iHE m RIAL n I STORY OF Boston 1630-1880. •<^..<.. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARV 3 1924 070 675 800 f ■b r yw Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070675800 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children. ... He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children ; that the generation to come might know them, — PsALM Ixxviii. Write this for a Memorial in a book. — Exodus xvii. 14. WBLIv'.-VPt PRINTING GO-BOSTON . REFERENCES. HILLS. A. Fox Hill in the Marsh. B. West Hill. ^ Treamount, C. Gentry, later Beacon Hill [i8o feet]. \ later D. Cotton Hill. . J Beacon Hill. E. Windmill Hill, Snow Hill, later Gopp's Hill [50 feet].. F. Gorn Hill, later Fort Hill [80 feet]. SITES. G. Watering Place. [Pond.] H. Green. K. Springgate. L. First Meeting-House. M. Open Market. N. Jail. P. School. Q- Mill Creek (partly excavated, 1643) ^"d South Mill. R. Ship here built by Neheraiah Bourne. S. First Burial Ground. T. Blackstone's lot (dotted line) . V. North Mill. W. Drawbridge (gave away, 1659). X. North Battery, 1646. Y. TuthiU's Windmill. Z. Gate and Defences. HOUSES. I. Gov. Winthrop. 2. Rev. John Cotton. 3- Rev. John Wilson. 4- Capt. Robt. Keayne. 5- Edward Tyng. 6. Gov. BeUingham, 7- Samuel Cole (first tavern). 8. Henry Dunster. 9- Thos. Savage. THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, INCLUDING SUFFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS. 1630 — 1880. EDITED By JUSTIN WINSOR, UBSARIAN OF HARVARD UNIVEESTTY. IN FOUR VOLUMES. Vol. I. THE EARLY AND COLONIAL PERIODS. Issued under the business superintendence of the projector, Clarence F. Jewett. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 1885. Coiyright, 1 880. By James R. Osgood & Co. All Rights Reserved. PREFACE. nPHE scheme of this History originated with Mr. Clarence F. Jewett, who, towards the end of December, 1879, entrusted the further development of the plan to the Editor. On the third of January following, about thirty gentlemen met, upon invitation, to give countenance to the undertaking, and at this meeting a Committee was appointed to advise with the Editor during the progress of the work. This Committee consisted of the Rev. Edward E. Hale, D.D., Samuel A. Green, M.D., and Charles Deane, LL.D. The Editor desires to return thanks to them for their counsel in assigning the chapters to writers, and for other assistance ; and to Dr. Deane particularly for his suggestions during the printing. Since Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co. succeeded to the rights of Mr. Jewett as publisher, the latter gentleman has continued to exercise a supervision over the business management. The History is cast on a novel plan, — not so much in being a work of co-operation, but because, so far as could be, the several themes, as sections of one homogeneous whole, have been treated by those who have some particular association and, it may be, long acquaintance with the subject. In the diversity of authors there will of course be variety of opinions, and it has not been thought ill-judged, considering the different points of view assumed by the various writers, that the same events should be interpreted yi PREFACE. sometimes in varying, and perhaps opposite, ways. The chapters may thus make good the poet's description, — "Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea," — and may not be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to its turn to the light, without marring the unity of the general expanse. The Editor has endeavored to prevent any unnecessary repetitions, and to provide against serious omissions of what might naturally be expected in a history of its kind. He has allowed sometimes various speUings of proper names to stand, rather than abridge the writers' preferences, in cases where the practice is not uniform. Such annotations as he has furnished upon the texts of others have, perhaps, served to give coherency to the plan, and they have in all cases been made distinctly apparent. For the selection of the illustrations, which, with a very few exceptions, are from new blocks and plates, Mr. Jewett and the Editor are mainly responsible. Special acknowledgments for assistance in this and in other ways are made in foot-notes throughout the work. JUSTIN WINSOR. Cambridge, Harvard University Library, September, 1880. CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece. Boston, old and new, a topographical map . . . Facing titlepage PREFACE. The Editor to the Reader . . . v INTRODUCTION. The Sources of Boston's History. The Editor xiii HISTORICAL POEM. The King's Missive, i66i. jfohn G. Whittier. xxv Illustrations : Boston Town-house, Endicott and Shattuck, xxvii ; the Jail Delivery, xxviii ; the Quakers on the Common, xxix : the Great Windmill on Snow Hill, XXX ; tail-piece, xxxii; Statue of John Winthrop, heliotype, xxxii. Prefjistortc ^Pcrtolr anlr Natural f^tstorg* CHAPTER I. The Geology of Boston and its Environs. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler . i CHAPTER II. The Fauna of Eastern Massachusetts. Joel A. Allen 9 Illustration : The Great Auk, 12. CHAPTER III. The Flora of Boston and its Vicinity. Asa Gray 17 Illustration: The Great Elm on Boston Common, 21. viii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. CHAPTER I. Early European Voyagers in Massachusetts Bay. George Dexter ... 23 Illustration : A Norse Ship, 25. CHAPTER II. The earliest Maps of Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor, yustin Winsor 37 Illustrations: Cosa'sMap (1500), 39; Stephanius'sMap (1570), 39; Fernando Columbus's Map (1527), 41 ; French Map (1542-43), 43; Lok's Map (1582), 44; Hood's Map (1592), 45; Wytfliet's Map (1597), 45; Champlain's Map (1612), 49; Lescarbot's Map (1612), heliotype, 49; John Smith's Map {1614), heliotype, 52; Portrait o£ Smith, heli^ype, 52; Figurative Map (1614), 57; Jacobsz's Map (1621), 58; Governor Winthrop's Sketch of Coast, 61. Autographs : Champlain, 48 ; John Smith, 50 ; Isaac Allerton, 60. CHAPTER III. The earliest Explorations and Settlement of Boston Harbor. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. 63 Illustrations: Squaw Rock, or Squantum Head, 64; Miles Standish, 65; Standish's Sword and a Matchlock, 66 ; Blackstone's Lot, 84. Autographs : Miles Standish, 63 ; Phinehas Pratt, 70 ; Ferdinando Gorges, 72 ; Samuel Maverick, 78 ; Thomas Morton, 82. 2D{)e Colonial ^erioti. CHAPTER I. The Massachusetts Company. Samuel Foster Haven 87 Illustration : Seal of the Council for New England, 92. Autograph : Joshua Scottow, 97. CHAPTER II. Boston Founded. Rohert C. Winthrop no Illustrations: The Winthrop Cup, heliotype, 114; Plan of Ten Hills (1636), heliotype, 114; Winthrop's Fleet, 115; " Trimountaine shall be called Bos- ton," heliotype, 116; St. Botolph's Church, 117; First page of the Town 'Rs-zoxAs, heliotype, 122; Sir Harry Vane, 125; John Winthrop, 137; Letter of John Hampden in fac-simile, 140. Autographs : Matthew Cradock, 102 ; Margaret Winthrop, 104 ; John Winthrop, 114; John Wilson, 114; Isaac Johnson, 114; Thomas Dudley, 114; Hugh Peter, 124; John Haynes, 124; Harry Vane, 125; Sir Richard Saltonstall, 129; Richard Saltonstall, Jr., 129. CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER III. The Puritan Commonwealth. George E. Ellis 141 Illustrations: John Cotton, 157; Sir Richard Saltonstall, 183; Recantation of Winlock Christison, in fac-simile, 188. Autographs: John Cotton, 157; Samuel Gorton, 170; Roger Williams, 171 ; William Coddington, 174; William Aspinwall, 175; Edward Rainsford, 175; Thomas Savage, 175; John Underhill, 175; John Wheelwright, 176; John Clarke, 178; Mary Trask, 185; Margaret Smith, 1S5; William Dyer, 186; Nicholas Upsall, 187; Dorothy Upsall, 187; William Greenough, 187; Elizabeth Upsall, 187 ; Experience Upsall, 187 ; Susannah Upsall, 187. CHAPTER IV. The Rise of Dissenting Faiths. Henry W. Foote 191 Illustrations: Samuel Willard, heliotype, 208; Cotton Mather, heliotype, 20S; Simon Bradstreet, 209 ; the first King's Chapel, 214. AuToGRArHS : John Davenport, 193 ; Thomas Thacher, 194 ; James Allen, 194, 206; Increase Mather, 194, 206; John Russell, 195; Robert Ratcliffe, 200; John Eliot, 206; Samuel Phillips, 206; Joshua Moodey, 206; Samuel Willard, 208. CHAPTER V. Boston and the Colony. Charles C. Smith 217 Illustration: The Old Aspinwall House, 221. Autograph : Robert Keayne, 237. CHAPTER VI. The Indians of Eastern Massachusetts. George E. Ellis 241 Illustrations: Charles Sprague's Ode (1830), in fac-simile, 246; Indian Deed of Boston, heliotype, 250; John Eliot, the Apostle, 261. Autographs: John Mason, 253; Israel Stoughton, 253; Lion Gardiner, 253; Miantonomo, 253 ; John Eliot, 263. CHAPTER VII. Boston and the Neighboring Jurisdictions. Charles C. Smith . . . . 275 Autographs: D'Aulnay, 285; Edward Gibbons, 286; La Tour, 2S8 ; William Hathorne, 292 ; Daniel Denison, 292 ; Commissioners of the United Colonies (Theophilus Eaton, John Endicott, John Haynes, Stephen Goodyear, Her- bert Pelham, Edward Hopkins, John Brown, Timothy Hatherly), 300; another group (Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Denison, Thomas Prence, James Cudworth, John Mason, John Tallcott, Theophilus Eaton, William Leete), 301. CHAPTER VIII. From Winthrop's Death to Philip's War. Thomas W. Higginson . . . 303 Illustration : John Endicott, 308. Autographs : James Davids, 305 ; John Endicott, 307, 308 ; Richard Belling- hani, 307 ; Daniel Gookin, 307. VOL. I. — B. X THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. CHAPTER IX. Philip's War. Edward E. Hah 3" Illustrations: Secretary Rawson's Memorandum on Captain Richard, 313; John Leverett, 315; Thomas Savage, 318; a part of Hubbard's Map of New England (1677), 328. AuTOGRArHS : Josiah Winslow, 311; Wussausman, 311 ; Richard Russell, 312; Thomas Danforth, 312 ; Daniel Denison, 313; Samuel Mosley, 313; Com- missioners of the United Colonies (Thomas Danforth, President, William Stoughton, Josiah Winslow, Thomas Hinckley, Jr., John Winthrop, Wait Winthrop), 314; John Leverett, 316 ; Thomas Clark, 316; William Hudson, 316; Thomas Savage, 316; John Hull, 316; Daniel Henchman, 316, 317 ; James Oliver, 316; John Richards, 316; Isaac Johnson, 319; Thomas Wheeler, 320; Nathaniel Davenport, 323; Samuel Appleton, 323 ; William Turner, 325; Philip's mark, 325, CHAPTER X. The Struggle to maintain the Charter of King Charles the First, and ns Final Loss in 1684. Charles Deane 329 Illustrations: The Massachusetts Charter, keliotype, 329; Oliver Cromwell, 348; Edward Rawson, 381. Autographs: Charles I., 331 ; John Hull, 354; Royal Commissioners (Richard Nicolls, Robert Carr, George Cartwright, Samuel Maverick), 358 ; Richard Bellingham, 360 ; Edmund Randolph, 364 ; Charles II., 365 ; Simon Brad- street, 369; Thomas Danforth, 369; Joseph Dudley, 369; Daniel Gookin, Sen., 369; William Stoughton, 369; Elisha Hutchinson, 369; Elisha Cooke, 369; Samuel Nowell, 371 ; James II., 380; Edward Rawson, 381. CHAPTER XI. Charlestown in the Colonial Period. Henry H. Edes 383 Illustrations : Order, Feb. 10, 1634, establishing Board of Selectmen, keliotype, 388; Order, Oct. 13, 1634, relating to lands, &c., keliotype, 390; the Training- Field, 392 ; John Harvard's Monument, 395, Autographs: The Squaw-Sachem's mark, 383; John Greene, 384; Richard Sprague, 384; Thomas Walford's mark, 384 ; Thomas Graves, surveyor, 385; Walter Palmer, 386; Thomas Coitmore, 388; Thomas Lynde, 389; Samuel Adams, 389; Thomas Graves, the admiral, 389; Edward Buit, 389; James Gary, 390; John Newell, 390; Abraham Palmer, 391; John Edes, 392; Edward Converse, 393; Robert Long, 393; Increase Nowell, 394; Zechariah Symmes, 394; Thomas Goold, 396; Thomas Shepard, 396; John Greene, 396; John Morley, 397 ; Ezekiel Cheever, 397 ; Samuel Phij^ps, 397; Lawrence Hammond, 399; Richard Sprague, the younger, 399; Robert Sedgwick, 399; Francis Norton, 399; Francis Willoughby, 399; Richard Russell, 399. CHAPTER XII. RoxBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. Frauds S. Drake 401 Illustrations : William Pynchon, 404 ; the Curtis Homestead, 406 ; John Eliot's Chair, 415; Certificate signed by John Eliot and Samuel Danforth, 416. Autographs: William Pyncheon, 404; John Eliot, 414; Thomas Dudley, 417, CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XIII. Dorchester in the Colonial Period. Samuel jf. Barrows 423 Illustrations: Pierce House, 431; Minot House, 432; Blake House, 433; Tolman House, 434 ; Bridgham House, 435 ; Richard Mather, 437, Autographs: Roger Clap, 428 ; Humphrey Atherton, 428; James Parker, 428 ; Richard Mather, 438 ; George Minot, 438 ; Henry Withington, 438. CHAPTER XIV. Brighton in the Colonial Period. Francis Sr Drake 439 CHAFPER XV. Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh, and Pullen Point in the Colonial Period. Mellen Chamberlain 445 Illustrations: Deane Winthrop House, 447; Yeaman House, 448; Floyd Mansion, 450, Autographs : Proprietors (Robert Keayne, John Cogan, John Newgate, James Penn, Samuel Cole, George Burden), 451. CHAPTER XVI. The Literature of the Colonial Period. Justin Winsor 453 Illustrations : Title o£ first book printed in Boston, 457 ; Memorandum of . Richard Mather, 45S ; Stanza signed by Benjamin Tompson, 460, Autographs: Jose Glover, 455; Stephen Daye, 455; Henry Dunster, 456; Samuel Green, 456 ; Marmaduke Johnson, 456 ; John Foster, 456 ; Richard Mather, 45S ; Thomas Weld, 458 ; Anne Bradstreet, 461 ; Michael Wiggles- worth, 461 ; Thomas Shepard, 462 ; Edward Johnson, 463, CHAPTER XVII. The Indian Tongue and its Literature. J. Hammond Trumbull . . . 465 Illustrations : Title to the Indian Bible, 469; the Massachusetts Psalter, 476; the Indian Primer, 478. Autographs : John Cotton the younger, 470 ; James Printer, 477, CHAPTER XVIII. Life in Boston in the Colonial Period. Horace E. Scudder 48 1 Illustrations: Bill of Lading (1632), 490; Adam Winthrop's Pot, 491; the Stocks, 506; the Pillory, 507 ; Rebecca Rawson, 519. Autographs: Samuel Cole, 493; George Monck, 494; Nehemiah Bourne, 498; Hezekiah Usher, 500; John Usher, 500; John Dunton, 500; Samuel Fuller, 501. CHAPTER XIX. Topography and Landmarks of the Colonial Period. Edwin L. Bynner . 521 Illustrations: Wood's Map of Boston and Vicinity (1634), heliotype, 524; the Tramount, 525; section of Bonner's Map (1722), 526; Plan of the Summit of. Beacon Hill, 527; West Hill in 1775, 528; the Old Feather Store, 547; Old House in Salem Street, 551. \ii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. CHAPTER XX. Boston Families Prioe to 1700. William H. Whitmore 557 Illustkations : Isaac Addingtoii, 576 ; Mrs, Jane Addington, 577 ; Simeon Stoddard, 583; Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, 584; Mrs. Shrimpton, 585; Increase Mather, 587. Autographs : Isaac Addington, 575; Penn Townsend, 575 ; Humphrey Davie, 57S ; Edward Hutchinson, 579 ; Peter Oliver, 580 ; Thomas Brattle, 580 ; Edward Tyng, 581; Anthony Stoddard, 583; Samuel Shrimpton, 584; Peter Sergeant, 585; Increase Mather, 587 ; Crescentius Matherus, 587. INDEX 589 INTRODUCTION. T X THEN, in 1730, a hundred years had passed from the foundation ' ' of the town, a commemoration was proposed ; but the community was then suffering under a visitation of tlie small-pox, and the anniversary was not observed, except by one or two pulpit ministrations. The Rev. Mr. Foxcroft preached a century sermon ^ at the First Church, and Thomas Prince, in the previous May, made the annual election sermon^ an admoni- tion of the event. A fit celebration, however, took place on the second centennial, in 1830, and Josiah Quincy — who, after he had left the chief magistracy of the city, had taken the presidency of the neighboring uni- versity — was selected to deliver an address in the Old South, and Charles Sprague, who had shown his powers on more than one earlier occasion, read the ode,^ which is preserved in the volume of his Writings. The address was printed, and in some sort it became the basis of The Municipal History of Boston which Mr. Quincy printed in 1852, This volume gives a full exposition of the city's history after the town obtained a charter, and during the administrations of the first and second mayors (Phillips and Quincy) ; but it contains only a cursory sketch of the earlier chronicles.* This part of its story, however, had already been but recently told. As early as 1794 Thomas Pemberton printed A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston!' A limit of sixty pages, however, could afford only a glimpse of the town's history. It nevertheless formed the basis upon which Charles Shaw worked, as shown in his little duodecimo 1 Oiservations, Historical and Practical, on 'A fac-simile of a part of this ode is given the Rise and Primitive State of New England, on p. 246. with a special reference to the old or first gathered * Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, Church in Boston. pp. 444, 501. ' 2 The People of New England put in mind ^ Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 241-304. There are of the Righteous Acts of the Lord to them and manuscripts of Pemberton's in the Society's their Fathers. Cabinet. xiv THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of 31 1 pages which he published in 1817^ under the same title, ^ Topo- graphical and Historical Description of Boston. In 182 1 Mr. J. G. Hales, to whom we owe the most important map of Boston issued in his day, published a little descriptive Survey of Boston and Vicinity. Four years later, in 1825, Dr. Caleb Hopkins Snow printed his History of Boston, to which an appendix was subsequently added, and in 1828 what is called a second edition seems to have been merely a reissue of the same sheets with a new title ^ and index, to satisfy the interest, perhaps, arising from the approaching centennial. Snow's labor was creditable, and his examina- tion of the records in regard to the sites of the early settlers' habitations and other landmarks was careful enough to make his work still useful.^ The next year, 1829, Bowen, its publisher, issued his own Picture of Bos- ton^ which proved the precursor of numerous guide-books.^ In 1848 Nathaniel Dearborn printed his Boston Notions, a medley of statistics and historical descriptions; and in the same year, 1852, in which Quincy's Mun- icipal History, already mentioned, appeared, Samuel G. Drake began the publication of his History and Antiqidties of Boston, which was issued at intervals in parts, till the annals — for this was the form it took — were brought down to 1770, when the publication ceased, in 1856.^ No further special contribution of any importance ' appeared till the late Dr. Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff published, under sanction of the city, during his mayor- alty, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston. The volume is principally made up of papers previously published, chiefly in the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, which had been amended and enlarged. They relate to various topographical features of the town and harbor, forming a collection of valuable monographs, but in no wise covering even that re- stricted field. Two years later, in 1873, Mr. Samuel Adams Drake, a son of the elder annalist, printed an interesting volume, The Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, in which the reader is taken a course through the city, while the old sites are pointed out to him, and he is 1 Reprinted in 1818 and 1843. American Review, vol. Ixxxiii., by William H. ^ A History of Boston, the Metropolis of Mas- Whitmore. Lucius Manlius Sargent printed a sachusetts,from its Origin to the Present Period, little tract, Notices of Histories of Boston, in 1857. ■with some account of the Environs. Boston : A. The City Government had taken steps to print Bowen. i8z8. a continuation of Drake, when his death put a ■" Dr. Snow also published, in 1S30, a Geog- stop to the project. raphy of Boston, with Historical Notes, for the ' There was a small History of Boston, by T. younger class of readers. He died in 1835, at S. Homans, published in 1856, and an anony- less than forty years of age. ■ mous Historical Sketch in 1861, beside others of * Other editions in 1833 and 1838. even less interest. The account of Boston in 5 Among them may be classed Boston Sights, the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica by David Pulsifer, 1859. is by the Rev. G. E. Ellis, D.D. A Boston ^ An examination of it was made in the North Antiquarian Club has recently been founded. INTRODUCTION. XV edified with the story of their associations. This is the last acquisition to the illustrative literature of Boston, apart from the numerous guide- books which have filled from time to time their temporary mission. The outlying districts of Boston have each had their historians. A large History of East Boston, with Biograpliical Sketches of its early Proprietors was printed by the late General William H. Sumner in 1858, the author being a descendant of the Shrimptons and other early occupants and pro- prietors of the island. A History of South Boston, by Thomas C. Simonds, was published in 1857. General H. A. S. Dearborn delivered a second cen- tennial address at Roxbury in 1830. Mr. C. M. Ellis issued a History of Rox- biiry Town in 1847. Mr. Francis S. Drake, another son of the annalist, did for Roxbury much the same service that his brother had done for the orig- inal Boston, when The Town of Roxbury, its Memorable Persons and Places, appeared in 1878. For Dorchester, there is the History published by the Dorchester Historical and Antiquarian Society, and other publications bearing their approval, which are enumerated in another part of the present volume.^ Of Brighton there is no distinct history ; but a sketch prepared by the Rev. Frederic A. Whitney forms part of the recently published His- tory of Middlesex County, which contains also a brief sketch of Charles- town. This is based in good part, as all accounts of that town must be for the period ending with the Revolution, on the History of Charlestown, by Richard Frothingham, the publication of which was begun in numbers in 1845 ^i^d never finished, — seven numbers only being pubhshed. Avery elaborate work, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown by Thomas Bellows Wyman, the result of nearly forty years' application to the subject, was published in 1879, the year following the author's death, the editing of it having been completed by Mr. Henry H. Edes. Mention should also be made of the earlier Historical Sketch by Dr. Bartlett, 18 14, and Mr. Everett's commemoration of the second centennial in 1830.^ Those regions, no longer within the limits of Boston but once a part of the town, have also their special records. Muddy River, now Brookline, has had its history set forth in several discourses by the late venerable Dr. Pierce, in an address by the Hon. R. C. Winthrop, and in the more formal Historical Sketches by H. F. Woods. The Records of Muddy River, extracted in part from the Boston Records, have also been printed by the town. Mount WoUaston, or " The Mount " as it was usually called when the people of Boston had their farms there, has recently given occasion to an elaborate History of Old Braintree 1 The church history of Dorchester has been ^ The church history of Charlestown has specially commemorated by Harris, Pierce, Cod- been particularly elucidated by Budington, man, Hall, Allen, Means, and Barrows. Ellis, Hunnewell, and Edes. Xvi THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and Quincy, by William S. Pattee, 1878, while there have been earlier con- tributions by Hancock, Lunt, Storrs, Whitney, and Adams.. Of Pullen Point and Winnissimet there have been no formal records printed. As full a list as has ever been printed of the great variety of local publications which must contribute to the completeness of the history of Boston has been given by Mr. Frederic B. Perkins, in his Check-list of American Local History, 1876, many of which titles, of particular applica- tion, will be referred to in the foot-notes and editorial annotations through- out these volumes. Chief among such are the numerous discourses and other monographs which have been given to the history of the churches of Boston. ^ Their history has also been made a part of such general accounts of the progress of religious belief in New England as Felt's Ecclesiastical History. This is in the form of annals ; and John Eliot's " Ecclesiastical History of Plymouth and Massachusetts," as begun in the Mass. Hist. Collections, vii., has a similar scope. In this place it would be unpardonable to overlook one or two chap- ters of the elaborate treatises of the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter on Con- gregationalism as seeti in its Literature? Boston formed so considerable a part of the colony, and the theocracy which ruled its people influenced so largely their history, that it is not easy to separate wholly the local from the general, and it certainly was not done by the earlier writers. Win- throp's Journal, which is called, however, in the printed book, a History of New England, tells us more than we get elsewhere of the course of events in Boston for nearly twenty years after the settlement.^ This can 1 The principal of these are here enumerated : 1877. Trinity, — Broolis. South Congregational, OnW^ First Church,— ¥o-&i:xoit,\-]^o\ Emerson, —Hale. Twelfth Congregational,— ^■3.ne.\X,\'&tp; 1812; N. L. Frothingham, 1830, 1850; Rufus Pray, 1863. Park .S'/re,?;', — Semi-centennial, £1113,1868,1869,1873. Second, or Old North,— 1861. Bulfinch Street, — k\e.x, 1861. Fir'st Ware, 1821 ; Robbins. 1844, 1845, 1850, 1852, Universalist, — Wi\o\-i2.y, 1864. New South,— 185S. Third, or O/af 6'oart, — Austin, ^8o3 ; Ellis, 1865. Church of the Advent, — '&o\\es, Wisner, 1830; Armstrong, 1841 ; Blagden, 1870; i860, &c. Coggeshall's discourse on the intro- and Manning; a history of the meeting-house by duction of Methodism into Boston. Cf. articles Burdett, 1877. New North, — 'EAioi, 1804, 1822 ; in the Amer. Quarterly Register, vii., and Boston Parkman, 1814, 1839, 1843, 1849; Fuller, 1854. Almanac, 1843 and 1854. Manifesto, or Brattle Square, Church, — Thacher, 2 The Congregationalism of the last three hun- 1800; Palfrey, 1825; Lothrop, 1851, 1871. dred years as seen in its Literature, 'i^&vi Yoy\<., King's ««/£■/, — Greenwood, 1833; Foote, 1873. 1880. In an appendix there is a bibliography C/5rw/C/;arf/5, — Eaton, 1820, 1824; Burroughs, of the subject, giving 7,250 titles, arranged 1874. First Baftist,-^e3\e, 1865. West Church, chronologically, — a most valuable contribution — Lowell, 1820, 1831, 1845; Bartol, 1867, 1877. showing most of the books one must consult Federal and Arlington Street, — Davis, 1824 ; on the early history of Boston. Gannett, i86o, 1864 ; the lives of Channing and 3 It was first printed in Hartford in 1790, Gannett. Essex Street Church, — 'a^hm^t, 1823, from a copy collated with the original but in- and the memorial volume, i860. Second Baptist, complete, as the third volume of the manuscript -Baldwin, 1824, 1841. Hollis Street, — Ch2.ney, was not then known to be in existence though INTRODUCTION. XVll best be supplemented by the convenient group of contemporary writings which the Rev. Alexander Young, D.D., gathered in his Chronicles of Mas- sachusetts Bay, 1623-36, and by a part of the documents which Hazard printed in his Historical Collections, and Hutchinson published in 1769 in his Collection of Original Papers} to fortify his history. Of the early accounts by Wood, Lechford, Johnson, Josselyn, and others, and of such diaries as Hull's and Sewall's, mention is elsewhere made. Although some of these were in print when Hubbard wrote his History of New England, it was from the manuscript of Winthrop's Journal that this old historian obtained pretty much all that was valuable in his narrative ; and for the thirty years that he continued it beyond Winthrop's death, Dr. Palfrey, following Hutchinson's judgment, calls his book "good for nothing,'' — a decision, perhaps, too denunciatory. Every historical student, however, recognizes the great importance of Hubbard for the period before Win- throp took up the story, and for which Hubbard must have had material at first hand.^ Before the printing of Winthrop, Hubbard was looked upon as an original authority, but the recovery of his preface shows that he urged no claims but those of a compiler of " the original manuscripts of such as had the managing of those affairs," &c. First among the books whose authors were indebted to Hubbard comes Prince is supposed to have had the three volumes Atlantic Monthly, January, 1864, and February, in his keeping in 1754, and to have used them in 1867 ; Harper's Monthly, November, 1876 ; Black- his Chronology. This third volume, covering wood's Magazine, Kug\iSt,I$6T ; Annual Register, the last four years of Winthrop's life, was dis- 1867 ; Reime Britannique, &c. Additional refer- covered among the Prince manuscripts about ences are given in AUibone's Dictionary. 1815, and was shortly after surrendered to the ^ This was reprinted by the Prince Society in Winthrop family, in whose custody the other 1865, under the care of VV. H. Whitmore and volumes were. Savage used it, however, in W. S. Appleton. Other papers of Hutchinson preparing his valuable edition of the entire are printed in 2 il/ajj'. j^wA Co//., vol. x., and third manuscript (cf. Mr. Hillard's " Memoir of Sav- series, vol. i. The Proceedings, February, 1868, age," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, March, 1S78, and January, 1874, of the Society contain ac- p. 135) ; but while the volumes were in his counts of the controversy which preceded the hands, the fire occurred in CourfStreet in 1S25, transfer of these papers to the State Archives, in which the second volume was burned. The Cf. also, ibid. ii. 438. first and third volumes are now in the cabinet of ^ It was not printed till 1815, and again in 1848, the Historical Society. See their Proceedings, in 2 Mass. Hisl. Coll. v. and vi. Savage, Winthrvp, June, 1872. The original letters of Winthrop i. 357. The Historical Society has the rough and others, which Mr. Savage printed in his ap- draft and the corrected copy of Hubbard's man- pendix, have recently become the property of uscript, and has recently printed some opening the same Society. These and other letters and and concluding pages of it, which had long been papers of the early Winthrops, brought to light missing, until procured from England by Dr. F. of late years, and printed in the Society's Collec- E. Oliver. It would seem that the Society's tions, as noted elsewhere, were used in the Hon. copy, when perfect, had been copied by Judge R. C. Winthrop's Life and Letters of John Win- Peter Oliver, and it is from his transcript that throp, which, with the papers, have been the the text is completed. Mass. /List. Soc. Proc, subject of numerous reviews: No. Amer. Rev., August, 1814, and February, 1S78. Sibley, //a?-- January, 1864, and January and October, 1867 ; vard Graduates, p. 56. VOL. I. — C. XVIII THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana: The first book of the New- English History, reporting the Design whereon, the Manner wherein, and the People whereby, the several colonies of New England were planted. This book is an anomaly, even in those times of anomalous books. It was pub- lished in London in 1702, in a huge folio, but the introduction bears date Oct. 16, 1697. While there is much that is valuable in its hetero- geneous contents, there is not a little that is absurd and irrelevant. It is largely made up of earlier separate publications of its author,^ and gives us the chief accounts we have of the lives of several of the Boston ministers, — Cotton, Wilson, Norton, Davenport, and others. Next, there is a similar acknowledgment to Hubbard due from Thomas Prince, the pastor of the Old South, for the use he made of him in his Chronological History of New England? This work, as published, ex- tends only over the earliest years of Boston's history, not going beyond 1633, as the author, seeking a start, began with the Flood. In his pre- face he enumerates the manuscripts he had used, and his paragraphs are credited to their sources. 1 It has since been reprinted in this country, in 1820 and in 1853. Mr. Deane has indicated the light thrown upon it by Mather's diary in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, December, 1862. Cf. Mr. "Winthrop's apt characterization of the book in his lecture of the Lowell Institute course, p. 21. Dunton, the London boolcseller who came to Boston, says of Mather and his book : " His library is very large and numerous, but had his books been fewer when he writ his history, 't would have pleased us better ; " and again he speaks of Mather's library as " the glory of New England, if not of all America. I am sure it was the best sight that I had in Boston." Some part of this library, as is well known, is now in the possession of the American Anti- quarian Society at Worcester, and fragments of it even to this day occasionally find their way into public sales or dealer's catalogues. The Mather manuscripts in the library of that Soci- ety are described in their Proceedings, April 30, 1873, p. 22. The papers known as the Mather manuscripts, belonging to the Prince Library, have been fully calendared in the catalogue of that library, and the best part of them printed in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. Some part of the diaries of Increase and Cotton Mather are pre- served iu the Historical Society's cabinet. — Proceedings, March, 1858, and April, 1868. Other portions are in the library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It does not seem likely that they will be printed until men are better pleased with confessions of short- comings and with the display of self-debase- ment. Drake, in his introduction to Increase Mather's History of Philip'' s War, speaks of the Mather library as the product of the care of four generations, and refers to some letters of Sam- uel Mather, D.D., the last of the four, which were a part of a MS. volume afterwards noted in the Brinley Catalogue, No. 1,329. Accepting the statements of these letters, it appears that Samuel Mather furnished Hutchinson "with most of the material of which his history was composed." His son says of the library, that it was "by far the most valuable part of the family property. In consisted of 7,000 or 8,000 volumes of the most curious and chosen authors, and a prodigious number of valuable manuscripts, which had been collected by my ancestors for five generations." A considerable portion, if not the whole, of Increase Mather's library is said to have been burned in the destruction of Charlestown in 1775. 2 The first volume was published in 1736, and a second volume was begun in 1755, of which only three serial numbers were issued before the author's death. The completed vol- ume is not a scarce book, but the subsequent parts had become so rare that it was deemed desirable to reprint them in ■> Mass. Hist. Colh vii. INTRODUCTION. XIX Great value must confessedly be put upon Governor Hutchinson's His- tory of Massachusetts Bay. No one before his day, and perhaps no one since, has had reflected on him more credit as a local historian. His first volume was published in 1764, and was the subject of a correspondence, preserved to us, ^ between the author and Dr. Stiles. His second volume was nearly ready for the press when his house was sacked by a mob, Aug. 26, 1765. He left the manuscript to its fate, as he bore off a daughter from their fury; thrown into the street, it was saved by the interposition of the Rev. Dr. Andrew Eliot, and was not so much injured but that the author readily repaired the loss: it was printed in 1767, bringing the story down to 1749. A third volume — detailing events preceding the Revolution with a surprising fairness when we consider the treatment he had received, and of course without sympathy for the patriot cause — was not published till long after its author's death (1780), when a grandson, at the instigation of some Boston gentlemen, gave it to the world in 1828.^ It is not worth while to enumerate here a long list of histories, all more or less general as regards our State and country, but all throv«ng light in considerable sections upon our own Boston history, and which the eager student of her fameful annals will not neglect, — the histories of New England by Neal, Backus, Palfrey (hardly to be surpassed), and Elliott; those of Massachusetts by Barry (the completest), Minot, and Bradford, not to mention other works. Of the foreign writers, who in days not recent have visited Boston and left accounts of the town, there are enumerations in Shurtlefif's Description of Boston, and in Henry T. Tuckerman's America and her Commentators, with extracts from such narratives. The Commonwealth has done its work nobly in causing the printing of those early records,^ to which the historian of Boston must constantly resort. In our State House, too, are tier upon tier of volumes, labelled " Massachusetts Archives," so arranged, indeed, in an attempted classifi- cation,* that it is irksome and unsatisfactory to consult them. They are rich, however, to the patient inquirer in the evidences of Boston's power and significance in our colonial history. The city has, fortunately, estab- '^ N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1872. ^ Jiecords of Mass. Bay, 1628-86, edited by 2 Charles Deane has traced the bibliography N. B. Shurtleff, Boston, 1855-57, in six volumes. o£ Hutchinson's historical writings in the Hist. The transcription for the printer was made by Mag. i. 97, or with revision in the Mass. Hist. David Pulsifer. C£. Alass. Hist. Sac, Lowell Soc. Proc, February, 1857. Hutchinson, in his Lectures, p. 230. preface, speaks of his efforts to save records and * Set forth in JV. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., papers from destruction, and of their repeated 1848, p. 105. See Dr. Palfrey's condemnation loss by fire; and in the preface of his second vol- of it in the preface to his New England, iii. ume he recounts his own losses by the riot. p. vii. XX THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. lished of late years a Record Commission. Under the supervision of the gentlemen who have thus far constituted it, Messrs. William S. Appleton and William H. Whitmore, three reports have been printed. The first consists of various lists of early inhabitants, and the second, third, and fourth are mentioned below. Of the records and papers in the office of the City Clerk, the following statement is furnished by SAMUEL F. McCleary, Esq., the present clerk: The Town Records, 1634 to 1 821, in ten volumes. Also a copy on paper of vol. i. (1634-60), by Charles Shaw, made in 1814. Also a copy on parchment of vol. i., and fully indexed, made by S. B. Morse, Jr., in 1855. [This first volume is now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioner sJ^ The City Records,^ from 1822 to 1867, in forty-five volumes ; from 1868 to 1880, in twenty-six volumes, two for each year. The Original Papers forming the foundation of the Town and City Records, from 1634 to 1880. [Those from 1634 to 1734 (1716 missing) are bound in two vol- umes ; the rest are in files.] The Book of Possessions, being the original entries of the earliest recorded division of land within the town, written about 1643-44, in one volume. Also a copy made on parchment in 1855 by S. B. Morse, Jr., in one volume. [The volume is now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners. Its probable date is discussed elsewhere in this history.] Minutes of Meetings of the Selectmen, 1 701-1822, inclusive, in twenty-four volumes. Selectmen's Memoranda, being the original entries from which the above "minutes" were made up, 1732 to 1821, in ninety-four memorandum books. Record of names of the inhabitants of the town in 1695, i^i one volume. Records of strangers not inhabitants of the town ; also of bonds furnished by sundry persons as sureties that certain other persons therein named shall not become a charge to the town, 1679-1700, in one volume. Permits to build with timber in the year 1707. Account books of the town and records of the committee on finance, 1739 to 182 1. Records of committee on rebuilding after the great fire of 1 760. Subscriptions for sufferers by the great fire of 1794. Lists of persons who arrived by sea during the years 1763-69. Memorandum book of selectmen for the year 1772. List of donations to the town of Boston from all parts of the country, north and south, at the time of the enforcement of the Boston Port Bill in 1774. Records of the donation committee of the town in 1774. Lists of persons aided in the several wards by gifts of food or money, in eighteen memorandum books, for the years 1774-75. Cash-book of donation committee for 1774-75. The Slioemakers' book, 1774. Spinning and knitting-book, 1774. Brickmakers' book, 1774. Wood-account book, 1774. "Departing money" receipt-book, 1774. Petty ledger of donation committee, 1774. 1 There is a printed iiide.K of city documents, 1834-74, compiled by J. M. Bu"bee. INTRODUCTION. Xxi Records of Committee of Safety, after the evacuation of Boston by tlie British troops, 1776. Then, of the records of adjacent towns, now a part of the metropoHs by annexation, there are the following; and for the enumeration I am indebted to John T. Priest, Esq., the Assistant City Clerk: — Charlestown. — Town Records, 1:629-1 847, in fourteen volumes. Selectmen's Re- cords, 1843-47, in one volume; previous to 1843 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1 84 7-73, in ten volumes. Common Coun- cil Records, 1847-73, i^^ seven volumes. [These and other records and papers have been rearranged by Mr. Henry H. Edes, acting under orders of the city of Charles- town, 1869 and 1870. See Third Report of the Record Commissioners, where the "Book of Possessions," 1638-1802, is printed in full. One of the other volumes in this series is " An estimate of the losses of the inhabitants by the burning of the town, June 17, 1775." The volumes so far arranged make sixty-nine in number, and the papers yet to be arranged, few of which are earlier than 1720, will fill fifty or sixty volumes more. J Roxbury. — Town Records, 1 648-1 846, in six volumes [the records were burned in 1645, and of those remaining there are but few before 1652. Ellis, Roxbury, p. 7 ; Drake, Roxbury, p. 260]. Selectmen's Records, 1783-1846, in four volumes; pre- vious to 1783 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1846-67, in seven volumes, 1652-54. [The "Ancient Transcript," so-called, is the Roxbury Book of Possessions, and was made about 1652-54. It has been copied for the Record Commissioners and will be printed] . West Roxbury. — Town Records, 1 85 1-73, in two volumes. Selectmen's Records, 1851-73, in two volumes. Dorchester. — Town Records, Jan. 16, 163I- 1869, in twelve volumes. [These are the oldest original records in the office ; a portion of the first volume will consti- tute the Fourth Report of the Record Commissioner s^. Selectmen's Records, 1855-69, in two volumes ; previous to 1855 these records were kept in the Town Records. Brighton. — Town Records, 1807-73, ™ ^'^'^ volumes; the first volume contains the records of the "Third Precinct of Cambridge on the South side of Charles River," beginning in 1772. Selectmen's Records, 1807-73, ^n four volumes. The following statement of the records in the keeping of the City Regis- trar has been kindly furnished from that office : — Boston. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths (County Records), 1630-60, in one volume; with a transcription made in 1856: Births, 1644-1744 (complete, over 20,000), in one volume, with a transcription made in 1874 ; 1726-1814 (imperfect), in one volume; 1800-49 (imperfect), in one volume; 1849-79 (complete), in six- teen volumes. Marriages, 1651-1879, in twenty-seven volumes, with a gap from 1662 to 1689 ; marriages out of the city, but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths, xxii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 1800-79 (complete from 18 10), in twenty-one volumes; of persons buried here but wlio died elsewhere, in one volume. Charlestown. — 'SxtCas., Marriages, and Deaths, 1 629-1 843, in two volumes, including marriages out of town before 1800, and indexes : Births, 1843-73, in three volumes. Marriages, 1843-73, in three volumes. Deaths, 1843-73, in three volumes. Indexes, 1843-73, in three volumes. ^PotSmO/. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1632-1849, in three volumes: Births, 1843-68, in four volumes. Marriages, 1632-1868, in four volumes ; marriages out of the city but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths, 1633-1868, in three volumes. Z)wrte/^r. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1 631-1849, in four volumes : Births, 1850-69, in one volume. Marriages, 1850-69, in two volumes. Deaths, 1850-69, in one volume. Brighton. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1771-1873, in one volume. West Roxbury. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1851-73, in one volume. Intentions of Marriages: Boston, 1 707-1879, in thirty-five volumes; Charles- town, 1 725-1873, in five volumes, with an index volume ; Roxbury, 1 785-1868, in two volumes; Dorchester, 1 798-1869, in two volumes. The editor has endeavored in the map which accompanies this volume, called " Boston, Old and New," to depict, as well as he could, the physical characteristics of the original peninsula, with the highways and footways of the young town for its first thirty years or more, and to indicate a few of the sites most interesting in its early history. His chief dependence has been the first volume of the " Boston Town Records " and the " Book of Possessions," both of which are now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners. The earliest published maps of the town were not made till eighty or ninety years after the settlement, and after the original water-line had been much obscured by the " wharfing-out " process, which began, so far as the records indicate, in 1634. Ever after that date the town records show that frequent permission was given to wharf out along the front of riparian lots. Still, some help has been derived from Bonner's map of 1722, Burgiss's of 1728, and even from later published surveys. More than one attempt has been made to construct a map of Boston as it was about the middle of the seventeenth century, but none has heretofore been published. Mr. Uriel H. Crocker was led to the study of the subject from his professional calls as a conveyancer, and constructed a map of the lots in the town, which he explained by extracts from the records in "an accompanying volume. These he very kindly placed at the editor's service, and they have been of frequent assistance. So has a similar plan on a much larger scale, which was made by Mr. George Lamb of Cambridge, and which is now in the Public Library. Of this latter plan a Hthographed fac-simile of full size has been made INTRODUCTION. XXIU under the direction of the Trustees of the Library. If there are other plans existing based on the same sources, they have not come to the editor's knowledge, except a sketch of streets and estates, indorsed " William Appleton, 1866," a copy of which is in the Historical Society's Collec- tion. Any one working up this subject can but derive great assistance, in tracing the bounds of estates and placing the original habitations, from the "Gleaner" articles of the late Mr. N. I. Bowditch, which were pub- lished in the Boston Transcript in 1855-56, and which are to be republished in the near future. They are the key to the greater store of information preserved in Mr. Bowditch's manuscripts. Not a few hints and corrobora- tive statements which have also been of assistance were found in Snow, Drake, and Shurtleff.