April Meeting, 1956

A STATED Meeting of the Society was held at its House, No. 87 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 25 April 1956, at a half after eight o’clock in the evening, the Vice-President, Mr. Richard Mott Gummere, in the chair.

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

On behalf of the Corresponding Secretary, the Editor reported the receipt of a letter from Mr. Paul Herman Buck accepting election to Resident Membership in the Society, and of one from Mr. George William Cottrell, Jr., declining his election.

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

To nominate candidates for the several offices,—Messrs. Fred Norris Robinson and Elliott Perkins.

To examine the Treasurer’s accounts,—Messrs. Arthur Stanwood Pier and William Bradford Osgood.

To arrange for the Annual Dinner,—Messrs. Walter Muir Whitehill and David Britton Little.

Mr. Benjamin Woods Labaree read a paper entitled: “Newburyport Colonial Merchants.”313

The Editor communicated by title the following paper by Mr. William L. Sachse, of the University of Wisconsin, a Non-Resident Member:

John Huske’s Proposals for Improving American Trade, 1765

AMONG the Colonial Office Papers is a hitherto unpublished manuscript entitled “Observations on the Trade of G Britain and Her American Colonies, & on their Trade to foreign plantations; with a Plan for retrieving, extending & securing thereof.”314 Written by John Huske, it is dated 1 November 1765. The first part is a criticism of certain policies adopted by the mother country toward the colonies between 1763 and 1765. The remainder is given over to a proposal for the establishment of eleven free ports, stretching from Nova Scotia to Dominica, “for all American produce, for black Slaves from Africa, & for all produce and Manufactures legally imported from Europe,” under conditions set forth by the author.

John Huske315 was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in or about 1721, the son of Ellis Huske, who for over twenty years served as a Councillor of that province. As a young man he evidently took up a mercantile career in Boston. But not for long: altogether he lived in America but twenty-four years. The rest of his life was spent in England, where he devoted himself to commercial and political affairs. He was the nephew of John Huske, who had been made a major general for his service at Dettingen, and who would rise to be a general and governor of Jersey. It is likely that this connection was of some value to the young American.

Around 1760 Huske was associated with Charles Townshend, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom he served as deputy in the office of Treasurer of the Chambers. According to a contemporary versifier

This alien upstart, by obtaining friends,

From T—wn—ds clerk, A M—ld—n member ends.316

This reference is to Huske’s acquisition of a parliamentary seat by defeating Bamber Gascoyne in the Maldon by-election of 1763, allegedly with the support of John Wilkes. Surviving the election of 1768, he retained the seat until his death in 1773. In 1765, we are told, Huske was mentioned as a possible successor to William Mellish as Secretary to the Treasury, but nothing came of this. Unfriendly critics attributed his success to “stock jobbing and servility,” but it should be noted that Maldon was a borough with a fairly wide franchise, and that he won it in opposition to the government, which supported Gascoyne.317

Huske’s interest in America is revealed in various activities scattered over the years. He was the author of The Present State of North America, &c. This vigorous and lucid, though unfinished, indictment of French pretensions in the New World was published in two editions in London in 1755; in the same year it appeared also in Dublin and Boston, and in a German translation at Frankfort. In 1761 John Hancock believed that Huske had “some prospect” of becoming a colonial agent. At this time Hancock, who knew him intimately, describes him as “a sensible cleane Man, and one I have a great Esteem of.”318 Huske voted against the so-called Sugar Act in 1764. The following year his stock, on the American side of the Atlantic, took a sharp tumble. Like Franklin, he did not foresee the storm which the passage of the Stamp Act would unleash; in the colonies he was regarded not only as a supporter, but as the prime instigator, of the detested measure.

From H—k, the veriest monster on the earth,

The fell production of some baneful birth,

Their [the colonies’] ills proceed; from him they took their date,

The source supreme, and center of all hate.

So wrote in 1765 the unknown American author of the poem, Oppression, in which the supposed meanness and veniality of the “Portsmouth Yankey” were underscored.319 In Boston his effigy, along with that of George Gren-ville, was hanged from the liberty tree. In the colonial press Huske hastened to disavow any sponsorship of the Act.320 In the House of Commons he spoke several times on behalf of repeal and gave support to Franklin during his examination on the subject.321 A few years later he tentatively proffered a petition for the repeal of the Townshend Acts.322

Lawrence Wroth has suggested that the “Observations” may be the scheme for the improvement of relations between Britain and the colonies, outlined in Part I of The Present State of North America with a promise of further development in Part II, which never appeared. A comparison of the texts will reveal that this is not the case. Huske was not concerned in 1765 with the elaboration of an argument which he had blocked out a decade earlier, in the early stages of a war which had run a successful course. He was interested in alleviating economic maladjustments occasioned, in large measure, by policies which Parliament had written into law after the Peace of Paris.

On 6 June 1766 George III gave his assent to a measure entitled: “An act for opening and establishing certain ports in the islands of Jamaica and Dominica, for the more free importation and exportation of certain goods and merchandises; for granting certain duties to defray the expenses of opening, maintaining, securing, and improving, such ports; for ascertaining the duties to be paid upon the importation of goods from the said island of Dominica into this kingdom; and for securing the duties upon goods imported from the said island into any other British colony.”323 Huske’s connection with this bill, if any, is not apparent. He was not a member of the committee of the House of Commons entrusted with its formulation. It is interesting to note, however, that Charles Townshend served on this committee, and that “he took a forward Part & did admirably well.”324 Possibly the “Observations,” set forth some six months before the bill was introduced in Commons, were designed for Townshend’s perusal.

In any case, the “Observations” cannot be regarded as a blueprint for the parliamentary enactment. This differs from Huske’s recommendations in a number of important particulars, and is in general more restrictive. Huske called for eleven free ports, located from Canadian to Caribbean latitudes, without differentiation in treatment. The Act set up seven, confined to Dominica and Jamaica, these islands being affected by distinct regulations. His broad provision that “all American produce” might flow into the ports was not duplicated in the Act, which excepted some twenty commodities, emanating from both British and foreign colonies. He did not see fit to include restrictions, imposed by the Act, on the design and tonnage of ships making use of the ports. A comparison of the two documents will reveal other differences.

The Statute is, of course, far more complex and precise than Huske’s proposals. Had the former New Englander been entrusted with the responsibility of framing a tight regulatory measure, he would undoubtedly have been forced to incorporate some similar exceptions and stipulations. Even so, the impression remains that, had Huske enjoyed a free hand, a more liberal arrangement would have come into existence. As it is, his proposals are of interest and significance as a solution of an experienced merchant and politician, who knew conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, for some of the pressing imperial problems of his day.

Observations on the Trade of G Britain to Her American Colonies, & on their Trade to foreign plantations; with a Plan for retrieving, extending & securing thereof

It is the opinion of those who are allowed to be best acquainted with the British Colonies on the Continent of North-America, & the Trade of G Britain with them, that the export from hence would be vastly more than ever it was for their own consumption, if they could find out ways & means to pay for it. And that if the Trade with said Colonies & that of our Sugar Islands, with the Spanish & other foreign Colonies were even in their pristine state, there would be a farther demand on G Britain & Ireland for their produce & manufactures to a very great amount.

This opinion is the result of experience, as the demands of our Colonies from the Mother Country, both in Peace & War, have always been in proportion to their abilities to remit for their payment: and there is not a period since the establishment of the Northern Colonies in which they would not have demanded much more than they have done, could they have found out ways & means to have paid for such demand. Therefore G Britain ought, incontrovertibly, to countenance & encourage every direct & circular method of enabling Her Colonies to make remittances for what they & the Colonies of Foreigners do, & would demand from these Kingdoms.

But G Britain, ever since the late Peace,325 hath, contrary to sound policy & the truest commercial principles, taken such measures for destroying the paper currency of the continent of America;326 for obstructing the obtaining of any other currency by all the Colonies; for preventing the superfluous produce of the American Continent, & British goods from all our Colonies from being exported to foreign Colonies; & for drying up the principal sources for remittances to the Mother Country, that many in North America have been deprived of the means of paying the enormous taxes they were subject to in consequence of the late War in particular, of carrying on their Trade & making good their engagements with one another, of making remittances to G Britain for what they owed, and of demanding from Her such goods as they required for the usual course of their Trade and business: hence such a scene of distress & Bankruptcy has commenced & continued as is not to be described. And we now begin to feel the blows given them, rebounding upon ourselves; for the export of G Britain to Her Colonies is reduced by the above means more than one fourth per annum, & the decrement is still going on. The merchants of G Britain cannot now recover their Debts in that Country, & knowing the principal sources for remittances are dried up, they refuse to comply fully, even with the reduced orders from America for Goods. And upon one House at Bristol lately quitting the Trade to North America, no less than five hund^ḍ nail makers are already become a parish charge!

It is certain that His Majesty’s Northern Colonies do produce infinitely more of the following Commodities, than they & all our West-India Islands do or can consume; viz. Flour, Bread, Beef, Pork, Pickled & dry Fish, Livestock, Pease, Beans, Butter, Cheese, Roots of various kinds, Lumber of all sorts for the construction of dwelling Houses & Sugar Mills for the Islands, & Cask to contain their produce: besides Horses &c, &c. Now every obstruction to the exportation of these Commodities to foreign Colonies, must be an injury to the growth & improvement of our Plantations; & the particular difficulty to which the Fisheries of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia & New-England are exposed, is very remarkable; as one third of the dry Fish which is cured is Refuse, & not fit for a European market; which, together with the greatest part of the pickled Fish, is only used in the feeding of Negroes.

With these Commodities our Colonies used in their own navigation to supply those of Foreigners; & in this commerce with them, they had an opportunity of vending large quantities of Goods brought from G Britain, it being well known that formerly from five to forty thousand pounds have been insured in London on a single Vessel employed in this Trade from New York, Pennsylvania, &c, &c. And as not one eighth of this amount could be in the produce of our Colonies, it is not only presumable, but may be proved, that the remaining part of the Cargo consisted of Goods from G Britain. Indeed the Vessels formerly employed in this Trade from Jamaica were almost wholly loaded with Goods from G Britain.

