company. Endicott had before Winthrop’s arrival already thrown off his allegiance to the Church of England by eliminating the ritual and had actually banished two prominent men, members of the Company, because they were not willing to abandon altogether the use of the Prayer Book in the Church service.24
Winthrop probably knew of this arbitrary and important proceeding, when on the seventh of April, 1630, on board the Arbella he, with others, addressed an open letter “to the rest of their brethren in and of the Church of England,”25 in which they said “we beseech you therefore by the mercies of the Lord Jesus to consider us as your brethren, standing in very great need of your helpe, and earnestly imploring it.” “We beseech you,” they further said, “to pray for us without ceasing (who are a weake colony from yourselves) making continual request for us in your prayers.”
They then went on to intimate that there might be some of the brethren who would not have a clear intelligence of their course or tenderness of affection towards them. Such as felt that way were entreated not to despise the colonists, and their compassion was besought. In other words, while still claiming to be members of the Church, the knowledge of the imminence of the break is evident in this letter. The pretence that no separation was intended was maintained even after the election of John Wilson as their teacher. Winthrop says:
We used imposition of hands, but with this protestation by all, that it was only as a sign of election and confirmation, not of any intent that Mr. Wilson should renounce his ministry he received in England.26
Whether Endicott’s act of secession was approved at the time or not, no step back was ever taken to check its effects, and the Puritan emigrants became practically Separatists and their church a Congregational Church.27 It was, then, to a Colony dominated by a Congregational Church that Harvard knowingly turned his footsteps.28
Winthrop was elected Governor after his arrival in 1630 for three consecutive years, 1631–1633. Then dissatisfaction with his rule led to his overthrow, and during the next three years experiments were made with weaker men. Thomas Dudley, John Haynes, and Henry Vane were the successive Governors during these years.
The last of these, when he arrived in the Colony, bore the prestige of an honored name, his father Sir Henry Vane being at that time a distinguished man, holding high office in England. Although the son on reaching New England in the fall of 1635 was not yet twenty-five years of age, he was almost at once selected as a suitable candidate for the highest office in the Colony—as one around whom the discontents could rally—and at the next election he was duly elected Governor. It was during his term of office that Mrs. Hutchinson held the series of meetings at her house in Boston, which resulted in her being tried the next year for heresy and sentenced to banishment from the Colony. Strongly in sympathy with her were John Cotton, probably the most distinguished preacher in Boston at that time, and John Wheelwright. The latter was banished as a result of his adherence to his opinions, but the former when interrogated as to his support of the doctrines of Mrs. Hutchinson, so far hedged that he avoided the same fate. During these proceedings all Boston was in a turmoil of excitement, and while it was at its height Vane’s term of office expired. At the new election he was turned down; the old regime of Winthrop was restored; and Vane was humiliated by being dropped out of the magistracy.29
It will readily be understood that an election held under these conditions could not be entirely free from fears of disturbance. Vane’s support for re-election came mainly from Boston. Winthrop who opposed him relied upon the country, and as he feared interference on the part of the people of Boston if the election should be held in that place he secured the passage of an order that the Court for that purpose should be held at Cambridge.
The accounts of the election itself strongly suggest a situation corresponding in many points with that which occurred at Springfield at a recent nominating convention. Perhaps the language of one of the chroniclers of the event, himself a candidate at the time, will more clearly portray the fact that politics have not changed much since 1637:
There was great danger of a tumult that day, for those of that side grew into fierce speeches, and some laid hands on others; but seeing themselves too weak, they grew quiet.30
Vane, fresh from the pomp of the English Court, had been in the habit of marching to church on Sundays with an escort of four sergeants bearing halberds. These sergeants were all supporters of Vane, and when Winthrop, the new Governor, sought their escort, they refused to give it.31
The tumultuous election followed by the petty insult of the sergeants to the new Governor, were evidence enough of the bitterness of the contest, but to make more significant the fact that Winthrop had lost his hold upon the affections of the people of Boston, they immediately elected Vane a deputy. This election was disallowed by the General Court, and a new election ordered. Again Vane was elected, and this time he was permitted to serve, “the Court not finding how they might reject him” as Winthrop naively remarks.32
One other incident which happened that summer illustrates the intensity of personal animosity engendered by these quarrels. In June there arrived Lord Ley, then a young man of about twenty years of age, the son and heir of the Earl of Marlborough. He took lodgings in a common inn and declined the courteous invitation of Governor Winthrop to make his headquarters at the Governor’s house. In the early part of July, the Governor extended to Lord Ley an invitation to dine, and in a friendly way tendered the same courtesy to Vane. He records that they both not only refused to come, but at the same hour went over to Noddle’s Island to dine with Mr. Maverick.33
These proceedings made evident to Winthrop and his followers that the great immigration to the Colony, notwithstanding the limitation of the franchise to freemen, was undermining their power. To render doubly secure the limitations already imposed, and to perpetuate them through control over temporary as well as permanent residents, the Act was passed which has already been referred to, imposing a penalty on all those who should harbor strangers for over three weeks, unless they were properly endorsed by the designated authorities. Already the efforts to protect the community from the evil effects of heretical doctrines by the banishment or disfranchisement of their exponents had furnished abundant ground for the charge of intolerance. The passage of this Act testified to the justice of the charge. Boston was the place of landing for those who were to be affected by it, and Boston was indignant. When the Court then in session at Cambridge adjourned, and Winthrop returned to his home, his neighbors, instead of turning out to receive the Governor and escort him to his house, “refused to go out to meet him or show him any respect.”34 Hutchinson records that at this session an Act was passed disqualifying any person from acting as Governor until he had been in the Colony a full year.35 This was, of course, a hit at Vane, and doubtless had to do with the reception of Winthrop on his return home. The Governor had, however, prevailed, and a few days after Harvard’s arrival in the Colony, Vane, defeated and humiliated, folded his tent, went on board ship, and sailed for England.
If I have succeeded in conveying even a faint conception of the political tumult in Massachusetts in the fall of 1637, it will be appreciated that when Harvard landed he must at once have realized how difficult it would be for any person who intended residing anywhere near Boston to avoid taking part in this contest. The defeated Vane was to the last the recipient of honors from his supporters. They followed him to his ship in great numbers, and if Harvard himself did not see, as he may have done, this popular demonstration in Vane’s favor, he must at least have heard the volleys of musketry and the thunder of the ordnance, discharged from shore and even from the Castle,36 which announced to those in the neighborhood, whether actually present at the scene or not, that the person thus honored was about to depart from this shore. Contemporary opinion as to Vane’s departure may be inferred from a line from Johnson:
With small defeat, thou didst retreat to Brittaine ground againe.37
Up to that time the government of the Colony had been carried on under the general powers conferred in the Charter, through the General Court; through the oversight of the affairs of the towns by officers selected by the townsmen, who were oftentimes forced by penalties, to undertake their duties of office; and through Church discipline. A few statutes had been passed, some of them however being only temporary in their nature. Justices of the peace had been appointed who had like powers given them with those in England for the reformation of abuses and punishment of offenders,38 and with the increasing population sessions of quarter courts had been instituted. Wages had been fixed. Prices on certain articles had been restricted. Sumptuary legislation had been instituted.39 Offenders who had committed offences which had been for all time recognized in England as crimes were punished, the penalties being apparently fixed arbitrarily by the Court of Assistants and in some cases offences were treated as seditious and criminal which it would be difficult to classify under an ordinary criminal code. For instance, Philip Ratclyfe was ordered to be whipped, to have his ears cut off, to be fined £40, and to be banished out of this jurisdiction, for uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the government and the Church of Salem.40
It will not be wondered at that the people were restless under this condition of affairs. They clamored for a code of laws. They wanted the government organized. They were not content merely with the General Court of the Company under the Charter, but they wanted some definition to be given of the rights of individuals; of property rights; of crimes, and of penalties. This was the spirit that prompted the formation of the committee of the Charlestown townsmen of which Harvard was a member. But this did not correspond with the views of John Winthrop, who had just dethroned and humiliated Vane and driven him from the Colony; who at the expense of great turbulence in Boston had succeeded in causing the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheelwright, and in effecting the disarmament of many of their followers;41 and who in addition had nearly overthrown that popular preacher John Cotton. Once more in power, he and the majority of the magistrates were opposed to granting this wish of the people.
He himself writes in 1639: “The people had long desired a body of laws, and thought their condition very unsafe, while so much power rested in the discretion of the magistrates.” He adds:
Two great reasons there were, which caused most of the magistrates and some of the elders not to be very forward in this matter. One was, want of sufficient experience of the nature and disposition of the people, considered with the condition of the country and other circumstances, which made them conceive, that such laws would be fittest for us which should arise pro re nata upon occasions, etc., and so the laws of England and other states grew, and therefore the fundamental laws of England are called customs, consuetudines. 2. For that it would professedly transgress the limits of our charter, which provide, we shall make no laws repugnant to the laws of England, and that we were assured we must do.
Then, having laid down the proposition that their legislation would inevitably be repugnant to the laws of England, he goes on to argue the point, saying:
But to raise up laws by practice and custom had been no transgression; as in our church discipline, and in matters of marriage, to make a law, that marriages should not be solemnized by ministers, is repugnant to the laws of England; but to bring it to a custom by practice for the magistrates to perform it is no law made repugnant to it, etc.42
Here, then, is Winthrop’s creed. Let us have no code, so long as we can help it, but let us go ahead and establish customs. Let us pass only such laws as shall be required by occasions, and he exemplified his meaning by attaching to the first ordinance entered in the Boston Records words asserting that the ordinance “is but a declaration of the Common Law.”43
Now, as people looked around they could not only see such cases of punishment as the one which I have quoted above, but in addition to arbitrary punishments for ordinary crimes, others like the following.
Thomas Walford was living at Charlestown in the only house then built, when Endicott’s party arrived. The next year, after Winthrop’s arrival, he was fined forty shillings, and he and his wife were enjoined to depart out of the limits of this patent before the twentieth of October next following under pain of confiscation of his goods, for his contempt of authority and confronting officers.44
Thomas Morton of Mount Wollaston, another resident of this region, who was living in his own house when Winthrop arrived here, was ordered by the Court to be put in the bilboes and then to be sent to England on the ship Gift. All of his goods were ordered to be seized to meet his debts and to pay an Indian for a canoe which it was alleged he had appropriated. After his goods were removed from his house, it was to be burnt to the ground.45
Sir Christopher Gardiner, another prior resident of this region, was sent to England as a prisoner on the ship Lion. Gardiner was one of a number of persons deported on the Lion.46
In short, persons obnoxious to the government; those who preached heretical opinions; those who attacked the Church; and those who confronted officers, were deported or banished. They could not even transfer their real estate. Such transfers, unless approved by the town authorities, were set aside, and those concerned in them fined.
In addition to the definite offences, enumerated above, there were certain that were indefinite, the probable punishment of which was only to be measured through such threats as these—if any man shall exceed the bounds of moderation we shall punish them severely—the final words of a statute regulating trade.47 The right of a man to carry money or beaver with him to England was made dependent upon the consent of the Governor for the time being.48
This was apparently the sort of Common Law that Winthrop wanted to work out, and it is evident that some of it was not altogether acceptable to the colonists.49 The presence of John Harvard on the committee appointed to do what they could to secure a code of laws would indicate that he sympathized with the movement to procure some recognition of the rights of the people and that his name was to be registered among those whom Winthrop himself described as being of opinion that “their condition was very unsafe while so much power rested in the discretion of the Magistrates.”
Harvard had arrived too late to take part in the conflict between Vane and Winthrop, although he must constantly have heard their names and those of Mrs. Hutchinson and Cotton and Wheelwright in the daily interchange of news with his neighbors which then took the place of the morning newspaper. The trials before the General Court in November of that year must have been followed with eagerness by all the colonists, and even after the excommunication of Mrs. Hutchinson, in the final trial before the Church in the spring of 1638, the whole subject must have continued to be of public interest. Especially was this the case in Boston, where Winthrop was in disfavor, his following being recorded to be of the country, and the open evidence of dislike with which he met having taken place in that town. That a resident of Charlestown must have realized that the sympathies of the people across the river were with those who had been defeated at the polls is a certainty. When the election was held, Winthrop forced the holding of it at Cambridge, against the opposition of Vane. Charlestown was probably too near Boston to suit his purposes, and perhaps the people there sympathized with their neighbors.
Out of all this has come a general impression that Winthrop was the representative of intolerance and even of persecution. Naturally those who were opposed to him pose in public estimation as the advocates of toleration and freedom.50 Plymouth Colony gave refuge to some of the exiles from this Colony, and later the settlement at Rhode Island, under the direction of Roger Williams, became a sort of Cave of Adullam for the discontents banished from Massachusetts Bay. Both of these settlements were far more liberal than Massachusetts Bay. This adds to the disposition to regard all opponents of the Winthrop regime as liberals. When therefore we find Harvard appointed on a committee to forward the preparation of a code of laws, in known opposition to the wishes of the great leader of the Colony, then at the height of his power, we are prone to think of him as sympathizing with Cotton and Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson, an attitude highly improbable for the colleague of Zachariah Symmes, or for one whom John Wilson could eulogize. We involuntarily give to this opposition a character to which it is probably not entitled, and credit the opponents of Winthrop with being apostles of freedom. Success on Vane’s part at the polls in Cambridge in the fall of 1637 might have reversed these reputations, but we must accept things as we find them, with the result that in this appointment on the Charlestown committee we find Harvard identified with a movement of progress which brought him in opposition, on this point at least, with the leader of those who represent to us the spirit of intolerance.
I have dwelt at some length upon the Charlestown committee for the reason that it is the only recorded event which brings us in touch with Harvard’s relations to his fellow-townsmen. Moreover, it is important in showing his estimate of the rights of his fellow-citizens. They were entitled to have a settled government. They were entitled to have a fixed set of laws. They were entitled to be protected from the caprice of the magistrates.
Me commune bonum, prœsertim gloria Christi,
Impulit et charœ posteritatis amor.
These words from John Wilson’s elegy, words written by a contemporary who certainly knew all about him, with the purpose of characterizing the man, are singularly appropriate and are fully justified by what has just been said. The editor of the 1853 edition of the Magnalia translates the lines as follows:
The common weal, the glory of my God,
The love of man—these lured me where I trod.51
The emphasis placed by Wilson upon Harvard’s piety is lost in this translation, and it is noticeable also that it was the love of posterity, not merely the love of his contemporaries which impelled—not lured—him to take the steps that he did.
One other contemporary, Thomas Shepard, who also must have known him well, characterized him in an epigrammatic sentence of almost identical import:
This man was a scholar, and pious in his life, and enlarged toward the country, and the good of it, in life and death.52
We have here testimony as to his scholarship, his piety, his public spirit, and his benevolence. From another contemporaneous source we gain an idea as to the character and quality of his preaching. A single line from some verses in Johnson’s Wonder-working Providence gives us an estimate of his powers in this line, furnished by one who must have heard him when in his own pulpit at Charlestown. The poet addresses Harvard and exhorts him to tell how sweet among the saints, Christ has ravished his heart with heavenly joys,—
To preach and pray, with tears affection strong.
He was not, then, to adopt a contemporaneous epithet, a “painful” preacher but was of the emotional type. Elswehere, Johnson uses somewhat similar language when speaking of Shepard’s preaching. One of Shepard’s hearers, the author says, “was faine to hang down the head often, least his watry eyes should blab abroad the secret conjunction of his affections.”53 Many of Shepard’s sermons have been preserved. Their perusal to-day does not promote “watry eyes” in the sense in which the author of Wonder-working Providence meant to imply that actual hearers were affected. We cannot, however, overlook the fact that Shepard had a wonderful hold upon his people, and if we do not find in his printed sermons adequate cause for his great force in the community, we must seek for the explanation in his winning personality, in his manners, in the mutual sympathy between himself and his congregation, and in the identity of their religious beliefs. Nor does the similarity of Johnson’s language in epitomizing the style of two different men greatly minimize the descriptive value of his account. He must have been familiar with the methods of both Harvard and Shepard. We have no published works of the former to which we can turn, but a single phrase in one of Shepard’s sermons gives a hint as to what he evidently did not like. “People are naturally moved sometimes,” he says, “by a thundering minister.”54
These contemporary descriptions of Harvard and of his preaching, when collated, tend greatly to reduce the evasive character of his personality. They bring before us a scholarly and pious man; an emotional preacher; a public spirited citizen, and a generous benefactor; one who was selected by his fellow-citizens for service on an important committee, where both steadfastness and moral courage were required if aught was to be accomplished, and this at a time when his health must have been precarious. An open-minded man withal, as we may infer, from his willingness to study the opinions of his opponents, which is disclosed in the number of books by Jesuit authors, placed by himself upon the shelves of his library.
It would obviously be an unauthorized flight of imagination to go farther and intimate that this foreshadows sympathy with the spirit which led Dunster to insert as a motto for the College the word Veritas in the rude sketch of a proposed seal drawn a few years thereafter in the College Hall on a page of a College Record Book. Nevertheless, the deference to the opinions of those who differed from him shown in the purchase of books for his library, may, perhaps, justify the opinion that he would have endorsed the action of Dunster in thus pledging the College to the inflexible propagation of the truth—whatever the consequences—whatever the prejudices that must be trampled down!
I have now exhausted the record of the traces which Harvard left behind him in life. His death revealed the direction in which his thoughts were turned. One half of his estate was left to the inchoate College to be established at Newtown. It matters not whether the exact amount of the bequest as stated by Mather, £779 17s 2d, was correct or not.55 It matters not that the receipt in full of the amount by the College cannot be discovered. The fact that he bequeathed a sum estimated at the time at about £800 is testified to by nearly all the contemporaneous writers on New England affairs. The records show that some of it at least was received, and there is no good ground for the quibble upon which the doubt as to the value of the estate was founded. The financial records of the College at that day have not been preserved in such shape that any inferences can be drawn from the fact that no acknowledgment of the receipt of an amount equal to the alleged bequest can be found. Whatever the value of the estate, it was enough to secure the organization of the College at once, and its instrumentality in that direction was recognized in the following spring by the passage of an Act assigning the name “Harvard College” to the little institution at Cambridge, whose inception had been hastened through the bequest. Had there been issued in the summer of 1638 an edition of “Who’s Who in America,” Harvard’s name would not have appeared in it. He had published nothing. He had done nothing to make himself conspicuous. But the philanthropic motive which inspired the bequest, secured for him posthumous fame. It would seem as if, in taking this step, he might with prophetic insight, have had in mind the lines—
What shall I do to be forever known,
And make the age to come, my own?
Let us now ask ourselves what manner of place was this to which Harvard had come? How many people were there in the Colony and what were the conditions of life?
Seven years before this time Winthrop arrived in New England. He then found about two hundred people in and about Salem and another hundred at Charlestown. One Thomas Walford was already in possession, living in what was termed a palisaded house, when the first band of these settlers arrived at Charlestown.56
The arrival in this country of Winthrop was followed by that remarkable immigration which in a few years converted the wilderness along the Massachusetts shore into a cluster of populous villages. It has been stated that between 1630 and 1643, two hundred and ninety-eight vessels had arrived, bringing 21,200 persons.57 In order that we might not feel too confident upon this point, other writers have set the number of arrivals up to 1640 at 4000 only.58 That the former estimate is approximately correct is evident from the figures from time to time given of the number of passengers on the different vessels by Winthrop in his Journal. He does not undertake to record the arrival of every vessel, nor does he give the number of passengers on every one of those that he mentions, but he does give the names of some of the vessels which arrived during this period and in some instances the number of passengers brought by them. The highest number conveyed on any one ship was 220, the lowest 10. He says that in 1638 alone there arrived twenty ships bearing 3000 passengers59 and the average number on thirty-three ships that I have culled from his narrative, which arrived down to and including the 3000 in 1638, was 140 passengers for each ship. Now, if the two hundred and ninety-eight ships which are reported to have arrived by 1643 each bore 70 passengers it would justify the higher estimate of arrivals. Hence one cannot be far wrong if he should say that there must have arrived 10,000 or 11,000 immigrants in Massachusetts when Harvard set foot there. Those settlers were scattered along the coast in villages within easy distance of each other, none of them being far from the seashore. We have two means of testing the relative importance of these settlements in 1637. One, the draft ordered for soldiers for the Pequot War, the other the distribution of the country rate. It would not be unreasonable to infer that the former was based on population, the latter on property. The towns stand in the following order of importance in the draft order:60 Boston, Salem, Ipswich, Saugus, Watertown, Dorchester, Charlestown, Roxbury, Newtown, Newbury, Hingham, Weymouth, Medford, Marblehead, the last two being each called upon to furnish four men. In the distribution of the rates,61 Boston leads, then comes Salem, then Dorchester and Charlestown, then Ipswich, followed by Roxbury and Watertown on even terms; then Newtown, Saugus, Medford, Newbury, Hingham, Weymouth. Marblehead does not appear as a separate settlement in this list. A second rate was levied this year, in which the order was slightly varied and Saugus appeared as Lynn. It will be seen that Boston had already attained its supremacy, while Charlestown ranked higher on the property list than on the one based on population.