^ 1 The modern map used as a background is a reduced section of a large one recently pub- lished by the Boston Map Company; but it has been found necessary to modify a little the "original shore-line," as indicated by its com- pilers, George F. Loring and Irwin C. Cromack, surveyors and draughtsmen in the City Sur- KjU\/yi4\ veyor's office. The stones of the last previous authentic map of Boston were destroyed in the fire of 1872, and no satisfactory representation of the recent changes in the streets had been given till the issue of this map. The present re- duction of it has been made by the proprietor's kind permission. NOTE TO THE KING'S MISSIVE. Samuel Shattock, or Shattuck, of Salem, a Quaker, had been whipped in 1657 for interfering while another Quaker was gagged. He was subsequently banished under the law, which provided whipping for a first and second offence (branding was later included), and finally banishment on pain of death. The Quakers in London, whither Shattuck had gone, gaining the ear of the King, procured a royal order, addressed to the authorities here, commanding them to send to England for trial all Quakers detained for punishment. Shattuck was selected to take the mandate to Boston, and a ship was procured, of which another Quaker, Ralph Goldsmith, was commander. Upon their arrival in the harbor, Shattuck, with not a little of the dramatic instinct which directed many of the proceedings of the early Quakers, refused to tell to those who boarded the ship the object of the voyage. On the second day after their arrival, accompanied by Goldsmith, he proceeded tlirough the town, knocked at Governor Endicott's door, and sent word to him that they bore a message from the King. The interview followed, as told in the poem; but the Governor's determination was not reached till he had gone out and consulted with the Deputy-Governor, BeUingham. The release from jail was tardily ordered, and happily at last there were no Quakers in detention to be sent to England; and none were sent. The persecution had nearly run its course, and the royal mandate proved a happy escape from the dilemma of positive enactments in contravention of previous orders. It is sad to say, however, that though the beginning of the end was come, there were still some whippings at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston before the persecution was over. The poet, with a fair license, has placed the interview in the Town House, — that picturesque structure, which stood where now the old State House stands, and which was then but newly built, partly with the bequest of Captain Robert Keayne, who had lived opposite on the southerly comer of State and Washington streets. The artist has delineated it according to the descriptions we have of it, — the building standing on pillars, while a market was kept beneath. The view down what is now State Street shows the tide, as was then the case, flowing up to Merchants Row. Of the prison we have no description, other than that it was surrounded by a yard. It stood where the Court House now stands, on Court Street. The artist has given in the procession of the Quakers across the Common as good a delineation of the spot at that time as the records afford us, — the rounded summit of Gentry Hill, with the beacon on it, which finally gave it a name, and which was seventy feet or more higher than now ; the slope, broken in places by rocks (Sewall records getting build- ing-stones from the Common, at a later day) ; the elm, known in our day as the Great Elm, but even then very likely a sightly tree, and near which the executions, probably on one of the knolls, took place. The victims we know were buried close by. Snow Hill, as Copp's Hill was then called, projected into the river much as the artist has drawn it, topped by the principal windmill of the town. Just by a little cove stood the house which William Copp, the cobbler, had built there, and near by was the water-mill, which, with the causeway across the marsh, forming the dam had been built some years previous. — Ed. ' THE KING'S MISSIVE. 1661. BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. T TNDER the great hill sloping bare To cove and meadow and Common lot, In his council chamber and oaken chair Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott, — A grave, strong man, who knew no peer In the pilgrim land where he ruled in fear Of God, not man, and for good or ill Held his trust with an iron will. He had shorn with his sword the cross from out The flag, and cloven the May-pole down. Harried the heathen round about. And whipped the Quakers from town to town. Earnest and honest, a man at need To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed. He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal The gate of the holy commonweal. His brow was clouded, his eye was stern. With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath : " Woe 's me ! " he murmured, " at every turn The pestilent Quakers are in my path ! Some we have scourged, and banished some, Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come, Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, Sowing their heresy's seed of sin. VOL. I. xxvi THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " Did we count on this ? — Did we leave behind The graves of our kin, the comfort and ease Of our EngHsh hearths and homes, to find Troublers of Israel such as these ? Shall I spare ? Shall I pity them ? — God forbid ! I will do as the prophet to Agag did : They come to poison the wells of the word, I will hew them in pieces before the Lord ! " The door swung open, and Rawson the Clerk Entered and whispered underbreath : " There waits below for the hangman's work A fellow banished on pain of death, — Shattuck of Salem, unhealed of the whip, Brought over in Master Goldsmith's ship, At anchor here in a Christian port With freight of the Devil and all his sort ! " Twice and thrice on his chamber floor Striding fiercely from wall to wall, " The Lord do so to me and more," The Governor cried, " if I hang not all ! Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, sedate, With the look of a man at ease with fate. Into that presence grim and dread Came Samuel Shattuck with hat on head. " Off with the knave's hat ! " An angry hand Smote down the offence ; but the wearer said. With a quiet smile : " By the King's command I bear his message and stand in his stead." In the Governor's hand a missive he laid With the Royal arms on its seal displayed, And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat, Uncovering, " Give Mr. Shattuck his hat." XXVlll THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. He turned to the Quaker, bowing low: " The King commandeth your friends' release. Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. What he here enjoineth John Endicott His loyal servant questioneth not. You are free ! — God grant the spirit you own May take you from us to parts unknown." So the door of the jail was open cast. And like Daniel out of the lion's den. Tender youth and girlhood passed With age-bowed women and gray-locked men ; And the voice of one appointed to die Was lifted in praise and thanks on high. And the little maid from New Netherlands Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands. THE KING'S MISSIVE. XXIX And one, whose call was to minister To the souls in prison, beside him went, An ancient woman, bearing with her The linen shroud for his burial meant. For she, not counting her own life dear, In the strength of a love that cast out fear, Had watched and served where her brethren died, Like those who waited the Cross beside. One moment they, paused on their way to look On the martyr graves by the Common side. And much-scourged Wharton of Salem took His burden of prophecy up and cried: " Rest, souls of the valiant ! — Not in vain Have ye borne the Master's cross of pain ; Ye have fought the fight ; ye are victors crowned ; With a fourfold chain ye have Satan bound ! " XXX THE jMEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The Autumn haze lay soft and still On wood and meadow and upland farms ; On the brow of Snow-hill the Great Windmill Slowly and lazily swung its arms ; Broad in the sunshine stretched away With its capes and islands the turquoise bay ; And over water and dusk of pines Blue hills lifted their faint outlines. The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, The sumach added its crimson fleck, And double in air and water showed The tinted maples along the Neck. Through frost-flower clusters of pale star-mist, And gentian fringes of amethyst. And royal plurr \ of the golden-rod, The grazing4^rle on Gentry trod. THE KING'S MISSIVE. XXXI But as they who see not, the Quakers saw The world about them : they only thought With deep thanksgiving and pious awe Of the great deliverance God had wrought. Through lane and alley the gazing town Noisily followed them up and down ; Some with scoffing and brutal jeer, Some with pity and words of cheer. One brave voice rose above the din ; Upsall gray with his length of days Cried, from the door of his Red- Lion Inn, " Men of Boston ! give God the praise ! No more shall innocent blood call down The bolts of wrath on your guilty town ; The freedom of worship dear to you Is dear to all, and to all is due. " I see the vision of days to come. When your beautiful City of the Bay Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home, And none shall his neighbor's rights gainsay ; The varying notes of worship shall blend. And as one great prayer to God ascend ; And hands of mutual charity raise Walls of salvation and gates of praise ! " So passed the Quakers through Boston town. Whose painful ministers sighed to see The walls of their sheep-fold falling down, And wolves of heresy prowling free. But the years went on, and brought no wrong ; With milder counsels the State grew strong. As outward Letter and inward Light Kept the balance of truth aright. THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. prel^i^tortc laenoD anu iiiiatural l$imvv» CHAPTER I. OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON AND ITS ENVIRONS. BY NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER, S. D., Professor of PaheaiUology in Harvard University. THE topography, the soils, and other physical conditions of the region about Boston depend in a very intimate way upon the geological history of the district in which they lie. The physical history of this district is closely bound up with that of all eastern New England, so that it is necessary at the outset to premise some general statements concerning the geological conditions of the larger field before we can proceed to the description of the very limited one that particularly concerns us. In this statement we shall necessarily be restricted to the facts that have a special bearing upon the ground on which the life of the city has developed. The New England section of North America — viz. the district cut off by the Hudson, Champlain, and St. Lawrence valleys — is one of the most distinctly marked of all the geographical regions of the con- tinent. In it we find a character of surface decidedly contrasted with that of any other part of the United States. While in the other districts of this country the soil and the contour of the surface are characterized by a prevailing uniformity of conditions, in this New England region we have a variety and detail of physical features that find their parallel only in certain parts of northern Europe, whence came the New England col- onists. This peculiarly varied surface of New England depends upon certain combinations of geological events that hardly admit of a very brief description. The main elements of the history are, however, as follows : — VOL. I. — I. 2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The New England district has been more frequently and perhaps for a longer aggregate time above the level of the sea than any other part of the region south of the great lakes. This has permitted the erosive forces to wear away the unchanged later rocks, thereby exposing over its surface the deep-lying metamorphic beds on whose masses the internal heat of the earth has exercised its diversifying effects. This irregular metamorphism brings about a great difference in the hardness of the rocks, causing them to wear down, by the action of the weather, at very different rates. Then the mountain-building forces — those that throw rocks out of their original horizontal positions into altitudes of the utmost variety — have worked on this ground more than they have upon any other region east of the Cordille- ras of North America. Again, at successive times, and especially just before the human period, and possibly during its first stages in this country, the land was deeply buried beneath a sheet of ice. During the last glacial period, and perhaps frequently in the recurrent ice times, of which we find traces in the record of the rocks, the ice-sheet for long periods overtopped the highest of our existing hills, and ground away the rock-surface of the country as it crept onward to the sea. During the first stage of the last ice period this ice-sheet was certainly over two thousand feet thick in eastern Massachusetts, and its front lay in the sea at least fifty miles to the east of Boston. At this time the glacial border stretched from New York to the far north, in an ice-wall that lay far to the eastward of the present shore, hiding all traces of the land beneath its mass. These successive ice-sheets rested on a surface of rock, already much varied by the metamorphism and dislocations to which it had been sub- jected. Owing to the fact that ice cuts more powerfully in the valleys than on the ridges, and more effectually on the soft than on the hard rocks, these ice-sheets carved this surface into an amazing variety of valleys, pits, and depressions. We get some idea of the irregularity of these rock- carv- ings from the fretted nature of the sea-coast over which the ice-sheets rode. When the last ice-sheet melted away, it left on the surface it had worn a layer of rubbish often a hundred feet or more in depth. As its retreat was not a rout, but was made in a measured way, it often built long irregu- lar walls of waste along the lines where its march was delayed. When the ice-wall left the present shore-line, the land was depressed beneath the sea to a depth varying from about thirty feet along Long Island Sound to three or four hundred feet on the coast of Maine. The land slowly and by degrees recovered its position ; but, as it rose, the sea for a time invaded the shore, washing over with its tides and waves the rubbish left by the ice-sheet, stripping the low hills and heaping the waste into the valleys. While this work was going on, the seas had not yet regained their shore- life, which had been driven away by the ice, and the forests had not yet recovered their power on the land ; so the stratified deposits formed at this time contain no organic remains. At the close of this period, when the land had generally regained its old position in relation to the sea, there were OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON. 3 several slight, irregular movements of the shore, — local risings and sink- ings, each of a few feet in height. The last of these were accomplished in this locality not long before the advent of the European colonists ; some trace of their action is still felt on the coast to the northward. This brief synopsis of the varied geological history of New England will enable us to approach the similarly brief history of the Boston district. Looking on a detailed map of southeastern New England, the reader will observe that Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor form a deep but rudely shaped re-entrant angle on the coast. If the map is geologically colored, he will perceive that around this deep bay there is a fringe of clay slates and conglomerates, or pudding-stones. Further away, making a great horse-shoe, one horn of which is at Cape Ann and the other at Cohasset, the curve, at its bottom near the Blue Hills, includes a mass of old granitic rocks. This peculiar order of the rocks that surround Boston is caused by the existence here of a deep structural mountain valley or synclinal, the central part of which is occupied by the harbor. Long after the formation of the Green Mountains, at the time just after the laying down of the coal-beds of the Carboniferous age, this eastern part of New England, and probably a considerable region since regained by the sea, was thrown into mountain folds. These mountains have by the frequent visitations of gla- cial periods been worn down to their foundations, so that there is little in the way of their original reliefs to be traced. They are principally marked in the attitudes of that part of their rocks that have escaped erosion. The Sharon and the Blue Hills are, however, the wasted remnants of a great anticlinal or ridge that bordered the Boston valley on the south side. The Waltham, Stoneham, and Cape Ann Bay granitic ridges made the mountain wall on its north side. Narragansett Bay and Boston Harbor are cut out in the softer rocks that were folded down between these mountain ridges. The lower part of the Merrimac valley is a mountain trough that has been simi- larly carved out, and there are others traceable still further to the northward. This mountain trough is very deep beneath Boston ; a boring made at the gas-works to the depth of over sixteen hundred feet failed to penetrate through it. If we could restore the rocks that have been taken away by decay, these mountain folds would much exceed the existing Alleghanies in height. Within the peninsula of Boston, the seat of the old town, these older rocks that were caught in the mountain folds do not come to the level of the sea. They are deeply covered by the waste of the glacial period. But in Roxbury, Dorchester, Somervilte, Brookline, and many other adja- cent towns, they are extensively exposed. They consist principally of clay-slates and conglomerates, — a mingled series, with a total thickness of from five to ten thousand feet. The slates are generally fine-grained and flag-like in texture, their structure showing that they were laid down in a sea at some distance from the shore. The conglomerates were evi- dently laid down in the sea at points near the shore ; and they are proba- 4 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. biy the pebble-waste resulting from a glacial period that occurred in the Cambrian age, or at a time when the recorded organic history of the earth was at its very beginning. These rocks represent a time when the waters of this shore were essentially destitute of organic life. In the whole section we have only about three hundred feet of beds among the lower layers that hold any remains of organic life ; and these remains are limited to a few species of trilobites, that lived in the deep sea. From the slates and conglomerates of the Cambridge and Roxbury series the first quarried stones of this Colony were taken. The flagging-slates of Quincy, at the base of Squantum Neck, were perhaps the first that were extensively quar- ried. A large number of the old tombstones of this region were from these quarries. The next in use were the similar but less perfect slates of Cam- bridge and Somerville ; and last to come into use were the conglomerates and granites, that require much greater skill and labor on the part of the quarryman to work them.^ At first the field-boulders supplied the stone for underpinning houses and other wall-work; so that the demand for gravestones was, during all the first and for most of the second century of the existence of the town, the only demand that led to the exploration of the quarry-rocks of this neighborhood. Indeed, we may say that the exploration of the excellent building and ornamental stones so abundant here has been barely begun within the last two decades. Although the rocks of this vicinity are extensively intersected by dykes and veins, — those agents that in other regions aid the gathering together of the precious metals, — no ore-bearing deposits have ever been found very near Boston. There is a story that a very thin lode of argen- tiferous galena was opened some fifty years ago in the town of Woburn, about eight miles from Boston, out of which a trifling amount of silver was taken. But, unlike the most of the other settlers in this country, the Mas- sachusetts colonists seem never to have had any interest in the search for precious metals, and we know of no eff'orts at precious metal-mining in the eastern part of this Commonwealth until we enter the present century. The craze for gold and silver, which seems almost inevitable in the life of the frontiersman, was unknown in the early days of New England.^ Although the general features of the topography of this district are determined by the disposition of the hard underlying rocks, the detail of all the surface is chiefly made by the position of the drift or glacial waste left here at the end of the last ice time, but much sorted and re-arranged by water action. If we could strip away the sheet of glacial and post- glacial deposits from this region, we would about double the size of Boston Harbor and greatly simplify its form. All the islands save a few rocks, the peninsulas of Hull and Winthrop Head, indeed that of Boston proper, would disappear; with them would go about all of Cambridge, Charles- 1 [Cf. Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, p. 189.— whales and make trials of a mine of gold and ^^■} . ^ , ^. . , , . copper ; " but he added the alternative, " if those [Captam John Smith, speabng of his voyage failed, fish and furs were then our refuge to make on our coast m 1614, says he came "to take ourselves savers,"— and so they proved. — Ed.] OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON. 5 town, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, a large part of Maiden, Brighton, Brook- line, and Quincy. Charles River, Mystic River, and Neponset River would become broad estuaries, running far up into the land. The history of the making of these drift-beds is hard to decipher, and harder still to describe in a brief way. The following statement is only designed to give a very general outline of the events in this remarkable history. After the ice had lain for an unknown period over this region, climatal changes caused it to shrink away slowly and by stages, until it disappeared altogether. As it disappeared it left a very deep mass of waste, which was distributed in an irregular way over the surface, at some places much deeper than at others. At many points this depth exceeded one hundred feet. As the surface of the land lay over one hundred feet below the present level in the district of Massachusetts Bay when the sea began to leave the shore, the sea had free access to this incoherent mass of debris, and began rapidly to wash it away. We can still see a part of this work of destruction of the glacial beds in the marine erosion going on about the islands and headlands in the harbor and bay. The same sort of work went on about the glacial beds, at the height of one hundred feet or more above the present tide-line. During this period of re-elevation, the greater part of the drift-deposits of the region about Boston was worked over by the water. Where the gravel happened to lie upon a ridge of rock that formed, as it were, a pedestal for it, it generally remained as an island above the surface of the water. As the land seems to have risen pretty rapidly when the ice-burden was taken off, — probably on account of this very relief from its load, — the sea did not have time to sweep away the whole of these islands of glacial waste. Many of them survive in the form of low, symmetrical bow-shaped hills. Parker's Hill, Corey's Hill, Aspinwall, and the other hills on the south side of Charles River, Powderhorn and other hills in Chelsea and Winthrop, are conspicuously beautiful specimens of this structure. Of this nature were also the three hills that occupied the peninsula of Boston, known as Sentry or Beacon, Fort, and Copp's hills. Whenever an open cut is driven through these hills, we find in the centre a solid mass of pebbles and clay, all confusedly intermingled, without any distinct trace of bedding. This mass, termed by geologists till, or boulder-clay, is the waste of the glacier, lying just where it dropped when the ice in which it was bedded ceased to move, and melted on the ground where it lay. All around these hills, with their central core 'of till, there are sheets of sand, clay, and gravel, which have been washed from the original mass, and worked over by the tides and rivers. This reworked boulder-clay constitutes by far the larger part of the dry lowland surface about Boston : all the flat-lands above the level of the swamps which lay about the base of the three principal hills of old Bos- ton — lands on which the town first grew — were composed of the bedded sands and gravels derived from the waste of the old boulder-clay. These terraces of sand and gravel from the reasserted boulder-clay make up by 6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. far the greater part of the low-lying arable lands of eastern Massachusetts ; and of this nature are about all the lands first used for town-sites and tillage by the colonists, — notwithstanding the soil they afford is not as rich nor as enduring as the soils upon the unchanged boulder-clay. The reason these terrace deposits were the most sought for town-sites and cul- tivation is that they were the only tracts of land above the level of the swamps that were free from large boulders. Over all the unchanged drift these large boulders were originally so abundant that it was a very laborious work to clear the land for cultivation ; but on these terraces of stratified drift there were never boulders enough to render them difficult of cultivation. The result was that the first colonists sought this class of lands. One of the advantages of the neighborhood of Boston was the large area of these terrace deposits found there. There was an area of fifteen or twenty thou- sand acres within seven or eight miles of the town that could have been quickly brought under the plough, and which was very extensively culti- vated before the boulder-covered hills began to be tilled. After the terrace-making period had passed away, owing to the rising of the land above the sea, there came a second advance of the glaciers, which had clung to the higher hills, and had not passed entirely away from the land. This second advance did not cover the land with ice ; it only caused local glaciers to pour down the valleys. The Neponset, the Charles, and the Mystic valleys were filled by these river-like streams, which seem never to have attained as far seaward as the peninsula of Boston. This second ad- vance of the ice seems to have been very temporary in its action, not hav- ing endured long enough to bring about any great changes. At about the time of its retreat, the last considerable change of line along these shores seems to have taken place. This movement was a subsidence of the land twenty feet or more below the former high-tide mark. This is shown by the remains of buried roots of trees, standing as they grew in the harbor and coast-lands about Boston. These have been found at two points on the shore of Cambridge, a little north of the west end of West Boston Bridge, and in Lynn harbor. Since this last sinking, the shore-line in this district shows no clear indications of change. With the cessation of the disturbances of the glacial period and at the beginning of the present geological conditions, the last of the constructive changes of this coast began. Hitherto mechanical forces alone had done their work on the geography of the region ; henceforward, to the present day, organic life, driven away from the shore and land by the glacial period, again takes a share in the constructive work. This is still going on about us. The larger part of it is done by the littoral sea-weeds and the swamp grasses. Along the estuaries of the Saugus, Mystic, Charles, and Ne- ponset rivers there are some thousands of acres of lands which h?ive been recovered from the sea by these plants. The operation is in general as follows : The mud brought down by these streams, consisting in part of clay and in part of decomposed vegetable matter, derived from land and OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON. 7 water plants, coats the sandy bottoms or under-water terraces. In this mud, even at considerable depths, eel-grass and some sea-weeds take root, and their stems make a dense jungle. In this grass more mud is gath- ered, and kept from the scouring action of the tide by being bound together by the roots and cemented by the organic matter. This mass slowly rises until it is bare at low-tide. Then our marsh-grasses creep in, and in their interlaced foliage the waste brought in by the tide is retained, and helps to raise the level of the swamp higher. The streams from the land bring out a certain amount of mud, which at high-tide is spread in a thin sheet over the surface of the low plain. Some devious channels are kept open by the strong scouring action of the tide, but the swamp rapidly gains a level but little lower than high-tide. Except when there is some chance deposit of mud or sand from the bluffs along its edges, these swamps are never lifted above high-tide mark, for the forces that build them work only below that level. Their effect upon the harbor of Boston has been disadvantageous. They have diminished the area of storage for the tide-water above the town, and thereby enfeebled the scouring power of the tidal currents. Except at the very highest tides, the Charles, Mystic, and Neponset rivers now pour their mud directly into the harbor, instead of unloading it upon the flats where these marshes have grown up. There are other forces at work to diminish the depth of water in the harbor. The score or more of islands that diversify its surface are all sources of waste, which the waves tend to scatter over the floor. For the first two hundred years after the settlement, the erosion of these islands was not prevented by sea-walls ; and in this time the channels were doubtless much shoaled by river-waste. Just after the glacial period these channels were very deep. Borings made in the investigations for the new sewerage system showed that the channel at the mouth of the Neponset had been over one hundred feet deeper than at present, — the filling being the rearranged glacial drift brought there by just such processes as have recently shoaled the channels of the harbor. The depth of this port has also been affected by the drifting in of sands along the shores contiguous to the northeast and southeast. When the sea surges along these shores, it drives a great deal of waste towards the har- bor. A fortunate combination of geographical accidents has served to keep the harbor from utter destruction from this action. On the north side, whence comes the greater part of this drifting material, several pocket-like beaches have been formed, which catch the moving sands and pebbles in their pouches, and stop their further movement. But for these protections — at Marblehead Neck, Lynn, and Chelsea on the north, and Nantasket on the south — the inner harbor would hardly exist, since these lodgements contain enough waste to close it entirely. At Nantasket the beach is now full and no longer detains the accumulating sands, which are overflowing into the outer harbor ; yet, as the rate of flow is slow, its effect is not likely to be immediately hurtful. 8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Of the ancient life of this district there is hardly a trace. The two great and conspicuous formations in the basin — the flags and conglomer- ates of the Roxbury series and the drift deposits of the last geological age — are both very barren in organic remains, for the reason that they are probably both the product of ice periods. The rocks older than the Roxbury series are too much changed to have preserved any trace of the organisms they may have once contained. In the rearranged drift there are some very interesting remains of buried forests that have not yet received from naturalists the attention they deserve. These buried trees lie at a con- siderable depth below low-tide mark, and are not exposed, except by the chance of the few excavations along the shore that penetrate to some depth below the water-line. When found, these trees seem all to be species of coniferous woods. The cone-bearing trees appear from this and other evidence to have been the first to remake the forests of this region, after the cessation of the last ice time. Even the larger animals that once in- habited this district — the moose, caribou, etc. — have left little trace of their occupation. It is rare, indeed, that a bone of their skeletons is found, except among the middens accumulated around the old camping-grounds of the aborigines. On the extreme borders of the Boston basin there are extensive fossil- bearing strata. At Mansfield, on the south, which is just outside of this synclinal, and within the hmits of the Rhode Island trough of the same nature, there is a broad section of the coal-measures exposed in some mines now unworked. These beds are extremely rich in fossil plants. At Gloucester there is a small deposit of beds, containing shells of mol- lusks that lived in the early part of the present period, that he just above the high-tide mark. But neither of these interesting deposits extends into the limits of the Boston basin. Although this basin has lost the greater part of its rocks by the wast- ing action of the glacial periods, it owes more to these events than to all the other forces that have affected its physical condition. To their action we must attribute the formation of the trough in which the har- bor lies, the building of the peninsula occupied by the original town, and all the beautiful details of contour of the adjoining country. To them, also, it owes the peculiarly favorable conditions of drainage afforded by the deep sandy soils that underlie the terraces where the greater part of the urban population has found its dwelling-place. CHAPTER II. THE FAUNA OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS: FORMS BROUGHT IN AND EXPELLED BY CIVILIZATION. BY JOEL A. ALLEN, Museu-m of Covtparative Zoology, Harvard University. THE changes in the fauna of the region immediately surrounding Boston, wrought by civihzation, are merely such as would be expected to occur in the transformation of a forest wilderness into a thickly populated district, namely, the extirpation of all the larger indigenous mammals and birds, the partial extinction of many others, and the great reduction in numbers of nearly all forms of animal life, both terrestrial and aquatic, as well as the introduction of various domesticated species and those universal pests of civilization the house rats and mice. The only other introduced species of importance are the European house-sparrow and a few species of noxious insects. As there is nothing peculiar in the changes in question, it seems best to devote the few pages allotted to this subject to a presentation of data bearing upon the character of the fauna as it was when the country was first settled by Europeans, these data being derived from the narratives of Wood, Morton, Higginson, Josselyn, and other early writers. Mammals. — William Wood, in his New Englands Prospect, first pub- lished in 1634, thus begins his quaint enumeration of the animals occurring in the neighborhood of Boston : — " The kingly Lyon, and the strong arm'd Beare, The large lim'd Mooses, with the tripping Deare, Ouill darting Porcupines and Rackcoones be, Castell'd in the hollow of an aged tree. . . ." " Concerning Lyons," a point of some interest in the present connection, he adds, " I will not say that I ever saw any my selfe, but some affirme that they have scene a Lyon at Cape Anne, which is not above six leagus from Boston : some likewise being lost in woods, have heard such terrible roarings, as have made them much agast; which must either be Devills or Lyons;- there being no other creatures which use to roare saving Beares, which have not such a terrible kinde of roaring : besides, Plimouth men have traded for VOL. I. — 2. lO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Lyons skinnes in former times." ^ To the above respecting " Lyons " may be added the following from an anonymous account of New Englands Plantation, published in 1630, and attributed to Francis Higginson: "For Beasts there are some Beares, and they say some Lyons also; for they have been seen at Cape Anne. ... I have seen the Skins of all these Beasts since I came to this Plantation excepting Lyons." These and other early allusions to " Lyons " at Cape Ann, Plymouth, and elsewhere in southern New England, doubtless relate to the catamount or panther (the Felis con- color of naturalists), which formerly ranged from near the northern boun- dary of the United States throughout the continent, but which long since disappeared from nearly the whole Atlantic slope north of Virginia. Lynxes were quite common, and bears rather numerous, the latter being hunted for their oil and flesh, which were esteemed " not bad commodities." Wolves roamed in large packs, and were very destructive to sheep, swine, and calves. As early as 1630 the Court of Massachusetts ordered rewards for their destruction. The wolves appear to have been unable or unwilling to leap fences in pursuit of cattle, a trait the settlers soon learned to profit by, as shown by the following from Wood, who, in describing the plantation of Saugus, refers to the " necke of land called Nahant," and adds : " In this necke is store of good ground, fit for the Plow ; but for the present it is onely used for to put young cattle in, and weather-goates, and Swine, to secure them from the Woolves : a few posts and rayles from the lower water-markes to the shore, keepes out the Wolves, and keepes in the cattle." 2 He alludes to the same practice in his account of Boston, the situation of which, he says, " is very pleasant, being a Peninsula, hem'd in on the South-side with the Bay of Roxberry, on the North-side with Charles- river, the Marshes on the backe-side, being not halfe a quarter of a mile over; so that a little fencing will secure their Cattle from the Woolves." ^ Foxes were also so numerous as to be a great annoyance, bounties being early offered for their destruction. Lewis states that the authorities of Lynn paid, between the years 1698 and 1722, for the destruction of four hundred and twenty-eight foxes killed in " the Lynn woods and on Nahant," the reward being two shillings for each fox. Among animals long since extirpated from Massachusetts is the " Jac- cal" mentioned by Josselyn,* who describes it as "ordinarily less than Foxes, of the colour of a gray Rabbet, and do not scent nothing near so strong as a Fox!' This account points unquestionably to the Virginian or gray fox {Urocyon cinereo-argentatus) , which during the last hundred years has receded southward and westward with great rapidity. In respect to the larger game animals, there appears to be no evidence of the presence of the elk or wapiti deer {Cervus canadensis) in eastern Massa- chusetts within historic times, although it occupied the country not far to the westward. There are, however, distinct references to the occurrence of ' Wood, ed. of 1636, pp. 16, 17. 3 Ibid. p. 32. 2 Ibid. p. 35. i ^^ Englands Rarities, p. 22. THE FAUNA OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. II the moose {Alces malchis) at Lynn and elsewkere northward and west- ward within forty miles of Boston. It was sometimes referred to under the name " elk," as in the following, from Morton's New English Canaan,^ pub- lished in 1637, but the accompanying descriptions render clear the, identity of the species. " First, therefore," says Morton, " I will speake of the Elke, which the Salvages call a Mose : it is a very large Deare, with a very faire head, and a broade palme, like the palme of a fallow Deares horn, but much bigger, and is 6. foote wide betweene the tipps, which grow curbing downwards : Hee is of the biggnesse of a great horse. There have bin of them, scene that has bin 18. handfuUs highe: hee hath a bunch of haire under his jawes. . . ." Wood ^ says : " There be not many of these in Massachusetts bay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them." The common deer {Cariacus virginianus') was, from its abundance, by far the most important of the larger native animals, and for many years afforded a ready supply of animal food. Morton states that " an hundred have bin found at the spring of the yeare, within the compasse of a mile,^' ^ and other writers refer to their numbers in similar terms. With the excep- tion of a small remnant still existing in Plymouth and Barnstable Counties, thanks to stringent legislative protection, the species became long since extirpated throughout nearly the whole of southern New England. Among other mammals that have entirely disappeared are the beaver, the marten, and the porcupine. The otter and the raccoon are nearly ex- tinct, and nearly all the smaller species occur in greatly reduced numbers, including the muskrat, mink, weasels, shrews, moles, squirrels, and the various species of field-mice._ The marine mammals have declined equally with the land species. There are many allusions to the abundance, in early times, of seals, whales, and the smaller cetaceans. One writer, in speaking of Massachusetts Bay, says, '' for it is well knowne that it equalizeth Groin- land for Whales and Grampuses." It is a matter of history that a profita- ble whale-fishery was at one time carried on in the Bay itself, the whales being pursued at first in open boats from the shore. Birds. — The great auk and the Labrador duck are believed to have become everywhere extinct, especially the former, and five or six other species long since disappeared from southern New England. All the larger species, and many of the shore-birds, have greatly decreased, as have likewise most of the smaller forest-birds. The few that haunt culti- vated grounds have doubtless nearly maintained their former abundance, and in some instances have possibly increased in numbers. Prominent among those formerly abundant, but which now occur only at long inter- vals as stragglers from the remote interior, are swans and cranes. Respect- ing the former, Morton has left us the following : " And first of the Swanne, because shee is the biggest of all the fowles of that Country. There are of ' Page 74. 2 Page 18. ■*. New English Canaan, p. 75. 12 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. them in Merrimack River, and in other parts of the country, greate store at the seasons of the yeare. The flesh is not much desired of the inhab- itants, but the skinnes may be accompted a commodity, fitt for divers uses, both for fethers and quiles." Of " Cranes," he says, " there are greate store. . . . These sometimes eate our corne, and doe pay for their presumption well enough ; and serveth there in powther, with turnips to supply the place of pow- thered beefe, and is a goodly bird in a dishe, and no discommodity." ^ The crane was probably the brown crane {Grits can- adetisis), while the swans embraced both of the ^ American species. The wild Turkey is well known to have been for- y merly abundant. Wood '- speaks of there sometimes feS^^gE — ^ bemg " forty, three-score, and an hundred of aflocke," uhile Morton alludes to a " thousand " seen in one 1^ day. According to Josse- lyn, they began early to decline. After alluding to their former abundance, he THE GREAT AUK. gays. Writing in 1672, " but this was thirty years since, the hnghsh and the Indian having now so destroyed the breed so that 't is very rare to meet with a Turkic in the Woods; but some of 'the En^j of the Danish Antiquaries' Society, of the United States, i. 44, note. The French 1836-39. P- 165. and 1840-44, p. 128. The fol- translation of V^\\%zXoWs History of the North- lowing extract from a letter written by the great men, made by Paul Guillot and sanctioned by philologist, Erasmus Rask, in 1831, to Mr. Henry Mr. Wheaton, leans also toward this view. Wheaton is not \Vithout interest. I have printed " Mr. Major's introduction to the Select Let- the whole letter in the Proceedings of the Massa- ters of Columbus (Hakluyt Society, 2d edition chusetts Historical Society iox h.^x\\,\ZZa: "Then 1870), contains a good account of'the earliest [when the text of the Sagas shall have been pub- voyages to America. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 27 only the southern parts of the United States, or perhaps Mexico. I come next to the story of the Zeni brothers, which is briefly as follows : — Nicolo Zeno, a Venetian of noble family and considerable wealth, started on a northern voyage — perhaps the not uncommon one to Flanders — late in the fourteenth century.^ He was driven out of his course, and finally cast away on the island of Frislanda (Faroe Islands). Here he was rescued from the rude inhabitants by a chieftain named Zichmni,^ who received him into his service as pilot, and in time entertained a great regard for him. Nicolo sent a letter home to Venice, urging his brother Antonio to join him in Zichmni's dominions, which he did. Four years after his arrival Nicol6 died, and ten years later Antonio returned to his native city. Meantime the brothers had accompanied- Zichmni in an attack on the Shetland Islands, on one of which, according to the narrative, Nicolo Zeno was left after the victory. The following summer he sailed from the island on a voyage of discovery toward the north, and reached a country called Engroneland (Greenland). A settlement which he discovered there, sup- posed to have been one founded many years before by the Northmen, is described at length in the story, with its monastery and church, its volcanic mountain, and hot springs whose waters served for all domestic purposes. The climate proved too severe for the Italian, and he returned to Frislanda, where he died. The other brother, Antonio Zeno, was detained in the service of Zichmni, who desired to make use of his nautical skill and daring to ascertain the correctness of the stories of some fishermen who had reported the discovery of rich and populous countries in the west. The Zeni narrative gives the fishermen's story at some length. Twenty-six years before this time, four fishing boats had been driven helplessly for many days, and found them- selves, on the tempest abating, at an island a thousand miles west from Frislanda. This island they called EsTOTiLAND. The fishermen were carried before the king of the island, who, after getting speech with them with difficulty through the medium of an interpreter who spoke Latin, com- manded them to remain in the country. They dwelt in Estotiland five years, and a description of it and of its inhabitants is preserved. From Estotiland they were sent in a southerly direction to a country called Drogeo, where they fared very badly. They were made slaves, and some of them were murdered by the natives, who were cannibals. The lives of the remainder were saved by their showing the savages how to take fish with the net. The chief of the fishermen became very famous in this occupation, and proved a bone of contention among the native kings. He was fought for, and transferred from one to another as the spoils of war, 1 The date given in the narrative is 1380, and pp. xlii.