APRIL MEETING, 1925
A Stated Meeting of the Society was held, at the invitation of the President, at the house of the Club of Odd Volumes, No. 50 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, on Thursday, April 30, 1925, at eight o’clock in the evening, the President, Fred Norris Robinson, Ph.D., in the chair.
The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.
The Corresponding Secretary reported the death on the tenth and the fifteenth of April respectively, of Arthur Lord, a Resident Member, and John Singer Sargent, an Honorary Member.
The President appointed the following Committees in anticipation of the Annual Meeting:
To nominate candidates for the several offices, — Messrs. Francis Russell Hart, William Vail Kellen, and James Parker Parmenter.
To examine the Treasurer’s accounts, — Messrs. Frank Brewer Bemis and Harold Murdock.
The President announced the receipt of a gift of two thousand dollars from Mrs. Frederick Lewis Gay, in memory of her husband.
Mr. George L. Kittredge offered the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted:
Resolved, That the members of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts desire to express their gratitude to Mrs. Frederick Lewis Gay for her generous gift of $2000 towards the cost of publishing the Records of Harvard College — a project in which their late associate, Frederick Lewis Gay, felt a lively interest and to which he made liberal contribution.
Resolved, That the Records, when issued, bear upon the title-page an appropriate inscription to the effect that they are published by the Society as a memorial to Mr. Gay.
Resolved, That these resolutions be spread upon the records of the Society and that a copy be sent to Mrs. Gay.
Mr. Albert Matthews read a paper written by Miss Viola F. Barnes, of Mount Holyoke College, on
RICHARD WHARTON, A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY NEW ENGLAND COLONIAL
Among colonial Englishmen of the seventeenth century there is no more striking figure than Richard Wharton, a non-freeman in Puritan Boston, a man whose vivid personality, varied interests, and forceful leadership entitle him to be rescued from the oblivion into which he has been allowed to sink. He was by nature masterful, vigorous, energetic, persevering, and ambitious. His enemies believed him unscrupulous, headstrong, and selfish. He was undoubtedly tactless and precipitous, and as a consequence always antagonized those who disagreed with him. These were many, because his numerous activities as merchant, attorney-at-law, promoter, landed proprietor, and political leader brought him into contact with a large number of people.
Wharton was not among those whom religious and political dissatisfaction drove out of England. He sought the new world because it appealed to his imagination as a place where a man could acquire riches through commerce and easy possession of the soil, and at the same time retain allegiance to his king. He did not think of himself as emigrating from England; he simply followed the “westward ho!” impulse, as many an American was to do in the next two centuries.
Why he chose to settle in Boston is difficult to tell, but it was probably because that town offered the best commercial advantages to be found at the time in any of the English continental colonies. In all the large coast towns were many merchants of distinction who were amassing fortunes from the trade built up during the Puritan Revolution. Wharton’s marriage in 1659 to Bethia Tyng,436 the daughter of William Tyng,437 a wealthy merchant, drew him at once into close association with this group. Bethia’s sister Elizabeth was the wife of another prominent merchant, Thomas Brattle, reputed to be the wealthiest man in New England.438 Among her many cousins were Jonathan Tyng, who married a daughter of another great merchant, Hezekiah Usher;439 Edward Tyng, who through his wife’s inheritance of an estate in Maine became interested in land speculation there in coöperation with Wharton;440 and Rebecca, who married Joseph Dudley, later president of the provisional government and member of Andros’s council.441 After the death of Bethia, Wharton married, in 1672, Sarah Higginson,442 daughter of a Puritan divine at Salem and sister of an East India merchant. She died in 1672 and Wharton then married Martha Winthrop,443 sister of Wait and Fitz-John Winthrop, grandsons of the first Governor Winthrop and sons of the governor of Connecticut. These marriages into prominent New England families added to Wharton’s social distinction — for he was well-connected in England444 — and gave him opportunities for success in business. He became a great merchant, and very soon extensive wharfs, which he was constantly enlarging, testified to the growth of his commercial interests.445
That Wharton was also an able attorney-at-law is indicated by his successful handling of some of the most conspicuous cases of his time. One affair which attracted attention because of the prominence of the people concerned was that of Samuel Bellingham, who after the death of his father, Governor Richard Bellingham, employed Wharton as his counsel in contesting the will. During this case, Wharton incurred the displeasure of the General Court and received as penalty, withdrawal of his licence to plead in the courts. Out of fairness to Bellingham, however, Wharton was allowed to finish this one case, and finally won for his client a favorable decision.446
Another case which Wharton successfully managed, stirred New England to great excitement and permanently affected his reputation. He was attorney for the famous Bernard Lamoyn,447 a French privateer whose ships, two rich prizes captured from the Dutch off the coast of Cuba, were stranded on Nantucket Island in 1678. The Englishmen in subordinate command of one of them, the Griffin, took advantage of the boats’ distress to dispose of “much gold, pearls, silver plate and other things to great valew contrary to his knowledg & their articles of agrement at their commission port.” Lamoyn sought justice of the government of Massachusetts, asking that his case be heard in an admiralty court. The Englishmen had sold the goods to prominent merchants in Rhode Island and in Boston, so that, as Fitz-John Winthrop wrote Governor Andros of New York, “severall interests are engaged in ye case on both sides, wch makes much discoarse of what may be ye issue.” The case was tried before the court of assistants, where Wharton apparently conducted his client’s cause with vigor, for Dudley wrote to Fitz-John Winthrop, “Mr. Wharton is hurrying the poor English privateers to jayle & Misery.” He won the case, the court deciding that the vessel must go to its commission port, Petit Guanare, and that the proceeds of any goods already sold from the vessel should be deposited with Lamoyn’s lawyers. It was this case which brought Wharton the reputation of being, as Randolph said of him, “a great undertaker for pirates.”448
All these commercial and legal activities would have kept most men busy enough, but Wharton apparently had a mind always teeming with new ideas which stimulated him to undertake all sorts of enterprises. One of his first great ventures was a scheme for making salt out of sea water. That product was a most important necessity in New England trade because in addition to ordinary domestic uses it was needed as a preservative in the fishing industry. A part of the salt came from Spain and the Straits, and a part came from the island of Tortuga,449 where it was produced by a well-known process. Salt beds were made by selecting a low spot on the shore where shallow pools were formed by high tides. In time the sun evaporated the water, leaving a deposit of the salt. This salt, although of low grade and not usable with “merchantable” fish, was indispensable, particularly for “refuse” fish, which found ready market in the West India trade. When storms destroyed the salt beds or pirates captured the salt-bearing vessels, the New Englanders suffered great inconvenience. Wharton believed, as many New Englanders had before him,450 that salt could be evaporated by the same process along New England shores, and with great profit if production were undertaken by a company. He succeeded in getting men to invest in such an enterprise, and applied to the General Court of Massachusetts for a charter granting monopolistic privileges of production. Not much is known about the later history of this enterprise. However, from the fact that Wharton asked for permission in 1687 to build a wooden salt-house, it seems probable that he, at least, continued permanently in the business. That he had confidence in its possibilities is shown by his later application for a royal monopoly grant.451
Wharton’s next undertaking was a company for the development of naval stores. England had tried to interest the colonies in their production, but had not succeeded with New Englanders, although the northern forests abounded in trees of mast size and in pines suitable for tar products. Therefore there was a good opening for such an enterprise if the promoters could obtain exclusive privileges of production. For this, Wharton applied to the colonies of the New England Confederation in 1670. His petition was granted by Massachusetts and Plymouth for ten years. There is no evidence to show how successful this enterprise was. Presumably little was done with the tar products and the raising of hemp, but there must have been great profit in the lumber and mast business, particularly since shipbuilding was progressing by leaps and bounds.452
The third and largest scheme which Wharton promoted was the organization of a company primarily for developing mines in New England. There had been many previous attempts to discover and mine ore, and in the case of iron, with a fair amount of success. There was a revival of interest in minerals in the eighties, at which time Wharton’s attention was attracted to the possibilities in that line. He began to plan an enterprise on a grand scale, one which included not only mines, but other industries in which he had been concerned for many years, the production of salt and of naval stores. After interesting a number of prominent New Englanders in the undertaking, he went to England, where he found many influential men eager to invest in stock. These he skilfully sifted, turning away the troublesome or doubtful, but encouraging those who had money and influence. Among the latter was Sir John Shorter, the Lord Mayor of London, whose coöperation gave great impetus to the undertaking. Although the company was to be directed from England, Wharton tried to obtain the presidency for his brother-in-law, Wait Winthrop. After the scheme was well launched, Wharton sought the aid and advice of a lord of the Privy Council who had the reputation of being influential with the king, and gave him “specimens of sundry ores and coppers” and of “our balsam, masticke, olibanum, and other my collections which were very pleasing to him.”453 Wharton presented his petition in February, 1688, for a most comprehensive grant of powers. The investors desired incorporation into a joint stock company with monopolistic privileges of mining copper, lead, saltpetre, and of producing salt, drugs, dyeing wares, and all materials for building ships. They asked, in case of discovery of mines, for a grant of land not exceeding seven miles square at a rent of sixpence per hundred acres, and for certain governmental powers, namely: that the company should have its own courts for trial of all civil pleas not exceeding ten pounds and not concerning titles of land, which might arise between their servants and other inhabitants of the colony; that the company should have its own coroner; that all deeds, fines, and forfeitures connected with servants of the company should accrue to the company; and that servants and officers of the company be exempt from jury service outside of the company courts and from military service except in case of invasion or rebellion.454
Wharton and his New England companion, Hutchinson, were well received by the king in council, who referred the petition to a committee. Unfortunately Wharton and Hutchinson quarrelled over the heads of the charter, and while estranged, Hutchinson talked too freely with another group who started a rival movement. This competition, as Wharton wrote, gave “great trouble and delay to our business and abates many advantages we might otherwise have had.” With his usual optimism, Wharton added that the “persons that hath given us the great trouble, will, when things come to a settlement, be managed as a good instrument to promote the prosperity of New England.”455
The Lords of Trade gave “Wharton and others concerned” a hearing, then referred the proposal to the Lords of the Treasury, who in turn consulted the customs commissioners. The latter reported that they saw nothing objectionable in the proposal, provided that the corporation be “restrained from altering the plantation trade as now settled.” The Lords of the Treasury thought it inadvisable to pass such a grant without first receiving the opinion of the governor of New England. The Lords of Trade then referred the petition to the attorney-general, asking for a comparison with the Duke of Albemarle’s grant and for an opinion as to whether the king could legally and with due regard to local constitutions grant them such extensive powers as they desired. The attorney-general reported that the “privileges asked for may legally be granted, and though certainly they would be too great to be granted here in England, yet, since the corporation will reside in England and will be always under the King’s eye, they may be proper enough for a country as yet so unpeopled especially if the corporation were bound to begin to work mines within a limited time.” Blathwayt then instructed him to prepare a draught patent with the exceptions mentioned in the report, and with an additional clause requiring the company to produce some profit to the king as was the case with the Albemarle patent. This draught was made, but had not passed the seals when the revolution against James broke out, and brought procedure temporarily to an end.456
Wharton was chiefly interested in business, but he aspired also to be a large landowner. This ambition was not easy to achieve, because of the method by which New England had been settled and land granted. The original allotments were small, and although a few citizens possessed extensive holdings, these usually comprised a great number of small scattered farms and were not a continuous whole. In fact, in the colonies of the seventeenth century large landowners were rare. In spite of the ease with which land could be obtained in the south, there were comparatively few country gentlemen of the type of William Byrd of Virginia. In New York the Dutch patroon system had left behind some large estates like that of Van Rensselaer, and later English grants there produced a few land princes like Livingston and Courtland. In New England, until the last quarter of the seventeenth century, there were no such examples, although the Atherton Company, formed somewhat earlier, ultimately succeeded in developing a few large estates in the Narragansett Country. Among the members of this company were Fitz-John and Wait Winthrop, Wharton’s brothers-in-law. Jurisdiction of the land held by this company, obtained mostly on a mortgage from the Indians, was claimed by both Connecticut and Rhode Island, so that the border feud between these two colonies, and the rival land claims, made extensive development of the property impossible for some time.457
In 1680 the company, desiring a settlement, appointed Lord Culpeper its agent in England and petitioned the king either to confirm Connecticut’s grant of the Narragansett Country or to add the territory to New Plymouth, or to establish it as a separate province. Wharton and Saffin, acting for the company, instructed Culpeper to ask the king to “commissionate judicious, righteous and uninterested persons to elect a Court of Claims in New England to determine all private claims and pretensions and to ascertain bounds between the colonies.” A special commission was appointed in 1683, headed by Edward Cranfield, governor of New Hampshire, which reported that the title to the soil was vested in the Atherton Company and the jurisdiction belonged to Connecticut. Apparently that decision was ineffectual, for the proprietors again petitioned the king in 1684 for confirmation and establishment under Connecticut “or otherwise.” The next year they declared themselves willing to pay the king two shillings sixpence per hundred acres as a quit-rent and to submit to such regulations as he saw fit. In expectation of the king’s assumption of government there, the proprietors renewed their effort to colonize and at considerable expense established some French Huguenots who came over to America after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They made many grants of land, reserving a quit-rent on condition that the holder pay whatever acknowledgment the king should ask of the proprietors. The king took no immediate action and the Lords of Trade, to whom the matter was referred, decided to make no recommendation until they received a report from the new governor of New England on the company’s claims.458
Wharton received an Indian grant of land in 1682 in the Nipmuck Country, near the lands of the Atherton Company. After King Philip’s War, large numbers of Indian captives became the property of the United Colonies or of the individual members of the confederation, and were sold or allotted as compensation for war services. Wharton acquired several slaves by these methods, among them an Indian woman who “spake the Maqua tongue.” An Indian named Andrew Pitamy, “upon the great importunity of most of the considerable Christian Indians,” ransomed her, giving to Wharton five hundred acres of land in the Nipmuck Country in exchange. This land was located near the grant made by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1682 to Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton.459
In 1683 Wharton apparently determined to make a bold endeavor to acquire a large estate in Maine, where he could establish a lordship and found a family. His son William was just coming to maturity and Wharton wished to interest him in this project of developing a manor. The time was propitious for such a plan because Massachusetts, through the recent acquisition of the Gorges propriety, now possessed large vacant tracts of land in Maine which she desired to have colonized. Wharton petitioned the General Court for a grant of land on this new frontier as compensation for an unjust court sentence imposed in 1674.460 The court gave him an estate of one thousand acres, but before arrangements were made for laying it out, he asked for an extension. The magistrates voted to grant his petition, but the deputies, who did not like him, refused to do any more than make provision for laying out the one thousand acres already given him. At about the same time, he acquired other tracts by purchase, all in or near Casco Bay, one from Eleazer Way and the heirs of Thomas Purchas, whose title descended from a grant of the Council for New England, another from John Shapleigh, and in 1684 a large piece from six Indian sagamores. These tracts, called the Pejebscot Purchase, comprised an estate of about 500,000 acres.461
A part of the land thus acquired brought with it certain rights of lordship,462 but not the privilege of government which Wharton coveted. Therefore, after the annulment of the Massachusetts charter, he petitioned the king “to take into his Royall Protection and Government” all of his (Wharton’s) purchases and establish them as a manor, regranting them to him with a quit-rent reservation. He asked that all actions arising within the manor be tried there except those involving over one hundred pounds; that he might transport thither people of all nations who wished to come, promising them liberty of religion, English denization, and freedom for five years from arrest for debt if they began improving their estates within a year; and that he might have power to establish ports. He desired also to have exclusive rights of fishing, for with his usual vision he foresaw the possibilities of profit from the fisheries in that region. He apparently expected that the manor would be subject, except in local matters, to the authority of the royal governor soon to be appointed for New England.463
The Lords of Trade were evidently not in favor of granting such extensive privileges as Wharton wished. They were inclined to give him only as much land as he could improve in seven years, with liberty to fish, “so far as not to molest others.” However, they referred his petition to the attorney-general, who reported that Wharton’s draught contained nothing unfit for the king to grant. In spite of this report, the Lords of Trade were reluctant to make the grant without more first-hand information concerning the project, lest by sanctioning “engrossment” of the land, settlement of the region might be hampered. They therefore delayed the final decision until other matters concerning the government of New England should be determined.464
Wharton was also associated with another group in the Million Purchase, a scheme for land speculation on the Merrimac River. In 1685 he, with Joseph Dudley and Samuel Shrimpton, purchased from the chief Indian sachem on the Merrimac River a large estate, about six by ten miles square on each side of the river, including the river and all islands and other rivers issuing into the Merrimac, with sole right of salmon fishing, free fishing with angles and nets, free hunting, and all rights, privileges, royalties, etc. This land the three then sold to Charles Lidgett, John Blackwell, and Shrimpton in trust for a company of twenty stockholders, partly colonial and partly English. The investors put in twenty pounds apiece and were to share the land and profits equally. Before any of the land could be disposed of to other persons, twenty “parcels,” each consisting of five thousand acres of the best, were to be set apart for themselves. To give the undertaking greater security than could the registration of titles in the colony, the promoters decided to seek royal confirmation with quit-rent reservation. In order to “grease the wheels” for speedy patent procedure, Dudley and Shrimpton, two of the trustees, presented William Blathwayt, secretary to the Lords of Trade, with a share. He must have accepted it, else, if one could trust Dudley’s letter, the petition would not have been presented to the king. At any rate, his influence did not produce results, for no royal action was ever taken on the petition. As will be seen later, all these undertakings concerning land and mines were so bound up with the political events of the period following the annulment of the charter, that they must be considered with those events.465
Wharton’s interest in the commercial and land enterprises was dependent on more than the material success he hoped they would bring. He enjoyed “playing the game,” as his buoyant and enthusiastic letters testify. His imagination, power of organization, courage in taking risks, ability to inspire confidence in prospective investors, driving force, tireless energy, optimism, are all characteristics of the successful captain of industry. His interest in seeing the country developed, the mineral treasures discovered, the natural resources utilized, the commerce expanded, make this English promoter of the seventeenth century, in spite of his social distinction, seem very like the American frontier townsman of the nineteenth century, who would with little else than faith buy up large tracts of land for speculation, establish a real estate office, a bank, a store, and perhaps a newspaper, and at once step into a position of leadership which his vision had won for him.
Wharton was an economic imperialist, interested in business as a source of private wealth, of public prosperity, and of national expansion. This point of view often brought him into conflict with the Puritans, who were concerned primarily with their religious experiment and with maintaining their institutions in isolation and nominal independence of the mother country. One of the most conspicuous of these clashes came at the time of the Dutch capture of New York in 1673. Massachusetts at once assumed a position of neutrality, but Connecticut sent a letter to the Dutch officials at New York in the name of the United Colonies, threatening retaliatory measures if encroachments on New England territory were attempted. The United Commissioners endorsed the Connecticut letter, which Connecticut now sent to Massachusetts. The Massachusetts General Court was immediately called in special session, and instead of coöperation with the other colonies voted not to “engage in the concernes thereof, further then the making provision for our oune safety.”466 Massachusetts also ignored the king’s proclamation of war against the Dutch, which had ordered all English subjects to make hostile attacks on the enemy’s commerce. Wharton and other merchants who had suffered commercial losses at the hands of the Dutch and wished to indemnify themselves by privateering, appealed to the General Court for letters of reprisal. Their petition was denied. From these and other incidents, it was evident that Massachusetts intended to follow a policy of peace at any price.467
Wharton could not understand the General Court’s attitude, and interpreted it as a treasonable position. Believing that the colonies would do nothing toward the recapture of New York, he wrote to English friends at court urging that the mother country send over a force and order the colonies to coöperate in conquering the province in the interests of the trade and defence of the empire. In a most eloquent letter he reminded the king —
wt a fair foundation was here lately laid for the Royall ofspring of Great Brittain to build a most glorious empire upon, nor need I to you enumerate the many usefull & rich commodityes yt nature affords & yt Art & Industry may produce in these plantations: Onely this I confidently tell you & am ꝑsuaded that though these pts of the world are disesteemed by the Princes of Europe, yet if the most potent among them were seated with their subjects upon this continent it would be more difficult to psuade them to returne to their ancient Dominions then now it is to remove them thence.
He feared that the inhabitants of the northern and southern colonies were so “familiarized to the Dutch by trade, & converse, that all will not believe they are their enemyes. And having such a convenient place of shelter & resort for their shipping his Majesty’s subjects will be universally infested if not overrun & conquered in their Plantation & destroyed in their navigation.” When the Massachusetts government heard that Wharton had informed the king “what the Dutch did on the coast and how he conceived it might be remedied, [he] was taken as no friend to New England and his letters stopped.” They thought him disloyal to the colony because he might have involved it in war, and because he urged England to interfere in what they believed to be exclusively within the jurisdiction of the colony to decide.468
That he had considerable influence in England, they were well aware, which made him all the more to be feared. In this particular case, his suggestions, supported as they were by memorials from other colonists, would have been carried out but for the sudden ending of the war. The Lords of Trade were convinced of the danger that New England inhabitants, “being more intent upon ye advancement of their owne private trade then ye publique Interest of yor Maties crowne and Government may if ye Dutch continue a quiet possession there enter into commerce with them” and lay the foundation for later union with Holland. They therefore recommended the recapture of New York. Their fears were justified, for a few months later, the States General instructed the governor of New Netherland to try, in spite of the war, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with the English colonies.469
The Massachusetts government was even more displeased with Wharton because of his defiance of its refusal to grant him letters of reprisal. News reached Wharton that a small Dutch vessel had fallen by accident into the hands of the Nantucket authorities. After having brought it into the harbor for repairs, its Dutch officers had abandoned it, and Molines, one of the crew, had claimed a part of the goods on the ground that he was an English denizen. The court at Nantucket without condemning the vessel, decided against Molines’s claims. At this juncture, Wharton, “seeing such a fair & facil way for the purchasing & obtaining the sd ship & goods,” with three other merchants bought it of the Nantucket authorities. As a protection against the enemy in case of capture, the associates secured from a Captain Anderson a licence of reprisal granted him by Colonel Stapleton, lieutenant-governor of the Leeward Islands, and pretended that the vessel had been seized by virtue of its authority. As soon as they could repair the Expectation, they planned to send it to an admiralty court for condemnation according to the terms of the licence. While the vessel was at Plymouth for repairs, Molines again laid claim to a part of the goods. The Plymouth governor apparently did not care to become involved in the admiralty intricacies of the case, and since the possessors were having difficulty in getting the repairs made, it was mutually agreed that they be allowed to give bond to take the Expectation to Boston and from thence to send it with the claimants to some other port and court of admiralty.470
The associates then applied to the governor and council at Boston for permission to bring the vessel into the harbor, for security against molestation while there, and for a passport hence for the “common port.” The governor and council gave a noncommittal answer that the associates should have all the favor that justice and the law would allow. After the ship’s arrival at Boston, Molines again insisted upon his English denization and succeeded in getting restraints placed on a part of the goods.471
In the meantime the Dutch governor-general and the council of war at New York, upon hearing that the Expectation, commanded by Captain Vonck, was lying dismasted near Nantucket, had sent Captain Ewoutsen to rescue it with instructions not to attack any New England vessels unless the Expectation had been captured. If it had been, which they thought unlikely, then he was to “attack, capture, or endeavor to destroy all English boats and craft whencesoever they may be.” Ewoutsen of course found the vessel gone and so captured four New England ketches in retaliation. One of them, the Providence, on its way from Virginia, was, ironically enough, freighted with forty-seven tubs of tobacco for “Wharton and Company.” The Dutch governor and council, on examining the skippers of the captured ketches, October 29, 1673, learned with satisfaction that the seizure of the Expectation had been without the consent of the Boston authorities, under an English commission. They released the officers and crews and paid their expenses to Rhode Island, but later, to the chagrin of the Massachusetts authorities, declared the ketches forfeited.472
The Massachusetts government heard with surprise of the Dutch attacks on New England commerce and wrote a letter to the council at New York demanding a return of the vessels and men. When it learned of the existence of the Stapleton commission and the serious consequences of its use, the General Court, in order to protect the colony’s shipping, declared an embargo on all vessels and started an investigation concerning the commission. Wharton and associates found themselves in a most unhappy situation. Their wilfulness in seeking, against the authority of the General Court, compensation for losses sustained from the Dutch, had involved them in greater loss, and the colony in a state of commercial war with the Dutch. They had become the centre of governmental and popular wrath and were in danger not only of losing the Expectation by an adverse decision in court, but also of being severely punished for disobedience.473
The associates, much concerned at the turn of affairs, now made an effort to vindicate themselves by sending the governor and council a deposition explaining their actions. They claimed that the king’s declaration of war obligated the inhabitants of the colony to attack the commerce of the enemy, in spite of which the deputies had refused to grant them letters of reprisal, against the wishes of most of the magistrates. They explained how and why they got possession of the ship, and denied Molines’s claim of denization, asserting that he betrayed the vessel first to the Dutch and then to the English, for his own profit. They made a plea for protection “from the injury of such persons as being too amicably inclined to our enemies will be too easily prejudiced against us,” and requested that a court of admiralty be constituted for the trial of the ship, adding significantly, that they were most desirous “to render to the country in his majesty’s and admirals behalf, such dividends and parts of the sd ship and goods as belong to them.” If the request for trial were not granted, they asked for permission to take the vessel to their commission port.474
The General Court, though very angry with Wharton and associates, decided not to become involved in the case, possibly hoping that the Dutch would be able to distinguish between English and Massachusetts authority.475 In spite of the embargo, the court on December 10 gave the associates liberty to fit the ship for England and ordered that it be carried into one of his majesty’s courts of admiralty there for trial. At its January meeting, “for some weighty reasons,” it annulled the December order and introduced a radical change in the practice of handling admiralty matters. It is probable that the authorities desired to have the trial in the colony to prevent the associates from an almost certain award in an English court, but at the same time they took precautions to offer them no cause for challenging the authority of the court on the grounds of its not proceeding according to English admiralty law. Moreover, if commercial warfare with the Dutch continued, other cases would be coming to trial and the colony might be called to account by England for not acting in conformity with English maritime law and custom. Whatever the cause, the General Court passed a law providing that “henceforth all cases of admiralty shall be heard and determined by the Court of Assistants and to be Issued by the Bench without a Jury; unless the court shall see cause to the contrary.” Wharton and associates, denied a pass to go to their commission port, asked for judication in this court, but Molines and his crew, preferring a jury trial, petitioned successfully against it. Meanwhile the war ended, the embargo was lifted, and the colony returned to its former method of trying admiralty cases by jury. After a long delay, the court of assistants, in June, 1674, referred the associates to the observance of their bond with Plymouth, but the latter could not get away, because Molines and the other claimants still detained the goods. Finally an order came from the king to the authorities at Boston ordering them to send the vessel to England for trial.476
Early in the spring of 1674 a new case developed out of the old. In February, Wharton and associates published with the notary public a protest against the delays caused them by Molines and his crew. This protest incensed the authorities and for the time being sidetracked the real issue. The governor and council declared it reprehensible “as confronting the government and laws of this colony and in particular the infringement of the jurisdiction of the admiralty court here established.” The associates declared, also before a notary, that they had no intention of reflecting upon the authority of the government there or questioning the power of the local admiralty court, but that they aimed only to criticize those persons who had assisted the claimants in “their injurious and illegal attempts and proceedings.” The matter was now taken up in General Court, which moved to re-examine the declaration submitted in December and reported finding “many expressions therein that are deeply reflecting upon the authority of this court, & upon severall members of it.” The associates were brought to trial before the General Court, convicted and penalized, Wharton more severely than the rest because he was the leader. He was to be “solemnly admonished,” disabled from pleading any cause but his own and that of Samuel Bellingham, and to pay thirty pounds toward expenses. The others were to receive “solemn admonishment” and pay only five pounds expenses.477
The episode of the Expectation illustrates well the contrast between the men who thought as Wharton did and the Massachusetts government, as to the conceptions of the relationship of the colonies to the mother country. The latter wished to have entire control of all matters of government, believing that the sovereignty rested with the colony, while Wharton’s party thought of all the colonies as England’s frontier, believing that the sovereignty was with England, who had delegated to the colonies only the authority in local government, reserving control in such matters of imperial concern as trade and defence. In the particular case of the Dutch War, the Puritans who dominated the Massachusetts government preferred to preserve the peace, in spite of England’s orders, and believed the colony could thus determine its own action. Wharton and associates, seeing the war as an imperial affair, believed it not only their right but their patriotic duty to attack the commerce of the Dutch, and made the mistake of defying the local authorities by seizing the Expectation under an outside commission. They then stirred the factional fires in the General Court by using in self-defence the indiscreet remarks of some of the pro-English magistrates and by accusing the deputies who believed in Molines’s denization, of Dutch sympathies and disloyalty to the mother country. Finally they turned the government against them by making insinuations against the authority of the local admiralty court and insisting on English admiralty law.
The Dutch War and the problems it brought in its wake had barely passed when King Philip’s War broke out. Wharton, like many other pro-English colonials, found much to criticize in its management, which suffered from the usual defects of the system of defence in New England. The United Commissioners were able at times to bring about mutual coöperation of the four colonies in the confederation, but frequently Massachusetts determined her own course without regard for what such action might mean to her confederates. Late in 1675 the commissioners decided to attack the Narragansetts, whom they suspected of being in league with Philip. Connecticut’s representatives asked Wharton to send provisions from Boston for the supply of the garrison on Richard Smith’s estate, and a force of a thousand men was raised under the command of Winslow, the governor of Plymouth. This expedition was successful against the Narragansetts, but a second expedition sent early in 1676 to pursue them failed because of lack of provisions. After the withdrawal of the forces, a garrison of troops of the United Colonies was left at Richard Smith’s house to protect the region, but the “Councill of Boston (to the great Surprise of many People)” refused to maintain it. The troops after using up their supplies went home, and shortly afterward the Indians destroyed the house and other buildings. All through the war, the examples of selfishness, lack of coöperation, failure to organize the commissary, and poor leadership were many, as the records testify. Wharton was extremely dubious about the outcome because, though he had much respect for the fighting qualities of the soldiers, he had little confidence in the ability of the commanders to direct the forces and to organize the resources of the colonies effectively. His experiences in connection with the two wars made him fear that “except God give greater wisdom to their rulers or put it into the King’s heart to rule and relieve them, the colonies will soon be ruined and they reduced to the necessity of subjecting upon any terms to any that will protect them.” In the same letter he added, with his characteristic frankness and lack of tact, “Our Governor is crazy in body and many are so in their heads.”478
Wharton and others of the pro-English group, freemen and non-freemen, were much concerned over the selfish particularism which made Massachusetts reluctant to spend resources of men and money on the protection of a neighboring colony unless there was actual danger to Massachusetts territory. Also they were irritated by the government’s lack of interest in big business and land enterprises. For these reasons, they desired to get into power. The freemen among them preferred to do this by election to office without charter changes, while the non-free like Wharton advocated the establishment of a royal government which would adequately protect their interests, and in which they would be represented. They used every opportunity to express their opinions discreetly to royal officials in England and in the colonies, urging royalization and some provision for intercolonial action.479 The pressure from this discontented element exerted a great influence on the Lords of Trade, who gradually in the decade after 1675 came to the decision that economically and politically Massachusetts would never fit into England’s colonial system unless the charter were annulled. The colony’s gradual assumption of powers not granted by charter offered legal excuse for quo warranto procedure, which the lords instituted in 1683.
While the prominent non-freemen like Wharton were urging royalization, certain moderate Puritans, who after 1680 dominated in the council, were trying to prevent the leaders of the house of deputies from open defiance of the mother country. Upon the arrival of the king’s declaration of 1683, announcing the immediate regulation of the government and promising only slight changes if the colony would submit, those who favored a middle course urged surrendering the charter. The house of deputies, incensed at such treason, hired an agent to defend the charter at law.480 When the question arose in Boston town meeting, the champions of the charter won by strategy. Apparently they could not tell how many citizens desired compromise, and they feared the strength of the coalition of the pro-English freemen with the non-freemen, who could vote in town meeting except in the elections of deputies to the General Court. So the question was raised whether non-freemen should be allowed to vote on what was really a colony question, and was decided in the negative. Wharton, checkmated, withdrew in anger, accompanied by his followers among the non-freemen. After their departure, the vote on Mather’s question was taken, whereupon someone fervently exclaimed, “The Lord be praised! Not a man held up his hand for the delivering up of the charter.”481
The triumph of the advocates of the charter was short-lived. While they were setting fast days and defying England, the non-freemen were busy with suggestions for royalizing Massachusetts. Wharton’s active mind seized upon this opportunity to send to the Lords of Trade “proposals for regulation of New England” and for the establishment of a royal government. Its organs were to be a general governor, council, and assembly, the governor and council to be also a supreme judiciary with appellate powers from inferior courts, from which appeals could be taken to the Privy Council, as in the other royal colonies. Suffrage laws were to be the same as in England, which would transfer the control of government from the Congregationalists to the propertied classes. To make the change of government acceptable, Wharton advocated general pardon to all who should submit, religious indulgence, confirmation of property, continuation of Harvard College, and preservation of all laws not contrary to those of England. Wharton’s personal interest was responsible for one rather unusual suggestion. He proposed that the king appoint a registrar-general of lands in order to further the development of mineral resources, and incorporate a company for making pitch, tar, resin, and gums.482
Wharton’s plan of government for New England was strikingly like that which the Lords of Trade finally adopted, with, however, the very important difference that in the latter the representative assembly was omitted. Who was responsible for the idea of consolidation, it is difficult to tell. At any rate, the Lords of Trade decided upon a single royal province whose relationship to the mother country should be clearly defined in the governor’s commission and instructions. By this means important imperial interests such as trade and defence would be safeguarded and the right of England to regulate them recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. To pave the way for so great a change, the lords established a provisional government in May, 1686.