The produce of these supplies was partly invested in Indico, Cochineal, dying-Woods, Drugs, Cocoa, & other rough materials which chiefly came to G Britain. Another part of the produce was also invested in Sugar, Coffee, Indico &c, which, exclusive of a portion of the Sugar consumed in the Northern Colonies & which is, I confess, an exceptionable part of this Commerce, were sent in English shipping to Germany & Italy & the amount of their sales chiefly remitted to G Britain to pay for Her manufactures consumed in the Colonies. Another part of the investure327 of the proceeds was in Molasses, used by our Northern Colonies in their brewery, or distilled with Rum for their own & the Indians consumption, & for exportation to Newfoundland & the Coast of Africa. On this article alone depends the whole African Trade from North America; for the Americans export nothing else to that Country, & they used to employ annualy in that Trade no less than 30 Vessels: and the produce of this African commerce was invested partly in Gold dust, Elephants teeth, Gum & Dying-Woods for the use of G Britain, & partly in Slaves for the Colonies. And the remainder of the produce of those supplies to foreign Colonies in America, was brought with His Majesty’s dominions in Silver & Gold, part of which served in our Sugar Colonies for the whole of their Currency, & in some measure for that of the Northern Colonies, & the rest was remitted to G Britain. From this Trade alone came all the Silver & Gold circulating in our Colonies, or that was remitted from them to G Britain in time of Peace; which is easily proved as no mines of Silver or Gold are known or occupied in British America, nor either of those articles ever sent to our Colonies from Europe, except in the time of the late War from hence to pay our Troops, & since the restriction of the Trade with the Spanish Colonies, some has been sent from hence also to our Sugar Islands, & great part of that which used to come here from Spain, Portugal, & Italy in payment for the American Fish, Rice, Corn, Flour &c, now goes to the Northern Colonies for a medium of Trade, they have been so distressed by the destructive regulations relative to the Paper Currency, & to the Spanish West-India Trade in particular.

The trade of His Majesty’s Colonies with those of Spain, hath never been censured or objected to from any quarter, except that of the Spanish Government; but to the contrary on our part, it was formerly very wisely countenanced by Government, & even protected by our Men of War, who are now, by an unaccountable fatality, employed to destroy it!

As to the Trade with the French, Dutch & Danish Sugar Colonies, it has been opposed & clogged, at the instance of our Sugar Planters, in a very injudicious manner, (except with respect to preventing the consumption of foreign Sugar & Rum in His Majesty’s Dominions) if one may be allowed to speak the sense of every man who knows the nature of the Trade & the faculties of our Islands, & compares those faculties with our present, & contantly growing consumption of their produce.

The following plan so far coincides with the wishes of our Sugar Planters, as it still more effectualy prevents the consumption of foreign Sugar & Rum in the King’s territories: consequently, they only will have the supplying therof with Sugar; which it is notorious, & not a Sugar Planter will presume to say otherwise, they are scarcely able to do now, & such is the constant growth of the consumption that there is no probability of their ever being able to do more. Therefore it does not concern their particular interest what foreigners raise, or how they dispose of it, while they do not interfere with their market; which, Communibus Annis,328 is at least 50 per Cent better than any other in the World.

As to foreign Molasses, our Sugar Planters are at last convinced of the necessity & utility of that being imported into our Northern Colonies, & have given up the long contest on this point from a sense of their inability to supply the present & growing demand; tho’ not without opposing the duty being lower than threepence per Gallon.329

But then, say they, you nourish the French & other foreign Colonies, & give Being & support to fresh plantations by your supplies, whereby they raise their Sugar the cheaper. What is this to our planters, if it does not hurt their market? However, setting aside it’s not injuring our Sugar Planters, do not these Supplies to foreigners & the adventages made of the Returns, also give support to our Northern plantations, & cause new ones to be formed? Does it not make them more useful & beneficial to the Mother Country? And does not supplying foreign Colonies with what they want, & taking from them what they produce, so far, as this extends, make them the Colonies of G Britain, & this too without the expense of supporting or defending them?

France & Spain fully sensible of the immense advantages we reap from trading with their Colonies in the West-Indies, have done & continue to do all in their power to prevent it, except for particular articles which their Colonies occasionaly want. And we have, ever since the late Peace, done their business for them more effectualy than they could have done it themselves, when, from all considerations & in every point of view, we ought to have done the reverse.

By the Commissions, Instructions & Oath given since the Peace to the Commanders of His Majesty’s Ships stationed in America, & to the Custom-House & other Officers of the Crown residing in our Colonies; and by the Act of Parliament for regulating the Trade & for raising a Revenue in America, which passed in 1763,330 we have, in conjunction with the Efforts of France & Spain, almost ruined the whole of the above most advantageous Trade; whereby G Britain & her Colonies have felt the fatal effects already stated. It is absolutely become impossible for those Officers, without being perjured, to connive at the Spaniards coming to our Colonies, even with Dollars, & to take in return British manufactures only. And it has actually happened at Jamaica, Mobile, Pensacola, Augustine, Savannah & Charlestown, that Spanish Vessels have come since the Peace with 20 to 80,000 Dollars in a Vessel, & demanding articles imported from G Britain in return for their hard money, yet they have been forced away without being suffered to do any business. Surely it is as much for our interest to encourage smuggling of our produce & manufactures into foreign Dominions, as it is our duty & advantage to prevent their smuggling any thing into our territories, except money & rough materials for our manufactures.

By the above Act of Parliament also, a duty, which with a former imposition331 amounts to 27^s/ per hundredweight, is charged on foreign Sugar, & is, as it ought to be, equivalent to a prohibition against its being consumed in our Colonies; but then the whole of these duties, or very nearly, should be drawn back upon re-exportation & giving of Bond to land it in a foreign Country: but by the Act nothing can be drawn back. And by this omission & the interruption of the Trade with the foreign Sugar Colonies by our Cruizers, a Commerce very beneficial to the British Colonies & Mother Country by a re-exportation from our Colonies is put an end to, & it is greatly reduced & injured in all other Channels of conveyance. By this Trade there used annualy to come to Europe in English navigation full half a million of pounds Sterling in Sugar, Indico, Coffee, & other West-India products, which were re-sold in Germany & Italy, & the greatest part of the proceeds thereof was remitted to G Britain.

And by the same Act, tho’ the duty on foreign Molasses was reduced one half, yet it is two thirds too high; for it can be demonstrated that it would yield double the Revenue at one penny per Gallon, it does now at threepence per Gallon, such are the frauds & abuses in the duty, & such is the covering thereof, that the Captains of the Men of War cannot prevent, or the Custom-House Officers detect them.

For remedying the recited inconveniences & mischiefs, & for extending our Trade with foreign Colonies in America beyond whatever it was in its most florishing state, it is humbly proposed that an act may be passed next sessions of Parliament, making & constituting Port Royal in Jamaica, Basse Terre in Granada, Bridgetown in Barbardos, the Bays of Prince Rupert & Roses332 in Dominica, Mobile & Pansacola in West, & Augustine in East Florida, New York City in the Province of N York, Halifax in Nova Scotia, & Portsmouth in New Hampshire, Free Ports to all Nations, for all American produce, for black slaves from Africa, & for all produce and Manufactures legally imported from Europe, under the following regulations & restrictions.

That no foreigner shall introduce any article into any of said places, except it be the produce of Foreign America, upon pain of forfeiting the Vessel & Cargo.

That no produce of the British Colonies, for which Bond is given, when shipped, to be landed in G Britain, under the character of Enumerated goods, except Rice now allowed to go to foreigners,333 shall be shipped or laden on board any foreign Vessel in any of said places, upon penalty of confiscation of Ship & Cargo.

That all foreign Vessels may load any other produce of His Majesty’s Colonies, take on board Black slaves, or any goods & merchandize legally imported into America from Europe; & nothing else upon pain of loss of Ship & Cargo.

That no foreign Vessel shall pay more Port or Custom-House charges than an English Vessel.

That foreigners be allowed to have foreign Factors at any of the above places, if they require the same.

That no produce of Foreign Colonies so imported into any of the above places, be re-exported or re-shipped, but on board of Vessels belonging to British subjects, & navigated according to Law.

That all foreign Sugars & Rum, that may be imported either in foreign or British subjects Vessels, be landed & Stored in the King’s Warehouses only; where they shall remain under the care, locks, & keys of three of the principal Officers of the Customs of the place; & be delivered to the rightful claimer when the brown Sugar has paid 1^s/6^d, & the White Sugar 3^s/ Sterling per hund^d weight, as the Cask may weigh upon delivery out of the Warehouses; & the Rum 2^s/6^d per Gallon. Which Sugars & Rum shall be afterwards re-shipped & bond given by sufficient securities for double the value, that they shall not be re-landed in any part of His Majesty’s Dominions; & that said Bond be not cancelled or made void until a proper certificate be produced, from the place where they were landed, & that within a limited time.

That all Cotton, or any other Wool, that may be imported into said places from any foreign Colony, whether in foreign or English shipping, be stored in like manner in the King’s Warehouses, & be not delivered for any other purpose, but to be reshipped for G Britain; & that sufficient security be given that it be landed in G Britain.

That all other produce of foreign Colonies, besides Sugar, Rum & Wool, that may be imported into said places, be not subject to any duty, imposition, or restriction whatever, in any other part of His Majesty’s Dominions, more than it is now by Act of Parliament. And,

That no produce of any foreign Colony, except Molasses, be imported even in English Vessels, into any other British Colony, until it has been re-shipped at one of the said Free ports; which foreign Molasses, shall not be subject to any higher duty or imposition whatever than one penny per Gallon.

These are all the regulations & restrictions apprehended to be necessary for these, otherwise, free ports. By these, no foreign European produce or manufacture can be introduced into our Colonies, nor can any enumerated American produce for which Bond is given upon Shipping to land it in G Britain be otherwise exported, than at present. Nor can foreign Navigation be employed in any part of the Trade, except in the bringing of the produce of foreign Colonies to the Free ports, & in the taking away that of ours: in return for which we acquire an additional navigation, by our carrying to other markets what they bring, & our sending to the Free ports what they may require. Hereby also, the risque, difficulty & expence of going to, or coming from, Foreign Colonies will be avoided; & complaints such as produced the War, proceeding the last with Spain,334 prevented. The Wool is secured for the manufactories of G Britain; & lastly, the consumption of foreign Sugar & Rum, within His Majesty’s Dominions, will have an effectual stop put to it.

That the Sugar will admit of the above duties, seems certain as they may be then brought to a German or Italian market, & sold at a cheaper rate, than they now are by the French & others: and these duties will not only pay the expences of the Warehouses to be built or hired for the purpose of receiving them, but yeild a considerable Revenue for America. But no Rum will be brought, subject to such a duty, & the inconveniency of having no market to re-ship it to.

Foreigners being indulged in their having their own Factors there, will encrease the business greatly, & be a means of spreading connections & of drawing all money, except the King’s, from New Spain to G Britain thro’ some of these Channels, to be remitted, except what belongs to Us, by Bills of Exchange to Old Spain.

Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, Dominica, Mobile, Pansacola & Augustine, are preferr’d on account of their vicinity to the Colonies of France & Spain; to some of which they may go in open Boats, & thereby elude the vigilance of their Guarda de Costas,335 & such other force & policy as their Gov^ts: may employ to prevent this Trade. Augustine is also very convenient for them to load Rice at, & other products of the South part of the continent of America. New-York is not only a very great provision Colony, but being situated between Connecticut & New Jersey, both of which abound in provisions, except Fish, & have little navigation, it is the most proper Port to make free for this purpose. And Halifax & Portsmouth are made choice of to the Northward, as they are situated in the centre of the pickled & dry Fisheries; & there is such an abundance of Lumber there, that Forests may be had for the consideration of clearing them away: & there are in New Hampshire people sufficient to prepare all kinds of timber &c, which is not the case in Nova Scotia; but exclusive of all other motives for the having Free ports in this Province & the Florida’s, it is necessary to secure by all possible means the colonizing of those extreme Provinces, now weak & exposed, & no measure can be devised which will expedite this with facility, equal to the establishment of these Free ports, whereby strength & entireness will be added to the continent Colonies.

The regulating of these great objects will effectualy serve the mutual interests of G Britain & Her Colonies: will reconcile the almost alienated affections of the distressed Americans, & obviate many of the difficulties to which they have been exposed & labor under, by the injudicious & destructive Laws & regulations of this Country respecting them; and no objection of any weight, on our part, occurs, why these arrangements should not take place & be enforced.

Indeed France & Spain have the strongest reasons, on their part, against a Plan of this kind: it will greatly reduce their Exports to, & Imports from, their Colonies, & of course lessen in proportion their manufactures, navigation, number of Seamen, & Revenue; whereby ours will be increased in an inverse Ratio. And Old Spain will receive no more money from the New, but what comes on the King’s account: for what we shall not draw away by the supplies furnished, will come to England to save the difference of Insurance, which is five per Cent, & to escape the high but fluctuating indulto336 upon importation into Spain; & thus, even upon this part we shall obtain the Freight, Insurance & Commission.

But however stinging & prejudicial the proposed Plan may be to France & Spain, they cannot with any countenance, or colour of pretense from any Treaties subsisting between us & them, object to it: for the Government of France made Louisburgh a Free Port to our people, an Isle of Man337 to our Colonies, the whole of the time it was in their hands; they have occasionaly granted Us & others, passports even to go to their Sugar Islands with provisions & many other Goods, for which supplies payment was authorised to be made in the Islands produce; & they now give all manner of encouragement to our Colonies to trade with them at Micquilon & St. Pierre, tho’ ceded to them for no other purposes than securing & drying their fishery: they are become free Ports to our people; & notwithstanding they disavow the authorizing of this Trade, they cherish it with the tenderest care, knowing that their Newfoundland fishery, with all its other encouragements, could scarcely exist, much less florish without it. And as to Spain, the [markets of?] Havanah, St. Augustine, Porto Rico, Hispaniola, & Cathagena were occasionaly before & during the late War, supplied by their Courts authority with Flour &c from our Colonies: and soon after the late War commenced with France, & long before Spain entered into it, she made Monti Christi a Free port, with a view to the serving of France, particularly the Colony of St. Domingo; for Monti Christi had no produce, nor any demand for Ours.

But supposing that France & Spain had never acted thus, as they always have when it suited their conveniency, & refused it when and whereever it did not, it is not presumption to say, that in making of these Ports free ones, we do not act contrary to any stipulation with either Court; for if we were obliged to prevent our people from going to their Colonies to Trade with them, yet such restriction lays us under no injunction to prohibit their people from coming to Trade with us: that is their business; & it were to be wished they would persue the like method as now proposed of preventing them, or even by opening all their Ports as free to us, except Micquilon & St. Pierre.

Neither France or Spain have a fact, nor an argument to bring against this Plan, that does not militate for it on our part, or that deserves to have any other effect than to stimulate us to execute it: which combined with the necessity & advantages of it to Us, are reasons of such Cogency for its adoption & execution, that it cannot but be hoped it will succeed.

1 Printed in a pamphlet Will of Thomas Boylston, late of London, without place or date of publication, in the Boston Athenæum (B 455).

2 Thomas C. Amory, The Life of Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Baronet (Boston, 1886), 96–110, gives an account of the Coffin schools and the text of a will establishing them that was subsequently revoked.

3 Charles H. Pope and Katharine Peabody Loring, Loring Genealogy (1917); the family’s corrected copy has been used for these data. Another branch of the Hingham family, the Joshua Lorings (for whom see the Dictionary of American Biography), were officers in the Royal Navy and loyalists.

4 So called because the earliest settler nearby, a kinsman of the Colonel Pride of Pride’s Purge, kept a yoke of oxen to pull traveling wagons out of a swampy place on the road. The post office there was still kept by an Elisha Pride at the turn of this century.

5 The small square house with mansard roof, which at the turn of the century belonged to Professor Charles Loring Jackson of Harvard, and now (1952) to a Jackson family trust.

6 Theophilus Parsons, Memoir of C. G. Loring in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xi (1869–1870), 282. Miss Katharine Loring told me the story that the farmer who sold the land to Mr. Paine was so conscience-stricken by the price that he asked and received, that he threw in a yoke of white oxen after the bargain was concluded.

7 Letter of 25 March 1952, and letter of Charles A. Read, 12 February 1952, who adds, “Gus had no fear during the storm and kept his head at all times.” But he had not yet acquired his later culinary skill, and they had nothing to eat out and home except baked beans, bread and strawberry jam.

8 Lest yachting purists object that North Haven dinghys were only 14 feet long, I insist that mine, the Leda, was by exception a 16-footer, having been especially built for a grandson of Bishop Doane.

9 An amusing episode was that of the Frick estate. Henry Frick, the Pittsburgh steel tycoon, wanted shore-front at Beverly, on which to build a palace. No shore land was then (c. 1904) for sale. A local realtor sold him a lot without waterfront, cut off from Plum Cove beach by the Loring property, on the ground that the Lorings were an impoverished old family who would be only too glad to sell out. The Lorings courteously offered Mr. Frick the privilege of a bathing house on their beach and the right to run a pipe down for salt water; but that was not what Mr. Frick wanted. The realtor then suggested that, since Bartletts Island was the apple of Mr. Loring’s eye, Mr. Frick authorize him to buy up the rest of the island, after which they could make a deal for the Plum Cove beach. Mr. Frick did then buy up the rest of Bartletts, greatly to the delight of the natives; but when it came to making a deal, Mr. Loring laughed and said he’d sell his part of Bartletts to Mr. Frick, but not a foot of the beach at Pride’s.

10 R. E. Bowen to S. E. M., Galveston, 20 February 1952.

11 Printed in The New England Quarterly, xxvii (1954), 53–74.

12 “Brian Harrison, Mariner, and Elizabeth Harris, widow of William Harris, Mariner, late of St. Marys, White Chapel, 18 Feb. 1620.” Chester’s Marriage Registers, edit. Joseph Foster.

13 “3 Dec. 1626. Peter Whare and Mary Bourne.” Marriage Reg. of St. John’s, Wapping.

14 “22 July 1628. Peter Whare.” Burial Reg. of St. John’s, Wapping.

15 “22 Sept. 1630. Mary, wife of Peter Whare.” Burial Reg. of St. John’s, Wapping.

16 “6 Dec. 1618, Ruth, dau. of Robert Bourne and Mary.” Baptismal Reg. of St. John’s.

17 “14 Nov. 1620, John, son of Robert Bourne & Mary.” Wapping.

18 There are no Trinity House records prior to 1660, and this date is taken from a reference in the State Papers.

19 Except that Parnell Gray married William Parker, a merchant in London: “5 Aug. 1622, William Parker of St. Peter’s, Cornhill, London, and Parnell Gray of this hamlet, singlewoman (Mar. Reg. of St. John’s, Waffing).” He died before 1626, and she married, secondly, I. Nowell, merchant, a prominent settler in Massachusetts, who went out in Governor Winthrop’s fleet in 1630, and settled at Charlestown.

20 His name appears in a list of the Younger Brethren of Trinity House, dated 1628, which is amongst the State Papers in the Public Record Office. The family of Bence were prominent in the affairs of Aldeborough for several generations.

21 Squire was a family name and had formerly been spelt Squeir.

22 Except to add that his second daughter, Judith, baptized at Wapping 14 September 1624, married Stephen Winthrop (born March, 1619), son of Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts.

23 “24 June 1635, Thomas Coytmore and Martha Rainborowe, both of this hamlet.” Mar. Reg. of St. John’s, Wapping.

24 “A daughter, Elizabeth, baptised 3 Feb. 1622, was buried at Wapping on 21 Sept. 1625”.

25 Limehouse at this time being a part of the extensive Parish of Stepney.

26 Although the Mayflower was said to have been the ship of Plymouth Pilgrims, eight years before. (Winthrop’s Journal), J. K. Hosmer, 1908.

27 The Stepney Parish Registers contain some dozens of entries concerning the Graves family, nearly all of whom are described as Shipwrights or Mariners.

28 William Adams (d. 1620), the first European to land in Japan (1600), records that at the age of twelve he began his seafaring life, being apprenticed to Nicholas Diggins, of Limehouse, with whom he remained for twelve years.

29 The parish Register of St. Nicholas, Deptford, records that he commanded a ship against the Spanish Armada in 1588, and was a brother of Sir John Hawkins.

30 The length of both is given as 116 feet, but the beam of the Speaker 34–5 as against 35 feet for the Fairfax. Their tonnage is shown as 727 and 745 respectively. Their armament varied from time to time from 50 to 62 guns.

31 Assistance had been built with the Fairfax, at Deptford; her dimensions were 102 feet by 31 feet, and tonnage 521. When first commissioned she carried 36 guns, and had a crew of 150. Her armament subsequently varied between 40 and 50 guns. She long survived and was rebuilt in 1699.

32 Some of the records and regalia were returned to Scotland a few years later, others were lost at sea after the Restoration.

33 It would appear that Penn was in command of the Triumph in Bourne’s squadron and serving under him in the engagement of the 19th, as the order of the Council of State of the same day was received by Blake, then lying in the Downs, who, on the 21st sent Penn his warrant to “wear a flag on the foretop of the ship Triumph under your charge.”

34 This refers to Captain William Badiley, of whom further mention will be made. His brother, Captain Richard Badiley, was then in command of a squadron in the Mediterranean.

35 In the original recommendation from the Admiralty Committee the space for the first of the three names was left blank, for the Council of State to fill in. Although Willoughby was named, he had, in fact, already been appointed (10 October. Cal. State Papers Dom. 1652).

36 A sailing barge.

37 The letter does not mention that Bartholomew Bourne, later referred to, who was lieutenant in the Assistance, had been killed in the same action.

38 Raveled=Tangled, confused or involved; having no basis or foundation.

39 Rude=superficial.

40 In one of the lists of ships and their commanders, in The First Dutch War (Navy Record Society), he is incorrectly entered as William Graves, but elsewhere as Thomas, or just Captain Graves. In the index he appears as William, query Thomas.

41 Colchester and Romford are on the main road from Harwich to London; the main road to the eastern counties crossed the River Lea at Bow Bridge.