It would not be an easy matter to estimate the population of the towns at this time. The number of immigrants by no means indicates the number of permanent settlers. The mortality had at times been great. Many settlers had returned to England, and it is not reasonable to suppose that the birth rate during this period had offset this depletion, but a rough estimate would indicate that there might have been in Boston at that time a permanent population of 1500 or 1600 which was likely at any time to be swelled temporarily as high as 2000 by the arrival of transients. Charlestown had perhaps a population of 600 and that, of course, was subject to temporary increase from time to time by the overflow from Boston. Both places were rapidly growing.
Those who first arrived, if not provided with tents, constructed temporary shelters, which were termed booths, or huts, or wigwams.62 The last of these, made with boughs of trees, soon became mere tinder boxes, and were necessarily much subject to conflagration. The household fires were presumably outside and as they could not be dispensed with during high winds, the flying sparks not infrequently caused the destruction of the wigwams and often also of the belongings of the occupants.
Such lodgings were followed by others of a more permanent character, but still primitive. It is natural to suspect that the settlers proceeded to construct log-cabins, and we should conceive of buildings of this sort being made as they are to-day in the South and West, an outline of logs being laid on the ground and others superimposed upon them. By hewing the upper and lower surface of each log so that it can rest upon its neighbors below; by mortising their ends at the corners of the building; and by preserving the several tiers of logs on a level, a solid wall can easily be reared to the required height for a roof. By caulking the cracks between the logs and daubing them with clay, such a structure may be made fairly impervious to the wind. Whether buildings of this kind were erected by the colonists does not, so far as I know, appear. Their permanent homes are merely spoken of as cottages or houses, with the exception that in one or two instances—for example, in describing the house of Thomas Walford which was found by the settlers at Charlestown—palisaded houses are referred to.63 The meaning of this term becomes clear when we turn to the Plymouth Records and find men charged with effecting an entrance to a house by moving the loose palisadoes.64 Houses of this sort were evidently constructed with vertical logs, the lower ends being sharpened and driven into the ground, or set in a trench, as is the custom in the West to-day, the upper ends being fastened together and roofed over. The use of this form of log-house, at least, we can identify with reasonable certainty.
Bearing in mind that there is no limestone to be found along our coast, it will be realized that a formidable difficulty was to be encountered in the construction of chimneys and in the interior finish of wooden houses until by some means the lack of this material was overcome. Bricks could easily be manufactured, and Higginson says they were made in Salem as early as 1629.65 Until limestone was discovered within accessible distances, lime for mortar could only have been procured by calcining oyster and clam shells. The cost of this process precluded for a while the extensive use of mortar and prevented the inside plastering of the houses. Chimneys were constructed of small strips of wood laid at right angles to each other, one on top of another and locked together at the corners by gravity, the cracks between the strips being filled with mud and the inside surface of the chimney covered with a coating of clay. Winthrop records a fire occasioned by the ignition of such a chimney. “About noon,” he says, “the chimney of Mr. Sharp’s house in Boston took fire (the splinters being not clayed at the top), and taking the thatch burnt it down.”66 This quotation, in addition to the description of the chimney which it furnishes, reveals to us one of the causes of the frequent fires recorded in the early days of the Colony—namely, the thatched roof.67 The immigrant had been accustomed to roofs of this description in England, where the frequent showers kept them sufficiently moist to prevent special danger from fire in houses having such well constructed chimneys as the English cottages were provided with. Here the occasional drouths, and the protracted spells of infrequent rain, entirely altered the conditions of exposure to conflagration from the use of such a roof, and added to this increased hazard was the danger, as we have seen, that some of the splinters of the wooden chimneys might not be clayed at the top. Doubtless, the same neglect sometimes occurred at the bottom as well. As late as 1642 the town of Boston erected a building the roof of which was ordered to be thatched.68
Winthrop gives us a clue to still another cause of conflagration, which would not have suggested itself to us at once. He says, “The house of John Page of Watertown was burnt by carrying a few coals from one house to another; a coal fell by the way and kindled the leaves.”69 Of course, a moment’s reflection would recall to any of us that the friction match was a comparatively recent invention. The convenience of this method of ignition is so interwrought with our daily lives, that the thought of going over to a neighbor’s for a shovelful of coals to start up a fire would not naturally suggest itself as an every day possibility, but it is apparent that under the then existing circumstances every household would endeavor to maintain a bed of coals in the fireplace, in order to avoid the delay incident to the use of flint and tinder in kindling a fire. The colonists were so accustomed to the loss of property by fire that Cotton Mather records without comment the fact that the houses of the Rev. John Wilson had been destroyed “divers times by fires.”70 These losses were, according to Mather, borne by Wilson cheerfully. Indeed, on one occasion, when the destruction of his house by fire was announced to him, he said, “Blessed be God! he has burnt this house, because he intends to give me a better”—which, adds Mather, accordingly came to pass.
The disadvantage of not having lime at ready command is illustrated by an experience in house-building recorded by Winthrop. He says, “The governor having erected a building of stone at Mistick, there came so violent a storm of rain for twenty four hours from N. E. and S. E. as (it not being finished, and laid with clay for want of lime) two sides were washed down.”71 Elsewhere people suffered in a similar way, though not so disastrously. Their complaint was merely that the daubing was washed out by storms.72 Scottow describes the first meeting-house in Boston as a “Mud Wall meeting house,”73 and in the Boston Records we find a house described as a “Mud Wall house.”74 As late as 1653 the town of Dorchester paid a charge for daubing the walls of the second meeting-house built in that place.75 The protracted use of this style of finish merely indicates the difficulty experienced by the colonists in procuring lime. They made use of such means as were at hand to make their houses windproof.
There was one other method of protection from the penetrating winds beside daubing with clay, perhaps not so effectual but at any rate likely to prove more cleanly. Clapboards were from the very outset an article of export both here and in Plymouth, and they could be used in houses both externally and internally. In the case of framed houses, the construction of which began with the arrival of artisans, at a very early date, the exterior covering of shingles or clapboards was practically a necessity. We have the record of the use of clapboards for interior finish as early as 1632 under circumstances which also enlighten us as to what was considered ostentation in house building at that time. It had been agreed to move the government to Cambridge, and in order to make the plan effective the several members of the government mutually consented to transfer their homes there. Dudley actually set up his establishment in Cambridge. Winthrop built a house, put his servants in it for a few days, and then having concluded that the attempt to transfer the government there was a failure, he took down the frame of the house and moved it to Boston.76 Dudley charged him with going back on his word. Winthrop retaliated with a counter-charge that “he [Dudley] did not well to bestow such cost about wainscoting and adorning his house, in the beginning of a plantation, both in regard of the necessity of publick charges, and for example.”77 To this charge of ostentation and extravagance in the interior finish of his house, by the substitution of wainscoting for clay-daubing, Dudley replied, “that it was for the warmth of his house, and the charge was but little, being but clapboards nailed to the wall in the form of a wainscot.” This was in 1632. The frame house had already asserted itself, but so simple an interior finish as wainscoting with clapboards was subject to criticism. In the five years that followed before Harvard arrived, there was doubtless some improvement in the character of the houses as they were from time to time erected, and it is probable that wainscoting became permissible. At any rate, we find evidence that this was so in 1639 when the first College building was erected, and a contemporary writer describes the buildings in Boston as “Houses of the first edition, without large chambers or windows, ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilion.”78
Besides houses of the character of those already referred to, Winthrop speaks of one which was burned down in 1632, constructed exclusively of clapboards.79 It is not probable that when Harvard landed in Charlestown in 1637 he found many log-cabins or clapboard houses. The place had already assumed the shape of a settlement, and boards and squared timber were procurable. It must be added, however, that seasoned lumber must have been out of the reach of the builder. The difficulty about obtaining lime, although partially overcome, still existed in a great measure, and the houses then constructed, although adequate shelters for a young and hardy population, must have been totally inadequate to protect invalids or aged people, if there were any in the Colony, from the severe and violent changes of our winter weather.
If we wish to ascertain just what the possibilities of Harvard’s house were, let us look for a moment at the methods of construction and finish made use of in the College building at Cambridge, the erection of which was made possible by Harvard’s bequest. Here was a building which was intended to be permanent. Yet, so utterly inadequate for its preservation were the methods of construction then in vogue, that in 1677 a portion of the building fell down, thus limiting its life to less than forty years. The cause of this fall is not stated, but unseasoned lumber and bad mortar would sufficiently explain it. While the building was still very young there were complaints of rotting ground-sills, and heavy demands were made on the College purse for repairs.
Under one roof in this building were all the rooms deemed requisite for the College and the students. There was the public hall where religious and literary exercises were held and where also the students had their commons. Over this was a room in which was the library that Harvard brought with him to Charlestown. The kitchen and buttery were on the ground floor, and there were dormitories in both stories as well as in the attic. The chambers were provided with studies, mere closets in size, but rendering it possible for the occupants of the rooms to obtain some sort of seclusion during study hours.80 When this building was erected the College was very short of money and the several studies and chambers were finished according to the desires of those who intended to occupy them, the cost of the finish being charged to the proposed occupant. This enables us to see what was possible at that time in the way of interior finish. Certain of the rooms were lathed and daubed, and as there are charges for clay, it would follow with reasonable certainty that the clay was purchased for this purpose.81 Other rooms were plastered and whitened. Still others were sealed with cedar, thus being finished in that reprehensible form, wainscoting. There were charges for glass used in the building, but they would seem to be inadequate for all the windows. There are references in existence which indicate that oiled paper was also in use at that time.82
Hints at the life in the building help us to understand the conditions under which Harvard was placed in his new house at Charlestown a few years before these entries were made. There were, for instance, only one or two studies which were capable of being warmed. Hence, in the winter months, nearly all the students were compelled to assemble in the public hall, where, before the open fireplace, they could at any rate keep from freezing. Wood was abundant, but a roaring fire in an open fireplace required constant replenishing. It was easy to produce heat enough to warm such a room, but the trouble was that nearly all of it went up the chimney and in a drafty room, even the interposition of a settle as a screen did not mean comfort with a hot fire on one side and the chill of the room the other. The question of lighting the hall in the evenings sufficiently for study must have been a troublesome one. The steward charged the students for candles and if they made use of the public fire a charge was made for this. The drafty room, the open fire and the tallow candle—these were the conditions to which all were subject, and if they do not in themselves indicate suffering, they at least do not convey an idea of comfort. Higginson, writing at an earlier date, says that there were no tallow candles to be had in the Colony but that they had fish oil in abundance for lighting, and that pine splinters served their purpose very well.83 These references to candles in the College books would indicate that candles had soon become plenty in the Colony, but the inventories of the day are of no use in settling this question.
The College books assist in interpreting the conditions of life on one other point—namely, how the colonists managed to carry on their daily transactions without a circulating medium. Coming as they did to what they were accustomed to term a wilderness, they did not fortify themselves with coin. The result was that they were soon obliged to provide substitutes. A price was fixed, at which the Indian wampum should circulate. Bullets were made current for a time in place of brass farthings. Prices were fixed for beaver skins. Corn was declared to be a legal tender, and so on.84 The result of all this was that the Treasurer of the College received very little silver. He was paid almost exclusively in commodities, oftentimes in live stock. Take a single account for a year. It was settled in rye, Indian, wheat, malt, butter, apples, and a final payment designated as commodities. The same difficulty must have been experienced in Charlestown by John Harvard, and it would be interesting to find out how he managed to pay his bills, or if he did not run any bills, fancy him going to market equipped with a few bushels of corn, a bundle of beaver skins, a string of wampum and a handful of bullets, thus prepared to settle for what he should buy.
I think we can safely draw the conclusion from what has been learned from the College building that the house that Harvard built for himself must have been but a very simple and rude cottage, especially must it have been small, if he was to occupy it during the winter of 1637–1638, for the reason that the smaller and simpler the house the quicker could it be finished. If it survived until Sewall’s time, it had a long life for those days, but of course, this was possible, since with constant occupation and continuous repairs, there would be a gradual substitution of new material, which might not only prolong the life of the building, but actually improve it and place it in better condition for continued life. Harvard was a comparatively wealthy man. Few of the colonists could show such a balance sheet. The days of framed houses had by that time become fairly well established in the older towns. He could, therefore, afford to indulge in a brick chimney, a shingled roof, in walls plastered and whitened or in a wainscot, and he certainly would have clapboarded the outside of his house. Probably also he had glass and not paper in his windows.
Here, surrounded by the three hundred and seventy-three or perhaps more volumes which he brought over with him,85 he must have made the best of the situation, and although it would be difficult for us to obtain much pleasure from the perusal of most of the volumes in his library, still inasmuch as they were deliberately selected by him, we must conclude that he expected to derive comfort from them. If his house was constructed in the fall, the time had come when he moved in, for him to enjoy his books. Winter was at hand with its cold winds, its ice and snow and slush. Inside the house, in the room where the books were shelved, near the fire, sheltered by the settle, was the place for the delicate young clergyman whose predisposition to pulmonary complaint forbade the idea of much exposure in ordinary New England winter weather. Reading these ponderous volumes,86 whose contents seem to us to-day as heavy as the books themselves, by the light of a candle in the winter evenings, afforded opportunity for cultivation and study if not for recreation. It is not right, however, to assume that what seems dull to us to-day was without interest to the theological student of the seventeenth century.
Audiences then listened patiently to long sermons which in their published form require careful study for us, to-day, to make out their meaning. Winthrop says:87
Mr. Hooker began to preach at Cambridge, the governor and many others went to hear him, (though the governor did very seldom go from his own congregation on the Lord’s day). He preached in the afternoon, and having gone on with much strength of voice and intention of spirit, about a quarter of an hour, he was at a stand, and told the people, that God had deprived him both of his strength and matter, &c. and so went forth, and about half an hour after returned again, and went on to very good purpose about two hours.
And yet, so complete was the domination of Hooker over his parish that when he went to Hartford, one hundred of his parishioners accompanied him, making the journey on foot, in about fourteen days. We can think of them trudging along through the forest, treading the old Indian trail, which skirted the swamps and led from ford to ford of brook or river, over the saddles in the intervening ranges of hills, and following their favorite preacher who could hold forth for over two hours, even when physically so prostrate that he was obliged to stop for a rally. We cannot judge of the enjoyment or the satisfaction to be derived by one situated as Harvard was, in the perusal of books which do not interest us to-day. It may be, probably was, that he found comfort in his Bellarminus and his Zanchius and recreation in Quarles’s Poems and the Mirror for Magistrates.
It would be pleasant for those who are smokers to think of Harvard toasting his feet before the fire and enjoying a pipe. This process was in those days termed “taking” or “drinking” tobacco and was frowned upon by the authorities. The public use of tobacco was forbidden in 1632 and its sale was prohibited in 1635. Thus the law stood until the spring of 1638. It was possible therefore for Harvard at this time if he could procure smuggled tobacco to smoke it in solitude, but the presence of his wife during the act would have made this proceeding illegal. In March, 1638, the restraints were temporarily withdrawn, but early in September they were again interposed and tobacco was not allowed to be taken in the fields, except on a journey, nor at meal-times, nor in or near any house, barn or hay-rack, where there was danger of fire; nor at any inn, or common victualing-house, except in a private room with no other person present.88
We are prone to think of the food which was served in those days as something for which the settlers were entitled to sympathy. I should be inclined to say that if Ann Sadler was a good plain cook, Harvard’s table would have been quite as attractive as the ordinary table of to-day. We all know how good the simple things taste which are served to us in camp. To Winthrop the rough fare seemed good, and he wrote in 1630, “I never fared better in my life, never slept better, never had more content of mind,”89 and again, “Though we have not beef and mutton yet (God be praised) we want them not. Our Indian corn answers for all. Yet here is fowl and fish in great plenty.”90 Johnson, describing things a few years later, spoke of the gardens and orchards. The author of New England’s First Fruits, writing only two or three years later, spoke of the gardens—orchards, grounds fenced, corn fields, etc.—and enumerated the resources of the table as fish—sea and fresh—fowl of all kinds, wild and tame, and spoke of white meal and of English grain as well as Indian. Goats, sheep and cattle had multiplied, and although in 1637 and 1638 they could not have been sufficiently numerous to be relied upon for furnishing meat for the table, still there is evidence that the colonists occasionally indulged in this diet. The forest, in season, provided occasional venison. Fowls were abundant, and, after they had become acclimated, bred freely. Partridges, pigeons and ducks, wild turkeys and geese were to be had in plenty in the fall of the year. The brooks were full of trout and the ocean teemed with life. Mackerel, cod, haddock, pollock, hake, and bass were to be had all along the coast, some of them at any time and in any quantity; and there were sturgeon in some of the rivers, and smelts and alewives were at times abundant. Clams and oysters were to be procured with ease, there were many beds of mussels, and lobsters abounded in the waters of the bay, not short lobsters, but big fellows, one of which would serve for a family. The period at which Harvard arrived was the transition from the sufferings of the early immigrants to the plenty which followed their successful efforts at introducing stock and cultivating gardens.91 The first difficulties attending the cultivation of English grain had at that time probably been overcome, and people were no longer absolutely dependent upon Indian corn, or imported wheat and oatmeal.92
Cooking was then accomplished before an open fire. The fowl or the cut of meat placed in the spit could be properly browned and basted under the constant supervision of the cook. The smaller birds could be broiled on the live coals. There were no stoves, and no ovens to mingle the flavor of roasted meats, no cold storage to destroy their taste. The Charlestown man who in 1638 had eggs for breakfast, felt reasonably sure that they were freshly laid and had no occasion to speculate as to whether they had been in cold storage for the preceding twelve months. There was no occasion for a chef de cuisine to disguise the decadent flavor of meats, nominally fresh but preserved artificially long after the time when they should have been eaten. A plain cook was all that was needed to secure palatable food. I am disposed, therefore, to say that there is no occasion for us to waste sympathy on John Harvard on that ground, certainly not if I am right in thinking that the era of plenty, which we know obtained four or five years later, had already dawned.
The lack of tea and coffee greatly changed the character of the meals of that day from those which are served us to-day. There were no five o’clock teas, no after-dinner coffee; but morning, noon, and night, beer, beer, beer. This does not sound attractive, but it must be remembered that one of the complaints made by the students against Eaton was that he did not furnish them with bread and beer between meals.93 One important article of diet is said to have been abundant, and that is milk. Our authorities do not fix the date when it became so, but presumably this was the case in 1638.
It is not probable that the earlier immigrants brought with them much of any furniture. The vessels were filled with passengers and stock. Sheep, cattle, goats, horses were crowded in, and as the voyage might be even longer than twelve weeks, they were obliged to carry provisions for passengers and for stock which should serve under any probable circumstances, and practically they had also to provide in advance for the return voyage. Besides this the colonists were dependent upon the Mother Country for clothes, for shoes, and for some years for medicines, condiments, spices, and some articles of food. All these things were of more importance than furniture, and it is not conceivable that much storage room could have been found for chairs, tables, bedsteads, and bureaus in the crowded ships down to 1640.94 If we should seek to reconstruct the furnishing of Harvard’s house we ought therefore to confine ourselves to simple and rude articles, just as well adapted, however, for their purpose as if more skilfully constructed.95 Table habits and table manners must have been very different at that time from those which prevail to-day. We should be shocked if when we sat down to dinner a guest should pull out a clasp knife, cut up his meat into small pieces, and then feed himself by conveying them to his mouth with his fingers.96 Yet, that must have been the way in which people ate their food in 1637. There were no forks in this country at that time, and there were very few knives other than such as people carried on their persons, either clasped in the pocket, or in a sheath attached to a belt. There were indeed no forks in England in general use at that time. The first that were used in Europe were dainty little things, not over three or four inches in length. They were made of silver, having slender stems, with short prongs at the lower end, and evidently having for a function simply the picking up of the small pieces of meat after they had been cut off. The idea of a fork of such strength as to permit one to hold the meat while cutting it had not yet been conceived. It was possible, however, by using a spoon to steady the meat, to avoid holding it with the hands. Bearing in mind that wooden and pewter spoons were then in use, it will be seen that reliance upon the stronger of the two could only have taken place. Montaigne in his journey to Italy says the Swiss always “place as many wooden spoons with silver handles as there are guests, and no Swiss is ever without a knife, which he uses in taking up everything, and it is very seldom that they put their hands in their plates.”97 These hints from across the Atlantic suggest what our ancestors probably did, but at all events, napkins are preponderant in early inventories in this country. Perhaps this preponderance may be explained by the absence of forks.98
Harvard, as a man of peace, could not himself have taken part in the trainings which then took place eight times a year.99 Although personally exempt, he must have taken an interest in the service of his parishioners in the militia. In the early days the Company sent over for their equipment corselets consisting of head pieces, gorgets, back pieces, breast pieces, gauntlets, and tassets, varnished all black with leather and buckles.100 Armed with pike or snaphance each man was a walking fortress and had but little to fear from the Indians, so long as he had the strength to bear his armor, as he wearily plodded through the woods and over the hills. When it came to the pursuit of a foe a soldier thus equipped must have been at a great disadvantage.101 We do not naturally conceive of armor-clad men in the forests of New England in the seventeenth century, but Longfellow calls up that association when he speaks of Miles Standish as pausing,—
Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of warfare,
Hanging in shining array along the walls of his chamber—
Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty sword of Damascus.