Wharton was the dominating personality of the small group of wealthy merchants and “grandees” to whom the reins of government were temporarily entrusted. He was related to six of them by marriage,483 he was associated with six of them in the Million Purchase,484 and with three of them in the Atherton Company,485 while at least five besides himself were well-known merchants.486 Fortunately for the success of the provisional government Wharton was not chosen president. Although exceedingly able and well-fitted to direct the economic policy of the new government, he lacked sufficient diplomacy to make the change of government acceptable to the supporters of the old régime. Since the provisional government was established primarily as a bridge between the old and the new order of things, it was wise to choose someone as nominal leader who was more popular than Wharton with the majority of the Congregationalists. Joseph Dudley, the son of one of the colony’s founders, but withal as pro-English as Wharton himself, was selected.
These men were able to control not only the central, but also to a great extent the local government. The council had very extensive powers, for it was the sole legislative, administrative, and judicial machinery. It acted as supreme court, besides which each councillor served as justice in the inferior court of his own district. Its members likewise monopolized all of the other principal offices in the province. By commissions from England, Randolph was made collector of the customs, surveyor of the woods, deputy postmaster, and, to Wharton’s chagrin, secretary and registrar, for Wharton, because of his land and mining interest, had hoped to receive that commission himself. Instead, he was appointed judge of the new admiralty court, a post which gave him great power over the enforcement of the navigation acts.487 By council appointment, Usher was made treasurer, Stoughton deputy president, Wait Winthrop major-general of the militia, and Bulkley provost marshal-general.488
Wharton’s ideal of a government directing and encouraging business was realized in the provisional government. It appointed a great and standing committee of trade which was really a league of town committees, among whose members were included some of the resident councillors.489 It sent an agent to petition for changes in the new sugar imposts, and for the privilege of coining money.490 Furthermore, it sanctioned the bank of credit scheme, hoping that by providing a medium of currency the bank would be a great benefit to commerce.491 It forbade private individuals to trade with the Indians for furs anywhere in the Dominion except in New Hampshire without a licence from the government. However, Wharton himself was able to get from the council monopolistic privileges for the fur trade in his new Pejebscot Purchase.492
Wharton likewise found the new government as favorably disposed towards land speculation as towards commerce. The Million Purchase Company of which he and six other councillors were members petitioned the government to confirm its purchases in New Hampshire and to grant an addition in Massachusetts, including the townships of Concord, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Stow, and Dunstable, all to be formed into a county by the name of Merrimac, reserving the privilege of challenge to those who claimed rights to the soil. The president and council granted this petition.493 Of still greater interest to Wharton was the new government’s championship of the Atherton Company. The king had erected the Narragansett Country into a county and had added it as a separate unit to the Dominion. The president and council, in making a governmental settlement there, appointed three justices, two of whom were John Fones and Richard Smith, prominent resident proprietors. The latter was also commissionated sergeant-major and commanderin-chief of the militia of the county. The president and council then established a special commission to go to the Narragansett Country to “assert the authority granted by his Majesty’s Commission & to prevent the Road Islanders further incursions.” Of the fifteen members of this commission, five were councillors and seven were proprietors of the Atherton Company, Wharton and his brother-in-law Fitz-John Winthrop being both councillors and proprietors. The commission met at the home of Richard Smith at Rochester494 and after settling governmental affairs, took up the matter of land titles. Provision was made that squatters on the lands of the Atherton Company should treat with the proprietors or their committee, from whose decision they could appeal to the president and council.495 This committee, consisting of Wharton, Hutchinson, and Saffin, met with much hostility and hatred from the poor squatters who could show no title to the soil and who were dispossessed. One of them was arrested for calling Major Smith “a great fat gutted Rouge a dogg,” and Wharton “another fatt gutted Rouge a doublebelled dogg, … as for that Saffin, he did not well know what to make of him, but took him to be a Cunning Cheating Curr, but as for that Huchenson he thought he was a pretty honnest fellow but he fearred none so much as that Rouge Wharton.”496
In spite of their policy of self-interest the councillors met with very little opposition in their brief enjoyment of power. The probable explanation is that they took care to interfere as little as possible with the existing religious and political customs and practices. They believed that it was a great mistake on England’s part to remove the representative assembly, and at the very beginning of their administration petitioned England for re-establishment of representative government. It was this understanding of, and sympathy with, governmental and religious privileges, which made the administration a successful bridge between the old charter government and the Andros administration which followed. Because of this success, the councillors stood high in the favor of the Lords of Trade, and in spite of Randolph’s complaints they were all included in Andros’s council.497
Wharton held as prominent a place in the Andros government as in the provisional, and apparently expected very little if any change in the new administration’s economic and political interest. He and his friends were soon disillusioned, for they found that Andros blocked all their schemes for commercial profit and land aggrandizement. Andros vigorously enforced the navigation acts, he practically eliminated piracy, in which the Massachusetts ring were accused of being involved,498 and he opposed all attempts to regulate the currency. Wharton, like other merchants, was anxious to have the new government make a satisfactory settlement of the troublesome money question. The closing of the mint after the annulment of the charter had made money very scarce, because it decreased the actual amount in circulation. Hence money was the crying need when the pro-English party came into power. To their disappointment, the Lords of Trade decided not to grant the petition of the president and council for the privilege of coining money.499
The one remaining hope of the merchants was to improve currency conditions by a judicious regulation of the value of foreign and domestic coins, so they tried to persuade Andros to take some action to prevent the little money that was left from being transported out of the colony. Wharton presented a paper to the council in which he had worked out an intricate scheme for raising the value of both domestic and foreign money in such a ratio that neither would have a disastrous effect on the other, but both would remain in the colony. The farmers opposed this proposal because they believed it would be the same as reducing the price of agricultural products. Andros, interpreting his instructions too strictly, refused to allow any such change. Thus the merchants were worse off as to the money question than they had been under the old government, because the Dominion government would not regulate foreign coinage and was forbidden to coin money.500
The adverse settlement of the matter had a serious effect on commerce at a time when the latter was having many other difficulties. The strict enforcement of the acts of trade greatly reduced the amount of illegal foreign trade, by which articles were obtained for the purchase of enumerated products in the southern and island colonies. Consequently there was a decrease in the amount of enumerated products purchased, which in turn affected the trade with the mother country, a trade in which the colonies paid usually in enumerated products or hard money. Very soon the little money that had remained in the province was drained off, so now the merchants had neither money nor sufficient enumerated products to use in exchange trade with England. The result was most disastrous. Merchant after merchant went bankrupt and shops were closing every day in Boston. Even Wharton with all his wealth was almost impoverished. The reason for the alienation of the merchant class against Andros is therefore apparent.501
Wharton was as concerned over Andros’s disapproval of land speculation as he was over his lack of understanding of business problems. Although the Lords of Trade had empowered Andros to grant the lands which had reverted to the king upon the charter cancellation, they reserved to themselves action on the petitions from Wharton and the land companies, probably because of the size of the coveted tracts. However, they decided to ask Andros to investigate the claims of the petitioners and to give his advice concerning the wisdom of making such extensive grants.502 Andros reported adversely. The titles to the Million Purchase he found were based mostly on Indian grants or purchases, and consequently worthless legally. Of the many claims to the Narragansett Country, he believed only those of Rhode Island valid, but since Wharton had made improvements on a part of it, Andros reported that he had granted to him about seventeen hundred acres, reserving to the king a quit-rent of ten shillings per annum. Andros urged the Lords of Trade to settle the claims of the proprietors as soon as possible, so that the land could be patented to others who were in possession and to those who would make settlements.503 Concerning Wharton’s Pejebscot Purchase, Andros reported that the titles were defective, and he expressed his disapproval of granting large tracts to individuals because it hindered settlement.504
Andros’s opposition to what he called the “engrossment of large tracts of land” affected the “grandees,” as his commercial and currency policy had the great merchants. Unwisely he had antagonized the two classes which had at the outset supported his administration. One more false step united the large and small landowners alike in opposition to him. By his instructions he was given discretionary power to reserve quit-rents in confirming old titles to land. He apparently thought it necessary to force a recognition of English land law, partly to correct defective titles and partly to curb the spirit of independence. Confirmation of title required payment of fees. Coming at a time when money was scarce, this fee naturally was a great hardship for the small landowner, and still worse for the large landowner, who was required to take out a separate title for every piece of land. For Wharton the policy was ruinous. Added to the financial burden of his recent extensive land purchases in Maine and to considerable money invested in the settlement of the Narragansett Country, he must now pay many fees for confirmation of his titles and quit-rents of two shillings sixpence for every hundred acres of land. And all this at a time when the decline in trade and the scarcity of money threatened to wreck the fortune which he had invested in commerce. The work of his whole life was threatened with destruction by this unfortunate combination of events. Wharton felt that nothing could be done with Andros, who plainly could not see the harm he was doing. Wharton therefore determined to go to England at once to see what could be achieved through his influence at court.505
Arrived in England, Wharton worked with his customary vigor and shrewdness for the land patents and the chartering of the mining company. He had to admit in a letter to Wait Winthrop in November, 1687, that he had “made noe ꝑgess in any business of concernmt,” but he reported optimistically that “some lords and persons of quality” who had seen Andros’s report thought “it may prove more to our advantage then was intended.”506 He had great confidence in Lord Culpeper, the official agent of the Atherton Company, who promised “to make ye best out.” Two months later, Lord Culpeper, apparently convinced that no royal patent to the company would be forthcoming, petitioned the king to instruct Andros to confirm to the proprietors as individuals the lands they had purchased, the whole not to exceed 60,000 acres and to be surveyed at their own cost. The petition was referred to the Lords of Trade, who recommended granting it on condition that the usual quit-rents be reserved and that all disputes which Andros could not decide be referred to Whitehall. Practically the same decision was made concerning the Million Purchase and the Pejebscot estate. No royal grants were made, but instead, it was left to Andros to confirm such titles as seemed to him advisable, having a regard for the other claimants and the squatters.507
As has been previously noted, Wharton’s efforts in behalf of the mining company brought results, but not without delay and modification of the original plan. Wharton, as usual, overreached himself in asking that the company be given such extensive privileges and powers. Had the charter draught been simpler at the outset it is probable that it would have passed the seals before it was overtaken by the revolution.
After many months of hard work, Wharton’s hope of settlement of the land projects slowly faded away. It became apparent that everything hinged on Andros, since the Lords of Trade would make no decision without his advice. Only one thing remained to be done, and that was to work for Andros’s removal, and for the appointment of someone who better understood New England conditions. Consequently Wharton began to coöperate with those who, under the leadership of Increase Mather, were in England petitioning the king for changes in the Dominion government. James promised certain religious and economic concessions, but would give no hope of extensive political reforms. Then came the signs of approaching revolution, and Wharton again became hopeful. “Great Revolutions seem to be hasting on,” he wrote his brother-in-law, “out of which New England may, I hope, find deliverance.”508 But after the revolution Mather petitioned for the restoration of the old charter with grant of additional powers, a thing that Wharton and his friends could not approve. Nor did the Lords of Trade, who were already considering a more extensive use of the Dominion principle in the colonies.509 They recommended in the spring of 1689 the removal of Andros and the appointment of a new governor of New England, New York, and the Jerseys. An order in council followed and the lords were directed to consider candidates for the position.510 Again there was hope of an administration sympathetic toward business interests and the land projects. Moreover, the mining enterprise would receive the favorable attention which investors could not give it when there was uncertainty and danger of return to the former colonial governments in New England. However, almost immediately the charter supporters began to fight this decision. At this critical time, when only careful generalship could save his own fortune and give any chance of permanent political success to the moderates, Wharton, worn out by the strain and worry of the last two years, became ill, and died on May 14, 1689. He left to his family an estate so heavily burdened with debt that two of his daughters, Sarah and Bethia, were later forced to support themselves by keeping a little shop in Boston.511
To make the tragedy of his death more complete, shortly afterward news arrived of the Boston revolution, an event which marked the ruin of the Dominion government which Wharton had helped to build. Mather now used this report to strengthen the charter cause. If Wharton had lived, those who thought with him would have had as able a leader at court as the charter supporters had in Mather,512 and the scales which balanced uncertainly when the king first heard of the revolt, might have settled on the side of the Wharton faction and the Dominion, against the revolutionists, as in New York. In New England there still remained a considerable number of people who preferred the Dominion government to the old charter régime, in spite of the efforts made by adherents of the latter to win their support by a great extension of the suffrage in the months following the revolution. Charter champions insisted that only about a seventh of the inhabitants favored the Dominion, but even if this were true the minority represented a group strong through wealth and social position. Lacking leaders, their efforts were scattered and without effect. They were unable to prevent the permanent disintegration of the Dominion and the return to charter government.513
The royal charter of 1691, because it did not restore the Congregationalists to their former political power, marks an epoch in the constitutional development of Massachusetts. The king reserved the right to choose the, governor and gave the suffrage to property-holders. Because of these provisions, the two parties were more evenly balanced in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. Never again was the suffrage denied to substantial propertied men like Wharton because of religious nonconformity, nor was it possible for a small aristocratic ring to control the government in the interests of its members. Both parties changed somewhat, — the one losing its decidedly pro-English attitude, the other modifying its separatistic religious and anti-English position. Moreover, new issues brought new alignments and new factions. However, the general character of the eighteenth-century parties was largely determined by the two rival groups of the seventeenth century, — the pro-English, and the supporters of the old charter government. Wharton was typical of the one group, Increase Mather of the other.514 The seventeenth-century Puritans have bequeathed to us a rich inheritance of ideals, but we owe much also to those other colonial Englishmen who saw New England, not as a place of refuge for a chosen people, but as the frontier of England, with the governmental principles of the mother country transplanted and modified to suit the conditions of the new world. From both of these strands the fabric of New England life and institutions was woven.
Mr. Lawrence Shaw Mayo presented the following communication on
JOHN LANGDON’S SPEECH
A NEW HAMPSHIRE TRADITION
God bless New Hampshire! — from her granite peaks
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.
So exclaimed Whittier in the opening lines of an anti-slavery poem which he wrote about 1845. Few of us are likely to quarrel with the poet for giving New Hampshire his benediction, or for identifying General Stark with the voice of freedom. But what claim to fame has John Langdon of Portsmouth, that his name should be linked with that of Stark? He was, to be sure, a leader of the bold party that captured Fort William and Mary and removed the powder in broad daylight in December, 1774. But for that matter so was John Sullivan of Durham. Langdon was for a time a member of the Continental Congress, as were at least a half-dozen other New Hampshire worthies during the war. He was present at Burgoyne’s surrender in 1777;515 but it was Whipple who shared with Stark the command of the New Hampshire militia, and it was Whipple who was one of those appointed to sign the articles of capitulation when Burgoyne had made up his mind to yield.516
Whence, then, this preëminence of John Langdon which entitles him as a revolutionary hero to take his place beside Stark? The answer is: He is said to have financed with his own resources Stark’s expedition in the summer of 1777, the expedition that more than justified itself at Bennington. If Langdon did this, Whittier was right and the name of Langdon may well be ranked with that of John Stark whenever New Hampshire’s revolutionary history is brought to mind.
What happened was briefly this. When the unexpected news of the abandonment of Ticonderoga by the American army reached Exeter the leaders of the revolutionary party were greatly disturbed, and well they might be. With Ticonderoga gone there was no reason to suppose that Burgoyne would not invade the New Hampshire Grants and New Hampshire itself. Something must be done, and it must be done at once. The Committee of Safety called an immediate meeting of the Assembly. The Assembly including the Council met as a Committee of the Whole and discussed the critical situation. The scheme agreed upon was to divide the whole militia of the state into two brigades. Whipple was to command one and Stark the other. Then every fourth man in Stark’s brigade and in three of the regiments under Whipple’s command was to be drafted into immediate military service for two months for the defence of the frontier. Of this force Stark was to be the commander, and every drafted man was to receive one month’s pay in advance. All this was very practical, but it meant an immediate outlay of about seven thousand pounds at a time when there was almost no money in the treasury.517 John Langdon was a well-to-do merchant and shipbuilder of Portsmouth. He was also the speaker of the House of Representatives. Somehow Stark’s rustic army was raised, and a month later the fight at Bennington determined Burgoyne not to attempt another foray in the direction of New Hampshire.
These are the bare facts of the special session of July 17–19, 1777, and its direct consequences. But biographers and historians have not been content with the bare facts. The situation held dramatic possibilities and posterity has developed them to the utmost. The most interesting development is the speech which Langdon is said to have made when he offered to finance Stark’s expedition. You may read it in any one of a dozen books, but probably it appears at its best in Trevelyan’s American Revolution.518
Their Speaker, John Langdon of Portsmouth, [wrote Trevelyan] addressed them in words which it is well to quote in full as a specimen of the oratory employed during those sternly practical times, in the unsophisticated regions situated to the North of the Merrimac River. “I have,” he said, “three thousand dollars in hard money. I will pledge my plate for three thousand more. I have seventy hogsheads of Tobago rum, which shall be sold for the most it will bring. These are at the service of the State. If we succeed in defending our homes, I may be remunerated; if we do not, the property will be of no value to me. Our old friend Stark, who so nobly sustained the honour of our State at Bunker’s Hill, may be safely entrusted with the conduct of the enterprise, and we will check the progress of Burgoyne.”
It is worth noting that, in the many nineteenth-century works in which these patriotic phrases have been repeated, the accepted version of them seems to have been that established in 1834 by Edward Everett in his Life of John Stark in Jared Sparks’s American Biography.519
Where did Everett find the story and to a certain extent the rhetoric? This I found to be a difficult question. Belknap, writing in the 1780’s, when Langdon was at the height of his popularity, mentioned neither his speech nor his patriotic offer, — though Langdon was a subscriber to Belknap’s admirable History of New Hampshire. On the other hand the Marquis de Chastellux, who drank tea with Langdon at Portsmouth one November afternoon in 1782 — just five years and a few months after the incident in question — seems to have heard of a speech made by Langdon at some time during Burgoyne’s campaign. According to him Langdon addressed the Assembly in these words: “Gentlemen, you may talk as long as you please, but I know that the enemy is on our frontiers, and that I am going to take my pistols, and mount my horse, to combat with my fellow-citizens.”520
For forty years after the publication of Chastellux’s Travels I find no quotation of Langdon’s speech, even in the eulogies which followed his death in 1819. Suddenly in 1828 it bobs up again. On July 4 of that year Isaac Hill, delivering a pro-Jackson harangue before the Republicans of Portsmouth, played upon local pride whenever he could do so. Hill was a Jacksonian, a Concord man, a politician, and the editor of The New Hampshire Patriot. What is more, he was, in 1828, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. The most conspicuous Democrat Portsmouth had thus far produced was John Langdon, and Hill took care that no one in the audience should fail to see the political connection between Langdon and Jackson. Among other references to Langdon’s glorious record he related an incident which he said “the late Judge Walker of Concord,” who was “a member of the provincial assembly” in 1777, had often told. The following is Isaac Hill’s version of the story:
Intelligence was received that Burgoyne’s army was marching down upon our infant settlements, through the then wilds of Vermont, and that his was a war of extermination. Consternation palsied every bosom: the men shuddered and attempted to conceal their fears — women and children broke forth in shrieks of agony. The provincial legislature was in session at Exeter when the appalling news arrived: the members of that body were discouraged and disheartened. The public credit was gone — they had not the means to subsist a regiment, if they could raise one: the men of New-Hampshire had already gone to what they supposed the full length of their ability. Langdon was speaker of the assembly; and on the instant he makes this proposition: “I have (said he) three thousand dollars in hard money — I will pledge the plate in my house for three thousand more; and I have seventy hogsheads of Tobago rum which shall be disposed of for what it will bring. — These, and the avails of these, are at the service of the State; if we defend our homes and our fire sides, I may get my pay — if we do not defend them, property will be of no value to me.”521
Hill’s address was printed at Concord in 1828. The similarity of his version of Langdon’s speech to that given by Everett in his Life of Stark, published six years later, is so striking that one can hardly believe that Everett did more than to polish and amplify the somewhat raw material which he found in Hill’s harangue. Besides polishing it he put into Langdon’s mouth an additional glowing phrase or two about “our old friend Stark who so nobly sustained the honor of our State at Bunker’s Hill.” Where Everett found that additional sentence I have been unable to discover; but when one considers that he was writing a life of Stark, to which Langdon was only incidental, it is not difficult — though it may be unfair — to form a conjecture.
When all is said and done, there seem to be three fairly safe conclusions that may be drawn in regard to the tradition of John Langdon’s speech. The first is that he made a patriotic speech before the Assembly in the summer of 1777, which was still remembered in Portsmouth five years later when the Marquis de Chastellux visited the place. The second is that the phraseology of his speech, as recalled by Judge Walker of Concord, first found its way into print in 1828, when Isaac Hill’s Address to the Republicans of Portsmouth was published. And the third is that Edward Everett, treating Hill’s version with more or less freedom, gave to the speech the form and phraseology in which it has persisted for almost a century. What John Langdon actually said to the New Hampshire Assembly in July, 1777, is a question I leave with you.
Mr. Benjamin Loring Young spoke on the presentation to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of a portrait of Sir Henry Vane. He said, in part:
My pleasant task this evening is to describe briefly the circumstances under which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has received a portrait of Sir Henry Vane as a joint gift from Baron Barnard and the Society of Colonial Wars.522 This portrait is, perhaps, the most interesting historical gift which the Commonwealth has ever received.
Christopher William Vane, Baron Barnard, is the tenth holder of the title which was established in 1698, when Christopher Vane, of Barnard Castle in the County Palatine of Durham, son of our Massachusetts Governor, was elevated to the peerage by William III as Baron Barnard. The present baron was born in 1888, educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, served in the war and, according to records available at the State House, has been Major of the Sixth Durham Light Infantry. He is seventh in direct line of descent from Sir Henry Vane.
He learned of the desire of the Commonwealth to acquire a portrait of his ancestor, Sir Henry Vane, through the activity of the English Speaking Union in London. The Union in turn had been asked to assist in this endeavor by Mr. Edward Francis Gray, Consul General of His Britannic Majesty in Boston. The Baron was the possessor of several portraits of Sir Henry Vane and, wishing to assist the Commonwealth, investigated the subject and found another available portrait which he had sent to his seat at Raby Castle and from there to our State House.
This portrait coming direct to us from Raby Castle brings to our minds the scenes and memories of many centuries of English history. We think of most of our early Puritan Governors as New Englanders who left the old world behind and came here to find a permanent home. Sir Henry Vane, however, ties together the old world and the new. He is remembered in history rather as an English statesman than a Colonial Governor of Massachusetts. His history and achievements are, of course, well known. John Fiske called him “one of the greatest Puritan statesmen of that heroic age,” and said that he was a “thorough republican and enthusiastic lover of liberty, … spiritually akin to Jefferson and Samuel Adams.”523
Within a few days Vane’s portrait will be received by his Excellency the Governor, on behalf of the Commonwealth, to remain forever the property of the people of Massachusetts. The portrait is by an unknown artist, but we have Lord Barnard’s statement that it is unquestionably a likeness of Sir Henry and in all probability an original contemporary work. The expense of its purchase is being shared equally by Lord Barnard and the Massachusetts Society of Colonial Wars. Lord Barnard has sent me a letter with a few lines of his own which he has suggested I read in his behalf when the formal presentation of the portrait takes place. These lines are as follows:
Raby Castle,
Staindrop,
Darlington.
21st March, 1925,
Gentlemen,
I consider myself both fortunate and privileged in no small degree, in that I have been able, in conjunction with the Society of Colonial Wars, to be instrumental in assisting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to acquire the portrait of one of its former Governors — Sir Henry Vane the Younger, of Raby Castle.
It is a privilege for a direct descendant of Sir Henry Vane, as I am, to be in the position in which I find myself to-day, and I am delighted to think that my small efforts have assisted the important and historic Commonwealth of Massachusetts in adding to the treasures of its State House, and to feel that my ancestor’s portrait will be received into the keeping of a people with so great a history.
Of the portrait itself, I fear I can say but little. It is very similar to others which I have seen, but at the same time is not exactly alike to any. It follows the style of the portrait of Sir Henry in the National Gallery, London (by Dobson) and might be by one of his pupils.
Gentlemen,
I have the honour to be,
Your obedient servant
Barnard.
I think we can assure the Baron that during the three centuries of the existence of Massachusetts as the home of a free people we have held none of our Governors in greater honor or deeper reverence than his distinguished forbear, Sir Henry Vane, and we can assure the Baron not merely of the deep gratitude which we feel toward him and the Society of Colonial Wars but also of a hearty welcome whenever he sees fit to follow the course of his distinguished ancestor and sets foot himself on the shores of Massachusetts Bay.
Mr. William C. Lane read a paper on “Harvard College Vacations,” which is to be printed elsewhere.524
Mr. Albert Matthews read some extracts from the Diary of Josiah Cotton, speaking as follows:
Little is known of student life at Harvard College in the early days, and though accounts are eagerly sought for, few are found. The one I am about to read, though not written until perhaps thirty years after graduation and so lacking the contemporaneous touch, yet contains something of interest.
In the Plymouth Church Records is an amusing account of the “offences committed by Mris Dorothy Clarke,” the wife of Nathaniel Clark, among them Mrs. Clark’s “violent carriage to a child of the pastors,” which consisted of her being “in a passion, when she pulled the lad out of the tree with her hand, & then threw him over the fence,” and of “putting a key into the childs mouth,” causing it to bleed; and it was asserted, seemingly not without reason, that Mrs. Clark “in divers words & carriages showed an evill frame of spirit.”525 The youth subjected to the indignities of the Plymothean Amazon was the writer of the Diary from which I quote — namely, Josiah Cotton (1680–1756), son of the Rev. John Cotton (1640–1699; H. C. 1657) of Plymouth and Joanna (Rosseter) Cotton, and grandson of the Rev. John Cotton (1585–1652) of Boston. In an earlier portion of his Diary, the incident is mentioned in a letter written by his mother January 19, 1692, in which she gives “a catalogue of the most remarkable” mercies accorded the boy: “Mercy 9. You remember how near you was to death by the hurt & ffall from a tree: There was but a hands breadth betwixt you and death. Then O the goodness & longsuffering of God!”
Josiah Cotton’s account of his school and college days is as follows:
My younger days were attended with the follies & vanities incident to youth; howsoever I quickly learnt to read, without going to any school that I remember — I began to learn Latin under ye Revd Mr Wisewall526 at Duxborough, with whom I continued some months; & he then being invited to a voyage for England in ye countrie’s service, I was sent to school at Barnstable where the Revd Mr. Jonathan Russell527 was my instructor, with whom I tarried about two years, and then about ye year 1692 removd to Mr. Joseph Dassett’s528 school at Boston, under whose tuition I was till God took him away by death: In whose school succeeded Mr. Peter Burr,529 to which (after I had been a small space again wth Mr Wisewall) I returned, & continued with Mastr Burr until my admission into ye Colledge. My school exercises were not attended with that difficulty that some meet with, by reason of a memory which God had favored me with — My school masters were capable & faithfull from whom I met with very good quarter.
I was admitted into ye Colledge Jun. 29. 1694. The Revd Mr Increase Mather being then President, Mr. Leverett530 & Mr Brattle531 Fellows of Harvard Colledge, who signed my admittatur. Mr Leverett was my Tutor & Mr Brattle my Patron, tho. brought up at my father’s charge — thro. ffavour, not merit I happened to be placed the second of the Class Mr Symes532 being the first. The winter of the first year I livd at Taunton under the Tuition of ye Revd Mr Adams533 now Minister at New Londn The other parts of that year I livd at ye College. The second winter I kept school for three months for ye Town of Plymouth in my fathers house & under his inspection — The third year I continued at Colledge; in the fall whereof, William Maxwell & John Eyre534 both belonging to ye Colledge stating on fresh pond Nov. 30, 1696 [were drowned] To the first of wch I was a bearer: those that had ye ordering of that affair, appointing ye two first of Senr Class to be his bearers — Those are the two scholars referred to in my Father’s & Mother’s letter;535 on occasion of whose sudden deaths, my Uncle Mather preacht at Cambridge, an awful sermon on Eccles. 9. 12. Man knoweth not his time; & inasmuch as ye case is certainly so, surely time ought carefully to be redeemed; & yet how apt is man, even to set his invention upon the stretch to find out methods to pass it away; & such methods too as have no vertue in them & can scarce be justified but by the numbers that pursue the same — This year I learnt (among other arts) to smoke it, but might have improved my time much better, for so much time is consumed in sleeping & eating & other necessary diversions of life, that we have no need to continue those that are altogether needless. This is a practice I should not have run readily into at home, for my Father & Mother never inclined to it, but example abroad brought me into it. Howsoever our Class did some penance about this time for their faults being obliged to recite at five o’clock in ye winter mornings yt Mr Leverett might seasonably attend ye General Court at Boston being Representative for ye town of Cambridge. In the winter of the fourth year I dwelt & studied at home, it being customary for many of the scholars to draw off in ye winter tho. perhaps in the general not advantageous. Sometime this year Mr. Leverett removed from Colledge, but tarried so long with us, that our class were put under no other tutor.
Mr. Brattle also left the Colledge about this time. These two had been Fellows & Tutors at ye Colledge many years & therein done very good service, being some years the Chief Rulers there, & the Moderators at the Commencements,536 when President Mather was in England — And if I may allow myself a small digression or excursion now & then, I would here insert a remark made on these two gentlemen in conjunction with Dr Oliver537 another of ye same class, namely, That they were born in the same Town viz Boston, Educated at the same school,538 admitted in ye College ye same year, took their degrees together, all settled in Cambridge & as it were in ye same street; one a Professor of ye Law, the other of Divinity, the third of Physick; and all eminent in their kind; which brings to mind ye antient controversy
“Law, Physick & Divinitie,
Were at a loss which of the three
Should have superioritie”
which I shall not take upon me here to determine tho I think my Cousin Cotton has done it in his Letter Pa. 8.539
July 6th 1698 I took my first Degree under the moderating of President Mather and disputed on that question an Cometos cunt meteora, which Mr Hubbard540 of our class held negatively — After ye Commencement I removd from Cambridge to Plymo. & took a journey to Bristoll, which being over I set out for Salisbury, Exeter, Marblehead &c. and in the fall waited upon my father at Boston till his sailing to Carolina, being the last of his children that saw him.
1 See our Publications, ix. 478.
2 The Quinquennial Catalogue gives 63 names. The member of the Class who did not graduate in 1771 was Amos Windship. As a matter of fact he never received the degree of A.B., but in 1790 was given the degrees of A.M. and M.D.: see our Publications, xxv. 144, 162 note 2.
3 P. 2/2. Draper continued to print the sheets of Quaestiones in 1772 and 1773, but the Theses of these years were printed by Thomas and John Fleet. In 1774 and 1775 no Commencement sheets were issued. In 1776 Powars and Willis were the printers, but the Fleets were again employed to print these sheets from 1777 to 1785.
The question of how many days before Commencement the programmes were printed is of some interest. In 1771 Commencement came on July 17. A writer (p. 13, below) says that a Class committee was chosen “about a fortnight before Commencement,” — i.e. about July 3. A rumor that a new printer had been selected reached Draper by July 11, but clearly the programme had not then been printed. Cf. our Publications, xviii. 328 note.
4 Doubtless the custom was of long standing. In 1702 Cotton Mather, in his account of the College says, “At the Commencement, it has been the Annual Custom for the Batchelors to publish a Sheet of Theses, … and those Theses they dedicate as handsomely as they can, to the Persons of Quality, but especially the Governour of the Province, whose Patronage the Colledge would be recommended unto. The Masters do, in an half sheet, without any Dedication, publish only the Quæstiones pro Modulo discutiendæ,” etc. (Magnalia, bk. iv. ch. i., § 7, p. 131).
An earlier glimpse of the same custom is seen in an entry in the diary of William Adams (H. C. 1671). Under date of August 2, 1671 he notes, “Was printed our theses for ye commencement” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, I. 13). He would hardly have mentioned the fact unless he and his classmates had had a hand in the affair.
5 Underneath Draper’s communication is the following: “[Just as the above was finished, a Letter came to Hand from Cambridge, upon this Affair, but shall not take up any more Room this Week, perhaps it may be in one Corner of our next.]”