-xlviii., that a mistake of ten years has this date, incompatible with some of the inci- been made, and that Nicolo Zeno's journey took dents of the story, has been a serious obstacle in place in 1390. the way of accepting the adventures of the Zeni. ^ Mr. Forster suggests, and Mr. Major ac- Mr. R. H. Major has shown, in his introduction cepts the suggestion, that Zichmni was Henry to the Hakluyt Society's reprint of the Voyages, Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness. 28 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. not less than twenty-five times in the thirteen years which he is supposed to have passed in Drogeo. In this way he saw much of the country, which he says became more refined in cHmate and in people as he travelled toward the southwest. At last the fisherman escaped back through the length of the land, and over the sea to Estotiland, where he amassed a fortune in trading, and whence he returned finally to Frislanda with his wonderful story. The narrative goes on to tell how Antonio Zeno accompanied his patron Zichmni on a voyage of discovery to find Estotiland and Drogeo ; how the fisherman, who was to have been their guide, died just as the expedition was ready to sail ; how the vessels encountered a severe storm, and were driven to an island called Icaria,* where they were refused shelter by the inhabit- ants. After six days' further sail westward the wind shifted to the southwest, and four days' journey with the wind aft brought the fleet to Greenland. Here Zichmni decided to establish a settlement, but some of his followers having become anxious to return home, he agreed to send them back under the charge of Antonio Zeno, who brought them safely to Frislanda. I have given a full outline of the story of the Zeni, suppressing none of its exaggerations. The narrative was published with a map, on which much reliance is placed in the identification of places. The countries called Estotiland and Drogeo are supposed with some probability, if the story is not an absolute fabrication, to have been part of America. Dr. Kohl thinks the former Nova Scotia, and Drogeo New England. Mr. Major prefers Newfoundland for Estotiland, and considers Drogeo, " subject to such sophistications as the word may have undergone in its perilous trans- mission from the tongues of Indians via the northern fisherman's repetition to the ear of the Venetian, and its subsequent transfer to paper," a native name for a large part of North America.^ Many historians reject the narrative entirely. The difficulties attending the identification of particular places are certainly great. The bibliography of the controversy about the Zeni voyages is given by Mr. Winsor in the Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, No. 37, for April, 1876. The strongest opponent of the narrative has been perhaps Admiral Zahrtmann ; ^ its strongest upholders Cardinal Zurla, John Reinhold Forster, 1 Icaria has been supposed to be some part by tliat name in the chart of the Zeni is the of America, — Dr. Kohl thinks Newfoundland. Faroe Islands. Mr. Major, following Mr. Forster, identifies it "Second. That the said chart has been com- with Kerry in Ireland, and gives some reasons piled from hearsay information, and not by any for his opinion. seaman who had himself navigated in those seas 2 F(y/«f«o/'i',4(?Zc»/(Hakluyt Society), p. xcv. for several years. Dr. Kohl's views are given in \i\=, Discovery of "Third. That the 'History of the Voyages Mame, pp. 105, 106. of the Zeni,' — more particularly that part of it 3 The following summary of Admiral Zahrt- which relates to Nicol6,— is so. replete with mann's essay is taken from Mr. J. Winter Jones's fiction that it cannot be looked to for any infor- introduction to the Hakliiyt Society's reprint of mation whatever as to the state of the north at Hakhiyt's Divers Voyages, pp. xciii, xciv. The that time. admiral contends, - " Fourth. That both the history and the chart "First. That there never existed an island of were most probably compiled by Nicolo a de- Frisland; but that what has been represented scendant of the Zeni, from accounts which came EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 29 and Mr. Major. Nothing of importance has appeared, I think, since the Hjakluyt Society of London reprinted the original narrative, with an Enghsh translation and an elaborate introduction by Mr. Major, in 1873. Mr. Major contributed a r^sumi of his editorial labors in this work to the Massachu- setts Historical Society, which is printed in their Proceedings for October, 1874. The original narrative, founded on a letter from Nicolo Zeno to his brother Antonio, and on subsequent letters from Antonio to a third brother, Carlo, is said to have been prepared by Antonio after his return to Venice. It was preserved in manuscript among the family papers until a descendant, also named Nicolo, while still a boy, partially destroyed it. From what escaped of the papers, this Nicolo Zeno the younger afterward rewrote the narrative, which with a map copied from one much decayed, found in the family palace, was published in 1558 by Francisco Marcolini at Venice. It is a small i2mo volume of sixty-three leaves, and contains, besides this narrative, the adventures of another member of the family, Caterino Zeno, who made a journey into Persia. It was reprinted in the third edition of the second volume of Ramusio's Collection of Voyages, Venice, 1574; and Hakluyt included a translation of this in his Divers Voyages, published in 1582. The story of the voyages of the Cabots, which come next in the list of the early voyages, requires a different treatment from that pursued in con- sidering the stories of the Northmen and the Zeni. Instead of having to condense a detailed narrative, real or fictitious, I am called upon to con- struct, if possible, a connected story from very scanty and very scattered materials, — many of them of doubtful value. These voyages of the Cabots present great difficulties, and have given rise to much discussion. To recapitulate even a small part of this discussion would overrun the limits of my space. It is only within a few years, since the publication of the researches of Mr. Rawdon Brown and Mr. Bergenroth among the archives of Venice and of Spain, that positive evidence has been brought to light which enables the historian to settle beyond reasonable doubt even such fundamental points as the date of the voyage in which the main-land of America was discovered, and the name of the commander. To John Cabot this honor is due; and he saw the coast of North America, June 24, 1497, more than a year before Columbus reached the main-land. John Cabot, a native of Genoa, or of some neighboring village,^ settled in Venice, where he obtained a grant of citizenship from the Senate, after a residence of fifteen years, March 29, 1476.^ He was a man of some acquirements in cosmography and the science of navigation, and had been a traveller in the East.^ He married in Venice, and there probably his to Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century, 1 Letter of M. D'Avezac, 2 Maine Hist. Soc. being the epoch when information respecting Coll. i. 504. Greenland first reached that country, and when ^ Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1202- interest was awakened for the colony which had 1509, p. 136. disappeared." '^ M. D'Avezac's letter, p. 505. He cites an Mr. Winter Jones expresses his own convic- Italian authority without giving the name, tion of the conclusiveness of the argument. JO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. second son Sebastian was born.^ John Cabot emigrated with his family from Venice to England, where he settled in Bristol, then, next to London, the most flourishing seaport of the kingdom and a great resort for mer- chants and navigators. It was already possessed of a trade with Iceland, and was favorably situated for exploring voyages in search of Kathay.^ The date of this removal to England is uncertain, but it was probably about the year 1477,^ when Sebastian Cabot, if born at all, was a very young child. The object of the removal is supposed to have been the embarking in mercantile pursuits, in which many foreigners were then engaged in Bristol.* That voyages from Bristol toward the west in search of new countries or of a new route to Kathay were not unusual, and that John Cabot was a mov- ing spirit in some of these voyages, appear from a despatch of the Span- ish ambassador in England to his sovereigns. Under date of July 25, 1498, he writes : " The people of Bristol have, for the last seven years, sent out every year two, three, or four light ships {caravelas) in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of the Genoese."^ Possibly some encouraging result was obtained in one of these pre- liminary voyages, if I may call them by that name. It is certain that application was made to King Henry VII. for aid, and that a patent was issued to John Cabot and his three sons by name, bearing date March 5, 1496, by which they were authorized to discover new lands for the king, to set up his ensigns therein, and they were granted, under restrictions, some control over future trade with such new countries.^ By this patent the Cabots were to bear all the expenses of the voyage ; and this may have caused the delay of a year in the sailing of the expedition, which did not leave Bristol until the following spring. The name of one vessel, the " Matthew," has come down to us. With this vessel John Cabot, accompanied by Sebastian, reached some point in America, most probably Cape Breton, on June 24, 1497.' No long stay could have been made ; for the " Matthew," ^ M. D'Avezac's letter, p. 505. Sebastian American Antiquarian Society, October, 1865, Cabot is said to have made contradictory state- p. 25. [These islands belong to the myths which ments as to the place of his birth, having told puzzled the early cartographers. Brazil or Eden (Decades, p. 255) that he was born in Bresil was usually represented as lying two Bristol, and Contarini (Letter in Calendar of State or three hundred miles off the coast of Ireland. Papers, K««£'^/a?;, 1520-1526, p. 293) that he was It is said not to have disappeared from the a Venetian. The date of his birth can be only , British Admiralty charts till within ten ye'Srs. approximated. He accompanied his father on The Seven Cities had a floating station, but was the voyage of 1497, and assisted a " good olde usually put down farther to the south. — Ed.1 gentleman " at wishing God-speed to Stephen " The patent, in Latin and English, is in Burrough in the " Search-thrift " in 1556. See Halduyt's Divers Voyages (reprinted by the YiACi-a-jI's Principal Navigations (\tf)i:^,\. r]\. Hakluyt Society in 1850). It is also in his ^ Dr. Koh], Discovery of Maine, ch. iii. ; Principal Navigations, ed. 1589, pp. 509, 510, Corry, Hist, of Bristol, i. ch. v. and again in the 1 599-1600 edition, iii. 4, 5. It " M. D'Avezac (Letter, p. 505) says 1477; has been reprinted by Hazard and others. Dr. Kohl [Discovery of Maine, T^. 123) says prob- ' There is some difference of opinion as to ably before 1490. the landfall of the Cabots, but the best evidence * NichoUs, Life of Sebastian Cabot, p. 18. points to Cape Breton. See J. C. Brevoort's 5 This letter is published, from the English article in the Historical Magazine, March, 1868 ■ State Paper Calendars, in the Proceedings of the F. Kidder's contribution to the Afco England EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 31 after sailing along the coast three hundred leagues, was back in Bristol early in August, as appears from a letter of a Venetian gentleman, and from the entry in the privy-purse expenses of a payment of ^10 "to him that found the new isle." 1 A second patent or license was issued to John Cabot the next year (Feb. 3, 1498), in which he was authorized to impress six vessels, and "them convey and lead to the land and isles of late found by the said John in our name and by our commandment." ^ John Cabot does not appear to have profited by this license. He is said to disappear from history at this point. ^ He is supposed to have died soon after the grant was made. Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1498 under this license, the king having been at the charge of one vessel of the fleet. He is supposed to have taken out at least three hundred men, and to have entertained some plan of a colony or settlement.* What the exact events of this voyage were, — how much of the coast of North America was explored, — yet remain uncertain. There is no contemporary account of the voyage, and what we find which may possibly relate to it presents many difficulties, and is, in part at least, of doubtful character. It is probable that Cabot reached in this voyage a high degree of latitude, seeking always a passage through the land to Kathay. It is possible that, as Dr. Kohl suggests, finding the coast trend to the East at the modern Cumberland, which answers to the highest latitude which any of the stories state him to have attained, and finding also his way blocked by heavy ice, he may have turned and run down the American coast to the south. The farthest point in this direction which he is supposed to have reached was in the latitude of the Straits of Gibraltar, — 36° north.^ Historical and Genealogical Register, October, See his letter in Dr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, 1878; H. Stevens's Sebastian Cabot — John pp. 502-514. Cabot = 0; and Mr. Deane's paper on Cabot's ' '^ Huddle, Memoir 0/ Sebastian Cabot, p. y6. " Mappe Monde " in the Proceedings of the ^ Unless the Spanish Ambassador's despatch American Antiquarian Society for April, 1867, gives trace of him : " I have seen the map which where the earliest suggestion of Cape Breton the discoverer has made ; who is another Genoese, (drawn from the map) is made. like Columbus. . . . The Genoese has continued 1 The patents issued to John Cabot ; the de- his voyage." The date of the despatch is July spatch of the Spanish Ambassador quoted above ; 25, 1498, and Sebastian Cabot is supposed to the letter of the Venetian gentleman Lorenzo have sailed on the second voyage early in the Pasqualigo [Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, spring. But dates and all other particulars of 1 202-1 509, p. 262, and reprinted with other doc- this voyage are uncertain. That the expedition uments in Proceedings Amer. Antiq. Society, had started before the despatch was written is October, 1865) ; and Cabot's " Mappe Monde," certain from the despatch itself, and from the published by M. Jomard, are ample evidence for passage in the Cotton MSS. See Mr. Hale's the truth of the voyage of 1497. The map should paper in the Antiquarian Society's Proceedings, be examined with the aid of Mr. Deane's learned April, i860, p. 37. comments on it, made to the meeting of the Anti- ^ Biddle, Cabot, p. 87. quarian Society in April, 1867, and of his careful " From the scanty original authorities for the note to the Halduyt Discourse on Western Plant- voyages of Sebastian Cabot many elaborate ac- ing (Maine Hist. Soc, 2d series, ii. 223-227) ; counts have been built. Mr. Biddle, in his valu- and Mr. Major's contribution to the Archaologia, able Memoir, gives an account of a third voyage xliii. 17-42, on the "True date of the English in 1517, and M. D'Avezac agrees with him. Dr. Discovery of the American Continent under Kohl thinks that this voyage never took place, John and Sebastian Cabot." M. D'Avezac and he is followed by other critics. The reader adhered to his early belief in a voyage of 1494. must be referred to Kohl's Discovery of Maine. 32 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The voyages of the Cabots were barren of immediate results. The claim of England to her North American territory rested upon them finally, but no present advantage accrued to their commander. Sebastian Cabot's subsequent career does not fall within the scope of this chapter. It is known that he lived for many years after his discoveries, serving successively Spain and England. He entered the service of the former in 1512,^ and was advanced to the dignity of Grand Pilot in 15 18. In this capacity he presided at the celebrated Congress of Badajos in 1524. Two years later he sailed for the Moluccas in command of an expedition which did not result successfully. He returned to England about 1548, and was granted a pension by Edward VI. the next year. He became Governor of the new Company of Merchant Adventurers, who opened the trade to Russia. The date of his death is uncertain and the place of his burial unknown.^ I must pass over, without relating their stories, the voyages of the Cor- tereals in 1500 and 1501. Mr. Biddle thinks that Caspar Cortereal's landfall was in New England,^ but Dr. Kohl, who has made a careful study of these voyages, places it to the north of Cape Race. The interested reader will find in the fifth chapter of Dr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine the fullest and latest information regarding the Cortereal voyages. I approach next the voyage of Verrazano, whose narrative is said to contain the earliest particular description of the eastern coast of North America.* Giovanni Verrazano, an Italian in the service of Francis I. of France, had made for that monarch some predatory voyages with a view to Spanish Indian commerce, and possibly one or more voyages in search of new countries.^ On his return from one of these latter voyages he wrote to the King from Dieppe, July 8, 1524, an account of his discovery and exploration of a new country. His letter relates that with one ship, the "Dauphine," well manned and equipped, he sailed westward from the Ma- deira Islands about Jan. 17 (27), 1524. He encountered a severe tempest, from which he escaped with difficulty, and at length, after a voyage of forty- nine days, he came in sight of a land hitherto unknown to navigators.* First he coasted to the south in search of a harbor, but finding none he turned about, and running beyond the point of his landfall, anchored and sent a boat ashore.'^ Continuing northward along the coast, a second landing was attempted, and a youth who was cast upon the shore in the attempt was kindly received and cared for by the natives.^ Their kindness was 1 Biddle, Cabot, p. 98. 6 Dr. Kohl places Veirazaiio's landfall at 2 The character of the times, if not of the Cape Fear [Discovery of Maine, p. 252) ; Mr. J. man, is shown by Cabot's intrigues with Venice, Winter Jones, in the neighborhood of Charleston of which we get glimpses in the Calendar of or Savannah (Hakluyt Society's Divers Voyages, State Papers, Venetian, 1 520-1 526, pp. 278, 293- p. 56) ; Mr. Brevoort, off Little Egg Harbor beach 29S> 3°4. 315. 328; and also in the volume 1534- [Verrazano the Navigator, p. 37). i554> P- 364- ' At Onslow Bay, near New River Inlet; 3 Biddle, Cabot, book ii. ch. iv. Discovery of Maine, p. 254. ■> Hakluyt, Divers Voyages (Hakluyt Soc. » Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones place this incident ed.), p. Ixxxviii. at Raleigh Bay ; Mr. Brevoort, at Rockaway = ^xz\OQX\.,VerrazanotheNavigator,-^^. 19,35. Beach, Long Island. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 33 repaid by the abduction by the French, at their next landing, of an Indian boy.i Verrazano describes a harbor, a pleasant place among small hills, in the midst of which a great stream of water ran down into the sea ; so deep at its mouth that any great vessel might pass into it.^ From this harbor the shore line was followed to the eastward, and at a distance of fifty leagues an island was discovered and called Louisa, the only place named by Verrazano.^ Fifteen leagues from Louisa Island the explorer found a good harbor, where he remained two weeks,- and became somewhat acquainted with the natives, of whose manners and customs he gives an account.* From this point the voyage was continued, and another landing made, where the natives were found much more savage than those before seen, and where the Europeans were roughly received.^ At last the land " discovered by the Britons, which is in fifty degrees " ® was reached, and then, having spent all their provisions, the expedition sailed for France. The story of Verrazano's voyage contained in the letter from the explorer to the King already mentioned was first printed by Ramusio in the third volume of his Collection of Voyages in 1556. From this it was translated by Hakluyt for his Divers Voyages, published in 1582. A manuscript copy of the letter, diff'ering in some particulars from Ramusio's printed text, and containing a cosmographical appendix,'' was found later in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. This was printed, with a translation by Dr.. Joseph G. Cogswell, in the Collections of the New York Historical Society in 1841 (2d series, i. 37-68),'* and the translation was incorporated by Dr. Asher into his Henry Hudson the Navigator, published by the Hakluyt Society in i860 (pp. 197-228). With the Magliabecchian manu- script there was found a letter from Fernando Carli to his father, from Lyons, dated Aug. 4, 1524, in which he transmits the copy of Verrazano's letter.^ There exists no French original of this letter. This narrative has been generally considered as worthy of credit until a few years ago, when its authenticity was attacked by Mr. Buckingham Smith, who accounted the whole letter a fraud. Mr. Smith's view has been followed and supported by Mr. Henry C. Murphy, who published an 1 Somewhere on the Delaware coast (Jones) ; been identified with Narragansett Bay, and or south of it (Dr. Kohl) ; or on Long Island particularly with Newport. (Brevoort). ^ Not far from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2 Identified generally with New York Har- according to Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones. Mr. Bre- bor and the Hudson River. See Dr. Kohl's voort places this landing between Nahant and Discovery of Maine, pp. 256-258; Hakluyt So- Cape Ann. ciety's edition, Divers Voyages, p. 63 ; Asher's ^ Hakluyt Society's edition, Divers Voyages, Hetiry Hudson the Navigator, p. i\i,note. But p. 71.. Brevoort thinks that this description applies to '' Dr. Asher considers this appendix a very the mouth of the Thames in Connecticut (Ver- important document (Henry Hztdson the Navi- razano the N'avigator, p. 43), and identifies New gator, pp. 198, 199, 222, ; York with a point reached earlier (Ibid. p. 40). 8 gee also Professor G. W. Greene's article ' Block Island (Brevoort, p. 43); Martha's m the North American Jieview,x\v. 2(j2- Vineyard (Dr. Kohl, p. 260, and Mr. Jones, ' Carli's letter is in Buckingham Smith's p 64). Inquiry, pp. 27-30; H. C. Murphy's Voyage of ■• Verrazano's letter says that this harbor Verrazzaito, '^t^. \-]-\C)\ and in Brevoort's K->-o- was in the parallel of Rome, 41° 40'. It has zano the Navigator, -^-f. 1 51-153. VOL. I. — J. 34 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. elaborate monograph on the subject in 1875. On the other side, the genuineness of the letter has been maintained by Mr. J. C. Brevoort, whose Verrazano the Navigator, read before the American Geographical Society in November, 1871, was printed in 1874; by Mr. Major, who reviewed Mr. Murphy's book in the Geographical Magazine (London) for July 1876; and by Mr. De Costa in articles in the Magazine of Ametican History for February, May, and August, 1878, and for January, 1879. Mr. Murphy thinks that the Verrazano letter was concocted to increase the glory of Florence, and that its 'geography was taken from the dis- coveries made by Gomez, whose voyage I shall touch upon next. In the discussion of this, as of all early voyages, much depends upon the maps. There is a Verrazano map preserved in Rome, supposed to have been made by a brother of the navigator ; and Hakluyt speaks of an " olde mappe in parchmente, made as yt shoulde seme by Verarsanus," and of a " globe in the Queene's privie gallery at Westminster, which also semeth to be of Verarsanus' mekinge." ^ I have purposely avoided touching upon the maps of these early voyages, as the early cartography of this region will be treated in a succeeding chapter. Mr. Deane's note to the passages cited from Hakluyt's Discourse (pp. 216-219) should be consulted. Mr. De Costa, in his contribution to the Magazine of American History for August, 1878, gives for the first time the names on the American section of the Verrazano map. Much doubt hangs over the subsequent career of Verrazano. He is said to have made a second voyage to America, and to have been killed by the savages here. He is said also to have been taken by the Spaniards and hanged as a pirate. The reader must consult the works of Murphy and Brevoort, where all that can be said is related. The year following Verrazano's voyage, but, so far as is known, without any connection with it, Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese by birth, who had served Spain as pilot, and had been a member of the Congress of Badajos, sailed in search of a passage to India less difficult than that discovered by Magellan in 1520. Gomez had been of Magellan's expedition, but had deserted his commander and returned home. There is no narrative of his voyage. It is uncertain where he landed, and whether he sailed up or down the American coast. Dr. Kohl has examined more carefully than -any one else the various allusions to this voyage, and its results as laid down on the maps.^ His opinion is that Gomez struck the coast toward the North and sailed along it southward as far as the fortieth or forty-first parallel of latitude. He saw, probably, much of the New England coast, and may have entered many bays and even harbors, for his voyage lasted "ten months. A map of the world made in 1529 by Diego Ribero, the imperial cosmographer, gives the name " tierra de Estevan Gomez" to that part of America answering nearly to New England and Nova Scotia. 1 Discourse on Western Planting (2 Maine 2 Discovery of Maine, jjp. 271-281, and ap- llist. Soc. ii. 113, 114). pendix to chapter viii. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 35 For some time nothing seems to have been done in England, after Cabot's discovery, in the way of exploration of the new continent. I am incHned to reject the voyage of 15 17 under the supposed command of Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Part.^ But in 1527 two ships, the " Mary of Guilford " and the " Samson," sailed for the New World under the command of John Rut. The object of the expedition was probably the discovery of a northwest passage. One vessel, the " Samson," was lost ; the other is said to have visited parts of the American coast, and Dr. Kohl supposes that she carried the first Europeans who are known to have trodden the shores of Maine.2 No detailed account of this voyage exists beyond Rut's letter from Newfoundland to the King, which is very meagre.^ It has been supposed by some that Verrazano was the pilot, and that he lost his life in this voyage. Rut's expedition was followed in 1536 by that of" Master Hore," under- taken with the(>, been subjected in 171 1 or 1747. A colonial ii. 410. This covered the New England coast, stamp in 1755 figured a cod as "the staple of '' Le Cap atix Isles,ht calls it, in reference to the Massachusetts." Cf. R. S. Rantoul on "The the three islands which Smith, a few years later, Cod in Massachusetts History," in Ussex Insti- named the Three Turks' Heads, to conmiemorate tute Hist. Coll., September, 1866. one of his Eastern exploits. An early French 2 Plymouth was the bay in which Pring map, of which Mr. Francis Parkman procured a landed, according to De Costa, in his paper on copy, somewhat strangely confounds matters, Gosnold and Pring, in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. when the C. St. Louis of Champlain, on the Reg., January, 1878, p. 80. Marshfield shore, is fixed here, with C. St. Anne '^ In Harvard College Library. as an alternative, — a canonization of the royal * Rosier's Joicrnal, describing this voyage, is consort of King James that improves on the one of the rarities. The Brinley copy (No. simpler adulation of Smith. 48 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Bay ; and Champlain adds, " I observed in the bay all that the savages had described to me." Sailing then to the west-south-vs^est, between numerous islands, the French anchored near an island, finding on their way the coast a great deal cleared, and planted with corn and fine trees. The islands about them were covered with wood.^ This supposed to depict Boston Harbor, and is the Charles, perhaps, that he describes when, towards the end of his chapter, he says, " There is in this bay a very broad river, which we named River dit Guast, which stretched, as it seemed, toward the Iroquois." Passing outside the harbor, we next track them to Brant Rock Point, on the Marshfield shore, — their Cap St. Louis, — whence they skirted a low sandy coast to Port dii Cap St. Louis, seemingly the same harbor in which the " Mayflower" landed her company in 1620.^ Again following the bend of the bay, they reach Cap Blanc, our Cape Cod, which they rounded, and, going south a little further, they had a skirmish with the natives, and turned back. The next year, 1606, Champlain came back with Poutrincourt. Having occasion to calk their shallop in Gloucester Harbor, he has left us a map of it in his book. He says, however, very little of his now following his previous track beyond Cap St. Louis to a harbor, which was perhaps Barnstable ; and so again rounding Cap Blanc he tacked away to the south, finding the shore and the shoals doubtless different from now, and so proceeded to the entrance of the Vineyard Sound, a little further than before, when he again turned back, and never again visited these shores. He left on them, however, names that clung to some maps for a long time. The full narrative of these explorations appeared in the 1613 edition of Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain, published at Paris ; and it was ac- companied by two maps, — the one showing the coast from the St. Law- rence to the Chesapeake, " faict I'an, 1612;" and the other carried the coast south only to about the extent of his own observations. This is called the map of 1613. In the first we have Baye Blanche inside of C. blan ; the Baye aux Isles, from its relation to C. St. Louis, might be Plymouth ; the R. de Gas flows into a bay dotted with islands, and comes, as his text indicates, from a region west near Lac de Champlain, which is marked as the country of the Yrocois. The 161 3 map is not so carefully drawn, but it has the same prototype of the Charles, stretching still to the western Yroquois, just south of Lake Champlain. Some of these features still clung ' A manuscript in the State Paper Office, for the Prince Society, and edited by Rev. E. London, has events a good deal mixed. Cf. F. Slafter, 1878, vol. ii. The Quebec edition Mass. Hist. Soc. /'wr , January, 1861. of Champlain's works has all the maps in ^ A plan of this bay is rudely given in the fac-simile. I regret that I have not been 1613 and 1632 editions of Champlain; and able to agree with Mr. Parkman — Pioneers Drake, Nooks and Corners of ike New England of France in the New World, p. 2-'2 in Coast, copies it. This whole narrative is easily fixing the modern correspondences of Cham- followed in the English translation of the 1613 plain's localities. My views accord with Mr. edition which has been made by Professor Otis Slafter's. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 49 to the larger map^ of 1632, which appeared in the consoHdated edition of Champlain's successive narratives of that date ; but the supposable Charles has dwindled in this later map to a mere coast stream, while Lake Cham- plain, interposing to the east of the Hudson, lies not farther distant to the west from the site of Boston than the Cap aux Isles (Cape Ann) lies to the east. It is interesting to remember tha.t in 1609, only three or four years after Champlain's voyage, Henry Hudson landed at Cape Cod on his way to explore the river since called by his name ; and his reports made it pos- sible for Champlain to make his map of the harbor of New York and its magnificent river as well as he did. In the same year, 1609, Lescarbot brought out in his Nouvelle France a map which did further service in the later editions of 161 1 and 1612. Cape Cod would hardly challenge our ac- quaintance in this map, and the bay within seems but one of a zigzag series of contours which run north, each well supplied with islands, till the region of the Kiiiibeki is reached, when the coast turns eastward. There are no names from Malebarre to Choiiacoet, the latter well up into the bend of the coast.^ In the year of the original issue of Lescarbot, Hakluyt had caused an English translation of it to be published in London. This Nova Francia, as it was called, came out in 1609, with nothing to show that Lescarbot was its original source except that it had his map ; and this was the latest engraved cartographical expression of this region which Englishmen could have seen when that " thrice memorable discoverer. Captain Smith," as Wood calls him, took up the problem. Lescarbot had certainly gone far from a solution, as many others had done, if we may trust Smith's own words. " I have had six or seven several plots of these northern parts, so unlike each to other, and most so differing from any true proportion or resemblance of the country as they did me no more good than so much waste paper, though they cost me more. It may be that it was not my chance to see the best." ^ Smith left England in March, 1614, on this trading expedition, four London merchants joining him in the commercial venture, and two 1 One of the 1632 editions in Harvard Col- ter. Tlie French, after this, added nothing to lege Library has the map. It is given in fac- our knowledge of the coast. Their later maps simile in the Quebec edition, vol. vi. of Cham- were drawn to express their knowledge of the plain, and defectively in O'Callaghan's Docu- great lakes and the Mississippi ; and, when the mentaiy History of New York, iii. eastern seaboard was drawn in, it was with little ^ The 1612 Lescarbot is in Harvard College or no regard to detail. Franquelin made for Library. The map is fac-similed in Tross's re- Colbert various maps; and others of his time are print of the book, — Paris, 1866, p. 224; and r\o\.^i.\\\\\3x'[\%st's, N^otes sitr la A'ouvelle France, other reproductions are in the Abbe Faillon's and in the appendix to Parknian's La Salle. Histoire Ue la Colonie Francaise cii Canada, i. 85, Mr. Parknian's tracing of the great map of and in The Pophain Metnorial. A fac-simile is Franquelin, the original of which has disai> also given herewith. peared from the French archives, gives Baton, ' Smith's reference must be to drafts made with the hook of Cape Cod, but nothing else dis- by English explorers or fishermen on the coast, tinctively. An earlier map shows an undulating The only engraved maps to which he could line from Maine to Jersey. Mr. Parkman has have referred were Lescarbot's and Champlain's; lately placed his collection of maps in Harvard and it seems improbable that he knew the lat- College Library. VOL. 1. — 7. 50 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ships ^ carried his company and his supplies. He sailed away for North Virginia, as the country was then called, and struck the coast near the Penobscot. Leaving his vessels to fish and trade, he took eight men in a boat, and started to map out the bay. He speaks of passing " close aboard the shore in a little boat," and of drawing " the map from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, rocks, and landmarks," and adds that he " sounded about twenty-five excellent good harbors." We follow him in his coursing pretty accurately round Cape Ann, which he named Cape Tragabigsanda, after an old Turkish flame of his, while the neighboring islands were set down on his plot as the Three Turks' Heads, the doughty navigator having memorably decapi- tated an equal number of Moslems at some past time.^ Our present interest in his narrative is to ascertain how closely he explored Boston Harbor. His language is usually held to signify that he struck across from the north shore and touched the south shore some- where in the neighborhood of Cohasset, and that he mistook the entrance by Point Allerton as the debouching of a river. He wrote afterwards that he thought " the fairest reach (3i7>i,xf^ • ^" this bay" was a river, "whereupon I called it Charles River." The map which two years later he published clearly shows a bay with eight islands in it, into which this river flows. From this one would infer that he at least got within the outer harbor, and mistook one of the inner passages for the river's mouth.^ It is, of course, possible that he embodied in this map what information he obtained from the descriptions of the natives at that time, but he does not say he did. He afterwards made use of later explorers' reports, when he extended on his map this same bay farther inland, and increased the num- ber of its islands ; describing at the same time " that fair channel " as divid- ' These vessels were of fifty and sixty tons. zW, July, 1861. Mr. Deane says the body of the Mr. Deane has gathered a number of instances letter is not in Smith's hand ; Ijut he thinlis the of the sizes of the ships of these early naviga- signature above given is. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. tors. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, October, 1865. Proc, January, 1S67. Summarized accounts of 2 The authorities for this exploration are his this New England voyage will be found in Belk- own Descriftion of New Englajul, \6i6, oi vihich nap's American Biografhy ; Hillard's Life of there are copies in Harvard College Library ; John Smith ; Palfrey's New England, where (i. in the Prince Collection (Boston Public Library); p. 89) there is a note on the authenticity and in Charles Deane's Collection, &c. It was re- veracity of Smith's books. Accounts of his printed at Boston — seventy-five copies — by published works are to be found in Allibone's Veazie in 1S65, and is in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. Dictionary of Authors ; in Ilillard, p. 398; and 95 (the Prince copy being followed), and in an estimate of their literary value in M. C. Force's Tracts,K\. It was afterwards included in Tj-ler's Hist, of American Literature, \. his Generall Historic, of which there are copies ^ His language already quoted would seem of different editions in Harvard College Library, to imply that he was in the bay when he descried in the Prince Collection, and in Mr. Deane's. Cf. its "fairest reach," and we know he makes in also his Advertisement to Planters, 1631, of another place Massachusetts Bay and Charles which there are copies in the College Library River one and the same. The question at and in Mr. Deane's Collection. This also was issue seems to be what Smith saw and thought reprinted by Veazie in 1865; audit is also in- to be a river's mouth, — the lighthouse chau- cluded in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. i. Smith's nel, or the passage between Long Island Head letter to Lord Bacon ( [61S), giving an account of and Deer Lsland. I incline °lo the latter New England, is printed in the Historical Maga- view. Lescarbot's Map, 1612. Champlain's Map. 16.2. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 51 ing itself " into so many fair branches as make forty or fifty pleasant islands within that excellent bay." ^ Smith thence sailed across Massa- chusetts Bay, made his draft of the Cape Cod peninsula, and then, rejoin- ing his vessels to the eastward, set sail for England, and reached port in August. Smith was, or professed to be, well pleased with what he saw ; but as he next engaged in a project for settling the country, which first took from him the name of New England, his enthusiastic description may savor perhaps of self-interest. " Of all the parts of the world I have yet seen not inhabited," he said, " I would rather live here than anywhere." The site of Boston before this had been successively found within a region variously designated. To the Northmen it was Vinland. In 1520 Ayllon could not have sailed much above 30° north latitude, yet in Ribero's map Tierra de Ayllon stretched up into New England. So again, a little later, the Tierra de los Bretones was extended west and south from the region where Cabot made his landfall. After Verrazzano and Cartier, Francisca, Nova Francia, La Terre Frangaise, and Nouvelle France was stretched to the south over New England, and sometimes the Spanish Florida, as in Ruscelli's map, 1561, came well up to the same latitude. The earliest native name to be applied to the country by Europeans was Norumbega, which appears in the narrative of the French captain quoted in Ramusio, in 1537, and, by the time Mercator made his great chart in 1569, this name began to be general. It seemed at first to cover a terri- tory stretching well along our eastern seaboard, but gradually became fixed on the region of the Penobscot.^ Smith, in 1620, makes Virginia a part of Norumbega. Virginia first appeared on maps in Hakluyt's edition of Peter Martyr's Decades, 1587, and later Gosnold and his successor considered they were exploring the northern parts of Virginia, and so it was known to Smith before he gave it the designation it now bears, — New England. " My first voyage to Norumbega, now called New England, 1614," is his marginal note in his Advertisement to Planters. Hunt and other navigators called it Cannaday. Smith's designation did not wholly supplant the Dutch New Netherland in European maps (which began to be used also about this time), till the Hollanders were finally expelled from New York; and even after that the Dutch name vanished slowly. To further his colonization scheme, Smith set sail from England again in March, 161 5, with two ships, one commanded by himself and the other by Dermer. The latter alone succeeded in reaching the coast, and returned after a successful business in August.'^ Meanwhile Smith's ship was dis- 1 There is a narrative on the early records of himself says rather unguardedly that " Smith Charlestown, which represents Smith as having entered Charles River and named it." come up to that peninsula. It is printed in ^ Cf. De Laet's Nov2is Mundus ; Kohl's Disc. Yoxmg's Chronicles 0/ Massachtisells. It can be, of Maine; Hakluyt's Western Planting; De however, o£ no authority. Frothingham, in his Costa's Northmen in Maine, p. 44 ; Congris des History of Charlestown (unfortunately never to be Americanistes, 1877, p. 223, &c. completed), says that it was written in 1664 by ^ xhe absolute continuity of the New Eng- John Greene, and not, as Thomas Prince had land and Virginia coasts was later proved by affirmed, by Increase Nowell. Frothingham Dermer first among the English. Cf. Purchas's 52 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. abled in a storm ; returned to refit ; again set sail, June 24, but only to be captured by a French cruiser. After many mishaps in his captivity, Smith got back to England late in 1615, bringing with him the narrative of his first voyage, which he had written while a prisoner to the French. In June, 1616, he published it in London, as A Description of New Engla7id : or The Observations, and Discoveries, of Captain John Smith {Admirall of that Country), in the North of America, in the year of our Lord, 1614. — London. Humfrey Lownes, for Robert Clerke, 1616. It was a little quarto volume, of a size and shape common to that day, of about eighty pages. A folding map of New England, extending from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, went with it. With this publication Smith sought to incite a movement for colonization. He journeyed about the western counties distributing it. " I caused," he says, " two or three thousand of them [the book] to be printed ; one thousand with a great many maps, both of Virginia and New England, I presented to thirty of the Chief Companies in London at their halls." No immediate results came from Smith's efforts. He never again was on the coast, and his endeavors were but a part of the causes that finally worked together to establish the English race permanently upon Massachusetts Bay. Smith's map, as the real foundation of our New England cartography, deserves particular attention. To the draft which he made he affixed the Indian names, or such as whim had prompted him to give while he sur- veyed the shores. There is rarely found in copies of the Description of New England a leaf, printed on one side only, which reads as follows : " Because the Booke was printed ere the Prince his Highnesse had altered the names, I intreate the Reader peruse this schedule ; which will plainly shew him the correspondence of the old names to the new." Below this are two columns, one giving the old names, the other the new ones ; the latter such as Prince Charles, then a lad of fifteen, had affixed to the different points, bays, rivers, and other physical features, when Smith showed him the map. As engraved, the map has the Prince's nomen- clature ; the book has Smith's or the earlier ; and this rare leaf is to make the two mutually intelligible.^ So far as is known to me, this map exists in ten states of the plate, and I purpose now to note their distinctive features.^ I. The original condition of the map bears in the lower left-hand corner, Simon PascBus sculp sit ; Robert Clerke excudit ; and in the lower right-hand corner, London Pilgrims; z N.Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. i. ; Thornton's Mr. Deane having caused such a fac-simile to be Ancient Pemaqidd. In 1616 the settlement of made from the Prince copy. Mr. Deane's copy, Richard Vines at Saco, and other ineffectual that in Harvard College Library, and the three plantations, enlarged the knowledge of the coast, copies in the ISritish Museum, want it - u o- .^^— ^... ^u^^.uu ... .,.,_ j.»iix,5u J..i LtOl, will, VV£Llll IL. Cf. Gorges's Ararratiw ; Valliey's JVew England, 2 i„ t^ig ^^^^^ j ^^^^^ ^^.