These trainings must have aroused great interest in those days. A thousand men were reviewed in Boston by Governor Winthrop in 1639, presumably, however, not all of them in armor, for by that time they had discovered the questionable value of armor in the character of wars that they were likely to wage, and the equipment of a trained soldier was defined to be in 1634 a musket, a bandolier, a rest, and powder and shot, pikemen to bear them as well as other soldiers.102 The records show, however, that armor was still in use after the date of this Act.103
If on occasions like training days, John Harvard took his wife out with him to witness the evolutions and watch the congregation of his neighbors, it was important that both he and she should be clothed in a subdued and unobtrusive manner, for it was forbidden to make or wear slashed clothes, needlework caps, bands and rails. All gold and silver girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, and beaver hats were prohibited to be bought or worn. Nor was it permissible to use lace of any sort upon any garment, except small edging laces.104
The drum furnished the means of inspiriting the soldiers in these drills, but its use was not confined to such occasions. There were no bells in the Colony, and everything of a public sort was done to the tap of the drum.105 Were the inhabitants to assemble in town meeting the drummer made the announcement. Though Harvard did not march on Sundays to the Great House in Charlestown, yet he went at the call of the drum. In Dorchester a town official was appointed to drive the cows to the common pasture, and it was his business to blow his horn along the town as he accompanied the herd to the pasture.106 The drum and the horn served to warn people.107
Indentured servants were imported in great numbers, and while it is not probable that many of these were house servants, still it is possible that Harvard profited by their presence. Their time belonged absolutely to their masters during the term of the contract. They were liable to be whipped if they violated the unwritten laws of the Colony and were not permitted to trade without license from their master. When their terms of service ran out they were at liberty to make new wage contracts, and Winthrop records a humorous answer made by one of them to his master a few years after the period under consideration. The master had been obliged to sell a pair of his oxen to meet the wages of the servant. He thereupon told the man that he could not retain him in his service as he did not know how he could pay him. “Sell more cattle,” said the man. “What shall I do when they are gone?” “You can serve me and get them back,” said the man.108 Although this story is placed a few years after Harvard’s death, it is entitled to our consideration not alone for its humor but also for the moral involved in the answer of the servant. The indentured servants of the Colony, if they persisted after the expiration of their indentures in being industrious and were economical, were destined to have their share of the wealth of the Colony, and their employers, if unwilling to work, were to see the transfer of their wealth from their own hands into the possession of those better entitled to care for it.
Johnson’s description of Charlestown, as a place having one hundred and fifty dwelling houses, with a large market-place near the water side, built round with houses, comely and fair, from which there issued two streets lined with dwelling houses having gardens and orchards,109 fairly represents the possible Charlestown of 1638, with the exception that the trees in the orchards could hardly have reached such maturity as to amount to much. The meeting-house stood in what is now known as City Square. It must have been a primitive affair.
Such were the conditions of life in Harvard’s day, such the place in which he lived, so far as we can reconstruct them from the statements and hints contained in the records and narratives at our command. Had his life here been longer we could be more certain as to his experiences.
We do not know with whom Harvard was thrown when he arrived; whose friendship he especially sought; from whom he received such social attentions as were then possible. Pride in ancestry and class distinctions based upon occupations were rife in those days, and even under the levelling pressure of mutual exposure and hardship it was quite probable that the son of a butcher would have been coldly received by those claiming the right to be classified as of gentle families. It would have been natural for him to turn for associates and friends, first to the graduates of his own College and then to those who had been associated with other Colleges in the University of Cambridge. Hooker and Stone, both Emmanuel men, had already gone to Hartford, but Thomas Shepard, an Emmanuel graduate and a man of mark in the Colony, was within easy reach, being then settled at Newtown. Zachariah Symmes, his colleague, was a Cambridge man, as was also John Wilson, the colleague of Cotton and the sturdy opponent of Mrs. Hutchinson. Cotton, perhaps the most conspicuous of the colonial clergymen, was a Cambridge man, a graduate of Trinity, who was afterward connected with Emmanuel. In view of the turbulent conditions of the politics of the colony, in which Shepard,110 Symmes, and Wilson were to be found among the opponents of Vane and Cotton, it is not conceivable that the colleague of Symmes, who was eulogized by Wilson and spoken of with words of tender and loving praise by Shepard, should have sought the friendship of Cotton. Evidently he cast his lot with those who supported Winthrop—a fact which emphasizes the recognition of his independence and public spirit by his fellow-citizens in their appointment of him in the spring of 1638 as one of a committee to secure a code of laws. With the above trio, however, for sponsors, Harvard could not have lacked social attention. The clergy were the real leaders of the Colony. Lawyers there were none, and of doctors but a few.111 The society which was based upon intellectual cultivation, must after all have been that which was the most desirable.
One other person alone among his American contemporaries has his name directly associated with that of Harvard, and that is Thomas Allen—his successor in the Charlestown pulpit. Allen served as executor of the will. If this instrument was duly executed by Harvard in ordinary form, then this appointment indicated the personal preference of the testator and pointed out one person at least besides his wife in whom he had trust and for whom he had affection. The fact that in the confusion of the records at that date no written will has been found does not seriously militate against this conclusion.
Wilson in his elegy112 portrays the deathbed scene:
Not that no spouse sustained my fainting head,
Or loving children watched my dying bed;—
These I remembered, yet a half of all
I gave to you who throng this hall.
This reference to the loving children, who were remembered in the half of the estate, not given to the College, is the only hint that has ever been discovered of the existence of any family left by Harvard other than his widow, and adds one more difficulty to the attempt to describe his career.113
It is evident that if we could identify the leading spirit in the attempt to secure the establishment of a College in New England, with some person who was probably a friend of Harvard, we should have good reason to believe that in this person we had found the one who influenced him to make the bequest to the College. The entry in the Record in 1636,114 was simply an agreement to the proposition that there should be a college, in aid of which the sum of £200 would be given when the site was fixed upon, and £200 more when the building should be finished. The vagueness of the Act was slightly reduced by the deliberate statement that the site and the character of the building must be determined by the next Court. No name is in any way associated with this legislation, and there is no hint as to the person who was forcing action on the subject. Whoever it was, however, did not permit the matter to rest here, but next year, on the 15th of November,115 secured the adoption of Newtown as the site for the College and on the 20th,116 through the appointment of a working committee, brought matters into promising shape. This committee was composed of the Governor, the Deputy Governor, the Treasurer, three Assistants, and six clergymen.117 Of these latter Thomas Shepard was one. His influence in securing the adoption of Newtown as the site of the College is set forth by Cotton Mather in the following words:
And it was with a respect unto this vigilancy and the enlightening and powerful ministry of Mr Shepard, that when the foundation of a College was to be laid, Cambridge, rather than any other place, was pitched upon to be the seat of that happy seminary.118
He [the Lord] was pleased to direct the harts of the Magistrates (then keeping Court ordinarily in our towne because of their stirs in Boston) to think of erecting a Schoole or College, and that speedily to be a nursery of knowledge in these deserts and supply for posterity, and because this towne (then called Newtown) was hereto [by] God’s great care and goodness kept spotless from the contagion of opinion, therefore at the desire of some of the Deputies of the Court having got Mr Eaton to attend the Schoole, the Court for that and sundry other reasons determined to erect the College here.119
Making all due allowances for Shepard’s modesty, one might infer from his presence on the committee the influence that determined the selection of the site, even though Cotton Mather had not come to our aid. It is plain, however, from all this, that Shepard must have been a living force in settling “speedily”—to use his own language—these preliminary questions. His appreciative estimate of Harvard has something personal in its ring and compels the suggestion that he may have been the one to direct Harvard’s thoughts toward the College.
Concerning the details of the one great act in Harvard’s life which has made him famous we know absolutely nothing. There is no trace of the will which contained his immortal bequest. There is no certainty even that there was any written instrument. The lack of evidence as to the details of the bequest led the writer of a note to say, “John Harvard seems to be the ‘Melchisedec’ of the first age of the Colony of Massachusetts. He is known to us only as a ‘priest of the most High God,’ and as one who ‘gave gifts.’”120
Quite recently an Englishman has made an attempt, as he expresses it, to visualize the life and character of John Harvard. It may seem strange that Harvard graduates should have left the performance of this grateful task to a foreigner, but it must not be forgotten that the accretion of facts which have made the work possible has been slow and at best does not amount to much. Perhaps, on the whole, it is well that this testimony should have been borne to the fact that the care of John Harvard’s reputation does not belong alone to Harvard graduates, or even to Americans, but is the world’s possession. At all events, we must be grateful to Mr. Shelley for the graceful and charming work which he has performed. In conclusion let me quote a few words from his preface and from his closing chapter. The preface opens as follows: “Among the names graven on the foundation stone of American History none is so deeply carved, or is so rich in promise of endurance as that of John Harvard.” In his last chapter, which is entitled “The praise of John Harvard,” after alluding to Harvard’s contemporaries whose fame he and they probably believed to be not only better established in the present but also as having far better claim upon the future for endurance than his own, Mr. Shelley goes on to say: “Yet, while even the greatest of these are known to few save the diligent student of history, while their Court honors have turned to dust, and their achievements are lost in oblivion, the dying inspiration121 of John Harvard has given him an immortality which gathers brighter radiance with every passing generation.”
How true this is we all fully appreciate. The shadowy personality of Harvard as we have seen almost evades research. His final resting place is unknown, but his renown pervades the world. His fame has its foundation in the gratitude of the graduates of the University which bears his name. His glory is ever to be found in the work which that great institution has accomplished in the past and which it is destined to perform in the future.
Mr. Charles K. Bolton made the following remarks:
At our January meeting in 1904, I brought to the attention of the Society a leaf, torn from a Bible, on which had been written a record of Governor Shirley’s family.122 That record contained the previously unknown dates of the birth and baptism of the Governor and other interesting particulars concerning his own and his father’s family.
I noticed recently a handsome quarto volume, privately printed in London in 1897, bearing the title, Some Account of the Family of Godman, with a Record of every known Reference to the Name. Facing page 29 is a large tabular pedigree of the Godmans of Ote Hall, Wivelsfield, Sussex, which gives the maternal ancestry of Governor Shirley for seven generations with dates of baptism, marriage, and burial. There are also interesting facts concerning the Shirleys on pages 49 and 50.
Governor Shirley’s mother was Elizabeth Godman, daughter of John Godman, lord of Ote Hall, through whom the manor and lordship of Ote Hall, which had been the seat of the Godmans since 1537, passed to her son the Governor, and later to his son Sir Thomas Shirley, who sold it to Mr. William Tanner of Moorhouse, Sussex. From Tanner’s daughter the estate was recovered by purchase, in 1881, by Major-General Richard Temple Godman, who had served as an adjutant in the Crimean War at Balaklava, Inkerman, and Sebastopol.
On pages 37 and 38 are views of the manor house as it appeared in 1871 and 1881; and on pages 35 and 36 there is a description of it and an account of its restoration after its recovery by General Godman.
It is curious to observe that, apparently, the author of this elaborate volume had never heard that Shirley held office or had a distinguished career in America.
Mr. Henry H. Edes made the following communication:
In his History of Massachusetts (III. 15, 16), Hutchinson speaks of Governor Shirley as follows:
Mr. Shirley arrived in Boston from England, August 6th, 1756. He made an ill-judged step when he was in France, which he had reason to repent as long as he lived. At the age of threescore, he was captivated with the charms of a young girl, his landlord’s daughter in Paris, and married her privately.
When he came back to England, he would have concealed his match. Lord Halifax had heard the report, but did not credit it, until some of her letters were shewn him, which had been privately taken out of Mr. Shirley’s desk, by persons who wished to defeat his design of obtaining a better government, and to oblige him to return to New England. This imprudence lessened him in Lord Halifax’s esteem; and, though he had shewn himself to be very capable of his trust of commisary in France, as well as very faithful in the discharge of it, yet, as he failed of success, which, more frequently than real merit, entitles to reward, his private fortune was much hurt by his employment. His allowance being four pounds only per diem, he used to say, it did not cover his necessary expense in that publick character. The rumour of his marriage came to New England before his arrival, and some who were not well affected to him, were ready enough to insinuate that his French connexions might induce him to favour the French cause, but his conduct evinced the contrary.
Whether Shirley brought his young wife to America or left her in Europe does not appear. Of his recall, in 1756, Hutchinson says:
He wished to spend a little time with his family in Boston; but his successor [Pownall], judging that he should be better able to transact business with the assembly after the governor had left the province, called on him repeatedly, by letters, to embark, and he sailed several weeks sooner than otherwise he would have done (p. 48).123 . . . After long solicitation, he obtained the small government of the Bahama islands (p. 48 note).
As I had never met with any statement or record of the name of Shirley’s second wife, I was glad to find, a few days ago, in the Suffolk Registry of Deeds, the record of a conveyance that Shirley made to his son-in-law Eliakim Hutchinson, in which the given name of this young woman appears. In this instrument the grantor is described as “His Excellency William Shirley, late of Boston in the County of Suffolk and Province of the Massachusetts Bay, now of New Providence in the Bahama Islands, Esqr.” The covenants contain the following clause:
And further that the said William Shirley and his heirs all and singular the herein before-mentioned and granted premises with their 
unto the said Eliakim Hutchinson his heirs and assigns against him the said William Shirley and all persons whomsoever lawfully claiming the same shall & will forever hereafter Warrant & Defend particularly the Claim of Dower out of in & to the same, which Julie his present wife may make or set up in case of her surviving him.
This deed, the consideration in which was £2500, was dated 10 March, 1763, was acknowledged by Shirley in Boston, 25 February, 1764, before Nathaniel Hatch, and was recorded four days later, the record stating that the words in the above mentioned clause concerning dower were “first added thereto” before signing.124
The inference is fair that Shirley wished to divest himself of his tangible property, so far as possible, during his lifetime in order that it might be enjoyed after his decease by his children without the interference of their step-mother. The conveyance covered several estates, comprising more than a hundred acres, situated in Roxbury and Dorchester. This inference is strengthened by the facts that after Shirley’s death on 24 March, 1771, administration on his estate was granted to Eliakim Hutchinson, who gave bond in the moderate sum of £3,000,125 that no other probate proceedings appear of record, and that Hutchinson held the real estate conveyed to him in 1764 till 3 August, 1782, when, for £1600 lawful silver money, Samuel Henshaw and Samuel Barrett, both of Boston, a majority of the committee to sell the estates of conspirators and absentees, sold to John Read of Boston “the real estate of Eliakim Hutchinson late of Roxbury in the county of Suffolk,”126 which comprised only the several parcels conveyed to him by Shirley.
The Rev. Henry A. Parker read the following paper:
THE REVEREND EZEKIEL ROGERS.
The Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, Anglican priest and New England pastor,127 is one to be remembered by us, if for no other reason because he brought over and established here that substantial and industrious company of Yorkshire clothiers who settled Rogers’s Plantation, afterwards known as Rowley. For their early introduction of manufacture of cotton and woollen fabrics not only supplied a pressing need of the colonists, but gave New England the lead which it still keeps in that important industry.
Mr. Rogers, like John Harvard, was a benefactor of our College. He left it most of his English books, valued at £26, and all his Latin books, valued at £47 (except a copy of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, which he left to his colleague the Rev. Samuel Phillips). The College also, some time after his death, profited by a provision in his will by which he left a considerable real estate to provide for the support, in part, of both pastor and teacher for the Rowley church, but if both were not employed according to the New England Way, to which he was enthusiastically attached, the estate was to go to the College—as in the end it did.
When in 1660 he found that the time when he should be gathered to his fathers was near, before disposing of his earthly estate he bequeathed to posterity a brief religious autobiography in which he incidentally expresses his disapproval of the “fashions and guises” of his time, particularly of “that general disguisment of long ruffian-like hair;” and says that he lives and dies “an unfeigned hater of all the base opinions of the Anabaptists and Antinomians, and all other phrenitics, dolays of the times, that spring from thence, which God will, ere long, cause to be as dung on the earth.” He thanks the Lord for having “mercifully prevented” him from becoming a physician, for he says he has “observed, that the most, through their own corruption, have made it to themselves the very temptation to covetousness or lust, or both.” Of the English Church he says that he lived in the time of “the hottest persecution of that bloody hierarchy, and being enlightened concerning the evil and snare of subscription and ceremonies” was nearly persuaded to give up the design of being a minister of the gospel.
His will is printed in the History of Rowley with an apologetic footnote stating-that it had “been submitted to the consideration of several competent judges, including some of our Baptist friends,” but that in spite of “a very earnest desire expressed for its publication entire,” it was published “not without some hesitation.” It is not stated that any stray Episcopalians or Antinomians or physicians were consulted, though the opprobrious remarks on the medical men being entirely gratuitous, they might with most reason have objected.
Mr. Rogers, indeed, was a masterful man of strong opinions which he expressed strongly. Winthrop reports that in his election sermon in 1643 he opposed the re-election of any man for governor twice in succession, “and expressed his dislike with such vehemency as gave offence.” And Winthrop, reporting his speech at the Cambridge Synod of 1647, when amongst other things he denounced long hair, says, “Divers were offended at his zeal in some of these passages.” When he discovered that the land granted his plantation did not include a certain neck of land, he made a scene in the General Court and gained his point—though obliged to apologize for his language. His thorough certainty that he was in the right, and that a more than ordinary reward awaited him in Heaven, is expressed in his letter of February, 1657–58, to the Rev. Zachariah Symmes of Charlestown:
I thank God I am near home; and you too are not far off. Oh! the weight of glory, that is ready waiting for us, God’s poor exiles! We shall sit next the martyrs and confessors. Oh the embraces wherewith Christ will embrace us!
Such was the man as known to us here. All this and more may be found in the excellent History of Rowley by Mr. Gage.128 But there is a good deal about this rather neglected worthy which was unknown in 1840 but has turned up since in England, though only accessible in published abstracts. The following from the Calendar of State Papers throws some light on his life in England and the circumstances of his emigration:
1638–39, Feb. 6 (about). In the certificate for York, the archbishop replies to the 12th article of the instructions:—“I do not find in my diocess any inclination to innovation in anything which concerns either the doctrine or the discipline of the Church of England;129 only I find that too many of your Majesty’s subjects inhabiting in these parts of Yorkshire are gone into New England, among which there is one Rogers, that had a benefice well worth 240 l. per annum, gone, whom I have laboured by the space of two years in sundry conferences to reclaim, and refused to suffer him to resign; but at the last, he going on shipboard for New England, wrote his letter to me, acknowledged that I had given him good counsel, but in vain, and prayed me to accept his resignation, for gone he was for New England.” Against which is written in the margin, in the King’s hand, “An honnester man must bee put in place.” Endorsed: Received 11 Feb. 1638–9.130
One would very much like to see Mr. Rogers’s letter of acknowledgment which he wrote to Archbishop Neile, for Neile was by no means favorably inclined to the Puritans—being indeed Laud’s original patron and intimate friend, personally and theologically. Moreover it seems that Neile, being as lenient as seemed to him possible to Rogers’s nonconformity, was merely continuing the course of his predecessor; for Rogers says in his will, that—
the Lord gave me a call to a public charge at Rowley, in Yorkshire, where by the gentleness of Toby Matthew I was favored both for subscription and ceremonies, and enjoyed my liberty in the ministry about seventeen years in comfortable sort, till for refusing to read that accursed book that allowed sports on God’s holy Sabbath, or Lord’s day, I was suspended, . . .
Tobie Matthew, above mentioned, who greatly favored him in subscription and in conformity to the ceremonies, was otherwise known as his Grace the Archbishop of York. It seems that the difficulty arising from Rogers’s refusal to read the Book of Sports was the first and only serious trouble that he ever had with his ecclesiastical superiors.
Rogers’s call to the rectorship of St. Peter’s in Rowley, East Riding of Yorkshire, came in the form of a presentation to the benefice by his patron Sir Francis Barrington, whose private chaplain he had been for some years, and who was one of the greatest men in Essex, a man of powerful family connection and very ancient descent,—he quartered the arms of England. Sir Thomas Barrington, a son of Sir Francis, was one of the adventurers for the Providence Island Plantation, of which Company Pym was treasurer; and it was doubtless through Sir Thomas’ influence that the Company offered Mr. Rogers a cure in their settlement in February, 1637–38, and again later.131 At Pym’s death the finances of the Company were found in very bad shape.132 Sir Thomas was a heavy loser, as appeared when Mr. Rogers applied after his death to his heir, Sir John Barrington, for preferment and for certain money which he claimed.133 There is evidently much autobiographical matter contained in Mr. Rogers’s letters in the Barrington Hall collection.134 It should be noted that Mr. Rogers left a benefice of the value of £240 to come to New England where his annual stipend seems never to have exceeded £60.