6 For a memoir of Dr. Thomas Young, see our Publications, xi. 2–54. Mr. Anderson tells me that Dr. Young attended Richard Draper’s nephew, Samuel Draper, who died March 21, 1767 (our Publications, ix. 438 note 2), in his last illness, that Richard Draper was dissatisfied with Dr. Young’s treatment of the case, and that a bitter feud ever after existed between Richard Draper and Dr. Young.
7 Neither “type” (as here used) nor “typo” (in the same sense) is recognized in the Oxford English Dictionary. The Century Dictionary recognizes “typo,” though with no examples, but not “type.” In his American Glossary (ii. 913), R. H. Thornton, though citing examples of “typo” dated 1816 and 1902, does not recognize “type.” Both words were in more or less common use in this country before 1800.
8 William Tryon, Governor of North Carolina.
9 P. 3/1. It was also printed in the Spy of August 22 (p. 3/3).
10 It seems more likely that Thomas inserted his notice in the Boston Gazette because that paper appeared three days before his own.
11 See p. 64 note, below.
12 G. Eyre-Todd, Highland Clans of Scotland (1913), ii. 334–346.
13 Pardoned by ordinances of Parliament, October 20, 1651 (Suffolk Deeds, i. 7).
14 Suffolk Deeds, i. 4 ff.
15 Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), i. 264–265. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews for this helpful reference.
16 On the authority of the Rev. Everett S. Stackpole of Bath, Maine, who has extensive manuscript material on these Scotch prisoners.
17 S. A. Bates, Ancient Iron Works at Braintree (1898), pp. 1 ff.
18 Essex Antiquarian, x. 81.
19 They went into the battle of Worcester free men, hopeful and confident. They were young, John then being only about twenty-two years old. A few hours later the army in which they fought was crushed and defeated by Cromwell and they were no longer free. Instead of suffering the fate of soldiers taken by Cromwell in Ireland, where it is said that he put to the sword several hundred thousand of his prisoners, the Scotch soldiers were sold into servitude and sent to America. As soon as they arrived in Boston and were disposed of, probably out of family pride they adopted the surname Tosh, the last syllable of their clan name.
Whether the name Tosh was selected by accident or by design and instinctively because of the fact that it was nearly a restoration of the ancient Gaelic name of the family, “Toisech,” can only be conjectured. I am indebted to President Robinson for the suggestion that possibly the prisoners, wittingly or unwittingly, had gone back to the Gaelic root for their substitute surname. The Gaelic form of Mackintosh is “Mac-an-Toisich,” the son of the leader, or Thane’s son. “Toisech,” the nominative case, in Gaelic signifies leader or chieftain. The prefix “mackin” thus signifies “son of the,” and “Mackintosh” therefore means “son of the leader.” The spelling “Toish” adopted by John Mackintosh is even closer to “Toisech.” He may have been enough of a scholar to have known about the Gaelic root. It is significant, however, that as soon as he once more was a free man he restored the surname Mackintosh.
20 Not all the early Mackintoshes of Boston and its vicinity are descended from John Mackintosh of Dedham. Some of them who came from Bristol, Rhode Island, and who married into the Royal family, have no close connection with the Dedham family. Peter Mackintosh, the Boston blacksmith, who is sometimes confused with Ebenezer and incorrectly called the rioter, may have been a descendant of John Mackintosh of Dedham, but his relationship to Ebenezer cannot be stated. If Peter’s grandfather came from Scotland, as is said to be the tradition in his branch of the family, they were related only in a most distant way, and perhaps not at all. Cf. p. 52 note 2, below.
It is a significant fact, however, that Moses Mackintosh, father of Ebenezer, had a brother named John, and a John Mackentosh was married to Jane Blair in Boston, November 11, 1731 (Boston Records, xxviii. 173), only three years before the marriage of Moses in Dorchester. If this was in fact his brother, and this John was the father of Peter Mackintosh, then Peter and Ebenezer were cousins. Cf. O. A. Roberts, History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, ii. 423, where it is said, on the authority of a manuscript in the Peter Mackintosh branch of the family, that the grandfather of Peter Mackintosh, Jr. (born January 3, 1788) was named John and came from Scotland. The services of a trained genealogist will perhaps be needed to establish the relationship, if any, between Peter and Ebenezer.
On the other hand, the McIntoshes of Needham were rather close relatives of Ebenezer. Col. William McIntosh of Needham was a half-brother of Moses, the father of Ebenezer. Col. McIntosh served with credit as an officer in the French and Indian War. He had a son named Ebenezer, who thus was a cousin of Ebenezer of Boston. Col. William McIntosh spelled his surname differently from the other members of the family. He kept a tavern in Needham which was quite famous in its day, and is described by John Rowe as a convivial place. (Cf. G. K. Clarke, History of Needham, p. 43.)
21 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lxvii. 24–25.
22 Dedham Records: Births, Marriages and Deaths, p. 35; Boston Records, xxviii. 186.
23 The surname of this patriot appears under four different spellings, and members of the family in this country have at least a half-dozen other ways of spelling it. The spelling that Ebenezer himself used was Mackintosh, but his name is usually spelled McIntosh in the Boston town records; it is McKintosh in John Rowe’s Diary, and in his military records in New Hampshire; while it is McKentosh in the 1790 Census of New Hampshire. In the United States as a whole, to-day without doubt the favorite spelling is McIntosh. The name of a county in Georgia is spelled in that form, and in the Boston Directory for 1923 there are seventy-seven names spelled McIntosh and only thirteen spelled Mackintosh. There are ten people in Boston spelling it MacIntosh and five Macintosh. The rubber coat inventor spelled his name Macintosh. In whatever way the name is spelled the original source is the same Scotch Clan from Inverness-shire.
24 On November 19, 1725, Joseph Wight of Dedham was appointed guardian of Moses Mackintosh, then seventeen years old (Suffolk Probate Files, no. 5166).
25 “The effect of warning out as thus practised upon persons who remained in the town after being warned was to relieve the town from all obligation to aid them if they became poor and in need of help or support. They were inhabitants of the town for all purposes except being helped if they needed help. They paid taxes, they could vote, they could hold office, they could perform all the duties of citizenship and of tax-payers, and yet, if they had been warned out, they could have no help from the town. They might be taxed for the support of others who were in need, but, when they came to be in need, they were entitled to no help from the taxes of the town. They were spoken of among their neighbors as persons who had ‘been warned’” (J. H. Benton, Warning Out in New England, 1911, p. 116).
26 Records of the Supreme Judicial Court, no. 89, 905.
27 Boston Records, xxiii. 72.
28 Massachusetts Province Laws, xx. 272. It seems not improbable that the helping hand of Col. William McIntosh of Needham was behind the placing of Moses Mackintosh at the Castle, because in a letter dated Needham, January 31, 1778, to Caleb Crafts of Brookline, the Colonel says that the transports are soon “Expected for the purpose of Carring Burgoynes’ army to Europ” (Harriet F. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, p. 382), and gives directions for the detaching of 86 men to be sent to the Castle to do duty there until the troops are embarked.
29 Massachusetts Archives, xci. 302.
30 Id. xcii. 179.
31 Suffolk Deeds, li. 153.
32 Boston Records, xxviii. 186.
33 xxi. 88, xxiv. 230.
34 xxi. 249.
35 Dedham Records: Births, Marriages and Deaths, p. 119.
36 The signature of Ebenezer Mackintosh which is reproduced herewith is the only one known to be in existence. The signature is in a firm hand, as if the writer were accustomed to the use of a pen. He spells the surname as did his ancestors, although his children wrote it “McIntosh.” The signature is attached as witness to a contract executed at Newbury, Vermont, September 27, 1774, a few months after he left Boston. The contract is signed by John Young and he agrees to do certain masonry on a house to be erected by Col. Thomas Johnson (1742–1819). Col. Johnson was one of the wealthiest men in that section of Vermont and the house he built is still standing. The frame was put up the day the news of the battle of Lexington and Concord reached Newbury. The original of this contract is in the Johnson Papers in the Tenney Memorial Library at Newbury. It was placed at my disposal by Frederic Palmer Wells, the historian of Newbury, Rye-gate and Barnet (Vermont).
37 Massachusetts Archives, xciii. 147a.
38 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 31.
39 A. Holmes, Annals of America, ii. 82–83.
40 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 22–23; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, x. 308; S. Sewall, History of Woburn, p. 551.
41 Massachusetts Archives, xcvi. 437.
42 Boston Records, xix. 120.
43 Cf. our Publications, viii. 90–92, 104, xii. 288–294, xvii. 314 note, xviii. 12–14.
44 Boston News Letter, November 8, 1764.
45 J. Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 76.
46 Boston Records, xvi. 132.
47 Boston Records, xvi. 70.
48 xvi. 166, 203, 235.
49 xx. 261.
50 Samuel Hughes became a Loyalist at the time of the Revolution.
51 November 18, 1767, Boston Records, xx. 277.
Mackintosh received only limited financial return from the discharge of the office of sealer of leather. The fees must necessarily have constituted a relatively small part of his income. There were four sealers of leather in Boston at this period, whereas a decade or so before there had been six. The law provided that in addition to the regular fees, travel fees of three pence per mile should be paid to the sealers for distances above one mile travelled by them in the discharge of their duty. Inasmuch, however, as the extreme limits of the town of Boston were only about a mile apart, and the south part of the town was a long narrow neck of land on which no tanner or currier was likely to locate, it is doubtful if any travel fees were ever collected by the Boston sealers of leather. The law by which Mackintosh and his associates were governed, offered many opportunities for disputes between the sealers and the tanners and curriers: see “The County and Town Officer, or an Abridgment of the Laws of the Province of the Massachusets-Bay. By a Gentlemen” (Boston, 1768), pp. 72–73.
52 Records of the Supreme Judicial Court, no. 86,536.
53 See Jared Ingersoll’s Letters relating to the Stamp-Act (1766), pp. 14–16.
54 The tree was so named on September 11, 1765. The supplement to the Boston Gazette of Monday, September 16, said: “The Great Tree at the South End of the Town, upon which the Effigies of a Stamp Master was lately hung, was honour’d last Wednesday with the Name of, The Tree of Liberty; a large Plate of Copper, with that Inscription, in Letters of Gold, being fixed thereon” (p. 2/2). Cf. the Boston News Letter of September 12, p. 1/1.
55 When the Sons of Liberty and the South Enders were opposed to any British official or sympathizer, their state of mind was shown by the appearance of effigies on Liberty Tree. By the same token when satisfaction or joy prevailed the same Liberty Tree reflected their change of attitude. Thus when the news of the repeal of the Stamp Act was received in Boston the tree was elaborately decorated with lanterns and there was general rejoicing. As Mackintosh had led in the disorders and acts of disapproval, so did he lead in the expression of satisfaction, and as First Captain General in charge of illuminations on Liberty Tree, it is reasonably safe to assume that the celebration of the repeal of the hated Stamp Act was at least partly under his direction.
The news of the repeal reached Boston May 16, and May 19 was selected as a date for general rejoicing. On that night the tree was bedecked-with many lanterns — one account says 108 were hung on the boughs — and the spectacle must have been pleasing. The lantern owned by the Bostonian Society is in almost perfect condition. It is stoutly built, hexagonal in shape, and has a graded turret, with a circular fastener at the extreme top. Within are two sockets for the candles. The whole is about a foot and a half high. This lantern was given to the Bostonian Society by the estate of J. H. Hunneman in 1889. An inscription in gilt upon the bottom of the lantern shows that it was originally owned by Eleazer Johnson:
This
LANTERN
Was on the Northwest
Bough, (opposite Frog-lane), of the
LIBERTY TREE
Illuminated last night with
Several hundred Lanterns, on the
Arrival of the News of the
“Repeal of the Infamous
GEORGE GRENVILLE
Stamp Act.”
Boston May 21st 1766.
Eleazer Johnson
It is probable that Eleazer Johnson, who at this time had a store at Number 9 Long Wharf, took the lantern from his own stock, as he dealt in a variety of metal articles ranging from fish-hooks to anchors, dealing also in some dry goods and in wine. The inscription on the lantern purports to have been placed there on May 21, 1766, two days after the festivities at the tree. The inscription for the most part is in script, with the words “Lantern, Liberty Tree, and George Grenville” in large ordinary type letters. Eleazer Johnson in 1798 was living on Marlboro (Washington) Street in a brick house which, with the land, was valued at $2500. His wife was Elizabeth Le Crass and they were married June 13, 1758, in Boston. It is noteworthy that he was a merchant, showing once more the activity of that class in the public demonstrations of that period. Frog Lane, it will be remembered, is the present Boylston Street.
56 W. Gordon, History of the American Revolution, i. 175.
57 E. H. Goss, Life of Paul Revere, ii. 643.
58 On December 6, 1766, an act was passed granting compensation as follows: to Hutchinson, £3194.17.6; to Oliver, £172.4.0; to Hallowell, £385.6.10; and to Story, £67.8.10. The act was disallowed by the Privy Council. See Massachusetts Province Laws, iv. 903–904.
59 Massachusetts Archives, xxvi. 146–147.
Some months after the wrecking of Hutchinson’s house, Daniel Leonard, a young attorney at Taunton who then had colonial sympathies but who finally turned loyalist, related to John Adams some gossip he had gleaned in Providence at a then recent session of court in that town. Leonard spent an evening with the political club there, and on January 20, 1766, Adams wrote in his Diary this account of what Leonard had reported to him relative to the impressions of the Rhode Islanders:
Thought Hutchinson’s history did not shine; said his house was pulled down to prevent his writing more, by destroying his materials. Thought Otis was not an original genius, nor a good writer, but a person who had done and would continue to do much good service.
Were very inquisitive about Mackintosh; whether he was a man of abilities or not; whether he would probably rise, in case this contest should be carried into any length (Works, ii. 182).
60 Charles Paxton, marshal of the Court of Vice Admiralty, lived on the east side of Hutchinson (now Pearl) Street, about the fifth house from Milk Street: cf. C. H. Snow, History of Boston (1825), p. 260; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lvi. 343–352; our Publications, xxv. 285 note 1.
61 Bernard Papers (Harvard College Library), iv. 62–64.
62 Nathaniel Coffin was born in 1725, graduated from Harvard College in 1744, was a merchant, and at the time of the Stamp Act riots was King’s Cashier of the Customs (J. H. Stark, Loyalists of Massachusetts, pp. 234–235). He was a tory in sympathies and his intercession in behalf of Mackintosh probably arose from fear of what might happen to himself, or to the Custom House to which he was attached. As receiver of customs he might be without a position if the excesses continued and the Custom House, a shining mark, should be sacked. Doubtless Sheriff Greenleaf, knowing Coffin to stand high in the opinion of the Governor’s party, felt that he would be an excellent witness to cite to Hutchinson and the Council, when explaining his unwillingness to function as sheriff. Coffin may have had no regard whatsoever for Mackintosh, but it is a significant fact that he lived at the corner of Essex Street and Rainsford Lane (Harrison Avenue), and this was only a very short distance from Liberty Tree. Coffin thus had reason to know the power of the South Enders. Coffin was one of the addressers of both Hutchinson and Gage and went to Halifax when Boston was evacuated in March, 1776. He died in 1780. It is said that it was one of his sons who in August, 1775, helped cut down the Liberty Tree, when the British had complete control of the town.
63 T. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters, i. 70–71.
64 In the author’s copy of Snow’s History of Boston, acquired by the Boston Public Library, are annotations in ink by Mr. Snow, and corrections for a future edition. Opposite the account of the destruction of Hutchinson’s house is this entry: “Mr John Rowe is said to have been the leader of the party which went to Hutchinson’s. They had no design to commit such violence. C. Hopkins to R. Webster.” Below this is another entry: “Similar in appearance to H. G. Otis.” From this it would appear that Mr. Snow had learned that Caleb Hopkins had related to Redford Webster the above incident. It is not at all probable that John Rowe was active at the destruction of Hutchinson’s house, but he may have been a spectator, and may even have gone along with the mob to see what was going to happen. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, iii. 14.
65 Cited by J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 269.
66 S. G. Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 701.
67 History of Massachusetts, iii.126. An account of the jail delivery and escape of these prisoners was reported to the Council at its meeting on October 2, 1765, by Sheriff Greenleaf. He said that divers prisoners had escaped, three of whom had been committed on account of the late riots. The Council must have received the news with equanimity, for on October 3 their disposition of the problem was as follows:
The Board were of opinion that it does not appear the Escape was effected by any armed force, but that the Prisoners were privately assisted by some of their friends without, and that they accomplished their purpose thro’ the weakness of the Goal, and that it being the duty of the Sheriff in such cases to issue his advertisement for the recovery of such prisoners, it is not incumbent on the Government to issue any Proclamation on this occasion (Council Records, xvi. 52, 54).
Search of the Boston newspapers of that period does not disclose any advertisement issued by the Sheriff for the apprehension of these prisoners, or for the arrest of those who released them.
68 Boston Gazette, November 4, 1765, p. 1/3.
69 F. S. Drake, Tea Leaves, p. cxxvi.
70 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xii. 246–247.
71 S. G. Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 712.
72 J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 334.
73 W. P. Greenlaw, manuscript genealogy of the Maverick family (New England Historic Genealogical Society).
74 Boston Records, xxx. 54.
75 Massachusetts and its Early History (Lowell Institute Lectures, 1869), p. 23.
76 Boston Records, xxiv. 315, 319.
77 On January 14, 1769, a son of Elihu and Elizabeth Hewes was baptized by the name of Paoli (Boston Records, xxiv. 318).
78 The reference is to William Hyslop, who was born about 1711 in Scotland, came to this country and was living in Brookline in 1767, and resided there until his death in 1796. He was accounted wealthy for that time, having started as a pedler of dry goods and afterwards became a tradesman. He was moderator of the Brookline town meetings in 1771 and 1772, and was made a member of its Committee of Correspondence in December, 1772. He was abroad at the time the American Revolution opened and was unable to return until the war closed. In 1793 he gave the town of Brookline funds with which to build a schoolhouse. His daughter Elizabeth married Governor Increase Sumner. (Harriet F. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, pp. 301–306.)
79 For Thomas the Rhymer, see Dictionary of National Biography and Encyclopudia Britannica under Erceldoune.
80 For the expression “New England saints,” see our Publications, xiv. 190–191.
81 Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, February 25, 1775. For this extract I am indebted to Mrs. James F. Willard of Boulder, Colorado.
82 See Boston News Letter, February 27, 1766, p. 3/2. On that occasion Liberty Tree was pruned. The Boston Evening Post of February 17 stated that the carpenters were offered pay for their work but refused, stating that it was work done for the public good. The account says that “a gentleman well skill’d in those affairs” acted “as director” (p. 2/3). Perhaps this is a reference to Mackintosh, as he was First Captain General of Liberty Tree.
83 Boston News Letter, February 6, 1766, p. 3/1.
84 Boston News Letter, March 20, 1766, p. 1/2.
85 Boston News Letter, April 10, 1766, p. 2/3.
86 Boston News Letter, March 27, 1766, p. 3/3.
87 See p. 64 note, below.
88 For two remarkable cases of verification of family traditions, see Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlii. 193–195.
89 Traits of the Tea Party, pp. 262, 264. Cf. F. S. Drake, Tea Leaves, pp. xciii, cxxvi–cxxviii.
90 There is considerable confusion in various publications as to the identity of the Mackintosh who was in the Tea Party and the Mackintosh who led the Stamp Act riots. Caleb A. Wall says that Captain Peter McIntosh had a blacksmith shop near the wharf where the tea was thrown overboard, and that the men went into it to blacken their faces preparatory to the work of throwing the tea overboard. He adds: “He resided during his last years in North Haverhill, Grafton County, N. H., where he died in 1810 or 1811 in the family of a Mrs. Hurlbut” (Historic Boston Tea Party, 1896, p. 64). This is an error. No Peter McIntosh lived in North Haverhill, N. H., at this period, and it was Ebenezer who lived at the home of Mrs. Hurlbutt. Through Mr. Wall’s investigations the name of Peter McIntosh has been placed on the Slater monument in Worcester, Mass., in the list of participants in the Tea Party. It is probable that he was not engaged in that undertaking, and it is absolutely certain that he was not the leader of the Stamp Act riots. Thatcher makes this comment:
The Mr. McIntosh mentioned above is said to be still living in Vermont. Mr. Peter McIntosh, of this city, was at that time a blacksmith’s apprentice, and upon the mention of the fact spoken of in the text, — that some of the Party ran into such places to disguise their faces hastily with the soot, — recals the circumstance that several of them visited his master’s premises with that view. He remembers [Thomas] Spear, among them (Traits of the Tea Party, p. 262).
Though Thatcher was mistaken in supposing that Ebenezer Mackintosh was still living in 1835, since he had died in 1816, yet his statement about Peter Mackintosh, made during the lifetime of the latter and by inference after a discussion with him of the events attending the Tea Party, would seem to be almost conclusive evidence that Peter Mackintosh was not an active participant in the destruction of the tea.
91 P. 2/1. Although this statement was incorrect, as time disclosed, the publishers may have believed that it was true. Mackintosh and the three others mentioned, and others not mentioned, may well have felt that their personal liberty was in danger and have governed themselves accordingly.
The information that the above-named mixed quartet of three high-brows and one low-brow was about to be transported in irons was supposed to inspire terror. As a matter of fact it merely made the Boston leaders more wary and cautious, for they relaxed their campaign but little. The British plan to seize and transport the most troublesome patriots was not a new proposal. Six years before Lord Hillsborough in anger had proposed to invoke a statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII, which enacted that English subjects charged with committing treasonable acts beyond the confines of England might be brought home for trial. Friends of the American colonists at once pointed out that the act was passed at one of the worst periods of English history and before any English colonies had been planted in America. Moreover it was designed to meet a different situation. Hillsborough, however, stubbornly persisted that the statute was legally available, but to meet the objections of the critics of the ministry, the next year (1769) he induced Parliament to pass an act which extended the operation of the statute of Henry VIII so that unquestionably it could be invoked to meet the situation in America. Hillsborough’s influence waned at this juncture and nothing was done toward creating a test case. Thereafter the statute was a standing menace and threat to all American colonists who presumed militantly to act or speak in behalf of their rights. But nobody was sent across the water to face a treason charge in English courts. Soon after the Boston Tea Party rumors were revived in London that the leading incendiaries of Boston were to be brought to England to answer for the destruction of the tea. In Boston the Hutchinson party tried hard to find someone who would implicate Hancock and Adams in the plan to destroy the tea, but evidence was not forthcoming. It was about this time that the London news item quoted in the text appeared, mentioning not only Hancock and Adams but Rowe and Mackintosh. Why they left out William Molineux and Dr. Thomas Young, who were known participants in the Tea Party, does not appear. Why they included John Rowe is a puzzle, unless they credited him with the remark (which he probably did not make): “Who knows how tea and salt water will mingle?” Inclusion of Mackintosh’s name in this list is a straw indicating that he was in the Tea Party and had remained in Boston up to the spring of 1774, being “active among the lower order of people,” — which can be taken to mean the working people, or people of moderate means.
92 Loyalists of Massachusetts, p. 167.
93 Records of Births, Haverhill, N. H.
94 New Hampshire Revolutionary Rolls, ii. 280.
95 H. Hall, Early History of Vermont, p. 321.
96 New Hampshire Revolutionary Rolls, iii. 539.
97 Moses Dow, born February, 1746, at Atkinson, New Hampshire; H. C. 1769; removed to Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1774, to Haverhill, New Hampshire, in 1779; a prominent patriot; died March 31, 1811: see W. F. Whicher, History of Haverhill, New Hampshire, p. 514.
98 Mrs. Goodhue suggests that possibly “communication” is here used as in Philippians, iv. 10–18.
99 For this letter I am indebted to its owner, Mrs. Sarah Arabella (Bigelow) Goodhue, of Northfield, Minnesota, a great-granddaughter of Ebenezer Mackintosh.
100 E. Miller and F. P. Wells, History of Ryegate.
101 One of Elizabeth’s eleven children was John Bigelow, who became prominent in the affairs of the town of Ryegate and who represented that town in the Vermont Assembly in 1869. John Bigelow is the father of Mrs. Sarah Arabella Goodhue, of Northfield, Minnesota, who supplied me with useful data relative to Mackintosh. Elizabeth (Mackintosh) Bigelow died October 10, 1848, aged eighty-one. The name Pascal appears among her descendants, and also Maverick, both used as given names.
102 F. S. Drake, Tea Leaves, p. cxxvii. The description is by Schuyler Merrill of North Haverhill, N. H.
103 W. F. Whither, History of Haverhill, N. H., p. 578.
104 A copy of this inscription was furnished to me by Mr. Robert H. Large of Woodsville, N. H., who also described the tablet.
105 Sometimes spelled “Hurlburt.” Possibly Mrs. Hurlbutt was a relative of Mackintosh’s second wife.
106 The illustrations accompanying this paper, for which I am indebted to the courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, require some explanation. That facing page 14, above, reproduces a stamp and a counter-stamp issued under the Stamp Act of 1765. They were thus described in 1902 by Dr. Samuel A. Green:
Apparently with a die an impression was made on faded blue paper pasted over parchment, and fastened to it by a narrow strip of tin-foil; and a small piece of white paper, bearing a device as described below, was stuck on the back over the ends of the tin-foil. The impression on the blue paper is not very deep, but yet quite distinct. It contains a crown, with the word America over the top, and the letter A on one side; and the money value of the stamp is given at the bottom. In the centre of the impression is a double Tudor rose surrounded by the motto of the Order of the Garter. In the cut the foil is represented on the right of the rose. The counter-stamp, which was stuck on the back, has a crown with the letters “G R,” — one letter on each side, — and the figure 3 slightly below; and a double cipher or monogram of G. R. under the whole.
The blue stamps were intended for deeds, wills, and other formal documents, and the price varied according to circumstances. All the specimens that I have seen appear to have been cut out of the corners of parchment, which have been duly embossed, but never used, as the odious Act was so soon repealed (Ten Fac-simile Reproductions Relating to New England, pp. 37–38, 42. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, iii. 12 and note).
The illustration facing page 50, above, reproduces an embossed piece of stamped paper preserved in the Belknap Papers. The words “A piece of stamped paper saved out of the fire — when some bales of it were burned at New York. Jany 1766” are in red ink in the hand of the Rev. Jeremy Belknap. On the verso of the sheet are written, in black ink and in an unknown hand, the words: “One of the Detestable Marks of Slavery Recd from the sons of Liberty in Boston, & is one of those that were taken at New York.”
107 The standard work on the subject is Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery from its earliest inception to the Year 1876 (Waltham, 1878), originally printed in Report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1875–’76, Volume II, Appendix A (Washington, 1876: Senate, 44th Congress, 1st Session, Mis. Doc. No. 107).
108 Mourt’s Relation (ed. H. M. Dexter, 1865), pp. 4, 36.
109 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 119.
110 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 156.
111 Hakluyt’s Voyages (1904), viii. 10.
112 Id. viii. 162.
113 In John Pory’s Lost Description of Plymouth (ed. C. Burrage, 1918), pp. 5, 11. Cf. Purchas his Pilgrimes (1906), xix. 179, 184.
114 History of New England (1825), i. 157.
115 C. F. Swift, History of Old Yarmouth, p. 84.
116 F. Freeman, History of Cape Cod, ii. 50.
117 O. Macy, History of Nantucket (1835), p. 29. The man was Ichabod Paddock.
118 A reproduction of this photograph faces this page. Underneath the original is the caption:
CAPTAINS OF THE STONE FLEET
Which Sailed From New Bedford, Nov., 16TH, 1861.
Capt. Rudolphus N. Swift (standing) was the general agent of the affair, and Capt. Fred A. Stall and Capt. James B. Wood were the assistant agents. The names of the other captains, and those of their ships (printed in italics), are as follows: Thomas S. Baily, Maria Theresa; William A. Beard, America; Shubael F. Brayton, Courier; Thomas Brown 2nd, Potomac; David P. Chadwick, South America; John D. Childs, Cossack; Michael Cumiski (or Cumiskey), Frances Henrietta; Commodore Rodney French, Garland; A. H. Gifford, Herald; Joseph Howland, Leonidas; Martin Malloy, L. C. Richmond; Jotham S. Swift (sitting), Amazon; W. W. Taylor, Harvest; Benjamin W. Tilton, Kensington; James M. Willis, Rebecca Simms; William Worth, Archer.
119 Our Publications, vol. xxii. pp. xxxi-xxxii.
120 Diary, i. 472–473.
121 Rev. John Cotton (H. C. 1730; d 1789), first minister of Halifax, later of Plymouth, a son of Josiah Cotton (H. C. 1698; d 1756), who was a son of the Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth.
122 Rev. Josiah Cotton (H. C. 1722; d 1780), son of the Rev. Rowland Cotton (H. C. 1685; d 1722), who was a son of the Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth.
123 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lvi. 30–31.
124 See our Publications, xxiv. 200.
125 Id. xxiv. 250.
126 Lieut.-Col. Bernard is a son of the late Mrs. Napier Higgins, who published a work on the Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon in 1903–1904.
127 Pickering Papers, liii. 230. Cf. 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 489. At the top of the document is the word “Copy,” but in a different hand and in a later ink.
128 The New England Company of 1649 and John Eliot (Prince Society, 1920).
129 Lt.-Col. Benjamin Bernard.
130 P. 2/2.
131 Historical Magazine, June, 1868, p. 377.
132 Force, American Archives, 4th Series, ii. 1118–1119.
133 Id. ii. 1126.
134 E. Stiles, Literary Diary, i. 580, 581.
135 Historical Magazine, June, 1868, p. 384.
136 Pp. 29, 30.
137 “From his [Page’s] and De Bernier’s maps, Mr. Stow, the list of regiments to which the killed belonged, and all authorities, it seems certain that the regiment of Welsh Fusileers was not in the battle” (History of Bunker Hill Battle, 2nd ed., 1826, p. 31).
138 “Hence several of the regiments — among them the 23d, or Welsh Fusileers — had only their Grenadiers, or Light Infantry Companies, in the battle” (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 61).
139 For a detailed account of troops engaged, see my paper on “The American Defence,” pp. 130–132, below.
140 Massachusetts Royal Commissions, 1681–1774.
141 Land-Bank and Silver-Bank Papers; Bibliography of the Massachusetts House Journals, 1715–1776; Bibliography of the Massachusetts Laws, 1641–1776.
142 Check-List of Boston Newspapers, 1704–1780.
143 Plymouth Church Records, 1620–1859, Part i.
144 Plymouth Church Records, 1620–1859, Part ii.
145 Those portions of the report omittea here are entered in the Council Records.
146 At the meeting of the Council held on December 3rd, the following minute was adopted:
Moved, that the Council place upon record the sense of profound gratitude we feel for the services of Albert Matthews, who gives up the office of Editor at the end of this year. For twenty years Mr. Matthews has held this important office. His salary has never been more than merely nominal. He has discharged his duties with that quality of zeal and thoroughness which no money could ever purchase, but which must be prompted by genuine interest in the work, and profound affection for the Society. We have been wonderfully fortunate in having his help during these formative years. Thanks to him, the Society enjoys its present prominent and respected status. The Publications of the Society up to date, the greater part of which are stamped by his careful and scholarly oversight, will ever stand as an enduring memorial to his faithful, competent, and devoted labors.
147 Pp. 135–158, below.
148 Poor did not command the New Hampshire troops before Boston. These troops before the Battle of Bunker Hill voluntarily placed themselves under Ward’s orders. At a meeting of their field officers held as early as April 26, it was voted, pending action by the New Hampshire authorities, to advise the men to enlist in the service of Massachusetts. The records of this meeting are in the Massachusetts Archives.
149 John Adams to George Brinley, June 19, 1818, from the original letter in the Massachusetts Historical Society. In his History of the Siege of Boston (1849), p. 173, Frothingham quotes the passage, but not altogether accurately. The letter was written in reply to a request by Brinley (dated June 16, 1818) to be allowed to quote in an article shortly to appear in the North American Review a passage from Adams’s letter to Daniel Putnam of June 5, 1818. The article in question, written by Daniel Webster, was printed in the number for July, 1818, vii. 225–258.
150 Siege, p. 217 note 2.
151 July 27, 1775, in id. p. 217 note 2.
152 Id. p. 218 note.
153 This is clearly evidenced in the Proceedings of the Provincial Congress. Dawson discusses the matter in his article in the Historical Magazine for June, 1868, p. 329. All references in these footnotes to the Historical Magazine are to the number for June, 1868.
154 Journals Massachusetts Provincial Congress, p. 230.
155 The original of this letter is in the Samuel Adams Papers in the New York Historical Society. It is printed in Frothingham’s Life of Joseph Warren, pp. 495–496.
156 J. T. Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry, i. 78–79.
157 June 21, 1775, in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 81.
158 June 23, 1775, in Historical Magazine, p. 377.
159 Printed in Frothingham’s Siege, p. 118 note.
160 This is attested by a letter of Dr. Grant, a British surgeon, dated Boston, June 23, 1775, in the New York Historical Society: “The Provincials had either exhausted their ball, or they were determined that every wound should prove fatal; their muskets were charged with old nails and angular pieces of iron” (Historical Magazine, p. 361).