^ ^^f g^j^^ nienior- i. ch. 2 ; Folsom's Saco and Biddcford, &c. anda of Mr. James Lenox and Mr. Chas. Deane, ^ The Prince copy and the Peter Force copy printed in Norton's Literary Gazette, new series', (Library of Congress) are the only copies known i. ( 1854) 134, 219; but I add one condition ( VIIL) to me which have this leaf, unless in fac-simile, to their enumeration. u EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 53 Printed by Gear: Low. The title NEW ENGLAND is in large letters at the top, to the right of it the English arms, and beneath it, The most re}narqueable parts thus named \ by the high and mighty Prince CHARLES, | Prince of great Britaine. The latitude is marked on the right-hand side only : there are no marks of longitude. Boston Harbor is indicated by a bay with eight islands, and a point of land extending from the southwest within it. The River Charles extends inland from the northwest corner of the bay, a short distance. A whale, a ship, and a fleet are represented upori the sea. Tliere is no date beneath the scale. There are many names on later states not yet introduced, and some of the present names are changed in the later impressions, as will be noted below. Of the names which the Prince assigned, but three became permanently attached to the localities, and these are, — Plimouth to the spot which Champlain had called Port St. Louis, which the natives called Accomack, and which the Pilgrims continued to call by this newer name, seven or eight years later ; Cape Anna, for which Smith had sacrificed the remembrance of his Eastern romance ; and The River Charles, which had been previously known as Massachusets River ; while the name Massa- chusets Motmt, earlier applied to our Blue Hill, became, under Charles's pen, Cheuyot hills} Gosnold's Cape Cod proved better rooted than Charles's monument to his dynasty, Cape yames, and so the Prince's Stiiard's Bay has given place to Cape Cod Bay. Our own name, — Boston, — as is the case with many other well-known names of this day, appears in connection with a locality remote from its present application. It supplanted Smith's Accoviinticus, and stood for the modern York in Maine. Two of the Captain's names were suffered to stand, — Neiv England as the general designation of the country, and Smith's Lsles, within ten years afterwards to be known among the English as the Lsles of Shoals?- London was put upon the shore about where Hingham or perhaps Cohasset is ; Oxford stood for the modem Marshfield ; Poynt Suttliff is adjacent, and does duty for Champlain's C. de S. Lj)uis and the present Brant Rock ; and Poynt George is the designation of the Gurnet. Of the copies of the book known to be in America, but one has the map in this state, and that is the Prince copy, in which the map is unfortunately imperfect, but not in an essential part.^ From this copy C. A. Swett, of Boston, engraved the fac-simile which appeared in Veazie's reprint of the Description of New England, in 1865.^ In 1617, Hulsius, the German collector, translated Smith's Description for his Voyages, and re-engraved the map ; but the names in the lower corners were omitted, and Smith's title, the verses concerning him, and some of the explanations were given in German. Hulsius's map, beside accompanying his Part XIV., first edition, 161 7, and second edition, 1628, is often found in Part XIII. (Hamor's Virginia), and is also given in Part XX. (New England and Virginia), 1629.^ 1 Smith, in his text, speaks o£ "the high Brinley sale, March, 1879, I'^'l maps of a later mountaiiie of Massachusetts." state, and so do all the other copies in Ameri- ■^ A monument to Smith was erected on can collections, — Harvard College Library, Star Island, one of the group, in 1864. It is Lenox Library, the Carter Brown Library, Chas. pictured in Jenness's Isles of Shoals, and in S. Ueane's collection, &c. A. Drake's Nooks and Corners of the New Eng- * The reduction in Bryant and Gay's Pop. liiud Coast. Hist, of the U. S., i. 518, is from Swett's fac- ^ A copy without the map was advertised in simile, which can also be found in some London in 1879 f°'' j^'° ioj-. y while Quaritch copies of Chas. Deane's reprint of New Eng- in 1873 advertised a copy with what he called land's Trials. the original map (perhaps, however, not the ^ "Voyages of Hulsius," in Contributions to original state) for ^£^50. The copies sold in the « Catalogue of the Lenox Library, part i., 1877. 54 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. II. The date, 1614, is for the first time inserted under the scale, and the names P. Travers and Gerrards lis are put in near Pembrocks Bay (Penobscot). A copy of this second state is in the Harvard College copy of the Description of 161 6. We give a heliotype of a portion of it. A lithographic fac-simile of the whole, but without the ships, &c., is given in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. iii., and in a reduced form by photo-lithography in Palfrey's Ne7v England, i. 95.1 Mr. Lenox supposed that this state of the plate may have been first used in the 1620 edition of Smith's New England's Trials, no copy of which was known to be in this country when Mr. Deane, in 1873, reprinted if^ in t\it Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Society, Yth. 1873.' III. Smith's escutcheon, but without the motto, was introduced in the lower left- hand corner. This state is found in Mr. Deane's copy of the Generall Historic, 1624, and in the Lenox copy of the Description of 1616. Mr. Lenox supposed this state may have been first used in the 1622 edition of New England's Trials.'^ IV. The motto Vincere est vivere is put in a scroll to the left of Smith's escutcheon. The degrees of latitude and longitude are noted on all sides. Copies of this state are found in the Charles Deane and Carter Brown copies of the Description of 161 6, and it was also in the Crowninshield copy, taken from Boston to England some years since. Mr. Lenox supposed this state to have originally belonged to the first edition of the Generall Historic^ 1624, in which Smith gathered his previous independent issues. There was no change in the several successive editions of this book (1624, 1626, 1627, 1632, the last in two issues) except in the front matter; and, speaking of this book, Field, in his Indian Bibliography, p. 366, says of the original issue, " It is so commonly the case as almost to form the rule, that even the best copies have been made up by the substitution of later editions of some of the maps." Some of the copies were on large paper.° V. The name Paynes lis is put down on the Maine coast. Cross-lines are made on the front of the breastplate in the portrait of Smith, in the upper left-hand corner, and the whole portrait is retouched. Robert Gierke's name is partly obliterated. This state is supposed to belong to the 1626 edition of the Generall Historic. The edition of this date in Cornell University Library (Sparks Collection) has Both editions, each with map, are also in Har- a private reprint of it. The text is given in vard College Library. Chas. Deane has the Force's Tracts, ii. 1617 edition. A copyvifas sold in the Brinley ^ Mr. Deane has printed the prospectus of sale, March, 1879, No. 362. this book, which he found in London. AInss. ' We give a heliotype of the portrait of Hisi. Soc. Proc, January, 1S67. Smith on his map from the same state, and before * Such is S. L. M. Barlow's copy, but it has it was retouched. The only other photographic state V. of the map. A large-paper dedication reproduction of it is, we think, the reduction copy, bound for Smith's patron, the Duchess of given by Palfrey while reproducing the map. It Richmond and Lenox, was bought at the Brinley is unsatisfactory, however, the art of photo-lith- sale (No. 364), March, 1879, for the Lenox ography being then young. There have been Library, for $1,800. Mr. Deane's copy of the various engraved copies of it, — in Bancroft's 1624 edition has state III. of the plate. This Uniled States ; in the Nciv England Hist, and book is a favorite subject for the artful manipu- Gen. Register, 1858; in Drake's Boston; in lations of modern dealers in second-hand books. Veazie's reprint of the map, &c. There were important changes in the title, maps, ■•i From a transcript of a copy in the Bodleian and other parts of the successive issues ; but in Library, which differs in the names of the dedica- making up deficient copies, these fabricators tionfrom the British Museum copy. has-e inserted whatever they could find, irrespec- 3 Also separately issued. five of its state of issue. The Generall Historic * This second edition was enlarged from is reprinted in Pinkerton's Voyages, xiii., and in eight to fourteen leaves of text. Mr. Deane great part in Purchas's Pilgrims. It was care- has a copy. The late John Carter Brown issued lessly reprinted in Richmond, Va,, in 1819. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 55 but a part of the map, which, however, so far conforms. It is in Mr. Barlow's 1624 edition.^ VI. The name of lames Reeue in the lower right-hand corner is substituted for that of George Low. The name of the engraver is given with an additional s, — Passaus. This state is supposed by Mr. Lenox to belong to the 1627 edition of the General! Historic, of which there are copies in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Library, and in the Prince Library (with notes by Prince). This state is in the 1632 edition in Harvard College Library. VII. The last line of the inscription at the top is changed to read : nowe King of great Britaine. In the portrait the armor is figured. Wesfs Bay is placed on the outer side of Cape lames. P'. Standish corresponds to the modern Manomet Point. The word NEW is inserted above Plimouth. P. IVyntkrop is put north of Cape Anna. P. Reeues is put near Ipswich. Salem is laid down just north of Cape Anna. Fidlerton He is changed to Frauncis Ile;^ Cary lis to Claiborne lis (off Boston Harbor) ; and P. Murry to P. Saltonstale (south of Boston Harbor). The bay (Boston Harbor) is enlarged westward, a point of land within it erased, and the islands increased from eight to eighteen.^ Mr. Lenox held that this state first appeared in Smith's Advertisements to Planters* 1 63 1, and it is found in the Carter Brown copy of this tract. The Harvard College copy, however, has the state X., and the Charles Deane copy has IX. Mr. Lenox has questioned if this state did not sometimes make part of Higginson's New England's Plantation, of which there were three editions printed in 1630, the first of twenty, and the second enlarged to twenty-six pages. The two copies of the book in Harvard College Library, the three editions in the Lenox Library, and the copy which was in the Brinley sale, all, however, want the map.^ Sparke, who printed the second edition of Higginson, probably owned the plate, as he printed the Generall Historic oi 1624, 1626, and 1627, and the Historia Mtmdi of 1635, which all had the map. Yet, if it properly belongs to Higginson, it is strange that a map mis- placing Salem, where Higginson lived, should be used ; and the names Wynthrop and Saltonstale could have been given only in anticipation of the arrival of those gentlemen. VIII. Martins He is given in Penobscot Bay. Perhaps some of the changes named under IX. were made in this state (except the Plymouth Company's arms) ; for the only example of it which I have found is a fragment (two thirds) of the map belonging to Harvard College Library, the westerly third being gone. It belonged, perhaps, to the first issue of the 1632 edition of the Generall Historic. IX. The arms of the Council for New England are given in the .centre of the plate.* The following changes may first have appeared in the preceding number. 1 The I-Iarvard College copy of this date simile of the map by Veazie, Boston, 1865, and (1626) wants the majjs. There is a copy in the is also included in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. .Smith Mass. Hist. Society's library. died June 21, 1631, and this must have been the ^ This is just north of the entrance to Bos- last state of the plate he was personally con- ton Harbor, and is supposed to be Nahant, re- cerned in. ferred to in Smith's account as "the isles of * The tract was reprinted in Mass. Hist. Mattahunts." Coll. i. ^ This was because of the reports of later ° Mr. Charles Deane supposes these arms to visitors, which Smith, in his Advertisements to be those of the Council. See his letter in Mass. Planters, says had represented the "excellent Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1867. Dr. Palfrey en- bay " to have "forty or fifty pleasant islands." graves them as such on the title-page of his * This tract has been reprinted, with a fac- History of New England. 56 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The name Charlton'^ is inserted just south of the mouth of The River Charles. Salem misplaced is obliterated, and the name is inserted m its proper place. Two unfinished arms of the sea, on the north of Talbotts Bay, are extended inland, covering the position of a church in previous states. This may have belonged to the second 1632 issue of the Generall Historie, and it appears in such copies in Harvard College Library and in Mr. Barlow's copy. It is in Mr. Deane's Advertisement to Planters of 1631. X. The River Charles is extended to the left-hand edge of the plate, and symbols of towns with figures of men, animals, and representations of Indian huts are scattered near it. On its north bank the following names are inserted, beginning at the west : Watertowne, Newtowne, Medford, Charlestowii^ and beyond the Fawmoiith of the original plate Saiigus is put in. The south bank shows Roxberry, Boston (repre- sented as five leagues up the river, by the scale) , and Winnisime. Cheityot hills is erased and the name Dorchester is inserted along the eastern slope of the picture of the hill which still remains. London and Oxford still stand. A school of fish is delineated under the single ship. Under the. compass these words appear : He that desyres to know more of the Estate of new Engla?id lett him read a new Book of the prospecte of new England &' ther he shall have Sattisf action. Although the old date, 1 6 14, is still kept on the plate, this inscription shows that this state followed the publication of Wood's New England's Prospects^ 1634, and it seems to have been made for the following work : Historia Mundi, or Mercator's Atlas . . . Enlarged with new Mapps and Tables by the studious Industrie of Jodociis Hondy. Englished by W\jj€\ .S[altonstall] . London, Printed for Michaell Sparke and Samuel Cart- wright, 1635, folio.* This state is found in the Harvard College copy of the Advertisement to Planters, 1631. The modern fac-simile, by Swett, of the first state was also altered for Veazie to suit this condition, but the engi-aver did not observe that a third s had been inserted in the name of Passceus. This altered engraving is found in J. S. Jenness's Isles of Shoals, New York, 1873. A new element entered into the progress of New England cartography when the Dutch laid claim to her territory. We have already mentioned how Hudson, in 1609, came upon Cape Cod. He thought the promontory an island ; and, naming it NieiLW Hollande, he sailed about within the bay, baffled in his efforts to find a passage to the south. Five years later from the settlements of the Dutch at Manhattan, Adrian Block, in the spring of 1 6 14, sailing in the first vessel built in that region, — the yacht " Onrust," or the "Restless," — explored the Connecticut shores and inlets; passed by Tcxel (Martha's Vineyard), Vlielande (Nantucket) ; rounded the southern 1 This pronunciation of Charlestown was * I" some of the copies of a " second Edytion " usual in the 17th century. Hull, the mint-mas- of this ImoIc, 1637, a new map of New Virginia, ter, in his diary, 1663, writes Charltown. Amer. announced before as in preparation in America Anlij. Soc.^ Coll. lii. 209. engraved by Ralph Hall, 1636, was inserted. Cf! 2 This is the same as C/;a>-to«, which is still Quaritch's Catalogue, No. 11,728, who errs in left in erroneously, as in IX. calling the map " New England."' There is a 3 Wood had spoken of the harbor as " made copy in the American Antiquarian Society's by a great Company of islands, whose high cliffs library. The original edition is in Harvard shoulder out the boisterous seas." College Library. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 57 point of the Cape Cod peninsula, which he called Vlacke Hoeck ; passed the easterly highlands on the back of the Cape, which he called Staten hoeck; rounded the Cape itself, naming it Caep Bevechier ; passed into the bay {Fuyck) ; named the southerly reach off the Barnstable shore Staten ■7ac?ce. >^> 1625), and again in 1630 annexed it to a new edition of the ^^.^^^^ tract, in which he had changed the name to The Mapp and Descrip- \ tion of New England? Some of the names which Prince Charles bestowed had a sing vitality, — cartographically speaking at least. Though there were no communities to be represented by them, geographers did not willingly let them die. De Laet and Blaeu, within the next score of years, used several of them. They got into the Carta II. of Robert Dudley's Arcana del Mare, published at Florence in 1647. Sanson used some of them through a long period of map-making, and even as late as 1719; and during the latter part of the seventeenth century they constantly appear in the geographical works of Visscher, Homann, Jansson, De Witt, Sandrart, Danckers, Ottens, Allard, and others. They stood forth in the maps of Montanus's Nieuwe Weereld, and adorned the great folio translation known as Ogilby's America in 1670. Some of them are found so late as 1745, in a Dutch Atlas von Zeevaert, published at Amster- dam.^ It is curious to observe how the imaginary Bristow and London appear as Bristoium and Londinum, in the Latin map of Croeuxius's book on Canada in 1664. In Visscher's and Jansson's maps, the intruding Cheviot Hills becomes Cheuyotkillis , — not readily recognized, except for the Mons Massachusetts, given by their side. A strange migration occurs in one of Hen- nepin's maps. The Dutch claimed that Pye Bay (Nahant) marked their northern limit, and so the upper boundary of Nouveau Pays Bas runs west- erly from Boston Harbor. It could hardly be de- nied, in Hennepin's time, that the English had a substantial hold upon Boston, and ought to have had upon Bristow and London, — which were Eng- lish enough in name, if aerial in substance. So, to gov. winthrop's sketch. David Laing's Royal Letters, &c., Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1867 ; and in part in J. W. Thorn- ton's Landing at Cape Anne. It is also given, with documents appertaining, in the American Antiquarian Society* s Proceedings, April 24, 1867. ^ Ignorance in Holland in 1745 is certainly more pardonable than the English blunder of 1778, when the North American Gazetteer oi that year spoke of Bristol, R. I., as being famed "for 1 This division is treated of in Mr. Adams's section. 2 The tract is reprinted, with a fac-simile of the map, in E. F. Slafter's Sir William Alex- ander, published by the Prince Society. Har- vard College Library has the 16.30 tract without the map. The map was repeated in Purchas's Pilgrims, iv., and has been reproduced in S. G. Drake's Founders of New England, i860; in 62 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. cause no dispute, Boston is put down somewhere in the latitude of Ports- mouth, where Prince Charles had placed it, and Bristow and London flank the mouths of what must be the Merrimac. This was not. long before 1700. It is interesting to note that Winthrop, in the " Arbella " in 1630, mak- ing the shore just south of Cape Ann, sketched on a blank leaf of his journal — as on preceding page — the earliest outline of the coast from Gloucester to Salem harbor, which is preserved to us in any original drawing. The same page bears a description of the islands and reefs about Cape Ann.^ U^\jou\ the King of Spain having a palace in it and 1685, still keeps Charles's London on the south being killed there." The Indian " King Philip " shore of the bay. was meant. A popular account of the English 1 Savage's ed. of Winthrop's Hist, of New empire in America, published by N. Crouch in England, ii. 418. o^T^Ji/l^ CHAPTER III. THE EARLIEST EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Jr. ON the afternoon of Wednesday, the 29th of September, 1621, a large open sail-boat, or shallop, as it was then called, entered Boston Harbor, coming up along the shore from the direction of Plymouth. In it were thirteen men, — ten Europeans, with three savages acting as their guides. The whole party was under the immediate command of Captain Miles Standish, and their purpose was to explore the country in and about Massachusetts Bay, as Boston Harbor was then called, and to establish friendly trading relations with the inhabitants. /^Z C/ f_^^^^,.^ They had started from Ply- ^-^ f mouth on the ebb tide shortly before the previous midnight, expecting to reach their destination the next morning ; but the wind was light and the dis- tance greater than they supposed, so that the day was already old when they made the harbor's mouth. Passing by Point Allerton they laid their course for what appeared to them to be the bottom of the bay, and, finding good shelter there, came to anchor off what is now known as Thomson's Island.' Here they lay during the night, which they passed on board their boat ; though it would seem that Standish and others landed and explored the little island, even naming it Trevore, after one of their number, — William Trevore, an English sailor. - The course of this exploring expedition has been in the custom of navigating it, how- has been differently surmised Ijy tlie several au- ever, the phrase "the bottom of the bay" is, as thorities. The words used in Mourt are : "We a description, almost unmistakable. Aboatcom- came into the bottom of the bay." Young sup- ing from Plymouth would enter the harbor by the poses this to mean that they anchored off Copp's channel between Shag-rocks and Point Allerton ; Hill, at the north end of Boston (Chronicles of the and from there the view in the direction of Thom- Pilgrims, p. 225, n., following, in this statement, son's Island is wholly unobstructed, while the Dr. Belknap in his American Biography) ; while ship-channel to Boston and Copp's Hill is de- Dexter, in his edition of Mourl, says : " That is, vious, and masked by islands. Explorers would run in by Point Allerton into Light-house Chan- naturally go directly through the open water to nel " (p. 125, «.). Neither Dr. Young nor Dr. Squantum near the mouth of the Neponset, — the Dexter, it is fair to presume, were practically apparent " bottom of the bay." very familiar with Boston Harbor. To one who Many years subsequently (in 1650), Stand- 64 THE MKWORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Early on the morning of the next day the party made ready to extend their explorations to the main-land. As they had come to establish rela- tions with what remained of the once powerful tribe of the Massachusetts, SQUAW ROLK, OR ^gU4\TUlM HI W their Indian guides seem to have bi ought them to that point on the shoit of the ba) which -was most conxeniem for access to the biuad plain '' -«"»-- -^ then and long subsequently known as the " Massachusetts Fields," from its being used as the central gathering-place of the tribe.' This plain lay in ish made a deposition in relation to Tliomson's Island, in wliich lie .stated that, in the year he came into the country, he visited this island, and then named it Island Trevore, — after William Trevore, who, as stated in the te.xt, was with him (yV. £. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., i.x. 248). This Trevore came over in the " Mayflower," hired to stay in the country one year. At the expiration of his year he returned to England. Standish and Trevore, therefore, could only have visited Thomson's Island together during the Septem- ber expedition oi: 1621. (Mass. Hist. Sol. Froc, 1875-76, p. 373.) This visit also could apparently have been made only on the evening of their arrival at the " bottom of the bay," or the morning after their arrival there, and before they crossed to the main-land. For it is clear that Obbatinewat did not live on this island, as Standish, in the depo- sition of 1650, particularly sa)'S that it was not only deserted, but that there were no signs of its ever having been inhabited. After visiting the main-land, and setting out in search of Ob- batinewat's place of abode, the whole time of the exjilorers is accounted for : they crossed the bay, passed the night off the main shore on its other side, and the next day made their excur- sion into the interior, getting back to their boat only in time to start for Plymouth by moonlight. Apparently, they were too much occupied to explore uninhabited islands. It seems, therefore, fairly to lie inferred that they came to anchor off Thomson's Island on their arrival, and that their subsequent course was as described in the te.xt. The Hist, of Dori/iestcr supposes that the first landing was at Nantasket, then at Squantum, and that it was on the Neponset that they made their explorations. ^ Chronicles of A/ass., p. 395; Cliroiiicles of the Pilgrims, p. 226. [Mr. Everett, in his Dor- chester oration, 1855 (Works, iii. 318), speaks of a solitary individual of the tribe still lingering within his recollection. — Ed.1 THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 65 the northern part of what is now the town of Quincy, and, almost surrounded by the swamps and marshes bordering on the bay and the Neponset River, was connected with the Squantum headland, opposite to which the party had anchored their boat, by a low neck of mingled marsh and beach. Crossing the narrow channel which divides Thomson's Island from this headland, MILES STANDISH. Standish landed at the foot of the bold rocky clifif which is still so striking and exceptional a feature of the shore, — a miniature Nahant deep within the recesses of the harbor. ' [The portrait which is here called that o£ Standish is from a photograph, taken from an old painting owned by Captain A. M. Harri- son, U. S. Coast Survey, of Plymouth, which, through the friendly offices of B. Marston Wat- son, Esq., of that town, was kindly placed at my disposal by the owner. Captain Harrison has given an account of what is known of the pic- ture, in a letter printed in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, October, 1S77, p. 324. The canvas stands in need of complete identification as a likeness of the redoubtable Pilgrim hero, and the leader of the first party of Englishmen of whom we have accounts as landing on any part of the ter- VOL. I. — 9. ritory of Boston ; but, until positively disproven, it must have a certain interest. The portrait, which is painted on an old panel, was found in a picture shop in School Street, the legend /Etatis Slue 38, A'-'^' 1625 being observable, — the year of Standish's visit to England, when he was of the age noted. The name M. Standish was disclosed on removing the apparently mod- ern frame. The previous owner, James Gilbert, stated that it was purchased by Roger Gilbert, his great-uncle, who was born in Portsmouth, Va., but then living in Philadelphia, of a branch of the Chew family in Germantown, Penn., shortly before the war of 1812. — Ed.] 66 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Either the party had set out but slenderly provided, or they had not yet breakfasted ; for, finding a number of lobsters on the shore, collected there by the savages, they appropriated them, and on them made their morning's meal. This done, Standish, having posted two men as sentinels behind the cliff on the landward side, to secure the shallop against any attempt at surprise, took four other men, with Squanto as a guide, and went in search of the inhabitants. They had not gone far when they met a woman coming for the lobsters they had found on landing. They told her that they had taken them and gave her something in compensation, and she in return explained to them where her people were. Her sachem's name she gave as Obbatinewat. There is no record, other than this, either of him or of the place where he usually lived. He professed allegiance to Massasoit, though then in the territory of the Massachusetts, and at this particular time was in such terror of the dreaded Tarrentines that he did not dare remain long in any settled place. It would seem probable that he and his people were then tarrying somewhere on the shores north of the Neponset, perhaps standish's sword and a matchlock.' at Savin Hill or near Dorchester Heights ; for, while Squanto went thither with the woman, probably in her canoe, the rest returned to the shallop and followed them by water, which they would scarcely have done had their destination been any point further to the south and accessible by land. Rejoining Squanto and the Indian woman at the place she had indicated, Standish there found Obbatinewat, and, taking advantage of the terror in which he lived both of the Squaw-Sachem of the Massachusetts, the widow of Nanepashemet, and of the Tarrentines, he easily, by means of a promised protection, induced him to profess allegiance to King James. Obbatinewat then undertook to guide the party to the Squaw-Sachem, who lived somewhere on the Mystic, in the neighborhood, it is supposed, of the VVachuset. Going, therefore, presently on board their boat, they crossed ' [This sword came into the possession of the matchlock is also in the Society's cabinet and is Mass. Hist, Soc. in 1798, where it now is. See given here as a specimen of the weapons with then- Pn:n;^„!<^s, January, 179S, p. 115. The which Standish's me.i were armed -Ed] THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 67 the bay, and, as they did so, they noted with admiration its broad expanse and the numerous islands dotting its surface, which, though then deserted by their inhabitants, were covered with trees and the remains of those savage plantations which Captain Smith had observed upon them seven years before.' It was night before the explorers reached the mouth of the Mystic and landed the savages, who, however, found no one. It being too late to go further that day, they anchored their shallop and again passed the night on board. The next morning they landed, and, leaving two men to protect the boat, pushed forward up the country in the direction of Medford and Winchester.^ It was the first of October, of the present style, and a bright clear autumnal day, with the wind, what Uttle there was of it, from the west.^ Though en- cumbered by their arms, the explorers marched briskly on, following their Indian guides, until, having gone some three miles, they came to an aban- doned village ; another mile brought them to the place where the Sachem Nanepashemet had lived. His wigwam they found still standing, though deserted. It was situated on the top of a hill, and consisted of a wide scaf- folding of planks, raised some six feet from the ground and supported upon posts, and on this stood the hut. Still pressing forward, they next found in a swamp, not far distant from the hill, the dead sachem's stronghold, which consisted of a palisaded enclosure of about forty or fifty feet in diameter, and of the usual circular form. The single means of entrance was by way of a bridge crossing two ditches, which formed the chief protection for the place, one being within and the other without the palisade ; and " in the midst of this Pallizade stood the frame of an house, wherein being dead he lay buryed." The party had now gone perhaps four miles from their starting-point, and one mile more brought them to their destination, — another and similar stronghold on a hill-top, in which, some two years before, Nanepashemet had been surprised and killed by the Tarrentines.* Here, on what is supposed to have been Rock-hill, in Medford, they halted. The stockade had not been occupied since the sachem's death, nor had they as yet seen any of his people. Indeed, the rumor of their approach had evidently gone before them, for at several points they had come upon the bare poles of recently dismantled wigwams, and once they had found a pile of Indian corn covered only with a mat. They now, therefore, stopped at the second of these stockades and sent two of their guides out to hunt up the savages. About a mile away some Indian squaws were found at the place where they had carried their corn, and thither the party went. It was not without difficulty that the terror of the women was appeased, but at last the friendly bearing of the strangers had its effect, and they recovered their courage sufficiently to prepare for them such an entertainment as they could of boiled cod and whatever else they had. No males had yet been seen. At length, however, ' -^Mass. Hist. Coll.,v\.iiq. [The question of History of Boston, — \& the authority for the Smith's sailing into the inner harljor is examined course pursued hy the explorers on this day. in Mr. Winsor's chapter, next preceding. — Ed.] ^ Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 229. 2 The Harris MS., followed by Drake, — * Xiexier's Afoiirfs Relation, \^. izj. 68 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. after much sending and coaxing, one was induced to show himself, " shaking and trembling for feare ; " but finally they satisfied him also that they came to trade and not to injure him, and then he promised them his furs. They could, however, get no information as to the whereabouts of the Squaw- Sachem. They were simply told that " shee was far from thence." The day now being well spent the party prepared to return, and Squanto then took occasion to suggest the propriety of plundering the poor Indian women, who had just entertained them, of their furs ; " for," said he, " they are a bad people, and have often threatened you." Naturally the suggestion was not listened to, and the squaws, on the contrary, had by this time become so friendly that they accompanied the explorers the whole distance back to the boat. Then at last the spirit of trade proved so -strong with them that they even " sold their coats from their backs, and tied boughs about them, but with great shamefacedness, for indeed they are more modest than some of our English women.'' Their provisions growing scarce, the party now set sail, having a fair wind and a bright moon, and reached their homes at Plymouth before noon of the following day, the last of the week. They had been most fortunate in the time of their expedition, for they had enjoyed a series of clear, windless days, during which they saw the harbor and its surrounding country under their most attractive aspect, — through the translucent September haze, when field and forest and hill-side glow with autumnal tints, and it is a pleasure to breathe and move in the pure New England air.^ Their explorations, it is true, had not gone far, and they saw apparently the mouth of one only of the rivers which empty into the harbor.^ They had, however, in their going and coming, thoroughly traversed the bay, and taken in its great size and the number of its islands. It was, therefore, no occasion for surprise that they returned to Plymouth not without repining ; and, as they made report of the pleasant places they had visited, they could not help " wishing they had been ther seated." ^ Such was the first recorded exploration of Boston Harbor; for Smith, when he passed along the New England coast seven years before, had 1 The facts stated in Mourt fix perfectly the "such a name upon that river upon which since character of the weather. It was a period of Charles-towne is built (supposing that was it full moon, between the 29th of September and which Captain Smith in his map so named)." October 2. The wind was westerly, but so Ed.] light — " coming fayre " in the evening — that the " [Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, p. 105. It voyage of about forty-four miles occupied, each may be unsafe to say that Bradford himself was way, from fifteen to twenty hours. one of this party ; but that he made one of some 2 [It would seem, however, that at the same party of these early Plymouth explorers before time they discovered the Charles; for Bradford, Winthrop came would appear from his verses on in his History of Plymouth Plantation, — edited Boston, written long subsequently. It would be byC.Deane, p. 369,— claims for the Pilgrims that inferred that he landed, whenever it was, upon they really fixed that name upon the stream now the peninsula itself : — bearing it. They recognized that Smith had ap- "Yet I have seen thee a void place, plied the name to a river emptying into this bay ; Shrubs and bushes covering thy face : but when, on further exploration, there proved ^"'' houses then in thee none were there, to 1)6 several streams, " y= people of this place ^°' ^"'^'^ '^ ="''' =""' ='"' "^'^ "="=• which came first " - meaning presumably Stand- w',i"'°? '^"'"'' ^T'' °\ ."^^!P""S ... , ^ ■'. Without paying of anythlni;." ish and his party -were the first to impose . .W... //,i<. Cff., iii.- Ed.] THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 69 apparently hardly more than looked into it, as he did not even ascertain the non-existence of the great river, a mouth for which he suggested in his map, and which the savages assured him pierced " many days journeys the entrails of that country." There is no question, however, that long before Standish's visit the harbor was well known to the traders and fishermen of all the maritime nationalities. Of the French, in particular, the traces are curiously distinct. Smith, for instance, mentions that, when he visited the bay in 1614, a French ship had shortly before been there and remained six weeks, trading with the natives until, when he followed, they had nothing left to barter. A year or two later there is a passing record of another French vessel which entered the harbor to truck for furs ; and while she lay at anchor off Pettuck's Island the savages conspired to surprise her; which they successfully did, killing or capturing all on board, and then plundering and burning the vessel. Years afterwards pieces of French money, which not improbably fell into the hands of the savages on this occasion, were dug up at Dorchester. There were traditions also of shipwrecked Frenchmen, most of whom ended a miserable existence as captives among the Indians, though one or two were rescued from them.^ These passing traders, whatever their nation, left, however, no records of their visits ; and, though the harbor was familiar to many, no attempt at settlement had yet been made upon its shores. It is probable that, in consequence of Standish's expedition, some shelter necessary for the uses of an occasional trading- party may have been erected by the Plymouth people at Hull the next year ; ^ if so, it was but temporarily occupied, and had about it nothing of the character of a settlement. It was not possible, however, that so advantageous a point upon the coast should long remain a wilderness; and in 1621 its civilized occupation was already a question of time, and a very short time at that. The first attempt at a settlement was, in fact, made the very next year, at a place known by the Indians as Wessagusset, on the south side of the bay, and in that part of the present town of Weymouth locally known as Old Spain. The advance party of those concerned in this attempt made their appearance in the bay less than eight months after Standish's visit, about the middle of May, 1622. Ten in number, they came from the northward in an open boat. They had been sent out by Mr. Thomas Weston, a London merchant, who had a design of establishing a trading-post some- where on the coast, in the immediate vicinity of Plymouth. Weston was well known to the Plymouth people, and, indeed, had for a time been prominently connected with their enterprise. He, however, was interested only in its commercial aspect, being a pure adventurer of the Captain John Smith type, so common at that time. As such, he had very naturally looked upon the English exiles then at Leyden as convenient instruments ' Pratt, Relation, 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. 489 ; Morton, Nno English Canaan, bk. i. ch. iii. ; Savage, Winthrop, i. 59*, n. ; Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, p. 98. 2 Hubbard, New England, p. 102. 70 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. for the establishment of a permanent trading-station on that New England coast of which Smith had given so glowing and so deceptive an account. Accordingly, he had been very instrumental in sending them out. But, as time went on and the Plymouth people sent little or nothing back to their English partners, Thomas Weston was disposed to attribute the unsatisfac- tory financial outcome rather to " weeknes of judgmente, than weeknes of hands ; " and so he bluntly charged them with passing their time in discoursing, arguing and consulting, when they should have been trad- ing. Wholly breaking with them/ therefore, and selling out his interest in the Merchant Adventurers' Company, Weston now proceeded to organize an expedition of his own on what he regarded as the correct commercial plan. Though long concerned in trading voyages, he personally seems to have known nothing of New England. An inborn adventurer him- self, he was persuaded that a settlement of able-bodied men could, as Captain Christopher Levett afterwards expressed it, " do more good there in seven years than in England in twenty ; " ^ and he regarded families as a mere encumbrance to any well-designed enterprise. Accordingly, in the winter of 1621-22, he was busy in London organizing his new company on this approved plan ; and he made it up of the roughest material pos- sible, — the very scum, apparently, of the streets and docks of the English trading-ports, — " rude fellows" . . . " made choice of at all adventures." ^ Before sending out his main expedition, Weston took the precaution to dispatch the smaller party, which has been mentioned, to explore the way and fix upon a place of settlement. Those composing it were shipped in a vessel named the " Sparrow," bound to the fishing-grounds ofT the coast of Maine ; and the plan was for them to leave the vessel near the Damariscove Islands, and thence to find their way by sea to Plymouth, looking as they went along for some place suitable for their purpose. Their method of procedure was a curious exemplification of the reckless spirit of the times, as well as of the lack of forethought, which, throughout, seems to have characterized Weston's attempt. None of the advance party appear to have been familiar with the region to which they were going • a portion of them were not even seafaring men, and they were wholly unprovided with outfit. Not until they were on the point of leaving the " Sparrow " for a voyage of 1 50 miles along the New England coast in an open boat do they seem to have fully realized the nature of their errand. Apparently commiserating their helplessness, and being himself an adven- 1 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 190. Bxs.Aiovd,, Plymouth Planlation, p. 120; Winslow, 2 [The authorities for this and all other facts Good Newes ; Hubbard, New England, ch. xiii. ; connected with Weston's attempted settlement Baylies, Old Colony, chs. v. and vi. ; Palfrey, New are given in detail in Adams's Address on the Two England, i. 199. The narrative of Phinehas Pratt, one of Weston's company, still exists in manu- /p^n^^as ^r^^ script, and Richard Frothingham has edited it in 4 Mass, Hist. Coll., iv. ; but Mr. Adams says " it Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settle- can be accepted as authority only with very de- ment of Weymouth. The other chief conteitipo- cided limitations." It was Pratt who warned the rary and later writers to be consulted are: Plymouth people. Ed.] THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 71 turous fellow, the mate of the "Sparrow" volunteered to pilot the party, and under his guidance they skirted the shore to Cape Ann, whence they ran across to Boston Harbor. Here they seen^ to have passed a number of days exploring, and finally selected its southerly side as that most favorable for the proposed settlement, for the single reason that there were the fewest natives thereabout. Indeed, there would not seem at this time to have been more than a few score of the wretched remnant of the Massa- chusetts lingering in that vicinity.^ Making some arrangement for what land they needed with the local sachem, and growing uneasy at the vast- ness of the solitude and the smallness of their own number, they then left the bay and made their way to Plymouth. There they landed and were cared for; and, while their pilot returned to his vessel, they awaited the arrival of the main body of their enterprise. This was already on the sea, having sailed from London during the previous month. It consisted of some sixty '" rude fellows,'' whose " pro- faneness " their own leader surmised might not improbably scandalize the voyage, on board of two small vessels, the " Charity" and the "Swan," the former of one hundred and the latter of thirty tons measurernent. They all landed at Plymouth towards the end of June, and there they remained, to the great annoyance of their hosts, until some time in August. The necessary preparations having by that time been made at Wessagusset, the healthy members of the party were then removed thither, and towards the end of September the larger vessel, the " Charity," returned to England, leaving the smaller one for the settlers' use. Weston himself was not of the party, but had placed it in charge of his brother- in-law, one Richard Greene. Greene, however, had died during the summer at Plymouth, and a man named Saunders had succeeded him in control. The wretched sequel of Weston's abortive attempt belongs rather to the history of Weymouth than to that of Boston. Organized on wholly wrong principles, and managed without judgment ; unrestrained by any authority and controlled by no purpose ; at once reckless and cowardly, scantily sup- plied and utterly improvident, — it required but the first touch of a New England winter to develop its whole inherent weakness. Insufficiently clad and starving, the would-be settlers mixed freely with the neighboring Indians, first begging and then stealing from them, and thus incurring anger while they ceased to inspire fear. A number of them died, and by the month of March their affairs had come to such a pass that it seemed more than questionable whether any would survive. Meanwhile, the savages had become so incensed at the depredations committed upon them, that a conspiracy was formed to destroy not only the Wessagusset intruders, but the Plymouth colony also. Rumors of it reached the latter towards the close of March; and, after some anxious deliberation, it was determined to send an armed force to Wessagusset, there to meet the impending danger. Standish, accordingly, was authorized to take as many 1 Chronicles of Mass., p. 305; Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 310. 72 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. men as he deemed sufficient to hold his own against all the Indians in that vicinity, and to proceed thither at once. Placing no high estimate appar-. ently either on the number or the courage of his opponents, he selected but eight companions, and with these set sail on what is now the 4th of April. He reached his destination the next day, in wet and stormy weather, and proceeded energetically to the work he had in hand. Collecting the wretched stragglers from the woods where they were searching for nuts, apd from the shore where they were digging clams, he gathered them into the stockade, and issued to them rations of corn taken from the store which the hard-pressed people of Plymouth were reserving for seed. Having thus provided for his allies, he prepared to deal with the savages ; and the next day, or the day after, seven of them who had come within the stockade were surprised and massacred. Among those thus summarily dealt vi^ith were Pecksuot and Wituwamat, — two warriors who had been special objects of dread to the Plymouth magistrates. , This was the end of Weston's settlement. On the following day it was wholly abandoned, every European leaving Wessagusset, excepting only three stragglers, who, in defiance of orders, had wandered off among the savages. All of these were subsequently put to death by the natives.