1 The title of this book is as follows:
The | Constitutions | of the | Free-Masons, | Containing the | History, Charges, Regulations, &c. | of that most Ancient and Right | Worshipful Fraternity. | For the Use of the Lodges. | London Printed; Anno 5723. | Re-printed in Philadelphia by special Order, for the Use | of the Brethren in North-America. | In the Year of Masonry 5734, Anno Domini 1734. | Reproduced in Facsimile by the R. W. Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. | In the Year of Masonry 5906; Anno Domini 1906.
2 This paper was originally prepared to be read as a part of the memorial exercises at Cambridge which were held under the auspices of the Harvard Memorial Society, in honor of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard’s birth. The material then collated relative to the construction of houses, etc., when worked into shape proved to be far in excess of the demands for the occasion, so that the paper had to be much abridged in reading; but in submitting it to the Colonial Society with a view to publication, the rejected matter has been restored.
3 Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 88, note by Savage.
4 Ibid. ii. 342.
5 Magnalia (1853), ii. 10.
6 Cotton Mather gives his father’s argument in full, as to the power of the College to confer degrees, in Magnalia, ii. 19, 20, and the degree itself, ii. 26.
7 Magnalia, ii. 10, 30.
8 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vol. iii. p. iv.
9 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 196.
10 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 237.
11 In “The Site of the First College Building at Cambridge,” in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for October, 1888, the “Way to Charlestown” is identified with Kirkland Street, and the inference is drawn that the town grant was north of Kirkland Street, as it is now laid out. There can be but little doubt that Kirkland Street represents the “Way to Charlestown,” but whether the way was not from time to time removed from place to place is another question. President Wadsworth’s location of the town grant within the Yard shows his opinion, and my own later views are expressed in “The College in Early Days,” in the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine for April, 1893.
12 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 206.
13 Records of the First Church in Charlestown, Boston, 1880, p. 9.
14 “The 26 of the ii. Month” (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vol. iii. p. iv.).
15 Records of the First Church in Charlestown, p. 165.
16 Frothingham’s History of Charlestown, p. 74.
17 In Pientissimum, Reverendissimumque virum, Johannem Harvardum, è suggestio Sacro Caroloensi ad cœlos evectum (Magnalia, ii. 33).
18 Frothingham’s History of Charlestown, p. 55.
19 Frothingham further says that in another division his lot was nearly a third larger than that of Mr. Symmes, and adds that on November 27, 1637, he had a grant of three and a half feet of ground for a portal (History of Charlestown, p. 74).
20 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vol. iii. p. iv.
21 Diary, i. 446, 447.
22 Quincy’s History of Harvard University, i. 48, facsimile of the record.
23 Hutchinson’s Collection of Original Papers, p. 49.
24 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 408; Palfrey’s History of New England, i. 298; Neal’s History of New England, i. 129, 130.
25 Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts (1795), i. 431.
26 Journal, i. 33.
27 Winthrop, writing in 1633 of the proceedings against Saltonstall, Humphry, and Cradock, says that “the defendants were dismissed with a favorable order for their encouragement, being assured by some of the Council, that his Majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England upon us; for that it was considered that it was the freedom from such things that made people come over to us” (Journal, i. 103).
28 His description in his mother’s will as “clarke” and in his marriage licence as “clìcum,” carries with it the probability that he was ordained in the Anglican Church.
29 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 219, 220.
30 Ibid. i. 220. The proceedings this day were replete with interest. Winthrop baffled Vane’s attempt at delay and finally compelled him against his will to proceed with the election by threatening to assume charge of the meeting himself, if Vane would not yield to the desires of the majority.
31 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 220.
32 Ibid. i. 220.
33 Ibid. i. 232.
34 Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts, i. 64. Winthrop’s account is: “None of them met him & the Sergeants who had escorted the former Governor refused to perform that service for him alleging that such service had been performed on account of the man not the place” (Journal, i. 234).
35 Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts, i. 65.
36 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 235.
37 Wonder-working Providence (1867), p. 72.
38 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 74.
39 Ibid. i. 74, 76, 77, 79, 91, 109, 160 (wages); 126, 183 (sumptuary laws).
40 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 88. Thomas Dexter was in March, 1632–33, set in the bilboes, disfranchised and fined 40 s. for reproachful and seditious words against the Government here established, and for finding fault to divers with the Acts of the Court, and for saying “this captious 
t will bring all to naught, adding that the best of them was but an atturney” (ibid. i. 103).
Capt. John Stone, in September, 1633, for “confronting aucthority, abuseing Mr Ludlowe both in words and behaviur, assalting him & calling him a iust as,” was fined £100 and prohibited “comeing into this pattent, wthout leaue of the 
, vnder the penalty of death” (ibid. i. 108).
41 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 211, 212.
42 Journal, i. 322, 323.
43 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ii. (second edition) 1.
44 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 86.
45 Ibid. i. 75.
46 Ibid. i. 83.
47 Ibid. i. 111.
48 Ibid. i. 93.
49 The situation was sized up by Chalmers in the following words:
The colonists became at length dissatisfied with adjudications various and contrary, since every magistrate decided according to the equity of his own mind, without established laws to inform his judgment, or former precedents to direct his practice. Dissatisfaction soon swelled into clamor, and continued complaint produced ultimate reformation (Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the American Colonies, Boston, 1845, i. 50).
50 Winthrop himself contended that he was not in favor of a rigorous execution of the orders against those who were merely residents. He stated “that it was his judgment, that, in the infancy of the plantations, justice should be administered with more lenity than in a settled state;” and after some discussion he acknowledged “that he was convinced, that he had failed in over much lenity and remissness and would endeavor (by God’s assistance), to take a more strict course hereafter” (Journal, i. 178).
51 Magnalia, ii. 33.
52 Autobiography, p. 64.
53 Wonder-working Providence, p. 103.
54 Certain Select Cases Resolved, p. 49.
55 The memorandum made by Winthrop and published by Savage in the Addenda reads: “Mr. Harvard gave to the College about £800” (Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 342). The author of New England’s First Fruits, p. 12, says “one halfe of his estate, (being in all £1700) towards the erecting of a college, and all his Library.” Thomas Shepard says, “The Lord put it into the heart of one Mr. Harvard, who dyed worth £1600 to give halfe his estate to the erecting of the Schoole” (Autobiography, p. 64). Johnson in his Wonder-working Providence fixes the amount of the bequest at “near a thousand pounds” (p. 133).
56 Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 374.
57 Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts, i. 91; Johnson’s Wonder-working Providence, p. 31.
58 Magnalia, i. 80.
59 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 268.
60 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 192.
61 Ibid. i. 201.
62 Winthrop calls them wigwams (Journal, i. 36, 38); Prince, booths and tents (Annals, p. 309); Scottow, huts and smoky cottages (Narrative of the Planting of Massachusetts Colony, 1694, p. 16); Hubbard, small cottages (History of New England, p. 134); Winslow, booths and huts (Good News from New England, 1648, 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 201)
63 Early Records of Charlestown, in Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 374.
64 March 2, 1646–47, John Crocker vs. Thomas Shawe, “for coming into his house by pulling aside some loose pallisadoes, on ye Lords day, about ye middle of ye day” (Plymouth Colony Records, i. 111).
65 New Englands Plantation, in Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 244.
66 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 48.
67 For references to wooden chimneys and thatched roofs, see Dudley’s letter to the Countess of Lincoln, March, 1631 (Collections New Hampshire Historical Society, iv. 248)
68 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ii. 70.
69 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 54.
70 Magnalia, i. 311.
71 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 63.
72 Mourt’s Relation (1865), p. 9.
73 Scottow’s Narrative of the planting of the Colony, p. 40.
74 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ii. 40.
75 Ibid. iv. 63. See also two charges in 1637 for daubing the meeting-house (Essex Institute Historical Collections, iv; Second series, i). Roger Clap describes the Castle as built with “Mud walls which stood for divers years” (Memoirs, Boston, 1731, p. 15).
76 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 82.
77 Ibid. i. 73.
78 Scottow’s Narrative of the Planting of Massachusetts Colony, p. 41.
79 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 87.
80 The Early College Buildings at Cambridge, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for April, 1890.
81 It may seem unnecessary to devote so much time to the discussion of daubed walls in connection with the career of one whose mother was from Stratford and a contemporary of the poet who wrote the familiar lines—
Imperious Cæsar dead and turned to clay
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
82 “Bring paper and linseed oil for your windows” (Winslow in Mourt’s Relation, p. 142).
83 Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 254. Capt. Smith says, “traine oyle with the splinters of the roots of pine trees for candles” (3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 38); Wood, New England’s Prospect (1898), p. 18.
84 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 92 (corn), 97 (bullets), 140 (beaver), 208 (wampum).
85 Dunster’s list of these books comprehends 260 titles. Several of these titles indicated works published in several volumes. See A few Notes concerning the Records of Harvard College, Bibliographical Contributions, Library of Harvard University, No. 27. Quite recently a praiseworthy effort has been put forth to place upon the shelves of the Harvard Library a copy of each work named in the catalogue—a contemporaneous publication by preference. The study of the subject has revealed the fact that the library bequeathed by Harvard must have contained 373 volumes.
86 The effort to duplicate these volumes has disclosed the fact that many of them were octavos and some even smaller.
87 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 304.
88 Winthrop was not, apparently, opposed to its use. March 18, 1627, he wrote “We want a little tobacco. I had very good, for seven shillings a pound at a grocer’s by Holborn Bridge” (Journal, i. 350). The statutes referred to will be found in the Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 101 (use prohibited), 109 (constables to take note of persons), 136 (sale prohibited), 204, 206 (former laws repealed), 241–242 (new law against use).
89 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 377.
90 Ibid. i. 379.
91 Wood writes in 1634: “Four eggs may be had for a penny and a quart of milk at the same rate and when butter is six pence a pound and Cheshire cheese at five penc” (Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 414).
92 When the Governor’s wife arrived in 1631 people sent him “fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese, partridges, &c.” (Journal, i. 57). By 1633, the gardens had become productive, so that notwithstanding a scarcity of corn people lived well with fish and the fruit of their gardens (ibid. i. 108).
93 “For bread and beer, that it was denied to them betwixt meals, truly, I do not remember, that ever I did deny it unto them; and John Wilson will affirme, that, generally, bread and beer was free for the boarders to go unto” (Winthrop’s Journal, i. 310 note).
94 Thomas Dudley writes in 1631 to the Countess of Lincoln saying “having yet no table, nor other room to write in than by the fireside upon my knee” (Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 305).
95 My attention has been called to the omission in the text of reference to the use of intoxicating liquors. Of course drunkenness was one of the troubles of that time. Numerous convictions are recorded for the offence, but at the period which I cover, all liquors were imported except strong beer. In 1630, Winthrop restrained the drinking of healths at his table, and so it grew little by little to disuse (Journal, i. 37). In 1635, he speaks of drunkenness occasioned by people running to the ships (ibid. i. 161).
96 I am indebted to Professor Kittredge for calling my attention to two things: first, the proverb “fingers were made before forks,” evidence in itself that the knife was not used by well bred persons for conveying food to the mouth; and secondly, to Chaucer’s description of the dainty manner in which the Prioress fed herself, obviously with her fingers, given in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Thomas Shepard in one of his sermons calls attention to the danger accompanying the use of the knife in cutting one’s meat: “Its from the excellency of a knife to cut well, but to cut my finger with it when I should be cutting of my meat with it, ariseth not from the end of the knife, nor from the intention of him who made it” (Certain Select Cases Resolved, p. 7).
97 Montaigne’s Journal, iv. 210.
98 William T. Davis in his Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth (p. vii.) makes substantially the same observations as to the preponderance of napkins.
99 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 210.
100 Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 54.
101 “We could not follow them in our Armor” (Winthrop’ Journal, i. 199).
102 Massachusetts Colony Records, i, 125.
103 “Our men being completely armed with Corslets, muskets, bandoliers, rests and Swords.” Head pieces are also mentioned in this account. (Capt. John Underbill’s Newes from America, in Hart’s American History told by Contemporaries, p. 439.) Besides the expression, showing that the men were in armor—quoted in the note above—Winthrop, in another description in the same year, 1636, speaks of their being armed with corselets (Journal, i. 194).
104 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 126, 183.
105 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ii. 8, iv. 3.
106 Boston Record Commissioners Reports, iv. 22.
107 “He demands of the next man he met, what the signall of the drum ment, the reply was made they have as yet no Bell to call men to meeting” (Johnson’s Wonder-working Providence, p. 103).
108 Winthrop’ Journal, ii. 220.
109 Wonder-working Providence, p. 41.
110 See C. F. Adams’ Antinomianism (Prince Society), p. 251. Shepard did not take a very active part in the discussion relative to the heresy of Mrs. Hutchinson, and he evidently considered that he occupied a neutral opinion in the controversy, for he says that Newtown was “kept spotless from the contagion of opinion.” He was, however, one of a committee which examined Mrs. Hutchinson, and although he was not violent in his opposition to her, yet he joined in a report with Thomas Welde which was referred to several times in the discussion. It seems to me therefore that he must be considered as practically taking sides in the matter.
111 Cotton Mather is authority for the statement that the Clergy had “eminent skill in physick.” He says, “it is well known that until two hundred years ago, physick in England was no profession distinct from divinity.” Most of Charles Chauncy’s sons, six in all, were, he says, practicers of physic as well as clergymen (Magnalia, i. 475).
112 Magnalia, ii. 33.
113 It is known that Mrs. Harvard bore children by her second husband. It is probable that Wilson was thinking of these children when he composed his elegy. The form of the elegy, an address by Harvard to an assembly of graduates, involves the idea of the lapse of many years after Harvard’s death before such a gathering could have taken place. Wilson died in 1667 at the age of seventy-nine, and if we allow an interval of at least twenty-five years to have elapsed after Harvard’s death before the elegy was composed, it would make him seventy-five years of age when it was written. This may perhaps account for this expression in the elegy, as confusion of memory on his part. That this must have been so, becomes apparent when we take into consideration the date of Harvard’s marriage, April 19, 1636.
114 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 183.
115 Ibid. i. 208.
116 Ibid. i. 217.
117 The close resemblance of this committee to the body to whom was entrusted the care and regulation of the affairs of the College in 1642, has led encyclopædists to record that members of the committee were at that time appointed Overseers of Harvard College.
118 Magnalia, i. 386.
119 Autobiography, p. 64.
120 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 447, note. George E. Ellis was one of the committee in charge of the publication of this volume and doubtless is responsible for this witty and appropriate quotation.
121 The assumption that Harvard’s will was nuncupative may be correct, but it does not rest upon direct evidence.
122 Publications, viii. 243, 244.
123 The Boston News-Letter of Thursday, 30 September, 1756, stated that “On Saturday last His Excellency embarked on board His Majesty’s Ship Mermaid, Washington Shirley, Esq; Commander” (p. 1/2).
124 Suffolk Deeds, ci. 164.
125 Suffolk Probate Files, no. 15,041.
126 Suffolk Deeds, cxxxv. 196. See also clxx. 48, 96, clxxvi. 13, 15.
127 Born in 1590 at Wethersfield, Essex, where his father the Rev. Richard Rogers held a lectureship from about 1577 to 1618, being repeatedly “suspended for Nonconformity though supported by the Puritan Lord Knolys.” Ezekiel Rogers’s elder brother, Daniel, succeeded his father, after an interval, in the Wethersfield lectureship. All three were of the University of Cambridge. See Victoria History of the County of Essex, ii. 52.
128 The History of Rowley, by Thomas Gage, with an Address by the Rev. James Bradford, 1840. Most of the information about Mr. Rogers is contained in the Address and in Appendix A to the Address.
129 This reminds one of the inability of the younger Weller to see his father in court.
130 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1638–1639, pp. 430, 431.
131 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 263, 264.
132 Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Report vii. App. p. 538.
133 There is a letter dated November 6, 1621, from Mr. Rogers to Lady Joan Barrington, the wife of Sir Francis, who was a daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell and so an aunt of the Protector (ibid. p. 543). Another letter dated September 28, 1626, tells of Mr. Rogers’s sickness and recovery (ibid. p. 543). In 1644 Sir Thomas Barrington died and was succeeded by his son Sir John, and Mr. Rogers wrote to Mr. John Kendall at Sir John Barrington’s on December 8 of that year—
A long letter about what the late Sir Thomas Barrington had promised him in the way of preferment. He alludes to his diligent attendance on and comfort to Sir Thomas “on his sad and deep distemper of melancholy; not only in the day but in the night watchings and midnight rising he (Rogers) did much to impare his health.” (On the back is the copy of an answer by Kendall dated 1 May, 1645, in which he says that Sir Thomas had left his son burdened with 10000 l) (ibid. p. 570).
Mr. Rogers wrote again November 9, 1645, and once more December 9, 1646: “He mentions that old Lady B. promised him 100 l, and that Mr. Bridge said that he himself paid it to Robert Barrington, to be sent to New England for Rogers.” On April 25, 1646, “John Barrington to Ezekiel Rogers in England.—Copy of a letter on the subject of Rogers’s claims.” Was he then in England? See also a letter of the Rev. Daniel Rogers, a brother of Ezekiel, of July 7, 1647 (ibid. p. 570).
134 Ibid. pp. 543, 570.
135 Barton Stacey, a tithing and parish in Hants. The parish includes also the townships of Bransbury, Drayton, and Newton Stacey.
136 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1635, pp. 520, 521.
137 Magnalia (1820), i. 74.
138 Bond, Genealogies and History of Watertown, p. 995.
139 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 170.
140 Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 11.
141 Johnson, Wonder-working Providence, pp. 75, 77; Holmes, History of Cambridge, 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 15, 16; Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, p. 86 note.
142 Winthrop’s Journal (1853), i. 214 note.
143 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 154; Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, p. 512; Stiles, History of Ancient Wethersfield, i. 24. But see Records of the First Church of Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1636–1734, p. vii. The records of the Windsor Church, now extant, do not embrace anything pertaining to its life at Dorchester, Massachusetts.
144 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 2.
145 Journal, i. 203.
146 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxv. 21
147 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 26, 103, 123.
148 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, iv. 230.
149 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 580.
150 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlviii. 263.
151 Stiles, History of Ancient Windsor, i. 429.
152 Magnalia, i. 74.
153 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 7.
154 Holland, History of Western Massachusetts, i. 24.
155 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxv. 21. Dr. H. R. Stiles, in his History of Ancient Windsor, i. 54, and of Ancient Wethersfield, i. 39, seems to confuse him with the Rev. Henry Smith, who later came over from England and became the minister in Wethersfield. See his Ancient Wethersfield, i. 154.
156 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 113.
157 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 118.
158 Trumbull says that this reads “inconvenient” in the manuscript Journals of the Congress (Historical Notes on the Constitutions of Connecticut, p. 5).
159 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 119.
160 Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 525.
161 Bowen, Boundary Disputes of Connecticut, 15.
162 Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 544.
163 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 477.
164 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 160.
165 Dr. Henry Bronson states, I think mistakenly, that Mr. Welles was for a short time a magistrate under the Massachusetts commission. New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers, iii. 296.
166 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 12.
167 Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, i. 13.
168 Burt, First Century of the History of Springfield, i. 152.
169 As late as 1639 there were probably not over fifteen men there. Green, Springfield, 1636–1886, p. 45.
170 Dwight’s Travels in New-England and New-York, i. 319.
171 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. 472.
172 2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 308.
173 Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, ii. 283.
174 Morris, Early History of Springfield, p. 11; Todd (The Burr Family) puts the date of his removal as 1644. He represented Fairfield in the Connecticut General Court in 1645, his name being enrolled as “Jehu Burre” (Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 130).
175 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 10, 13.
176 Letter quoted in Taylor, Roger Ludlow, p. 70.
177 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 192.
178 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 259.
179 Ibid. i. 260.
180 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 10.
181 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 11.
182 Ibid. i. 13.
183 Ibid. i. 19.
184 Johnson, Wonder-working Providence, p. 199.
185 Roger Wolcott’s Memoir, Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, ii. 326.
186 Journal, i. 216.
187 This was on October 7, 1640 (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 304). Connecticut assented in 1641 (Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 64).
188 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 281.
189 Ibid. i. 284.
190 Letter of Thomas Hooker to Gov. Winthrop. Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, i. 9; Winthrop’s Journal, i. 237, 285, 286.
191 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 216.
192 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 320, 321.
193 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 260.
194 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 321.
195 Ibid. i. 229, 230, 232.
196 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 72.
197 Ibid. ii. 111.
198 Ibid. ii. 112.
199 Ibid. ii. 137.
200 John Winthrop, Senior.
201 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 139.
202 Journal, i. 319. Cf. i. 335.
203 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 264.
204 Ibid. “You” in this letter evidently refers generally to those who represented Massachusetts at the conference.
205 Winthrop’s Journal indicates that this conference occurred not in June but July, 1638. He speaks, under date of December 13, 1638, of these three men as having brought their Connecticut amendments to the attention of the General Court at Newtown (i.e. Cambridge) on “the of the 5th” (Journal, i. 342). This probably indicates simply a lapse of memory.