161 There is also the testimony emanating from the Prescott family, embodied first in what is known as “the manuscript,” and second in the memoir written by Judge Prescott, the Colonel’s son. Neither of these is to be regarded as in any sense contemporaneous authority, being probably of even later date than the affidavits of 1825. The manuscript said to have been written by different members of the family is brief and commonplace and nowhere suggests collaboration. The memoir is free from the bitterness that characterized the output of so many partizans in the Putnam-Prescott controversy and is evidently inspired by the loving pride of a son in the achievements of a worthy sire. It is open to the criticism that attaches to any recollections of this sort. The name and high respectability of the aged writer have won for this document the confidence of many historians and it has had a marked influence in shaping the commonly accepted story of the battle. It is of no importance to us in our effort to get back to original sources and should, I think, be rejected by every one, in so far as it conflicts with what Colonel Prescott said himself in 1775. The manuscript is printed in C. Butler’s History of Groton (1848), pp. 337–341, and in the Historical Magazine, pp. 437–438; and the memoir will be found in full in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 68–78.
162 In Frothingham’s Siege, pp. 395–396.
163 Collections New Hampshire Historical Society, ii. 144–145; reprinted in Historical Magazine, pp. 370–371.
164 Dearborn’s account and much of the controversial matter it inspired is reprinted by Dawson in the Historical Magazine, pp. 402–437.
165 Reader’s Handbook of the American Revolution (1880), pp. 43–44.
166 I Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 231 note. Cf. ii. 224, 225.
167 This theory rests largely upon statements made by Daniel Putnam, the General’s son.
168 Orders were issued that the men should be supplied with one day’s provisions, but as they found themselves short of food and drink in the morning, this may have been one of the important matters that was overlooked. Mr. Charles Martyn in his life of Artemas Ward (1921, p. 123) puts proper emphasis on the entry in Stow’s Orderly Book for June 17, which proves that the regiments of Nixon, Little, and Mansfield with 200 Connecticut troops were to relieve Prescott on the afternoon of that day. Prescott doubtless knew this and did not expect earlier relief. Stow’s entry throws discredit upon statements in the Prescott manuscript and other late authorities.
169 Frothingham, Siege, p. 395; Historical Magazine, pp. 390–391.
170 Richard Gridley.
171 Frothingham, Siege, p. 395.
172 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1373–1376; reprinted in Frothingham’s Siege, p. 382, and in Historical Magazine, p. 387. The italics are mine.
173 General Heath’s memorandum, probably contemporaneous, is worth quoting: “Just before the action began, Gen. Putnam came to the redoubt, and told Col. Prescott that the entrenching tools must be sent off, or they would be lost; the Colonel replied, that if he sent any of the men away with the tools, not one of them would return; to this the General answered, they shall every man return. A large party was then sent off with the tools, and not one of them returned; in this instance the Colonel was the best judge of human nature” (Memoirs, 1901, p. 123).
174 Frothingham, Siege, p. 395.
175 Id. p. 395.
176 Probably Prescott was not altogether fair to Knowlton. He had evidently expected the Connecticut men to move in the direction of Moulton’s Point, whereas by marching “a different course” they gained a better position and constructed the rail fence. Capt. Callender of “the train” was court-martialed and dismissed the service, but lived to re-establish his reputation for courage upon many a well fought field.
177 Doubtless Knowlton’s command.
178 Frothingham, Siege, p. 396.
179 It may have been this detachment which occupied the barn shown on de Berniere’s map and fired upon the flank of the Marines in the final attack upon the redoubt.
180 Frothingham, Siege, p. 396.
181 See the letter in Stiles’s Literary Diary, i. 595–596; also in Frothingham’s Siege, pp. 392–393, and in the Historical Magazine, pp. 396–397.
182 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vii. 191.
183 I do not think that this can be construed as the wail of a teetotaler. The men were up and down from Charlestown village all the morning and had free access to the town wells. What Brown yearned for was a long drink of the wine of the country — that is, cider and beer. A letter written to Jeremiah Powell from Newburyport June 21, 1775, says that the men “were almost suffocated with dust & choak’d for want of liquor.” Jonathan Trumbull writes August 31, 1779, that the men were “not even furnished with provisions and liquors for their refreshment” (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 159).
184 The armed transport Cymetry, mounting eighteen 9-pounders, bombarded the Neck from Charles River.
185 Dawson made a curious misreading of this passage, interpreting it to mean that 700 men left the works, the words “not deserted” being added by way of satire. Brown was not satirical and meant that there were 700 left in the redoubt after all desertions.
186 This may refer to the appearance of Stark’s vanguard of 200 men or to some unidentified Massachusetts troops who reached the redoubt.
187 Capt. John Callender.
188 See his diary in 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xv. 255.
189 Rev. Andrew Eliot says: “great part of the time the firing seemed incessant” (Historical Magazine, p. 369). The merchant in Boston: “the most incessant discharge of guns that ever was heard with mortal ears, continued for three quarters of an hour” (Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1079). Richard Pope: “It resembled rather a continual sheet of Lightning, and an uninterrupted peal of Thunder, than the explosion of Fire arms” (manuscript diary in the Huntington Library, photostat in the New York Public Library). A British officer: “an incessant stream of fire poured from the rebel lines, it seemed a continued sheet of fire for near thirty minutes” (in Detail and Conduct of the American War, 3rd ed., London, 1780, p. 13. This letter is found in an earlier but undated edition of the same pamphlet, entitled A View of the Evidence relative to the Conduct of the American War, etc., London, p. 73).
190 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1094–1095.
191 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 62.
192 Frothingham, Siege, p. 391.
193 Historical Magazine, p. 374.
194 Frothingham, Siege, p. 390.
195 Memoirs (1901), p. 13.
196 See pp. 151–152, below.
197 Thacher’s manuscript draught of the report is printed by Dawson in the Historical Magazine, p. 384, from the original in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society. It is also printed in the Proceedings of that society for April, 1909, xix. 438–442.
198 Frothingham, Siege, p. 390.
199 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 292.
200 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1089; Historical Magazine, p. 374.
201 Rev. Andrew Eliot says the action lasted “perhaps an hour” (Historical Magazine, p. 369). The merchant in Boston has it, “three quarters of an hour” (Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1079). J. Waller, officer on a British ship, thought “about forty minutes” (letter in my possession). “Another account” from Boston says “after an obstinate attack of an hour” (Rivington’s Gazetteer, July 13,1775).
202 Capt. Chester’s letter: “We lost our regularity, as every company had done before us, and fought as they did, every man loading and firing as fast as he could” (Frothingham, Siege, p. 391).
203 Stiles, Literary Diary, i. 576.
204 “Near one half the troops engaged on each side, being either killed or wounded; that is, of the British 1100, and of the Americans more than 300” (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 160).
205 Frothingham, Siege, p. 394.
206 Id. p. 193 note.
207 According to a return of June 14, Reed’s regiment, a smaller organization than Stark’s, had 486 rank and file. (Frothingham, Siege, p. 187.) These two regiments alone had a strength on paper of more than one thousand men.
208 Frothingham, quoting this passage, vaguely attributed it to Lee’s “Vindication, published in 1778” (Siege, p. 375). “General Lee’s Vindication to the Public,” prefaced by a brief note from Lee himself, was printed in the Pennsylvania Packet of December 3, 1778: see Lee Papers, iii. 255–265 (Collections New York Historical Society for 1873), where the passage in question occurs on p. 262.
209 The best account of this confusion in the rear is to be found in Capt. Chester’s letter (Frothingham, Siege, pp. 389–391).
210 Two companies of this regiment were already in Boston, having arrived in the Rose man-of-war from Newfoundland, October 12, 1774. Thomas Newell in his diary (Frothingham, Siege, pp. 363–364) says three companies arrived at that time, but this is probably an error as it disagrees with subsequent military returns.
211 Diary of Lieut. John Barker, Cambridge, 1924, p. 47. The balance of the 600 appears to have landed on May 23 (id., p. 50).
212 Printed in S. A. Drake’s “Bunker Hill. The Story told in letters … by British officers engaged” (Boston, 1875), pp. 74–75.
213 The 22nd Regiment is included in the garrison by many American writers. This blunder is undoubtedly due to the appearance of Col. Abercrombie’s name in the death-roll of Bunker Hill. Abercrombie arrived in Boston on special duty in the spring and was appointed Adjutant, and later to the command of the Corps of Grenadiers. He did not live to rejoin his regiment, which landed in Boston in August.
214 These three companies of the 18th (Royal Irish) arrived from New York on October 23, 1774 (Diary of Thomas Newell).
215 Barker, p. 50.
216 Orders reached Boston in November, 1775, authorizing an increase in the company strength from 38 to 56 men, and providing that two additional companies of 56 men should be recruited in England for each regiment. Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 132. Because of slow recruiting this augmentation is only slightly reflected in the strength of Howe’s regiments up to the time of his sailing from Halifax to New York.
217 Lieut. Mackenzie, 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 396.
218 Roster and losses printed in Historical Magazine, June, 1868, p. 369. All references in these foot-notes to the Historical Magazine are to the number of June, 1868.
219 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1097.
220 Gage’s perturbation of mind is reflected in a letter to Lady Gage, mentioned in Hutchinson’s Diary and Letters, i. 223.
221 J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, 1691–1776, p. 425.
222 Force, 4 American Archives ii. 1094–1095.
223 Mr. Frothingham names General Grant as being present. This officer did not arrive in Boston until late in July. See Howe’s Orderly Book (London, 1890), p. 57.
224 Letter to Lord Stanley, Farce, 4 American Archives, ii. 1094–1095.
225 “Had we have intended to have taken the whole rebel army prisoners, we needed only to have landed in their rear and occupied the high ground above Bunker’s-[Breed’s] hill. By this movement we shut them up in the peninsula as in a bag, with their rear exposed to the fire of our cannon, and, if we pleased, our musquetry: in short, they must have surrendered instantly or been blown to pieces” (letter of an officer in Boston in Detail and Conduct of the American War, reprinted in Historical Magazine, p. 368). This letter, frequently cited in this paper, was one of the evidences upon which General Howe based his request for a Parliamentary investigation.
226 The British maps of Page and de Bernière mentioned later in the text show only three ships engaged: the Lively and Falcon, sloops of war, in the stream between Boston and Charlestown, and the Cymetry, an armed transport, off Lechmere’s Point, to bombard the Neck. The Somerset and Glasgow may also have been engaged, but their stations are not shown. The drawing of the battle made for Lord Rawdon (see Memorial History of Boston, vol. iii, frontispiece) shows a man-of-war in action, up the stream from the sloops. The gondola was a small gun-boat, musket-proof, and mounting a heavy piece of cannon.
227 See letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War, in Historical Magazine, pp. 367–368.
228 “At 7 oclock the Grenrs. and Light Infantry had orders to keep in readiness” (Barker, Diary, p. 60).
229 Thomas Graves was appointed to command on the North American station in 1774. On May 26, he was saluted by the ships in the harbor on being promoted to Vice-Admiral of the White. There was much friction between him and the military authorities in Boston, and he is freely criticized in the correspondence of Burgoyne and other officers. The truth seems to be that he was sent out with an inadequate force, his ships were undermanned for war conditions, and he lacked light craft capable of operating against the Americans in shallow waters. He was superseded in January, 1776.
230 Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 1.
231 Dawson names these flank companies as those of the 18th, 22nd, and 63rd Regiments. He did not know that the Marine battalions were organized with Grenadiers and Light Infantry. The 18th Regiment, as we have seen, consisted of only three companies serving in the Incorporated Corps. Their losses in the field fell upon men drafted from these companies to fill up the flank companies of the 65th, also serving with the Incorporated Corps. The 22nd, as stated in a previous note, was not in Boston. The mention of the 63rd marks the full measure of Dawson’s accuracy.
232 This is indicated on de Bernière’s map, the flank companies of the 35th being the only ones to serve with the twenty “eldest companies” in Howe’s first detachment. Dawson refers to some specific operations performed by this company, and cites de Bernière as his authority. He was wrong again, basing his story on Swett’s adaptation of de Bernière’s map. Swett took some strange and unwarrantable liberties with that historic document.
233 It is probable that Howe’s force was closer to Gage’s figure than I have estimated. My figure of sick and unfit for duty amounts to only 5 per cent of the garrison, while on October 1, according to Howe’s return, it exceeded 20 per cent. It is also probable that the flank companies averaged more than thirty men and the battalion companies less than that number.
234 Siege, p. 191.
235 This roster is printed in S. A. Drake’s Bunker Hill, pp. 74–75.
236 Sir Thomas Hyde Page (1746–1821) was appointed Lieutenant of the Royal Engineers in 1774. He served on Howe’s staff at Bunker Hill, where he was wounded. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1783 and was knighted the same year in recognition of his distinguished military services. In 1784 he was transferred to the invalid corps of the Engineers. He published several important works on professional subjects between 1784 and 1801. A portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in existence.
237 He executed orders in February, 1775, “to go through the counties of Suffolk and Worcester, and sketch the roads as we went, for the information of Gen. Gage.” See General Gage’s Instructions, etc., 2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 205.
238 A portion of de Bernière’s map is reproduced facing the opposite page. The legend reads as follows:
REFERENCES
|
A.A. |
First position, where the troops remained until the re-inforcements arrived |
|
B.B. |
Second Position |
|
C.C. &c. |
Ground on which the different Regiments marched, to, form the line |
|
D.D. ➳ |
Direction in which the attack was made, upon the Redoubt & Breastworks |
|
E.E. |
Position of part of the 47th and Marines to Silence, the fire, of a Barn at E. |
|
F. |
First Position, of the Cannon |
|
G. |
Second Position, of the cannon in advancing, with the Grenadiers, but Stopt by the Marsh |
|
H. |
Breast work formed of Pickets, Hay, Stones &c. with the pieces of Cannon |
|
I.I. |
Light Infantry, advancing along the Shore to force the right of the Breast work H. |
|
K.L. |
The Lively and Falcon, hauled close to shore to Rake, the low grounds before the troops advanced |
|
M.M. |
Gondolas, that fired on the Rebels in their retreat |
|
N. |
Battery of Cannon, Howitzers & Mortars, on Cop’s Hill, that battered the Redoubt and set fire to Charles-Town |
|
O.O.O.&c. |
The Rebels behind all the Stone walls, Trees, and brush-wood, &c their numbers uncertain, having constantly large Columns to re-inforce them, during the action |
|
P |
Place, from whence the Grenadiers received a very heavy fire |
|
Q |
Place, of the 52d Regiment, on the night of the 17th |
|
R.&c. |
47th Regiment in Charles-Town, on the night of the 17th |
|
S |
Detachments, in the Mill, & 2 Store Houses |
|
T |
Breastwork thrown up by the remainder of the Troops, on the night of the 17th |
|
Note |
The distance from Boston to Charles-town, is about 550 Yards, over which a bridge has since been built |
239 See Page’s map. Copied by Stedman and Frothingham.
240 See Page’s map.
241 The burning of Charlestown occasioned not only bitter Provincial denunciation against “those bloody incendiaries,” but expressions of regret in the British camp. On the other hand, there is no reason to question that it was a justifiable military act. British evidence is overwhelming that the houses were used to harass the British flank, and the Committee of Safety practically confirmed this fact by admitting that Provincial regiments were in the place shortly before it was fired. Our New England ancestors stolidly refused to concede that the use of houses as fortresses constituted a valid reason for their destruction in battle.
242 “Had we only wanted to drive them from their ground, without the loss of a man, the Cymetry, transport, which drew little water and mounted eighteen nine-pounders, could have been towed up the Mystic channel, and brought to within musket-shot of their left flank, which was quite naked; and she could have lain, water-borne, at the lowest ebb tide; or, one of our covered boats, musket-proof, carrying a heavy piece of cannon, might have been rowed close in, and one charge on their uncovered flank would have dislodged them in a second” (letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War).
According to Lieut. Barker (Diary, p. 62), three of these small boats went up the Mystic on the 18th. His comment is interesting: “had these boats been with us on Saturday at the time of the Attack they cou’d have been of great use, as they wou’d have taken a part of the Rebels intrenchment in flank and in their retreat wou’d have cut off numbers; instead of that they were on the other side and of no manner of use.”
243 The letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War has it that “Our Light-infantry were served up in Companies against the grass fence, without being able to penetrate — indeed how could we penetrate? Most of our Grenadiers and Light-infantry, the moment of presenting themselves lost three-fourths, and many nine-tenths of their men.” This would certainly indicate that the Grenadiers were closely and disastrously engaged.
244 See Page’s map. The Grenadiers were supported on their left by the 43rd and 52nd Battalions.
245 The following picturesque account must refer to the Light Infantry attack: “They advanced in open order, the men often twelve feet apart in the front, but very close after one another in extraordinary deep or long files. As fast as the front man was shot down, the next stepped forward into his place; but our men dropt them so fast, they were a long time coming up. It was surprising how they would step over their dead bodies, as though they had been logs of wood” (Rivington’s Gazetteer for August 3, 1775, in Historical Magazine, p. 390).
246 “Our manner of attacking in front was ruinous. In advancing, not a shot should have been fired, as it retarded the troops, whose movement should have been as rapid as possible. They should not have been brought up in line, but in columns, with Light-infantry in the intervals, to keep up a smart fire against the top of the breastwork. If this had been done, their works would have been carried in three minutes, with not a tenth part of our present loss” (letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War). General Dearborn’s comment made in 1818 is interesting: “It is a most extraordinary fact that the British did not make a single charge during the Battle, which if attempted would have been decisive and fatal to the Americans as they did not carry into the field fifty bayonets.” We are not using Dearborn as a witness, but this is in harmony with what we learn from contemporaneous accounts.
247 “We went to battle without even reconnoitring the position of the enemy” (letter in the Detail and Conduct of the War).
248 Id.
249 History of the Royal Artillery. See S. A. Drake’s Bunker Hill, p. 35.
250 There was much conflicting gossip in 1775 as to the time that Charlestown was fired, estimates varying from ten o’clock in the morning to some hours after the battle. The real facts, however, are clear. The Committee of Safety says that it was at the “instant” the British began their advance; General Heath, “at the time the British made their attack;” Barker, “just about the beginning of the attack.” J. Waller, an officer on a British ship, writes: “when the attack was first made” (letter in my possession). There is no good evidence contradicting these positive statements. General Gage says, “during the action.”
251 See Prescott’s statement in my paper on “The American Defence,” p. 120, above. The statement of the British Headquarters that Pigot’s men retreated by order stirred some caustic criticism in the garrison. “Observe, our men were not driven back; they actually retreated by orders. Great pains have been taken to huddle up this matter” (letter in Detail and Conduct of the War).
252 Quotations from Burgoyne in this paragraph are from his letter to Lord Stanley, Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1094–1095.
253 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlviii. 118.
254 Further confirmation of these facts will be found in the letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War and in a letter printed in Mrs. Stirling’s Annals of a Yorkshire House (London, 1911), ii. 13, written by Major Sill (misprinted there as Till). The Major crossed with the flank companies of his regiment (63rd) and met wounded men retreating. Swett seems to have been the originator of the idea that the troops whom Clinton and Burgoyne saw standing on the beach were refugees from Pigot’s column. He assumed that the reinforcement that Clinton accompanied or followed was a third detachment. Being puzzled by the losses of the Second Marines in the casualty list he ventured to make marines of this mythical force, with Major Small in command. Small was a major in the 42nd Regiment (Highlanders) and was on special duty in Boston. He was appointed Brigade Major of Pigot’s Brigade in 1774 and served in that capacity at Bunker Hill. I find no authority for Swett’s suppositions, and no evidence whatever that any troops save the detachments mentioned in the Morning Orders crossed the river during the battle.
255 This is doubtless where Captain Harris of the 5th Regiment was dangerously wounded after two unsuccessful attempts to mount the wall (Lushington’s Life of Lord Harris, pp. 54–56).
256 In this advance the troops suffered heavily for a few moments when they came within range of the fire of the Connecticut men at the rail fence. See my article on “The American Defence,” p. 126, above.
257 See joint letter written by Capt. Chester and Lieut. Webb, June 19, 1775, 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 62.
258 “The retreat was no flight: it was even covered with bravery and military skill” (Burgoyne to Lord Rochfort, in de Fonblanque’s Burgoyne, p. 147). Curiously enough most American narratives are in disagreement with Burgoyne and suggest a rout.
259 Letter of Samuel Paine, Historical Magazine, pp. 440–442.
260 Letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War.
261 For duration of the battle, see my paper on “The American Defence,” p. 128, above.
262 Gage’s Report, 226 killed, 828 wounded.
263 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1092–1093.
264 Historical Magazine, p. 360.
265 De Fonblanque, Life and Correspondence of Gen. John Burgoyne, pp. 147–148.
266 London Chronicle, February 24, 1776, p. 186.
267 Attributed to Marshal Soult.
268 See our Publications, xviii. 15–17.
269 New-Englands Memoriall, by Nathaniel Morton; with an introduction by Arthur Lord. Boston, 1903.
270 See our Publications, xviii. 17–26, especially 21–23.
271 See the notice of him in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 560–561.
272 B. Kingman, Epitaphs from Burial Hill, pp. 150–151.
273 Cf. our Publications, xviii. 23.
274 This agreement was printed in full, id. xviii. 21–22.
275 W. T. Davis, Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth, p. 196.
276 W. T. Davis, Plymouth Memories, p. 167; John J. May, Danforth Genealogy, p. 172.
277 See our Publications, xviii. 25, xxiii. 549–550, 561, 562, 568, 570–572.
278 See also Commonwealth of Massachusetts, House Document No. 1815: Presentation of the Portrait of William Stoughton … to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Boston Athenaeum … May 20, 1924, which contains addresses by J. Randolph Coolidge, Jr., Esq., Mr. Charles Knowles Bolton, and the Honorable Benjamin Loring Young, together with a formal acceptance on behalf of the Commonwealth by His Excellency Channing H. Cox.
279 See our Publications, xvii. 250–271.
280 Amos Lawrence, 1814–1886, became Treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Company after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854. For the naming of Lawrence, Kansas, see 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xii. 132, 133.
281 Josiah Royce, Provincialism, in his Race Questions, etc. (New York, 1908).
282 Since the present year (1925) is the bicentennial of Paoli’s birth, it seems appropriate to give a brief summary of his career, which will also serve to make clear various points which occur below in the text. He was born April 25, 1725, at Rostino, Corsica, the son of Hyacinth and Dionisia Valentini Paoli. His mother was of noble birth, and his father had fought bravely as a Corsican general in 1734 in an uprising against the Genoese. Pascal (or Pasquale) received a good education, learned several languages, acquired military experience, and, in 1755, found himself already, at thirty years of age, benevolent dictator of Corsica, an office to which he was called by the people. He expelled the Genoese, who had long held most of the island in subjection, and ruled with conspicuous wisdom for fourteen years. In 1768 the Genoese sold their rights to the French, and Corsica was overrun by these new foes. This meant that Paoli was now called upon to face a resourceful European power, and it is remarkable that for a year he was able to withstand the assaults of the French. Defeated in battle on May 9, 1769, he retired to Leghorn, and in September went to England, where he remained for the rest of his life except for a visit to Corsica in the period from 1791 to 1795, at which time he tried in vain to free the island from the control of France. Seeing that the attempt was doomed to fail he turned the island over to the English. He hoped to be made governor of the island, but, for political reasons, that position was given to Sir Gilbert Elliot, and Paoli, discouraged, returned once more to England, where he resumed a pension, formerly granted to him, which now amounted to two thousand pounds. He died in England February 5, 1807. An impressive memorial to him was erected in Westminster Abbey. His body was buried in old St. Pancras Churchyard, but in 1889 it was removed to Corsica. The Latin inscription on his tomb in St. Pancras Churchyard is printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1808, p. 61.
Paoli’s public aims were essentially insular, and his sole idea in life was independence for Corsica. He never allowed his activities to be diverted to other channels and so never showed the world what he might have accomplished in a larger field. At heart he was a more constructive statesman than Napoleon, the other great Corsican in European history since the tenth century, for his thoughts were always close to the people and he was always seeking their prosperity and happiness.
A short but interesting account of Paoli will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, and there is a longer appreciation and critical study of him in Historical Studies, by Herman Merivale (1865), pp. 75–129. See also F. M. Giamarchi, Vita Politica di Pasquale Paoli (Bastia, 1858), K. L. Klose, Leben Paskal Paolis (Braunschweig, 1853), C. B. Tinker, Nature’s Simple Plan, and H. Murdock, Earl Percy Dines Abroad (Boston, 1924). In 1769 there was published in London a poem by George Cockings, called The Paoliad, or Corsican Memoirs. This was in praise of Paoli and the liberty-loving Corsicans.
Throughout this paper the usual modern spelling of Pascal for Paoli’s Christian name is adopted, although in many of the quoted passages Paschal appears.
283 Samuel Quincy, Solicitor General of Massachusetts in the time of Hutchinson, in his diary, under date of January 1, 1777, while a refugee in London, tells of seeing Paoli at court. See Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xix. 217.
284 Guizot, History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848 (London, 1872–1881), v. 230–232 (Chapter LIV).
285 Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the eminent French philosopher and author, was a friend of Paoli.
286 I have not discovered that there were any American subscribers to this fund.
287 This translation of a letter from Paoli to Barlow Trecothick and S. Vaughan was printed in the London Chronicle, April 22–April 25, 1769, p. 390. The original letter was dated at Corsica March 20, 1769. The London Chronicle for 1768, 1769, and 1770, passim, contains many references to Paoli’s activities in Corsica, and after his arrival in England.
288 For English impressions of Paoli, see the London Chronicle, November 20–November 22, 1766, p. 498, and September 30–October 3, 1769, p. 328; The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, vii. 328; a poem by the Rev. T. Tournay, called Ambition, an Epistle to Paoli, in the London Chronicle, March 21–March 23, 1769. Walpole writes: “The King and_Queen both took great notice of him … he was everywhere received with much distinction.”
289 This letter first appeared in the Political Register, an English illustrated monthly magazine, for January, 1769, p. 31. The original, in French, was printed, together with an English translation. The London Chronicle for December 31–January 3, 1769, p. 4, reprinted the translation. It was then copied in the Connecticut Courant for March 27, 1769, and also in the Boston Gazette, April 10, 1769. I am indebted to Mr. Albert C. Bates, Librarian of the Connecticut Historical Society, for first calling my attention to this item. The text given here is that of the letter as printed in the London Chronicle.
290 The Comte de Marbeuf (c. 1712–1786) was one of the leading French generals serving in the campaign to annex Corsica. He was tactful and efficient, and later acted as the first governor of Corsica under French rule. He tried unsuccessfully to reconcile Paoli to the conquest of the island.
291 James Boswell (1740–1795).
292 An Account of Corsica; the Journal of a Tour to that Island; and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, London, 1768.
293 The reference is to Mrs. Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791), whose History of England from the Accession of James the First to that of the Brunswick Line was, in its day, highly popular. Mrs. Macaulay had the support of the Whigs in England, and was a favorite in patriot circles in America. She was especially well liked in Massachusetts, and sent James Otis a set of her writings. In 1784 and 1785 she was in America and in the latter year was a guest of Washington at Mount Vernon. She married William Graham, December 17, 1778, and is sometimes referred to in books of biography as Mrs. Graham. On April 15, 1770, Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Barber of Boston had a daughter born whom they named Catharine Macaulay Barber. See Boston Records, xxiv. 320.
294 Boswell’s book contains an engraving of Paoli, probably made from a painting by Henry Bainbridge of London, who was sent by Sir John Dick, the English consul at Leghorn, to Corsica to paint the general’s portrait. This was done shortly before the French completely dominated the island.
295 Account of Corsica, p. 370.
296 John Dickinson (1732–1808), author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, published in twelve successive numbers of the Pennsylvania Chronicle, beginning December 3, 1767. They were instantly popular.
297 Boston Gazette, April 10, 1769.
298 Pennsylvania Journal, April 13, 1769.
299 John Glynn (1722–1779), counsel for John Wilkes. Glynn himself later was elected to Parliament in the political overturn of this exciting period. It was of him that Wilkes said to George III: “Ah, Sir! he was a Wilkite, which I never was.”
300 Daniel Dulaney (1721–1797), of Maryland. In 1765 Dulaney strenuously opposed the Stamp Act, and in the same year published his Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies. In 1769 he was at the height of his popularity. Later he became a Tory.
301 Doubtless Samuel Adams, as at this time John Adams was less prominent than his cousin.
302 The number 45 which was popular at this period represented the number of the North Briton, John Wilkes’s publication, which had been attacked by the Crown for its treasonable utterances. There were forty-five toasts at many of the jollifications of the Sons of Liberty, but the colonists were said to have drunk as many as ninety-two toasts and still, according to John Adams, to have remained sober.
303 This information was secured for me by Mr. Thomas L. Montgomery, Librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
E. D. Mansfield, in his Personal Memories, p. 51, describing a journey made through Pennsylvania about 1812, speaks of taverns, saying, “These taverns had special names, such as ‘The Black Horse,’ and ‘The General Wayne,’ ‘The Ship,’ ‘The Paoli,’ etc., and were noted throughout the country.”
304 At intervals along the Lancaster road there were several other hostelries, one of which came to be known as the Warren. (Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, ii. 163.) It stood about two miles south of the Paoli. It was originally called the Admiral Vernon. See J. T. Faris, Old Roads Out of Philadelphia, p. 140.
305 See A. E. Newton, The Greatest Book in the World, chap. 5, “Change Cars at Paoli.”
306 Wayne’s defence of his precaution is stated in H. B. Dawson, Battles of the United States, i. 315–317.
307 For Wayne, see C. J. Stillé, Major-General Anthony Wayne and the Pennsylvania Line in the Continental Army.
308 Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book, ii. 166–167 note.
309 Only 53 were buried at this point, but 8 others were killed in this night attack.
310 Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book, i. 764 note. General Grey is not unknown in New England annals, as is seen in the following extract from the Journal of Captain John Montresor in New York Historical Society Collections (Publication Fund Series, 1881), p. 513: “[Sept.] 19th. [1778]…. This day arrived Major-General Grey from his Expedition — the last to Martha’s Vineyard where he took 10,000 sheep, 300 head of Cattle, besides Hogs and 400 stand of arms and 1000 pounds in Paper, Congress Tax — 6000 of the sheep were sent to Rhode Island which the Garrison were much in want of.”
Lossing says of the affair at Paoli (Field-Book, ii. 164 note): “A Hessian sergeant, boasting of the exploits of that night at Paoli, exultingly exclaimed, ‘What a running about, barefoot, and half clothed, and in the light of their own fires! These showed us where to chase them, while they could not see us. We killed three hundred of the rebels with the bayonet. I stuck them myself like so many pigs, one after another, until the blood ran out of the touch-hole of my musket.’”
American charges against Grey’s inhumanity led Sir George Otto Trevelyan, in his American Revolution (N. Y. 1907), Part iii. 234 note, to come to the English general’s defence, and to question the authenticity of the letter just quoted. He points out that there were no Hessians in Grey’s column and that the letter has the air of a forgery.
Trevelyan also says (pp. 233 and 234): “It once was the fashion in America to write about General Grey as if he was of a pair with Governor Tryon; but in truth he was a high-minded and honourable gentleman, and a soldier every inch of him. He had been on Prince Ferdinand’s staff in Germany; was wounded at Minden; and afterwards, like a good comrade, went back to his regiment, and was wounded again at Kloster Kampen. In that memorable camisado Grey learned by personal experience the important truth that, in a night attack, the less noise the better.… The affair has often been called, unfairly and almost absurdly, the Massacre of Paoli. Men always attach the idea of cruelty to modes of warfare in which they themselves are not proficient; and Americans liked the bayonet as little as Englishmen approved of taking deliberate aim at individual officers. It was currently reported throughout the Confederacy that quarter had been refused, and that the wounded were stabbed where they lay; but there is no arguing against figures. When the neighboring farmers assembled next morning to bury their fallen countrymen, they found only fifty-three dead bodies.”
311 Stillé: Major-General Anthony Wayne, p. 96.
312 J. T. Faris, Old Roads, p. 141. For the Admiral Warren tavern, see p. 192, note 2, above.
A recent account of the battle, written by Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker for the dedication at Valley Forge of an equestrian statue to Wayne, says, “At Germantown his [Wayne’s] division encountered and attacked the right wing of the British army to the east of the town, charged with bayonets, crying out for ‘Paoli and revenge,’ put the enemy to rout and pursued them for three miles, killing with little mercy those who were overcome.” (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1908, xxxii. 267.)
313 Massachusetts Gazette, August 21, 1766.
314 Massachusetts Gazette, August 18, 1768; Boston Records (The Town of Roxbury), xxiv. 165–166.
315 Boston Gazette, Supplement, August 15, 1768.
316 Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser, June 19, 1769.
317 Charles Lucas (1713–1771), Irish physician and politician who as a pamphleteer offended the House of Commons and was voted by it an enemy to the country. He retired to France but was pardoned by George III, and subsequently was elected to the House of Commons. He advocated more liberal rights for the Irish Parliament, and defended the interests of the Protestants in Ireland. He championed principles much the same as those urged by the modern Protestant leaders of Ulster.