^ The remainder divided into two parties, one of which cast in their lot with the Plymouth colony, while the other and apparently larger body, supplied by Standish with enough corn for the voyage, went on board the "Swan," and with their leader, Saunders, sailed for the fishing-stations on the coast of Maine. They felt no further desire to remain in New England. Weston himself, meanwhile, had already left London, and was now on the way to his plantation. At the Maine fishing-stations he heard of its abandonment, but nevertheless started in an open boat with one or two men for Wessa- gusset. Less fortunate than his pioneer party of the year before, he was cast away upon the voyage, and barely escaped with his life. Though he recovered the " Swan," and remained some time longer on the coast, trading with the savages and in trouble with the authorities, he made no attempt to revive his plantation, or, if he did, it resulted in nothing. During the very months that Weston's enterprise was thus dragging to its end, another and scarcely less ill-conceived undertaking was being matured in England. The design now was to establish a princi- pality, rather than a trading-post, on : f^/)/^0 ^"^^ ^^^ England shore. The new (J^l^i^^ enterprise was organized by no less a i-^ J person than Sir Ferdinando Gorges; and his younger son, Robert,^ was in immediate charge of it. Robert Gorges had at that time recently returned to England, having seen "some service in the Venetian wars ; and now, being apparently out of occupation, ' Morton, ATew English Canaan, bk. iii. ch. v. nent people of the Gorges name, see N. E. Hist. ^ [Of the relationship of the various promi- and Gen. /{eg., January, 1875, PP- 44. 112. — Ed.] THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. IZ and not devoid of the prevailing spirit of adventure, he was ambitious of planting and ruhng over a species of feudality or palatinate of his own in the New World. As a preliminary, a patent had been issued to him by the Council for New England. By its terms it vaguely covered a tract on the northeast side of what was then known as Massachusetts Bay, but which included only the waters inside of Nahant headland and Point Allerton. The territory thus conveyed had a sea-front of ten miles, and stretched thirty miles into the interior, — not much, perhaps, in those times for a royal grant of unclaimed wilderness, but covering, nevertheless, some two hundred thou- sand acres of what are now the most thickly-peopled portions of the counties of Essex and Middlesex. No portion of either Boston proper or Weymouth could, however, be included within its limits, which seemed rather to cover the region lying back of the coast-line between Nahant headland on the north and East Boston on the south. The patent bore date Dec. 30, 1622; and during the next few months Robert Gorges was busy organizing his com- pany. It was part of a great scheme which, through sixteen years, had been maturing in the restless mind of his father. Sir Ferdinando. It looked to nothing less than the organized colonization of New England. Though somewhat discouraged and greatly reduced in means by the poor results of his earlier attempts of a similar character on the coast of Maine, Gorges was not disposed to abandon for the future what seems to have been with him the dream of a long life. He simply, as he himself expressed it, waited for "better times." ^ In 1620 he had obtained from the Crown a patent incorporating forty persons into what was known as the Council for New England, but which in fact was a private colonization and trading company.^ The territory nominally ceded to it covered not only all of what is now New England, but also New York and New Brunswick as well, and extended across the continent from sea to sea. In this com- pany Gorges had associated with himself a number of the most prominent characters in the kingdom. Indeed, no less than thirteen of them were noble- men, among whom were several dukes and quite a number of earls. Taught by experience. Gorges thus proposed to give his next attempt at coloniza- tion a broader basis of means and influence than he alone could command. The patent of the Council for New England was issued Nov. 3, 1620; and the very next month the Plymouth Colony seated itself within the territory covered by it. This rather facilitated than interfered with Gorges' plans. It was a stroke of good fortune ; for what he of all things wanted was something besides savages and wild animals to occupy his new domain. The application of the new settlers for a patent was accordingly at once com- plied with, aijd a new hfe seems to have been infused into the projects of the Council. Just at this time, however, when all else seemed at last propitious, the Parliament of 1621 was assembled, and Gorges at once found himself involved in new and serious difficulties. He was sharply called to account 1 [Gorges' Brief Narration is reprinted in 3 ^ [And a reincorporation of an old company. Mass. Hist. Coll.fVi. and Maine Hist. Coll., ii. — En.] See Stith's Charters. — Ed.] VOL. I. — [O. 74 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. because of the Council for New England, which was attacked as a monopoly, while its orders for the regulation of commerce were denounced as being in restraint of trade. Finally, when Sir Edward Coke, as Chairman of the Committee on Grievances, presented a list of things demanding redress, the patent for New England was first specified. The sudden dissolution of Parliament in January, 1622, relieved Sir Ferdinando from this difficulty; and the way now seemed to him clear once more. His sanguine spirit, however, again deceived him. Though Parliament was dissolved, the angry opposition of the Commons had, he found, produced an effect upon those he had thought to interest in the enterprise, which his utmost efforts failed to overcome. One by one they fell away from it, or failed to respond. A project for raising the large sum of one hundred thousand pounds among the London merchants had been one feature in his scheme ; but this had to be abandoned. A debt had been contracted for building a ship and pinnace for the trade it was proposed to carry on ; and there were no funds with which to discharge it. Finally, those who had taken shares in the ven- ture failed to meet their engagements, on the ground that they did not know what their shares were. Under these circumstances Sir Ferdinando seems to have determined on a supreme effort. A meeting of the Council was held at Greenwich on Sun- day, June 29, 1623 ; and, in the presence of King James himself the whole coast of New England from the Bay of Fundy to Narragansett was appor- tioned among twenty patentees.^ Their names included two dukes, — Buck- ingham and Richmond, — four earls, and numerous lords and gentlemen. The King drew for Buckingham. The plan was that each lot represented two shares, so that the person drawing it should introduce one other person into the enterprise, — making the whole number not less than forty .^ The success which attended this meeting seems to have decided both Sir Ferdinando and his son to go on at once ; and a few weeks later the latter sailed for America. He was armed with a commission as Lieutenant of the Council, and was to exercise a jurisdiction, not only civil and criminal but ecclesiastical also, of the widest nature. With his civil and criminal power it was intended that he should correct the abuses incident to the wholly unregulated condition of the trade along the coast. There was certainly room, too, for reform in this respect; for these abuses, as Sir Ferdinando Gorges truly told the Com- mons, tended not only to the dishonor of the government, but to the over- throw of trade, — for besides "beastly demeanors, tending to drunkenness" and debauchery, the reckless traders were freely selling arms and am- munition to the savages. But, in the mind of Sir Ferdinando, "the advancement of religion in those desert parts " was also a matter of high concernment; so the new lieutenant was not only clothed with wide eccle- 1 [See an account of the map showing this Council for New England," in the Proceedings oj division in Mr. Winsor's chapter. — En] the American An/iquarian Society for October, 2 Mr. Deane's paper on the " Records of the 1875. V^i- Dr. Haven's chapter. — Ed.] THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 75 siastical powers, but he brought with him a clergyman of the Church of England, having a commission conferring upon him, as Bradford after see- ing it subsequently wrote, " I know not what power and authority of super- intendencie over other churches . . . and sundrie instructions for that end." As at this time there was but one church — that at Plymouth — in all New England, the significance of the authority thus conferred is apparent. It was no part of the present scheme to place the seat of the new gov- ernment within the limits of either New Hampshire or Maine, though in both Gorges either then had or was planning settlements. The Plymouth colony was no enterprise of his ; but he now clearly proposed to absorb it, civilly and ecclesiastically, in his more ambitious scheme, — making of it a convenient instrument to his end. His son's destination, therefore, was fixed for a point in Massachusetts Bay, in close proximity to Plymouth. Though modesty itself, so far as titles and dignitaries were concerned, when compared with Gorges' previous short-lived settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec fourteen years before, the new government was organized on a scale sufficiently grandiose. At its head was the Lieutenant of the Coun- cil, with powers of life and death. He was further provided with . a council of his own, of which the Governor of the Plymouth colony for the time being was ex officio a member ; as was also Francis West, who had already been commissioned as " Admiral for that coast during this voyage," and Captain Christopher Levett, — both of the two last-named being then in America or voyaging in American waters.^ The Robert Gorges expedition, when it departed from Plymouth in the midsummer of 1623, represented, therefore, the whole power and dignity of the Council for New England. Specially favored by King James, it num- bered among its patrons and associates the most powerful noblemen in England. It went out also in the full confidence of being the mere fore- runner of a much larger movement of the same character, soon to follow. It was, also, as respects those who composed it, wholly different from Wes- ton's party of the preceding year, for Robert Gorges took with him a number of his relatives and personal friends ; ^ and there is every reason to suppose that the Rev. William Morell, the ecclesiastical head of the new govern- ment, was accompanied by at least one Cambridge graduate, — William Blackstone. Among Gorges' other followers was a Captain Hanson and one Samuel Maverick, then a young man of means and education in his twenty-second year.^ As the design of the expedition was to effect a settle- 1 An account of Levett's voyage was issued Historical Society for June, 1878 (pp. 194-206). in London, 1628. Cf. 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii., Detailed citations of the original authorities are and Maine Hist. Coll., ii. there given. 2 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 70. [The paper thus referred to was a contri- 8 The evidence upon which Blackstone, bution by Mr. Adams, and a most searching Maverick, Walford, Jeffrey, and Bursley have examination and collation of the accounts of been included in the Gorges expedition and these earliest settlers about the harbor. The settlement of 1623 is set forth in the paper en- previous writers who had glanced with more or titled "The Old Planters about Boston Harbor," less care at the intricacies of the subject were included in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts a writer in the Charlestown Records (copied in 76 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ment in an unbroken wilderness, care seems to have been taken to include in it a certain proportion of mechanics, among whom was probably Thomas Walford, the blacksmith. Otherwise it was composed of the usual traders and tillers of the soil, — respectable and well-to-do persons, some of them accompanied by their families ; and among these may have been William Jeffrey and John Bursley, subsequently of Weymouth. They reached their destination about the middle of September. Although the grant covered by his patent lay upon the opposite side of the bay, Gorges, not improbably alarmed by the nearness of the winter and tempted by the shelter ready to his hand offered by Weston's ■ deserted block-house, landed his party at Wessagusset. There they established themselves; and, as the place was never again wholly abandoned, the permanent settlement about Boston Harbor must be dated from this time, — September, 1623. The residence of the new Governor-General within his jurisdiction does not seem to have been what he expected. Possibly, for he died not long after his return to England the next year, he was already in declining health. He seems, however, to have made some attempts to exercise his authority, first summoning the Governor of the Plymouth Colony to Wessagusset to consult with him, and then, before that dignitary could answer the sum- mons, departing suddenly for the coast of Maine in search of Weston, whom he proposed to call to account for various trading misdemeanors. On his way thither he encountered a storm and put back, running into Plymouth, where he landed and passed a fortnight. Here he met Weston coming from the eastward, and a heated discussion seems to have -followed ; which, how- ever, resulted in nothing. Returning then by land to Wessagusset, his anger, after a time, seems to have gotten the better of his judgment, and he sent a warrant to Plymouth for Weston's immediate arrest and the seizure of his vessel. The arrest and seizure were made, and it would seem that Weston must have passed the winter of 1623-24 at Wessagusset,^ for dur- ing it he and Gorges went again to the coast of Maine, this time together. Finally, towards the spring, they reached an understanding. Weston, his vessel having been restored to him with some compensation for its seizure, thereupon departed for Plymouth, whence he shaped his course to Virginia. This angry quarrel with Weston appears to have been the principal inci- dent in Gorges' New England life. His jurisdiction on paper was wide and complete ; practically he had no power to enforce it. The fishermen and traders were stubborn fellows. They had paid no attention to the orders of Francis West,^ though commissioned as Admiral of New England ; and they paid none to Robert Gorges, though he was recognized as General Governor and was provided with a Council. Gorges accordingly sickened of his undertaking. Governor Bradford observed that he did not find " the Budington's Hist, of the First Church, and in Felt's Eccles. Hist, of N. E. ; Drake's Boston ; Young's Chronicles of Mass., and in part in Froth- Palfrey's New E,tgland ; Barry's Massachusetts'; ingham's Hist, of Chn)-testo7un) ; Mather's A f,7g/ia- Savage's Winthrop,\. 52. Ed.I lia, bk. i. ch.iv. ; Prince's Chronology: Holmes's 1 Bradford, PlymotUh Plantation, p. 153. Annals; Chalmers's Political Annals, ch. vi. ; ^ Hjjd. p. lai. THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 77 state of things hear to answer his qualitie and condition." His father, Sir Ferdinando, was also in serious trouble. The difficulty was an obvious one. The enterprise in England was great only in the names and titles of its nominal projectors and patrons. The Council for New England was, after all, but another name for Sir Ferdinando Gorges ; and the high dignitaries whom he so strenuously endeavored to bring into prominence and active participation in it, though in no way reluctant to have their names recorded as the proprietors of vast tracts of territory, evinced little disposition to advance the funds necessary to quicken the settlement of their new domains. The .meeting of the Council in the King's own presence, at Greenwich, in June, 1623, and the drawing of the lots, was, after all, but a stage effect, skil- fully arranged. The whole burden of carrying forward the undertaking now, therefore, devolved upon Gorges ; and he was not equal to it. He seems, nevertheless, during the months which followed the departure of his son, to have made every effort in his power to infuse something of his own zeal into his friends, even announcing his determination to go to New Eng- land himself with the party of the following year.^ It was, however, of no avail; and before the close of 1623 it seems to have become apparent, even to him, that no second party was to follow. A reluctant intimation of this fact was at last sent to Robert Gorges, reaching him, probably by way of the fishing-stations on the coast of Maine upon the arrival there of the forerunners of the fleet, in the early spring of 1624. He decided at once to return to England. A portion of his followers returned with him. Others, however, among whom was Morell, remained at Wessagusset. Beyond the fact of their receiving some assistance from Plymouth to enable them to overcome the hardships necessarily incident to every new settlement, the records contain no mention of those thus left at Wessagusset during the year which immediately succeeded the departure of Robert Gorges. The following spring — that of 1625 — he was followed by the Rev. Mr. Morell, who, having passed the intervening time among his own people, went to Plymouth for the purpose of taking ship from thence. It was then that he first informed the authorities there of the ecclesiastical powers which had been confided to him. He seems, during his residence in Massachu- setts, to have passed his time in a quiet and unobtrusive way, attending to his own duties and giving trouble to no one. As the fruit of his New Eng- land sojourn he has left behind him a Latin poem, showing scholarly acquirements of a good order, in which he, in a genial and somewhat imaginative way, describes the country and gives his impressions of it.^ Notwithstanding his early departure, also, those impressions were extremely favorable. He was indeed as much charmed by the region about Boston Harbor as he was disgusted with its aboriginal inhabitants. Nevertheless, even before his departure, it had become apparent to the little settlement that a great mistake had been made when they had placed themselves at ^ Sir Wm. Alexander's Map and Description of New England, p. 31. ^ i Mass. Hist. Coll., i. 125. 78 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. W^ssagusset ; and Morell speaks with something like feeh'ng of the hard lot of men who are " landed upon an unknown shore, peradventure weake in number and naturall powers, for want of boats and carriages," being for this reason compelled, with a whole empty continent before them, " to stay where they are first landed, having no means to remove themselves or their goods, be the place never so fruitlesse or inconvenient for planting, building houses, boats, or stages, or the harbors never so unfit for fishing, fowling, or mooring their boats." The settlers at Wessagusset were in fact repeating on a smaller scale the experience of those of Plymouth. The great scheme of colonization having failed, they were there to trade; and for trading pur- poses Wessagusset was in every way unfavorably placed. The only means of communication with the interior, from whence came the furs they coveted, was by the rivers ; for the region thereabouts was a wilderness devoid of natural ways and interspersed with swamps. Wessagusset was just below the mouth of the little Monatoquot, it is true ; but the Monatoquot was hardly more than a brook, and could scarcely have been navigable for any distance, even by an Indian's canoe. Meanwhile the Charles, the Mystic, and the Neponset each commanded the interior for many miles. Nor was Wessagusset any more favorably situated so far as the ocean was concerned. Even then a fleet of no less than fifty vessels annually traded along the coast, and their appearance in Boston Harbor was a matter of such ordinary occurrence as to have long ceased to excite surprise among the Indians. Wessagusset, however, was accessible to these vessels only by a narrow and devious river channel, so inconvenient for navigation that almost from the outset Hull was regarded as its seaport. There the Wessagusset planters met the coasting traders. Accordingly there is some reason to suppose that, about the time Morell returned to England, the settlers he left behind him divided, — Jefi"rey and Bursley, with some few others abiding at Wes- ^ p sagusset, while Blackstone, Maverick, and ^4Xfr\.uS^ "^ **■'*' ^^'- ; T- C. Amory's notes to his poem. THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 85 ford, the blacksmith, with his wife, were his nearest neighbors, hving at Mishauwum, or Charlestown, in an " Enghsh paHsadoed and thatched house ; '' while a little further off, at East Boston, Samuel Maverick, a man of twenty-eight, dwelt in a sort of stronghold or fort, which probably also served as the settlers' trading-post. This he had built with the aid of Thom- son, some three years previously; and it was armed with four large guns, or " murtherers," as a protection against the Indians. It was in fact the first of the many forts erected for the protection of those dwelling about Boston Harbor ; and it is not unnatural to suppose that it was constructed at the common cost of the old planters, with the exception of Morton, and was regarded as the general place of refuge in case of danger. It only remains to be said that all of these settlers belonged to the Church of England, and either had been or afterwards became associates and adherents of Sir Fer- dinando Gorges. They were all that was left of what had been intended as the mere forerunner of a great system of colonization, emanating from the Blackstone, Boston's First Inhabitant ; W. W. Wheildon's Beacon Hill. What information we have of Blackstone can be gleaned from Bliss's Rehoboth, p. 2 ; Daggett's Attleborough, p. 29 ; Callender's Hist. Discotcrse, app. ; S. C. New- man's Address at Study Hill, July 4, 1855 ; Arnold's Rhode Island, i. 99, ii. 568 ; and par- ticularly of his Boston life in Savage's Winthrop, i. 44, and Geneal. Dictionary ; Young's Chronicles of Mass. ; S. Davis, in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., x. 170 ; Drake's Boston, p. 95 ; L. M. Sargent, quoted in Hist. Mag., December, 1870; North America7i Review, Ixiii., by G. E. Ellis, and Ixviii., by F. Bowen. Motley the historian, in his early ro- mance. Merry Mount, introduces Blackstone as riding on a bull about his peninsula. He briefly tells Blackstone's story in "The Soli- tary of Shawmut," in the Boston Book of 1850. The document above referred to is endorsed, "John Odlin, &c., their depositions ab' Black- ston's Sale of his Land in Boston," and is printed by Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 296, as follows : — "The Deposition of John Odlin, aged about Eighty-two yeares; Robert Walker, aged about Seventy-eight yeares ; Francis Hudson, aged about Sixty-eight yeares; and William Lyther- land, aged about Seventy-six yeares. These Deponents being ancient dwellers and Inhabit- ants oi the Town of Boston, in New England, from the time of the first planting and setling thereof, and continuing so at this day, do jointly testify and depose that in or about the yeafe of our Lord One thousand Six hundred thirty and (four, the then present Inhabitants of s'' Town of Bosfon (of whome the Hono'''= John Win- throp, Esq'- Governo'' of the Colony, was Cheife) did treale and agree with M' William Blackstone for the purchase of his Estate and right in any Lands lying within the s'^ neck of Land called Boston; and for s"* purchase agreed that every householder should pay Six Shillings, which was accordingly Collected, none paying less, some considerably more than Six Shillings, and the s'' sume Collected was delivered and paid to M"'' Blackstone to his full content and satisfaction ; in consideration whereof hee Sold unto the then Inhabitants of s'' Town and their heires and assignees for ever his whole right and interest in all and every of the Lands lying within s"" neck. Reserving onely unto himselfe about Six acres of Land on the point commonly called Blackston's Point, on part whereof his then dwelling house stood ; after which purchase the Town laid out a place for a trayning field, which ever since and now is used for that pur- pose and for the feeding of Cattell. Robert Walker & W"- Lytherland further testify that M'' Blackstone bought a Stock of Cows with the Money he reC^ as above, and Removed and dwelt near Providence, where he liv'd till y= day of his death. "Deposed this loth of June, 1684, by John Odlin, Robert Walker, Francis Hudson, and William Lytherland, according to their respec- tive Testimonye, " Before us, S. Bradstreet, Cou''n''- Sam. Sewall, Assist.''' .Shurtleff notes that Odlin was a cutler by trade, and died Dec. 18, 1685. Hudson was the fisherman who gave his name to the point of the peninsula nearest Charlestown. Walker was a weaver, and died May 29, 1687. Lyther- land was an Antinomian, who removed to Rhode Island and became town clerk of Newport, and died very old. — Ed.J 86 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Royalist and Church party in England. The scheme had come to nothing ; and it now only remained for the next wave of emigration — which was to originate with the other party in Church and State — to so completely sub- merge it as to obliterate through more than two centuries every historical tradition even of its continuity with what followed. hohsuj / €]^e Colonial ^^erioD* CHAPTER L THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. BY SAMUEL FOSTER HAVEN, LL.D. Librarian of ike American Aniigitarian Society. CARLYLE, in his book on Cromwell,^ refers to our city of Boston thus : — " Rev. John Cotton is a man still held in some remembrance among our New Eng- land friends. He had been minister of Boston in Lincolnshire ; carried the name across the ocean with him ; fixed it upon a new small home he had found there, which has become a large one since, — the big, busy capital of Massachusetts, — Boston, so called. John Cotton, his mark, very curiously stamped on the face of this planet ; likely to continue for some time." The passage is a very good specimen of Carlyle's mannerism ; but it must not be mistaken for correct history. Many errors in recording minor particu- lars may be found in the narratives of early New England authorities, which have been adopted and transmitted by later writers ; this is one of them. The placing of Endicott's expedition after the procuring of the charter, when he really sailed more than eight months before, is another. It is a want of precision in them, which indicates that their minds were more occu- pied with the great results they had witnessed than with the order of events. Hence, a little readjustment of the time and manner of occurrences is some- times necessary. Governor Dudley's almost official letter to the Countess of Lincoln is described by himself as written by the fireside on his knee, in the midst of his family, who " break good manners, and make me many times forget what I would say, and say what I would not ; " and that he had " no leisure to review and insert things forgotten, but out of due time and order must set them down as they come to memory." ^ ^ Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elu- came above eight months before." — Prince, An- cidations, iii. 197. nals, edition of 1826, p. 249. "Governor Brad- 2 " Deputy-Governor Dudley, Mr. Hubbard, ford and Mr. Morton seem to mistake in saying and others, wrongly place Mr. Endicott's voyage he (Endicott) came with a patent under the after the grant of the Royal Charter, whereas he broad seal for the Government of the Massa- 88 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Hubbard is responsible for the assertion that the neck of land on the south side of Charles River was called " Boston," " on account of Mr. Cot- ton." ^ Yet the circumstance of bestowing upon the principal town of Massachusetts the name of the principal town of the English county of Lincolnshire has an historical significance which deserves to be more carefully stated. Dr. Young ^ was probably right in his opinion that the name "Boston" was given, not out of respect for Mr. Cotton particularly, but because so many of the prominent men of the colony were from that part of the coun- try. It was at a Court held at Charlestown, Sept. 7, 1630, that it was sim- ply ordered that Tri-Mountain be called Boston. Mr. Cotton was not men- tioned ; and no reason was assigned for selecting that name. It is rather singular that Winthrop, in his very particular diary, does n^t record this important act of the General Court. He uses the name for the first time about a month later, in stating the fact that a goat died there from eat- ing Indian corn, — which affords to his editor an occasion to remark : " Here is proof that the name of our chief city of New England was given, not, as is often said, after the coming of Mr. Cotton, but three years before." Governor Dudley intimates that it had been predetermined to adopt that name for whatever place should be chosen for the first settlement, — "which place we named Boston (as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on)." He gives no reason for it* Perhaps a motive may be found in the relations of the several interests that were combined in the organiza- tion of the colony. Various influences were united in the constitution of the Massachusetts Company that also affected the policy of the colony. The religious and political elements are more marked in the views and purposes of the men from the eastern counties of England, — usually termed " the Boston men." The commercial element existed more visibly among the adventurers from the western counties of Dorset and Devon, who were commonly designated as " the Dorchester men." The merchants and capitalists of London min- gled hopes of profit with the desire to do good and advance the cause of religion. Between the Dorchester men, with whom the movement for a plantation originated, and the Boston men, who were new associates, there is an appearance of competition — amicable, doubtless — in the matter of first establishing and naming a settlement in the new country. The Dor- chusetts." — Ibid. p. 250. Harris, in his edition the charter itself. Mr. Savage says of Hubbard : of Hubbard, tries, we think unsuccessfully, to " He seems to have slighted most of the occur- give a different construction to Hubbard's state- rences in which he should have felt the deepest ment. Hubbard says in the same place : "The interest, and for anything of date preceding 1630 Company having chosen Mr. Cradock Governor his information is sometimes authentic and (&c.), sent over Mr. Endicott." Cradock was often curious." Winthrop, JVew England, i. not chosen by the Company till May 13, 1629 297, note. (Easter week), the day assigned for elections by 1 Hist, of Neia England, ch. xxv. the charter, after letters had been received from ^ Chronicles of Mass., pp. 48, 49. Endicott. The first officers were designated by ^ Letter to the Countess of Lincoln. THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 89 Chester emigrants came in a large and well-appointed ship by themselves. They arrived a fortnight sooner than the rest of Winthrop's fleet, and fixing upon Mattapan (now South Boston), called it "Dorchester," — expecting it to become the principal town ; and there were good reasons for that anticipa- tion. Rev. John White, of Dorchester, in England, was the acknowledged father of New England colonization; and the existence of the proposed colony was chiefly due to his exertions. No other man and no other county were so well entitled to such a memorial of services in the first introduc- tion of permanent settlements here. The situation selected was well supplied with pastures and fields for till- age, possessing also a convenient harbor and facilities for trade ; and for a time it took the lead among the new plantations. Wood ^ calls Dorches- ter " the greatest town in New England." Prince says that Dorchester became the first settled church and town in the county of Suffolk, "and in all military musters or civil assemblies used to have the precedency." ^ In 1633, when four hundred pounds were assessed upon the colony, Dorches- ter was called upon for one fifth of the whole, — eighty pounds, — while Boston paid only forty-eight pounds.^ On the other hand, when the Boston men joined the Massachusetts Com- pany, after the two preliminary expeditions had been provided for, and after the royal charter had been prepared for signature, their superior wealth and standing gave them the ascendency in its councils ; and their election to the offices of the government placed in their hands the management and con- trol of the enterprise. They came over holding the power and responsi- bility of an organized community; and to their authority all previous and all subsequent operations became subordinate. When they decided upon " Tri-Mountain " as the seat and centre of their jurisdiction, they simply gave it the appellation by which, as a body, they were best known in the mother country, — the name of the place around which their home associa- tions were chiefly gathered. Thus it came to pass, legitimately enough, that Lincolnshire and its neighborhood of counties acquired the birthright of Dorset and Devon. The adopted metropolis naturally became, — as Wood describes it in the early period, — "although neither the greatest nor the richest, yet the most noted and frequented, — being the centre of the Plan- tations where the monthly Courts are kept." But a Boston already existed — nominally — on the coast of New England, for which King Charles himself, then only Prince Charles, stood godfather fourteen years before. In 1616, when Captain John Smith dedicated his famous map, made in 1614, to the Prince, he begged the favor of him to change the native names of places for more euphonious ^ New England's Prospect, London, 1635. England, he having placed the city of London ''■ Annals, edition of 1826, p. 287, note. in this neighborhood. Hist, of Dorchester, by a " The vicinity of Dorchester, Mass., was re- committee of the Dorchester Antiquarian and garded by Smith (perhaps we should say by Historical Society, p. 8. [A glance at Smith's Prince Charles, who gave the English names) map does not wholly confirm this view of Smith's as the probable site of the future capital of New location of London. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 12. 90 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. appellations.^ Of course the prospective head of the Church did not intend to honor particularly the Non-conformist capital of Lincolnshire, and doubt- less, without any special motive, suggested such names as happened to occur to him, — "Berwick," "Plymouth," ''Oxford," "Falmouth," "Bristol," "Cam- bridge," " Boston^ &c. It is possible that, when asked for a charter to the Massachusetts Company, his mind reverted to his examination of Smith's m.ap ; and this, in connection with the intrinsic advantages of the locality for one of the most valuable branches of trade of his dominions, perhaps led to the favorable conditions granted to the applicants. It is certain that on several subsequent occasions Charles exhibited a mind of his own on the subject, and independent sentiments more liberal and friendly than those of • his ministers and advisers.^ The transition from a trading copartnership engaged in the business of fishing to the embryo of a religious and political Commonwealth is the history of the Massachusetts Company, whose steps are to be now concisely traced. While the deeply wooded shores of the northern portion of the continent continued in undisturbed barbarism, the fisheries were frequented by gen- erations of hardy mariners of different nations, through whom a knowledge of their abundant riches was gradually communicated to European countries.^ A century of familiar acquaintance with the harbors and islands of the sea 1 " Humbly intreating his Highness he would please to change their barbarous names for such English as posterity might say Prince Charles was their Godfather." " Whose barbarous names you changed for such English that none can deny but Prince Charles is their Godfather." Smith, Desc. of New •England. [See Mr. Win- sor's chapter in the previous section. — Ed.] 2 See Winthrop's New England, i. 102, 103. Before leaving this point I wish to refer to a paper upon " Anthropology, Sociology, and Na- tionality," by D. Mackintosh, F.G.S., read at the forty-fifth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in August, 1875. ^" ^'^'^ portion of his lecture which re- lated to the ancestors of the British, the writer endeavored to show that "between the northeast and southwest portions of England, the difference in the character of the people is so great as to give a semi-nationality to each division. Rest- less activity, ambition, and commercial specula- tion predominate in the northeast ; contentment and leisure of reflection in the southwest." He concluded by a reference to the derivation of the settlers of New England from the southwest, mentioning as a fact that, while a large propor- tion of New England surnames are still found in Devon and Dorset, there is a small village called Boston near Totness.and in its immediate neigh- borhood a place called Bunker Hill ! Did some English political dissenter of 1775 ^' '''^ Devon- shire Boston (near which may now be found meeting-houses for Independents, Methodists, and Unitarians) thus signify his sympathy with the Boston of New England by christening a neighboring hill after the famous battle-field of our Revolution ? Local differences of manners, of dialects, and of temperament are strongly marked in England, and betray diversity of an- cestral derivation. It is a suitable task for our New England Historic Genealogical Society to determine whether the southwestern or the north- eastern sections of the mother country, or the intermediate point of London and its vicinity, contributed most largely to the numbers that ulti- mately formed the Massachusetts Colony. Hig- ginson, in the journal of his voyage, written from New England, July 24, 1629, describes the Com- pany of Massachusetts Bay as consisting of many worthy gentlemen in the city of London, Dor- chester, and other places. He does not mention Lincolnshire. The merchants of London already took a leading part, but the Lincolnshire men had not come to the front when he wrote. Hig- ginson writes again, in September, 1629, " There are certainly expected here the next spring the coming of sixty families out of Dorsetshire. Also many families are expected out of Lin- colnshire, and a great company of godly Chris- tians out of London." Young, Chron. of Mass. p. 260. ^ It is claimed that the first French settle- ments originated from this source, and that the active participation of Holland in the trade drew THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 91 had passed away without plantations or durable stations on land for settle- ment or traffic. During this period there would be more or less exchange of articles of use or ornament with the natives for furs or provisions. Occasionally a ship or boat would be wrecked, and the brass kettles of the fishermen, transmuted into breast-plates and decorations of metal, fur- nished materials for " The Skeleton in Armor," and other supposed relics of the Northmen.^ Mr. Sabine, in his learned Report to Congress, in 1853, on American fisheries, carries back the trade as a regular employment as far as A. D. 1 504. The Biscayan sailors of France and Spain led the way, while the merchants of Holland were more prompt than those of England in securing its profits. The earlier American fisheries were chiefly in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. The particular fisheries of Massachusetts Bay did not commence till about 161 8 or 1619. The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, and govern- ing of New England in America, succeeded to the Northern Company of Virginia as proprietors of the portion of the continent between the fortieth and forty-eighth degree of latitude on the 3d of November, 1620, and all British subjects were prohibited from visiting and trafficking into or from the said territories, unless with the license and consent of the Council first obtained under seal. In 1622 the President and Council of New England published an account of their condition, the difficulties they had encountered, their proposed plans, &c., which was dedicated to Prince Charles, on whom they relied for encouragement and assistance.^ It contains a summary of the past history of the Council, and affords very satisfactory reasons why thus far they had made no progress ; and also tends to explain why it is that the attention of the Pilgrims to this particular the same in life and being, so ought we to render place of refuge; while, again, the cod-fisheries an account of our proceedings from the root of the New England seaboard, whose emblem thereof unto the present growth it hath,'' &c. has so conspicuously figured in our popular hall It seems that after their patent passed the seals of legislation, first brought hither the merchant in 1620, "it was stopped, upon new suggestions ships of the southern ports of Great Britain. to the King, and referred to the Privy Council ' It seems safe to say at this time that no to be settled." "These disputes held us almost authentic vestiges of Scandinavian occupancy two years, so as all men were afraid to join with have ever been discovered in New England, us," &c. " But having passed all these storms See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, April, 1880, for re- abroad, and undergone so many home-bred op- marks of George Dexter, Esq., on communicat- positions and freed our patent, which we were ing a letter of Erasmus Rask to Henry Wheaton. by order of state assigned to renew for the [A chapter by Mr. Dexter in this volume covers amendment of some defects therein contained, this question. — Ed.] we were assured of this ground more boldly to '■i A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Flan- proceed on than before." It is just at this point tation of New England, London, 1622, reprinted that the records begin, and it was just at this in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. The beginning of the period that the fisheries were becoming very dedication is significant of the good will of profitable. Hence it was the time of effort and Prince Charles towards American colonization, activity on the part of the Council, and also as well as of his knowledge of the country, the time when inducements to emigration were " And for the subject of this relation, as your the strongest. Thus it happened for a year or high.ness hath been pleased to do it the honor two that there was a demand for grants from the by giving it the name of New England, and by Council, and a swarming o£ adventurers to the your most favorable encouragement to continue Bay of Massachusetts. 92 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. the two copies of their records which have been brought to light within a few years have their first entries so late as May, 1622.^ During the few years of prosperity in the fishing business, the Council made great exertions to secure their monopoly and to establish their authority on land; but they lost courage and energy as soon as the business of fishing was broken up by the Spanish and French wars, causing a loss of the best customers and great hazard to navigation. The re- action began in 1624, when the war with Spain commenced, and was made com- plete by the additional war with France in 1626, and the civil dissensions at home. But all those things were preparing the way for the rise of a very different series of operations under very different auspices. John White, of Dorchester, a Puritan minister, but not a Non-conformist, whose parishioners and friends were actively en- gaged in the business of fishing, being troubled at the godless life and unruly condition of the men employed by them (and having some views of his own about plantations, which he subsequently embodied in a tract), conceived the idea of establishing a settlement on the land. His purpose was to furnish assistance to the crews in the busy season, to provide supplies of provisions and other necessaries by cultivating the soil and trafficking with the natives, and to afford religious instruction to both planters and sailors. To this end, about 1624, he raised a common stock of three thousand pounds, and pur- SEAL OF THE COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND.^ ' Among the irregular proceedings of tlie Council for New England was an early attempt to divide the territory embraced in their patent among their members; a measure which did not acquire a legal validity. But the Earl of Shef- field, in whose portion Cape Ann was included, acting upon his anticipated right, conveyed five hundred acres there to Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow, their associates and assigns, with the "free use of the Bay and islands, and free liberty to fish and trade in all other places in New England." It was this conveyance (which came to nothing) that led to John Smith's state- ment in his Generall Historie, p. 247, "that there is a plantation beginning by the Dorchester men which they hold of those of New Plymouth." ' The story is very well told by Mr. Thornton in Mis Landins^ at Cape Anne, i62d,. His principal mistake was in giving too much significance to what was in reality one of the least important incidents of the period, having little or no bearing on subsequent events. [The matter of this abor- tive division of territory above referred to is fur- ther explained in Mr. Adams's chapter of this volume, and the map showing it is explained in Mr. Winsor's. For further, on Conant's Com- pany, see Felt's Salem ; George D. Phippen in Essex Institute Collections, i. 97, 145, 185; N. E. Hist, and Geneal. j?c^., July, 1848; Bradford's Ply- mouth Plantation, Deane's note, p. 169. Hub- bard's most valuable chapter is that on Conant, and his facts may have been derived from Conant himself. It is given in part in Young's Chron- icles of Massachusetts. — Ed.] 2 [An account of the seal, with the reasons for believing this to be the seal, is given by Charles Deane in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, March, 1867. Dr. Palfrey adopts Mr. Deane's conclusions. The patent creating the Council will be found in Hazard's Collections, i. 103 ; in Brigham's Ply- mouth Laws; in Baylies's Plymouth Colony, i. i6o; in the Popham Memorial, p. no, and in Trumbull's Connecticut, i. 546. The petition for it can be found in the Colonial History of Nnu York, iii., and the warrant in Gorges' New England. — Ed.] THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 93 chased first a small ship which brought over fourteen men, who were left at Cape Ann. The New Plymouth men, and perhaps others, had stages at that place for drying and curing fish, and it was now selected for a per- manent plantation. He did not hesitate to make use of the disaffected persons from the little colony at Plymouth who had located themselves there and at Nantasket, and selected the most trustworthy among them to manage the new enterprise. The associates in England struggled for three years against constant loss, till their capital was expended with no favorable results, when, becoming discouraged, they dissolved the company on land and sold their shipping and provisions. " The ill choice of the place for fishing, the ill carriage of the men at the settlement, and ill sales for the fish " are assigned by Mr. White as reasons for the bad results of the adventure.. In brief, the stock was ex- pended with no returns, the settlers quarrelled with those from New Ply- mouth, and among themselves, till the community of three years' duration fell to pieces, and its members who desired to leave the country were helped to do so. In the mean time, however, there were four " honest and prudent men" — Roger Conant, John Woodberry, John Balch, and Peter Palfrey, from the settlement — who had removed to Naumkeag (now Salem), and resolved to stay in Massachusetts if they were sustained by encouragement from England. On receiving an intimation to this effect, Mr. White wrote to them that if they would remain he would " provide a patent for them, and send them whatever they should write for, either men, or provisions, or goods, for trade with the Indians." Through the influ- ence of Conant they were kept to their engagement, and are entitled to the consideration of being among the originators of the Massachusetts Company.