206 Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 428; Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, i. 2.
207 Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, i. 14.
208 Life and Letters of John Winthrop, ii. 422.
209 Journal, i. 344.
210 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 25, 26.
211 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 20, 24.
212 Ibid. i. 18.
213 Massachusetts Historical Society Manuscripts, 81. D. p. 4. I am indebted for this reference to the courtesy of Mr. Charles K. Bolton, the librarian of the Boston Athenæum.
214 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xiii. 291; Holland, History of Western Massachusetts, i. 33; 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 487.
215 Green, Springfield, 1636–1886, pp. 29–36; quoted from the original manuscript now owned by Charles E. Oliver of Boston. The only date of the letter is the 18th day of the second month, but it was addressed on the back “To his lov. friend, Mr Pinchon, at his house in Aguam, lett these bee deld,” and on the first page is a marginal note, apparently in his handwriting, of its receipt on “the 20 April, 1639.”
216 Green, Springfield, 1636–1886, pp. 55, 60.
217 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 119.
218 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 360.
219 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 30, 31.
220 Burt, First Century of the History of Springfield, i. 144.
221 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 296.
222 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 320–322.
223 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 57.
224 Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 115.
225 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 31, 35, 36; Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 82.
226 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 90 note.
227 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 119, 185.
228 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 123.
229 Colonial Records of Connecticut, i. 139.
230 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 136.
231 A copy of this survey is given in Bowen’s Boundary Disputes of Connecticut, opposite p. 19. It runs the line below Enfield Falls. See further Bowen’s description of the territory included, in chapters iii and iv of his work.
232 Colonial Records of Connecticut, v. 390–399.
233 Colonial Records of Connecticut, ix. 431.
234 Johnston, History of Connecticut, p. 209.
235 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 142.
236 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 109.
237 Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 457.
238 Green, Springfield, 1630–1886, p. 63.
239 This letter, dated 15 March, 1793, is printed in Anne Cary Morri’s Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris (1888), ii. 38. The opening words—“I have receiv’d yours of the third of February and reply shortly that I may reply immediately. My Reason for which is that”—are omitted in the Diary and Letters, as are also the words printed in italics in the following sentence: “In the first Place I must have leave to resign from the President but further you will consider that the very Circumstance,” etc.
240 Publications of this Society, vi. 109–130.
241 For Boyle, see ibid. vi. 321 note 4, ix. index.
242 Palfrey, History of New England, i. 313.
243 Cambridge Modern History, iv. 275.
244 Ibid. iv. 266–275.
245 In the Massachusetts Colony Records (i. 36), under date of March 17, 1628–29, is the following entry:
A warrant was made ffor payment of 120t to Mr Nathaniell Wright, for so much pd by him to Mr Jarvis Kerke, Mr Wm Barkley, & Mr Roᵬrt Charlton, ffor the shippe.
The Jarvis Kerke here referred to is the Gervase Kirke named in the text, both forms of the name being found in the Calendars of State Papers. Thia entry was made a few days after the date of the Charter, March 4–14,1628–29, but before organization thereunder.
246 Henry Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada (1871), p. 69.
247 History of New England (1853), i. 15, 16.
248 Ibid. i. 17. Terceira is one of the large islands of the central group of the Azores. It is in slightly above 27° west longitude. Under date of May 9, Winthrop says that the fleet was a little west of Corvos. Corvo and Flores are the two islands comprising the northwestern group of the Azores and are in slightly above 31° west longitude. Upon the two estimates the fleet made about four degrees of longitude in ten days.
249 History of New England, i. 17, 18, 21.
250 See Parkman, Pioneers of France (1896), p. 444; Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, p. 136; Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, pp. 69–74. In saying that “Champlain surrendered Quebec to the English on the 9th of August, 1629,” Henry Kirke is slightly inaccurate. The surrender of Quebec took place on July 20; the articles, drawn up July 19, were ratified on August 9 by David Kirke at Tadousac. See Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 98, 99. The matter is correctly stated by R. Brown in his History of the Island of Cape Breton (1869), p. 73. The articles are printed in Hazard’s Historical Collections, i. 285–287.
251 Birch’s Court and Times of Charles the First contains letters bearing on the subject from the Rev. Joseph Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville dated September 26, 1629 (ii. 28), from Mr. Beaulieu to Sir Thomas Puckering dated January 20, 1629–30 (ii. 52), from John Pory to Puckering dated January 13, 1630–31 (ii. 89, 90), from Beaulieu to Puckering dated May 25, 1631 (ii. 122), from Pory to Puckering dated June 16, 1631 (ii. 123), and from Pory to Puckering dated February 23, 1631–32 (ii. 171, 172). In his letter to Puckering of January 13, 1630–31, Pory, with pleasing naïveté, writes:
That Philip Burlamachi hath gotten a brave employment into France, to fetch home the latter half of the Queen’s portion, being £120,000, and satisfaction also for three great rich English ships, treacherously taken by the French after the peace proclaimed. “Do you think that the French, being so exhausted by their wars, would part with such heaps of treasure for nothing? No: you may be sure they would not. The bait, therefore, to allure them thereunto, is the fort of Kebeck, in Canada, to get it out of Capt. Kirk’s clutches; the trade of beavers and otters, which they want to enjoy by the possession whereof, having been worth unto them, communibus annis, £30,000 by year.” That the said fort sticketh in their hearts, as Calais did in Queen Mary’s.
252 Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, pp. 82–86; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 117, 118.
253 In a note to Winthrop’s History of New England (i. 15), Savage says that “Capt. Kirk” was “probably a brother of Sir David Kirk.”
254 Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, p. 93.
255 Mosquitoes.
256 Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, p. 87.
257 Parkman, Pioneers of France, p. 444. In Rymer’s Foedera (xix. 303) is a promise of Charles I to return Quebec to the French King dated June 29, 1631.
258 Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, p. 137. The Treaty of St. Germain has been printed several times in French, but not in English. See Rymer’s Fœdera, xix. 361–365; Memoires des Commissaires (1755), ii. 7–13; Collection de Manuscrits relatifs a la Nouvelle-France (1883), i. 86–97; Hazard, Historical Collections, i. 319, 320.
259 See E. F. Slafter, Sir William Alexander, and American Colonization (Prince Society), pp. 62–72.
260 Winsor, Carrier to Frontenac, p. 138.
261 Ibid. p. 138. In a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., dated London, December 26, 1631, Francis Kirby wrote:
Captain Bruton who was imployed by my cozen Moris Thomson and company for the trade of bever in the river of Canada is now arrived heer . . . he hath brought in heer about 3000lb weight of bever, and they are now hasteninge to set forth a small ship only for that river hopinge to be there before Captain Kerke whom (I hear) Is to fetch his men from Quibeck and yield up the Castle againe to the French this next somer (3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 238).
It would appear from these statements that the English were making the most of their control of the River St. Lawrence while it lasted.
As contemporary glimpses of the Kirkes are somewhat rare, it may not be without interest to bring together a few. In a relation written at Quebec August 28, 1632, Father Le Jeune said:
At length, on the 5th of July, which was Monday,—two months and 18 days since the 18th of April, when we sailed,—we reached the much desired port. We cast anchor in front of the fort which the English held; we saw at the foot of this fort the poor settlement of Kebec all in ashes. The English, who came to this country to plunder and not to build up, not only burned a greater part of the detached buildings which Father Charles Lallement had had erected, but also all of that poor settlement of which nothing now is to be seen but the ruins of its stone walls. This greatly inconveniences the French, who do not know where to lodge. The next day Captain Thomas Ker was summoned, a man of French Nationality, born at Dieppe, who had gone over to England, and who, with David and Louys Ker, his brothers, and one Jacques Michel, also born at Dieppe, all huguenots, had thrown themselves upon this poor country, where they have done great damage and have prevented the doing of much good. . . . The English Clergyman, who was not of the same Faith as his people,—for he was a Protestant or Lutheran, and the Kers are Calvinists or of some other more libertine Religion (they held this poor Minister a prisoner in their house for six months),—told me that the Moutagnards wanted to negotiate a peace with the Hiroquois (Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, v. 39, 41, 49).
Under date of July 25, 1645, Governor Winthrop wrote:
Monsieur La Tour having stayed here all winter and thus far of the summer, and having petitioned the court for aid against Monsieur D’Aulnay, and finding no hope to obtain help that way, took shipping in one of our vessels which went on fishing to Newfoundland, hoping by means of Sir David Kirk, governour there, and some friends he might procure in England to obtain aid from thence, intending for that end to go from thence to England. Sir David entertained him courteously, and promised to do much for him; but no means of help appearing to answer his ends, he returned hither before winter, Sir David giving him passage in a vessel of his which came hither (History of New England, ii. 303).
In a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., dated New Haven, September 26, 1659, the Rev. John Davenport said:
I desire . . . to let you know that I have received a large letter fr: Mr Blinman dated Aug. 22. whereby I understand that God hath brought him and his to Newfoundland, in safety and health, . . . After these passages and his notifying to me the Lady Kircks respectful and loving mention of me whom she saith, she hath heard in London, he addeth to what I had heard fr: England that a fine of 5£ is put upon any that shall name the last protector (3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, x. 25, 26).
No doubt this was the widow of Sir David Kirke.
262 W. A. Shaw, Knights of England, ii. 201.
263 Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, p. 161 and note.
264 Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, p. 167.
265 Shaw, Knights of England, ii. 215. In his History of Newfoundland (pp. 155, 162, 164), Judge Prowse speaks of “Sir James Kirke.” This is apparently a mistake, for in the documents from the Calendars of State Papers referred to by Prowse James Kirke is not spoken of as a knight, nor is his name found in Shaw’s work. On the other hand, John Kirke, though his name too is not in Shaw’s work, was knighted, though exactly when does not appear. On May 14, 1683, there is mention of a “Petition of Sir John Kirk, Knight, to the King” (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1685–1689, p. 643), and on January 26, 1684, of “Sir John Kirk” as the father-in-law of Radisson (ibid. p. 648). The second wife of Radisson is sometimes erroneously said (Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, v. 277) to have been the daughter of Sir David Kirke. Radisson himself said that he was “marry’d at London unto an Honble familly,” and spoke of “my father-in-Law, Sir John Kirk” (Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, Prince Society, pp. 250, 254).
266 R. Brown, History of the Island of Cape Breton, p. 112 note; Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, p. 173.
267 That from the autumn of 1651 to June 11, 1652, Sir David was in London, as stated by Henry Kirke, is shown by the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 363, 371, 372, 373, 381. Henry Kirke writes:
At the same time [i.e., June 11, 1652], permission was granted to Sir David to return to Newfoundland, on condition that he returned to England with the Commissioners, and in the meanwhile gave security that he would answer whatever was objected against him, and to pay such sums as shall appear to be due from him to the Commonwealth. Upon such hard terms as these, Sir David Kirke returned to his estates at Ferryland, in the summer of 1652. He could not have remained there long, for in the spring of 1653, we find him again in England, . . . he was allowed to return to Newfoundland, upon entering into a bond of double the value of his estate, to answer any charges that might be brought against him. With such terms, which were the best he could procure, Kirke was bound to be satisfied; so he set sail for Newfoundland and arrived there in the autumn of 1653. . . . But all hopes and expectations were blighted by his death, which took place in the winter of 1655–6, but the exact date is not known. (First English Conquest of Canada, pp. T77–184.)
Henry Kirke offers no proof that Sir David returned to Newfoundland in the summer of 1652 and again in the autumn of 1653, and, while the statement may be correct, there is nothing in the Calendar of State Papers to support it. As to the date of Sir David’s death, Henry Kirke is clearly wrong. On June 11, 1653, a petition of Sir David was referred to the Committee of the Admiralty, and on December 1, 1653, an order of the Council of State referred the petition to the Committee for Irish and Scotch Affairs. On April 24, 1654, Sir David was spoken of as dead. (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 404, 412, 415.)
268 “In the full conviction,” writes Henry Kirke, “that the Baltimores had abandoned Newfoundland, Sir David Kirke obtained a grant of that place from the King, . . . This was in 1637, and no complaint was made by Lord Baltimore till 1660” (First English Conquest of Canada, pp. 188, 189). As early as February, 1637, Lord Baltimore presented a memorial “touching his right to part of Newfoundland” (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 246, 247). On June 11, 1652, the Committee for Foreign Affairs considered “the interests of the Commonwealth in Newfoundland, and the encouragement of the fisheries there;” and “Sir David Kirke and Lord Baltimore, who pretend private interest, agree that the proceeding therein will be no inconvenience to them” (ibid. p. 381). The Maryland Historical Society owns several documents relating to the subject dated 1652 or 1653, among them “the Lord Baltimore’s case concerning Avalon” (Calvert Papers, part i. p. 113). Under date of June, 1660, is a—
Petition of Cecil, Lord Baltimore to the King. Recites King James’s patent of Newfoundland to his father; where he began a plantation, built a fair house in which he resided, and expended above 30,000 l. After his decease, the petitioner deputed Capt. William Hill, Governor. In 1638 . . . Sir David Kirke surreptitiously obtained a patent, went over the following year, and dispossessed the petitioner of all his rights there. In 1655 Kirke made over part of his patent to John Claypole (son-in-law to Cromwell), . . . and others, and Sir Lewis Kirke and others are endeavouring to get a confirmation of that patent. Prays that no grant may be passed to his prejudice, and that he may be restored to his rights according to his patent (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, p. 481).
It has been stated that the Kirke who in 1655 “over part of his patent to John Claypole” was Sir David; but if the date is correct, Sir David was then dead; hence probably it was James Kirke, or else there was a mistake in, the date. A little later than the above petition, we find, presumably dated in 1661, another—
Petition of Cecil Lord Baltemore to the King. Recites his former petition and the proceedings thereon . . . ; with his Majesty’s order (of 20th March 1660/1) to restore petitioner to his possession and rights in Newfoundland, but that he hath yet no satisfaction for such damage done him by Sir David Kirke and others in dispossessing petitioner of his house, goods, and rights in the province of Avalon, and keeping him out of possession many years, to his prejudice of above 20,000 l. sterling, for which damages petitioner sued said Sir David Kirke at his first return thence into England about ten years since, and laid him in prison, where he died before making any satisfaction to petitioner. That nevertheless Sir Lewis Kirke claims satisfaction for the charges wrongfully bestowed by his brother upon said province to petitioner’s prejudice (ibid., Colonial, 1061–1668, p. 21).
Lord Baltimore appointed Captain Robert Swanley to be his lieutenant in Avalon, and on May 9, 1663, the King’s officers and subjects were “to be assisting to Capt. Swanley or his deputy in the Government of said province” (ibid. p. 132).
269 History of New England, i. 24. The following is the entry for May 30:
The wind N. by E. a handsome gale, but close, misty weather, and very cold; so our ship made good way in a smooth sea, and our three ships kept close together. By our account we were in the same meridian with Isle Sable, and forty-two and a half (ibid. i. 24).
270 That the colonists felt that they were in grave danger of hostilities by the French is shown by a statement in Thomas Dudley’s letter to the Countess of Lincoln, dated March 12, 1630–31, wherein Dudley, referring to the efforts of the colonists in July and August, 1630, to find a place for their sitting down, says:
And to that purpose, some were sent to the Bay, to search up the rivers for a convenient place; who, upon their return, reported to have found a good place upon Mistick; but some other of us, seconding these, to approve or dislike of their judgment, we found a place (that) liked us better, three leagues up Charles river; and thereupon unshipped our goods into other vessels, and with much cost and labor brought them in July to Charlestown. But there receiving advertisements, by some of the late arrived ships from London and Amsterdam, of some French preparations against us, (many of our people brought with us being sick of fevers and the scurvy, and we thereby unable to carry up our ordnance and baggage so far,) we were forced to change counsel, and for our present shelter to plant dispersedly, some at Charlestown, which standeth on the north side of the mouth of Charles river; some on the south side thereof, which place we named Boston, (as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on;) some of us upon Mistick, which we named Medford; some of us westwards on Charles river, four miles from Charlestown, which place we named Watertown; others of us two miles from Boston, in a place we named Rocksbury; others upon the river of Saugus, between Salem and Charlestown; and the western men four miles south from Boston, at a place we named Dorchester. (Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, pp. 312, 313.)
It thus appears that the danger of attacks by the French may have affected the locations of towns and town boundaries in the neighborhood of Boston.
271 Savage, referring to the capture of Quebec by the Kirkes, says (Winthrop’s History of New England, i. 13 note) that it was an event then and long after thought of so little consequence as not to be noticed in Hume’s History of England.
272 History of New England, chap. xiv.
273 History of New England, chap. lxxi.
274 This estate was at the southerly comer of what are now known as Washington and State Streets.
275 Mather, Magnalia (1702), book iii. chap. xxv. p. 144.
276 The Rev. John Wilson.
277 The Rev. John Norton.
278 See Massachusetts Colony Records (second edition), i. 37 f, 37 g, 37 h.
279 Original agreement in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
280 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (part i.) 327.
281 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ii. (second edition) 158.
282 For Oxenbridge in England, see index of Masson’s Life of Milton.
283 Mather Papers, in Catalogue of Prince Library, ii. 15; Suffolk Probate Files, no. 716.
284 Acadia was ceded to France by the Treaty of Breda, 1667, but was not actually turned over until 1670.
285 Both wills are given in Prime’s Some Account of the Temple Family, Appendix (1899), pp. 94–99.
286 The title-page has neither imprint nor date. It is generally assigned to the year 1670. In the address “To the Reader,” the Rev. Increase Mather, a brother of Samuel Mather, speaks of it as a posthumous work; and as Samuel Mather died October 29, 1671, the pamphlet obviously could not not have been printed before the end of 1671.
287 See John Dunton, Life and Errors (1818), p. 204.
288 John Usher (1648–1726).
289 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 576.
290 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vii. 162.
291 Diary, i. 141.
292 Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 45, 46.
293 Diary, June 27, 1671; August 3, 1671.
294 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 162.
295 Diary, i. 159, 160, 162.
296 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vii. 220.
297 See Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xi. 13, 14.
298 Ibid. xi. 26.
299 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 178.
300 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xi. 37.
301 See Palfrey’s History of New England, iv. 295 note, quoting a letter from Governor Dudley to the Lords of Trade, March 10, 1705: “I have received her Majesty’s picture and coat of arms. The same were the next day fixed in the Council Chamber of this Province.”
302 See John Hull’s Diary, p. 150 note.
303 See Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts (1767), ii. 187.
304 Sewall’s Letter Book, i. 422.
305 See Publications of this Society, viii. 19–21.
306 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xi. 185.
307 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 163.
308 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xiii. 249.
309 See Publications of this Society, xi. 196–207.
310 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xviii. 422.
311 [The return of Mede’s book to the King’s Chapel Library came from a suggestion by Mr. Canavan.—Editor.]
312 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xi. 240.
313 Sewall’s Letter Book, ii. 208.
314 See J. J. Ogle’s The Free Library (London, 1897), p. 11.
315 Report for 1899, p. 43.
316 The inscription has been kindly verified by Dean Wace of Canterbury Cathedral, who writes that the tablet is of white marble. It need scarcely be pointed out that the terms “British Colony of New England,” “British Forces,” and “American Commonwealth” would not have been employed by an American.
317 This silhouette of Bishop Cheverus belonged originally to the Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Pearson (H. C. 1773), a Fellow of the Corporation of Harvard College, and the first Principal of Phillips Academy, Andover. It was inherited by his daughter Margaret Bromfield Pearson, who married the Rev. 1. H. T. Blanchard (H. C. 1817), the Unitarian minister of Harvard, Massachusetts, and always adorned the wall of her chamber. At her death it passed to her kinsman our late associate Dr. Daniel Denison Slade, and is now the property of his son, Mr. Denison R. Slade. See Publications of this Society, v. 198 note, 205 note, viii. 290.
318 Jean Louis Anne Madeleine Lefebvre de Cheverus (1768–1836) signed himself, when Bishop of Boston, John Cheverus (Memorial History of Boston, iii. 518).
319 Some Select Cases Resolved (Boston, 1747), p. 44.
Again, the authors of A Defence of the Answer made unto the Nine Questions (London, 1648) say: “We had neither time nor Bookes ready at hand to Consider some of the quotations” (p. 29). Thomas Shepard and John Allen figure as the joint authors of this volume. Sabin treats it as identical with the Treatise of Liturgies, which is placed among the works of Shepard.
320 Legal may have a technical meaning here. Legalists are contrasted with Antinomians in contemporary literature. They were those who adhered to a rigorous administration of the word.
321 Theses Sabbaticæ, or The Doctrine of the Sabbath: etc., etc. By Thomas Shepard, Pastor of the Church of Christ at Cambridge in New England. London, 1649. The Sanctification of the Sabbath . . . The fourth Part, p. 36 et seq.
322 Theses Sabbaticæ, or The Doctrine of the Sabbath: etc., etc. By Thomas Shepard, Pastor of the Church of Christ at Cambridge in New England. London, 1649. The Sanctification of the Sabbath . . . The fourth Part, p. 45.