318 Cantons or districts are mentioned in the French treaty of 1452 and in the treaties of Westphalia in 1648, but are not officially recognized in Switzerland until 1799. At the time of this toast the Helvetic Society, founded in 1762, was advocating the establishment of a republic in Switzerland.
319 The reference is to Frederick II, known in history as Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He greatly increased the prestige of Prussia and was aided at times in his military conquests by England, which explains his popularity in America.
320 Charles Emmanuel III, in whose reign of forty-three years (1730–1773) the prosperity of the island was very marked.
321 Russia was harassing Poland at this time and Prussia was assisting her. The situation was preliminary to the first partition of Poland, which occurred in 1772.
322 The States-General of the Netherlands. The States-General, while disappearing as a political unit in 1796, is the title borne by the Dutch Parliament of today.
323 Boston Gazette, September 26, 1768.
324 Boston Gazette, January 16, 1769; Boston Post-Boy, January 16, 1769.
325 A. E. Brown, John Hancock, His Book, p. 170.
326 The original document is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
327 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xlvii. 210.
328 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xlvii. 202.
329 Boston Evening Post, August 21, 1769.
330 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xi. 140–142; Boston Evening Post, August 21, 1769.
331 The expression “in the Fields” perhaps is the adoption of an English phrase, meaning outside the city limits; other newspaper notices of this meeting say that they met “on the Green.”
332 Holt’s New-York Journal, March 23, 1769.
333 Gaines’ New York Gazette & Weekly Mercury, November 6, 1769. This reference and the previous one were furnished me by Mr. Alexander J. Wall, Librarian of the New York Historical Society.
334 I. Q. Leake, Life of John Lamb, p. 62; Holt’s New-York Journal, March 29, 1770.
335 Public Papers of General Clinton, i. 622. This item was called to my attention by Mr. Julius H. Tuttle.
336 See pp. 45–46, above.
337 P. F. Leavens, The Leavens Name, its Origin and its Track Through New England to Northern Vermont, p. 17.
338 The Tenney Family, pp. 159, 316; Oakham Vital Records, p. 49.
339 American Museum, iv. 188 (August, 1788).
340 It is worth noting, however, that P. P. is an abbreviation for “parish priest,” and p. p. for “per procurationem,” “by proxy,” and the initials on the document in question may represent no more than such an abbreviation.
341 Boston Records, xxiv. 316.
342 For an interesting discussion of the significance of Joyce Junior, see two articles by Mr. Albert Matthews in our Publications, viii. 90–104, and xi. 280–294.
343 Leake, Life of John Lamb, pp. 13, 14, note.
344 Harlow Lindly, Indiana as Seen by Early Travellers, p. 201.
345 So far as I have been able to learn there is no monument to him in America.
346 “The Deplorable State of New-England,” 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. 99*. This tract was inspired by Cotton Mather.
347 History of Massachusetts (1768), ii. 213.
348 ii. 214. This is cited with approval by Parkman in his Half-Century of Conflict (1906), i. 107.
349 History of New England, iv. 344.
350 History of the United States (1883), ii. 68.
351 History of the United States, ii. 169.
352 English Colonies in America (1889), iii. 217.
353 Public Life of Joseph Dudley (1911), pp. 1 ff., 204 ff. The comparison with Louis XI is mine.
354 American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (1907), iii. 385.
355 Founding of New England (1921), p. 408 and note 4.
356 This is well brought out by Kimball, pp. 112, 115, 206.
357 Dudley’s term as governor ran from 1702 to 1715.
358 See the address of the Council and Assembly of Massachusetts of July 12, 1704, in the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1704–5, no. 451, and that of the Council and Assembly of New Hampshire of October 22, 1707, in id., 1708–9, no. 65, iv. This publication will be cited henceforth as Calendar.
359 Three pamphlets called forth by the controversy of this period are printed in 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. Two of them set forth the case against Dudley; the third is a defence.
360 Hutchinson, ii. 141.
361 Collection de Manuscrits contenant Lettres, Mémoires, et autres Documents Historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle France (Quebec, 1884), ii. 425. This will be cited henceforth as Collection de Manuscrits. The letter is translated in the Massachusetts Province Laws, viii. 498. Practically all the documents bearing upon the negotiations are printed in the notes to that volume by its editor, Mr. A. C. Goodell.
362 Council Records, iv. 79.
363 Council Records, iv. 125; Province Laws, viii. 499; G. Sheldon, History of Deerfield (1895), i. 325–326.
364 Council Records, iv. 128; Province Laws, viii. 362.
365 Court Records, viii. 95; Massachusetts Archives, cviii. 23.
366 Calendar, 1704–5, no. 1274.
367 Id. 1704–5, nos. 679, 680.
368 Id. 1702–3, no. 673.
369 Province Laws, viii. 500; Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 428.
370 Sheldon, i. 329.
371 His instructions are in Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 432. They are translated in Province Laws, viii. 480.
372 Their course is traced in Province Laws, viii. 480–482, 511–514.
373 Id. viii. 512; Sheldon, i. 329.
374 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 438; Province Laws, viii. 513.
375 Province Laws, viii. 538; 6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, iii. 317; 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. 142. There are two slightly different versions of the proposed treaty, one in Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 440–447, the other in New York Colonial Documents, ix. 770–772. They are carefully collated by the editor of the Province Laws (viii. 541–543).
376 Province Laws, viii. 149, 543.
377 New York Council Minutes, ix. 574. Cornbury’s answer to Dudley has not been preserved. Mr. Goodell merely says (Province Laws viii. 543) that his assent was never given.
378 Province Laws, viii. 613; Sheldon, i. 332.
379 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 451, 452; Province Laws, viii. 614.
380 Calendar, 1706–8, no. 69.
381 The date is given in Vaudreuil’s letter to Dudley of June 2, 1706, in Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 452.
382 Calendar, 1706–8, no. 456. Dudley enclosed copies of the proposals in two letters, first in a letter dated November 1, 1705 (id. 1704–5, no. 1423), and again in his letter of February 1, 1706 (id. 1706–8, no. 69). As Vetch did not reach Boston till November 21, 1705, the enclosures in the letter of November 1 must have been added later, probably a not unusual proceeding. Some light might be thrown upon the question under consideration if we had a copy of Dudley’s draught. Unfortunately the editor of the Calendar did not see fit to summarize it and, so far as is known, no copy exists in this country. The fact that Dudley draws a clear distinction between what he proposed and the draught treaty which Vaudreuil sent back by Vetch goes to show, however, that there were essential differences between them. Other evidence of this will be adduced later.
383 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450, 470; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 779.
384 Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, i. 103; Kingsford, History of Canada, ii. 428. E. B. Greene in his Provincial America, p. 148, is also of this opinion.
385 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 438.
386 While preparing this paper, I wrote to Ottawa to see whether the original of Dudley’s letter was preserved there in the Canadian Archives. Replying to my letter, Mr. Francis J. Audet said that it was not, that they had only a copy of the transcript made in Paris and now in the Massachusetts Archives from which the Collection de Manuscrits was printed. Both Mr. Audet and Mr. Pierre-Georges Roy, Provincial Archivist of Quebec, to whom Mr. Audet referred my inquiry, gave it as their opinion that Dudley wrote in French, partly because French was the diplomatic language of the time, partly because they felt that had the letter in Paris been in English, the transcriber would merely have copied it as it was. Of course, the original may be lost and Vaudreuil may have sent only a translation to Paris. There is also the possibility that in translation the text of Dudley’s letter may have been purposely altered, but I see no good reason for such a supposition.
387 This cartel is calendared fully in Calendar, 1704–5, no. 860, i. A portion of it, as it appeared in the Boston News-Letter of April 9–16, 1705, is reprinted in Province Laws, viii. 482. See also An Historical Digest of the Provincial Press (Boston, 1911), pp. 173, 189.
388 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 452; Province Laws, viii. 614.
389 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450; Province Laws, viii. 544; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 775.
390 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 452.
391 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. 37*.
392 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 449, 451; New York Colonial Documents, xi. 779; Province Laws, viii. 512.
393 Court Records, viii. 183.
394 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 451; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 775. Modern writers have differed on this point. Kingsford (History of Canada, ii. 428) believes Dudley was sincere. J. T. Adams in his usual iconoclastic fashion affirms that neither was sincere (Revolutionary New England, p. 69). Charlevoix evidently got his views from the letters of Vaudreuil above cited. See his History of New France (ed. Shea), v. 176.
395 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 461.
396 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vi. 53.
397 History, ii. 165.
398 Calendar, 1706–8, no. 69.
399 Vaudreuil himself points out this fact (Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450).
400 Kimball, pp. 104, 115; Osgood, American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, i. 418; Sheldon, i. 330; Hutchinson, ii. 153. J. T. Adams is the only writer to question Vaudreuil’s sincerity. See p. 222 note 6, above.
401 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 448.
402 Again we have only the abridgment of a letter, in this case that of Vaudreuil written October 19, 1705. The abridgment reads that Dudley “propose par la lettre qu’il écrit à Monsieur de Vaudreuil une espèce de trève entre les deux gouvernements” (id. ii. 449).
403 There is no really good account of this part of Vetch’s life. Parkman has summarized the information contained in the only two attempts known to the writer to sketch his career in his Half-Century of Conflict (i. 133 ff). Vetch married a daughter of Robert Livingston, and was, therefore, a brother-in-law of John Livingston and through him a connection of the Winthrop family. Hence the statement which follows in the text.
404 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 439; Province Laws, viii. 514.
405 This information rests chiefly on Vetch’s petition of February 20, 1707, to the Privy Council (Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vi. 52 ff). See also Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 448, 451; Shea’s Charlevoix, v. 217 note 1; Osgood, American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, i. 420 note 2 and citations.
406 This charge was based upon a voyage made by Vetch to Acadia in 1706, not upon his 1705 voyage. See Hutchinson, ii. 154 ff.
407 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 448; Province Laws, viii. 545.
408 Calendar, 1701, nos. 785, ii, iii; Documentary History of the State of Maine, x. 96, 103.
409 Calendar, 1702, nos. 593, 679, 728, 780, 966.
410 See p. 216, above; also Calendar, 1704–1705, nos. 679, 680, 1274, 1423.
411 Calendar, 1706–1708, no. 526.
412 See p. 223, above.
413 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 333–334.
414 New York Colonial Documents, ix. 721, 739.
415 Id. ix. 728; Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 394.
416 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 405, 406.
417 New York Colonial Documents, ix. 748, 755.
418 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450, 461.
419 Id. ii. 448.
420 Id. ii. 470, 474; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 779.
421 “John Harvard and his Ancestry,” in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July, 1885, and October, 1886, xxxix. 265–284, xl. 362–380; Genealogical Gleanings in England (1901); “John Harvard’s English Home and Parentage,” in Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, June, 1907, xv. 543–560. Some interesting illustrations and facsimiles relating to John Harvard will be found in the Publications of this Society, xi. 366–382.
422 “The Discoverer of John Harvard,” by Edwin H. Abbot and William R. Thayer, in Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, December, 1913, xxii. 234–240.
423 Waters, Genealogical Gleanings, i. 126–129.
424 Genealogical Gleanings, i. 132.
425 Public Record Office, L. C. 4/66
426 Genealogical Gleanings, i. 257.
427 167 Memorandum quod Vicesimo Nono die Novembris Anno praedicto Robertus Houghton Civis et Pandoxator Londoniarum … recognovit se debere Jacobo Baldwin de Worlington in comitatu Suffolkie generoso Sexcentas libras solvendas in ffesto Natalis Domini proximo.
428 117 Memorandum quod Decimo tertio die Octobris Anno praedicto Ricardus Yerwood de parochia sancti Olavi in Southwark in comitatu Surr’ Armiger . . recognovit se debere Ricardo Britten de eadem ffeltmaker Ducentas et Viginti libras solvendas in ffesto Omnium sanctorum proximo.
429 Probably Levi Mills, born in Newburyport, 1758, married to Lucy Palmer (Plummer?) in Watertown in 1790, and father of Lydia Plummer and Mary Plummer Mills, born in 1796 and 1791 respectively. He died November 24, 1817. See Newburyport Vital Records, i. 263, ii. 315, 718, and T. B. Wyman, Charlestown Genealogies, ii. 675.
430 For Captain Nathaniel Nowell, see W. H. Bayley and O. O. Jones, History of the Marine Society of Newburyport, p. 324.
431 Captain Sylvanus Lowell (1746–1830). See D. R. Lowell, Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America, p. 328.
432 J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i. 464, no. 131.
433 Jeremiah Wise was the elder son of the famous John Wise (1652–1725), and graduated from Harvard College in 1700. In 1707 he became minister at Berwick. He died in 1756.
434 These memoranda are in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
435 Cf. K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather (1925), p. 395.
436 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; S. Sewall, Diary, i. 255 and note; J. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 494 (henceforth cited as Savage); New England Historical and Genealogical Register, iii. 38–39 (henceforth cited as Register); Memorial History of Boston, i. 581. By Bethia Tyng he had three sons: William, born in 1663; Richard, born in 1664; and Humphrey, born in 1666. Boston Records, ix. 89, 94, 101.
437 William Tyng arrived from England in 1638. An inventory of his estate taken in 1653 placed its value at £2774–14–94. Savage, iv. 356–358; Register, viii. 62.
438 Savage, iv. 356–358; Register, iii. 38–39. I doubt if he deserved this reputation. At the time of his death in 1683 his estate was valued at nearly £8000, but in the tax list of 1674 there were a few whose taxes were much higher than his. Boston Records, i. 22.
439 Savage, iv. 357; Register, xi. 284.
440 Savage, iv. 357.
441 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; Register, i. 71, ix. 172.
442 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; Sewall, Diary, i. 255 and note; Register, vi. 342. By Sarah he had four daughters: Sarah, born in 1671; Bethia, born in 1672; Frances, born in 1673; and Catherine, born in 1674. Boston Records, ix. 120, 125, 130, 134. One of Wharton’s children died in 1677, but which one I do not know. Sewall, Diary, i. 12.
443 Savage, iv. 612, 613; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note. By Martha Winthrop he had three daughters: Ann, born in 1679; Martha, born in 1682; and Dorothy, born in 1686; and one son, John, born in 1684. Boston Records, ix. 150, 159, 164, 172; Memorial History of Boston, i. 574.
444 Wharton used a seal bearing the arms of the Whartons of Yorkshire, a branch of which family was ennobled, but he was not, as the editor of the Connecticut Colonial Records thought, a son of Philip, Lord Wharton, whose only son was Thomas (1648–1715). Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 306 note; Sewall, Diary, i. 255 and note; Register, xxxi. 66, xl. 170; Encyclopædia Britannica.
445 Boston Records, vii. 74, 93, 117; Suffolk Deeds, xiii. 53, 65, 123; Register, lxi. 313, xxxvii. 270; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1675–1676, § 816 (henceforth cited as Calendar); New York Colonial Documents, ii. 662.
446 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 538, v. 6, 13, 24–25, 36, 56, 98, 102, 105–106, 153, 235, 397, 432; Register, xii. 53; Savage, iv. 494.
447 Calendar, 1675–1676, § 1018; 1677–1680, §§ 503, 581.
448 Records of the Court of Assistants, i. 129; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 458, 460; Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 296; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 582; Calendar, 1677–1680, § 1360–1.
449 The word Tortuga occurs in colonial records in many different forms. Sewall uses Taboodas, Tartooda and Tarbooda; Turtooda appears in the laws of Massachusetts, while the French Protestant Refugee (p.4) speaks of the island of Tortilla. Sewall, Diary, i. 124, 423, 495; Colonial Laws of Massachusetts (1887), p. 54.
450 In 1637 a tailor named Fitt was empowered “to set up a salt pen, if he can live upon it, and upon his trade,” and the following year, John Winthrop, Jr., was given liberty to set up salt works at Royal Side. W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 168–169. In 1641 the General Court of Massachusetts granted a monopoly of salt-making to S. Winslow for ten years (by his own process), and in 1648 to John Winthrop, Jr., for twenty-one years. Winthrop was to make salt from “meer salt water” for the use of the country. Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 331, ii. 229.
451 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts (1887), p. 54; Calendar, 1675–1676, § 953; American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, xiii. 468; Massachusetts Archives, cxxviii. 2; French Protestant Refugee, pp. 24, 41; Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 246–247. The committee appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts to treat with Wharton concerning his proposal, reported that they believed there was “so faire a probabillity for the raysing of salt in that way, & rationall encouragement for persons to advance as adventurers therein, that the Generall Court, in granting a charter for empowring a company of adventurers thereunto, may doe a publicke service for the country.” Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 505.
452 Register, ix. 339; Eleanor L. Lord, Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies in North America, p. 22. Plymouth made the grant on condition that the other colonies of the confederation give him the same privilege. Plymouth Colony Records, v. 65.
453 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 11–14.
454 The following names are contained in the petition presented on February 10, 1688: Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London, John Lacy, Daniel Cox, Robert Wolley, Richard Butler, Edmond Cox, Richard Wharton, Elisha Hutchinson, Jaheel Brenton, and Thomas Brattle, who petitioned for themselves and others. Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, 1680–1720, § 251. An extract from the petition is cited in Lord, Industrial Experiments, p. 16.
455 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 14.
456 Calendar, 1677–1680, § 1349–i; 1685–1688, §§ 901, 1629, 1809, 1839, 1840, 1850, 1855, 1859, 1863; 1689–1692, §§ 1811, 2466–i, 2467–ii–xi; Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 383; R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph (Prince Society), iv. 4, 221; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 11–14, 14–15; Andros Tracts, iii. 8.
457 There were before 1680 twenty-seven proprietors. After that date, the number increased. Among the new proprietors was Lord Culpeper, who acquired one-sixteenth interest and was appointed agent in England. 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 111.
458 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 137; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466; 5 id., ix. 111; Calendar, 1677–1680, §§ 1532, 1537; 1681–1685, § 1556; 1685–1688, § 91–i.
459 Suffolk Deeds, xiii. 203; 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 29; Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 370; Plymouth Colony Records, v. 210; Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699 (Original Narratives Series), pp. 13, 16.
460 See p. 256 note 1.
461 York Deeds, iii. 112 (Index of Grantees), viii. 56, 57, 58, 59; Savage, iii. 494; Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder, vi. 437, ix. 6, 132, 133, 196; Register, vi. 375, xiii. 264, xxi. 356–357, xliii. 152 note; Massachusetts Archives, iii. 352. Wharton wrote Wait Winthrop in July, 1683, that his business in Maine succeeded beyond his expectation and he hoped “to patch up matters to look like a whole piece.” 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 113. See also R. H. Akagi, Town Proprietors of New England Colonies, pp. 244–245.
462 One of Wharton’s tenants at Kennebec, in possession of land for about twenty-six years, held of Wharton on condition that he pay yearly two dozen cusk or two dozen fish if demanded, to Wharton and his heirs forever. Maine Historical and Genealogical Records, ix. 6. The Purchas property carried the reservation of the right to the fur trade. 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 244.
463 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, ii. § 177; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 81, 153, 155.
464 Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 166, 169, 276, 277, 360, 720.
465 Jeffries Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society), iv. 108, 111; Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 30–31, 138–150; Suffolk Deeds, xiii. 365, 366, 367; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 2128, 2176; Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 255, 256; Register, xxxi. 59; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 365 note. The stockholders were John Blackwell, Samuel Shrimpton, Charles Lidgett, William Stoughton, Joseph Dudley, Peter Bulkley, John Usher, Richard Wharton, Daniel Cox, Robert Thompson, Edmund Harrison, William Blathwayt, Edward Randolph, Thomas Henchman, Jonathan Tyng, John Hubbard, Thaddeus Mackarty, and three other persons to be named by Blackwell, Shrimpton, and Lidgett.
466 Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 486–488; Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 560–561.
467 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 11. At about the same time, the General Court in declaring a Thanksgiving Day expressed its policy of peace and neutrality, “the Lord our God hath also been intreated to continue unto us our outward peace, notwithstanding the approach & success of enemies upon our neighboring coasts.” Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 565.
468 Calendar, 1669–1674, § 1144; 1675–1676, § 531; Register, xl. 170; Historical Magazine, 1867, pp. 297–298.
469 New York Colonial Documents, ii. 536, iii. 207, 211–212.
470 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 12, 13, 18, 52, 115; Calendar, 1669–1674, § 1421.
471 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 18, 115, 52; Records of the Court of Assistants, i. 5.
472 New York Colonial Documents, ii. 658, 659, 662, 663, 664, 667.
473 New York Colonial Documents, ii. 667; Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 52. Massachusetts was similarly aroused in 1655 when Captain Leverett seized a Dutch vessel trading in the colony, because he had acted “without the consent or allowance of authoritje heere established.” Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 229, 234.
474 A document (Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 52–53), dated June 30, shows by its context that it is the petition handed by Wharton and associates to the General Court in December, 1673. The June dating is probably due to the fact that the petition was used by the court when it accused the associates of insubordination in March and again in June. Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii., p. 577, v. 13.
475 The Dutch were also desirous that the English colonies and New Netherland maintain friendly relations for trade purposes. In the secret resolutions of the States General is an acceptance of a proposal of the Board of Admiralty of January 29, 1674, to try to maintain neutrality with the English colonies, notwithstanding the war, and to conclude a treaty of commerce with them. The end of the war made such arrangements unnecessary. New York Colonial Documents, ii. 536.
476 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 26, 34, 45, 47, 48, 55; Records of the Court of Assistants, i. 15, 16; Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 573, 574; Calendar, 1669–1674, §§ 1357, 1421.
Massachusetts admiralty matters were usually conducted with juries, although the authorities, apparently appreciating that the colony’s laws did not conform to English admiralty law, tried to give the impression that admiralty cases were tried without juries. On June 9, 1680, Randolph reported a case in which the accused was acquitted because the jury was made up of merchants and masters of ships, yet in a letter dated that same month, the governor in answering queries of the Lords of Trade reported that admiralty cases were tried “without a jury according to the Sea Laws.” Calendar, 1677–1680, §§ 1383, 1494; 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 332–338.
477 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 39, 43; Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 577, v. 13. Wharton considered this decision most unjust, and in 1677 succeeded in getting the restraint against his pleading in the courts removed. In 1683 he appealed for a grant of land in compensation for the wrongs he had suffered. The court, “understanding that the effects of the sajd sentence had exceeded the intentions thereof, and that if the sajd Wharton had then so fully & clearly represented his case as now he doth, he might have binn acquitted, therefore, for the sajd Whartons releise, and in manifestation of the Courts respect and favour,” ordered “that the sajd sentence be totally and effectually reversed, and that for his full sattisfaction one thousand acres of land in the Province of Mayne” be granted to him. Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 153, 397. This grant was the nucleus of his Pejebscot Purchase.
478 Connecticut Colonial Records, ii. 294 and note; Calendar, 1675–1676, § 816; Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699, pp. 48, 57–61, 63, 64, 66–68, 81–82.
479 Hutchinson Papers, pp. 508, 509; Calendar, 1675–1676, § 721; 1681–1685, §§ 645, 1135.
480 Toppan, Randolph, iii. 273–274; Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 421–423, 424, 439–441; Calendar, 1681–1685, §§ 1145, 1445, 1566.
481 Toppan, Randolph, iii. 283–284, iv. 244; Calendar, 1681–1685, § 1589.
482 Calendar, 1681–1685, § 2033.
483 Edward and Jonathan Tyng, Wait and John Winthrop, Dudley, Usher.
484 Dudley, Stoughton, Randolph, Usher, Bulkley, Jonathan Tyng.
485 John and Wait Winthrop, Simon Bradstreet., Bradstreet, however, refused to serve as councillor.
486 Bulkley, Usher, Stoughton, Gedney, Pynchon.
487 Randolph soon accused him of conniving with illegal traders. Toppan, Randolph, iv. 114; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 582.
488 New Hampshire Provincial Papers, ii. 13–14; 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 161; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 231, 236, 240, 261, 262, 269; Toppan, Randolph, iv. 49–50, 58–59, 67–68, 69, 71; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 468, 472.
489 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 248–249; Calendar, 1685–1688, § 2132.
490 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 244–245.
491 Id., xiii. 272; Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 104–106.
492 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 24; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 242, 244.
493 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 30–31; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 255, 256.
494 Now Kingston: see Publications of this Society, xxi. 295 note 2.
495 Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 201, 202, 208–209, 353; Toppan, Randolph, i. 289–290; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ix. 469; 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ix. 153; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 702–iii, 819, 925; Rhode Island Colonial Records, iii. 197.
496 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 113, c. 389; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ix. 469. Randolph Holden of Rhode Island complained to the king that “since Joseph Dudley has been installed President they have taken the government of the province from us, and by a Committee, consisting of Elisha Hutchinson and John Saffin of Boston, formed to dispose of those lands, they have been making sale and merchandise of them, turning your Majesty’s province to their private advantage and to your great loss.” Calendar, 1685–1688, § 819.
497 That is, except those who had refused to accept office under Dudley, — Simon and Dudley Bradstreet, Nathaniel Saltonstall, and Francis Champernoon. For the names, see Andros’s instructions in Laws of New Hampshire, i. 156; Publications of this Society, xvii. 32–44.
498 Randolph, in a letter to the Lords of Trade after the revolution, in 1689 made this charge against the Massachusetts merchants, but he cites as his only evidence, Wharton’s acting as attorney for Lamoyn, who was a privateer, not a pirate. He added, “I forbear to trouble your Lordships with the instances of any more pyratts who have bin received and protected by some now in the present government.” Toppan, Randolph, iv. 279; Calendar, 1689–1692, § 152, p. 47.
499 Laws of New Hampshire, i. 172; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 909, 929, 944.
500 Wharton’s paper is to be found in Massachusetts Archives, c. 162–163, incorrectly dated. See V. F. Barnes, Dominion of New England, p. 163 note 75.
501 Goodrick, Randolph, vi. 216, 219, 235, 236, 251.
502 Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 360, 856.
503 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 203; Toppan, Randolph, ii. 33; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1319, 1414.
504 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 63, 204; Gay Manuscripts (Massachusetts Historical Society), State Papers, vi.; Andros Tracts, iii. 74; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1414–iv, 1496.
505 Samuel Sewall wrote to a friend, “The most remarkable within my view since your being here is the Going off of Counselour Wharton, Mr. Charles Morton, Mr. Woodrof, the Scotch Minister, Madam Bridgett Usher and her daughter which fell out last Tuesday.” Sewall, Letter Book, i. 50.
506 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 9. Povey wrote Randolph from London, April 25, 1688, “Mr. Wharton has severall businesses depending tho I doubt not much to his satisfaction.” Toppan, Randolph, iv. 221.
507 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 9, 14–15, 15–16; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1594, 1695.
508 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 17. He wrote practically the same letter to Hinckley, former governor of Plymouth. 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 713, 714, 712–713; Massachusetts Archives, cvi. 369, xi. 44; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1860, 1878, 1879; Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, i. 367.
509 Massachusetts Archives, cxxix. 317, 345; Andros Tracts, iii. 152–153; Gay Manuscripts, Phips Papers, i. 17, 18, 19–20; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 574; Calendar, 1689–1692, §§ 18, 25, 123, 124, 144, 145.
510 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, ii. 124–125, 129, 130; Gay Manuscripts, Phips Papers, i. 21; Calendar, 1689–1692, §§ 28, 75, 90, 102; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 298; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 573, 574.
511 Toppan, Randolph, ii. 79 note; Sewall, Diary, i. 225. John Higginson, a brother-in-law, wrote to his brother Nathaniel in 1692, “Our brother Wharton died in London about two yrs since, as suppose you haye heard. His estate, being much entangled, I doubt there will be nothing left for his two daughters Sarah & Bethia.” 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 198. John’s father, the Rev. John Higginson, also wrote to Nathaniel, who was apparently a wealthy man, exhorting him to “remember your sister Wharton’s two daughters to help forward their shop-keeping, for they keep a small shop at Boston; and are like to continue as ancient maids, I know not how long, Sarah being 25 or 26 years old.” Id., vii. 198, 199.
The Superior Court of Judicature of Massachusetts in 1697 authorized Ephraim Savage as administrator of Wharton’s estate to sell the Pejebscot Purchase to pay his debts. York Deeds, viii. 58.
512 Mather skilfully used the occasion of the war to insist that the New England colonies would coöperate better if charter governments were restored. Andros Tracts, iii. 151–152 note, 153.
513 Andros Tracts, iii. 198; Calendar, 1689–1692, §§ 1390, 1393, 1404; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 301–302.
514 Increase Mather greatly modified his position after the granting of the charter of 1691. Having failed in his efforts to bring about complete restoration of the old charter, he accepted the compromise charter as the best that could be had under the circumstances and thenceforth became its defender.
515 John Langdon to Robert Morris, November 10, 1777. Letter printed in S. V. Henkels’s Catalogue No. 1183.
516 James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times, i. 309–310.
517 New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 635–637.
518 George Otto Trevelyan’s American Revolution, pt. iii. p. 130. Langdon’s speech is also quoted in the following works, ranging in date from 1834 to 1916. The titles are listed here in chronological order:
J. M. Whiton, Sketches of the History of New Hampshire, p. 136; C. J. Fox and Samuel Osgood, The New Hampshire Book, p. 25; Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, i. 393; W. H. Bartlett, History of the United States, i. 437; C. W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth, i. 361; Caleb Stark, Memoir of General John Stark (1860), p. 46; E. D. Sanborn, History of New Hampshire, p. 182; W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay, Popular History of the United States (1879), iii. 580; J. L. Elwyn, “Some Account of John Langdon,” in New Hampshire State Papers (1891), xx. 858: C. R. Corning, “John Langdon,” in New England Magazine, New Series (1897), xvi. 622; F. B. Sanborn, New Hampshire, p. 226; H. D. Foster, “Stark’s Independent Command at Bennington,” in New York State Historical Association Proceedings (1905), v. 24; E. S. Stackpole, History of New Hampshire, ii. 136.
519 Jared Sparks, American Biography, i. 78.
520 Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in North America (London, 1787), ii. 232. Cf. William Gordon, History of the American Revolution, ii. 569.
521 Isaac Hill, Address delivered before the Republicans of Portsmouth and Vicinity, July 4, 1828, p. 4.
522 For the collection of portraits of the governors made by the Commonwealth, see also my remarks referred to on pp. 162–164, above.
523 The Beginnings of New England (1902), p. 142.
524 See Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, December, 1925.
525 Our Publications, xxii. 265–266. The incident is recorded under date of July 3, 1689.
526 Rev. Ichabod Wiswall (d. 1700).
527 Rev. Jonathan Russell (H. C. 1675).
528 Joseph Dassett (H. C. 1687).
529 Peter Burr (H. C. 1690).
530 John Leverett (H. C. 1680).
531 Rev. William Brattle (H. C. 1680).
532 Rev. Thomas Symmes (H. C. 1698).
533 Rev. Eliphalet Adams (H. C. 1694).
534 See Sewall’s Diary, i. 439. In my list of temporary students (our Publications, xvii. 275, 282), I assigned Eyre and Maxwell conjecturally to the class of 1699. From what Josiah Cotton says, it is a fair guess that Eyre was of the class of 1698. President Mather’s sermon, referred to by Josiah Cotton, was entitled “A Discourse Concerning the Uncertainty of the Times of Men, … Preached at Cambridge … Decemb. 6. 1696. On Occasion of the Sudden Death of Two Scholar belonging to Harvard Colledge,” Boston, 1697. Maxwell was probably the only Harvard student who had two sermons preached on him on two continents. For in addition to Mather’s sermon, “J. G.” published at London in 1697 “A Funeral Sermon Preached at Newport-Pagnell, April 11. 1697. On the Occasion of the Sudden Death of William Maxwell, A Pious and Hopeful Young Scholar, belonging to Harvard-Colledge, in Cambridge, New-England.” Newport Pagnell is in Buckinghamshire. For my knowledge of this sermon, I am indebted to the late Mr. Frederick L. Gay, who gave his copy to the Harvard College Library, where it is catalogued under “G., J.” The author was the Rev. John Gibbs, who was vicar of Newport Pagnell in 1647 or 1655, was ejected about 1660, later became an independent minister, and died June 16, 1699, in his seventy-second year: see J. Staines, History of Newport Pagnell (1842), pp. 97–102, 104–105, 108–112, 126–129, 137, 192; F. W. Bull, History of Newport Pagnell (1900), pp. 5, 110, 120, 134, 138, 140–141,150, 283; S. Palmer, Nonconformist’s Memorial (1803), i. 308. He was in some way related to the Maxwells.
535 In an earlier portion of the Diary. Increase Mather’s first wife was Mary (or Maria) Cotton, a sister of Josiah Cotton’s father.
536 Cf. our Publications, xviii. 373.
537 James Oliver (H. C. 1680).
538 Boston Public Latin School.
539 Rev. John Cotton (H. C. 1678).
540 Nathaniel Hubbard (H. C. 1698).
541 John Radcliffe of Hitchin Priory, Hertfordshire, who represented St. Albans borough from 1768 to 1783. In 1768 he married Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Carlisle. He died December 21, 1783. This identification is based on the fact that the text of the letter makes it clear that the Radcliffe addressed was a “Parliament Gentleman” and in 1775 John Radcliffe was the only Radcliffe in Parliament. See Gentleman’s Magazine (1783), liii. 1066, and R. Beatson, Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (1807).