-' There are three contemporary statements of what was done at this par- ticular juncture, representing three different points of view. One of these is that of Mr. White, the leader of the movement in the counties of Dor- set and Devon. Another is by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the President of the Council for New England, and the chief manager of its affairs. The third is the letter of Thomas Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, showing his impression of the time and manner in which the " Boston men " of the eastern counties became connected with the scheme of a settlement in Massachusetts Bay. Hubbard, the historian, wrotd fifty years later, having been a young man when the events occurred. ' "Conant," says Hubbard, "secretly con- answer his people before they call, as he had ceiving in his mind that in following times (as filled the heart of that good man, Mr. Conant, since has fallen out) it might prove a receptacle in New England, with courage and resolution for such as upon the account of religion would be to abide fixed in his purpose, notwithstanding willing to begin a foreign plantation in this part all opposition and persuasion he met with to the of the world, of which he gave some intimation to contrary, had also inclined the hearts of several his friends in England." — Hist, of New England, others in England to be at work about the same And " that God," says White, " who is ready to design." — Planter's Plea. 94 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Mr. White's account, in the Planter's Plea, printed in 1630, is brief, and does not refer to his own services.^ " Some then of the adventurers that still continued their desire to set forward the plantation of a Colony there, conceiving that if some more cattle were sent over to those few men left behind, they might not only be a means of the comfortable subsist- ing of such as were already in the country, but of inviting some other of their Friends and Acquaintance to come over to them, adventured to send over twelve Kine and Bulls more ; and conferring casually with some gentlemen of London, moved them to add as many more. By which occasion the business came to agitation afresh in Lon- don, and being at first approved by some and disliked by others, by argument and dis- putation it grew to be more vulgar ; insomuch that some men shewing some good affection to the work, and offering the help of their purses if fit men might be pro- cured to go over, inquiry was made whether any would be willing to engage their per- sons in the voyage. . . . Hereupon divers persons having subscribed for the raising of a reasonable sum of money, a Patent was granted with large encouragements every way by his most Excellent Majesty." It will be observed that no mention is made by Mr. White of the grant from the Council for New England. After the Royal Charter the grant from the Council apparently was regarded as of little consequence, and it has not been preserved except in citations from it contained in the Char- ter. The conveyance, bearing date March 19, 1627-28, was made to six persons, doubtless the friends alluded to by Mr. White as offering the use of their purses, — Sir Henry Rosewell and Sir John Young, knights, both of Devonshire ; Thomas Southcoat, presumed to be of Devonshire ; John Humfrey, who had been treasurer of the fishing company, whose wife was daughter of Thomas, third Earl of Lincoln; John Endicott, of Dorchester, the leader of the first party of emigrants ; and Simon Whet- comb, perhaps of London, subsequently an Assistant, constant in his attendance at the meetings of the Company in London, and a liberal con- tributor to its expenses. The first portion of the records of the Council for New England, as we have them, extends from Saturday, the last of May 1622, to Sunday, Juns 29, 1623, inclusive. The second portion begins the 4th of November, 1631. The patent to the friends of the Massachusetts Company comes between these periods, and no official account of the circumstances attending the applica- tion for it and its being granted is known to exist. The years 1622 and 1623 were those of hopeful expectation on the part of the New England Council. They were looking for an amended charter for themselves from the Crown, and trying to raise money for their operations in the failure of their members to pay their dues. They clung to their aristocratic ideas, but were anxious to admit untitled persons to fellowship so far as might be 1 Mr. White is described as " a person of great Chester," &c. — Echard, Hist, of England, p. 653. gravity and presence," and as always having great To these titles have been added those oE " Father influence with the Pin'itan party, " who bore him of the Massachusetts Colony," and " Patriarch of more respect than they did to their diocesan." New England."— Fuller, Worthies of EH«iaitd ; He is styled "famous," "the Patriarch of Dor- Callender, Hist. Discourse. THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 95 necessary to secure their capital and their services. In their new " Grand Patent, to be held of the Crown of England by the Sword," it was resolved to call the country " Nova Albion," and to have power given to create titles of honor and precedency. They proposed to admit new associates on the payment of .^iio, " provided that they, so to come in, be persons of Honor or Gentlemen of blood (except only six Merchants, to be admitted by us for the service and special employment of the said Council in the course of trade and commerce, who shall enjoy such liberties and immunities as are thereunto belonging."") It is not impossible that the grant to the six friends of Mr. White, for purposes of settlement, was a modification of the idea of admitting six mer- chants to partnership for the sake of their practical utility. There is a degree of mystery attending the transaction for which no means of positive solution exist. It is expressly charged by Sir Ferdinando Gorges that changes were privately made in the terms and extent of the grant, through some influence of which he was not cognizant, affecting his own interests and those of his son. He says that the Council for New England were in a state of " such a disheartened weakness as there only remained a carcass in a manner breathless, when there were certain that desired a patent of some lands in Massachusetts Bay to plant upon, who presenting the names of honest and religious men easily obtained their first desires ; but, these being once got- ten, they used other means to advance themselves a step from beyond their first proportions to a second grant surreptitiously gotten of other lands also justly passed unto some of us, who were all thrust out by these intruders that had exorbitantly bounded their grant from East to West through all that main land from sea to sea. . . . But herewith not yet being content, they obtained, unknown to us, a confirmation of all this from His Majesty, by which means they did not only enlarge their first extents . . . but wholly excluded themselves from the publick government of the Council authorized for those affairs, and made themselves a free people." ^ In their irregular modes of doing business, the execution of papers was often left to different officers or members of the Council, the seal serving as a sufficient emblem of authority. Especially must this have been the case in the period of which no record remains, between 1624 and 1629, when the Council was compared by Gorges to " a dead carcass." It seems to have been the impression of the Council, as represented by Gorges, their most active member, that the grant to the friends of Mr. White was intended to be merely a place for a settlement in Massachusetts Bay, where, they were to be subject to the authority of the Council and to serve the interests of that body as the six merchants before mentioned might have done ; the enlargement of territory and privileges being the private work ^ Resignation of the Great Cliarter of New [The document of resignation is given in Haz- England, April 25, 1635, in ProceediJtgs of the ard's Historical Collections i. 390. — Ed.] American Antiquarian Society, April, 1867. ^6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of some friend or friends, whose position in the Council gave the power to make such changes. There is but one person, so far as known, whose offi- cial relation to the Council would enable him to accomphsh that purpose, and whose personal interest in the object would have prompted the act. The Earl of Warwick was an ardent promoter of the Puritan movement. When the records, which closed in June, 1623, with a formal division of New England among the remnant of the patentees, (twenty from the original forty), commence again in November 1631, the Earl of Warwick is president, his predecessor, Gorges, being treasurer. The old names have mostly dis- appeared from the minutes of the meetings, which were held at Warwick House, where very few, chiefly new members, were accustomed to attend. The books and papers and the seal were in possession of the Earl, who for some reason, when called upon to produce them, omitted to do so. He was, of course, treated with great respect ; but when he was in vain desired to " direct a course for finding out what patents have been granted for New England," and when the Great Seal had been repeatedly called for without effect, those who represented the pecuniary interest of the remaining asso- ciates, growing uneasy, voted to hold their meetings elsewhere, and Warwick appears no more among them. Gorges' narrative of transactions at the time of the grant to the Massa- chusetts Company, printed in 1658, when aff"airs had long been settled, shows that he was then absent from London, and had been applied to by Warwick for his consent : — " Some of the discreeter sort, to avoid what they found themselves subject unto, made use of their friends to procure from the Council for the affairs of New England to settle a colony within their limits ; to which it pleased the thrice-honored Lord of Warwick to write to me, then at Plymouth, to condescend that a patent might be granted to such as then sued for it. Whereupon I gave my approbation so far forth as it might not be prejudicial to my son Robert Gorges' interests, whereof he had a patent under the seal of the Council.' Hereupon there was a grant passed as was thought reasonable ; but the same was afterwards enlarged by His Majesty and con- firmed under the great seal of England." It might very well happen, in their careless way of conducting such oper- ations, that a vote of those present at the meeting of the Council would empower the President, or a Committee, to execute an instrument according to their judgment of what was advisable and proper. The alleged interests of Robert Gorges were doubtless believed to possess no legal validity. Under the circumstances of the case, and regarding the Council as incapa- ble of accomplishing any successful results by its own eff"orts, the bold idea of creating an independent proprietorship, of liberal extent, for actual settle- > The patent of Robert Gorges, conveying Mass. p. 51 ; Mass. Archives, Lands, i. i ; 3 Mass. ten miles in length and thirty miles into the Hist. Coll. vi. [C£. Mr. C. F. Adams Jr 's chap- land on the northeast side of Massachusetts ter in the present volume. A reprint of Gorges Bay, was disregarded by subsequent grantees will be found in 3 Massachusetts Historical Col- as invalid, partly for its uncertainty. Hutchin- lections, vi., and in Maine Historical Collections son. Hist, of Mass. i. 14 ; Young, Chronicles of iii. — Ed.] THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 97 ment by an earnest body of men, might naturally and honestly appear to the Earl of Warwick to present the wisest course for the Council to adopt. In view of the Council's probable dissolution, he might also deem it advisable that the records of the many irregular proceedings, causing confusion and conflict of titles, should not be left as the seeds of future controversy. The account books and registers of the corporation have disappeared, and what are called the Records are supposed to be only transcripts used in the Parliamen- tary examinations to which the Council were subjected. Whether placed in some secret depository at Warwick House, or committed to the flames, they carry with them the history of a multitude of ineffectual endeavors, from which only two of their members. Gorges and Mason, reaped any perma- nent results ; and these were in localities not interfering with the claims and rights of the Massachusetts Company. The rise of this company, limited as it was, comparatively, in its jurisdiction, is considered as giving the death- blow to the Great Council for New England. That unwieldy corporation, after seeking in vain to cause a revocation of the Massachusetts Charter, ultimately declared it to be a reason for the surrender of their own.^ Besides the persons named in the charter from the Crown, additional to the six original grantees, many persons of wealth and consideration came forward to promote its design. Headquarters, as had been the case with the Council for New England, were established at London, and before the royal sanction had been officially secured operations were fairly in progress. Yet it was only at great cost and by means of high influence that the over- ruling grant from the Throne was carried through its formalities, and passed the seals on the 4th of March, 1629. Thus nearly a year had passed since the grant from the Council on the 19th of March, 1628? But the Company did not wait for either of these legal securities. The first date in their records is March 16, 1628, when without organization they were en- gaged in fitting out Endicott's expedition. He sailed on the 20th of June following. Favorable letters being received from him on Feb. 13, 1629, preparations were hastened for another and larger emigration. Endicott was made Governor of the Colony, and a form of government drawn up for his direction.^ On the 23rd of March, letters were received from Isaac 1 [The declaration of reasons, &c., will be ^ It was just at this point of time that the found in Hazard's Collections, i. A manuscript men from Lincolnshire and other eastern coiin- of this declaration is in the Massachusetts His- ties, encouraged by Endicott's letters, present- torical Society's cabinet. — Proceedings, April, ed themselves for admission to the Company 1868, p. 161. — Ed.] "2'' March, 1628-29. Also it being propounded 2 [It was under this grant that the limits of by Mr. Coney in behalf of the Boston men Massachusetts were fixed three miles north of (whereof divers had promised, though not in the Merrimac, — a trace of which remains in the our book underwritten) to adventure .^^400 for zigzag line of our present northeastern boundary, the common stock, that now their desire was following a parallel of the river. The southern that ro persons of them might underwrite ^25 a bounds were three miles south of the Charles, and man in the joint stock, they withal promising gave rise to much dispute with the Ply- mouth people. The tortuous river, with all its southern affluents, offered ground for much diversity of opinion. See Brad- ford's Plymouth Plantation, p. 369. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 13. <^-.^ 98 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Johnson, a son-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, giving notice that " one Mr. Higgeson, of Leicester, an able minister, proffers to go to our plantation." On the 8th of April Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton sign an agreement to that end; and on the 25th the second expedition set sail, carrying those ministers and three hundred passengers with them.^ On the 28th of July Governor Cradock " read certain propositions, con- ceived by himself," giving reasons for transferring the government to Mas- sachusetts ; but at this point another writer takes up the story in the follow- mg chapter. Thus the Massachusetts Company in England, having accomplished its great purpose, was merged in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Those members who remained in the mother country retained an organization, and endeavored by small appropriations of land and some advantages of trade to leave chances of compensation for the money they had expended. Nothing, however, ever came of those uncertain provisions. No list of members was entered in their records ; but among the names casually men- tioned (about one hundred in number), as contributors or associates,^ will be found many prominently connected with the revolutionary events which changed the kingdom of Great Britain to a commonwealth.^ ^^,;^^un^ with those ships to adventure in their particular alone above ^250 more, and to provide able men to send over for managing the business." — Mass. Company Records. [The instructions to Endicott are given in the Mass. Records, i. 2, ii. 383 ; Amer. Antiq. Soc. Coll., iii. 79; and in Hazard's Collec- tions, 1. 236, 359. - The original authorities on this settlement are these: A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony, which Joshua Scottow, then in a somewhat senile frame o£ mind, but who had been a well-to-do and active Boston merchant for many years, printed in 1694. There are copies of the orig- inal edition in the Massachusetts Historical Society's library (Proceedings, i. 447), and it is printed in their Collections, fourth series, iv. (Mr. Savage gives a notice of Scottow in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. too. Cf. Tyler's American Literature, ii. 94.) Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, noticed elsewhere in this volume. Higginson's New England Plantation, July to September, 1629, of which three editions were is- sued in 1630 (all are in the Lenox I^ibrary ; copies also in Harvard College Library, &c.) ; and it is reprinted in Young, Force's Tracts, i., and in Mass. Hist. Coll., i. There is a second-hand ac- count in Morton's Memorial. There has been some unsatisfactory controversy as to whom the title of first Governor of Massachusetts rightfully belongs, but it has all arisen from a lack of clear perception of the facts, or from inexactness of terms. The conditions are clearly stated in the following chapter. Cf., further, S. F. Haven in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Coll., iii. p. c. ; Savage's note to "Winthrop's New England, ii. 200; Gray, Mass Reports, ix. 451 ; R. C. Winthrop's Life of jpohn Winthrop, j. ch. xvii., ii. ch. ii. ; Essex In- stitute Hist. Coll., V. and viii. — tD.] ^ Mass. Company Records. 2 The Records (so called) of the Council for New England may be found in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society of April, 1867, and October, 1875, edited by Mr. Deane, whose able exposition of the character and ter- mination of both corporations occupies a follow- ing chapter of the present work. [The reader is also referred to Dr. Haven's paper on the origin of the Massachusetts Company in the American Antiquarian Society's Collections, iii., and to his "History of the Grants under the Great Council for New England," in the Lo^vell Lectures, 1869, by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Records of the Massachusetts Company are printed in the Mass. Records, pub- lished by the State, i. 21, and in Young's Chron- icles of Mass. — Ed.) CHAPTER II. BOSTON FOUNDED. 1 630- 1 649. BY THE HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, THE History of The Massachusetts Bay Company has been brought • down, in a previous chapter, to the last week of the month of July, 1629. On the 28th day of that month, a momentous movement, fraught with most important results for the infant Colony, was made in the General Court of the Company. At a meeting holden at the house of the Deputy- Governor (Thomas Goffe) in London, Matthew Cradock, the Governor of the Company, " read certain propositions conceived by himself; viz., that for the advancement of the plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant tjiemselves and families thither, and for other weighty reasons therein contained, to transfer the govern- ment of the plantation to those that shall inhabit there, and not to con- tinue the same in subordination to the Company here, as it now is." It is much to be regretted that the Paper containing these propositions is not to be found, but the language thus given from the original Records indicates, clearly and precisely, the condition of things then existing in the Plantation at Salem, and the radical change which was contemplated by Governor Cradock. The Government then existing at Salem is styled a Government " in subordination to the Company here ; " that is, in London. The proposition of Cradock was, that this Government shall no longer be " continued as it now is," but shall be " transferred to those that shall inhabit there." The proposition was too important to be the subject of hasty decision, and the Records state that, " by reason of the many great and considerable consequences thereupon depending, it was not now resolved upon." The members of the Company were requested to consider it " privately and seriously;" "to set down their particular reasons pro et contra, and to produce the same at the next General Court; where, they being reduced to heads and maturely considered of, the Company may then proceed to a final resolution thereon." In the mean time, the members were " desired to carry this business secretly, that the same be not divulged." lOO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. This call for " private and serious " consideration ; this demand for par- ticular reasons, on both sides, set down in writing; and this solemn in- junction of secrecy, — furnish abundant proof that the Company understood how important and how bold a measure their Governor had proposed to them. It was no mere measure of emigration or colonization. It was a measure of government; of self-government; of virtual independence. It clearly foreshadowed that spirit of impatience under foreign control which, at a later day, was to pervade not only the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, but the whole American Continent. The General Court of the Company now adjourned, as usual, to the following month. They met again, to consider this momentous matter, on the 28th day of August, 1629; but the interval had not been unimproved by those who desired to have it wisely and rightly decided. It had cost them, we may well believe, many an anxious hour of deliberation and consultation; and, two days only before the meeting of the Court, an Agreement had been finally drawn up and subscribed, which was to settle the whole question. This Agreement was entered into and executed at Cambridge, beneath the shadows, and probably within the very walls, of that venerable University of Old England, to which New England was destined to owe so many of her brightest luminaries and noblest benefactors. It bore date August 26, 1629; and was in the following words : — The Agreement at Cambridge. " Upon due consideration of the state of the Plantation now in hand for New England, wherein we, whose names are hereunto subscribed, have engaged ourselves, and having weighed the greatness of the work in regard of the consequence, God's glory and the Church's good ; as also in regard of the difficulties and discourage- ments which in all probabilities must be forecast upon the prosecution of this busi- ness ; considering withal that this whole adventure grows upon the joint confidence we have in each other's fidelity and resolution herein, so as no man of us would have adventured it without assurance of the rest ; now, for the better encouragement of ourselves and others that shall join with us in this action, and to the end that every man may without scruple dispose of his estate and affairs as may best fit his prepara- tion for this voyage ; it is fully and faithfully Agreed amongst us, and every one of us doth hereby freely and sincerely promise and bind himself, in the word of a Christian, and in the presence of God, who is the searcher of all hearts, that we will so really endeavor the prosecution of this work, as by God's assistance, we will be ready in our persons, and with such of our several families as are to go with us, and such provision as we are able conveniently to furnish ourselves withal, to embark for the said Plantation by the first of March next, at such port or ports of this land as shall be agi-eed upon by the Company, to the end to pass the Seas, (under God's protection,) to inhabit and continue in New England : Provided always, that before the last of September next, the whole Government, together with the patent for the said Plantation, be first, by an order of (^ourt, legally transferred and established to remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said Plantation ; and provided. BOSTON FOUNDED. loi also, that if any shall be hindered by such just and inevitable let or other cause, to be allowed by three parts of four of these whose names are hereunto subscribed, then such persons, for such times and during such lets, to be discharged of this bond. And we do further promise, every one for himself, that shall fail to be ready through his own default by the day appointed, to pay for every day's default the sum of ;^3, to the use of the rest of the company who shall be ready by the same day and time. "(Signed) Richard Saltonstall, Thomas Sharpe, Thomas Dudley, Increase Nowell, William Vassall, John Winthrop, Nicholas West, William Pinchon, Isaac Johnson, Kellam Browne, John Humfrey, William Colbron." The leading Proviso of this memorable agreement must not fail to be noted : — " Provided always, that before the last of September next, the whole Governmeiit, together with the patent for the said Plantation, be first, by an order of Court, legally transferred and established to remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said Plantation." This was the great condition upon which Saltonstall, and Dudley, and Johnson, and Winthrop, and the rest, agreed so solemnly " to pass the seas (under God's protection), to inhabit and continue in New England." They were not proposing to go to New England as adventurers or traffickers ; not for the profits of a voyage, or the pleasure of a visit ; but " to inhabit and continue " there. And they were unwilling to do this while any merely subordinate jurisdiction was to be exercised there, as was now the case, and while they would be obliged to look to a Governor and Company in London for supreme authority. They were resolved, if they went at all, to carry "the whole Government" with them. Accordingly, at the meeting of the General Court of the Company on the 28th of August (two days only after this Agreement was signed), Mr. Deputy, in the Governor's absence, acquainted the Court " that the especial cause of their meeting was to give answer to divers gentlemen, intending to go into New England, whether or no the Chief Government of the Plantation, together with the Patent, should be settled in New England, or here." Two Committees were thereupon appointed to pre- pare arguments, the one "for" and the other "against" "the settling of the chief government in New England," with instructions to meet the next morning, at seven of the clock, to confer and weigh each other's arguments, and afterwards to make report to the whole Company. On the next morning, at the early hour which had been appointed, the Committees met together, and debated their arguments and reasons on both sides; and after a long discussion in presence of the Company, Mr. Deputy put it to the question as follows : — I02 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " As many of you as desire to have the patent and the government of the Plan- tation to be transferred to New England, so as it may be done legally, hold up your hands ; so many as will not, hold up your hands." And thereupon the decision of the question is thus entered upon the Records : — " Where, by erection of hands, it appeared, by the general consent of the Com- pany, that the government and patent should be settled in New England, and accordingly an order to be drawn up." Nearly two months more were still to intervene before this declaration of Independence was to assume a more practical shape. Many incidental arrangements occupied the attention of the Company at their meetings in September and October. On the 20th of this latter month, however (1629), a further step forward was taken, and one which betokened that there were to be no steps backward, — " nulla vestigia retrorsum." On that day, Governor Cradock " acquainted those present that the especial occasion of summoning this Court was for OryM^^^^^^crL- *:,^lr*i°; of a new Governor, Deputy, * V. A ^ ^w /p^ and Assistants ; the Government bemg ^ to be transferred into New England, according to the former order and resolution of the Company ; " — and soon afterwards, some other business having been previously transacted, the following entry is found in the Records : — " And now the Court, proceeding to the election of a new Governor, Deputy, and Assistants, — which, upon serious deliberation, hath been and is conceived to be for the especial good and advancement of their affairs ; and having received extraordinary great commendations of Mr. John Wynthrop,' both for his integrity and sufficiency, as being one every (way) well fitted and accomplished for the place of Governor, — did put in nomination for that place the said Mr. John Winthrop, Sir R. Saltonstall, Mr. Is. Johnson, and Mr. John Humfry : and the said Mr. Winthrop was^ with a general vote, and full consent of this Court, by erection of hands, chosen to be Governor for the ensuing year, to begin on this present day ; who was pleased to accept thereof, and thereupon took the oath to that place appertaining." Mr. John Humfrey was then, in like manner, chosen Deputy-Governor ; and Sir Richard Saltonstall, Mr. Isaac Johnson, Mr. Thomas Dudley, Mr. John Endicott, and fourteen others, were chosen to be Assistants. John Winthrop, who was thus, on the 20th day of October, 1629, old style, or the 30th, as we should now reckon it, unanimously elected Gov- ernor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and with whose career and character the fortunes of Massachusetts were to be so closely associated for the next twenty years, was then in the forty-first year of his age. He was born at Edwardston, near Groton, in Suffolk, on the 12th day of 1 The name of Winthrop is spelled three or four different ways in these Records. This very paragraph uses y in one line, and i in others. And so it is with other names. BOSTON FOUNDED. 103 January, 1587, old style, or, as it would now be counted, the 22d of January, 1588. His grandfather, Adam Winthrop, the second of that name on the family pedigree, was a wealthy Clothier of Suffolk, to whom the Manor of Groton had been granted by Henry VHI. in 1544, immediately after the Reformation, of which he and his family were zealous supporters, and he had been Master of the great Cloth Workers' Company in London, in 155 1. His third son, Adam, — a lawyer, who had graduated at Mag- dalen College, Cambridge, and had been afterwards connected with that University as Auditor of Trinity and St. John's Colleges, — married, in 1574, Alice Still, a sister of Dr. John Still, then Master of Trinity, and afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells. She dying, without surviving issue, he married, secondly, Anne, a daughter of Henry Browne of Edwardston. Of this marriage, John, the Governor, was the only son. There is ample evidence, in his life and writings, that he must have enjoyed a good education; but it has not been ascertained at what schools it was com- menced, or how far it was prosecuted beneath the paternal roof. But we learn from his father's Diary that he was admitted into Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, on the 8th of December, 1602, and that he remained at the University for two years. An early love-match prevented him from staying to take a Degree. He was married on the i6th of April, 1604, in the first half of his eighteenth year, to Mary Forth, daughter and sole heiress of John Forth, Esq., of Great Stambridge, in the County of Essex. Of the life of Winthrop for the next ten or twelve years but few details are to be found, and those chiefly of a domestic character. He resided for several years with his wife's family at Great Stambridge. The wife of his youth bore him six children, the eldest of whom, born on the 22d of Feb- ruary, 1606, is known to history as the Governor of Connecticut. Nine years afterwards, in 161 5, his wife died, and he was left a widower, in his twenty-eighth year. After an interval of less than a year (according to the customs of that period), he was married again to Thomasine Clopton, daughter of William Clopton, Esq., of Castleins, a seat near Groton. But a year and a day only had elapsed since her marriage, when she and her infant child were committed to the grave. No wonder that, under such successive and severe bereavements, his spirit should have been sorely tried. No wonder that he was oppressed with melancholy, and that he should have been led to conceive and entertain many misgivings as to his religious condition. He gave himself to the study of divinity, and seriously contemplated an abandonment of his profession as a lawyer, with a view to take orders as a clergyman. His " Religious Experiences," as recorded by himself from time to time, during a period of three years, furnish a striking testimony td his Christian faith and character, and have a charm not unlike that which belongs to the devotional writings of Baxter or Bunyan. But his father and friends dissuaded him from any change of his profession; and we find him, not many years afterwards, discharging I04 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. his duties as a justice of the peace, following the circuits, holding a court as Lord of the Manor of Groton, admitted as a member of the Inner Tem- ple in London, preparing papers for parliamentary committees, and exer- cising the office of an attorney of the Court of Wards and Liveries, of which Sir Robert Naunton was then Master. Meantime he was once more married, in 1618, to Margaret, the daughter of Sir John Tyndal, knight, of Great Maplested, in the >'' L., -*■ Cjl..// ^-^J r y- ■/> county of Essex, who was ^-^ ^ / ^» y^ * J-l^,^ ^^a spared to him as an affec- wife for thirty years. Eleven or twelve of those years were passed in England ; and the idea of leaving their native land for a remote and unsettled region in another hemisphere was hardly in the dreams of either of them until the occasion presented itself Winthrop was not one of the original Massachusetts Company. His name was not with those of Cradock and Saltonstall and Humfry and Isaac Johnson and Endicott in the Massachusetts Charter, signed in behalf of Charles I. on the 4th of March, 1628-29. Nor does he seem to have been associated with them as an adventurer in the joint stock of the Com-, pany. But now that a great responsibility was to be incurred and a bold step taken, in transferring the Patent and the whole Government to New England, he appears to have been summoned at once to their counsels, and at the earliest practicable moment to have been invested with their Chief Magistracy. He said of himself, on a most solemn occasion, a few years after his arrival in New England : " I was first chosen to be Governor, without my seeking or expectation, — there being then divers other gentlemen who, for their abilities every way, were far more fit." Those gentlemen, how- ever, were of a different opinion ; and he was obliged to confess, in his little memorandum of private and personal self-communings, that " it is come to that issue, as, in all probabilitye, the welfare of the Plantation depends upon my assistance : for the maine pillars of it, beinge gentlemen of high qualitye and eminent parts, bothe for wisdom and Godlinesse, are determined to sit still if I deserte them." Rut the considerations which induced Winthrop and the other signers of the Cambridge Agreement to come over to New England were of no mere private or personal character. They had relation to the condition of England at that day, — its social, moral, religious, and political condition. Charles I. was just entering on that course of absolute government which brought him at last to the block. Forced loans and illegal taxes were imposed and extorted. Buckingham had just fallen beneath the stroke of an assassin ; but Strafford stood ready to replace him as the tool of despot- ism. Laud, already Bishop of London, and virtually Primate, was assert- ing the Divine right of Kings for his Master, and assuming the whole power BOSTON FOUNDED. , I05 of the Church for himself. Puritanism was his pet aversion. Parliament was dissolved, and the King's intention announced of ruling without one. Proclamations, Star Chamber and High Commission Courts, were to be the only instruments of government. The Marshalsea and the Gate-House were crowded with gentlemen who had refused to yield to arbitrary exac- tions. Free Speech was the special subject of proscription ; and the brave Sir John Eliot was doomed to linger out his few remaining years and die in the Tower. Winthrop gives a faint impression of all this in a letter to his wife, dated May 15, 1629, as follows: — " It is a great favour, that we may enjoye so much comfort & peace in these so evill & declining tymes, & when the increasinge of our sinnes gives us so great cause to looke for some heavye scourge & Judgment to be cominge upon us : The Lorde hath admonished, threatened, corrected, & astonished us, yet we growe worse & worse, so as his Spirit will not allwayes strive with us, he must needs give waye to his furye at last : He hath smitten all the other Churches before our eyes, & hath made them to drinke of the bitter cuppe of tribulatio, even unto death. We sawe this, & humbled not ourselves, to tume from our evill wayes, but have provoked him more than all the nations rounde about us : therefore he is tuminge the Cuppe towards us also, & be- cause we are the last, our portion must be, to drinke the verye dreggs which remaine : My dear wife, I am veryly persuaded, God will bringe some heavye Affliction upon this lande, & that speedylye : but be of good comfort, the hardest that can come shall be a meanes to mortifie this bodye of corruption, which is a thousand tymes more dangerous to us then any outward tribulation, & to bring us into nearer comunion with our Lord Jesus Christ, & more assurance of his kingdome. If the Lord seeth it wilbe good for us, he will provide a shelter & a hidinge place for us & others, as a Zoar for Lott, Sarephtah for his prophet, &c. : if not, yet he will not forsake us : though he correct us with the roddes of men, yet if he take not his mercye & lovinge kind- nesse from us we shalbe safe." In these words, " If the Lord seeth it will be good for us, he will provide a shelter and a hiding place for us and others," is found the first intimation of what followed. Winthrop was at that moment engaged in preparing a memorable paper, which has sometimes been ascribed to others, and which has been printed in more than one volume, with many variations and abbreviations, but of which the original draught has recently been found among his own manuscripts and in his own handwriting.^ That original draught is indorsed "For N. E. May, 1629." It is sometimes referred to in history as " The Conclusions for New England," and sometimes as " General Considerations for the Plantation of New England." But its true title is, " Reasons to be considered for justifying the undertakers of the intended Plantation in New England, and for encouraging such whose hearts God shall move to join with them in it." The second of the Rea- sons is in terms almost identical with the letter just quoted : — " 2. All other churches of Europe are brought to desolation, & o' sinnes, for w''' the Lord beginnes allreaddy to frowne upon us & to cutte us short, doe threatne evill 1 [See Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, July, 1865. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 14. I06 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. times to be comminge upon us, & whoe knowes, but that God hath provided this place to be a refuge for many whome he meanes to save out of the general! callamity, & see- inge the Church hath noe place lefte to flie into but the wildernesse, what better worke can there be, then to goe & provide tabernacles & foode for her against she comes thether : " " The Church hath no place left to fly into but the wilderness." This was the idea which had carried the Pilgrims to Plymouth ten years before, and which is now in part urging the Puritans to Massachusetts. But indeed, as we have seen, both Church and State were now in peril. Reli- gious and civil rights alike were trampled under foot at home ; and " a shelter and a hiding-place " could only be sought and secured beyond the seas. Meantime, however, the Puritans of Massachusetts had higher and larger views than merely securing a refuge for themselves. A great country was to be settled and civilized and Christianized. The very first clause of The Conclusions for New England, as prepared by Winthrop in May, 1629, sets forth that "it will be a service to the Church of great consequence to carry the Gospell into those partes of the World, to helpe on the comminge of the fulnesse of the Gentiles ; " and a later Consid- eration, in the same Paper, is as follows : — " 3. It is the revealed will of God that the Gospell should be preached to all nations, & though we know not whether these Barbarians will receive it at first or noe, yet it is a good worke to serve Gods providence in offering it to them (& this is fittest to be doone by Gods owne servants) for God shall have glory by it though they refuse it, & there is good hope that the Posterity shall by this meanes be gathered into Christs sheepefould." The spreading of the Gospel, and the conversion of the Heathen, were foremost in the contemplation of the New England Fathers. This Paper of Winthrop's was widely circulated at the time among the great Puritan leaders in England. It found its way to the noble Sir John Eliot, while imprisoned in the Tower, and a copy of it has recently been discovered among his papers at Port Eliot, in Cornwall. He seems to have held correspondence in regard to it with the famous John Hampden, and a letter of Hampden's to Sir John has been printed both in Nugent's Memorials of Hampden, and in Forster's Life of Eliot, requesting that " the Paper of Considerations Concerning the Plantation " might be sent to him, and promising to return it safely after it had been transcribed. Nothing could be more interesting or suggestive than this positive proof that the views of the Massachusetts Company were communicated to those great English Patriots, Eliot and Hampden, and were the subject of their consultation and correspondence. " Both of them," as Forster says, " in that evil day for religion and freedom, had sent their thoughts across the wide Atlantic towards the New World that had risen beyond its waters ; and both had been eager in promoting those plans for emigra- BOSTON FOUNDED. 