323 Subjection to Christ (London, 1652), p. 25.
324 Subjection to Christ (London, 1652), Quest. 3, p. 120.
325 Ibid. Answ. 2, p. 122.
326 Subjection to Christ (London, 1652), p. 124.
327 May 25, 1636, “Mr Shepeard” was one of a committee appointed by the General Court to prepare “a draught of lawes agreeable to the word of God, wch may be the Fundamentals of this com̄onwealth” (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 174). March 12, 1637–38, “Mr Sheopard”—one of several who were described as “elders of severall churches”—was also on a committee appointed by the same body for a similar purpose (ibid. i. 222). This Shepeard or Sheopard was probably our Shepard.
328 The Church Membership of Children, p. 26.
329 The Parable of the Ten Virgins (London, 1660), p. 106.
330 Ibid. p. 166.
331 New England’s Lamentation for Old England’s Errours (1644), p. 5.
332 A Treatise of Liturgies . . . in answer to Mr. . . . Ball, p. 8.
333 The Sincere Convert (London, 1659), p. 69.
334 The Parable of the Ten Virgins (London, 1660), p. 226.
335 The Parable of the Ten Virgins (London, 1660), part ii. p. 5.
336 Ibid. p. 6.
337 Some Select Cases Resolved (Boston, 1747), p. 49.
338 The Parable, p. 103.
339 Ibid. p. 106.
340 Certain Select Cases Resolved, p. 7.
341 The Parable, p. 223.
342 Ibid. p. 127.
343 The Sound Believer (Boston, 1742), p. 206.
344 Subjection to Christ, p. 116.
345 The Parable, part ii. p. 61.
346 Ibid. p. 41.
347 Subjection to Christ, pp. 119–120.
348 Ibid. p. 121.
349 The Parable, p. 89.
350 Subjection to Christ, p. 192.
351 The Saints Jewel, p. 184. This is printed in connection with The Sincere Convert, with continuous pagination.
352 The Parable, part ii. p. 55.
353 The Sound Believer, p. 216.
354 Subjection to Christ, p. 132.
355 The Parable, pp. 107, 166.
356 The Sincere Convert, p. 164.
357 The Saints Jewel (London, 1659), p. 197. Printed with the Sincere Convert and having continuous pagination.
358 The Parable, p. 110.
359 The Sound Believer, p. 62.
360 The Parable, part ii. p. 97.
361 The Sound Believer, pp. 111, 112.
362 Theses Sabbaticse, The Sanctification of the Sabbath, p. 43.
363 The Parable, p. 57.
364 Ibid. p. 211.
365 The Parable, p. 227.
366 The Parable, part ii. p. 23.
367 The Sincere Convert, p. 114.
368 The Sound Believer, p. 238.
369 The Sincere Convert, p. 52.
370 The Sound Believer, p. 142.
371 Theses Sabbaticæ, The Beginning of the Sabbath, p. 3.
372 The Sound Believer, p. 33.
373 The Parable, p. 41.
374 Ibid. p. 215.
375 The Parable, part ii. p. 7.
376 The Parable, part i. p. 80; The Sincere Convert, p. 163.
377 The Parable, part i. p. 191.
378 Theses Sabbaticæ, The Sanctification of the Sabbath, p. 88.
379 Ibid. p. 175.
380 Ibid. p. 49.
381 Theses Sabbaticæ, The Morality of the Sabbath, p. 28.
382 Theses Sabbaticæ, The Morality of the Sabbath, p. 88.
383 A Treatise of Liturgies, p. 42.
384 Subjection to Christ, p. 92.
385 Ibid. p. 106.
386 Preface by Thomas Shepard—without pagination—to A Reply to a Confutation of some Grounds for Infants Baptisme, by George Philips (London, 1645). See sixth page.
387 The Parable, part ii. p. 103.
388 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv. 363.
389 Subjection to Christ, p. 100.
390 Ibid. p. 100.
391 Wine for Gospel Wantons: or Cautions against Spiritual Drunkenness (Cambridge, 1668), p. 9.
392 This is to be found on the third page of a preface by Shepard, which has no pagination, to A Reply to a Confutation of Some Grounds for Infant Baptisme, by George Philips (London, 1645).
393 Luke, vi. 2.
394 Exodus, xxxi. 15.
395 The Parable, p. 18.
396 Autobiography, p. 34.
397 Subjection to Christ, p. 97. For the explanation of this I am indebted to Professor Roger B. Merriman.
398 Subjection to Christ, p. 11
399 Ibid. p. 27.
400 The Sound Believer, p. 101. For the meaning of this, Professor Kittredge, who has helped me in solving some of these questions, says: See Jonah, ii. 5.
401 Certain Select Cases Resolved, p. 49.
402 (1) Autobiography. (2) The Church Membership of Children. (3) New England’s Lamentation for Old England’s Errours. (4) The Parable of the Ten Virgins. (5) The Saints Jewel, with The Sincere Convert. (6) The Sincere Convert. (7) Some [or Certain in some editions] Select Cases Resolved. (8) The Sound Believer. (9) Subjection to Christ. (10) Theses Sabbaticae. (11) Treatise of Liturgies. (12) Wine for Wanton Gospellers. The Saints Jewel, which is separately cited, is only to be found in connection with The Sincere Convert. The Day-breaking if not the Sun-rising, etc., is the title of another pamphlet included by Sabin among Shepard’s works, but not considered by me as entitled to this attribution.
403 The Clear Sun Shine of the Gospel breaking forth upon the Indians, etc., separately published; First principles of the Oracles of God, to be found in Three Valuable Pieces; and Meditation and Spiritual Experiences, also to be found in Three Valuable Pieces, but which was subsequently published by itself. The Sincere Convert in the form of a translation into the Indian tongue is also to be seen in some of our libraries.
404 The Liturgical Considerator Considered in Reply to Dr. Gaudon, London, 1661.
405 See p. 160, above.
406 William Clarke was the father of Richard Clarke, one of the consignees of the tea in 1773. See Publications of this Society, viii. 78 note.
407 The Hon. Josiah Willard, son of Samuel and Eunice (Tyng) Willard and grandson of Major Simon Willard, was born in Boston 21 June, 1681; graduated in 1698 at Harvard College, which he served later as a tutor and librarian; studied divinity and preached, but retired from his profession because of unconquerable diffidence; travelled in Europe and the West Indies, and at one time commanded a ship in the London trade. On 17 June, 1717, he was commissioned Secretary of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay and held the office till his death. From 1728 till 1745 he was Judge of Probate in Suffolk; and from 1734 till 1755 he sat in the Executive Council. He was universally honored and esteemed and was affectionately called “the good Secretary.” At the time of the Knowles riot in Boston, in 1747, Commodore Knowles dined with him. During the dinner the Commodore used some profane language, for which he was gently admonished by his host, but not until the next day. (See the correspondence in Publications of this Society, iii. 239, 240.)
Secretary Willard married (1) Katharine Allen, 24 October, 1715, by whom he had several children; and (2) Mrs. Hannah Clarke, 7 April, 1726, who also brought him two sons and a daughter. Mrs. Clarke was born in Lynn, 1 November, 1684, the daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth (Whittingham) Appleton of Ipswich. She married William Clarke of Boston, at Ipswich, 11 October, 1705, by whom she had several children; and after his death, as already stated, she became the second wife of Secretary Willard. Her first husband, William Clarke, had inherited from his uncle of the same name valuable real estate in Boston, including a parcel at the southeasterly corner of Tremont and School Streets, opposite King’s Chapel, now covered by the newer part of the Parker House. The lot measured 68 feet, 10 inches, on School Street and 94 feet, 5 inches, on Tremont Street, its southerly line bounding on the present site of Tremont Temple. On the northerly portion of this lot stood his mansion house, which faced School Street. Here his widow continued to reside after her marriage to Secretary Willard; and here is where Commodore Knowles dined on the occasion already referred to. Mr. Willard died 7 December, 1756. His widow survived him nearly ten years and died 28 July, 1766. See Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 156, xxviii. 61, 135, xxx. 302; Willard Memoir (1858), pp. 368, 369, 400–403; Whitmore, Massachusetts Civil List, pp. 44, 55–59, 80; Publications of this Society, viii. 78 note, 79 note, xii. 134; Suffolk Probate Files, nos. 3273, 4439, 11,380, 13,898; Suffolk Deeds, lxviii. 136, lxxvii. 191; Minute Book no. 26 of the Superior Court of Judicature, third leaf from end, Docket no. 227, Suffolk term beginning 13 February, 1738–39, of which no Record is known to exist; Suffolk Court Files, dccvi. 15, case no. 108,493; Boston Evening Post, 13 December, 1756, p. 2/2, 4 August, 1766, p. 2/3.
408 Lefroy, Memorials of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, i. 710. Governor Lefroy considers Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, New England, and him of Bermuda the same; but on p. 545 he says, whether they are the same individual or not “the Editor has not ascertained. N. Ward can be traced in Bermuda from 1627 to October 1631.” At vol. ii. p. xv of the same work the title-page of Nathaniel Ward’s sermon preached before the House of Commons on June 30, 1647, is given, with a parenthesis for explanation, thus: “By Nathaniel Ward, minister of God’s word (long a minister in Bermuda).” The words in parenthesis are not a part of the title, and the assertion is clearly a mistake.
409 Ibid. i. 583.
410 Savage says born in 1606. Foster (Alumni Oxonienses) says born 30 Jan., 1608; matric. 20 June, 1623, aged 18; M. A. 17 April, 1627. The editor of Laud’s Works (v. 98) says that he took the degree of M. A. at Magdalen College June 18, 1631. Hotten’s Original Lists (p. 87) gives his age in June, 1635, as 24 years. There is a very good account of Mr. Oxenbridge and his family, which I had not seen until after this article was in type, in the Sussex Archseological Collections (xii. 203–220); where may be found his will, printed at length, and the epitaph of his first wife, whose influence over him was very great. I think the writer has somewhat misunderstood the matter of the sacramentum academicum and Laud’s connection with it. See also p. 121 notes 3 and 4, above, and p. 173 note 4, below.
411 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1633–1634, p. 563.
412 Ibid. p. 571.
413 History of Laud’s Chancellorship of Oxford, Laud’s Works, v. 98.
414 Hotten, Original Lists, pp. 85, 87.
415 Lefroy, Memorials of the Bermudas, i. 706.
416 He was the other or another schoolmaster who was, it would seem, a real Church of England man and whose imprisonment and other sufferings make him write more violently if not more strongly than Norwood.
417 Memorials of the Bermudas, i. 706, 707.
418 Tribe in Bermuda is equivalent to township elsewhere.
419 Memorials of the Bermudas, i. 585.
420 Otherwise Graeme, or Grames, the Rev. Alexander. Ibid. i. 663,704.
421 For an instance somewhat earlier (1616), see ibid. i. 107.
422 Memorials of the Bermudas, i. 569.
423 Ibid. i. 570.
424 Ibid. i. 571.
425 Ibid. i. 573, 574.
426 Ibid. i. 581.
427 Memorials of the Bermudas, i. 583.
428 Ibid. i. 584.
429 David Stokes, who had been removed by the Puritans, being restored.
430 Mr. Oxenbridge’s first wife, Jane Butler, was with him in Bermuda. She was a masterful woman, and in England is reported to have had much to do with her husband’s ecclesiastical activities. She died April 25, 1658. See also p. 168 note, above.
431 Memorials of the Bermudas, i. 692.
432 Ibid. i. 694.
433 Whitmore, Massachusetts Civil List, p. 45. See Massachusetts Province Laws, vii. 24, 54. This was not his first public service. After the overthrow of Andros, Taylor was chosen one of the Representatives from Boston to join in a convention with the Council of Safety at Boston on the ninth of May, 1689, for consultation in regard to the adoption of a form of government (General Court Records, vi. 15, 25). After the arrival of the Province Charter, he again represented Boston in the lower House at the session which began 31 May, 1693 (Massachusetts Province Laws, vii. 20). He may have been identical with the James Tailer, as the name was frequently spelled, who was Commissioner of Impost and Excise from 17 June, 1696, till 18 June, 1697 (Whitmore, Massachusetts Civil List, p. 125). Taylor died in Lynn 29 July, 1716, and was buried in Boston on the second of August (Sewall’s Diary, iii. 94, 95).
434 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary of New England, i. 392.
435 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 59, 63. She was buried in Boston 23 July, 1718, æ. 60 (Sewall’s Diary, iii. 190).
436 Records of the First Church in Boston.
437 Suffolk Probate Files, no. 2005. The estate was administered by Stephen. Minot, who had married Capt. Clarke’s youngest daughter Mary (or Mercy).
438 Essex Probate Files, no. 27,301. See also Rebecca Taylor’s estate, ibid. no. 27,315; Rebecca Kelsoll’s (sometimes Kelsey’s) will, ibid. no. 15,297; Essex Deeds, xliv. 152; Sewall’s Diary, iii. 94, 95.
439 Massachusetts Province Laws, vi. 108, 119, 123, and side notes. See also ibid. ii. 195 note.
440 William Taylor died 23 January, 1769, æ. 72 (Lynn Vital Records, ii. 602). See Essex Probate Files, no. 27,320. He married Sarah Burrill of Lynn, their intentions having been recorded 29 May, 1726, by whom he had two daughters one of whom, Rebecca, born 5 June, 1727, married her second cousin Timothy Orne of Salem, 20 June, 1747, and became the ancestor of our associate Mr. Francis H. Lee (Lynn Vital Records, i. 395, ii. 285, 368, 369).
441 Both declined service and William Taylor, the testator’s half-brother, administered the estate (Suffolk Probate Files, no. 6603). See Massachusetts Archives, li. 283; 1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 410, 414,416.
442 Suffolk Probate Files, no. 8656.
443 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 207.
444 Rev. Jeremiah Condy’s Funeral Sermon, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ix. 175. This sermon was called to my attention by Mr. William P. Greenlaw. See ibid, xxxii. 423.
445 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 83.
446 Rev. Jeremiah Condy’s Funeral Sermon on her husband.
447 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xi. 27, 28; Suffolk Probate Files, no. 11,430. This family appears to have spelled its name Procter and not Proctor.
448 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 23.
449 Boston Town Records,—Old Sexton’s bill.
450 Suffolk Probate Files, no. 4273; Suffolk Deeds, xxxviii. 224. This house stood on a part of the site of the Adams Building, between the Ames Building and Franklin Avenue. In 1714 Richard Procter dwelt in Cornhill (now Washington Street), on the westerly side, between Queen (now Court) Street and the present thoroughfare known as Cornhill. This estate ran through to the passageway now called Franklin Avenue (ibid. xxix. 252, xxx. 199).
451 Caulkins, History of New London (1852), p. 318, 367; Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 177. See Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxx. 20, 422.
452 Mrs. Procter’s gravestone at New London is inscribed: “In memory of Mrs Lucretia widow of Mr John Procter M.A. who died Sept. 10th 1770 in ye 64th year of her age” (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xi. 27, 28). If Procter ever received an academic degree, the name of the college or university conferring it has not been discovered. See Caulkins, History of New London, p. 318.
453 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xii. 21. See Publications of this Society, x. 257 note.
454 Records of the First Baptist Church, passim; Nathan B. Wood, History of the First Baptist Church of Boston, pp. 201, 204, 208, 209, 234.
455 In March, 1746, the Society met in their new meeting-house in Baldwin Place. It is now known as the Warren Avenue Baptist Church (ibid. p. 241). Concerning the schoolhouse, see Publications of this Society, x. 257 note.
456 I am indebted to our associate Mr. Julius H. Tuttle for this important item.
457 After Procter’s death, a dispute arose between his widow and executrix and the Baptist Church officials over his accounts with them. A commission appointed to adjust the dispute awarded in favor of the Church officials, 12 October, 1758 (Suffolk Probate Files, no. 11,430).
458 Suffolk Deeds, xlix. 141.
459 Ibid. xxii. 451.
460 Ibid, xxxiii. 235 (two instruments); xxxvii. 79, 80; xlii. 181.
461 As the parchment has, between the given name and surname of the signature, three slits for the insertion of a ribbon, a seal was probably pendant.
462 This entry and the next entry are on the face of the parchment.
463 The Boston Town Records preserve the dates of birth of the following named children of James Taylor which do not appear on the parchment: by wife Elizabeth, Elizabeth, 24 October, 1674; and by wife Rebecca, Abigail, 2 August, 1690; Ann, 13 November, 1692; Sarah, 19 May, 1695; William, 19 June, 1696; Mercy, 13 November, 1700, and Mary, 15 July, 1702 (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 134, 191, 202, 224, 228, xxiv. 5, 17). The daughter Mary, born of James Taylor’s first wife, Elizabeth, 25 January, 1675, had married William Payne, 11 October, 1694 (ibid. ix. 218) and died in childbed, 6 January, 1700–01, before the birth of Taylor’s youngest daughter of the same name by his second wife, Rebecca, 15 July, 1702 (1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 410). Cf. Suffolk Deeds, xxxvii. 79, 80.
464 Argent; a chevron between three cross-crossleta sable within a bordure engrailed gules bezantée; impaling argent on a saltire azure a dragon’s (?) head, erased or.
465 Hartford, 1790; Boston, 1825–1826; Boston, 1853; New York, 1908 (Hosmer’s edition).
466 Journal (Hosmer’s edition), i. 32.
467 Smiles, John Harrison, Inventor of the Marine Chronometer, in Men of Invention, London, 1884.
468 Lady Arbella Johnson.
469 See pp. 101–113, above.
470 Terceira is one of the central group of the Azores, and is in about 27° 10′ west longitude.
471 In his journal of his voyage to New England, Francis Higginson says under date of June 1, 1629, “For coming now to the height of the Western Islands, some of our men fell sick of the scurvy, and others of the small pox,” etc. (Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, 1846, p. 226). Higginson sighted Cape Sable June 24 (ibid. p. 231). On his second voyage, Josselyn sighted Flores and Corvo June 25, 1663, but passed them without landing. (Two Voyages to New England, 1865, p. 32.)
472 See Edmund M. Blunt, American Coast Pilot, 1827, p. 564; E. & G. W. Blunt, Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean, New York, 1832; A Chart of the Banks of Newfoundland, 1775, in Jefferys’s American Atlas, 1778, No. 13; Alexander G. Findlay, Directory of the North Atlantic Ocean, London, 1895.
473 Winsor, Christopher Columbus, pp. 201–203; L. A. Bauer, United States Magnetic Declination Tables and Isogonic Charts for 1902, pp. 22–24, 24 note. Under date of May 25 Winthrop writes: “We went on with a handsome gale, and at noon were in forty three and a half; and the variation of the compass was a point and one-sixth.”
474 Barrow, Life of Lord Anson, 1839, p. 84.
475 Ibid. pp. 46–47; F. J. Britten, Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, 1899, pp. 235, 236.
476 Williamson, History of Maine, 1832, i. 231 and note.
477 Savage believes this to have been the White Mountains (Winthrop’s Journal, 1853, i. 28).
478 It will be remembered that the promontory now known as Cape Ann was originally named Tragabigzanda by Captain John Smith, and that Smith also named three of the islands off that Cape the “three Turks heads” (Works, 1884, p. 204). I suggest the probability that Mt. Agamenticus temporarily acquired the name of the Three Turks’ Heads through some confusion in the description of, or reference to, the said three islands off Cape Ann.
Hubbard gives his version as to how the cape and three islands referred to ceased to be called by the above names respectively in characteristic language as follows:
As some merchants from the west of England had for a long time frequented the parts about Munhiggon, for the taking of fish, &c, so did others, especially those of Dorchester, make the like attempt upon the northern promontory of the Massachusetts Bay, in probability first discovered by Capt. Smith, before or in the year 1614, and by him named Tragabizanda, for the sake of a lady from whom he received much favor while he was a prisoner among the Turks; by whom also the three small islands at the head of the Cape were called the Three Turks’ Heads. But neither of them glorying in these Mahometan titles, the promontory willingly exchanged its name for that of Cape Anne, imposed, as is said, by Captain Mason, and which it retaineth to this day, in honor of our famous Queen Anne, then surviving, the royal consort of King James; and the three other islands are now known by other names (History of New England 1878, p. 105).
The story of “this Noble Gentlewoman,” as Smith called Charatza Tragabigzanda, and of the three Turks whom he overcame in single combat, is told by the redoubtable Captain in his True Travels, Adventures, and Observations, published in 1630 (Works, pp. 838–840, 853, 866). But Hubbard was mistaken in thinking that Capt. John Mason imposed the name of Ann upon the cape, as the change was made by Prince Charles (ibid. p. 232). It is worth noting that the same royal personage altered the name of Accominticus to Boston. But while the former change was accepted, the latter was rejected. Young gives the present names of the three islands as Straitsmouth Island, Thacher’s Island, and Milk Island (Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 22 note).