The writer of the letter was doubtless Harry Farrington Gardner, Captain Lieutenant in the 16th Light Dragoons (Army Lists, 1775–1777). Burgoyne was colonel of this regiment. Gardner came out with him as his Aide-de-camp (note 2 below). After Burgoyne’s return to England in the fall of 1775, certain of his affairs were left in Gardner’s hands, for, in Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 106, there is an entry under the date of October 7, 1775, which reads, “Whereas the House of Mr Quirney in South Street late the Quarters of Major General Burgoyne has been broke open and many Valuable Effects taken away, any person who will give Information so that the Offenders may be Apprehended & brought to Condign Punishments, shall receive Five Guineas Reward by applying to Capt. Gardner.”
542 Burgoyne wrote to Lee, July 8, 1775, “Among other supporters of British rights against American claims, I will not speak positively, but I firmly believe, I may name the man of whose integrity you have the highest opinion, and whose friendship is nearest your heart — I mean Lord Thanet, from whom my Aid de Camp has a letter for you, and also one from Sir Charles Davers.” Almon’s Remembrancer, 1775, p. 139. In his answer to this letter Lee writes, “He begs General Burgoyne will send the letters which his Aid de Camp has for him. If Gardiner is his Aid de Camp, he desires his love to him” (id., p. 140).
543 “On the same day, vizt, the 5th of September 1775, Lord Dartmouth, in a secret Dispatch, acquaints General Howe with the application made to the Empress of Russia for a Body of Infantry to serve in North America, that in consequence of a favorable answer from that Court the Minister was Instructed to agree for a Corps of 20,000, that the greatest part would be sent to Quebec early in the Spring, and it was hoped that we should have an equal number of British Troops in North America in the next year.… On the 27 Octo 1775, Lord Dartmouth acquaints General Howe with the Arrangements made for Recruiting the different Corps in America, and for the augmentation of each Corps, & signifies to him His Majesty’s Pleasure with regard to the Officers to be sent to England for raising those Recruits, and the new Levies; and his Lordship, in that Letter, acquaints him that the fair Prospect we had of succeeding in our Treaty with Russia for a Body of Infantry was, at best, but doubtfull” (Précis of correspondence in Howe’s Orderly Book, pp. 301–302). Evidently Gardner had heard of the plan to secure Russian troops very early, probably from Burgoyne.
544 A reference to Radcliffe’s residence at Hitchin Priory.
545 Lady Frances was Radcliffe’s wife. Sir Charles may have been Sir Charles Davers. See p. 292 notes 1 and 2, above.
546 Gage’s report to the Earl of Dartmouth, dated June 25, 1775, summarizes the loss as 1054.
547 Our Publications, xxv. 150 note 1.
548 The half-title reads: “Mr. Dexter’s Century Sermon, on the Publick Thanksgiving November 23. 1738.” The title-page begins “Our Fathers God, the Hope of Posterity.”
549 P. 51. Cf. Massachusetts Province Laws, xiv. 186.
550 “It was for many years a part of Dedham, being called the Fourth, or Springfield, Parish” (F. Smith, History of Dover, 1897, p. 2). It will be remembered that the present Norfolk County was incorporated in 1793 from the county of Suffolk.
551 Mr. Anderson’s paper will be printed in the Transactions of a future meeting.
552 This letter is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Librarian of which has kindly allowed it to be printed.
553 J. L. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 61, No. 52.
554 January 7, 1698_(i. 246–247).
555 What reason Dunton had to expect to publish the Magnalia we do not know: he was quite capable of making the statement without any encouragement from the author. Note that in his Letters from New England, ed. Whitmore, p. 75, he says of Cotton Mather: “He has very lately finish’d the Church-History of New-England, which I’m going to print.”
556 For Hackshaw see note 4 on page 301, post. The Bromfield referred to seems to be Edward Bromfield of Boston, whom Sewall calls a merchant “well known here and in England” (6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, i. 224). He was born in England in 1649, came to New England in 1675, was a member of the “South Church,” and died in 1734. There is an extended notice of him in the New England Weekly Journal for June 10, 1734. More than once he was Mather’s literary patron, as appears from the references to him in Mather’s Diary, passim. Mather’s Memoria Wilsoniana, 1695, was dedicated to him, and the address to him makes it plain that the book was published at his expense. Sewall records that “Capt. Mason sailed June 13th, and Capt. Foster June 14th, 1700. At 6 mane, Mr. Bromfield went off from Scarlet’s Wharf. Mr. Elm Hutchinson and I accompanied him thither. I went and staid at his house till he was ready to goe.” (6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, i. 239.) Probably, then, Bromfield went to England in June, 1700. That he was back in Boston in 1703 is shown by Sewall’s Diary, ii. 72. The date when Mather records the sending of the Magnalia to England and the date of Bromfield’s sailing are so close as to make it possible to wonder whether Bromfield was not trusted to carry the precious manuscript. Entry for June 8, 1700, in text above.
557 Was this Bromfield, or Quick, or someone else?
558 Presumably Hackshaw.
559 Presumably Parkhurst.
560 Arber, Term Catalogues, ii. 400. One of the Harvard Library copies has the following autograph inscription: “For my very Honoured Friend Elisha Cook Dr of Physick & one of ye Council of New England at his House in Boston, from ye Publisher his very much obliged Friend & servant. John Quick. London, ye 6th. 24. 94.” One would like to know more about Quick’s relations with Cooke, of whom — see the index to his Diary — Cotton Mather did not approve.
561 See the sketch by Alexander Gordon in the Dictionary of National Biography, and in his Freedom after Ejection, p. 337; also the authorities mentioned at the end of these two sketches, and J. G. White’s Churches and Chapels of Old London.
562 In a page headed “Advertisements” in Quick’s Serious Inquiry … Whether a Man may Lawfully Marry his Deceased Wife’s Sister, London, 1703, it is said: “Whereas there was about Three Years since Published by Mr. Quick, Proposals for the Printing his Icones Sacræ, being the Lives of Seventy Eminent Divines … the Reason of it’s not Publication is this, the very next Week after the Death of his most noble Patron, who would have Printed his Works at his own Expences, it pleased God to visit Mr. Quick with those cruel Torturors of Scholars the Stone and Gout … under which he has groan’d Night and Day for above these Three Years time, so that till the Lord shall please to restore him to his former Health, that he may be able to get in Subscriptions, or to raise up for him some other munificent Mecænas, the Publication is suspended.”
563 K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 198.
564 Diary, i. 364.
565 Samuel Mather, H.C. 1690, son of Increase Mather and brother of Cotton. For him see Mr. T. J. Holmes’s paper, pp. 312–322, post.
566 Excepting what appears in the letter I have found almost nothing about Robert Hackshaw, merchant, of London. Bromfield’s letter of March 28, 1701 (Diary, i. 400), speaks of him as “a very serious and Godly man.” Cotton Mather (id., i. 550) includes in his list of his European correspondents in 1706 “Mr. Robert Hackshaw, Merchant, at Hogsdon [Hoxton], a suburb of London. A Robert Hackshaw was a cousin of Thomas Prince of Boston, and there are two letters from him to Prince in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, dated August 23, 1723, and August 1, 1726. In the first of these he says his family consists of a wife, son, and daughter, and speaks of his “Mother Buckle” as still alive, of his sister Robinson as dead, and of a brother Buckle. He says his own father died in October, 1722. Was the father Mather’s Robert Hackshaw? The will of Robert Hackshaw, merchant of London, was proved in 1738. Presumably this was the son. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 401; Memorial History of Boston, ii. 221 note, and W. H. Whitmore, Catalogue of the Prince Library (Wiggin and Lunt edition). In Hoxton, where Robert Hackshaw lived in 1706, there lived also the Rev. Edmund Calamy, and one or two other eminent nonconformist divines, and there was there “a noted college for training ministers of the Independent denomination.” Wheatley and Cunningham, London Past and Present, ii. 246.
567 Of Thomas Parkhurst, whom John Dunton calls “the most eminent Presbyterian Bookseller in the Three Kingdoms,” there is a short notice in the Dictionary of National Biography. The eulogistic notice of him by John Dunton, who had been his apprentice, is well known. See Dunton’s Life and Errors, Nichols edition, i. 205. Note that before the Magnolia Parkhurst had published at least five books for Cotton Mather. See Arber, Term Catalogues, ii. 342, 521; iii. 242, 271.
568 To the first of the two folio volumes of the Whole Works of John Flavell (1630–1691), the second edition of which was published in 1716, there is prefixed a sketch of Flavell’s life. No author’s name is mentioned in connection with it, however, and therefore one is puzzled by Quick’s statement. This edition of Flavell is among Parkhurst’s books advertised at the end of the Magnalia.
569 Almanacs of the period often include, to show “The Dominion of the Moon in Man’s Body passing under the 12 Signs of the Zodiack,” a rude woodcut with short straight lines drawn from the different parts of the body to the names and signs of the various constellations in the margin. These lines do look like arrows. Indeed, some of the cuts (e. g. the one in Coley’s Merlinus Anglicus Junior for 1700) show daggers or arrows instead of lines. Cf. G. L. Kittredge, The Old Farmer and his Almanack, pp. 53–61.
570 Quick [does not quite accurately remember his Homer (Odyssey, ix. 152 ff.).
571 On Raleigh’s publisher, Walter Burre (fl. 1597–1621), see Arber, Stationers’ Register, v. 224. He was made a freeman of the Stationers’ Company on June 25, 1596. (Id. ii. 716.) Raleigh’s History was entered April 15, 1611 (id. iii. 457), though not published until 1614. If Burre was as unsatisfactory as Quick suggests, it seems strange that Ben Jonson should have been content to have him publish Every Man in his Humour, The Alchemist, and The Silent Woman. (Id. iii. 169, 445, 498.) On the legend, which Sir J. K. Laughton and Sir Sidney Lee reject, that Raleigh threw his manuscript into the fire, see John Aubrey, Lives, ed. Clark, ii. 191. Aubrey apparently got the story from William Winstanley’s England’s Worthies (1660). In the second edition (1684) it occurs on page 300 (wrongly numbered 360 in the Harvard copy). The Dictionary of National Biography tells us that Winstanley’s material was “principally stolen from Lloyd,” but in Lloyd’s State Worthies I do not find the story in the account of Raleigh.
572 As copy for the parts of the Magnalia that had already appeared in print Mather apparently sent over — as he naturally would — either the Boston or the London editions of the books in question. See, in Sibley’s list, Harvard Graduates, iii. 42–158, Nos. 5, 7, 32, 33, 52, 65, 66, 68, etc. Comparison of the text of these works as originally printed and as reprinted in the Magnalia would throw further light on the question of responsibility for the frequent misprints in the Magnalia. In sixteen cases, taken at random, where errors in the Magnalia are pointed out in the errata sheet found in a few copies of the Magnalia, the “prints” are correct in fourteen. That is to say, if given anything like the chance an author now has of assisting in the correct production of his book, Cotton Mather would probably have shown himself, if not an impartial judge, at least the painstaking scholar that he was.
573 Joseph Dudley is said to have reached London some time before February, 1693, and to have sailed for Boston on April 13, 1702. See E. Kimball, Public Life of Joseph Dudley, pp. 65, 75. In the Magnalia (1702), Book II, p. 16, the elder Dudley is called a “Steward” to the Earl. The same is true of the earlier account in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xi. 207 ff., 212. On the differences between Mather’s earlier account of Dudley and that in the Magnalia, see K. B. Murdock, Selections from Cotton Mather, p. xliv. Note the interesting passage in the Magnalia (1702), Book ii, p. 16: “I had prepared and intended a more particular Account of this Gentleman [Thomas Dudley]; but not having any opportunity to commit it unto the Perusal of any Descended from him, (unto whom I am told it will be unacceptable for me to Publish any thing of this kind, by them not Perused) I have laid it aside, and summed all up in this more General Account.”
574 Large paper copies of the Magnalia are to be found occasionally: the catalogue of the Church Library (No. 806) mentions seven besides its own. In the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society there are two copies not mentioned in the Church Catalogue, one being the copy that belonged to Samuel Mather and that was used by him while he was engaged upon an abridgment of the Magnalia. See Cotton Mather’s Diary, ii. 88, 142–143. This copy is about 1415⁄16 inches high and 93⁄16’ inches wide. Small paper copies are usually about 12 inches by 7¾ inches.
575 Strange as it may seem that an author’s representative should unsuccessfully beg the privilege of seeing proof sheets, we must remember that in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century the author had nothing like the control of his text and front-matter that he now has. On this point see my article on John Cotton’s Singing of Psalmes a Gospel Ordinance, in our Publications, xx. 241 ff.
576 Whether Quick here refers to the proposals for printing his own Icones Sacrae or those for the Magnalia is not clear. But we know that shortly before December, 1701, proposals for printing the Magnalia were issued over the names of Hackshaw and Parkhurst. Evidence of this is found in the following advance notice of the Magnalia in John Dunton’s The Post-Angel for December, 1701 (ii. 468), which on account of its rarity may perhaps be worth reprinting here: “Proposals were lately Publish’d for Printing The History of New-England from its first Plantetion [sic], in 1620. unto 1690. By Cotton Mather, Pastor of a Church in Boston, in New-England, containing seven Books. … As to the Author of this Elabrate History, HE IS A PERSON OF GREAT LEARNING AND PIETY: I had the Happiness formerly to be acquainted with him, and have heard him Preach many Excellent Sermons in New-England, being once in his Company (which I took for Heaven; ‘twas always so good and Spiritual) he shew’d me his Library, and I do think, he has one of the best (for a Private Library) that I ever saw: Nay, I may affirm, that as the Bodleian Library at Oxford is the Glory of that University, if not of all Europe: So I may say, Mr. Mather’s Library is the Glory of New-England, if not of all America. I must own, I was greatly wanting to my self, if I did not learn more in that Hour I Enjoy’d his Company, than I cou’d in a Week spent in other mens: And therefore, none can doubt of an Extraordinary History, from an Author so well Provided with Books, and of such Great Parts; but I shan’t Enlarge for the Work will recommended it self, for the Rich Variety of its Materials and for its most Exact Fidelity and Impartiality observed in its Collection. The whole containing 220 Sheets, or there abouts; it is to be Printed in Folio, on Paper and Print according to Proposals; deliver’d out by Thomas Parkhurst, at the Bible and Three Crowns, in Cheapside, near Mercers Chappel; and Mr. Robert Hackshaw Merchant in London. To Encourage Subscribers, to this Great and Useful Work, he that brings the first Payment for Six Books, — is promis’d a Seventh Gratis, in Larger or Smaller Paper; and it has already found, such great Encouragement, That the whole Book will be Finish’d about Lady-Day next.” Parts of this are identical with Dunton’s Letters from New England, ed. Whitmore, p. 75.
577 John Howe (1630–1705) lived on for four years more in spite of his severe labors. See Dictionary of National Biography; Calamy’s Memoir prefixed to Howe’s Works, 1724, and Gordon’s Freedom after Ejection, pp. 287–88. In 1697 Howe and two others had signed the prefatory note recommending Cotton Mather’s Life of Sir William Phips (Sibley, iii. 64, No. 66). One of Howe’s books is mentioned with approval in Mather’s Diary, i. 56. George Hamond (Hammond) (1620–1705) was still lecturer at Salters Hall. See Dictionary of National Biography. For Vincent Alsop (1630–1703), see Gordon, p. 199. Perhaps “Mr. Griffyth” is Roger Griffith (d. 1708). Id. p. 275. Mr. Bragge is presumably Robert Bragge (1627–1704), who was in 1702 the minister of a congregation in Pewterers’ Hall, Lime Street, London. Id. p. 220; J. G. White, Churches and Chapels, Part II, pp. 17–18. At least two of these divines had known Increase Mather in England: see K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, Index, s. v. Alsop and Howe.
578 Increase Mather’s sermon on Ezek. 9.3 is printed in his “Ichabod,” Boston, 1702, where appears also an “Epistle to ye Reader” dated November 14, 1701, which explains how apt churches are to degenerate, that “Christians may be called to suffer for their Testimony unto Truths which are not Fundamentals in Religion,” and that there is reason to fear great calamities are impending for the English nation. I have not been able to find the sermons by Quick to which he refers; perhaps they were not published.
579 See, among other titles, Sibley, iii. 51–157, Nos. 24, 41, 49, 52, 53, 55, 66, 68, 74, 77, 111, 118, 157, 159, 187, 213, 226, 250, 254, 261, 280, 301, 305, 307, 327, 330, 333, 338, 349, 362, 377, 394, 400, 419, 421, 423, 428, 429, 432, 441, 451.
580 See Helper’s Lexicon and Du Cange.
581 The Oxford Dictionary also gives five examples — all in the seventeenth century — of “magnale” as a singular or “magnalls” as a plural form.
582 The Harvard library has a copy of this book.
583 The Harvard library has a copy of this book.
584 Edition of 1811, vii. 480.
585 The Harvard library has a copy of this book.
586 Page 89 has the following heading, printed like a chapter-title: God on the Mount, Or A Continuation Of Englands Parliamentary Chronicle.
587 Mr. Julius H. Tuttle is my authority for this statement.
588 Cf. his Right Thoughts in Sad Hours (1689) with Thomas Fuller’s Good Thoughts in Bad Times (1645–46) and Good Thoughts in Worse Times (1647); note also Mather’s Balsamum Vulnerarium e Scriptura; or the Cause and Cure of a Wounded Spirit (1691), as compared with Fuller’s The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience (1647). These resemblances are not the only ones between Mather’s titles and those of certain predecessors: the kind of learning and wordplay that he delighted to show lent themselves perfectly to this sort of thing. Nor are these the only examples of Cotton Mather’s indebtedness to Fuller. That subject would, in all probability, be worth investigating.
589 See the London Gazette.
590 Diary, i. 433.
591 C. Robbins, History of the Second Church, p. 216.
592 Sewall, Diary (July 2, 1690), i. 324.
593 Sewall, Diary, i. 259.
594 Mather Papers in 4 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, viii. 67 and note; and J. L. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, i. 189–190.
595 See K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 197 and note 36.
596 Sewall, Diary, i. 259–261, 270, 301, 307; Sewall, Letter Book, ii. 262.
597 Sewall, Letter Book, i. 117.
598 Cotton Mather, Diary i. 148. See also, K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, pp. 284–286; and Increase Mather’s MS Autobiography now owned by the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. In a note recording his return to Boston in 1692, Increase Mather says that he came home to his house in Boston, “my Samuel with me.”
599 Magnalia, Book IV, 138. For the noting of the significance of this entry I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews, who writes in part as follows: “There is evidence that he [Samuel Mather, 1674–1733] received the A.M. degree from his own Alma Mater. This is furnished by the 1925 Quinquennial and by the only two Triennials I have at hand for consultation. No copy of the 1698 Triennial is known, but that it was issued as a broadside is my opinion, for I believe that the Catalogus given in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia (Book IV, p. 138) was merely copied from a broadside. But however that may be, ‘Samuel Matherus Mr.’ is there found. And ‘Samuel Matherus Mr’ is also found in the 1700 Triennial (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, viii. 28). I am aware that these entries are not absolutely conclusive, for I have found various errors both in the old Triennials and in the modern Quinquennials.… Now if S. M. was in Boston in 1693 it is reasonable to suppose that he would have turned up at Commencement for his A.M., and since that degree was accorded him in the 1698 and 1700 Triennials it seems to me a safe guess that he actually got it in 1693.”
600 Harvard Students “. : . such of them as had studied Three Years after their First Degree, to answer the Horatian Character of an Artist.… And besides their Exhibiting Synopses of the Liberal Arts by themselves composed, now again publickly disputed on some Questions, of perhaps a little higher Elevation; These now, with a like Formality, [of receiving a book from the hand of the President] received their Second Degree, proceeding Masters of Art.” Magnalia, Book IV, p. 128. However there is no specified period of study included in the requirements for the Master’s degree as set down in section 18 of the laws of Harvard College printed in the Magnalia, Book IV, p. 133.
601 In Attestation, to Cotton Mather’s Magnalia.
602 Sewall, Letter Book, i. 201, 203. A passage in Increase Mather’s manuscript autobiography (American Antiquarian Society) shows Samuel was still in Boston in 1695.
603 Nathanael died in 1697.
604 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlv. 296, 297.
605 6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, v. 200.
606 Page 11.
607 Diary, ii. 665.
608 See his letter in Cotton Mather’s Diary, ii. 322–323.
609 “It is situated in the Marlborough Yard, in Meeting-House Lane, Witney, Oxford, England. In recent years it was an agricultural implement warehouse, today — significant change — it has become a garage,” says the historian of Witney, William J. Monk, Burford, Oxford, in a letter November 17, 1921, to the William Gwinn Mather Library.
610 It was a William Townsend, doubtless of the same family, who carried the entire cost (one thousand pounds) of erecting, in 1828, the new chapel mentioned above. W. J. Monk cites a resolution of the Witney Blanket Company in the year 1714, desiring Mrs. Townsend to provide a dinner for the company. See W. J. Monk, History of Witney, pp. 75, 226, 229.
611 Poor, weak, good-natured, scape-grace young “Cressy,” son of Cotton Mather, found his aunt at Witney good and handsome. She received him when he arrived about May, 1715, worn and reduced, after his rather unsuccessful first venture to sea. Later, after she had tenderly cared for him through months of illness, he expressed a “passion of Gratitude and admiration” for her and her accomplishments. See Cotton Mather’s letters to his son Increase, August, 1715, and to Mrs. Samuel Mather, 1715–16, in his Diary, ii. 323, 325; Samuel Mather’s letter to Cotton Mather, id. ii. 322–323; Thomas Reynolds’s letter to Cotton Mather, id. ii. 319; and Sir Henry Ashurst’s letters in 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 200, 216.
612 Possibly the painting may have been that owned by Miss Jane Mather of Newcastle-on-Tyne, which the genealogist of the Mathers saw in 1887, but which has since disappeared. See H. E. Mather, Lineage of Richard Mather, p. 9, and note 4 on page 320 below.
613 See K. B. Murdock, The Portraits of Increase Mather.
614 See K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 390, and The Portraits, passim. Increase Mather died in 1723.
615 It is practically certain, too, that Samuel of Dublin left no portrait of himself. See 4 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, viii. 18, 19.
616 Prints of Increase Mather, not intended for use as frontispieces, have been found inserted in some of the extant copies of various of his works.
617 ii. 355.
618 Portraits of the Founders, iii. 875–880, where the painting is reproduced.
619 Cf. note 1 on page 319, ante.
620 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, x. 45–46.
621 In connection with the question of the Bocquet engraving of Samuel Mather for the 1802 Calamy, see K. B. Murdock, The Portraits, pp. 50–55. However, if the Townsend portrait of Samuel became shortly after 1802 the property of Samuel Mather’s grandniece Mrs. Hannah (Mather) Crocker of Worcester, Massachusetts, as Mr. Bolton supposes, then the Samuel Mather portrait owned in 1887 by Miss Jane Mather of Newcastle-on-Tyne may have been the original of the J. Simon mezzotint.
622 The copy as prepared by Samuel Mather for publication is now owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society. See Cotton Mather, Diary, ii. 88,142–143.
623 This book has been sometimes attributed to Edmund Calamy, who wrote the Preface.
624 Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, ii. 224. His name appears also as Lawrence Vandebost, Laurent Van den Bosck, Laurence Vandenbosk, Lambertus van der Bosch, Laurence van den Bosch, Vandenbosch, and Vanden Bosch.
625 “Primo die Augusti 1682, Laurentius Van den Bosck Flandriae Natione in Sacros Diaconatus et presbyteratus Ordines fuit admissus.” Ordination Book, 1675–1809, in Bishop of London’s Registry, Doctor’s Commons.
626 Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, x. 55.
627 Id., x. 60. This appears to be a very early, if not the earliest, reference to marriage ceremonies performed by a clergyman in the colony. In the Memorial History of Boston, ii. 315, referring to the Rev. Charles Morton installed pastor of the Church in Charlestown, November 5, 1686, it is stated that “He was the first clergyman in this place to solemnize marriages, which previously to 1686 were performed by civil magistrates.” In addition to the marriage recorded by Sewall as performed by Van den Bosch in September, 1685, cited below in the text (page 325), he also noted several marriages soon after the arrival in Boston, in May, 1686, of the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe of King’s Chapel. “[1686] Tuesday, May 18. A great Wedding from Milton, and are married by Mr. Randolph’s Chaplain, at Mr. Shrimpton’s, according to the Service-Book, a little after noon, when Prayer was had at the Town-House: Was another married at the same time. The former was Vosse’s Son. Borrowed a Ring. ’Tis said they having asked Mr. Cook and Addington, and they declining it, went after to the President and he sent them to the Parson.” Diary, i. 139. “Wednesday, Septr. 15, Mr. David Geffries marries Mrs. Betty Usher before Mr. Ratliff.” Diary, i. 152.
628 Andros Tracts, Prince Society, ii. 36, 37, in a reprint of “A Vindication of New England.” Mr. Murdock has clearly shown the erroneousness of previous attribution of the authorship of this tract to Increase Mather. K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 225–227.
629 W. C. Ford, Ezekiel Carré and the French Church in Boston, in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, lii. 121–132.
630 Henry Compton (1632–1713), Bishop of London from 1675 to 1713.
631 Ford, Ezekiel Carré, pp. 122, 123. Gay Transcripts, in Massachusetts Historical Society, State Papers, iii. 84.
632 Diary, i. 98.
633 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, Appendix, ii. 398–400.
634 Id., Appendix, ii. 400.
635 E. T. Corwin’s Manual of the Reformed Church in America, p. 499, states that Van den Bosch was at Boston, 1685; Rye, 1686; Staten Island, 1686–1687; Kingston, 1687–1689. I have not been able to verify the statement as to Rye.
636 Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, ii. 936.
637 Ira K. Morris, Memorial History of Staten Island, ii. 275, states that “For nearly two years — say 1687–8 — the Church at Stony Brook was supplied by a certain Laurentius Van den Bosch, or Van Bosen, as it was sometimes written.” J. J. Clute, Annals of Staten Island, p. 256, gives the years as “1687 to 1689.”
638 Foreign Protestants, and Aliens, resident in England 1618–1688. Publications of the Camden Society, 1862, pp. 57–59.
639 Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, ii. 1003.
640 Minister at Albany.
641 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1005.
642 Id., ii. 1007.
643 Id., ii. 1020, 1021.
644 Id., ii. 1021.
645 Id., ii. 1043.
646 Id., ii. 1083.
647 Rev. Ethan Allen, Historical Notices of St. Ann’s Parish in Ann Arundel County, Maryland, p. 23: “At this time [1692] there appears to have been only four Church of England clergymen in Maryland — Mr. Crawford in St. Mary’s, Mr. Moore in Charles, Mr. Lillingstone in Talbot, and Mr. Vanderbush in Cecil.”
648 Archives of Maryland, Proceedings of Assembly, xiii. 425–430.
649 Archives of Maryland, Proceedings of Council, viii. 474.
650 George Johnston, History of Cecil County, Maryland, p. 207.
651 The two Churches are about sixteen miles apart, the two parishes being divided by the Sassafras River. I am indebted to the Rev. Edmund Burk, a former Rector of North Sassafras Parish, for valuable information concerning the two parishes. St. Paul’s, Shrewsbury, is now in the County of Kent.
652 George A. Hanson, Old Kent of Maryland, p. 344.
653 800 lbs. in text but should be 8000 lbs. At a vestry meeting of St. Stephen’s Church held January 20, 1693, “it was ordered that the sum of 12430 lbs. of tobacco, assessed this year upon this parish, by Act of Assembly, be disposed of as follows:
|
To the Minister, Mr. Lawrence Vanderbush |
8000 lbs. |
|
To the Sheriff for receiving tobacco |
622 lbs. |
|
To Thomas Pearce Clerk |
800 lbs. |
|
9.422 lbs.” |
I am indebted to the Rev. Mr. Burk for this citation from a History of St. Stephen’s Parish by David P. Davis.
654 Hanson, Old Kent, p. 345.
655 Hanson, Old Kent, p. 346. Record of a Vestry Meeting of St. Paul’s, July 2, 1697.
656 Massachusetts Archives, Council Executive Records, ii. 52.
657 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, ii. 225.
658 Id., i. 231, 232.
659 See page 326, above.
660 The name, in the transcript of the correspondence of the Classis, is said to be undecipherable. In Selyns’ letters and the acknowledgments from Amsterdam and Haarlem, it appears as Morpo, Mageto, Moyro, and Morpe. Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, ii. 936, 945, 948, 1172.
661 Id., ii. 1172.
662 The Report of a French Protestant Refugee, Brooklyn, 1868, pp. 34, 35. It comprises a letter dated Boston, November 15–25, 1687, in which reference is made to Mr. Bondet as Minister in the Nicmock Country [i.e. Nipmuck Country, at Oxford, Mass.], and to Mr. Carré as minister at “Noraganzet” (Report, pp. 18, 19); and also a letter (undated but containing a reference to a previous letter, dated December 1, describing a journey to Narragansett), which has the reference to de Bonrepos, apparently written some time in December, 1687.
663 November 24, 1687. “Liberty is granted to the French Congregation to meete in the Latine Schoolhouse att Boston as desired.” Massachusetts Archives, Council Executive Records, ii. 155.
664 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, i. 211.
665 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 959. It is not possible to determine whether the words within parentheses are part of the original letter or are an editorial interpolation.
666 The Rev. Charles H. Stitt in his “Huguenots of New Palz,” Collections Ulster Historical Society, i. part 3, p. 194, wrote that “We learn further from the Documentary History of New York, that David De Bonrepos was naturalized under the seal of the Province, February 6th, 1696.” No volume or page reference is given, and I have been unable to verify this statement from the Documentary History.
667 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1172, 1173. See sketch of Daniel Bondet, page 335, below.
668 Magazine of American History, i. 96.
669 W. S. Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, Boston, 1885, ii. 423, 424. The Rev. Mr. Wittmeyer was then Rector of the Church of the Saint Esprit, New York, and Secretary of the Huguenot Society of America.
670 Collections New York Historical Society, 1893, Abstracts of Wills, ii. 127. Richmond County comprises all of Staten Island. Clute, Annals of Staten Island, p. 256, states that in 1717 de Bonrepos was obliged to give up his ministerial duties on account of the infirmities of age.
671 Collections New York Historical Society, 1894, Abstracts of Wills, iii. 148. See also Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 125 note 1.
672 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, i. 304 note 1. (From the Livre du Recteur: Catalogue des Etudiants de l’Académie de Genève, de 1559 à 1859, p. 158.)
673 Id., ii. 297.
674 Id., ii. 170. See also Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 125–128.
675 Baird, ii. 226. Ford states that Carré preached a sermon “in the French Church at Boston” in 1689 on The Charitable Samaritan which “was translated by Nehemiah Walter and published by Samuel Green in that year.” Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 128.
676 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 128–132. The title-page of the tract is reproduced at page 126.
677 Baird, ii. 307.
678 Id., ii. 310.
679 Council Executive Records, ii. 67.
680 Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, ii. 1172.
681 Mary de W. Freeland, Records of Oxford, p. 167. When Mrs. Freeland received a translation of the record she was informed by the Bishop of London that “No less than 27 Frenchmen were ordained by the Bishop of London between Feb. 28, 1685, & Aug. 26, 1686, and all of them were made Deacons and Priests at the same time.” He drew the inference that the French Clergy were ordained for service abroad since it was contrary to custom to ordain to both offices on the same day. (Id., p. 166.)
682 Id., p. 149. This Society was also known as the Corporation for Promoting the Gospel among the Indians in New England and quite commonly was referred to as the New England Company. See our Publications, vi. 180 note 2, 181 note 1, and 506, for a detailed account of this Society and its various designations by Mr. Henry H. Edes.
683 Abiel Holmes (3 Collections Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 1, 29 note) and George F. Daniels (The Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country, p. 67 and note 4) favor 1686. Baird (Huguenot Emigration, ii. 255) and Freeland (Records of Oxford, p. 149) give 1687.
684 Interpolation by the editor of the Ecclesiastical Records.
685 Ecclesiastical Records, iii. 1493. Documentary History of New York, 8.vo, iii. 929, 930. Daniels, Nipmuck Country, pp. 120, 121. The object of the petition was for relief on account of the loss of an allowance, and of a pension, of which he had been deprived on account of having incurred the displeasure of the Earl of Bellomont.
686 Ecclesiastical Records, iii. 1494. Documentary History of New York, 8vo., iii. 931.
687 Daniels, Nipmuck Country, pp. 83–85.
688 Id., pp. 88, 89.
689 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 226. Memorial History of Boston, ii. 252 note 3. For Bondet’s removal to Boston in 1694 see also Daniels, Nipmuck Country, p. 82, and Freeland, Records of Oxford, p. 149.