107 tion which in the few succeeding years exerted so momentous an influence over the destiny of mankind. It was in this very year" (1629), he con- tinues, " that the Company of Massachusetts Bay was formed ; and though the immediate design had scarcely at first extended beyond the provision of a refuge abroad for the victims of tyranny in Church and State at home, it soon became manifest that there had entered also into it a larger and grander scheme, that, with more security for liberty of person and freedom to worship God, had mingled the hope of planting in those distant regions a free Commonwealth and citizenship to balance and redress the old ; and that thus early such hopes had been interchanged respecting it between such men as Eliot and Hampden, Lord Brooke, Lord Warwick, and Lord Say and Sele." ^ Four or five months were now occupied in busy preparations for the great Emigration. Eleven or twelve ships were to be employed in carry- ing the Governor and Company across the Atlantic. Four of them were ready to sail together from Southampton on the 22d of March, and on that day Governor Winthrop and the Company embarked for New England, taking the Charter of Massachusetts with them. In the principal ship, with Winthrop, were Sir Richard Saltonstall ; Isaac Johnson with his wife, the Lady Arbella, a daughter of the. Earl of Lincoln ; George Phillips, the Minister; Thomas Dudley, the Deputy Governor; William Coddington, afterwards Governor of Rhode Island ; and Simon Bradstreet, who was to survive them all, and to be known as " the Nestor of New England." Two of the Governor's young children were with him, but his wife was obliged to postpone her departure for another year. John Wilson, the first Minister of Boston, seems to have been in one of the other vessels, which had the names of the "Talbot," the "Ambrose," and the "Jewel." The ship which bore Winthrop and the Charter had long been known as the " Eagle," but was now called the "Arbella," in compliment to the Earl's daughter who was one of her passengers. Detained by unfavorable winds at Cowes, and again off Yarmouth, the voyage was not fairly commenced until the 8th of April. In the mean time, the delay had given opportunity for those of the Company on board the "Arbella" to address to those from whom they were parting their admirable Farewell Letter, entitled : " The Humble Request of his Majesty's Loyall Subjects, the Governor and the Company late gone for New England; to the rest of their brethren in and of the Church of England ; for the obtaining of their Prayers, and the removal of suspicions, and misconstruction of their Intentions." This Letter belongs to the History of Massachusetts. Nothing more tender or more noble can be found in the annals of New England or of Old England. It furnishes the key-note of the whole enterprise, and illus- trates the spirit and character of those engaged in it. Not a word of it can be spared from any just account of the Puritan leaders of 1630. It is as follows : — ' Forster, Life of Sir John Eliot, ii. p. 531. I08 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " Reverend Fathers and Brethren, — The general rumor of this solemn enter- prise, wherein ourselves with others, through the providence of the Almighty, are engaged, as it may spare us the labor of imparting our occasion unto you, so it gives us the more encouragement to strengthen ourselves by the procurement of the prayers and blessings of the Lord's faithful servants. For which end we are bold to have recourse unto you, as those whom God hath placed nearest his throne of mercy ; which as it affords you the more opportunity, so it imposeth the greater bond upon you to intercede for his people in all their straits. We beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of the Lord Jesus, to consider us as your brethren, standing in very great need of your help, and earnestly imploring it. And howsoever your charity may have met with some occasion of discouragement through the misreport of our inten- tions, or through the disaffection or indiscretion of some of us, or rather amongst us (for we are not of those that dream of perfection in this world) , yet we desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our Company, as those who esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother ; and cannot part from our native Country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breasts. " We leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there ; but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while we ■ have breath, sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of lier bounds in the Kingdom of Christ Jesus. " Be pleased, therefore, reverend fathers and brethren, to help forward this work now in hand ; which if it prosper, you shall be the more glorious, howsoever your judgment is with the Lord, and your reward with your God. It is a usual and laudable exercise of your charity, to commend to the prayers of your congregations the necessities and straits of your private neighbors : do the like for a Church spring- ing out of your own bowels. We conceive much hope that this remembrance of us, if it be frequent and fervent, will be a most prosperous gale in our sails, and provide such a passage and welcome for us from the God of the whole earth, as both we which shall find it, and yourselves, with the rest of our friends, who shall hear of it, shall be much enlarged to bring in such daily returns of thanksgivings, as the specialties of his providence and goodness may justly challenge at all our hands. You are not ignorant that the spirit of God stirred up the Apostle Paul to make continual mention of the Church of Philippi, which was a Colony from Rome ; let the same spirit, we beseech you, put you in mind, that are the Lord's remembrancers, to pray for us without ceasing, who are a weak colony from yourselves, making con- tinual request for us to God in all your prayers. " What we entreat of you that are the ministers of God, that we also crave at the hands of all the rest of our brethren, that they would at no time forget us in their private solicitations at the throne of grace. " If any there be who, through want of clear intelligence of our course, or tenderness of affection towards us, cannot conceive so well of our way as we could desire we would entreat such not to despise us, nor to desert us in their prayers and affections, but to consider rather that they are so much the more bound to express the bowels of their BOSTON FOUNDED. lOg compassion towards us, remembering always that botli nature and grace doth ever bind us to relieve and rescue, with our utmost and speediest power, such as are dear unto us, when we conceive them to be running uncomfortable hazards. " What goodness you shall extend to us in this or any other Christian kindness, we, your brethren in Christ Jesus, shall labor to repay in what duty we are or shall be able to perform, promising, so far as God shall enable us, to give him no rest on your behalfs, wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may not altogether unexpectedly, nor, we hope, unprofitably, befall us. And so com- mending you to the grace of God in Christ, we shall ever rest Your assured friends and brethren, "John Winthrop, Gov. Richard Saltonstall, Charles Fines,i Isaac Johnson, Thomas Dudley, George Phillipps, William Coddington, &c. &c. "From Yarmouth, aboard the Arbella, April 7, 1630." While they were still at " the Cowes," Governor Winthrop had written the first pages of a Diary or Journal, which, having been continued until within a few weeks of his death, has supplied the main materials of early Massachusetts History. He seems to have appreciated the full magnitude of the work on which he had entered ; to have realized that he was going out to lay the foundation of a great Commonwealth ; and to have felt that no incident connected with such an enterprise could be too trifling to be recorded. He looked forward to some day of leisure for revising what he had written, and making it more worthy of himself and of his subject. But no such leisure time was ever vouchsafed to him, and his daily record of events as they occurred, providentially preserved, and now known as Winthrop's History of New England, furnishes almost all which is known of the first nineteen years of Massachusetts. The voyage of the " Arbella " and her consorts was a tedious one, and it was not until the seventy-sixth day that they came to anchor in the harbor of Salem. On the 12th of June, old style, or, as we should count it, the 22d of June, 1630, Governor Winthrop, with the Massachusetts Company, and with the Charter, are fairly arrived on the shores of New England. The Chief Government of Massachusetts was now established on her own soil, and there was no longer to be any subordination to a Governor and Company in London. John Endicott, who had been a devoted and vigorous ruler of the little Plantation, of which he had been appointed Governor a year before, but whose jurisdiction was now merged in the General Government of the Massachusetts Colony, of which he had been J Doubtless of the family o£ Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, one of whose daughters married the young Earl of Lincoln, a brother of the Lady Arbella Johnson. no THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. elected one of the Assistants, seems to have come at once to welcome Winthrop, and to offer to him and the Company all the hospitalities in his power. The relations of Endicott and Winthrop were of the most cordial character as long as they both lived. The account of the arrival and landing of the Company is thus simply and pleasantly recorded by Governor Winthrop in his Journal : — "Saturday, 12. About four in the morning we were near our port. We shot off two pieces of ordnance, and sent our skiff to Mr. Peirce his ship (which lay in the harbor, and had been there days before). About an hour after, Mr. AUerton came aboard us in a shallop as he was sailing to Pemaquid. As we stood towards the harbor, we saw another shallop coming to us ; so we stood in to meet her, and passed through the narrow strait between Baker's Isle and Little Isle, and came to an anchor a little within the islands. "Afterwards Mr. Peirce came aboard us, and returned to fetch Mr. Endecott, who came to us about two of the clock, and with him Mr. Skelton and Capt. Levett. We that were of the assistants, and some other gentlemen, and some of the women, and our captain, returned with them to Nahumkeck, where we supped with a good venison pasty and good beer, and at night we returned to our ship, but some of the women stayed behind. " In the mean time most of our people went on shore upon the land of Cape Ann, which lay very near us, and gathered store of fine strawberries." Among the most noteworthy incidents of the long voyage which had thus happily been brought to an end, was the Discourse written, and prob- ably delivered, by Governor Winthrop, and which came to light less than half a century ago, with the following title evidently prepared by some other hand than that of the author : — " A Modell of Christian Charity, written on board the ' Arbella,' on the Atlantic Ocean, by the Hon. John Winthrop, Esq., in his passage (with a great company of Religious people, of which Christian tribes he was the Brave Leader and famous Governor ;) from the Island of Great Brittaine to New- England in the North America, Anno 1630." In this discourse,^ after an elaborate discussion of Christian charity or love, the Governor proceeded to speak of the great work in which they had embarked, and of the means by which it was to be accomplished. The spirit of the whole is condensed in the following passage from the conclusion : — "Thus stands the case between God and us. We are entered into a Covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those ends, upon these and those accounts. We have hereupon besought of Him favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath he ratified this Covenant and sealed our Commission and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect 1 [The original MS. is in the library of the N. Y. Historical Society. — Ed.] BOSTON FOUNDED. Ill the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dis- sembHng with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us ; be revenged of such -a (sinful) people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a Covenant. " Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other's condition our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness, and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies ; when he shall make us a praise and a glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ' The Lord make it likely that of New England.^ For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. Soe that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going. " I shall shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel (Deut. 30). Beloved, there is noiu set before us Life and good. Death and evil, in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Command- ments and his Ordinance and his Lawes, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship and serve other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them ; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it; Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity." When the Massachusetts Company arrived at Salem, with the Charter of the Colony, in JUne, 1630, the ever-honored Pilgrims of Plymouth had already, for nine years and a half, been in happy and quiet possession of a part of the territory nov^f included within the State of Massachusetts. They were an independent colony, however, and continued such until the Pro- vincial Charter of Oct. 7, 1691. Coming over in a single ship, and count- ing only about a hundred souls, in all, at their landing from the " May 112 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Flower," their numbers had increased only threefold during this first decen- nial period ; and the population of Plymouth, when Winthrop arrived, is accordingly estimated as not exceeding three hundred, — men, women, and children. The settlement at Salem, it seems, had reached about the same number. Higginson, in his New England's Platitation, gives the number of persons in the colony, previous to his own arrival in 1629, as only about one hundred. But he brought two hundred persons with him, and he was thus able to say, in September of that year : " There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred ; whereof two hundred of them are settled at Nehum-kek, now called Salem, and the rest have planted themselves at Massathulets Bay, beginning to build a town there, which we do call Cherton or Charlestown." Roger Conant had presided over the Naumkeag plantation for two years, and had been succeeded or superseded by Endicott in 1628. Endicott had been sent over, at first, in the ship " Abigail," as the agent of the Massachusetts Company and the leader of a small band, under the patent obtained from the Plymouth Council, March 19, 1628. In the following year, after the royal charter had been obtained, March 4, 1629, a commission was sent out to him, dated April 30 of the same year, as " Governor of London's Plantation in the Mattachusetts Bay in New England." In the exercise of this commission he was subordinate to " the Governor and Company " in London, by whom he was deputed, and who, from time to time, sent him elaborate instructions for the regu- lation of his conduct. Massachusetts, as we have seen, was a very little colony at this time, still in embryo ; but it seems to have taken two governors to rule her ! Cradock and Endicott were governors simultane- ously from April 30, 1629, or, more correctly, from the time when Endi- cott's commission as governor reached Salem, two or three months later, until the 20th (30th) of October of the same year; and Winthrop and Endicott were simultaneously governors from that date until the arrival of the " Arbella " at Salem. There was thus a chief governor in London, and a subordinate or local governor in the Plantation. The Instructions to Endicott, dated April 17, and May 28, 1629, are among the most valuable of our early colonial papers, as showing precisely the relation which existed between the Plantation at Naumkeag and the Governor and Com- pany in England. But all this double-action machinery had now been abolished. The chief government had been transferred, agreeably to the Cambridge Agreement, and the local government was, of course, absorbed in it. Winthrop came over at once as the Governor of the Company, and to exercise a direct and personal magistracy over the colony. Not less than a thousand persons were added to the colony about the period of his arrival. Seven or eight hundred of these came with him, or speedily followed as a part of his immediate expedition. Two or three hundred more arrived almost at the same time, though not in vessels included in the Company's fleet. A second thousand was soon afterwards added under BOSTON FOUNDED. II3 the same influence and example. A precarious Plantation was thus trans- formed at once into a permanent and prosperous Commonwealth; and henceforth, instead of two or three hundred pioneer planters, thinly scat- tered along the coast, looking to a governor and company across the ocean for their supreme authority and instructions, two or three thousand people are to be seen, with a governor and legislature upon their own soil and of their own selection, — erecting houses, building ships, organizing villages and towns, establishing churches, schools, and even a college, and laying broad and deep the foundations of an independent Republic. Such was the result of that transfer of the chief government which Matthew Cradock, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Company in Old England, proposed on the 28th of July, 1629, and which John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Company in New England, was the instrument of carrying out to its completion on the 12th (22d) day of June, 1630. On that day the transfer was consummated, and the consequences soon began to develop themselves. But there was much to contend against at the outset. Thomas Dudley, who had come over as Deputy-Governor to Winthrop, in the place of John Humfrey who had declined the service, in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln, the mother of the Lady Arbella Johnson, dated March 28, 163 1, writes of the condition of things as follows : — " We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before, and many of those alive weak and sick ; all the corn and bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight, insomuch that the remainder of a hundred and eighty servants we had the two years before sent over, coming to us for victuals to sustain them, we found ourselves wholly unable to feed them, by reason that the provisions shipped for them were taken out of the ship they were put in ; and they who were trusted to ship them in another failed us, and left them behind : whereupon necessity enforced us, to our extreme loss, to give them all liberty, who had cost us about ;£i6 or ^20 a person, furnishing and sending It would thus appear that of the residents under Endicott, one hundred and eighty had been the bond-servants of the planters who were to follow, and that one of the first acts of Winthrop's administration was to emanci- pate all who had survived the winter ; not from any abstract considerations of philanthropy, but from absolute inability to provide for their main- tenance. The little Colony was clearly in a weak and almost starving condition when the "Arbella" arrived, and it is by no means surprising that Dudley speaks of the " too large commendations of the country," and adds, " Salem, where we landed, pleased us not.'' Five days only after their arrival we find Governor Winthrop recording in his Diary : " Thurs- day, 17 (June). We went to Mattachusetts to find out a place for our sitting down.'' This journey of exploration, made on foot, resulted in the immediate removal of the Governor and Company to what is now called VOL. I. — IS- 114 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Charlestown. " A great House " had been built here the year before, and in this " the Governor and several of the patentees dwelt," as we learn from the old records of the town, while " the multitude set up cottages, booths, and tents about the Town Hill." Here, in Charlestown, on the 30th of July, six weeks after their landing at Salem, after appropriate religious exercises. Governor Winthrop, Deputy- Governor Dudley, Isaac Johnson, and John Wilson, adopted and signed the following simple but solemn church covenant : — " In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his holy will, and divine ordinances : "We, whose names are here underwritten, being by his most wise and good providence brought together into this part of America, in the Bay of Massachusetts ; and desirous to unite into one congregation or church, under the Lord Jesus Christ, our head, in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed, and sanctified to himself, do hereby solemnly and religiously, as in his most holy presence, promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the rule of the Gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect to each other, so near as God shall give us grace." c^.^- -^(^(k <^^^?^:, AUTOGRAPHS OF THE SIGNERS.'' The Church thus formed is now known as the First Church of Boston, on one of the painted windows of whose new and beautiful house of worship this covenant is inscribed ; while among its ancient communion plate may still be seen an embossed silver cup, with " The gift of Governor Jn°. Win- throp to y". V Church" engraved on its rim.^ And here, at Charlestown, on the 23d of August, 1630, was held the earliest " Court of Assistants " on this side of the Atlantic, at which the was made by the kind permission of the present pastor, and shows it on a reduced scale. It measures eleven and three-fourth inches high, of which the bowl makes five inches, and the diameter at the top is four and three-quarters inches, and at its base four inches. The Church Records have the following account of it: "A tall embossed cup, with engraving and figures in relief. Weight, 16 oz., 1 dwt. No date." — Ed.] ' [This group does not represent the actual signatures of this document, but reproduces other autographs of the signers. Wilson was at this time forty-two years old, and had grad- uated at King's College, Cambridge. He was ordained at Charlestown, August 27, and again in Boston in November. He returned to Eng- land for his wife the next year, and was a third time installed in November, 1632. — Ed.] '^ [The heliotype herewith given of this cup VO CO „ "ft O ,j-7 w > H o O SU*' "'' U ft o BOSTON FOUNDED. 115 very first matter propounded was, " How the Ministers should be main- tained," — when it was ordered, that houses should be built for them with convenient speed, at the public charge. Everything so far seemed thus to indicate that Charlestown was to be the capital of the colony, and, accordingly, the town records tell us that the Governor " ordered his house to be cut and framed there." There is reason, however, for thinking that the " Great House " was still the Governor's abode on the 25th of October, WESITHROP S FLEET.' when he entered in his Diary the following record of what was unques- tionably the original temperance movement in Massachusetts, if not in America : - - " The Governour, upon consideration of the inconveniences which had grown in England by drinking one to another, restrained it at his own table, and wished others to do the like, so as it grew, by little and little, into disuse." Meantime discouragements and afflictions were falling heavily upon the Colony. Sickness and death had begun their ravages. The following entry in Winthrop's Journal, under date of September 30, tells its own sad story in language which could not be improved : " About two in the ^ [This cut is a reduction, by permission, from an oil-painting recently completed by Mr. Wil- liam F. Halsall, representing a part of the fleet which brought Winthrop and his company to Salem just as they had come round to Boston Harbor, and were dropping anchor. The ves- sels are a careful study of the ships of the period. The "Arbella," the admiral of the fleet, a ship of three hundred and fifty tons, carrying twenty-eight guns and fifty-two men, is in the foreground, being towed to her anchor- age. The "Talbot," the vice-admiral, riding at anchor, hides Governor's Island from the spec- tator. The "Jewell," the captain of the fleet, is the distant vessel on the right, where Castle Island appears. The time is late in a July day. The spectator's position is between Boston and East Boston. — Ed.] Il6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY' OF BOSTON. morning Mr. Isaac Johnson died ; his wife, the Lady Arbella, of the house of Lincoln, being dead about one month before. He was a holy man and wise, and died in sweet peace, leaving some part of his substance to the Colony." About the same time, also, died " good Mr. Higginson," the zealous and devoted minister of Salem; Dr. William Gager, the chosen physician of the Company, and one of the deacons of the little church ; and. others of both sexes, more or less conspicuous among the colonists. The loss of associates and friends, however, was not the only trial to which the com- pany were subjected at this early period. Provisions had again been growing scarce, and the springs at Charlestown seemed beginning to fail. Edward Johnson, an eye-witness, speaks of this precise period in his Wonder-working Providence, as follows : — " The griefe of this people was further increased by the sore sicknesse which befell among them, so that almost in every family, lamentation, mourning, and woe was heard, and no fresh food to be had to cherish them. It would assuredly have moved the most lockt-up affections to teares, no doubt, had they past from one hut to another, and beheld the piteous case these people were in. And that which added to their present distresse was the want of fresh water ; for although the place did afford plenty, yet for present they could finde but one spring, and that not to be come at but when the tide was downe." This want of water it was which finally determined Governor Winthrop and others to abandon their present location, to quit Charlestown, and to establish themselves on the neighboring peninsula. Of this step, the following brief but ample account is found in the early records of Charles- town : — "In the meantime, Mr. Blackstone, dwelling on the other side Charles River alone, at a place by the Indians called Shawmutt, where he only had a cottage, at or not far off the place called Blackstone's Point, he came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent Spring there ; withal inviting him and soliciting him thither. Where- upon, after the death of Mr. Johnson and divers others, the Governor, with Mr. Wilson, and the greatest part of the church removed thither : whither also the frame of the Governor's house, in preparation at this town, was also (to the discontent of some) carried ; where people began to build their houses against winter ; and this place was called Boston." William Blackstone had until now been the only known white inhab- itant of Shawmut, as the peninsula was called by the Indians, and will always be remembered as the pioneer settler of the peninsula.^ The order of the Court of Assistants, — Governor Winthrop presiding, — " That Trimontaine shall be called Boston," was passed on the 7th of September, old style, or, as we now count it, the 17th of September, 1630.2 The name of Boston was specially dear to the Massachusetts colonists 1 [The story of Blackstone's residence is told 2 [gy favor o£ the Hon. Henry B. Peirce at length in Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr.'s section of Secretary of the Commonwealth, a heliotype of the present volume. — Ed.] this famous order is herewith given. Ed.] .t^t-^ fv 't~7rxnf "k*-!^^ i-O /)*- t^-&i~^^ i ^^^i^eli^ cOe—ii'/U i-x, Qt--^^'^ aJt—^^i- U^t^^j>^ ___ v(^\mi^t TZt^ ^"T^ f^^ ^ ^^ ^7 ^^K ! ^•J- OA-i Colony Records, Sept. 7, 1630 (old style). Order Naming Boston. W--^ ■rw^'^^-r^^.yymi^lH^Smf-'* ' li 'tgg o f'^^f c^t*-i C,^^ <7 tt cL^^f, ^^^^) Qpc/t^;«>4_ /W /^f^ <^ ,J? "Uit't.'-yo ," T> /tw •• 'ir^t-t-!- _HEAniNG_ of above Record, showing Magistrates present at the Time. BOSTON FOUNDED. 117 from its associations with the old St. Botolph's town, or Boston, of Lincoln- shire, England, from which the Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband had come, and where John Cotton was still preaching in its noble parish church. But the precise date of the removal of the Governor and Company to the peninsula is nowhere given. The Court of Assistants continued to hold its meetings at Charlestown until the end of September; but on the 19th (29th) of October we find a General Court holden at Boston, and on the 29th of November we find VVinthrop for the first time dating a letter to his wife in England, "Boston in Mattachusetts," in which he says: "My dear wife, we are here in a paradise. Though we have not beef and mutton, etc., yet (God be praised) we want them not; our Indian corn answers for all. Yet here is fowl and fish in great plenty." In a previous letter he had said to her: " We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ. Is not this enough? What would we have more? " ST. BOTOLPH S CHURCH. Boston, however, was not destined to be " a paradise " quite yet, to any one except its hopeful and brave-hearted founder. The Winter, then just opening, was to be one of great severity and continued suffering. The Charlestown records tell us that " people were necessitated to live on clams and muscles, and ground-nuts and acorns." The Governor himself " had the last batch of bread in the oven," and was seen giving "the last handful Il8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of meal in the barrell unto a poor man distressed by the wolf at the door." A ship had been sent to England for provisions six months before, but nothing had been heard of her. A day had been appointed for a general humiliation, " to seek the Lord by fasting and prayer." And now, at the last moment, in the very hour of their despair, the ship is descried entering Boston Harbor, and " laden with provisions for them all." The Governor's Journal, accordingly, has the following entry: " 22 (February). We held a day of Thanksgiving for this ship's arrival, by order from the Governour and Council, directed to all the Plantations." This must have been the first regularly appointed Thanksgiving Day in Massachusetts. A second Thanksgiving Day was observed in Boston on the nth day of November following, on occasion of the next return from England of the same ship, — the "Lion," — bringing Governor Winthrop's wife, Margaret (Tyndal), with his eldest son, John, the future Governor of Connecticut, accompanied by the 'Rev. John EHot, soon to be known, and never to be forgotten, as the Apostle to the Indians, and the translator of the Bible into the Indian language. Massachusetts's Thanksgiving Days seem thus to have originated in the public acknowledgment of some immediate special causes of gratitude to God, and not as mere formal anniversary observances. On the 1 8th of May, 1631, the second General Court was holdeh at Boston, when Winthrop was re-elected Governor, and Dudley Deputy- Governor, and when a memorable order was unanimously passed by the people assembled on the occasion, — an order which was to furnish the subject of no little controversy and contention a few years later. It was recorded as follows : " And to the end (that) the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and agreed that for time to come no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the Churches within the limits of the same." Winthrop, in his Journal, adds to this record that " all the freemen of the Commons were sworn to this government." Among the few incidents of this year which have any historical or local interest, as showing the progress of the Plantation and the condition of things in Boston, it must not be omitted that on the 4th day of July, " the Governor built a bark at Mistick, which was launched this day, and called ' The Blessing of the Bay.' " Nor must the record be passed over, that, on the 25th of October, "the Governour, with Captain Underbill and others of the officers, went on foot to Sagus, and next day to Salem, where they were bountifully entertained by Captain Endecott, etc., and, the 28th, they returned to Boston by the ford at Sagus River, and so over at Mistick." The occupation of three whole days in a visit from Boston to Salem, by fords and on foot, gives an impressive picture of the locomotion of that early period of the colony. The Records of the third " General Court," holden at Boston, on the 9th of May, 1632, open as follows: — BOSTON FOUNDED. 1 19 " It was generally agreed upon, by erection of hands, that the Governor, Deputy- Governor, and Assistants should be chosen by the whole Court of Governor, Deputy- Governor, Assistants, and freemen, and that the Governor shall always be chosen out of the Assistants. "John Winthrop, Esq., was chosen to the place of Governor (by the general consent of the whole Court, manifested by erection of hands), for this year next ensuing, and till a new be chosen, and did, in presence of the Court, take an oath to his said place belonging." At the same session of the Court it was ordered, " that there should be two of every plantation appointed to confer with the Court about raising of a public stock.'' Accordingly, two persons were appointed from Water- town, Roxbury, Boston, Saugus, Newtown, Charlestown, Salem, and Dor- chester. The recognition of the " freemen " of the colony in the first clause of this Record, and the designation in the last clause of representatives of the several plantations to confer about taxes, indicate the gradual advance of the little colony towards popular institutions ; while the naming of the plantations shows that there were now eight separate communities in Massachusetts claiming consideration as towns. Of these towns Boston was named in the Records, intentionally or accidentally, third ; ^ but at a Court of Assistants, in the following October, the Record runs : " It is thought, by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay." Perhaps the most memorable incident of this year was the oflficial visit of the authorities of Massachusetts, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Winthrop's description of it, in his Journal, gives a vivid idea of the condition of both colonies, and of their cordial relations towards each other. We should not be forgiven for omitting a word of it: — " 25 (September) — The governour, with Mr. Wilson, pastor of Boston, and the two captains, etc., went aboard the ' Lyon,' and from thence Mr. Pierce carried them in his shallop to Wessaguscus. The next morning Mr. Pierce returned to his ship, and the govemour and his company went on foot to Plimouth, and came thither within the evening. The governour of Phmouth, Mr. William Bradford (a very discreet and gi-ave man), with Mr. Brewster, the elder, and some others, came forth and met them without the town, and conducted them to the governour's house, where they were very kindly entertained, and feasted every day at several houses. On the Lord's Day there was a sacrament, which they did partake in ; and in the afternoon Mr. Roger Williams (according to their custom) propounded a question, to which the pastor, Mr. Smith, spake briefly ; then Mr. Williams prophesied ; and after the ^ [Boston seems to have had no special build- out by Francis Jackson of late years, is in the ing for public worship until, during the year library of the N. E. Hist, and Genealogical 1632, was erected the small thatched-roof, one- Society. See the Register, April, i860, p. 152. story building which stood on State Street, where Wilson, the pastor, lived where the Merchants' Brazer's Building now stands. A plan of the Bank is, and Wilson's Lane until recently trans- church lot as existing at this time, but as made mitted his name to us. — Ed.] I20 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. governour of Plimoiith spake to the question ; after him the elder ; then some two or three more of the congregation. Then the elder desired the governour of Massa- chusetts and Mr. Wilson to speak to it, which they did. When this was ended, the deacon, Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their duty of contribution; whereupon the governour and all the rest went down to the deacon's seat, and put into the box, and then returned." What a grand group of New England worthies is presented to us here ! Governor Bradford and Elder Brewster, Roger Williams, John Wilson, and Governor Winthrop, — all gathered at Plymouth Rock ; all partaking together of the Holy Communion ; engaging in religious discussion, and joining in a contribution for the wants of the poor ! What a subject it suggests for American art ! But, alas ! authentic likenesses of all except Winthrop would be wanting for such a picture.^ The most cordial relations existed between Massachusetts and her elder sister Colony at Plymouth. Bradford and Winthrop exchanged letters often, and visits more than once. The two Colonies were one in spirit, as they were one in destiny; and the repeated interchanges of friendly offices, at that early day, were a pleasant prelude to their becoming members incorporate, a little more than half a century later, of the same noble Commonwealth. But all was not harmony for the Massachusetts Colony within her own limits. A controversy sprung up early between Governor Winthrop and Deputy-Governor Dudley, about many personal and many public matters, which involved serious discomfort both to themselves and their friends. This controversy has sometimes been absurdly exaggerated and caricatured by descriptions and by pictures. It is only worth alluding to, in these pages, as an evidence that it has not been overlooked, and as furnishing an opportunity to introduce the following brief account of the conclusion of the whole matter, a few years afterwards, as contained in Winthrop's Journal under date of April 24, 1638: — " The governour and deputy went to Concord to view some land for farms, and, going down the river about four miles, they made choice of a place for one thousand acres for each of them. They offered each other the first choice, but because the deputy's was first granted, and himself had store of land already, the governour yielded him the choice. So, at the place where the deputy's land was to begin,' there were two great stones, which they called the Two Brothers, in remembrance that they were brothers by their children's marriage, and did so brotherly agree, and for that a little creek near those stones was to part their lands." The " two great stones," which were the witnesses to this charming scene of reconciliation, are standing to this day, and are still known as the " Two Brothers." Few more delightful incidents are to be found in history than Winthrop's returning an insulting letter from Dudley with the simple 1 [What was once considered a portrait of cut of it. Dr. Appleton, in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Wilson hangs in the Gallery of the Historical So- Proc, September, 1867, doubted its authenticity ; ciety. Drake, Hist, of Boston, givts 3. -poov wood- but see /Voc, December, 1880, p. 264. Ed.1 BOSTON FOUNDED. 121 remark, " I am not willing to keep such an occasion of provocation by me." Nor could a better companion-piece easily be found than the reply of Dudley, when Winthrop offered him a token of his good-will: "Your overcoming yourself hath overcome me." But there were other contro- versies, meantime, of a more public concern, and between other parties, which were less happily and less speedily settled. Winthrop was again chosen Governor for the fourth time, and Dudley Deputy-Governor, at the General Court held in Boston May 29, 1633. In the following October it was ordered that there shall be four hundred pounds collected out of the several plantations to defray public charges, and eleven plantations are set down in the Records to be assessed accord- ingly, — Winnesimmet, Medford, and Agawam or Ipswich, having been added to the eight which have been previously recognized. Boston is now named at the head of the list, and is one of the five towns assessed at forty- eight pounds. Dorchester is named sixth, but with an assessment of eighty pounds. These sums may give some idea of the expenses of the colony and of the relative wealth of the plantations. But the great event of this year 1633, for Boston and for the whole colony, was the arrival of the Rev. John Cotton ; accompanied, too, by the Rev. Thomas Hooker and John Haynes, soon to be Governor of Massa- chusetts, and, not long afterwards, of Connecticut. The arrival of these im- portant characters is thus chronicled by Winthrop in his Journal : — " Sepi'. 4. The ' Griffin,' a ship of three hundred tons, arrived (having been eight weeks from the Downs) ... In this ship came Mr. Cotton, Mr. Hooker, and Mr. Stone, ministers, and Mr. Peirce, Mr. Haynes (a gentleman of great estate), Mr. Hoffe, and many other men of good estates. They got out of England with much difficulty, all places being belaid to have taken Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker, who had been long sought for to have been brought into the High Commission ; but the master being bound to touch at the Wight, the pursuivants attended there, and, iu the mean- time, the said ministers were taken in at the Downs. Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone went presently to Newtown, where they were to be entertained, and Mr. Cotton stayed at Boston." This was the year in which the poems of George Herbert were published, and there is some reason for the conjecture that the proposed emigration of Cotton and other eminent English ministers suggested those well-known lines of his, — " Religion stands a tiptoe in our land. Ready to pass to the American strand." ' This was the year, too, when an Order was issued by the Privy Council to stay several ships in the Thames, in which some distinguished opponents of the Crown were supposed to be embarked for New England, — as, later, there has been a tradition that even Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell medi- tated such a flight. 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, January, 1867. VOL. I. — 16. 122 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Coming from Boston in Old England, where he had ministered for more than twenty years in the Church of St. Botolph, whose lofty tower is still the pride of all the regions round about, the great Puritan preacher did not fail to receive the most cordial welcome in the little transatlantic town, which has often been said to have been named out of respect to his character, and in hopeful anticipation of his soon becoming one of its inhabitants. His welcome was all the more fervent from his having so narrowly escaped the pursuivants and the High Commission Court. He seems, however, to have brought over with him from England some views in regard to civil government which were by no means palatable in Massachusetts. He took occasion to express and enforce these views in the Election Ser- mon which he delivered before the General Court in the following May (1634), when he maintained "that a magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause," any more than the magistrates may turn a private man out of his freehold. The subject was thereupon discussed in the Court, and the opinion of the other min- isters asked. Winthrop paid the penalty of the decision. The immediate practical answer was that the General Court elected a new Governor, and a wholesome rebuke was thus given to the suggestion of a vested right on the part of any incumbent in the political office which he may happen to hold. Thomas Dudley ^ was now elected Governor of Massachusetts, and Roger Ludlow Deputy-Governor ; while Winthrop was chosen at the head of the Board of Assistants. Meantime, we have the record of a great advance in the political con- dition of the little Colony, — nothing less than the establishment of a Repre- sentative System in New England. It was ordered, " That four General Courts should be kept every year; that the whole body of the freemen should be present only at the Court of Election of Magistrates, and that, at the other three, every town should send their deputies, who should assist in making laws, disposing lands, &c." Town governments were thus already in existence, and in this year are found the earliest remaining records of the town of Boston, written by Winthrop himself, and dated " 1634, moneth 7*, Daye i."^ Reheved from the cares of the chief magis- ^ [Dudley lived where the Universalist Durrie's /nifex to American Genealogies. The Church in Roxbury stands, at the end of Shaw- full text of the life of Thomas Dudley, which mut Avenue. His well is said still to exist was abridged by Cotton Mather when he print- under the building. Here he entertained Mian- ed his Magnalia, is given in the Mass. Hist. tonomoh in 1640. He died July 31, 1654. Drake, Soc. Proc, January, 1870, with notes and col- To7.un of Roxbury, pp. 334, 340; Ellis, Roxbury lations with the. text of the same given in Town, p. 97. The family line is traced in N. E. George Adlard's Sutton-Dudleys of Englami. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. m\.2d\di\yi.,%w^^\s.\\\e.\\\m% Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, April, 1858. The Dean Dudley's Z)2«» / *pr -"^-i --M^A^H, ^^^..^f^/j^ ^ __ .« .-Mrs - U^'^-^'^^^cr^'^C: ,c.-X 1 ». r: ^.r' ■k ^^IfitrfTsQ, First Page of Boston Records, Sept. >, 1634, in Governor Winthrop's Hand. BOSTON FOUNDED. I 23 tracy of the colony, he was able to give more attention to town affairs, and in the following December we find him at the head of seven selectmen of Boston, commissioned " to divide and dispose of all such lands belonging to the town (as are not yet in the lawful possession of any particular per- son) to the inhabitants of the town, leaving such portions in common for new comers, and the further benefitte of the town, as in their best discretion they shall think fitt." It was in the exercise of this commission that Win- throp was mainly instrumental in reserving from the distribution of the town lands the forty or fifty acres now known as BOSTON COMMON, and which constitute so much of the beauty and pride of the city.' Another memorable incident belongs to the history of Boston about this time, of which the town records contain the following account: "Like- wise it was then gen'ally agreed upon, y' o' brother Philemon Pormort shalbe entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nourtering of children w'^ us." This is one of the very earliest references to that cause of education, and those free schools, which Boston has gloried to advance from that day to this; and the town records of another year (1636) contain a list of the subscriptions of all the principal inhabitants of the town, from four shillings up to ten pounds each, " towards the main- tenance of free-schoolmaster for Mr. Daniel Maude being now also chosen thereunto." ^ The spirit of legislation, as well as the habits of the people, at this period may be illustrated by such an order of the General Court as the following : " The Court, taking into consideration the great, superfluous, and unneces- sary expenses occasioned by reason of some new and immodest fashions, as also the ordinary wearing of silver, gold, and silk laces, girdles, hatbands, &c., hath therefore ordered that no person, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woollen, silk, or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes." And here is another sample : " It is ordered that no person shall take tobacco publicly, under the penalty of 2 shillings and sixpence, nor privately in his own house, or in the house of another, before strangers, and that two or more shall not take it together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty, for every offence." One more order will sufiice to throw light on the domestic condition of Boston : " There is leave granted to the Deputy-Governor, John Winthrop, Esq., and John Winthrop, Junior, each of them to entertain an Indian a-piece as a household servant." In this year Boston had reached the highest rate of assessment for public uses, being taxed ^80, with Dor- chester and Newtown, out of the £600 ordered to be " levied out of the several plantations," which were now twelve in number. ^ Palfrey, ffist. of N. E. i. 379. Second Report of the J?ecord Commissioners,^. 160. 