42 Rolling Ground=at the entrance to Harwich Harbor, formerly much used as an anchorage.

43 Flute=A type of vessel variously described as a storeship, naval transport, or partially armed vessel; probably the kind frequently used as privateers. A buss was a two- or three-masted vessel of varying size, used especially in the Dutch herring fishery.

44 Referred to as a cousin, in the will of his brother, John Bourne.

45 A protection against impressment for service in the state’s ships.

46 Possibly the site of the present New Crane Wharf, Wapping.

47 Hoseley Bay—Hollesley Bay, between Woodbridge Haven and Orfordness; it was much used as a man-of-war anchorage for upwards of a hundred years, and long afterwards by colliers sheltering from northerly winds.

48 In May, 1660, George Fox, a founder of the Society of Friends, visited Harwich and there was so much disturbance caused by his preaching that the mayor and justice committed him and his local supporter, Robert Grassingham, to prison. They were taken to London and detained as prisoners until after the House rose at the end of August.

49 Alexander Bence, sometime M.P. for Aldeborough, a prominent merchant and a supporter of the Parliamentary cause. He was afterwards Master of the Trinity House, in 1659–1660, and continued his membership of the House after the Restoration, and until his death in 1662.

50 Piscataqua, near Portsmouth Harbor, New Hampshire.

51 Bermuda.

52 There is a list of the Elder and Young Brethren of the Trinity House in the year 1628 amongst the State Papers in the Public Record Office.

53 Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, and copied into the Dictionary of American Biography.

54 Herbert Pelham went to New England in 1635, and later had a plantation near Sudbury, Mass. In October, 1643, he was chosen Treasurer of Harvard College, but later returned to England, where he died in July, 1673.

55 “Ordinary”—formerly a meal regularly provided at a fixed price in a tavern or eating-house; also applied to a tavern where meals were provided at a fixed price, or to a dining room in such a building. In Virginia, in the eighteenth century, it referred to a tavern or inn of any kind.

56 The first mention of the Pewter Platter is in the year 1531.

57 He was, however, in Grimsby Roads, in the Assistance on 18 June, and requesting the services of a pilot to take him up to Hull for provisions. (First Order Book of the Trinity House, Hull. Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1942.)

58 Renamed after the Restoration the Royal James, and burned by the Dutch in 1667 during the Second Dutch War.

59 In a printed list of inscriptions on the tombs in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground compiled for the Report of the Committee to the Court of Common Council in 1866. However, in the Burial Ground—heavily bombed in the Second Great War—no monument any longer marks the burial place of the Bourne family.

60 Epsom, Co. Surrey.

61 Chester’s London Marriage Licences.

62 In December, 1662, his name was mentioned (as a safe man) in connection with a plot to kill the King.

63 E.g., W. P. Trent, American Literature (New York, 1903).

64 G. M. Trevelyan, Illustrated. English Social History, 11 (1950); T. J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia (Charlottesville, 1910); S. E. Morison, The Puritan Pronaos (New York, 1936).

65 Diary, III. 31.

66 See J. S. Bassett, The Writings of Colonel William Byrd (New York, 1901). R. C. Beatty, William Byrd of Westover (Boston, 1932). The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1709–1712), edited by L. B. Wright and Marion Tinling (Richmond, 1941). Another Secret Diary (1739–1741), edited by Woodfin and Tinling (Richmond, 1942). Since this paper was given Dr. Wright and Miss Tinling have edited Byrd’s The London Diary (1717–1721) and Other Writings (New York, 1958). Letters of William Byrd, II, in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, October, 1901–January, 1902.

Diary of Samuel Sewall, three volumes, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society—Fifth Series, v, vi, and vii. Sewall’s Letter-Book, ibid., Sixth Series, I and II. See also J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University (Cambridge, 1881), II. 345–364.

See also, for both Byrd and Sewall, articles in the Dictionary of American Biography.

67 T. J. Wertenbaker, Virginia under the Stuarts (Princeton, 1914), 73. Livy, I. 54 (The Tarquins and Gabii); Herodotus, v. 92 (Thrasybulus to Periander). Zoltán Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Cambridge, 1952), 178.

68 Wertenbaker, Torch-Bearer of the Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1940), 40, 60, 180, etc. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, passim.

69 Martha W. Hiden, “Latin in Colonial Virginia,” The Classical Weekly, XXII (1928), no. 6, 41–45.

70 Edited by L. B. Wright (Chapel Hill, 1947). See pages 54, 98, 159, 180, 189, 229, 271, 292, 310.

71 Howard M. Jones, “The Literature of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,” Memoirs of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1946. See also L. B. Wright, “The Classical Tradition in Colonial Virginia,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xxxiii (1939), 85–97.

72 Of Plymouth Plantation 1620–1647, edited by S. E. Morison (New York, 1952). See especially pages 18, 23, 61 (Seneca, Epistle 53), 110, 120, 144, 206, 325.

73 Byrd, Secret Diary, 171; ibid., 414, 409. Sewall, Diary, II. 42 and 55.

74 Juvenal, Satires, vi. 165.

75 Sewall, Diary, II. 37; III. 379. See also, for a rebuke to an overindulgent minister, ibid., II. 267 (6 Nov. 1709).

76 Saltus Saliaris, named from the Salii, the leaping priests of Mars.

77 Horace, Epistles, I. 1, 74. For these items, see Diary, II. 305; Letter-Book, I. 323; I. 110; I. 150.

78 Diary, I. 21; I. 12; I. 25, etc.

79 Lètter-Book II. 104 (1 Feb. 1720).

80 Metamorphoses, iv. 428.

81 Diary, II. 96. “The last to leave his post in the heavens,” Metamorphoses, II. 115.

82 Letter-Book, I. 17, written at Newbury, then his home, quoting the beginning of Ovid’s Tristia. (This work is translated by A. L. Wheeler, in the Loeb Classical Library.)

83 Letter-Book, I. 372. Metamorphoses, xv. 158–159 (translated by F. J. Miller, in the Loeb Classical Library).

84 Tristia, II. 279–280.

85 Letter-Book, II. 35 (4 Oct. 1714); Horace, Odes, I. 4, 13. For the same phrase, see ibid., II. 86–87 (2 Jan.1718).

86 Letter-Book, I. 263; Terence, Andria, III. 3, 23.

87 Diary, II. 242 (15 Nov. 1708); Vergil, Aeneid, III. 56.

88 Ibid., II. 191 (4 July 1707); Vergil, Eclogues, III. 111.

89 Diary, II. 136 (24 Aug. 1705). Partially reminiscent of Horace, Ars Poetica, 394 and the building of Thebes by Amphion. Solymae is Jerusalem. The Latin word is usually treated as a neuter plural with singular meaning.

90 Diary, I. 238. Did S. mean Chapter IV, verses 5, 6, and 7?

91 See N. H. Chamberlain, Samuel Sewall and the World he lived in (Boston, 1897), 188. Diary, II. 58 (II June 1702).

92 Free speech was evidently tolerated; for Gee became college librarian in 1721; and Sewall later offered prayer at his funeral. Diary, III. 258. See C. K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, vi. 176.

93 Letter-Book, I. 90 (26 Oct. 1688).

94 Ibid., I. 163. The correct form for a Master’s thesis.

95 Diary, I. 450, 475 (27 Mar. 1697 and 16 Mar. 1698). The full title was Phaenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica ad Aspectum Novi Orbis Configurata, or, Some Few Lines Towards a Description of the New Heaven as it makes to Those Who Stand upon the New Earth.

96 Letter-Book, I. 193 (3 Mar. 1698). This refers to the famous case of Caecilianus, who was made Bishop of Carthage in opposition to the Donatists. He was backed by the Synod of Arles, a.d. 314.

97 Letter-Book, I. 196–199 (12 April 1698).

98 Diary, II. 19 (10 July 1700). The authorities were adamant: Mather must give up either his Boston pulpit or his college presidency.

99 W. K. Boyd, William Byrd’s Histories of the Dividing Line (Raleigh, N. C., 1929). The third version, finished in 1738, was first published at Petersburg, Virginia, in 1841. Incidentally, it might be noted that the final version contains almost entirely classical allusions; there are a few exceptions, such as the horse of Hudibras (p. 119), and the Paradise of Mahomet (p. 143).

100 From Lucian (a special favorite of Byrd’s), On The Syrian Goddess, 8. The river Adonis, flowing from Libanus, at Byblos turns by sympathetic magic a red color in pity for the wounding and death of Adonis, although an old inhabitant told Lucian that it was soil blown by the wind at a certain season. This river is also mentioned by Strabo, 755. It may be the modern river Nahr-Ibrahim.

101 For the location of these passages in the Dividing Line, see J. S. Bassett, op. cit., 47, 60, 49, 43, 53, 31, 67, 96, 106, 134, 120, 130, 161, 160, 247, 37, 334, 177, 207, 219, 183, 230, 254, etc.

102 Secret Diary, 10 Nov. 1709.

103 Book 41, ch. 21.

104 Other works of Sewall include The Selling of Joseph (against the slave trade), and certain brief communications dealing with Indian problems, paper money, doctrinal matters, and support of political independence for Massachusetts. Byrd maintained an extensive correspondence with the British Government authorities and, in addition to his reports on his explorations, wrote memoranda on the natural history of Virginia which furnished material of interest to possible settlers.

105 From the Satyricon, III. (Page 229, Loeb Classical Library, translated by M. Heseltine.)

106 See H. Rackham, Pliny the Elder, Natural History, x. 43 (III. 345, Loeb Classical Library). For all these passages from Byrd’s notebooks, see Another Secret Diary, Part II. 191–475. Here we find allusions to Homer, Lucian, Herodian, Sallust, Apollonius, Athenaeus, and many others, offhand as usual and not documented. It is impossible in most cases to determine the time and place of the particular letter or “character.”

107 Another Secret Diary, 332. (The δαιμών of Socrates).

108 Epigrams, I. 16.

109 Another Secret Diary, 386, translated by Professor W. H. Harris, of the University of Richmond.

110 To Zenobia, Another Secret Diary, 261, 283.

111 Letter-Book, I. 293 (24 Feb. 1704).

112 Diary, II. 311 (16 May 1711).

113 Diary, II. 369 (20 Dec. 1712). For Larnell’s pathetic story, see C. K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, vi.

114 Letter-Book, I. 245 (18 Oct. 1700).

115 Letter-Book, II. 178.

116 For example, E. Eggleston, The Beginners of a Nation (1896); Edward Arber, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1606–1623 A.D., as told by Themselves, Their Friends, and Their Enemies (London, 1897); H. M. and M. Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims (Boston, 1905); J. A. Goodwin, The Pilgrim Republic (1920); C. E. Banks, The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers (1930).