690 See above, page 334.
691 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1172, 1173.
692 Id., ii. 1321.
693 Id., iii. 1750, 1751.
694 Id., iii. 1751.
695 Documentary History of New York, 8vo., iii. 941.
696 Classified Digest of the Records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, p. 59. In the tabulated list of Missionaries is this entry: “Bondet, Daniel, (a French Minister driven out of France); o. Bp. Lon., and employed under the New England Company. S. New Rochelle, 1709–1722. Died 1722.” (Id., p. 855.)
697 Bondet was named as a beneficiary to the amount of £10 in the will of Elias Neau, merchant, of New York, which was dated August 15, and proved September 17, 1722. Collections New York Historical Society, 1893, Abstracts of Wills, ii. 255.
698 Id., Abstracts of Wills, ii. 255, 256.
699 Magazine of American History, i. 91.
700 Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, 1587–1883, ii. 418. Mr. Wittmeyer was doubtless the “eminent authority” cited by Baird.
701 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 866, 867. The Rev. John Gordon preceded, as Chaplain at the Fort in New York, the Rev. Josias Clarke, who in 1686 became the assistant minister at King’s Chapel, Boston.
702 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 397. Translation of a letter in the Mather Papers in the Boston Public Library.
703 Collections Ulster Historical Society, i. part 3, pp. 191, 192. Baird (Magazine of American History, i. 93) makes a similar statement as to the organization of the church but gives the date as June 22, 1683. This may be accounted for on the supposition that the month is not legibly written in the records. But in a statement under date of October 18, 1750, made by the Church of New Palz when involved in a controversy with the Church of Kingston, an entirely different month is given “For, as early as August 22nd, 1683, under Monsieur Pierre Daille there were elected and installed an elder and deacon — Louis Du Bois as elder and Aughe Frere as deacon, as appears from their Church-Book.” Ecclesiastical Records, iv. 3142. The variation in the month would be of little importance except for the fact that if January 22 is correct it furnishes the earliest reference to Daillé in this country, and establishes his arrival as being in 1682. The following extract from R. Lefevre, History of New Palz (Albany 1903), p. 136, would seem to be decisive in favor of the earlier date provided that the French record has been correctly transcribed. Referring to the Church records, it reads that “The first entry is as follows in the handwriting of Louis Du Bois: ‘Le 22 de Janv. (Janvier), 1683 monsieur pierre daillie, minister de la parole de dieu, est arive (arrive) au nouveau palitinat etc.’”
704 Magazine of American History, i. 95. Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, ii. 419. Selyns, Varick, and Dellius wrote the Classis, October 12, 1692: “Meanwhile, we must not omit to inform your Reverences, that the two French churches (New York and New Palz) have been united, and that Domine Perrot will generally preach here in the city, while Domine Daillé will generally preach in the country.” Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1043.
705 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1172.
706 Id., ii. 1089.
707 Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, ii. 422.
708 Magazine of American History, i. 95. But Mr. Stitt in Collections Ulster Historical Society, i. part 3, p. 192, wrote that Daillé’s last recorded service at New Palz was a marriage ceremony performed April 18, 1692. The records of the Church of the Saint Esprit, New York, show that Daillé performed baptisms May 30, and June 11, 1693, and a marriage ceremony May 31, 1693. Collections Huguenot Society of America, i. 28.
709 Freeland, Records of Oxford, pp. 160, 161.
710 Magnalia, ed. 1820, book i. 80.
711 Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, ix. 230.
712 See Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 226–239, for a detailed account of his ministry in Boston.
713 Massachusetts Archives, xi. 150. Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 235, states that in response to this petition it was ordered that “there be paid unto their Minister Twelve pounds out of the Publick Treasury.”
714 Id., xi. 165. This petition was read in the House, February 25, 1701[–2], and sent to the Council, which concurred on the same day.
715 See p. 330 note 2, above.
716 Massachusetts Archives, lxxxi. 472, 473.
717 Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, xi. 42.
718 Id., xi. 43.
719 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. Appendix, p. 401.
720 Perry, Historical Collections, iii. 80, 81. Mr. Bridge, in his letter, referred to Daillé as having been Episcopally ordained. There is no evidence to substantiate this statement. It is possible that he may have confused him with Daniel Bondet who had been so ordained. It is not probable that Dudley, Myles, and Daillé himself would have omitted to mention it if it had been a fact.
721 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 236.
722 Diary, ii. 153.
723 Id., ii. 407.
724 Id., iii. 45.
725 Boston News Letter, May 23, 1715, p. 2/2: “On Friday Morning last the 20th Currant, Dyed here the Reverend Mr. Peter Daille, Pastor of the French Congregation, Aged about 66 Years. He was a Person of great Piety, Charity, Affable and Courteous Behavior, and of an Exemplary Life and Conversation, much Lamented, especially by his Flock; and was Decently Interr’d on the Lords Day Evening the 22d Instant.” See also Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 237; Memorial History of Boston, ii. 252, and note 6. The inscription on his tombstone gives the date of his death as May 21. N. B. Shurtleff, Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, p. 224.
726 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 238 note.
727 See our Publications, xvii. 220 note 3. Le Mercier’s name appears in the Catalogue of the Academy of Geneva in the year 1712 under the heading of “Theologiae candidati.”
728 Brief Memoir of Rev. Andrew Le Mercier, New England Historical Genealogical Society, xiii. 315, 319. The account of Le Mercier which follows, unless otherwise noted, is based on this Memoir, pp. 315–324, in volume xiii of the Society’s publications. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, ii. 255–258; and Baird’s Huguenot Emigration, ii. 239–245.
729 Treatise against Detraction in Ten Sections, page v. See also our Publications, xvii. pp. 118–120, for an account of a rare pamphlet entitled “Some Observations upon the French Tongue,” Boston, 1724, printed by B. Green. While the name of the author does not appear on the title-page, the Dedication is signed A. L. M., as is the Dedication to the Church History of Geneva, and it seems probable that Le Mercier was the author. The Minutes of the Selectmen of Boston contain the following entry, under date of January 16, 1733[–4]: “Messrs. Boutineau and Johonnot with others applying to us, On accot of the School lately under the care of Mr. Samuel Grainger Deceased, which is become vacant by the Death of Mr. Grainger. And his Son Thomas Grainger being some time Usher to his Father who had Several Boarders, Desire, That his Son Thomas Grainger may have Leave to carry on the School for Three Months under the Inspection of Mr. Andrew Le Mercier. Voted, that upon Condition Mr. Le Mercier takes the Oversight of the School, that Mr. Grainger have Liberty to Instruct the Youth for Three Months.” Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, xiii. 248, 249.
730 Gay Transcripts, Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 91–94.
731 Id., iv. 97, 98.
732 Id., v. 113–118.
733 P. 3/1. Printed in full in the Memoir, pp. 317, 318.
734 P. 2/2.
735 P. 2/2.
736 The deed of the church was dated May 7, 1748; acknowledged by the French, March 7, 1748[–9]: and recorded April 10, 1749. Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 76, fol. 128, 129. In 1751 Stephen Boutineau, as the only surviving elder of the late French Church in Boston, executed a quitclaim deed to a warehouse which had been bequeathed to the church by Andrew Faneuil. The deed was signed July 10, and recorded August 2, 1751, and recited that “Whereas the said Church is now absolutely and finally ceased and utterly dissolved and their meeting-house sold” the warehouse reverted to the Faneuil heirs. Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 80, fol. 42.
737 Boston Records, xvii. 213.
738 P. 3/1.
739 Pages 15–64, above.
740 Egerton Manuscript 2671, in the British Museum. My quotations are from a copy in the Gay Transcripts in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
741 Thomas Whately was intensely interested in the American colonies. During his life he was a member of Parliament, a member of the Board of Trade, and was Secretary of the Treasury under George Grenville. A number of letters, sent to England in 1768 and 1769 by Andrew Oliver, Thomas Hutchinson, and Charles Paxton, and made public in Boston with disastrous effects upon their popularity, were written to Whately. Hutchinson esteemed Whately very highly and on April 24, 1771, named a town in Franklin County in his honor. The town still retains the name of Whately.
742 The comparison of Mackintosh to Masaniello (Tomaso Aniello, 1622?–1647) of Naples shows that Oliver had read European history. Perhaps he knew F. Midon’s The History of the Rise and Fall of Masaniello, the Fisherman of Naples. Containing an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Tumults and Popular Insurrections, that happened in that Kingdom (in the Year 1647), on Account of the Tax upon Fruits. London, 1729.
743 The date of this parade probably was December 17, 1765.
744 See page 53, above.
745 See page 43, above.
746 Massachusetts Historical Society, Savage Collection. The letter is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xliv. 688–89. Samuel Phillips Savage was born in Boston, April 27, 1718, son of Arthur and Faith Savage. Boston Records, xxiv. 131. He was a prominent merchant, and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Middlesex County from November 2, 1775, until his death, December 9, 1797.
747 The account of Oliver’s resignation was printed in the Boston newspaper of December 23, 1765.
748 Doubtless William Savage, son of Samuel Phillips Savage. He was born in Boston, December 26, 1745. Boston Records, xxiv. 258.
749 Faith Savage and Henry Bass were married in Weston April 16, 1767, by Rev. Samuel Woodward. She was the daughter of Samuel Phillips Savage, born in Boston, May 7, 1744. Boston Records, xxx. 322, and xxiv. 252.
750 Gordon’s History of the American Revolution, i. 175.
751 Adams, Works, ii. 156.
752 Id., ii. 178, 179.
753 Thomas Crafts, Jr., writes John Adams, under date February 15, 1766, requesting that he write some inscriptions, “one in favor of liberty, not forgetting the true-born sons, and one on King George, expressive of our loyalty.” He also requests that after reading it, Adams should destroy his letter. Id., ii. 184.
754 See page 209, above.
755 Chalmers Papers, Papers Relating to New England (1768–1770), iii. 40, Harvard College Library.
756 “A declaration of one’s assent to articles of religion … spec. in the Church of England, assent to the Thirty-nine Articles.” See New English Dictionary, under “subscription.”
757 Presbytery.
758 “An hour’s time shall not be fitting or suitable to us” — i. e. for preaching a sermon. An hour was generally recognized as the proper time for a preacher to hold forth in the Anglican pulpits of the period, as appears, for example, in certain of Donne’s sermons.
759 Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515–1572), a French philosopher and foe of Aristotelianism (the school of the “Stagyrite” or “stagerite”) was much read by Puritan theologians.
760 “Kata pantos” (κατὰ παντός), “kathauto,” (καθ’ αὑτό), and “kathaloo”(καθόλου, καθ’ ὅλου) are all terms used by Aristotle. Matthias Kappes, Aristoteles-Lexikon, p. 32, says “καθόλου (καθ’ ὅλου) allgemein (universalis); einem Subjektsbegriffe kommt alles καθόλου zu, was ihm nach dem ganzen Umfange (κατὰ παντός) oder an sich (καθ’ αὑτό) oder, insofern es ein solches … ist, also mit Notwendigkeit zukommt.… Daher ist καθόλου ein Allgemeines, welches mehreren Dingen nicht bloss zufälligerweise, sondern vermöge ihrer Natur … gemeinschaftlich zukommt…. Das καθόλου ist also ein κοινόν, aber nicht jedes κοινόν ein καθόλου. Τὸ καθόλου ist daher überall das Allgemeine, welches in dem Besonderen zum Dasein kommt und in demselben das Wesentliche bildet, der Inhalt des allgemeinen Begriffes.” The sense of the passage is simply-that Ramus, not Aristotle, shall be the basis of all general and particular conceptions — the philosophical master and guide, and that degrees at the universities shall be based on proficiency in his philosophy and not (as heretofore) on Aristotle’s.
761 Separation from the established church.
762 Predicament, in logic “the ten categories or classes of predications formed by Aristotle.” Compare Milton, “Then Ens is represented as the Father of the Praedicaments his ten Sons.”
763 Hair.
764 Foretops are locks of hair growing on the fore part of the crown, or arranged ornamentally there.
765 Possibly a spelling of ruff, or rug, rugge, a frieze, cloak, or mantle, or of roudge, a kind of coarse cloth, or, perhaps, shags of hair, used to describe “these foretopes,” — in general, “shaggy heads” as opposed to close-cropped hair.
766 Flounderkin was a contemptuous designation for a Dutchman. Flounderkin is probably used here as a name for Dutch breeches.
767 Pickadills, borders on a ruff or collar, or stiff bands or collars and to support ruffs.
768 Loose, baggy trousers.
769 Probably “Peeter” is used in a vulgar sense here.
770 If the reading “Meate” is right, the sense must be “well-fitting ornaments are scandalous.” Perhaps the word should be “Neate,” foppish, elegant.
771 Marowe: partner, mate, fellow-worker.
772 Doom.
773 Cf. 1 Corinthians, xv. 28, “That God may be all in all.”
774 Wilson, Code of Honor, p. 18.
775 Commentaries (Oxford, 1769), Book iv. 145, 185, 199. Cf. L. Sabine, Notes on Duels and Duelling (Boston, 1856), p. 357. For a good modern summary see Sir J. F. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England (1883), iii. 99–102. He points out that duelling in England has been dealt with “on principles applicable to fighting, wounding or homicide generally,” rather than by special legislation.
776 Boswell (Hill’s ed., 1887), ii. 179–181.
777 Parliamentary History, xxi. 319–325; Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century (N. Y., 1883), ii. 318–322; vi. 266–267. Cf. Sabine, pp. 176–178, 274–276.
778 T. J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, pp. 75–81 and authorities there cited; M. N. Stanard, Colonial Virginia, pp. 158–160.
779 North Carolina, Colonial Records, ii. 651 (1726); iii. 473–474 (1733); vii. 5, 9, 10, 39, 159, 197, 290. For another case in which one Dr. —– Skinner and two seconds were acquitted for lack of evidence, see id., ix. 356.
780 McCrady, South Carolina, 1719–1776, p. 352; Wallace, Laurens, pp. 214–216, 439 and notes; T. Gamble, Savannah Duels and Duellists, Chap. 1; South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, v. 125–130; xvi. 186.
781 There does not seem to have been much duelling in the middle colonies. There was one striking case, in 1715, recorded by the Boston Newsletter of Sept. 19, 1715: “New York, September 12, … on Thursday last Doctor John Livingstone was kill’d here In a Duel by Mr. Thomas Dungan, who on Saturday last was Try’d for that Fact in our Supream Court and found Guilty of Manslaughter.” Cf. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, iv. 484.
782 Lecky, vi. 266.
783 Diary, i. 410.
784 Diary, ii. 334.
785 6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, v. 256.
786 Diary, iii. 208. Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xvi. 48–52.
787 Acts and Resolves, ii. 135; House Journal (Massachusetts Historical Society ed.), ii. 139, 142, 144, 145.
788 L. M. Sargent, Dealings with the Dead, pp. 549–566, brings together a considerable number of the sources for this case. Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, v. 64–80, 165; Shurtleff, Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, pp. 221–223.
789 Quoted in Sargent, p. 554.
790 Joseph Sewall, He that would keep God’s commandments must renounce the Society of Evil Doers. A sermon preached at the publick lecture in Boston, July 18, 1748. After a Bloody and Mortal Duel. Boston, 1728. (Prince Collection, Boston Public Library.)
791 Two other expressions of Puritan opinion may be noted in this connection. One is a statement by Cotton Mather in his life of Phips, “Upon certain affronts he has made sudden returns that have chewed choler enough, and he has by blow, as well as by word, chastised incivilities: he was, indeed, sufficiently impatient of being put upon; and when base men, surprizing him at some disadvantages (for else few men durst have done it) have sometimes drawn upon him, he has, without the wicked madness of a formal duel, made them feel that he knew how to correct fools.” Magnalia (1855), i. 218.
The other is contained in a tract by Isaac Watts, A Defense against the Temptation to Self-Murder, London, 1726. The copy of this tract in the Prince Collection indicates that Prince received it from the author about two years before the Phillips-Woodbridge duel. In this tract, Watts devotes several pages to a denunciation of duelling as unchristian and contrary to the law of the land.
792 Acts and Resolves, ii. 516–517.
793 A precedent for this method of burial may be found in the old English custom of burying a suicide at cross-roads with a stake driven through the body. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law, iii. 105. The ignominious burial of suicides was also provided for in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay colony (Colony Records, iv, part 1, p. 432; Laws of Massachusetts, 1672, p. 137).
794 Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis communicated to this society in 1895 the copy of an indictment of two negroes in 1742 for attempting to fight a duel with swords on Boston Common. See our Publications, iii. 154–155.
795 Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania, ii. 51.
796 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, iii. 89; T. J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian, pp. 75–81.
797 Cf. Hugh Graydon, Memoirs, Chap. 2.
798 This clause did not apply to challenges sent to civilians. See the discussion of this whole subject in W. Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents (Boston, 1896), ii. 912–919.
799 Text of the “Articles” in George B. Davis, A Treatise on the Military Law of the United States (1915), Appendix B, Section 7.
800 Journals of the Continental Congress (Library of Congress ed.), ii. 114, June 30, 1775. The Massachusetts articles of April 5, 1775, with the Continental articles of 1775 and 1776, are in Winthrop, Military Law, ii. Appendix viii–x. The paragraphs dealing with duelling are substantially the same in both codes (Article 10, Mass.; Article xi., Continental); neither contains the clause of the British code, which attempted to give moral support to the refuser of a challenge.
801 Journals of the Continental Congress (Library of Congress ed.), v. 670, 788; Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, ii. 102.
802 Burnett, ii. 54–56.
803 Id., i. 253–254.
804 Cf. Sabine, p. 10.
805 John Jay, Correspondence and Papers, i. 402–403.
806 Hamilton, Writings (Lodge ed.), vii. 562; Graydon (1846), pp. 322–324; Lee Papers (in New York Historical Society Collections), iii. 283; iv. 152.
807 Gamble, Savannah Duels and Duellists, pp. 11–16. Cf. Burnett, ii. 439, 444; Washington, Writings (Ford ed.), xii. 30.
808 Washington, Writings, vii. 206–208 and notes; Tower, Lafayette in the American Revolution, pp. 31–35.
809 G. W. Greene, Nathanael Greene, iii. 527–529 notes; Gamble, pp. 73–76; Washington, Writings, ix. 452.
810 G. W. Greene, Nathanael Greene, i. 105, 198.
811 Greene, iii. 527–529, note. Gamble, pp. 73–76. A letter of Cadwallader to Greene, December 5, 1778, which apparently alludes to the Cadwallader-Conway duel, suggests that Greene approved that encounter referred to vaguely by Cadwallader as “a late affair.” Lee Papers, iii. 270.
812 Memoirs, p. 180.
813 McCrady, South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775–1780, pp. 305–308.
814 North Carolina Colonial and State Records, xvi. 626.
815 Hamilton, Writings, vii. 576.
816 Sabine, p. 130; Graydon, pp. 300–302.
817 Military Journal (1823), p. 176.
818 Id., pp. 250–251.
819 Id., pp. 197–198.
820 Id., pp. 370–371.
821 Greene, i. 196.
822 Thacher, pp. 369–371. Cf. Heath, Memoirs, p. 331.
823 J. Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution, i. xxiii–xxv. Several Revolutionary duels are listed by Sabine. Unfortunately he does not, as a rule, indicate his sources. It seems to me that in his preliminary statement (p. 10) he minimizes unduly the duelling of this period.
824 Burnett, ii. 384–386.
825 North Carolina Colonial and State Records, xvi. 83–89.
826 T. Paine, Writings (ed. Conway), i. 40.
827 Writings (Smyth ed.), ix. 236.
828 Jefferson, Writings (Ford ed.), ii. 207. Jefferson cited in support of this proposal the act of 25 George II, c. 37, which provided for gibbeting in cases of murder. The practice was much older. Cf. Stephen, i. 477. See also Jefferson Papers in 7 Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, i. 416.
829 North Carolina Colonial and State Records, xx. 336–337; xxiv. 39.
830 J. Drayton, Memoirs, pp. xxiii–xxv.
831 Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania, ix. 336–338.
832 Id., xii. 320.
833 Acts and Resolves, 1784–85, pp. 24–26 (1784, Chap. 9). The French writer, Eugene Cauchy, in his comprehensive study of the duel, commented on the withdrawal of political rights as the distinctive feature of American penal legislation on this subject. See Du Duel consideré dans ses origines et dans l’état actuel des mœurs (1846), ii. 140–154.
834 Connecticut Acts and Laws (1796), p. 148.
835 Public Laws of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (1798), p. 593. Cf. Field, Rhode Island, ii. 436, for a different statement.
836 Laws of New Hampshire, iv. 51 (1776–84).
837 Joseph Green (1701–1770), on May 12, 1725, was ordained minister of the East Church at Barnstable, and continued in office there until his death. Probably he was born on June 21, 1701, as Sibley says (Ms. Memoranda at the Massachusetts Historical Society), although Freeman’s History of Cape Cod (1860), i. 567 note, gives June 21, 1704, and, in another place (ii. 302), June 21, 1700. Neither of these dates accords with the inscription on his tombstone, where the date of his birth is given as June 21, 1701, and that of his death as October 4, 1770, being “in the 70th year of his age.” (Genealogical Notes of Barnstable Families, i. 447.) He was born in Boston, the son of Joseph and Mary (Beck) Green, and his baptism at the Second Church is recorded under the date of June 22, 1701. See C. Robbins, History of the Second Church, p. 250, and Boston Records, ix. 243. In id., xxiv. 7, the date of Green’s birth is given as June 22, 1701, but it seems probable that June 21 is correct.
838 He was the son of the Rev. John Williams of Deerfield, and was born in 1693. He married Abigail Davenport of Stamford, Connecticut, in 1718. He died in 1782. See S. W. Williams, Genealogy and History of the Family of Williams, pp. 71–84, and, especially, Proceedings at the Centennial Celebration of the Town of Longmeadow (1884), pp. 319–320.
839 The item in the Courant reads, “We hear the Reverend Dr. Cotton Mather has been desir’d to take the Charge of the College at Newhaven, in the room of the Reverend Mr. Timothy Cutler who has resign’d that Place.”
840 The name Mirrick or Merrick was common in Springfield and its vicinity at this time. See M. A. Green, Springfield, 1636–1886, History of Town and City, passim. Thomas Merrick of Springfield was the son-in-law of the Rev. Daniel Brewer, referred to later in the letter. See W. C. Fowler, Memorials of the Chaunceys, p. 197.
841 Samuel Sewall also describes this fast in his Diary for September 25, 1722. On the observance of similar days of fasting in the other Boston churches at this time, see H. A. Hill, History of the Old South Church, i. 409–410.
842 The ministers here referred to are Benjamin Wadsworth (1693–1737), at this time Teacher of the First Church; Nehemiah Walter (1688–1750), brother-in-law of Cotton Mather, and minister of the church at Roxbury; and Benjamin Colman (1673–1747), minister of the Brattle Street Church.
843 “Ye old Dr” is Increase Mather, Teacher of the Second Church. The reference to him is peculiarly interesting, since this occasion was his last public appearance in the pulpit. Cotton Mather says (Parentator, p. 200), “On Sept. 25. [1722] he did with an Excellent and Pathetic Prayer, in a mighty Auditory, Conclude a Day of Prayer kept by his Church, to obtain a Good Success of the Gospel, and the growth of Real and Vital PIETY, with Plentiful Effusions of the Good SPIRIT, especially upon the Rising Generation. Within Two Days after This, he fell into an Apoplectic sort of Deliquium; (very much occasion’d, as it was thought, by too extreme a concern of his Mind on some late Occurrences at New-Haven:) out of which he Recovered in a few Minutes; but it so enfeebled him, that he never went abroad any more.”
844 Cotton Mather.
845 This reference is especially interesting as showing that there was on September 27, 1722, at the New Brick Church, a service at which music was a special feature, with singing by what must have been virtually a choir of more or less trained voices. G. Hood, History of Music in New England, pp. 179 ff., discusses the origin of choirs in New England, and concludes that, after 1720, when singing schools were beginning to be known, it came gradually to be the custom for the most expert singers to sit and sing together at church. Hood, however, mentions no record of anything as “advanced” as the 1722 service at the New Brick Church, except in connection with the later period, and cites an instance which occurred in 1762, when the church at Rowley voted to permit the best singers to sit together in the front of the gallery. They did not avail themselves of this permission. L. C. Elson, History of American Music (1925), pp. 10, 11, says “choir-singing began to take the place of the crude congregational psalm-singing as early as the middle of the eighteenth century.” See also F. L. Ritter, Music in America, pp. 39, 48, who cites the episode at Rowley, referred to by Hood, but dates it 1752, and quotes an account of how in Worcester opposition to the singers’ sitting in special seats persisted as late as 1779.
The New England Courant for March 5, 1722, has the following item: “On Thursday last in the Afternoon, a Lecture was held at the New Brick Church, by the Society for promoting Regular Singing in the Worship of God. The Reverend Mr. Thomas Walter of Roxbury preach’d an excellent Sermon on that Occasion, from 2 Sam. 23. 1. — The Sweet Psalmist of Israel, —The Singing was perform’d in Three Parts (according to Rule) by about Ninety Persons skill’d in that Science, to the great Satisfaction of a numerous Assembly there present.” The Courant for March 19, 1722, refers to a similar “Singing Lecture” at Reading. On May 14 there is an item about a similar meeting at Dorchester, and on June 4 there is a reference to such a “Lecture” at the New Brick Church on “Thursday last.”
That the service in Boston on September 27 was another of these “singing-lectures” is clear from the entry in Jeremiah Bumstead’s Diary (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xv. 196): “A sing lecture att ye North Brick. Mr. Coleman preached from those words — They sung a new song. Revelations. 5 & 9. Sung Tate & Brady 4 psalms, namely, 108. first, 147. next, 89 next, 98 last, noted by titles in that psalm book.”
This evidence together with that contained in the Courant, makes it clear that as early as 1722 certain New England churches opened their doors for special services, under the auspices of those interested in “Regular Singing,” and that the singing at these services was performed by those best trained in the art. Also, it shows that Tate and Brady’s “new version” of the Psalms — probably the Boston edition of 1720 — was in use as early as 1722 in at least one Boston church. The Green letter, with its specific reference to the singers’ occupying special seats together, adds a significant detail, showing by what means and how early a long step was taken toward the establishment of formal choirs in Congregational churches in New England.
Apparently the New Brick Church at this time was especially identified with musical progress. I find no record in the Courant for 1722 of any other Boston church which was hospitable to similar musical exercises. It seems, however, that choir singing was not yet in vogue at the regular services at the New Brick. See C. Robbins, History, p. 180.
846 A Thomas More or Moore, known as “The Pilgrim Botanist,” came to New England in 1722. Extracts from the Literary and Scientific Correspondence of Richard Richardson (ed. Dawson Turner), refers to him several times. On pp. 181, 182, there appears a letter from Dr. W. Sherard to Dr. Richard Richardson, May 12, 1722. This says, “I have advanc’d money to send Pilgrim Moore to New England, and all is ready: … he is to go after to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsilvania.” The editor of the Richardson correspondence says (p. 181 note) that Sherard and Richardson had known Moore in Wales, in 1718. Earlier in 1722, Sherard wrote Richardson saying, “the Pilgrim Botanist, Mr. Moore, is desirous of going to New England and the rest of our colonies in North America. He is an excellent collector of all parts of Natural History, and desires no more than a poor subsistence; a mere philosopher, who designs printing tables of all parts of Natural History: he is now busy in copying them out on parchment; his paper scheme being worn out and torn. They look like so many tailor’s measures, joined at top and rolled up. It is pity he is not younger; and I am sorry I did not know him sooner: he would have done more service than all that have been sent abroad.” (Id., p. 181 note.)
More’s expenses in America were paid by Dr. Richard Richardson, Dr. William Sherard, Sir Hans Sloane, Charles Dubois, John Bellers, R. Mead, and Herman Boerhaave. (Id., p. xv.) Of these all except Boerhaave were members of the Royal Society in 1722, so that Green’s statement that More was “sent over” by the Royal Society, is justified, perhaps. What the King’s part in sending More may have been does not appear, except for what Green says in this letter. More himself was not a member of the Royal Society.
Apparently More did not meet Sherard’s expectations in regard to trustworthiness or success. On August 13, 1723, Sherard wrote, “Mr. Moore, from New England, writes he’ll send specimens and seeds, which I expect in two months.” (Id., p. 201.) On June 30, 1724, he tells Richardson that “Mr. Moore is now in England, but returns speedily, and promises to follow my instructions for the future, better than he has hither to.” (Id., p. 207.) A clue as to the reasons for Sherard’s dissatisfaction appears in his words, “I have heard nothing yet from the Pilgrim Botanist, which I admire at. Colonel Dudley wrote word he was gone up into the country, to visit his old acquaintances the Indian Kings, that were in England. I had rather he would first send what grows near Boston; but they have all a notion that, the further they go, the more rare things they find.” (Id., p. 206 note.)
In the Philosophical Transactions, xxxi. 147, there is a communication by Sherard on the “Poyson Wood Tree” in New England. This begins, “The Account I had of the Poyson-Tree from Mr. More (which probably he had from Mr. Dudley) is as follows.” Then comes More’s description, ending with “I have sent you all the seeds of it, I can get.” This is printed in Number 367 of the Philosophical Transactions, which is “For the Months of January, February, March, and April, 1721.” If the number was issued promptly, More must have been in New England as early as April, 1721, but according to Sherard’s letter quoted above, he was in England on May 12, 1722. Either he made two trips, or, as seems more probable, Number 367 of the Philosophical Transactions did not actually appear until some time in 1722, after More had had a chance to write from New England, and Sherard then contributed to it his communication on the “Poyson-Wood” tree as a sort of appendix to Paul Dudley’s paper on the same subject which immediately precedes it in the volume as printed. Volume xxxi, which contains Number 367, is dated 1723. Number 367 bears no separate date.
More’s “old acquaintance, the Indian Kings, that were in England,” referred to by Sherard, were, of course, the five Iroquois chiefs who visited the court of Queen Anne in 1710. They are referred to in both the Tatler and the Spectator. See S. G. Drake, the Aboriginal Races of North America (Philadelphia, 1859), pp. 509–512; Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies,1710–11, Nos. 103, 194, 310; and William T. Morgan’s “The Five Nations and Queen Anne” in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. xiii, no. 2, p. 169, which refers to the entertainment of some North American Indians by Queen Anne at her court, “when for the first time the problems of imperial defense and Indian politics assumed a place of real consequence in British policy.” More, apparently, met these chiefs in London in 1710.
847 I have found no record of the exact date when Dr. Zabdiel Boylston (1680–1766) left Boston on a trip which carried him to England, where he was in 1723. See our Publications, xiv. 114; H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, American Medical Biographies, p. 134, and J. Thacher, American Medical Biography, i. 185–192.
848 Hugh Hall married Elizabeth Pitts, October 31, 1722. (Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston, p. 239.) She was the daughter of John and Elizabeth (Lindall) Pitts. Hugh Hall (1673–1773) graduated from Harvard in 1713. From 1716 to 1720 he lived in Barbadoes and in London. After 1720 he settled in Boston, where he became a successful merchant. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 305. The Reverend Joshua Gee, who became minister of the Second Church in Boston in 1723, married Sarah Rogers, daughter of Nathaniel Rogers, on December 13, 1722. See id., xiv. 107 note; xxiv. 16.
849 Thomas Fish was born in Duxbury on May 22, 1700. He graduated from Harvard in 1719, being a classmate of Warham Williams, Stephen William’s brother. According to Sibley’s Ms. Memoranda at the Massachusetts Historical Society, he was a passenger from Duxbury to Boston in a coaster which was upset off Nantasket “not far from the lighthouse,” September 22, 1722, and was drowned. The Courant, September 24–October 1,1722, says, “On Saturday the 22d Instant, a Wood Sloop was forc’d ashore in a Gust of Wind, and stove to Pieces near Nantasket, and three of the Passengers, viz. the Wife and Daughter of the Rev. Mr. Robison of Duxbury, and a young Schollar were drown’d.”
Sibley says that Fish was published to Ann Turner of Scituate, “who afterwards married Deacon Joseph Stockbridge of Pembroke.” This is not correct, however, as Ann Turner of Scituate married Joseph Stockbridge in 1716. (Scituate Vital Records, ii. 300.) Instead, one may accept Green’s statement that Fish’s fiancée was drowned with him. She was Mary, the daughter of the Rev. John Robinson of Duxbury, aged 16 in 1722. See J. Winsor, History of Duxbury, p. 185; Duxbury Vital Records, p. 407.
850 In 1722 several Puritan ministers went over to the Anglican church, to the consternation of some of their brethren. For this sufficiently celebrated chapter in New England history, see, for example, W. S. Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, i. 247–256.
851 What Mr. Chauncey is referred to I do not know. No one of the Chaunceys who are known to have been ministers at this time seems to have been “converted,” though possibly some one of them professed an inclination toward Anglicanism and later recanted. For the possibility of this, see Perry, i. 250, note 1. If the Chauncey referred to was not a minister, it is even more difficult to tell of whom Green speaks.