479 On the sketch a line across the Atlantic on the parallel of 43° 15′ is laid in illustration.
480 See Johnson, Wonder-working Providence, pp. 31, 34; Hubbard, History of New England, pp. 199, 200.
481 In his Annals of New England, published in 1755, Prince gives (p. 10) this “List of Ships which arriv’d in New-England this Year,” 1630:
|
No |
Names |
whence set sail England |
whence set sail 1630 |
when arriv’d 1630 |
where arriv’d New-Engl. |
|
1 |
Lyon |
Bristol |
Feb. |
Maye. |
Salem |
|
2 |
Mary-John |
Plymouth |
March 20 |
May 30 |
Nantasket |
|
3 |
Arbella |
|
April 8 |
June 12 |
|
|
4 |
Jewell |
Ditto |
June 13 |
||
|
5 |
Ambrose |
Ditto |
June 18 |
||
|
6 |
Talbot |
Ditto |
July 2 |
||
|
7 |
May Flowr |
S. Hampton |
May |
|
Charleston |
|
8 |
Whale |
ditto |
Ditto |
||
|
9 |
Hopewell |
ditto |
Ditto |
|
[Salem] |
|
10 |
Wm & Fran. |
ditto |
Ditto |
||
|
11 |
Tryal |
ditto |
Ditto |
|
|
|
12 |
Charles |
ditto |
Ditto |
||
|
13 |
Success |
ditto |
Ditto |
July 6 |
[Salem] |
|
14 |
Gift |
Maye. |
Aug. 20 |
Charlestown |
|
|
15 |
Another |
June |
|||
|
16 |
Handmaid |
Aug. 6 |
Oct. 29 |
Plymouth |
|
|
17 |
Another set out by a private Merchant |
The Mayflower, Whale, Hopewell, William and Francis, Trial, Charles, and Success, are the ships which in the text are stated to have sailed in May.
482 In a letter to his wife written on board the Arbella at Cowes on March 28, 1630, Winthrop, referring to the four vessels which sailed from Yarmouth and the seven which sailed from Southampton, says: “We are, in all our eleven ships, about seven hundred persons, passengers.” He also states that the Mary and John carried about one hundred and forty persons, and the Lion about eighty (Life and Letters, 1864, p. 388). Young says that the Handmaid brought about sixty passengers (Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 310 note).
483 History of Plymouth Plantation (1908), pp. 106, 107.
484 Leviathan (1651), pt. i. ch. xiii. p. 63.
485 Ibid. pt. ii. ch. xviii. pp. 89, 90.
486 Leviathan, pt. ii. ch. xx. p. 102.
487 Ibid. pt. ii. ch. xxix. p. 169.
488 Observations upon Aristotles Politiques, touching Forms of Government (1652), Preface.
489 Ibid.
490 Observations, etc., Preface.
491 On November 29, 1769, Harvard College received from Thomas Hollis a volume containing six of Filmer’s pamphlets printed in 1680. On a fly-leaf Hollis has written the following:
As the Patriarcha gave occasion to two of the noblest works which were ever executed by men, the “Discourses of Government” by Algernon Sydney, and “Two Treatises of Government,” by John Locke; I have been willing to send all the Publications of Sir R. Filmer, to Harvard College, that so the whole of those Works by the curious may be compared.
- Aug. 12. 69. T. H.
- Floreat Libertas!
492 The Social Compact (1842), p. 28.
493 Discourses on Government (1805), i. 453, 454.
494 Discourses on Government, ii. 20, 21.
495 Ibid. ii. 381.
496 Two Treatises, § 22, Works (1823), v. 351.
497 Ibid. § 90, v. 389, 390.
498 Ibid. § 95, v. 394.
499 Two Treatises, § 99, v. 396.
500 Early Records of the Town of Providence, i. 1.
501 Whittier, The Mayflowers.
502 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lvi. 341–344.
503 The words “so long as his Master lives of said Term” are interlined.
504 Presumably he was the “[C?] ollister Baker” who was baptized on March 1, 1720 (Vital Records of Marlborough, p. 15).
505 The Philadelphia Hospital, the first in this country, was established in 1751. See Harrington, Harvard Medical School, i. 30, 31; Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, ii. 1584, 1588.
506 This was the class which President Stiles of Yale University called “the learned class.” Our associate, Mr. Franklin B. Dexter of the Yale University Library, in a letter to Mr. Henry H. Edes, writes that this phrase is pencilled in President Stiles’s copy of the Harvard Triennial of 1776, now preserved in the Yale Library, and that certain members of the class are marked as “docti” and “doctissimi.”
507 I am indebted to our associate Mr. Julius H. Tuttle, of the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for suggesting this identification.
508 It is written on a small folio sheet of four pages, 15¾ by 6 inches. Pages 2 and 3 are blank.
509 History of Concord (1835), p. 45.
510 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. part i. 100, 101.
511 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. part i. 205. See also ibid. vol. iv. part i. 179, 186; Publications of this Society, iii. 417–425.
512 Substituted for “and.”
513 I am indebted to Mr. William Prescott Greenlaw, a descendant of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, for deciphering this very obscure signature. Although not mentioned by Shattuck in his History of the town, Maj. Thomas Henchman, Hinchman, or Hincksmen, was among the early inhabitants of Concord who removed to Chelmsford, which was settled soon after the date of the Agreement in the text. He is also said to have been one of the “Wenham company” who under the leadership of the Rev. John Fiske, and as members of his church in Wenham, transplanted themselves to Chelmsford, where Allen says he “was for many years a leading character, and became a large land holder.” Savage says that Maj. Henchman died 18 July, 1703. See Colony Records, vol. iv. part i. 251, 261, 431, 432,441,460, vol. iv. partii. passim, and vol. v. passim; Province Laws, i. 93, 406; Wilkes Men, History of Chelmsford (1820), pp. 8, 16, 21, 27, 106, 122, 148, 149, 152, 154, 156–158, 162, 163, 166–170; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary of New England, ii. 403.
514 William Underwood also removed to Chelmsford, of which he was one of the first settlers, and a selectman in 1679. Other signers of this Agreement cast in their lot with the founders of Chelmsford.
515 Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts, p. 304.
516 1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, iii. 147.
517 Life of Thomas Hutchinson, chap. xii.
518 See G. E. Ellis, in Atlantic Monthly, liii. 662.
519 See Eighth Annual Report, pp. 14–15; Tenth Annual Report, pp. 19–20. A photograph of the field accompanies both Reports.
520 Andrew Oliver.
521 Stephen Greenleaf.
522 David Phips.
523 Of the Class of 1770.
524 College Book, vii. 216–220.
525 Of the Class of 1737.
526 The original is in Harvard College Papers, ii. no. 73.
527 This letter is printed in the Magazine of American History (1883), ix. 375.
528 Col. William Dalrymple.
529 On July 17, 1774, Omiah was presented to George III, who recommended his being inoculated; and on August 25, having recovered from the small-pox, he dined with the Royal Society. He was still in England in 1775. See the Gentleman’s Magazine, xliv. 330, 388, 441, xlv. 167, 169.
530 John Bowers came to Medfield with the Braintree and Weymouth people about 1652. His house lot was near the Great Bridge. His house was burned and he was killed by the Indians in their attack on Medfield February 21, 1676–76. See Tilden, History of Medfield, p. 320.
531 Henry Adams, son of Henry Adams of Braintree, came to Medfield, of which he was the first town clerk, with the Braintree and Weymouth people about 1652. He was killed by the Indians on February 21, 1675–76. Hannah Adams, the well-known writer, was descended in the fifth generation from Henry Adams of Medfield. For a sketch of him, see Tilden’s History of Medfield, p. 281.
532 Probably John Biscoe (1622–1690). See Bond’s Genealogies and History of Watertown, i. 43.
533 The words “might be caused to” are substituted for “would.”
534 Richard Norcross, a son of Jeremiah Norcross of Watertown, was born in England about 1621, was admitted a freeman in 1652 or 1653, and died in 1709. He is supposed to have been the first schoolmaster of Watertown, to which office he was chosen on January 6, 1650–51. See Bond’s Genealogies and History of Watertown, i. 376–377; Watertown Records, i. 21.
535 This document is in the hand of Thomas Danforth.
536 Thomas Danforth (1623–1699), Deputy-Governor of Massachusetts.
537 Capt. Hugh Mason of Watertown. He died October 10, 1678. See Bond’s Genealogies and History of Watertown, i. 356.
538 Deacon William Stitson, Stetson, or Stilson, of Charlestown. He died April 11, 1691. See Wyman’s Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, i. 902.
539 Medallic Portraits of Washington, No. 78, pp. 49, 52. See also, under date of April 20, 1778, S. Curwen’s Journal and Letters (1864), p. 204.
540 Publications, x. 258, xi. 195 note.
541 See Columbian Centinel, February 22, 1794, p. 3/2; February 26, p. 4/1; March 1, p. 3/2.
542 See pp. 174–181, above.
543 Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (1908), pp. 68–70.
544 Byington, Puritan in England and New England, p. 170.
545 Old Virginia and her Neighbours, ii. 29, 30.
546 Beginnings of New England, p. 127 note.
547 Ibid. p. 105.
548 Beginnings of New England, pp. 93–94.
549 Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbours, i. 177
550 Ibid. i. 186.
551 Drake’s History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 599.
552 History of American Literature, ii. 120, 121, 123.
553 See remarks of Mr. Charles Francis Adams in 3 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 154–170.
554 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ii. 351.
555 Mirick, History of Haverhill, p. 139.
556 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ii. 353.
557 Ibid. ii. 351 note.
558 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xv. 204.
559 The reason for giving these titles at such length is that no complete list of Mr. Checkley’s printed sermons has been made and that hitherto the writings of Mr. Checkley and those of his son, the Rev. Samuel Checkley, Jr., have been confused. Thus three sermons have been attributed to our Mr. Checkley which were really preached by his son, pastor of the Second (or North) Church, as is proved by the following title-pages:
The Character and Hope of the Righteous Consider’d, in a Sermon Preach’d the Lord’s-Day after the Funeral of Madam Lydia Hutchinson, the Virtuous Consort Of The Honourable Edward Hutchinson, Esq; Who departed this Life, July 10. 1748. Aged 61. By Samuel Checkley, A.M. Pastor of the second Church of Christ in Boston. Boston, 1748.
The Duty of God’s People when engaged in War. A Sermon Preached at the North-Church of Christ in Boston, Sept. 21. To Captain Thomas Stoddard, and his Company; On Occasion of their going against the Enemy. By Samuel Checkley, A.M. Pastor of said Church. Boston, 1755.
The Christian triumphing over Death through Christ. A Sermon Preached November 10. 1765. At the second Church of Christ, in Boston; Upon a mournful Occasion. Published with some Enlargements. By Samuel Checkley, jun’r. Pastor of said Church. Boston, 1765. The “mournful Occasion” was the death of “Mrs. Mary Gallop, Widow, aged 37 Years.”
560 The words in the text are those of the half-title, missing in some copies. There were three sermons, each separately paged, but with a continuous register. The titles are as follows:
Murder a great and crying Sin. A Sermon Preach’d on the Lord’s-Day March 4th. 1732–3. To a poor Prisoner Under Sentence of Death for that Crime.
Mercy with God for the chief of Sinners. A Sermon Preach’d on the Lord’s Day March 4th To a Prisoner Under Sentence of Death for Murder.
Sinners minded of a future Judgment. A Sermon Preached to, and at the Desire of, A Condemned Prisoner, March 18th. 1732–3. Being the Lord’s-Day before his Execution.
561 Pages 49–52.
562 Pages 33–36.
563 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, i. 134, ii. 353; Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 820; Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vol. xxii. p. iv.
564 Publications of this Society, ix. 9.
565 History of Newton, p. 252.
566 Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, i. 322 note; Hine, Early Lebanon, p. 153.
567 Allen, American Biographical and Historical Dictionary; Freeman, History of Cape Cod, i. 362, 566.
568 Mirick, History of Haverhill, p. 138.
569 J. S. Cushing, Cushing Genealogy, p. 34; J. Scales, Historical Memoranda of Dover, N. H.
570 Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, i. 280 note.
571 H. Child, Gazetteer of Cheshire County, New Hampshire; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ii. 208.
572 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ix. 340, 341.
573 See p. 214, above.
574 Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, i. 385.
575 Paige, History of Cambridge, p. 572; Hudson, History of Lexington, pp. 53, 71, 84.
576 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xliv. 251.
577 F. Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, N. J., pp. 338, 367, 568, 572, 629.
578 History of New England, v. 7.
579 Memorial History of Boston, ii. 231. Dr. McKenzie’s account, it must be confessed, is somewhat confusing. He says:
The new life began to appear in 1734, under the powerful preaching of Jonathan Edwards, at Northampton. It spread to the surrounding towns. It aroused the interest of the Boston churches. Dr. Colman wrote to Dr. Edwards for an account of the work, which was given in a letter long afterward published in London. The Boston ministers kept their people interested, and circulated among them Dr. Edwards’s letter and several sermons which had been influential in the movement. The remarkable interest in the valley of the Connecticut was not of long continuance; partly, it would seem, because so many had quickly felt the new life, and had come under its control, or turned away from it. But Boston was yet to feel its power.
Edwards’s letter to Colman was dated November 6, 1736, and was printed in abstract in the Appendix to the Rev. William Williams’s Duty and Interest of a People, among whom Religion has been planted, to Continue Stedfast and Sincere in the Profession and Practice of it, published at Boston in 1736. The letter was printed in full in London in 1737 under the title of A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighbouring Towns and Villages of New-Hampshire in New-England. This was reprinted in Boston in 1738. The London editors speak of “the Neighbouring Towns and Villages of New-Hampshire in New-England.” This natural error was corrected by the Boston editors to “the Neighbouring Towns and Villages of the County of Hampshire, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England.”
At the time when Edwards started his movement, Whitefield was an undergraduate at Oxford. He first came to Georgia in 1738 and to Boston in 1740.
580 Suffolk Probate Files, no. 6672.
581 Ibid. no. 6677.
582 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lv. 305, lxi. 303.
583 Ibid. xl. 59.
584 Publications, vi. 47.
585 This Anthony Stoddard—he married Martha Belcher, a sister of the Madam Oliver whose burial is recorded by Mr. Checkley—who was born in 1678, who graduated at Harvard College in 1697, and who died in 1748, should not be confused with his first cousin, the Rev. Anthony Stoddard, who was also born in 1678, who also graduated at Harvard in 1697, but who died in 1760. The grandfather of Mrs. Fitch was Simeon Stoddard, whose sister Lydia married Samuel Turell and became the mother of the Rev. Ebenezer Turell mentioned in the text. Hence Turell, who graduated at Harvard only six years before Fitch, and Anthony Stoddard, the father of Fitch’s wife, were first cousins.
586 See also p. 220, above.
587 Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, ii. 785–786; Thacher, American Medical Biography, ii. 13–16.
588 New England Weekly Journal of August 4.
589 Capt. Thomas Durrell. See Publications of this Society, viii. 244.
590 In these days such a death seems extraordinary. The following extract is taken from the Boston Evening Post of Monday, January 24, 1737:
Friday last one Richard Williams, a Chimney-Sweeper at the South End of the Town, was found in his Bed froze to Death, where in all probability he had lain since Tuesday Night, having never been seen by the Neighbours since that Time.
591 In the Weekly Journal of November 25, the name given is James Darling. This is correct. He was the son of George and Abigail (Reed) Darling. See Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, i. 276.
592 Diary, i. 102, 235, 368, 462.
593 S. Briggs, Essays, Humor and Poems of Nathaniel Ames, pp. 139, 440.
594 Dedham Historical Register, ii. 27.
595 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv. 61.
596 Palfrey, History of New England, v. 339; Snow, History of Boston (1825), p. 263.
597 John Boyle’s Journal, p. 87. For these extracts from this imprinted Journal, owned by a member of the Palfrey family, I am indebted to Professor George L. Kittredge.
598 Letters and Diary, p. 67.
599 I am indebted to Mr. Matthews for aid in the preparation of this paper.
600 Publications of this Society, viii. 90, 91, 92, 104.
601 Dialect Notes, i. 18, 217.
602 Journal of American Folk-Lore, v. 335.
603 Portsmouth Republican News, Monday, November 7, 1892.
604 Portsmouth Daily Evening Times, November 7, 1892.
605 Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith and the Rev. Samuel Deane, pp. 329, 331.
606 Literary Diary, i. 182, 470.
607 Works, ii. 201.
608 History of Newbury, pp. 249–251.
609 Massachusetts Province Laws, iii. 647, 997, iv. 78, 617; v, 87, 459, 1122.
610 On the first page is written in ink:
Rev. Mr. Checkley of Boston appears to have been the author of the notices entered in this Almanac. M.A.S.
May 4, 1837.
The top of the volume has been trimmed, thereby cutting off a few entries. Where these are undecipherable, square brackets are used.
There are no entries on the following days: January 15, February 18, 19, March 6, 19, July 8, October 8, November 8, 24, 26, December 17, 18.
The word “fair,” and that only, is entered on the following days: February 26, March 25, May 7, June 10, 16, 21, July 3, 21, August 6, October 7.
The words “fair pleasant,” and those only, are entered on the following days: February 6, 7, 10, 27, March 22, 26, April 17, 18, May 5, 6, 14, 16, 26, 27, 28, June 25, 26, 27, July 19, 22, 24, 30, August 11, 15, 16, 18, 25, September 6, 12, 13, 15, 20, October 2, 10, 18, 22, November 5, 10, 22, 25.
The following days are labelled “hot,” “cold,” “cool,” “dry,” “moderate,” “seasonable,” “cloudy,” or in some such indefinite way: January 6, 7, 10, 24, 25, March 8, 10, 11, 12, April 9, 11, 21, 30, May 1, 9, 10, 21, 31, June 5, 7, 13, July 17, August 21, 23, 30, September 4, 18, 23, 29, 30, October 17, November 3, 4, 11, 29, December 6, 11, 13, 23.
611 See p. 272, above.
612 See p. 281, above.
613 See p. 281, above.
614 See p. 281, above.
615 See p. 281, above.
616 See p. 275, above.
617 What follows is written on the other side of the leaf.
618 This name is uncertain. It might be “McLong” or “McLorey.” On May 2, 1734, Mr. Checkley married “Thomas McLory & Isabella Hood” (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 186).
619 See p. 283, above.
620 See p. 281, above.
621 See p. 283, above.
622 See p. 281, above.
623 See p. 279, above.
624 See p. 282, above.
625 See p. 276, above.
626 See p. 276, above.
627 See p. 282, above.
628 See p. 276, above.
629 See p. 282, above.
630 What follows is written on the other side of the leaf.
631 See p. 276, above.
632 What follows is written on the other side of the leaf.
633 See p. 276, above.
634 See p. 277, above.
635 See p. 284, above.
636 See p. 282, above.
637 See p. 277, above.
638 What follows is written on another leaf in the middle of the book.
639 See p. 285, above.
640 See p. 277, above.
641 What follows is written on the other side of the leaf.
642 Perhaps this name is “Burch’s.”
643 See p. 283, above.
644 See p. 279, above
645 see p. 279, above.
646 See pp. 284, 287, above.
647 This entry is on the other side of the leaf, and of course was not made until about a fortnight later.
648 See pp. 288–295, above.
649 See p. 278, above.
650 See p. 283, above.
651 See p. 277, above.
652 This refers to the entry under date of November 5. See p. 288, above.
653 See p. 278, above.
654 This entry is somewhat uncertain.
655 See p. 283, above.
656 See p. 278, above.
657 See Publications of this Society, vi. 288.
658 History of the Harvard Medical School, i. 111.
659 College Book, viii. 185 ff.
660 Overseers’ Records, iii. 300 ff.
661 College Book, viii. 264.
662 1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vii. 177 ff.
663 History of the Harvard Medical School, i. 112 ff.
664 College Book, viii. 387.
665 Overseers’ Records, iv. 192.
666 College Book, viii. 480.
667 July 15, 1801, College Book, viii. 484; Overseers’ Records, iv. 335.
668 August 25, 1802, College Book, viii. 500; Overseers’ Records, iv. 361.
669 August 30, 1809, College Book, ix. 152
670 August 29, 1810, College Book, ix. 179.
671 So spelled here and in all Triennials until that of 1830, when the spelling “Clapp” appears thirteen years after the man’s death.
672 Harvard College Papers, vi. 61.
673 That is, Benjamin Shurtleff.
674 College Records, x. 48. The Overseers’ Records (v. 360) give no lists.
675 Prophesying is dangerous. While these pages were going through the press, Charles W. Eliot received from Harvard the honorary degree of M. D.!
676 College Book, viii. ISO; Overseers’ Records, iii. 300.
677 This is the spelling of the name in the records of the First Church, but the more usual form is Hibbins or Hibbens.
678 February, 1907, Publications, xi. 196–207.
679 So called in the Proprietors’ Records, Boston Athenæum, March 18, 1826.
680 So called in the Proprietors’ Records, Boston Athenæum, January 1, 1827.
681 Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Buckminster (1849), pp. 188, 207.