117 The Dexters, op. cit., p. 236, n. 1, knew of its existence but made no use of it. Rev. John Raine, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Blyth (Westminster, 1860), translated the record of the April session of 1621 for inclusion in his book, 125–126. His translation is not accurate at all points (there is even a mistake in the date) and some of his explanatory notes are misleading.

118 To those whose interest in the Scrooby country is genealogical it will be well to say at once that not one of the family names on the passenger lists of the Mayflower, Fortune, Anne and Little James is to be found in the first volume (1621–1630) of the court roll of Scrooby manor, where an even hundred different names are recorded. Tracing the ancestry of the Pilgrim Fathers has always been beset with difficulties. These have been attributed to the circumstance that most of the Pilgrims were “plain farmers,” and came from “the cottages, not from the manor houses of England.” Scholars have long been of the opinion that very few of the early settlers of Plymouth Colony came from the Scrooby area, and the complete absence of Pilgrim names from the rolls of the manor court supports this view. “A considerable examination of parish records in the neighborhood of Scrooby has proved singularly barren of results,” Dexter, op. cit., 379.

119 “Genesis of the Massachusetts Town,” 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vii. 250.

120 A History of the United States, I. 426.

121 C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, I. 256.

122 Dictionary of American Biography, art. by R. G. Usher.

123 Dexter, op. cit., 216–218. The medieval documentation on Scrooby is not very extensive, despite the length of the account in Dexter. For example, there is no extent of the manor, of any period. The Dexters do seem to have missed a reference to Scrooby in the Hundred Rolls, Rot. Hund., II. 26.

124 LeNeve, The Lives and Character . . . of all the Protestant Bishops of the Church of England since the Reformation (London, 1720), Pt. II, 61.

125 Dexter, op. cit., 231, n. I, where the lease is quoted in full.

126 Cal. State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610, 33.

127 E.g. Sheppard, Court Keeper’s Guide, chap. 7, par. 3. Cited by E. P. Cheyney, A History of England, I. 397.

128 Statutes at Large, II. 339–340. James 1 c. 5.

129 S. and B. Webb, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporation Act, I (The Manor and the Borough), 124.

130 Channing, 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, vii. 262.

131 The record for 1621–1630 covers twenty-nine sheets of paper, 18 x 12, written on both sides. The book has no cover and the first page is faded and torn. Seven other paper books are for 1659–1676, 1676–1715, 1742–1773, 1774–1817, 1818–1850, 1851–1892, and 1892–1927, respectively.

Ranskill was a village of about 1, 300 acres, whose tenants did suit of court at Scrooby, nearby.

132 The names of William Hyde and William Bradley have been crossed out.

133 A line is drawn through this name.

134 A line is drawn through this name.

135 To save space the names of the constable, chief pledges, ale-tasters and jurors are omitted; also, the essoins of free tenants, residents, and customary tenants. The presentments of the jurors follow.

136 Omissions as above.

137 There were but two items of interest at this view.

138 It is not usual for a jury to be impaneled at a manor court. Their presentments were entered upon the roll in English.

139 All entries are omitted except the presentments of the jury.

140 Omissions as above.

141 Omissions as above.

142 “and dikes” is crossed out.

143 See the bibliography in S. and B. Webb, op. cit., i. 26, n. 1.

144 H. B. Simpson, “The Office of Constable,” Eng. Hist. Rev., x. 627.

145 For a list of the pertinent statutes see W. S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, IV. 125, n. 1.

146 Ibid., IV. 125 and n. 5. Cheyney quotes a form of oath that had become current c. 1600. This lists the constable’s duties quite fully. Op. cit., II. 404. The General Court of the Mass. Bay Colony defined the duties of a constable in 1634 and still more fully in 1658, the latter statement extending to 26 descriptive clauses.

147 For an interesting example of a constable’s account for the years 1635–1649, in the town of Stathern, Leicestershire, see Archaeological Journal, lxix. 125 ff.

148 Robert Lowe, chosen in April, 1622.

149 Hist. MSS. Com., Various Collections, i. 89.

150 Cited by Webb, op. cit., 117, n. 3.

151 William Lambard, The Duties of Constables, Borsholders, Tithingmen, and such other towne and lay Ministers of the Peace. Cited by Cheyney, op. cit., ii. 398.

152 Webb, op. cit.

153 Some manor courts continued to fix prices well into Tudor times. E.g., Nettleton, Lincolnshire, 1563. Br. Mus. Add. Ch. 15022.

154 Quarter Sessions Records (in MS.), ii. 30–32. The Statute directs that ale and beer shall be sold at “such prices and rates as shall be thought convenient and sufficient by discretion of the justices of the peace within every shire where such beer-brewer and ale-brewer shall dwell,” except in City borough or town corporate. Statutes at Large, i. 733–734.

155 Derbyshire Arch. and, Natural Hist. Soc., xx. 112.

156 At Stevenage, Hertfordshire, P. R. O. Ecc. Com. 211/46; and at Whitchurch, Hampshire, Br. Mus. Add. Ch. 44583.

157 W. O. Ault, “Some Early Village By-Laws,” Eng. Hist. Rev., xlv. 208–231.

158 Webb, op. cit., 77–78.

159 Manor Court of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. Fenland Notes and Queries, VIII. 635.

160 Manor Court of Brightwaltham, Berkshire, P. R. O. Court Rolls, 153/73, m. 20.

161 Statutes at Large, II. 120.

162 P. R. O., Court Rolls of the Ecc. Com., 62/2, m. 12, 30, and 39d.

163 34 and 35 Henry VIII, c. 3, 7 Edw. VI, c. 7; 43 Eliz. c. 14.

164 Edingley, Nottinghamshire, P. R. O. Ct. Rolls, Ecc. Com., 62/2, m. 39d.; Scotter, Lincolnshire, Archaeologia, XLVI. 384.

165 Archaeologia, loc. cit.; Fenland Notes and Queries, viii. 355–356.

166 Rolls of Cressingham, 85.

167 Cf. P. Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 169–170.

168 At Salem a stint was established in 1680. A. B. Maclear, op. cit., 92. For a good example of an English stint see the roll of the manor court of Winterbourn Stoke (1574). Wilts. Agric. and Natural Hist. Soc., xxxiv. 211. A complete set of bylaws for the regulation of pasture rights may be found in the court roll of Tackley (1631). Oxf. Arch. Soc., Report for 1911, 66–67.

169 Scotter, 1578. Archaeologia, xlvi. 384.

170 Ealing, Middlesex Co. P.R. 0. Court Rolls, Ecc. Com., 205/ 10, m. 1.

171 John Harland, Manchester Court Leet Records, Chatham Society, lxiii. viii.

172 Plymouth Colony Records, XI. 15, 27.

173 W. S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, VII. 300.

174 Holdsworth, op. cit., 298.

175 See the account of Winthrop by Professor S. E. Morison in Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iv, 1690–1700 (Cambridge, 1933), 535–549.

176 His son, John Still Winthrop, joined him in London after graduating from Yale in 1737

177 Sloane Mss. 4062, fol. 30 (British Museum, London). The list is inscribed at the bottom, “The Honourable Sr Hans Sloane Baronet from Mr. Winthrop.” As this document is not dated, the chronological reconstruction above is by the author.

178 The first word of this line is illegible. “Tantiusques” as used here, as well as in the fifth item of this list (above) and elsewhere in this account, refers to the site of the lead mine presented by the Massachusetts General Court to John Winthrop, Jr., in 1644. It was also the early name of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, within the present bounds of which the Winthrop family mine was located—in the southern part, about a mile from the Connecticut boundary. See George H. Haynes, “The Tale of Tantiusques’: An Early Mining Venture In Massachusetts.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s. xvi. 471–497 (Oct., 1901).

179 Part of first word is illegible.

180 Full title: A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbadoes, Nieves, St. Christopher’s and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Last (2 vols., London, 1707, 1725).

181 Sloane Mss. 4062, fol. 29. The letter bears neither place nor date, save “. . . sday Night.” The portions printed in square brackets are reconstructions, as the manuscript is much defaced.

182 Journal Book, xiv. 40–41. This and other manuscripts belonging to the Royal Society in the Society’s Library in Burlington House, London, are quoted with the permission of the President and Council of the Royal Society. The Journal-Book did not record, as it usually did, the name of Winthrop’s host. If, as I suspect, it was Sir Hans Sloane, the latter had already been Secretary of the Society for several years before he retired in 1712, was almost perennially a member of the Council from about 1700, and was soon to succeed Sir Isaac Newton as President of the Society.

183 Journal-Book, xiv. 40.

184 Ibid., xiv. 40–41.

185 Ibid., xv. 355. The minutes merely state “Dr. Stuart.” It might have been either Dr. Charles or Dr. Alexander Stuart, as both were Fellows of the Society at the time. I assume that it was Dr. Alexander because a few weeks later he signed the certificate recommending Winthrop for membership.

186 For a survey of the rules governing membership in the Royal Society, see my “Colonial Fellows of The Royal Society of London, 1661–1788,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, VIII, No. 2, 178–189 ff.

187 This seems most unlikely, and I have found no other evidence to support the contention. Perhaps Winthrop spoke of his grandfather’s role in the issuing of the Connecticut Charter of 1662 and the Royal Society writers became confused.

188 The communications and contributions of John Winthrop, Jr., Governor of Connecticut, to the Royal Society are in Mass. Hist. Society, Proceedings, 1st Ser., xvi. 211–251; Thomas Birch, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (5 vols., London, 1744), ii. 418–421, 473–474; and Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London . . . (4 vols., London, 1756–1757), i. 67 ff.

189 Certificates, 1731–1750, fol. 54 (Mss. in Royal Society Library).

190 Journal-Book, xv. 410, 413.

191 Sloane Mss. 1968, fol. 58.

192 Philosophical Transactions, XL (London, 1741), “Dedication” (to John Winthrop).

193 Journal-Book, xv. 459–487. The original copy of the catalogue appears to have been lost. Cf. the Original Minutes of the Royal Society, x. 147–148, and the “fair Copy” made by the Secretaries for general reference, i.e., the reference cited at the beginning of this note. The “most interesting portions” of this list was copied by the Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society for the Hon. Edward Everett at the instance of Robert Winthrop of Boston and published in The American Journal of Science and Arts, xlvii, No. 2, 282–290 (New Haven, 1844). Actually, however, the list published omits more than two hundred of the items and there are errors in the transcriptions of Nos. 41, 46, 109, 143, 225, and 280.

194 Nos. 107–113 may have been mica schist, like the famous scythestones and whetstones of Pike, N. H., which are quartz mica schist.

195 “Granates” here and elsewhere (Nos. 231–232) almost certainly mean “garnets.”

196 “Alumen plumosum” is false asbestos. See Johann Samuel Schröter, Real- und Verbal-Lexikon Lithologisches . . . (8 vols. Berlin and Frankfurt-A.M., 1772–1788), i. 36; ii. 136 ff.