852 Compare here “Checkley and his party had no more earnest opponent than the Rev. Henry Harris [minister at King’s Chapel], who, though a loyal member of his church, had no sympathy with their extreme opinions or their extravagant methods. The line of division was as sharp between the two parties in the King’s Chapel as it was between either of them and the churches around them. Unfortunately in Mr. Harris’s mind his catholic convictions were mingled with an alloy of feeling against Dr. Cutler.” (H. W. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 286.) In June, 1724, Harris wrote to Bishop Gibson in England, calling Cutler an erstwhile “Dissenting Minister” and saying of him “I had a great deal of reason to believe that the chief motive of this person’s conversion was the prospect of a new Church in this Town.” Id., i. 287. See also id., i. 311–321.
853 See Cotton Mather, Diary, ii. 634, and passim.
854 This refers to the founding of Christ Church, for which see Perry, i. 582–583; Foote, i. 315–316, and H. Burroughs, Historical Account of Christ Church, Boston, p. 4.
855 On the day after Green wrote this, October 2, Timothy Cutler was virtually promised Christ Church. See Foote, i. 316–317.
856 John Usher (H. C. 1719), later Anglican clergyman at Bristol, Rhode Island. See C. R. Batchelder, History of the Eastern Diocese, ii. 334, 335.
857 Rev. Daniel Brewer (H. C. 1687), minister of the first parish in Springfield. His son, Daniel, referred to a few words later in the text, was sixteen years old in 1722. He graduated from Harvard in 1727. See Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 383–385.
858 The Rev. Samuel Hopkins, a graduate of Yale in 1718, became minister of a church in West Springfield in 1720. See W. B. Sprague, Historical Discourse at West Springfield, December 2, 1824, pp. 29, 57, 58.
859 There were many Dwights in western Massachusetts at this time, but the reference here may well be to Joseph Dwight (H. C. 1722), who after leaving college went to Springfield, where “he was engaged in trade” until 1730. See B. W. Dwight, Descendants of John Dwight, ii. 625, 626.
860 In 1723, when Green was to be ordained at Barnstable, Cotton Mather wrote to the church there, under the date of April 26, saying of Green: “We do … signify to you … not only that he has been a Brother in the Communion of the Church from which he now transfers his relation [The Second Church of Boston] but also that he has been a beauty unto it. He has been indeed known unto us from a child, having been baptized in our arms … An excellent piety has recommended him unto us, and such a good spirit, that we cannot but think that all that have a good spirit in them, will be well affected unto him … the kind usuages he shall receive among you, we shall reckon shown unto ourselves.” The original letter is in the records of the Congregational Church of the East Parish of Barnstable. I print from a copy furnished me by Mr. Francis T. Bowles.
861 See, for the chronology of the events under discussion, F. B. Dexter, Documentary History of Yale, pp. 225–231.
862 Id., p. 228.
863 Id., pp. 226–229.
864 In 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, ii. 129–131.
865 Under the date of September 25, 1722, Sewall writes: “Dr. I. Mather pray’d, much bewail’d the Cōnecticut Apostacie; that Mr. Cutler and others should say there was no Minister in N. E.” Sewall, Diary, iii. 309. Cotton Mather was present, and preached.
866 Notes and Queries, cxlviii. 424. Cf. cxlix. 13, 22, 445.
867 See Robert E. Hunter’s “Shakespeare and Stratford-upon-Avon, a ‘Chronicle of the Time:’ comprising the salient facts and traditions, biographical, topographical, and historical, connected with the Poet and his Birthplace; together with a full record of the Tercentenary Celebration.… London: … 1864,” pp. 87–246. The event was also celebrated in this country.
868 The words quoted in the text are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary under “centenary.” The earliest example there given of the word in the sense of “A centennial anniversary; the celebration of the accomplishment of a centennium,” is dated 1788.
It will interest our members to learn that the late John Wilson, of The University Press, presided at a Burns celebration in Boston: see Report of the Meeting held to celebrate the Centenary of the Birthday of Robert Burns, at the Revere House, Boston, January 25, 1859 (Boston, 1859).
869 William S. Childe-Pemberton, The Earl Bishop: The Life of Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry, Earl of Bristol (1924), ii. 409.
870 The dedication is “To the Committee of the Society for commemorating the Glorious Revolution.”
871 The Advertisement states that the reason for celebrating November 4, instead of November 5 (on which day King William landed at Torbay), “appears to have been, to avoid confounding the commemoration of the Revolution with the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot” (p. iv). The event was widely celebrated in England in 1788.
In 1789 Richard Price published in London “A Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the Meeting-House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain.” “We are met,” he said, “to thank God for that event in this country to which the name of The Revolution has been given; and which, for more than a century, it has been usual for the friends of freedom, and more especially Protestant Dissenters, under the title of the Revolution Society, to celebrate with expressions of joy and exultation” (p. 30). The Discourse was reprinted in Boston in 1790. For the Revolution Society, see “An Abstract of the History and Proceedings of the Revolution Society, in London. To which is annexed a copy of the Bill of Rights. Printed by order of the Committee. M.DCC.LXXXIX;” “The Correspondence of the Revolution Society in London, with the National Assembly, and with various societies of the Friends of Liberty in France and England.… London. mdccxcii;” and Notes and Queries, 11th Series, v. 152.
872 January 30, 1649, and May 29, 1660. I do not find either in the Gentleman’s Magazine or in the London Magazine accounts of celebrations in 1749 and 1760. In the former for May, 1766, is this item:
“Being the anniversary of the restoration of King Charles II. (now 106 years ago) the same was observed as usual. The house of peers attended divine service in Westminster Abbey; as did the house of commons at St. Margaret’s church. The lord mayor. aldermen. &c. went to St. Paul’s” (xxxvi. 246).
873 In 1696 Dawes had published in London “A Sermon Preach’d before the King at White-Hall, Novemb. 5. 1696.” The Boston libraries contain over fifty sermons preached on November 5 in the years 1634–1775, but apparently only one after 1775.
874 “The Daily Chronicle of London states,” wrote Mr. Philip Hale in the Boston Herald of January 9, 1926, “that America, ‘badly bitten by the centenary craze, is celebrating the “centennial,” as they prefer to phrase it over there, of rubber boots.…’”
875 On January 22, 1862, “An able and interesting paper was then read by Henry Clark, Esq., of Poultney, upon ‘Centennial Celebrations in Vermont — their historical importance and social advantage to Towns’ — in which Mr. Clark embodied practical suggestions in regard to the best mode of making such celebrations attractive and useful.” The exact title of the paper is “Town Centennial Celebrations; their Historic Importance and Social Advantages;” and the running headline reads “Centennial Celebrations.” “This memorandum of fixed dates,” wrote Mr. Clark, “has been enumerated … as a proper prelude to the consideration of the topic of our paper, viz: The Historical importance and Social advantages of Centennial Celebrations to the several Towns in our Commonwealth.” (Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society, at the special meeting held in Burlington, January 22d and 23d, 1862, pp. 22, 27, 28.) Mr. Clark dealt only with town celebrations in Vermont.
876 For the title of a sermon preached by the Rev. Daniel Lewis of Pembroke “at the North-Precinct in Plymouth” (now Kingston) on November 2, 1720, and published the same year in Boston with a preface by the Rev. Ephraim Little of the First Church, Plymouth, see our Publications, vol. xxii, p. lv. This was so near the centenary of the landing that an allusion to that event might not unreasonably be expected, yet none is found either in the sermon or in the preface. Indeed, Forefathers’ Day was first celebrated at Plymouth on December 22, 1769: see our Publications, xvii. 297–300.
There is no allusion to the landing of Endecott in the Boston News Letter or in the Boston Gazette for September, 1728.
877 Curiously enough no example of the attributive use of “century” is given in the Oxford English Dictionary. As later extracts will show, such use has been common here for two centuries.
878 Quoted in Daniel A. White, New England Congregationalism in its Origin and Beauty (1861), pp. 109–110.
879 Rev. John Barnard (H. C. 1700).
880 The church records say: “upon which the 107th Psalm, the three first stanzas in it, was sung.”
881 Mr. Fisk’s sermon was never printed.
882 Rev. Benjamin Prescott (H. C. 1709) of Salem.
883 New England Weekly Journal, August 18, 1729, p. 2/2. Another account, almost but not quite identical, was printed in the Boston News Letter of August 21, 1729, p. 2. No account appeared in the Boston Gazette. The passage quoted in the text has often been reprinted, though not always either in full or accurately: see 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, 1795, iv. 219–220; C. W. Upham, Principles of the Reformation, 1826, p. 56; C. W. Upham, Principles of Congregationalism, 1829, pp. 3–4; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1855, ix. 268; Essex Institute Historical Collections, 1891, xxviii. 179–180. At the last reference Dr. Samuel A. Green suggested that the passage was written by the Rev. Thomas Prince. This may have been the case, but it is to be noted that the passage is dated Salem, August 12.
There has always been some uncertainty as to exactly what occurred at Salem in 1629. The statement quoted in the text asserts that the First Church was “compleatly form’d and Organized” on August 6th, and that on the same day Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton were ordained; and the mention in the “N.B.” of Nathaniel Morton and Edward Johnson indicates that the writer of the passage relied on those authorities. But Johnson, writing about 1651, gives no precise date, merely saying that “they Elected and Ordained one Mr. Higginson to be Teacher of the first Church of Christ, set up in those Parts,” and that they “also called to the Office of an Exhorting Elder Mr. Skelton” (Wonder-working Providence, 1654, pp. 21, 22). Morton is more specific, saying: “When the sixth of August came, it was kept as a day of Fasting and Prayer, in which after the Sermons and Prayers of the two Ministers, in the end of the day, the aforesaid Confession of Faith and Covenant being solemnly read, the forenamed persons did solemnly profess their Consent thereunto: and then proceeded to the Ordaining of Mr. Skelton Pastor, and Mr. Higginson Teacher of the Church there” (New Englands Memoriall, 1669, p. 75). William Hubbard, writing about 1680, gave “the 9th day of August” (2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 117, 120) as the date of foundation, but that was obviously an error for the 6th. Two decades later, Cotton Mather stated in one place that “the Sixth Day of August” was set apart “for Fasting and Prayer, for the Settling of a Church-State among them, and for their making of a Confession of their Faith, and entering into an Holy Covenant, whereby that Church-State was formed. Mr. Higginson then became the Teacher, and Mr. Skelton the Pastor, of the Church thus constituted at Salem,” and in another place that the events occurred on “a Day in … August” (Magnolia, 1702, bk. i. ch. iv, § 6, p. 18; bk. iii. pt. ii. ch. i, § 13, p. 74).
All these accounts, which apparently were the only ones known to the people of Salem in 1729, dwell on the events of August 6, 1629, but completely ignore an event that had previously occurred on July 20. The only known contemporary account of what took place on that day is found in a letter written by Charles Gott, dated Salem, July 30, 1629. In July, 1793, was reported the receipt by the Massachusetts Historical Society of a “Fragment of a MS. Letter-book of Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, from 1624 to 1630, found in a grocer’s shop in Halifax, Nova Scotia” (1 Proceedings, i. 52). Unfortunately this fragment has, as Mr. Tuttle informs me, either disappeared or cannot now be found; but it was printed in 1794 in 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 27–76. Gott wrote:
The 20th of July, it pleased God to move the heart of our governour [John Endecott], to set it apart for a solemn day of humiliation for the choice of a pastor and teacher; the former part of the day being spent in praise and teaching; the latter part was spent about the election, which was after this manner; the persons thought on (who had been ministers in England) were demanded concerning their callings; … so these two servants of God clearing all things by their answers (and being thus fitted) we saw no reason but that we might freely give our voices for their election after this trial: Their choice was after this manner, every fit member wrote, in a note, his name whom the Lord moved him to think was fit for a pastor, and so likewise, whom they would have for teacher; so the most voice was for Mr. Skelton to be pastor, and Mr. Higginson to be teacher; and they accepting the choice, Mr. Higginson, with three or four more of the gravest members of the church, laid their hands on Mr. Skelton, using prayers therewith. This being done, then there was imposition of hands on Mr. Higginson: Then there was proceeding in election of elders and deacons, but they were only named, and laying on of hands deferred, to see if it pleased God to send us more able men over; but since Thursday, (being, I take it, the 5th of August) is appointed for another solemn day of humiliation, for the full choice of elders and deacons and ordaining them. (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 67–68.)
This letter, but much abbreviated, was copied by Bradford into his History of Plymouth Plantation (ed. W. C. Ford, ii. 93–96), and by Morton himself, apparently from his uncle’s manuscript History, into the Plymouth Church Records (our Publications, xxii. 66–67). It will be observed that Gott spoke of the Thursday after July 30 as “being, I take it, the 5th of August.” The disappearance of Bradford’s Letter-book makes it impossible to verify this date, but, as a matter of fact, Thursday was August 6th. Bradford, in quoting Gott, makes him say “the 6 of August,” while Morton makes him say “the 5th of August.”
Perhaps the best comment on the events of July 20 and August 6, 1629, is furnished by two footnotes in the Rev. Thomas Prince’s Chronological History of New England, published in 1736. The first, appended to July 20, reads: “This Article is no where found, but in a letter from Mr. Charles Gott, Dated, Salem, July 30. 1629, and preserved in Gov. Bradford: and it being wrote between July 20 and Aug. 6, must be an undoubted Record of past Matter of Fact on July 20” (p. 189). The second, appended to August 6, reads: “As Mr. Skelton and Higginson had been Ministers Ordained by Bishops in the Church of England; this Ordination was only to the Care of this Particular Flock, founded on their free Election. But as there seems to be a repeated Imposition of Hands; the Former on July 20, may only signify their previous Separation for their solemn Change; and this Latter of Aug. 6, their actual Investiture therein” (p. 191).
The bicentennial in 1829 was celebrated on the wrong day: see p. 420 note, below.
884 The People of New-England Put in mind of the Righteous Acts of the Lord to Them and their Fathers, and Reasoned with concerning them. A Sermon Delivered at Cambridge Before the Great and General Assembly Of the Province of the Massachusetts May 27th mdccxxx.… Boston in New-England: … 1730, pp. 21–22.
885 The Characters of the Candidates for Civil Government, especially for the Council. As it was drawn in a Sermon, Deliver’d at Boston, Before His Excellency Jonathan Belcher, Esq; … On May 26. MDCCXXXI.… Boston, N.E.… 1731, pp. 41, 49–50.
886 This is often cited as “Callender’s Century Sermon;” but I have found no copy with a half-title, and the title on p. 1 and the running headline read “An Historical Discourse, &c.”
887 The half-title reads: “Mr. Dexter’s Century Sermon, on the Publick Thanksgiving November 23. 1738.”
888 The title on p. 5 is “A Century Sermon.”
889 “THIS DAY will be celebrated by the Historical Society, in Boston, as the completion of the third century since Columbus discovered this Western World: … The twelfth inst, has been already celebrated at Newyork, Providence, &c. as the day of that great event — The difference of style occasions the observance of different days” (Salem Gazette, October 23, 1792, p. 2/2). The same paper of October 9 called attention to the fact that “Next Friday, the 12th instant, will complete the third Century since the immortal COLUMBUS discovered America,” and asserted that “THIS DAY demands of us to celebrate the exertions of an individual, who, by his success, began a revolution in the condition of human nature.… Let then every man of Science, and of Commerce, and every Marine Association, transmit with the blessings of life the history of their births; and by general joy let them write the history upon the grateful hearts of posterity” (p. 2/2–3).
890 Belknap Papers, iii. 491.
891 This word, though not in the dictionaries, I have found elsewhere, and is obviously an adjectival form of “century.”
892 “Brother John B. Johnson, agreeable to appointment, addressed the Society with an animated Eulogy on this nautical hero and astonishing adventurer, with great applause” (Columbian Centinel, October 20, 1792, p. 2/4, quoting a New York newspaper). John Barent Johnson (1768–1803) graduated from Columbia College in 1792. His address on this occasion was not printed, but in 1794 he published “An Oration on Union, Delivered in the New Dutch Church in the City of New-York, on the Twelfth of May, 1794. The Anniversary of the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order.” Cf. E. P. Kilroe, Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tammany or Columbian Order in the City of New York (1913), pp. 136–137, 184–188, 215, 216.
893 New York Magazine, October, 1792, iii. 640.
894 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 28–29, 31.
895 With regard to Old Style and New Style, two remarks are pertinent. First, as to the difference between them. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, when ten days were dropped, and the day after October 4 was reckoned as October 15. The year 1600 was a leap-year in both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. “The difference between the old and new calendars continued to be 10 days till 1700 (the first disputed leap-year), when it became 11 days; in 1800 it became 12 days, and in 1900 13 days, from which there will be no further increase till 2100” (Oxford English Dictionary, under “style,” 27). In Old Style the year began with March 25; in New Style, with January 1. The legal change in England and the American colonies took place in September, 1752, when the day after September 2 was reckoned September 14. To convert Old Style into New Style by adding ten days to events that occurred in the years 1582–1699, and eleven days to events that occurred in the years 1700–1751, would seem not to be difficult; yet surprising and innumerable blunders have been made, in some cases by the most learned scholars. A dozen years ago I called attention to the curious history of what was perhaps the first blunder of the sort to be committed in this country — namely, the celebration of Forefathers’ Day at Plymouth on December 22, 1769, instead of the correct date, December 21. (See our Publications, xvii. 297 note 4.) A still more striking example is afforded by the celebration recorded in the text. The Independent Chronicle of October 25, 1792, began its account with these words: “Tuesday last, the 23d instant, being the 12th of the month, old style, and the day on which the third century after the discovery of America by Columbus was completed, that event was celebrated … in the following manner” (p. 2/5). Whether Belknap himself was responsible for the date I have been unable to ascertain, but certainly that date could not have been selected without his approval. In 1879 Charles Deane and Charles C. Smith declared: “The selection of the 23d of October for the day of celebration, as corresponding in new style to the 12th in old style, was an error, as only nine days were required to represent the difference, the true day falling on the 21st” (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 45 note).
Secondly, as to the exact day of a centennial celebration. Should it be held on the precise date of the event commemorated, or should that date be converted into New Style? So far as the year is concerned, obviously the date should be converted into New Style. For instance, Washington was born on February 11, 1731, as the legal date then was. It is unnecessary to point out that the centennial of his birthday was properly held in 1832. But so far as the day of the month is concerned, the case is not so clear; and, as a matter of fact, there have been and are curious discrepancies in this respect. A few illustrations may be given.
The Gunpowder Plot was detected November 5, 1605, Charles I was executed January 30, 1648–9, and Charles II was restored May 29, 1660. Those three events have usually, if not always, been celebrated on November 5, January 30, and May 29, respectively — that is, the Old Style dates have been adhered to. On the other hand, in and ever since 1769 Forefathers’ Day has been celebrated on December 21 (or sometimes, through error in calculation, on December 22) — that is, according to New Style. The history of the observance of Washington’s birthday is curious. In Boston or vicinity the day celebrated was February 11 in the years 1779–1792; February 22 in 1793; both February 11 and February 22 in 1794; and February 22 in 1796. In Philadelphia it was February 22 in 1797. In Alexandria, Virginia, it was February 12 (because the 11th fell on Sunday) in 1797, and February 11 in 1799. (See our Publications, x. 253–258, xi. 195, xii. 254, xiii. 96–99, 126, xiv. 199; Diaries of George Washington, 1925, iv. 252, 271, 298.) The day now everywhere observed is February 22 — that is, the original date has been corrected to New Style. Finally, there is Columbus Day. The original date was October 12, 1492; and, as is shown in the text, the tercentenary was held on October 12 in New York and on October 23 (by error for October 21) in Boston. There was a similar discrepancy a century later. In 1892 New York had a celebration of its own from October 8 to October 13, both included, the “anniversary proper” being held on the 12th, which was a legal holiday. But October 21 was by presidential proclamation made a national holiday and was observed throughout the country. (See the Boston Evening Transcript, October 8, 1892, p. 11/4; October 10, pp. 1/5, 6/1; October 11, pp. 1/5, 4/4; October 12, pp. 1/5, 2/4, 4/5; October 13, pp. 1/4, 6/1; October 14, pp. 5/2, 6/1; October 20, pp. 1/6, 3/1, 3/4, 4/1; October 22, pp. 3/1, 8/3.) In later years the national precedent set in 1892 was departed from, the original date was restored, and now Columbus Day is everywhere October 12. (The Massachusetts act making Columbus Day a legal holiday on October 12 was approved March 13, 1911.)
Thus there is ample precedent for either retaining the Old Style date or turning it into New Style. Obviously, however, if the original date is converted into New Style, the conversion should be correctly made.
896 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 45.
897 Notices of the celebration appeared in the Columbian Centinel of October 24 (p. 3/4) and in the Independent Chronicle of October 25 (p. 2/5). An “Ode, for the 23d of October, 1792,” but by whom written I do not know, will be found on pp. 56–58 of Belknap’s Discourse, but had previously been printed, at the request of “A Columbian,” in the Columbian Centinel of October 17 (p. 4/1).
898 Our Publications, vol. xxii, p. lvii.
899 See the writer’s paper on “A Dorchester Religious Society of Young Men” in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for January, 1906, lx. 30–40.
900 Report, pp. 3–6.
901 Report, p. 6. A footnote reads: “It was not forgotten that this landing was effected May 13th 1607, old stile, and consequently that, to avoid an anachronism, the 24th May, new stile, should have been fixed upon: but particular and impressive considerations have decided in favor of the 13th” (p. 6). The proper date New Style was not May 24 but May 23: see p. 412 note 4, above.
902 Report, p. 42.
903 Report, pp. 45–46. “The 14th was announced as usual, by a cannon. About 11 o’clock, preparations commenced for the Interment and Funeral of one of the pilgrims, a brave and benevolent young man, who fell a victim to a too free use of Ice in Cyder, having been violently heated” (p. 44).
904 Report, pp. 46–47.
905 The Church, wrote Mr. Eaton (p. 7), was “first opened for publick worship on the 29th day of December,” 1723.
906 “There is yet among us One, who brings their revered forms before us with peculiar dignity, and is at once the representative of their age and our own. Generation after generation has passed away, and yet he survives, the model, and the monument of a century.… We have seen this centennial patriarch; and we count it among the triumphs of this day, that he yet lives, the delight of his friends, the crown of his profession, and the ornament of human nature” (pp. 13–14). No doubt the reference was to Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, who was born August 1, 1728, graduated at Harvard College in 1746, received the honorary degree of M.D. in 1783 (the first on whom it was bestowed), and died March 31, 1829.
907 Not to be confused with Mr. Upham’s “Principles of the Reformation. A Sermon preached November 16, 1826, at the Dedication of the House of Public Worship of the First Congregational Society in Salem. … Salem: … 1826.” A second edition, with a slightly different title-page, was published at Salem in 1827.
Curiously enough, the date of Mr. Upham’s Century Lecture in 1829 is not given in his Principles of Congregationalism, though it is to be inferred that it was August 17. This is confirmed by the Salem Gazette of August 18: “The services at the First Church yesterday afternoon, were remarkably appropriate and interesting, … The discourse, by Mr. Upham, was historical in its nature, …” (p. 3/3). A longer account appeared in the same paper of August 21 (p. 2/5).
A striking illustration of what was said in a previous note (p. 412, above) is furnished by Mr. Upham’s lecture. “As there is some misapprehension,” he says in the appendix, “and diversity of opinion respecting the right mode of conforming dates in Old Style to dates in New Style,” he devoted three pages to an elaborate discussion of the problem, reaching the conclusion: “The 17th of August, N.S. 1829, was therefore the Centennial day corresponding to the 6th of August, O.S. 1729” (pp. 63–65). Though this conclusion is of course correct, nevertheless the wrong day was selected in 1829. For Mr. Upham overlooked the fact that the event commemorated took place not in 1729 but in 1629, and that therefore the difference between Old Style and New Style was not eleven days but ten days. Hence the celebration in 1829 should have been held not on August 17 but on August 16. It is to be hoped that when the tercentenary is celebrated in 1929, the correct date will be chosen.
908 “This day completes the second century since Governor Winthrop explored the banks of the Mystic River” (p. 3). Under date of June 17, 1630, Winthrop wrote: “We went to Mattachusetts, to find out a place for our sitting down. We went up Mistick River about six miles” (Journal, 1908, i. 50).
909 “Another thus expresses himself,” wrote Mr. Frothingham, and then went on to quote from what in a footnote he called “President Oakes’s Century Sermon, 1673” (p. 14). Obviously, no “Century Sermon” could have been preached here in 1673, and the title was probably used by inadvertence for “Election Sermon,” as the words quoted (with some inaccuracy) are taken from pp. 53–54 of Urian Oakes’s “New-England Pleaded with, And pressed to consider the things which concern her Peace, at least in this her Day: … Delivered in a Sermon Preached at Boston in New-England, May. 7. 1673. being the Day of Election there.… Cambridge, … 1673.”
910 On September 7, 1630, it was “ordered, that Trimountaine shalbe called Boston” (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 75).
The chief marshal in 1830 was William Sullivan, who enclosed the “truncheon” borne by him, together with a letter, in a parchment roll directed: “The Chief Marshall of the Centennial Celebration 17th September, 1830 to the Chief Marshall of 17th September 1930.” A few months ago this roll was found “down in the dim corners of the dusty vaults in the City Hall. No one knew it was there and apparently no one cared. It had lain there for nearly a hundred years, gathering dust and waiting for the day when it should be brought out again and shown the sunlight. Now that it has been discovered it will not be forgotten, and when the right day comes it will be brought forth once more and placed in the proper hands.” See an interesting account, with documents, in the Boston Evening Transcript of January 23, 1926 (part iii, p. 3/6).
911 See our Publications, x. 288 and note.
912 See p. 413 note.
913 The centenary of the first Masonic lodge in Boston was celebrated on April 30, 1833: see Harvey N. Shepard, History of Saint John’s Lodge of Boston (1917), pp. 91–95. For this reference I am indebted to Mr. George P. Anderson.
914 See J. Quincy, History of Harvard University (1840), i. 1–6, ii. 442, 639–708.
915 Niles’ Register, May 9, 1840, lviii. 146. For pageants in this country, see our Publications, xvii. 313–315 and notes.
916 Niles’ Register, July 11, 1840, lviii. 292.
917 It is hardly necessary to add that celebrations are frequently held on the 5th, 10th, 15th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 125th, 150th, 175th, 225th, etc., anniversaries — not to mention anniversaries in between.
918 In 1845 was published at Albany a volume filling 244 pages entitled, “The Berkshire Jubilee, celebrated at Pittsfield, Mass. August 22 and 23, 1844;” and also “A Sermon, delivered at Pittsfield, August 22, 1844, on the occasion of the Berkshire Jubilee. By Mark Hopkins, D.D.” This Berkshire Jubilee may perhaps be regarded as a forerunner of Old Home Week.
In 1850 was published at Boston “The Bi-Centennial Book of Malden. Containing the Oration and Poem delivered on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, May 23, 1849.” The earliest example of “bi-centennial” given in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1883, and of “bicentenary” 1862.
919 The title on the cover reads: “Mr. Jackson’s Historical Discourse, delivered at the Forty-Sixth Anniversary of the Oldest Missionary Society in Rhode Island, and the Two Hundredth and Fifteenth Anniversary of the First Baptist Church in America, March 5th, 1854.” On p. 2 is printed the request of the secretary of “The Female Missionary Mite Society” for the publication of the sermon. “We are convened this evening,” says Mr. Jackson, “to perform religious services in commemoration of the Forty-Sixth Anniversary of the Mite Society,’ it having been organized on Tuesday, November 11th, 1806, forty-seven years since, in November” (p. 3).
920 This is a volume of 368 pages.
“The First Colonization of New-England. An Address, delivered at the erection of a Monumental Stone … August 29th, 1862, … By John A. Poor. New-York: … 1863.” The address on pp. 5–46 and the appendix on pp. 47–98 are identical with pp. 57–98 and 353–362 of the Memorial Volume. In the same year was printed at Boston, “Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. Speech of John Wingate Thornton, Esq., at the Fort Popham Celebration, August 29, 1862, under the auspices of the Maine Historical Society.”
Other celebrations were held in 1864 and 1865:
An Address on the Character of the Colony founded by George Popham, at the Mouth of the Kennebec River August 19th, [O.S.] 1607. Delivered in Bath on the Two Hundred and Fifty-Seventh Anniversary of that Event. By Hon. Edward E. Bourne, of Kennebunk. … Portland: … 1864.
Responsibilities of the Founders of Republics: An Address on the Peninsula of Sabino, On the Two-Hundred and Fifty-eighth Anniversary of the Planting of the Popham Colony, Aug. 29, 1865. By Hon. James W. Patterson.… Boston: … 1865.
921 On September 2, 1635, “The name of Wessaguscus is also changed, & hereafter to be called Waymothe” (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 156).
922 Also printed in Essex Institute Historical Collections, xii. 1–52.
923 “Discourse delivered to the First Parish in Hingham on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Opening of its Meeting-House for Public Worship. Sunday, January 8, 1882. By Rev. Edward Augustus Horton.… Hingham: … 1882.” “The Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, September 15, 1885. Hingham: … 1885.” Thus in five years Hingham rejoiced in no less than three celebrations.
924 The title on the cover is not quite so tautological: “Bi-Centennial of Printing in New York.”
925 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlii. 48–67.
926 “The Annals A Supplement to Volume CXI January, 1924.” The title on the cover reads: “Supplement to The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Philadelphia, January, 1924.”
927 The Massachusetts Historical Society has two copies of Nelson’s Observations. One is a separate manuscript, with no indication as to its source; the other is in the Gay Transcripts, Miscellaneous, i. 99, from Stowe Mss. 163, folio 172. There are no essential differences in the two texts. The appended copy is taken from the manuscript.
928 Quoted by Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, i. 111.
929 Documentary proof that as early as 1677 Nelson was engaged in trade to the eastward is to be found in Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 159. His estate in 1687 was rated at £40. See the First Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (1876), p. 102.
930 History of Massachusetts Bay (1765), i. 378 note.
931 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 520. A copy of this letter is appended.
932 Collection de Manuscrits contenant Lettres, Mémoires, et autres Documents Historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 215. In citing this work the binder’s title will henceforth be used, Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France.
933 A list of goods desired by St. Castin and Marson is to be found in Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 157. Weeden, in his Economic and Social History of New England (i. 263 note 6) prints part of this document.
934 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 388.
935 Id., i. 199, 203; New York Colonial Documents, iv. 476.
936 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 203, 207, 209, 212, 217.
937 Id., i. 227.
938 Id., i. 236, 263, 266, 268.
939 Talon’s Memoir on Acadia (1676), in Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 240, is a good description of the state of affairs in Acadia at this time.
940 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 514.
941 This episode is described in detail by C. W. Tuttle in his Historical Papers (1889).
942 R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, ii. 241, and Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), ii. 224.
943 3 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vii. 334, 338; Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1677–1680, No. 1360, i.
944 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 281, 283, 285; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 148, 165, 917.
945 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 518.
946 R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, iii. 168.
947 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, v. 373.
948 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, No. 1863, v.; Gay Transcripts, State Papers, iii. 47.
949 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, No. 1863, i.; Gay Transcripts, State Papers, iii. 39.
950 Records of Massachusetts Bay, v. 333 ff.; Palfrey, History of New England, iii. 350 ff.
951 R. N. Toppan, iii. 95.
952 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, No. 1863; Gay Transcripts, State Papers, iii. 43.
953 This early episode in the relations of New England and the French is narrated at length by S. Roy Weaver in the Journal of Political Economy, xix. 411–415.
954 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 304, 329, 332; Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, Nos. 1863, 1985; id., 1685–1688, No. 545.
955 This is printed from Massachusetts Archives, ii. 520.
956 Josceline Bagot, George Canning and his Friends (1909), ii. 5. There is much on Washington social life of the times in this book, and in Stanley Lane-Poole’s Life of Stratford Canning (1888), vol. i.
957 Public Record Office, F. O. 5. 120, November 10, 1817.
958 Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, iv. 338.
959 Vaughan’s Viaticum of 1826 is printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, lix. 377–414.
960 The previous tenant of this house (now number 2017 I Street, N. W., home of the Arts Club of Washington) was Luis de Onis, minister of Spain. During Madison’s administrations it was occupied by James Monroe. After Onis’s departure in 1819 the house was taken by Bagot, and served as British Legation from 1819 to 1833, when Vaughan moved to the Decatur house on the northwest corner of Lafayette square. Information furnished by Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, and booklet of the Arts Club of Washington, 1923–24.
961 Harrison Gray Otis was much impressed by a ball and supper that he attended at the British legation in 1818. S. E. Morison, Life of H. G. Otis, ii. 212–13.
962 Sir Charles Vaughan did induce the Captain of the Phaeton frigate, in which he sailed for America, to put in at Madeira, where according to his journal of the voyage, “having laid in 2 pipes of Madeira wine & a small cask of Malmsey & the wind being fair on June 30th Thursday, we reimbarked.” The wine cost him £106, and he gave $180 in tips on leaving the Phaeton.
963 Stanley Lane-Poole, Stratford Canning, i, 296–322.