682 William Emerson, Nathan Frazier, James Jackson, John S. Popkin, Josiah Quincy, Timothy Williams, John Quincy Adams, John Lowell, and later John C. Warren, John C. Howard. (Life of J. C. Warren, i. 72; MS Records of the Society, p. 11.) The records of this society were presented to the Boston Athenæum in 1909 by the present Dr. John Collins Warren.
683 Catalogue / of / Books / in the / Boston Medical / Library, / and the / Rules and Regulations / concerning the same. / Also, / a Statement of the Trustees / to the Proprietors. / Boston. / Printed by Thomas Fleet, No. 5, Cornhill, 1808. Title, 1 leaf; Catalogue, pp. 3–10; Rules and Statement of the Trustees, pp. 11–16.
684 See E. J. Forster’s article in Professional and Industrial History of Suffolk County, iii. 220. The present Boston Medical Library was incorporated in 1877, after several meetings dating from 1875.
A copy of the catalogue of a so-called Second Social Library has been preserved, and it shows that this library was in 1808 wholly general in character. This copy, owned by Dr. Ayer, has many titles added in manuscript, suggesting that the library had a considerable call for books. The title-page reads:
A / Catalogue of Books, / in the / Second Social Library / in the / Town of Boston. / Instituted January, 1805. / Incorporated 1806. / Boston: / Printed at the Emerald Printing office, / No. 5, Court Street. / 1808. / E. G. House, Printer, /pp. 12.
This copy belonged to the Rev. William Emerson and bears his autograph signature on the title-page.
The Boston Public Library has a second edition, which was John H. Gould’s copy with a supplement covering twelve additional pages, entitled:
Supplementary Catalogue of Books, added to the Second Social Library, from January, 1809, to May, 1811. pp. 12.
685 The names read: Theoph: Parsons, Chas Jackson, Charles Paine, Rd Sullivan, Warren Button, Wm Stackpole, Jr., James Allen, Jr., Israel Munroe, Wm. H. Sumner, Thomas Williams of Roxbury, Peter Thacher, Cha Davis, John Heard, Jur., Samuel D. Parker, Ira: D. Channing, Edward Gray, Joseph Hall, Jno Lowell, Geo: Blake, Danl Davis, Eben Gay, John Phillips, R. G. Amory, Josiah Quincy, Robert T. Paine, Jr., Jos. Rowe, Thos. O. Selfridge, C. Gore, Geo. Sullivan.
686 Preface to Catalogue of 1849.
687 Preface to Catalogue of 1865.
688 Quincy, History of the Boston Athenseum, p. 94.
689 View in Ellis’s History of the First Church in Boston, facing p. 172.
690 Ibid. View facing p. 237.
691 W. Emerson, History of the First Church, p. 168.
692 The catalogue bears the title:
Catalogue of Books, / in the / Theological Library, / in the / Town of Boston. / March 1, 1808. / Snelling and Simons, Printers, / Devonshire-Street. . . . Boston. /1808. Title, 1 leaf; Rules and Regulations, Subscribers, and Government for 1807–8, pp. 3–6; Catalogue of Books in the Theological Library, including those Deposited by the Corporation of “King’s Chapel,” in Boston, pp. 7–33.
693 Greenwood, History of King’s Chapel, p. 162.
694 The General Theological Library was organized April 20, 1860, with the Rev. Charles Burroughs as president and J. Sullivan Warren as secretary. In 1862, with the Rev. Luther Farnham as secretary, the Library began its work, having quarters at different times on Tremont, West, Somerset, and now on Mount Vernon Streets. It is open to members, clergymen, and visiting strangers.
695 The Boston Public Library has a catalogue of books in “the Columbian Social Library, instituted January, 1813,” and of “Social Library No. 1, March, 1823.” The title-page of the latter reads:
Catalogue of Books / in / Social Library, / No 1. / March, 1823. / Boston: / Printed for the Proprietors. / pp. 36. 4 books at once. $10 a share.
696 Shaw’s Description of Boston, p. 278.
697 See Life of John C. Warren, i. 79. Members were Col. George Gibbs, President Holley, Dr. James Jackson, the Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster, Benjamin Vaughan, and Francis C. Gray.
698 Including some on International Law.
699 The writer.
700 See Howe v. Morse, 174 Massachusetts Reports, 491 (1899).
701 These included our associate, Major Henry L. Higginson, nephew of Colonel Lee, who narrated the incident to me.
702 A.B. Harvard, 1864; A.M. Harvard, 1870; LL.B. 1886.
703 The firm of Balch & Rackemann was formed in October, 1886, and consisted of Mr. Balch, the writer, and Felix Rackemann.
704 In his Memorial to Mr. Tillinghast, Mr. George H. Martin says:
In 1849, in order to give the Board and its Secretary an office, an act of the legislature made the Secretary of the Board of Education State Librarian with the power to appoint an assistant librarian and clerk, and the business of the Board was installed in one of the rooms of the Library.
This relation between the Board and the Library continued under sanction of law until 1893, when provision was made by statute for the appointment of the Librarian by the Governor.
705 Harvard College Papers, viii. 89.
706 Life and Letters of George Bancroft, i. 33.
707 Life and Letters of George Bancroft, i. 42.
708 Life and Letters (1909), i. 79.
709 The name Virginia, as is of course well known, was, when given by Queen Elizabeth at the time she knighted Ralegh (January 6, 1584–85), applied to an indefinite tract of territory north of Florida. The name Massachusetts occurs in Capt. John Smith’s Description of New England, published in 1616. The name Connecticut (under the form Quonehtacut) is found in Winthrop’s Journal under date of April 4, 1631. The Connecticut River was named the Fresh River by the Dutch, and continued to be so called by them long after the adoption by the English of the name Connecticut.
710 Documentary History of the State of Maine, vii. 223, 224. In the Century Cyclopedia of Names is this: “Maine. [In the charter granted by Charles I. in 1639 named ‘The Province or Countie of Mayne,’ because regarded as a part of ‘the Mayne Lande of New England.’]” This reason, it is perhaps unnecessary to point out, is not found in the charter itself.
711 History of Maine, p. 122.
712 Ibid. p. 307.
713 American Annals, i. 311 note.
714 History of Saco and Biddeford, p. 53.
715 History of the State of Maine, i. 277. Early in 1635 the Council of the Plymouth Company decided to return its charter into the hands of the King; but before doing so, an agreement was made on February 3, 1634–35, for the several divisions of the seacoasts of New England. In this division no name is given to that portion which became Gorges’s, but he soon (in 1636) called it New Somerset or New Somersetshire. For the history of the name of Somerset as employed in Maine, see Publications of this Society, vi. 61–70.
716 Folsom is not the only one who has fallen into error in calling Gorges “Lord Palatine.” Gov. Chamberlain did the same (Maine: her Place in History, p. 54), and also a writer in London Notes and Queries, Ninth Series, xii. 23. Such a title, however, was not used by Gorges himself. See Publications of this Society, viii. 206–207.
717 Collections of the Maine Historical Society, ii. 58. Folsom adds: “The biography of this queen recently published by Miss Strickland, is a work of intense interest and apparently drawn from original and authentic sources.” This allusion would seem to indicate that Folsom, who in 1830 (as quoted in the text) had held that Henrietta Maria was “connected by title or estate with the province of Meyne in France,” changed his opinion as a result of something said by Miss Strickland; but in her sketch of Henrietta Maria (Lives of the Queens of England, 1845, viii. 1–266) she apparently does not mention the French province of Maine.
718 Collections of the Maine Historical Society, iii. 31 note.
719 History of New England, i. 525 note.
720 History of the United States, i. 337 note.
721 Maine: her Place in History (1877), p. 54 note.
722 Collections of the Maine Historical Society, vol. v. p. xxi.
723 American Historical Record, i. 211.
724 History of Maine, p. 107.
725 Brief History of Maine (second edition), p. 42.
726 Rural Hours, pp. 479, 483.
727 See p. 367, above.
728 See p. 368, above.
729 Ancient Dominions of Maine, p. 124.
730 Gov. Chamberlain makes a curious slip. In one place he speaks of the grant of August 10, 1622, “which the indenture itself states ‘they intend to call the Province of Maine,’” yet a little later declares that in the charter of April 3, 1639, the territory “was now for the first time, and by charter, named the Province of Maine” (Maine: her Place in History, pp. 44, 54).
731 Documentary History of the State of Maine, vii. 66, 67, 68.
732 The word “charter” as here used includes charters, grants, and patents, as it is impossible to distinguish between the terms.
733 In J. A. Poor’s Vindication of the Claims of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, pp. 121–123.
734 Documentary History of the State of Maine, vii. 102.
735 History of New Hampshire, i. 8.
736 S. F. Haven, History of Grants under the Great Council for New England, in Early History of Massachusetts (1867), p. 150. Charles Deane called attention to Belknap’s mistake in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for April 24, 1867, p. 56 note, and ibid, for October 21, 1868, p. 34.
737 History of Maine, pp. 267–269. Yet Sullivan himself seems to have been hopelessly confused. Cf. pp. 111, 119, 304.
738 History of the State of Maine, i. 225.
739 Collections of the Maine Historical Society, ii. 52.
740 Ibid. in. 30.
741 History of New England, i. 205.
742 History of the United States (1876), i. 257; ibid. (1883), i. 217.
743 Brief History of Maine, p. 34.
744 Boston Transcript, June 8, 1872, p. 6/4. When this letter was reprinted in. the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for July, 1875, xxix. 243–244, it was preceded by an editorial note stating: “We learn that Mr. Tuttle is preparing a full account of the origin of the name of Maine.” So far as I am aware, that account was never written.
745 H. Ellis’s Original Letters, Second Series (1827), iii. 226–228.
746 Mr. Baxter says that “Charles, accompanied by the dissolute Buckingham, had seen and wooed the princess Maria, but, returning through France incognito, had stopped in Paris, and at a ball there had seen the French princess Henrietta” (Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, Prince Society, i. 133). It was, however, on their journey to Madrid that the two travelled incognito. Charles left the Escorial September 2, 1623, sailed from Santander September 18, and landed at Portsmouth October 5. (Gardiner, Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, ii. 409, 413, 421.) In a letter dated Paris, February 22, 1622–23, Charles himself gave this description:
Since the closing of our last we have beene at Court againe, (and that we might not houd you in paine, we assure you that we have not been knowen,) where we saw the young Queene, littell Monsieur, and Madame, at the practising of a Maske that is intended by the Queene to be presented to the Kinge, and in it ther danced the Queene and Madame with as manie as made up nineteen faire dancing Ladies, amongst which the Queene is the handsomest, which hath wrought in me a greater desier to see her sister. (In H. Ellis’s Original Letters, 1824, iii. 121–122.)
The wife of Louis XIII was Anne, sister of the Infanta Maria; “littell Monsieur” was Gaston, Duke of Orleans; “Madame” was the Princess Henrietta Maria. Henrietta Maria’s sister Elizabeth married Philip IV of Spain. After the breaking off of the English marriage, the Infanta Maria married the Emperor Ferdinand III.
747 In an account of an interview with Lady Carew, dated September 19, 1618, Sir Thomas Wilson said, referring to Queen Anne of England, that “Her Majesty said she would rather have the match with Mdme. Chretienne than the Spanish lady with all her gold” (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1611–1618, p. 573).
748 See the notices (by S. R. Gardiner) of Charles, Digby, Hay, and Henrietta Maria, and that of Rich (by C. H. Firth) in the Dictionary of National Biography; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1611–1618, 1619–1623, 1623–1625.
749 In his text (see p. 368, above) Williamson spoke of “the provincial name of Maine, though one by which this section of the country was at that time frequently called,” etc. This statement is somewhat misleading. The word “main” was applied to the mainland along the coast, but it was not applied to the territory as such. Previous to the charter of April 1, 1639, the country was once and once only called “Maine”—namely, in the grant of August 10, 1622. Thus before 1639 a man at Boston or Plymouth would never have said that he was going “to Maine,” meaning the present State of Maine. He might have said that he was “going to the main;” but that would have left the exact locality in doubt. See also note 3, below.
750 History of New England, i. 525 note.
751 In speaking of Maine’s “own unique geographical features,” Tuttle was using exaggerated language. Maine is not the only State in the Union that has islands along its coast, though it has more than any other. The word “main” was applied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the mainland along the entire Atlantic coast, from the Carolinas to Greenland. See also note 1, above.
752 Boston Transcript, June 8, 1872, p. 6/4; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxix. 244.
753 History of the United States, i. 337 note.
754 Maine: her Place in History, p. 54 note.
755 Narrative and Critical History of America, iii. 363 note.
756 The lack of certainty on the part of historians is doubtless due to the fact that this point has never received adequate treatment. Writers have asserted that the word “main” was frequently used for mainland, but have failed to furnish proof. “The name of ‘Province of Maine,’” says Miss Mary F. Farnham, “is first used in the grant to Gorges and Mason, 1622; its origin is not difficult to trace in the frequent use of maine as applied to ‘maine land,’ and ‘along the main’” (Documentary History of the State of Maine, vol. vii. p. xxi). And again, referring to the charter of April 3, 1639, she says: “The name ‘Province of Maine’ is repeated from the grant of 1622. By reference to the early charters it is easy to arrive at a correct idea of the origin of the name, which has survived all the changes of colonial rule, and is perpetuated in the phrase ‘state of Maine’” (ibid. vii. 222). It is obvious that nothing later than August 10, 1622, is of value. Now the word “main,” in the sense of mainland, occurs only three times previous to that date in the documents printed by Miss Farnham,—namely, on March 3, 1619–20, November 3, 1620, and July 24, 1622. These extracts are quoted in the text, p. 379, below. Hence it is necessary to go to other documents than those given by Miss Farnham. Williamson (History of the State of Maine, i. 277 note), quotes three extracts, one from Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, published in 1624, one from a document dated 1635, and one from a work written about 1680. These are of course too late. Palfrey (History of New England, i. 525 note) repeats two of Williamson’s citations. In the present paper, for the first time so far as I am aware, full evidence on this point is given.
757 “The poet found out, one day,” writes W. J. Rolfe in the Nation of October 22, 1908, “that the Spanish Main was the mainland bordering on what he—like nine people out of ten—had supposed to be the sea called by that name” (lxxxvii. 383). Dr. Rolfe, however, does not indicate when the discovery was made. The reading is “Had sailed the Spanish Main” in Longfellow’s Poems, 1842, ii. 43, and in his Poems, 1866, i. 95. In the Poetical Works, 1872, p. 40, the reading is “Had sailed to the Spanish Main.” Hence the change was made in 1872 or between 1866 and 1872.
758 Purchas his Pilgrimes (1906), xviii. 306, 307, 309.
759 Purchas his Pilgrimes (1906), xviii. 315.
760 Ibid, xviii. 323, 324.
761 Ibid, xviii. 338.
762 Description of New England, Works (1884), p. 190.
763 Purchas his Pilgrimes, xix. 132, 133.
764 Documentary History of the State of Maine, vii. 17.
765 Ibid. vii. 33.
766 Sir George Calvert, later first Baron Baltimore.
767 Documentary History of the State of Maine, vii. 61–62. In a letter written to Mason on March 18, 1631, Gorges said:
As for the ꝑtie yon write of that hath lived wth the Dutch soe longe time I wishe you would not omitt to keepe him on reasonable condic̄ns untill my comeing vpp [to London], in the meane while that you will informe your selfe of the strength they haue where they Hue, how fortified, & ꝑuided for, how farr vpp, into the Maine they bee, What other Commodity they finde besides their Trade of furrs, what Cattle, what Horses, and what carriages they make vse of wth what people they hold Coraspondancy wthall, and what Enemyes they haue, and in what parts of the Country ther Enemyes, or freinds are (Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine, Prince Society, iii. 254).
In the index to that volume “the Maine,” which of course means mainland, is entered under “Maine,” as if it referred to the Province of Maine.
768 Capt. John Mason (Prince Society), p. 174.
769 Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine (Prince Society), i. 124 ote.
770 Boston Transcript, June 8, 1872, p. 6/4; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxix. 244.
771 This is an allusion to the grant to Sir Robert Heath on October 30, 1629, of Carolana (or Carolina). No settlements were made under it.
772 Juan de Mariana (1536–1623).
773 Scharf gives as his authorities manuscripts in the British Museum.
774 History of Maryland, i. 51–52.
775 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1623–1625, p. 387; ibid. 1625–1626, p. 16.
776 Lives of the Queens of England, viii. 33.
777 Capt. John Mason (Prince Society), p. 14.
778 A facsimile of the title-page of this almanac is given in the Church Catalogue, iii. 1113.
779 See pp. 270–306, above.
780 Between 1725 and 1776 inclusive there are in addition to the specimens in the text almanacs for the several years named giving longitudes as follows: 1725, 4 h. 44 min.; 1726, 4 h. 44 min.; 1728, 70° or 4 h. 44 min.; 1729, 72°, in another 289°; 1730, also 1731, 4 h. 44 min.; 1732, 289°; 1733, 4 h. 25 min.; 1737, about 71°; 1738, 71°; 1740, 69°; 1743, 69° 27′; 1744, 69° 15′; 1750, about 4 h. 40 min.; 1751, 4 h. 45 min.; 1753, 69°.
In the New England Almanack, or Lady’s and Gentlemen’s Diary for 1769, by Benjamin West, the meridian is 4 h. 40 min. west from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. This language tends to indicate that the maker had knowledge of the British Nautical Almanac first published in 1766, as stated in the text. From 1725 to 1776 the almanacs stating the longitude to be that of Boston without addition appear to be in a large majority.
781 Account of Two Voyages to New England made during the Years 1638, 1663, Boston (1865), p. 124.
782 Ibid. p. 157.
783 The Massachusetts Town Boundary Survey makes the State House to be in longitude 71° 03′ 51.040″ (Atlas, Boston and Brookline, 1902).
784 I take the longitude of St. Michael’s from the map of that island in Walter Frederick Walker’s The Azores, London, 1886, opposite p. 46.
785 Voyages and Works of John Davis, the Navigator, Hakluyt Society, London, p. 284.
786 Personal Narrative of the First Voyage of Columbus to America, translated by Samuel Kettell, Boston (1827), pp. 18–19.
787 Schott, Secular Variation in the Position of the Agonic Line of the North Atlantic and of America between the Epochs 1500 and 1900 A. D., in Bulletin No. 6, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, June 7, 1888, p. 29 (being the first page of Bulletin) and footnotes.
788 Frontispiece to The Azores.
789 Schott, Bulletin No. 6, ubi supra, p. 29. See also Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, iii. 41. On p. 40 of the last named volume a facsimile is given of Michael Locke’s or Lok’s map of 1582, whereon the meridian of 350° passes through the Azores, and the meridian of 360° passes between the Azores and the Madeiras.
790 A Discourse of the Variation of the Compass by William Borough was published as an addition to Robert Norman’s The New Attractive in 1581.
791 St. Mary’s, a smaller island than St. Michael’s, lies about forty miles south from it, in the eastern group of the Azores.
792 Facsimile, New York, 1907.
793 By Andrew Wakely, Corrected and Enlarged by James Atkinson, London, 1716.
794 The first edition was published in 1652.
795 In this connection I quote from Bauer’s United States Magnetic Tables, etc., pp. 27, 28. The author, after stating that the purpose of Table I on p. 28 represents an attempt to collect the values of the magnetic declination up to the year 1600, inclusive, etc., goes on to say:
The values obtained with sea compasses require careful scrutiny, as these compasses were frequently shifted to allow for the supposed variation or “error” of the needle. Thus, Robert Norman, instrument maker, in 1581, says: “Of the common Sayling Compasses, I find heere (in Europa) five sundry sortes or sets”—according to the amount of correction allowed for by different makers. Thus, “by the Isle of Saint Michaell in the Acorres,” he found “that the North poynt of the common compass, showeth the Pole very neere in that Meridian, but the bare Needle sheweth about 4 Degrees 50 Minutes to the Eastwards of the Pole.”
It was not until the close of the sixteenth century that the “variation from the true north” came to be generally accepted as an and not one to be accredited to the imperfection of the construction of the compass.
796 Schott, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Bulletin No. 5, The Value of the Arcano del Mare with reference to our knowledge of the Magnetic Declination in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, June 7, 1888, p. 26. Schott, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Appendix No. 7, Report for 1888, Secular Variation of the Magnetic Declination in the United States and at some foreign stations, seventh edition, June, 1889, p. 182.
797 Vol. i. chaps, viii, x.
798 See my paper on Winthrop’s Course across the Atlantic, p. 192, above.
799 See p. 198 and note 1, above.
800 See pp. 194–195, above.
801 The great salt and the loving-cups are described and portrayed in the Curio for 1887 (New York, 1888), i. 20–22, and the loving-cups in the Catalogue of American Silver exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1906 (Boston, 1906), nos. 37, 64, pp. 45, 51, plates I, II, IV, V, VII. See also Publications of the Cambridge Historical Society, iii. 15.
802 This address was written by President Lefavour and was engrossed on parchment, measuring 17 by 22 inches, by Mr. Frank Williamson Martin. It is illuminated in red and gold. The seal of the Society is pendant on a scarlet grosgrain ribbon.