197 Nos. 160–164 refer to biotite (mica).

198 Probably not talcs in every case.

199 Most of these “spars” are probably feldspar.

200 Ludus Helmontii, or “Helmont’s Amusement,” the stone of extraordinary qualities which intrigued Jan van Helmont. See Élie Bertrand, Dictionnaire Universel des Fossiles . . . (2 vols. La Haye, 1763), i. 284, for a succinct account of its medical virtues.

201 What is this American bezoar? Traditionally, bezoars were found in animals or birds, the best from mountain goats. Powdered, they were considered an antidote for poisons and once were considered a specific for the plague. See Frank Dawson Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (London, 1938), 104–112.

202 From southern New Hampshire? Cf. Theodore Ralph Meyers, New Hampshire Minerals and Mines . . . (Concord, N. H., 1941), 6–9.

203 Part of these must have been graphite.

204 According to the minutes, Winthrop’s part in the meetings of the Society were as follows: On 20 June 1734 he remarked that rattlesnakes were more venomous in some seasons than in others and that the horns of deer of the same species are not always identical in form; on 10 November 1737 he signed a certificate recommending Captain William Walker as Fellow; on 2 November 1738 he brought one Mr. Robinson as a guest to the meeting of the Society; and on 7 January 1741/42 he showed the Society the skin of a ground squirrel, “an Ossification of the Aspera Arteris of a Duck,” and a lump of black ore from Tantiusques which, he contended, proved that New England had ore richer in silver than that of Potosi!—Journal-Book, xv. 449–450; xvii. 296; xviii. 312; Certificates, 1731–1750, fol. 139.

205 Journal-Book, xv. 454 n.

206 Council Minutes, iii. 167–168. The Bond was required of all Fellows who resided in London as a guarantee of payment of “weekly Contributions” levied for support of the Society’s experiments and other activities. See my “Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 1661–1788,” op. cit., 183–189.

207 Philosophical Transactions, xl, for the years 1737, 1738 (London, 1741), “Dedication,” unpaged.

208 The boxes were received by the Society on 10 February 1669/70. They contained something more than fifty specimens which were listed in detail in the Journal-Book, IV. 112–117. This list includes items almost entirely duplicated in the larger collection of 1734—the dwarf oaks and their acorns, the Indian Wampum, the walnuts and hazelnuts, the bayberry wax, the shellfishes, and the ores. Many of these items are also listed in the official catalogue of the Royal Society’s museum published in 1681. See Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis, Or A Catalogue & Description & the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham Colledge . . . (London, 1681), passim.

209 Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London . . . (4 vols. London, 1756–1757), i. 67 ff. Governor Winthrop’s largest single gift was that of 1669 mentioned above.

210 Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis, 205–206, 208, 346. Governor Winthrop was listed among the contributors to the Society at the end of the volume (unpaged).

211 C. R. Weld, A History of the Royal Society . . . (2 vols. London, 1848), ii. 125.

212 Charles Hatchett, “An Analysis of a mineral Substance from North America, Containing a Metal hitherto unknown,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1802, xcii. pt. 1, 49.

213 Loc. cit., 290 n.

214 Information supplied to the author by Miss J. M. Sweet, Department of Mineralogy, British Museum (Natural History), London, England. Letter of 18 March 1957. Used with permission of Miss Sweet.

215 F. S. M. Crofut, Guide to the History of the Historic Sites of Connecticut (2 vols. New Haven, 1937), ii. 721–738, 950.

216 I am much indebted to my friend and colleague, Professor George W. White, Head of the Department of Geology at the University of Illinois and a close student of the history of early American geology, for this and many other observations regarding Winthrop’s lists.

217 See Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences, 29, 98–102. Nehemiah Grew referred to eagle-stones as having been “named from a vulgar opinion.” Musaeum Regalis Societatis, 297.

218 By 1959 Mrs. Howland had completed her promised gift of $100,000 to the Society. As expenses of restoration and furnishing were met from current income and from the gifts of members and friends, the $100,000 is held as a fund (principal and income unrestricted), the income of which meets the normal operating costs of the house.

219 For an annotated biographical sketch of the merchant and an extensive analysis of his Will, see William and Mary Quarterly, third series, vii (1950), 568–587.

220 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from the text of the Will that follows.

221 Records of the First Church of Boston (copy in Massachusetts Historical Society), 12, 14.

222 N. B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston, 1853–1854), iii. 278.

223 Based on a comparison of the text in the tenth Report and the handwritten copy in the first volume of the Suffolk County Probate Records (1892).

224 Keayne had become a member of the Honourable Artillery Company of London in 1623, and had been a founder and the first captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. G. Goold Walker, The Honourable Artillery Company [of London] (London, 1926), 42–43; Oliver A. Roberts, History of the . . . Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts (Boston, 1895–1901), i. 1–21.

225 The complicated history of the Keayne family estate up to the death of the merchant’s granddaughter in 1704 has been sketched by Edmund S. Morgan in “A Boston Heiress and Her Husbands: A True Story,” these Publications, xxxiv. 499–513.

226 For a description of this particular property and an account of its subsequent history, see Mellen Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea (Boston, 1908), chaps, xix-xxi.

227 The proper spelling of seventeenth-century names is often a puzzle as there was little consistency in usage. Hannah, Anna, and Anne were used almost interchangeably. Since Keayne himself was more or less consistent in calling his wife Anne and his granddaughter Hannah (though the latter herself apparently preferred Anna) I shall follow his preference.

228 The provisions that follow led to the construction of Boston’s first town house; the conduit project was less successful. See Josiah H. Benton, The Story of the Old Boston Town House 1658–1711 (Boston, 1908).

229 I.e., the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

230 The early results of Keayne’s benefaction to Harvard may be conveniently traced in the Harvard College Records (these Publications, xv, xvi). The income from the bequest is still being paid towards beneficiary aid to “the godliest and most hopefulest of the poorer sort of scholars.” See, Official Register of Harvard University, liii, no. 18 (September, 1956), 8.

231 Benjamin Keayne married Sarah, daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley. It soon developed that she was given to certain excessive enthusiasms. She was banished from the First Church on 24 October 1647, not only for “irregular prophecying,” but also for “falling into odious, lewd, and scandalous unclean behavior with one Nicholas Hart, an excommunicated person of Taunton.” The Records of the First Church of Boston (These Publications, xxxix), 49. For other details, see Suffolk Deeds (Boston, 1880–1906), i. 83, 84.

232 Keayne’s concern about his granddaughter’s romantic disposition and his repeated insistence that her judgment be checked by wiser heads were only too well taken. For the fantastic story of her marriages, see Morgan, “A Boston Heiress,” these Publications, xxxiv. 499–513.

233 I.e., wampum.

234 Keayne’s repeated insistence that he was not giving away more than he comfortably could was in vain. He substantially overestimated his estate. It was officially appraised at his death in 1656 at £2569 19s. 3d., a sum insufficient to cover his bequests. Suffolk County Probate Records, III. 160–173; Morgan, “A Boston Heiress,” 503–504.

235 Printed in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, xcii (1956), 265–278.

236 This paper, supplemented by the bibliography that follows it, was preprinted by the Society in 1959 and was distributed as the third of the Studies in the History of Calligraphy of the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, and the Newberry Library, Chicago. Although this volume bears the imprint of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts on the title page, copies were available only from the two libraries, which bore the expense of the preprinting.

237 E. M. Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Paleography (Oxford, 1912), 555. He is here discussing the English secretary especially. Even the informal later medieval northern scripts tended to be solid, angular and heavy.

238 R. Nash, ed., An Account of Calligraphy & Printing in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1940), 9. In the Flemish text it is called loopende.

239 For an understanding of the cancellaresca in all phases of its Italian sixteenth-century development, the well-illustrated studies by James Wardrop are essential: see Signature, no. 12, 1939 (Arrighi); new series nos. 2, 1946 (P. Sallando and G. Pagliarlo);, 1948 (Ruano and Cresci); 8, 1949 (Tagliente); 14, 1952 (Palatino), pending publication of his forthcoming book. John Howard Benson’s notes to his English facsimile edition of Arrighi’s copybook, The First Writing Book (New Haven, 1954), are also important, as are recent publications of the English calligrapher Alfred Fairbank, A Handwriting Manual (London, revised edition, 1954), and his A Book of Scripts, 1949, which offers a broad prospect in Penguin compass, with sixty-four pages of plates to serve as an “anthology of calligraphy.”

240 On falling into Maria’s trap, Malvolio delivers the familiar line, “I think we do know the sweet Roman hand” (Twelfth Night, III. iv). Katharine’s reference to A Booke Containing Divers Sortes of hands is in Loves Labours Lost, v. ii, 42. On this see George a. Plimpton, Education of Shakespeare (London and New York, 1933); also T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere’s Petty School (Urbana, 1943). The Bard’s handwriting is discussed and illustrated by E. M. Thompson, Shakespeare’s Handwriting (Oxford, 1916), and the point in question by s. a. Tannenbaum, Shakespeare and “Sir Thomas Moore” (New York, 1929).

241 The general authority for the biographies of British writing masters and the bibliography of their published works, up to the year 1800, is Sir Ambrose Heal’s monumental English Writing-Masters and their Copy-books (Cambridge [Eng.], 1931). It contains a valuable historical introduction by Stanley Morison; also the abundant collotype reproductions of copybooks are important for the background of colonial American handwriting development.

Penmen from the Lowlands frequented England and their works were published in British copybook collections—such masters as Jan van den Velde were celebrated by generations of English writing masters. The compliment was returned, too; most notably by the Fleming Jodocus Hondius who, after spending the previous decade across the Channel, published his Theatrum Artis Scribendi (Amsterdam, 1594), for which he engraved the work of two English penmen.

242 Bradford’s manuscript is on exhibit at the Massachusetts State Library, Boston. The published editions of it contain reproductions; a dozen lines in halftone (from the page preserving the “Mayflower Compact”) appear in an article by the present author, “The Handwriting of the Founding Fathers,” in Manuscripts, vii. iv (Summer, 1955).

243 See the two pages reproduced, facing pages 114 and 116, from an odd leaf bound out of place in an old record book at the probate court, Charleston, in A. H. Hirsch’s The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina (Durham, 1928).

244 See Wardrop, “The Vatican Scriptors,” Signature, n.s. no. 5, fig. 5, for a fine collotype reproduction of Cresci’s epistolary hand.

245 Charles K. Bolton was one of the few American antiquarians to study this subject. In “Colonial Handwriting,” The Essex Antiquarian, I. 11 (November, 1897), he wrote:

“Some of the early handwriting shows a lack of training which is to be expected in an agricultural community like that in the New England of the seventeenth century. The callous hand was not always under control. A quaintness, too, was given to the page by the spelling which at best allowed some liberty to follow one’s own taste, originality and manner of pronunciation. A man who spelled ‘son’ with a double ‘o’ would now be writing his death warrant.

“But there are certain forms characteristic of the writing of our emigrant ancestors which were due neither to paper, pen nor lack of training. These are after all few, but they appear with sufficient frequency to puzzle one unfamiliar with the subject. They may be traced in part to the teaching of the schoolmaster and in part to the printed forms of letters.”

246 But see plate IIIb. Also infra see bibliographies of the Collins edition of the Instructor (Burlington, 1775), and its reissue by Crukshank (Philadelphia, 1787), copying plates and text from the English edition; its secretary hand is an anachronism.

247 Foster Watson’s article “Writing,” A Cyclopedia of Education (New York, 1913), summarizes the background of instruction in penmanship.

248 In many old writing books the copy line set by the master is in an exemplary hand, easily distinguishable from the pupil’s, and sometimes set off by different-colored ink. However, as many others at least show that the learner was working from printed copies. The small oblong books of “copy slips” introduced in the latter part of the eighteenth century served him.

249 R. F. Seybolt, Private Schools of Colonial Boston (Cambridge, 1935), is the authority on private education in Boston at this period.

250 Peter Burr’s accounts, preserved in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, show that he gave private instruction in writing to girls too.

251 The authority cited for private schools is also responsible for the standard work on public schools: R. F. Seybolt, The Public Schools of Colonial Boston 1635–1775 (Cambridge, 1935). This should be supplemented by the same author’s The Public Schoolmasters of Colonial Boston (Cambridge, 1939).

252 Town meeting was an unwieldy school board in any case. On the western fringe of civilization at Westfield, Massachusetts, for example, in 1719 the town is recorded as making provision for a “wrighting master” in November of the year following. In 1720 it was voted to leave “the concern of hiering a wrighting schoolmaster with the selectmen.” Two years later Isaac Stiles was actually serving in that capacity, as well as assisting the minister, and continued during 1723. See John H. Lockwood, Westfield and Its Historic Influences, 291, and J. G. Holland, History of Western Massachusetts (Springfield, 1855), ii. 143.

253 William Webster, An Essay on Book-keeping (London, 1752), (“The Eleventh Edition”), 77–88, “An Attempt Towards rendering the Education of Youth More Easy and Effectual.”

254 The tribute is contained in the introduction to A Delightful Recreation of 1717. It is only fair to add that this princeling from South Carolina who made such a favorable record in six months was not in London in the ordinary way but as a protégé of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to which William Brooks’s book is gratefully dedicated.

Brooks suggests in the same place that the copies in his book be cut asunder for mastery of one piece at a time. Sometimes the separated lines of copy were laid down on a piece of light board so that they could serve individual members of a class in turn and, though stained and grubby, circulate for years. However, the practice of cutting up copybooks could not on the whole be considered as in the interest of conservation and the master’s encouragement of it is suspect.

255 “Col. Fitch express’d himself as much prizing Mr. Granger’s Accomplishment to Teach Writing; never such a Person in Boston before.” Diary of Samuel Sewell, 8 March 1719/20. A Matthias Grainger published Grainger’s New Copy Book in London around 1730 but no kinship is established.

256 The report of a town committee in 1743 acting on the petition of Zachariah Hicks, usher at Boston’s North Writing School, shows the going terms. The enrollment was 280; Master Procter was paid £280 salary and Hicks received £150, which was the ground of his complaint. Admittance to the school, the committee found, was refused no child of the town who could read in the Psalter. Children of “strangers” had to pay an entrance fee. Poor children were asked to pay nothing on any account but those who could afford to make a contribution paid a few shillings for “firing,” averaging about five shillings each overall. This was taken by the master as his rightful perquisite and he insisted that he could not get along without it, especially since he had to hire additional help out of his own pocket to the amount of £100.

257 See the present author’s “Abiah Holbrook and his ‘Writing Master’s Amusement,’” Harvard Library Bulletin, vii. 1 (Winter 1953), 88–104, illustrated with collotypes of the work of Holbrook and contemporaries displaying all the usual hands of the time.

258 For illustrations of them, ibid.

259 This copy, which came down in the Gookin family through Holbrook’s adopted daughter, is in an old binding; the group at Harvard are in fairly uniform wrappers with titles in manuscript. On the engraved title of the Shelley Alphabets in all hands, hidden by a paper patch, is written “The Gift of Mr. Holbrook.”

260 In the author’s copy of this work is an inserted letter written by Thaddeus Mason Harris in his old age telling how the book was bought at the Dolbeare sale “to be exhibited to the School Masters, as models; and to the Scholars, for their excitement to fair hand-writing. . . .”

See W. C. Bates, “Boston Writing Masters before the Revolution,” New England Magazine, n.s. xix (1898/99), 403–418, for the story of the Ward collection, with reproductions of pieces from it.

261 For a notice of Rogers and this piece in particular, see R. Nash, “An American Colonial Calligraphic Sheet of King Charles’s Twelve Good Rules at Dartmouth College Library,” The Library, 5th ser. vn (1952), 111–116, with illustration.

262 William Massey, The Origin and Progress of Letters (London, 1763), 171: “I have also seen . . . Sir Matthew Hales character, and his sum of religion, in roman and italic print, written by Mary Johns . . .” around 1747.

263 See Stanley Morison, American Copybooks: An Outline of Their History from Colonial to Modern Times (Philadelphia, 1951).

264 A facsimile of the Plimpton copy, edited by Stanley Morison with his introduction, was issued at Christmas 1933 by the Printer to the University, Cambridge, England.

265 Other attempts in the way of home-study manuals on American ground but without particular handwriting instruction appeared in The Young Secretary’s Guide by John (alias Thomas) Hill at Boston in 1703; also in The Young Man’s Companion brought out as early as 1705 by William and Andrew Bradford of New York. In later editions the Bradford compilation assumed the title The Secretary’s Guide. Henry Miller of Philadelphia printed The Alphabet there in 1770, but since the only calligraphic interest in it is represented by illustration printed from type on the title page, this work hardly qualifies for our bibliography either.

266 I am indebted to Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., one of the editors of the Franklin Papers for this suggestion, and for looking (without avail) for a possible illustration of the Cyphers in manuscript.

267 Milns’s Round-Text Copies (New York), and A Set of Round Hand Copies, engraved by S. Hill (Boston), by him were published early in the nineteenth century (ca. 1810). In the burying ground on the Common, Boston, is his headstone inscribed: To the memory of William Milns Member of S^ṭ Mary Hall in the University of Oxford, Author of the well bred Scholar, The American Accountant, The Penman’s Repository, and of Several Dramatic works, Master of Salvador Academy, and of the City Commercial School in London, who died in this town, the 27^tḥ February 1801, Aged 40 years. . . .

268 According to W. Allen, The American Biographical Dictionary, 3d ed. (Boston, 1857), 475. There is no record in the Delaware state archives to support this date or place, however.

269 Note 3, p. 1 supra.

270 Two early eighteenth-century continental examples of excessive enthusiasm for subjecting the whole alphabet to mathematical rule and rigor: Aznar de Polanco, Arte nuevo de escribir por preceptos geometricos, y reglas mathematicos (Madrid, 1719); Jan Pas, Mathematische of Wiskundige behandeling der Schryfkonst (Amsterdam, 1737).

271 Cocker, The Pen’s Triumph (London, 1659).

272 “Explained” by Franklin in his Instructor of 1748 and 1753; see p. 23 f. supra.

273 William Bentley, Diary of William Bentley, D.D. (Salem, 1911), III, 389 f.

274 Ibid., III. 109.

Among other writing masters of the time who come in for comment by the diarist are Edward Norris, “a man of small powers but a good tho’ not correct penman,” and Andrew Peabody who in 1808 had been writing master in Beverly for ten years. He quotes, under date of 6 January 1808, a letter from President Jefferson regarding “the specimens which I sent him of penmanship from the children of Mr. B. Crowninshield, son of my Landlady”: “I have certainly never seen anything in either way equally perfect. . . . Be so good as to present to the young artists the assurances of my thankfulness for these acceptable proofs of their uncommon talents. If my testimony of their eminence can be any gratification to them it is offered with sincerity as justly due to them.”

Ex-President John Adams also had something to say on the subject, not quite in line with Bentley’s observation that the same position of body and fingers is not good for writing in different languages. In his deed of gift to the town of Quincy, referring to the academy, he wrote in 1822: “I advise them to begin their lessons in Greek and Hebrew, by compelling their pupils to take their pens and write, over and over again, copies of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, in all their variety of characters, until they are perfect masters of those alphabets and characters. This will be as good an exercise in chirography as any they can use, and will stamp those alphabets and characters upon their tender minds and vigorous memories so deeply that the impression will never wear out. . . . (Cited by W. S. Pattee, History of Old Braintree and Quincy (1878), 342 n.) This founding father’s own chirography is a witness to the Bentley theory.

275 Nash, ed., Calligraphy & Printing, 10, has the following exchange between the questioner of the dialogue, G., and the sixteenth-century writing master, H.: “After having shown the single letters, what do you do?” “First we show how to make words of them . . . then more and more according to the capacity of the child. . . .” “Then those who naturally have a heavy hand are not likely to write well.” “No. Nevertheless, practice can overcome this handicap in them.”

276 A letter from President Kirkland of Harvard to Tristam Burges of Providence, 22 December 1814, in the John Carter Brown Library, is to the point: “Sir, Mr. Jenkins informs me that you are disposed to aid him in getting his works published & sought for. I have told him it would be desirable, in my opinion, if they could be engraved on copperplate. He desires me to say to you that I have this impression on this subject—at the same time I have not made the calculations with any exactness. He says that you will give him the benefit of your judgment, which I hope will be the case.”

277 Cf. p. 22 supra. Jenkins says, “Let the learner be always furnished with two well made pens, the one of which should be always used entirely dry . . . to be carefully drawn or traced over the strokes or skeletons of letters before drawing the same with ink . . . to teach the learner the proper movement, pressure, and rise of the pen. It is also of great use thoroughly to impress the mind of the pupil with correct ideas of the shape of the letters.” (A. of W., 1813, p. 55 f.) See plates xxv, xxvi, xxvii; also detailed directions cited in the bibliography of Book II, infra.

278 The value of the land and buildings at 87 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, received by the Society on 14 December 1954 as a gift from Mrs. Llewellyn Howland, is not recorded on the books and is not included in the statement of assets and funds in this Treasurer’s report, or others published in this volume.

279 S. A. Drake, Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876), 27.

280 C. T. Jackson, First Report on the Geology of the State of Maine (Augusta, Maine: Smith & Robinson, 1837), 43

281 Jackson, First Report, 44.

282 H. E. Taylor, “Topographical Map of Roque Island,” 1881. Enlarged manuscript map of “Taylor, 1881” is framed at New House, Roque Island.

283 E. C. Donworth, “Not to the Swift,” Washington County Railroad Monthly (Calais, Maine, 1900), May, ii, no. 1, 20–23.

284 Lincoln County Registry of Deeds (Wiscasset, Maine), 15 Sept. 1773, Vol. 9, p. 214.

285 Manuscript and memo of Joseph Pierpont to Proprietors of Township No. 22, 1789 in “Jonesborough, Maine” (Salem: The Essex Institute), Manuscript volume.

286 Lt. Col. Breyman commanded the Grenadier Battalion of 564 men of the Brunswick troops, which arrived from Germany in Quebec in June 1776 for Burgoyne’s forces. M. von Etting “The German Allied Troops in the North American War of Independence” (Albany, N. Y.: John Munsell’s Sons 1893), translation by J. G. Rosengarten.

287 Letter, Joseph Fenno to Anon., 20 June 1805. Though the letter is addressed to no one more specific than “Dear Sir,” its contents make it impossible for it to have been meant for anyone but Joseph Peabody. (Framed manuscript letter in Old Farm House, Roque Island.) For such information as has survived about Joseph Peabody’s business activities, see Walter Muir Whitehill, Captain Joseph Peabody East India Merchant of Salem (1757–1844) A Record of his Ships and of his Family compiled by William Crowninshield Endicott (1868–1936) edited and completed with a Sketch of Joseph Peabody’s Life (Salem: Peabody Museum, 1962).

288 For a ship to be “registered” meant it was built and owned by a United States citizen, and engaged in foreign trade; when it was “enrolled” it was built and owned by a United States citizen, but involved in domestic trade; while to be “licensed” meant, with the same conditions of building and ownership, that the ship was a fishing vessel. As port charges and fees varied for the different categories, it was often worth an owner’s while to shift his ship from registry to enrollment and back again.

289 Letters to John L. Gardner, Jr., from Joseph P. Gardner, 13 Sept. 1867; and from John L. Gardner, Sr., 16 Sept. 1867.

290 John L. Gardner, Jr., to George A. Gardner, 8 July 1888.

291 Eleanor Palffy, Largely Fiction (Boston, 1948), 305.

292 Deed, Thomas Kelley to Francis Shaw, Jr., dated 18 Sept. 1773, Lincoln County Registry of Deeds (Wiscasset, Maine), Book 9, p. 214.

293 Jonathan Stone, “Survey of the Mespeckey Islands for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Plan of XXII, Aug. 1785.” The original survey map is in the Land Office, Forest Service of the State of Maine, Augusta, Maine. Book no. 8, p. 62 (old number “176”) entitled “Great Moosepeckick or Rogues” shows the islands in detail, p. 59 (old number “172”) shows the whole township.

294 For this section the writer draws heavily on personal communications with Dr. Frank T. Siebert, Jr.

295 According to R. W. Hale, Jr., The Story of Bar Harbor (New York: Ives Washburn, Inc., 1949), 48.

296 Collections of the Maine Historical Society. Documentary History 2nd Series, vi. 88.

297 Franquelin-de-Meulles, Carte d’une partie du Canada et de l’Acadie, 1686. (Original in Depot des Cartes et Planns de la Marine, Service Hydrographique, Paris, portfolio No. 132. A photostat is in the Map Room, Harvard College Library, M 3006, F 18–1–4B.) It is also called I. Mouchibequi on Anon., Carte Particuliere de la Coste d’Accadie, 1702, a chart which follows Franquelin. (Original in Depot des Cartes etc., Paris, portfolio 132. A photostat in the Map Room, Harvard College Library, M 3006 F 18–2-2B.)

298 Anon., Carte des côtes de l’Acadie,? 1697. (Original in Depot des Cartes, etc., Paris, portfolio 132. A photostat in the Map Room, Harvard College Library, M 3006, F 18–1-5.)

299 M. Seutter, Partie Orientale de la Nouvelle France ou du Canada . . . Augsbourg? 1720. (Original in Map Room, Harvard College Library, M 3085.11.)

300 The framed original hangs in the living room of the New House at Roque Island.

301 Narrative of American Voyages and Travels of Captain William Owen R.N., edited by Victor H. Paltsits (New York: New York Public Library, 1942), 118, 136, 151.

302 Lincoln County Registry of Deeds, Vol. 10, p. 69, as quoted in the Bangor Historical Magazine, Vol. 5, no. 3 (Sept. 1889), p. 67.

303 J. F. W. Des Barres, “No. 2—Charts of the Coast and Harbours of New England . . .” (London, 1776). A complete set is in the Map Room, Harvard College Library (MA 4865.781–1 no. 5). A framed original of “No. 2” hangs in the hall of the New House at Roque Island.

304 C. Blaskowitz, “A Plan of the Sea Coast from Gouldsborough Harbor to . . . Passamaquoddy . . . ,” Manuscript map in Hydrographic Department, the Admiralty, London, on which the Atlantic Neptune chart was based, clearly shows the spelling to have been Reach. This is only one of several errors made either by Blaskowitz, the District Deputy, who made the survey for Samuel Holland, the Surveyor General for the Northern District of North America, or those who actually drew the final charts in the Admiralty. A photostat of part of this manuscript map was obtained through the great kindness of Vice Admiral John Godfrey, R.N. (Ret.) whose daughter, Mrs. John Kinmonth, was a guest at Roque Island.

305 F. Kidder, Military Operations in Eastern Maine and Nova Scotia (Albany: J. Munsell, 1867), 137,130.

306 See footnote 2, this chapter. Rufus Putnam, under whose supervision this survey was made, left his unpublished survey notes to the Marietta College Library, Marietta, Ohio, where they now are.

307 J. Norman, The American Pilot Containing the Navigation of the Sea Coasts of North America (Boston, 1791). Copies of this very rare chart are in the Houghton Library of Harvard College (p. AC7-N7844.791A) and the Boston Athenæum

308 O. Carleton: A map of the lottery and other townships east of Mt. Desert Is. In the Massachusetts Archives, Maps and Plans, No. 995,1792 (Boston, 1792).

309 The Privateer Wasp Journal 1782. Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society 2nd Series, Vol. 6 (Portland, 1895). There is also an entry for 21 July, “Sayled as far as Mrs. Peck Reach there cooked dinner and then sailed to Machias.”

310 F. H. Eckstorm, Indian Place Names of the Penobscot Valley and Maine Coast. University of Maine Studies, 2nd Series, No. 55, The Maine Bulletin, xliv, No. 4 (Nov. 1941) (Orono, Maine), 217.

311 W. F. Ganong, Notes for projected “Monograph of the Indian Place Nomenclature of the Atlantic Provinces of Canada and adjacent parts of Quebec, Newfoundland and Maine.” This has never been published. His notes on Moosabec and Mispek (a word stemming from the Nova Scotia Micmacs, rather than from the Penobscot dialect, meaning “flooded by the tide”) were provided the writer, and their use permitted through the courtesy of the director of their repository, J. R. Harper, The New Brunswick Museum, St. John, New Brunswick.

312 Works Progress Administration, Maine, the American Guide Series (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1937), 284–285.

313 The material presented in this paper is included in Mr. Labaree’s book Patriots and Partisans, The Merchants of Newburyport, 1764–1815 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).

314 C. O. 5: 66, pp. 127–136, which has been transcribed here. Another copy is found in the Newcastle Papers, 33030, f. 318 ff. I am obliged to Nancy Davis Sachse for help in transcription.

315 Huske’s career is briefly outlined in Notes and Queries, 12th ser., viii (1921), 217, 335; Appleton's Cyclopœdia of American Biography (New York, 1887–1924), III. 330; Lawrence C. Wroth, An American Bookshelf, 1755 (Philadelphia, 1934) 135–136.

316 See below, note 6.

317 L. B. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London, 1929) 137–139

318 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xliii. 197. Horace Walpole once referred to Huske as “a wild, absurd man”; yet he admitted that he was “very conversant with America,” and commended his remarks in the House of Commons on at least two occasions. Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, re-ed. G. F. Russell Barker (London, 1894), ii. 190–191, 213–214. Franklin, who used materials furnished by Huske for newspaper letters on the state of trade with the colonies, described him as a “judicious Merchant.” Verner W. Crane, Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press, 1758–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1950), 141 ff. Sir Lewis Namier includes Huske among “the foremost experts on America” of the period. England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1930), 265.

319 Oppression, a Poem by an American (with notes by “a North Briton”) was published in London in 1765 and reprinted in Boston and New York the same year. The identity of author and annotator is unknown. Notes and Queries, 12th ser., viii (1921), 335. The New English Dictionary cites this poem as affording the earliest use of the term “Yankee” as a “nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England.”

320 See Wroth, An American Bookshelf, 1755 (Philadelphia, 1934), 136.

321 Sir John Fortescue, The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783 (London, 1927–1928), I. 226, 236, 247, 276.

322 Carl Van Doren, ed., Letters and Papers of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson, 1753–1785 (Philadelphia, 1947), 22.

323 6 George III, c. 49. It is printed in Danby Pickering, The Statutes at Large (Cambridge, 1762–1807), xxvii. 262–270.

324 Fortescue, I. 309. For the members of the Committee, see Commons Journal, xxx. 811.

325 The Peace of Paris, 1763, terminating the Seven Years’ War.

326 The Revenue Act of 1764 (the so-called “Sugar Act,” dated April 5) was followed two weeks later by the Currency Act.

327 Investment.

328 On the annual average.

329 According to the sixth section of the Revenue Act of 1764 (4 George III, c. 15), each gallon of molasses and syrups produced in foreign colonies and imported into British colonies was to pay a duty of 3d. See Pickering, Statutes at Large, xxvi. 35.

330 Huske errs on the date; he means the Revenue Act of 1764. In the same year Grenville’s administration issued special instructions for the seizure of all foreign vessels found in West Indian ports. Burke reversed this policy in 1765, granting privileges for Spanish ships. The Cambridge History of the British Empire, ed. J. Holland Rose, A. P. Newton, E. A. Benians (Cambridge, 1929–), I. 345.

331 Provided by the Molasses Act of 1733.

332 Roseau.

333 The export of rice direct from the British colonies to points in Europe south of Cape Finisterre had been permitted since 1730.

334 The War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–1742), occasioned by Anglo-Spanish conflicts over the conduct of Latin-American trade.

335 Guardacostas, customhouse cutters.

336 Impost, duty.

337 During the eighteenth century the Isle of Man was notorious as a resort of smugglers. Not until 1765 did the Stanley family sell its sovereign rights in the island, including the customs revenue, to the British crown.

338 This represents the balance of principal and interest due in connection with the sale of 500 shares of The Lehman Corporation and the purchase of $10,000 United States Treasury bonds.