2 [See further on this point in Mr. Scudder's The history of education is specially treated by chapter. The list in question is printed in the Dr. Dillaway in Vol. IV. — Ed.] 124 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. At the election of May, 1635, Thomas Dudley, after a single year of service, was left out of the chief magistracy of Massachusetts, and John Haynes was chosen Governor in his place. And now we come to the arrival in Boston of two most notable persons, who are to play no small part in the history of the colony for the next few years, and who, alas ! were doomed to a common and sad end at a later day in England, — Hugh Peters (or Peter, as he always signed his name), and Henry Vane. Peters had been the pastor of the English Church in Rotterdam, and had been persecuted . - by the English Ambassador, who desired to bring his jrj **• ptnf church under the English discipline. He had long before » taken an interest in the colonization of New England, was one of the first members of the Massachusetts Company, and one of the signers of the Company's Instructions to Endicott in 1629. Vane was son and heir to Sir Henry Vane, Comptroller of the King's household, and had already, though not yet twenty-five years old, been employed by his father, while an ambassador, in foreign affairs. These gentlemen exhibited the most active concern for the condition of the colony, both ecclesiastical and civil, at the earliest possible moment. Vane was ad- mitted a member of the Church of Boston within a month after his arrival, and, before three months had expired, he and Peters had pro- cured a meeting in Boston of all the leading magistrates and ministers of the colony, with a view to healing some distractions in the Com- monwealth and effecting " a more firm and friendly uniting of minds." At this meeting Vane and Peters, with Governor Haynes and the ministers, Cotton, Wilson, and Hooker, declared themselves in favor of a more rigorous administration of government than had thus far been pursued. Winthrop was charged with having displayed " overmuch lenity." The ministers delivered a formal opinion, " that strict disci- pline, both in criminal offences and in martial affairs, was more needful in plantations than in settled States, as tending to the honor and safety of the Gospel." Within seven days after this decision Governor Haynes and the Assistants, being informed that Roger Williams, who in the previous October had been sentenced by the General Court of Massachusetts to depart out of their jurisdiction in six weeks, and to whom liberty had been granted " to stay till spring," was iising this liberty for preaching and prop- agating the doctrines for which he had been censured, despatched Captain Underbill to apprehend him, with a view to his being shipped off at once to England. But Williams escaped to Narragansett Bay, and became the founder of Rhode Island. He said of this escape, in a letter long after- wards : " It pleased the Most High to direct my steps into this Bay, by the loving private advice of the ever honored soul, Mr. John Winthrop." But BOSTON FOUNDED. 125 the controversies about Roger Williams belong to a different chapter of this work and to another writer/ and they are passed over here accordingly. On the 7th of April, 1636, it was ordered by the General Court "that a certain number of magistrates should be chosen for life." This council for life was undoubtedly the work of John Cotton, and was designed to encourage the coming over to New England of some of those noblemen of old England to whom life-tenures were dear, and who shrunk from trusting their distinction to popular favor. It was entirely in keeping, also, with Cotton's Election Sermon in 1634, and it is expressly provided for in the draft of the " Model of Moses his Judicials," which Cotton presented to the General Court in October of this year. At the election in May, accord- ingly, John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley were chosen councillors for life. But the young Henry Vane was at the same time elected Governor of Mas- sachusetts, — a signal proof of the influence and importance he had so ^ [Dr. Ellis's chapter 011 "The Puritan Commonwealth." — Ed.] 126 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. rapidly acquired in the colony.' Winthrop — who accepted the Deputy Governorship under him — says of him in his Journal on this occasion: " Because he was son and heir to a Privy Councillor in England, the ships congratulated his election with a volley of great shot." But Vane had ability and enterprise enough to have secured an ultimate success and celebrity, as well as salutes of " great shot," without the aid of any mere family prestige. His administration, however, was destined to be disturbed by a violence of religious and civil controversy which has never been ex- ceeded on the same soil, if, indeed, on any soil beneath the sun. But the story of Mrs. Hutchinson and of the Antinomian Controversy belongs to another writer,^ and is gladly left to him. At the General Court in March, 1636-37, contentions ran so high that, although it had been so recently declared that " Boston is the fittest place for publique meetings of any place in the Bay," it was determined that the Court of Elections should not be held there. It was thereupon held in Newtown, soon to be Cambridge, where, after scenes of great controversy and even tumult, Winthrop was again chosen Governor and Dudley Deputy-Governor, while Vane, after a single year's service, was not even included among the Assistants. It was during this election that the first Stump Speech was made in this part of the world, and made by a clergyman, — no less a person than the Rev. John Wilson, one of the ministers of the first Boston Church ; having " got up on the bough of a tree," and having made a speech which was said to have turned the scale. Governor Winthrop thus entered on a fifth term of the chief magistracy in May, 1637, and soon after his re-election the General Court passed the order which gave occasion to the. memorable controversy between himself and Vane. The order was to the effect " that none should be received to inhabite within this Jurisdiction but such as should be allowed by some of the magistrates." Winthrop defended the order in an elaborate paper. Vane replied in what he termed " A briefe Answer," but which was more than three times longer than Winthrop's defence. Winthrop rejoined in a replication as long as both the other papers together. Many persons have pronounced judgment on these arguments, but few have read them. They may all be found in Governor Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers, who dismisses them with the wise remark : " I leave the reader to judge who had ' [Cf. N. E. Hist, and Ceneal. Reg., April, time after. The building is of wood ; the front 1848; C. W. Upham, Z^/f o/^K3«f,- J. B. Moore, part has a modern appearance, but the back Gffvernors of New Plymouth and Mass. Bay, p. exhibits marks of antiquity." It has lately, 313. Snow, Hist, of Boston, p. 75, speaks of however, been denied that this was Vane's the house where he lived, as fifty years ago house, by W. H. Whitmore, who (Sewall Pa- and more still standing on the slope back fers, i.' 58-62) traces the estate down through of the stores on Tremont Street, opposite to Seaborn Cotton and John Hull to Samuel "King's Chapel Burying Ground," extending up Sewall. The lot touched Tremont Street just towards Somerset Street. Snow spoke of it south of the entrance to Peniberton Square, as "the oldest house in the city," and adds: and extended south and also back over the "It was .originally small. Mr. Vane gave it to hill. — Ed.] Mr. Cotton, who made an addition to it, and lived 2 [Dr. Ellis, in his chapter on " The Puritan and died there. His family occupied it some Commonwealth." — Ed.] BOSTON FOUNDED. I 27 the best cause, and who best defended it." Vane's reply has often been mentioned as containing a clear and comprehensive exposition of the true principles of civil and religious hberty, and as entitling him to be ranked among the very earliest assertors of toleration and the rights of conscience. His paper, however, as Dr. Palfrey points out in his excellent History of New England, contains repeated suggestions of a power in the King to overrule all colonial proceedings, and exhibits him clearly as a friend to the Royal Prerogative. But, without detracting in the slightest degree from the lofty and enviable claims which have been made for him, it may well be more than doubted whether his views were applicable to the condition of the colony at the time, and whether the little Commonwealth could have been held together in peace and prosperity — if held together at all — by any other policy than that which Winthrop defended. It was admirably said by the late Josiah Quincy on this subject, in his Centennial Discourse in 1830, that " had our early ancestors adopted the course we at this day are apt to deem so easy and obvious, and placed their government on the basis of liberty for all sorts of consciences, it would have been, in that age, a certain introduction of anarchy. It cannot be questioned that all the fond hopes they had cherished from emigration would have been lost. The agents of Charles and James would have planted here the standard of the transatlantic monarchy and hierarchy. Divided and broken, without practical energy, subject to court influences and court favorites, ISTew England would at this day have been a colony of the parent State, her character yet to be formed, and her independence yet to be vindicated." "The non-toleration," proceeded Mr. Quincy, "which characterized our early ancestors, from whatever source it may have originated, had undoubt- edly the effect they intended and wished. It excluded from influence in their infant settlement all the friends and adherents of the ancient monarchy and hierarchy ; all who, from any motive, ecclesiastical or civil, were dis- posed to disturb their peace or their churches. They considered it a measure of ' self-defence.' And it is unquestionable that it was chiefly instrumental in forming the homogeneous and exclusively republican character for which the people of New England have in all times been distinguished ; and, above all, that it fixed irrevocably in the country that noble security for religious liberty, — the independent system of church government." Vane returned to England in August of the same year, and Governor Winthrop gave orders for his " honorable dismission " with " divers vollies of shot." There was so much that was noble in Vane's character, and so much that was sad in his fate, that it is pleasant to remember that Winthrop afterwards makes record that " he showed himself in later years a true friend to New England, and a man of a noble and generous mind." A friendly correspondence was kept up between him and Winthrop as late as 1645, and their relations were cordial and affectionate. 128 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Hugh Peters had made bold to tell Vane to his face " that, before he came, within less than two years since, the churches were in peace." But his departure by no means put an end to contentions. On the contrary, they seemed to wax warmer and fiercer than before. The General Court at last resorted to extreme measures, — banishment, disfranchisement, and, finally, disarming. On the 20th of November, 1637, nearly sixty persons in Boston, and about twenty in the neighboring towns, were disarmed, — many of them persons of the best consideration in the colony, and some of whom were afterwards highly distinguished in the military service of New England. But all this belongs to the history of the controversies of the colony, to form the subject of a separate chapter of this history by a different hand.^ Another political year opens in May, 1638, with the re-election of Win- throp as Governor. During this year the colony was called on to con- front a peremptory demand from the Lords Commissioners in England for the surrender of the Massachusetts Charter, coupled with the threat of sending over a new General Governor from England. But, happily, diplo- matic delays were interposed ; a humble petition was sent back, and the di- rect issue was " avoided and protracted," by the express advice of Governor Winthrop, until the King and his ministers became too much engrossed with their own condition at home to think more about their colonies. The Charter was saved for another half century, to the great relief and delight of those who had brought it over.^ Again, in 1639, the May election resulted in the renewal of Winthrop's commission as Governor. But pecuniary embarrassments, resulting from the fraud of his bailiff, now made him anxious to withdraw from public respon- sibilities, and on the 13th of May, 1640, he gave up the chief magistracy again to Thomas Dudley, and resumed a place at the Board of Assistants. In 1641 Dudley was succeeded by Richard Bellingham, and this year was rendered memorable by the adoption of a code of laws, a hundred in number, and known as " the Body of Liberties."^ It had been prepared by Nathaniel Ward, pastor of the Ipswich Church, who had formerly been a student and practiser of the law in England, and whose Simple Cobler of Agawam has rendered his name familiar. This code had been revised and altered by the General Court, and sent into all the towns for consideration. And now it was revised and amended again by the General Court, and then adopted. For all the previous years of the colony's existence there had been no statutes for the administration of justice, and no express recognition of the Common Law of England. In establishing this code at last, the General Court decreed " that it should be audibly read and deliberately weighed in every General Court that shall be held within three years next ensuing; and such of them as shall not be altered or repealed, they shall 1 [Dr. Ellis, as before. — Ed.] 3 [gge the note on this subject in Dr. Ellis's 2 [The story of the struggle is told later in chapter, as before. — Ed.) Mr. Deane's chapter. — Ed.] BOSTON FOUNDED. 1 29 stand so ratified that no man shall infringe them without due punishment." The code opened as follows: "No man's life shall be taken away; no man's honor or good name shall be stained ; no man's person shall be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembered, nor anyways punished; no man shall be deprived of his wife or children ; no man's goods or estate shall be taken away nor anyway endangered under color of law or coun- tenance of authority, — unless it be by virtue or equity of some express law of the country warranting the same, established by the General Court and sufficiently published, or, in case of the defect of the law in any particular case, by the word of God ; and in capital cases, or in cases concerning dismembering or banishment, according to that Word to be judged by the General Court." Governor Winthrop tells us, in 1639, that " the people had long desired a body of laws, and thought their condition very unsafe while so much power rested in the discretion of the magistrates.'' Now, at length, the wishes of the people had prevailed, and a system of written law was adopted for Mas- sachusetts. But it was written only, — not yet published, or certainly not yet printed ; for it was not until November, 1646, that we find the record that the Court, "being deeply sensible of the earnest expectation of the country in general for their Court's completing a body of laws for the better and more orderly wielding all the affairs of this Commonwealth," appointed a joint commission of magistrates and deputies " to peruse and examine, com- pare, transcribe, and compose in good order all the liberties, laws, and orders extant with us ... so as we may have ready recourse to any of them, upon all occasions, whereby we may manifest our utter disaffection to arbitrary government, and so all relations be safely and sweetly directed and protected in all their just rights and privileges; desiring thereby to make way for printing our Laws for more public and profitable use of us and our succes- sors." Two years more, however, were to elapse before the laws were " at the press," and still a third year before the colony records inform us that the Court had found, " by experience, the great benefit that doth redound to the country by putting of the law in print!' The first printed edition of the laws was in 1649, while " The Body of Liberties," of which the preamble has just been given, as adopted in 1641, did not find its way into type until two full centuries afterwards. Winthrop was elected Governor again in 1642, with Endicott as Deputy-Governor. The year was rendered notable by a controversy arising out of the publication — in manuscript copies, not by printing — of a book of Richard Salton- stall's, a son of that good Sir Richard ^ who had come over in the "Arbella" as one of 7f Vka/rio C \\ /V^'ff^ the Assistants, on the transfer of the charter v and chief government to New England, and who, while returning home ' [The autographs are those of father and son. — Ed.J VOL. I. — 17. 130 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. himself after a brief stay, left a part of his family behind him to perpetuate an honored nanie in the history of Massachusetts. The Book was prin- cipally aimed at " The Council for Life," to which only three persons had ever been chosen, — Winthrop, Dudley, and Endicott; of which, indeed, nothing but a nominal life-tenure remained, and of which Winthrop took oc- casion to say that " he was no more in love with the honor or power of it than with an old frieze coat in a summer's day." But a more serious controversy soon followed, which lasted for nearly two years, and which happily termi- nated in an organic change for the better in the mode of colonial legislation." " There fell out," says Winthrop, " a great business upon a very small oc- casion. Anno 1636 there was a stray sow in Boston, which was brought to Captain Keayne ; he had it cried divers times, and divers came to see it, but none made claim to it for near a year. He kept it in his yard with a sow of his own. Afterwards, one Sherman's wife, having lost such a sow, laid claim to it," — and so the story is pursued for many pages. This stray sow in the streets of Boston (and it was a white sow) is hardly less historical than the white sow which guided ./Eneas to the future site of Rome.^ It led to the great dispute between the magistrates and the deputies in re- gard to the " Negative Voice," and to the final separation, by solemn order, of the Legislature of Massachusetts into two co-ordinate branches, — Magis- trates and Deputies, or, as we now style them, Senators and Representatives. This order, as contained in the Colonial Records of March 7, 1644, is too notable to be omitted in any account of the gradual progress of the colony towards constitutional government. It is as follows : — " Forasmuch as, after long experience, we find divers inconveniences in the man- ner of our proceeding in Courts by magistrates and deputies sitting together, and ac- counting it wisdom to follow the laudable practice of other States who have laid groundworks for government and order in the issuing of greatest and highest conse- quence, — " It is therefore ordered, first, that the magistrates may sit and act business by themselves, by drawing up bills and orders which they shall see good in their wisdom, which having agreed upon, they may present them to the deputies to be considered of, how good and wholesome such orders are for the country, and accordingly to give their assent or dissent ; the deputies in like manner sitting apart by themselves, and consult- ing about such orders and laws as they in their discretion and experience shall find meet for common good, which, agreed upon by them, they may present to the magistrates, who, according to their wisdom, having seriously considered of them, may consent unto them or disallow them ; and when any orders have passed the approbation of both magistrates and deputies, then such orders to be engrossed, and in the last day of the Court to be read deliberately, and full assent to be given ; provided, also, that all matters of judicature which this Court shall take cognizance of shall be issued in like manner." ^ But the record of 1642 must not be closed without recalling the fact that it was the year of the first Commencement of Harvard College. Endowed 1 Virgil, ^ncid, bk. iii. lines 390-94. 2 Massachusetts Colonial Records, ii. 58, 59. BOSTON FOUNDED. 131 by the infant colony in 1636, the College assumed a practical existence in 1638, taking the name of the Rev. John Harvard, of whom, alas ! so little is known except his immortal bequest. And now, at the end of the first four years' term, Governor Winthrop has the satisfaction of making the following entry in his Journal : — " Nine bachelors commenced at Cambridge ; they were young men of good hope, and performed their acts so as gave good proof of their proficiency in the tongues and arts. (8.) 5. The general court had settled a government or superintendency over the college, viz., all the magistrates and elders over the six nearest churches and the president, or the greatest part of these. Most of them were now present at this first Commencement, and dined at the college with the scholar's ordinary commons, which was done of purpose for the students' encouragement, &c., and it gave good content to all." Winthrop was again elected Governor for 1643, with Endicott as his Deputy-Governor. The General Court, at its first session of this year, divided "the whole plantation within this jurisdiction" into four shires, or counties, — Suffolk, with Boston at its head, and seven other towns; Norfolk, with " Salsberry " at its head, and five other towns ; Essex, with Salem at its head, and seven other towns; Middlesex, with Charlestown at its head, and eight other towns. There were thus already thirty-four towns in Massachusetts, distributed among four counties, or shires. At the following session, a number of the neighboring Indian Sachems made voluntary submission of themselves to the government of Massachusetts, and the records contain sundry questions which were propounded to them, with their answers of consent or agreement. A single one of the nine or ten will illustrate their character : — " 3. Not to do any unnecessary worke on y" Sabath day, especially w*in y° gates of Christian townes.'' Answer : " It is easy to y" ; they have not much to do on any day, and they can well take their ease on yf day." But the great event of this year, and one of the most memorable events in the early history of our whole country, was the final formation of that New England Confederation or Union, by written articles of agreement, which is the original example and pattern of whatever unions or confedera- tions have since been proposed or established on the American Continent. It was adopted by only four Colonies, — Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, — the four which were afterwards consolidated into two. But it was formed by those who were " desirous of union and studious of peace," and it embodied principles, and recognized rights, and established precedents, which have entered largely into the composition of all subsequent instruments of union. It had been proposed as early as 1637, and Governor Winthrop had labored unceasingly to accomplish it for six years. He was recognized as its principal prompter and promoter 1^2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. by the famous Thomas Hooker, of Connecticut, in a remarkable letter, thank- ing him for the " speciall prudence " with which he had labored " to settle a foundation of safety and prosperity in succeeding ages," and for laying, with his faithful assistants, " the first stone of the foundation of this com- bynation of peace." ^ The little congress of commissioners was held and organized in Boston on the 7th (17th) of September, 1643, the birthday of the town, and Winthrop was elected its first president. The same day of the same month, nearly a hundred and fifty years later (1787), was to mark the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, in which it is not dif- ficult to discern some provisions which may have owed their origin to the Articles of this old New England Confederation. The year 1643 did not end without witnessing the rise and progress, but unhappily not the end, of the La Tour and D'Aulnay controversy, which involved not a few of the jealousies and animosities which have more re- cently occupied the public mind in connection with foreigners and Papists, and which involved also some nice points of neutrality and international law. Governor Winthrop gave vigorous expression to his views on the subject in one of the papers to which the controversy gave occasion, and in particular reply to some reproaches which were cast upon his own course. This paper has been preserved by Hutchinson,'-^ and contains the following passage near its close : — " All amounts to this summe : The Lord hath brought us hither, through the swelling seas, through the perills of pyrates, tempests, leakes, fires, rocks, sands, dis- eases, starvings ; and hath here preserved us these many yeares from the displeasure of Princes, the envy and rage of Prelates, the malignant plots of Jesuits, the mutinous contentions of discontented persons, the open and secret attempts of barbarous In- dians, the seditious and undermining practices of hereticall false brethren ; and is our confidence and courage all swallowed up in the feare of one D'Aulnay? " But this much-vexed controversy, with all the others, belongs to a dif- ferent writer and another chapter.^ The political year of 1644 opens with the election of Endicott as Gover- nor, and Winthrop as Deputy-Governor. The year was one of much political agitation. Grave discussions were held at the successive sessions of the General Court as to the principles on which the government should be administered, and particularly as to the respective powers of the two branches of the Legislature. The magistrates and deputies were drawn into frequent and earnest contention with each other, and the ministers and elders were sometimes called upon to give judgment or arbitrate between them. In connection with this controversy, and in justification of his own views, Winthrop prepared an elaborate Treatise on Government, entitled "Arbi- trary Governm! described : and the Governmen' of the Massachusetts vin- 1 Letter of Hooker, 4 Afass. Hist. Coll. vi. 2 Hutchinson, Collection of Original Papers, pp. 389-390. [See, further, in Mr. Smith's chap- p. 121-132. ter on "Boston and the Neighboring Jurisdic- ^ [By C. C. Smith, "Boston and the Neigh- tions." — Ed.J boring Jurisdictions." ^ Ed.] BOSTON FOUNDED. 133 dicated from that Aspersion." This work only added fuel to the flame. While it was still the subject of private consultation, and before it was revised and prepared for presentation to the General Court, some of the deputies succeeded in procuring a copy, and made it the subject of cen- sorious criticism. An autograph copy has lately been discovered among Winthrop's papers, and it has very recently been printed for the first time since it was written. ^ Thomas Dudley was substituted for Endicott as Governor in 1645, and Winthrop was again made Deputy-Governor. The Governor's Journal for this year contains the following noteworthy record : — " Divers free schools were erected, as at Roxbury (for maintenance whereof every inhabitant bound some house or land for a yearly allowance forever) and at Boston, where they made an order to allow forever 50 pounds to the master and an house, and 30 pounds to an usher, who should also teach to read and write and cipher, and Indians' children were to be taught freely, and the charge to be by yearly contribution, either by voluntary allowance, or by rate of such as refused, &c. ; and this order was confirmed 'by the General Court \blank'\. Other towns did the Uke, providing main- tenance by several means." But the most signal event of this year was what has sometimes been called " the Impeachment of Winthrop." The story is told so well by Dr. Palfrey, in his History of New England^ that we are unwilling to give it any other words than his : — " A dispute, local in its origin, and apparently of slight importance for a time, but finally engaging at once the military, the religious, and the civil authorities of the col- ony, was bequeathed by Endicott to his successor. The train-band of the town of Hingham, having chosen Anthony Eames to be their captain, ' presented him to the Standing Council for their allowance.' While the business was in this stage, the soldiers altered their minds, and in a second election gave the place to Bozoun Allen. The magistrates, thinking that an injustice and affront had been offered to Eames, determined that the former election should be held valid until the Court should take further order. The company would not obey their captain, and mutinied. He was summoned before the church of his town, under a charge of having made misrepresentations to the mag- istrates. He went to Boston and laid his case before them. Tiiey ' sent warrant to the constable to attach some of the principal offenders [Peter Hobart, minister of Hingham, being one] to appear before them at Boston, to find sureties for their ap- pearance at the next Court.' Hobart came and remonstrated so intemperately that ' some of the magistrates told him that, were it not for respect for his ministry, they would commit him.' Two of those arraigned with him refused to give bonds, and Winthrop sent them to jail. " So the affair stood at the time of Dudley's accession. Hobart and some eighty of his friends petitioned for a hearing before the General Court upon the lawfulness of their committal ' by some of the magistrates, for words spoken concerning the power of the General Court, and their liberties, and the liberties of the Church.' The dep- ' Life and Letters of John Winthrop, \'\. i,ip- throp, in 1876, to the Public Library, where it 459' [Tlie original manuscript, with all ihe now is. — Ed.] papers relating to it, was given by .Mr. Win- '■' Vol. ii. p. 254. 134 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. uties, on their part, complied with the request, and sent a vote accordingly to the magistrates for their concurrence. The magistrates ' returned answer, that they were willing the cause should be heard, so as the petitioners would name the magistrates whom they intended, and the matters they would lay to their charge, &c. The peti- tioners' agents, who were then deputies of the Court, . . . thereupon singled out the Deputy-Governor [Winthrop], and two of the petitioners undertook the prosecution.' The magistrates were loath to sanction so irregular a proceeding ; but Winthrop de- sired to make his vindication, and the petitioners were permitted to have their way. " ' The day appointed being come, the Court assembled in the meeting-house at Boston. Divers of the elders were present, and a great assembly of people. The Deputy-Governor [Winthrop], coming in with the rest of the magistrates, placed him- self beneath within the bar, and so sat uncovered.' At this ' many both of the Court and the assembly were grieved.' But he said that he had taken what was the fit place for an accused person, and that, ' if he were upon the bench, it would be a great dis- advantage to him, for he could not take that hberty to plead the cause which he ought to be allowed at the bar.' " In the full argument which followed, the Deputy-Governor ' justified all the par- ticulars laid to his charge ; as that, upon credible information of such a mutinous prac- tice and open disturbance of the peace and slighting of authority, the offenders were sent for, the principal by warrant to the constable to bring them, and others by summons, and that some were bound over to the next Court of Assistants, and others, that refused to be bound, were committed ; and all this according to the equity of laws here established, and the custom and laws of England, and our constant practice these fifteen years.' " The matter vv^as under debate, says Palfrey, for more than seven weeks, with only one week's intermission, and was at length adjusted by an agree- ment on all hands for a complete acquittal of Winthrop, and for the punish- ment of all the petitioners by fines, the largest of which was twenty pounds, and that of the minister two pounds. " According to this agreement," writes Winthrop himself, in his Journal, " presently after the lecture, the magistrates and deputies took their places in the meeting-house ; and the people being come together, and the Deputy-Governor placing himself within the bar, as at the time of the hearing, &c., the Governor [Dudley] read the sentence of the Court, without speaking any more ; for the deputies had (by importunity) ob- tained a promise of silence from the magistrates. Then was the Deputy-Governor desired by the Court to go up and take his place again upon the bench, which he did accordingly, and the Court being about to arise, he desired leave for a little speech." Few speeches, if any, which have ever been made in Boston, during its two centuries and a half of existence, have attained a celebrity so wide and so durable as this "little speech" of Winthrop's, delivered in the meet- ing-house of its First Church, before the assembled General Court of Mas- sachusetts, on the 14th (24th) of May, 1645. Ii^ the Modern Universal History ^ it is given at length, and pronounced " equal to anything of an- tiquity, whether we consider it as coming from a philosopher or a magis- ' Vol. xxxix. BOSTON FOUNDED. 1 35 trate." James Grahame, the excellent Scotch historian of the United States, says of it : " The circumstances in which this address was delivered recall the most interesting scenes of Greek and Roman history; while in the wisdom, piety, and dignity that it breathes, it resembles the magnan- imous vindication of a judge of Israel." De Tocqueville, in his remarkable essay on Democracy in America, quotes a passage from it as " a fine definition of liberty." This passage may well be quoted here, as one of the cherished memorials of the early days of Boston : — " There is a two-fold liberty, — natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt), and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists ; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exer- cise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be wdirse than brute beasts : Omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. " The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal ; — it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it ; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this, is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority ; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." Winthrop, as we have seen, had encountered many controversies ; but this was the last. In 1646, 1647, ^ri^^ 1648, successively, he was elected Gov- ernor again, with Thomas Dudley as Deputy-Governor. He did not live to be the subject of an election in 1649. The limits of our chapter will not allow of any detailed account of the legislation of the colony, or of the progress of Boston, as its capital, during these three remaining years. Yet there are some matters which must not be omitted. And before all others must be mentioned, as an enactment of inestimable value and of immeasurable influence on the future character and welfare of the Colony and the Commonwealth, the Order of Nov. Ii (21), 1647, — which was in the- following words : — " It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue ; so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, — that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, — " It is therefore Ordered, that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint 136 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the pru- dentials of the town shall appoint ; provided those that send their children be not op- pressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns. " And it is further Ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred famiUes or householders, they shall set up a Grammar School, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University ; provided, that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year, that every such town shall pay five pounds to the next school till they shall perform this Order." Massachusetts has nothing wiser or nobler to boast of, whether in her earlier or her later legislation, than this memorable provision for Education. It has been the very light of her own path, and the inspiration of her own onward progress, from that day to this ; while it has furnished an ex- ample, never to be forgotten, to all the world. Two centuries after this Order was passed by her little General Court, it was held up for imitation and admiration in the British Parliament by one of the most brilliant speakers and writers of his day.-"- At this same session of the Colonial Legislature a provision was made as follows : — " It is agreed by the Court, to the end we may have the better light for making and proceeding about laws, that there shall be these books following procured for the use of the Court from time to time : Two of Sir Edw'' Cooke upon Littleton ; two of the Books of Entryes ; two of Sir Edw" Cooke upon Magna Charta ; two of the New Terms of the Law j two Dalton's Justice of Peace ; two of Sir Edw" Cooke's Reports." English Law, with Coke as its expositor and commentator, was thus adopted as the model of Massachusetts legislation, while the foundation was laid thus early of a State Library for the General Court. But from Eng- land, too, Massachusetts seems to have derived her earliest suggestions and encouragements in regard to the dreadful delusion which was soon to per- vade the colony. The records of the May session of 1648 contain this clause: — " The Court desire the course which hath been taken in England for discovery of Witches, by watching them a certain time. It is Ordered, that the best and surest way may forthwith be put in practice, — to begin this night if it may be, being the 18'!' of the 3? mo., and that the husband may be confined to a private room, and he also then watched." But the story of Witchcraft, either in Old or in New England, of which this record is but a preamble, belongs happily to a later chapter. It only remains for us to close this summary sketch of the foundation- period of Massachusetts and of Boston by some notice of the death of him 1 Macaulay, in 1847, in my own hearing. BOSTON FOUNDED. 137 who has often been called the Father of both. Governor Winthrop's last entry in his Journal bears date the nth of January, 1648, or as we now count it, the 2 1st of January, 1649. This was the very last day of his sixty- first year. A letter to his eldest son, bearing date, in modern style, Bos- JOHN WINTHROP.^ ton, Feb. 10, 1649, is the last written evidence of his being in life and health. We hear next of his having " a cold which turned into a fever," and that he " lay sick about a month." Five or six years before he had written of himself, — " Age now comes upon me, and infirmities therewithal, which makes me apprehend that the time of my departure out of this world 1 The best portrait o£ Governor Winthrop is that in the Senate Chamber of iVIassachusetts, — always ascribed to Van Dycl<. There is a mar- ble statue of him, in a sitting posture, in the chapel at Mount Auburn, and another, stand- ing, in the Capitol at Washington. A third, standing and in bronze, is to he unveiled in Boston on the 17th of September next. All the statues are by Richard S. Greenough. [See R. C. Winthrop's Life and Letters of John Win- throp, ii. 408. The portrait in the Senate Cham- VOL. I. — 18. ber is that referred to in Mather's iMai^nalia. A descendant in New York has another likeness, much inferior, of which there is a copy, or duplicate, in the hall of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester. The family has also a miniature, thought to be an original ; but it is in very bad condition. There are two copies of the Senate Chamber likeness in Memorial Hall at Cambridge ; another in the Boston Athenaeum, and one in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Socieiy. — Eo.] 138 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. is not far off. However, our times are all in the Lord's hand, so as we need not trouble our thoughts how long or short they may be, but how we may be found faithful when we are called for." He now sent for the elders of the church to pray with him, and " the whole church fasted as well as prayed for him," — John Cotton preaching a sermon on the occasion. Deputy-Gov- ernor Dudley is said to have waited on him, during this last illness, to urge him, as Governor, to sign an order for the banishment of some one deemed heterodox ; but Winthrop refused, saying that " he had done too much of that work already."^ He died, March 26 (April 5), 1649, being, as Mr. Savage has been careful to calculate (in correcting the error of Cotton Mather), 61 years 2 months and 14 days old. Governor Winthrop died at his residence, on what is now Washington Street, just opposite the foot of School Street, his garden being now oc- cupied by the " Old South." His house was burned up as firewood by the British soldiers in 1775, while they were using the meeting-house for their cavalry horses. In the parlors of that house, immediately after he had breathed his last, a consultation was held by the principal persons of Bos- ton as to the ordering of the funeral, " it being the desire of all that in that solemnity it may appear of what precious account and desert he hath been, and how blessed his memorial." These were the words used by John Wilson and John Cotton and Richard Bellingham and John Clark, in a let- ter^ addressed to John Winthrop of Connecticut, " from his father's parlour," on the same day, — announcing that the funeral would take place on the 3d (13th) of April, and despatched by a swift Indian messenger. On the 13th of April, accordingly, his remains were buried with " great solemnity and honor," in what is now known as the " King's Chapel Burial Ground," where the old Winthrop tomb is still to be seen. The only positive state- ment in regard to the funeral is found in the following record at the next meeting of the General Court : — " Whereas the Surveyor General, on some encouragements, lent one barrel and a half of the country's store of powder to the Artillery officers of Boston, conditionally, if the General Court did not allow it to them as a gift to spend it at the funeral of our late honored Governor, they should repay it, — the powder being spent on the oc- casion above said, — the Court doth think hieet that the powder so delivered should never be required again, and thankfully acknowledge Boston's great, worthy, and due love and respects to the late honored Governor, which they manifested in solemnizing his funeral, whom we accounted worthy of all honor." ^ Nearly twenty years had now elapsed since Winthrop was elected Gov- ernor of Massachusetts by the Company in London ; nearly nineteen years 1 The authority for this statement, which had Priest," — probably Marmadulce Matthews, who eluded the search of Mr. Savage, has been had then been ten years in the colony, kindly furnished to the writer of this chapter by 2 [Given in fac-simile in the Life of John Dr. George H. Moore, the superintendent of Winthrop, \\. y)i. Ed.I the Lenox Library in New York, —viz., George 8 [See Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, pp igo 6^2 • Bishop's New England Judged, i66i, p. 172. and Mr Winthrop's appeal for the preservation Bishop mentions the person whose banishment of the old burial spots in Boston in Mass. Hist was urged as " one Matthews, a Weltch man, a Soc. Proc, September, 1879. — Ed.] BOSTON FOUNDED. 1 39 since he landed with the Company at Salem, bringing the charter of Mas- sachusetts with him. During that period he had been twelve times re- elected as Governor, three times chosen Deputy-Governor, and in all the few other years had served at the head of the Board of Assistants. Mean- time there had been no intermission of his devoted services to Boston, at the head of her Selectmen, or otherwise, from the day on which, under his auspices, the town was founded, and " Trimontaine called Boston." Boston had now become the thriving and prosperous capital of a colony which con- tained more than fifteen thousand people. Institutions of government, education, and religion had been established in town and country. Indeed, Dr. Palfrey, in his history, writing of this period, says : — " The vital system of New England, as it had now been created, was complete. It had only thenceforward to grow, as the human body grows from childhood to graceful and robust maturity." ^ And he adds, in relation to Winthrop : — " The importance which history should ascribe to his life must be proportionate to the importance attributed to the subsequent agency of that Commonwealth of which he was the most eminent founder. It would be erroneous to pretend that the principles upon which it was established were an original conception of his mind ; but undoubtedly it was his policy, more than any other man's, that organized into shape, animated with practical vigor, and prepared for permanency those primeval senti- ments and institutions that have directed the course of thought and action in New England in later times. And equally certain is it that among the millions of living men descended from those whom he ruled, there is not one who does not — through efficient influences, transmitted in society and thought along the intervening genera- tions — owe much of what is best within him, and in the circumstances about him, to the benevolent and courageous wisdom of John Winthrop." ^ Similar tributes by Cotton Mather and Governor Hutchinson, by Josiah Quincy and George Bancroft, and others, might be added. But one such is enough, coming as it does from a venerable author to whom no suspicion of partiality can attach. 1 //i'si. of New England, ii. 265. ^ Hist, of New England, ii. 266. I40 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. a w o •-» o [Note. — This auto- graph of the famous Eng- lish patriotjohn Hampden, which concerns Governor Winthrop's " Conclusions for New England," and is referred to by Mr. Win- throp in the preceding chapter, is taken from a fac-simile of the entire let- ter, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, July, 1865. The letter was addressed to Sir John Eliot, and was found among his papers, together with the transcript, sent by Eliot, endorsed " The project for New England. For Mr. Hampden," — and this text of the paper, together with another from the State Pa- per OfHce, is given in the same place. It may be interesting in this connec- tioi. to recall the fact that Isaac Johnson, before leaving England, made a will, in which John Hampden and John Winthrop were associated as his executors, and the sum of " three pounds lawful monies " left to each of them "to make him aringe of." 3 Mass, Hist. Coll., viii. 244, 245. See Mr. Winthrop's account of a portrait of Hampden in the White House at Washington, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, June, 1881, p. 436. — Ed.] CHAPTER III. THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH: ITS BASIS, ORGANIZATION, AND ADMINISTRATION; ITS CONTENTIONS; ITS CONFLICTS WITH HERETICS. BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS. Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society. THE colony or local government established here by the original set- tlers and founders was not by themselves called " The Puritan Com- monwealth ; " but the title is a most apt and just one for defining what really seems to have been their intent, and what was actually the result of their enterprise. Nor is it likely that those most gravely engaged in that enterprise would have objected to that title. There is no assumption in it which would have to them seemed unbecoming; nor would prejudice, con- tempt, or satire associated with it have led them to repudiate it. The title, however, is one assigned by a later age, and after the experi- ment which it describes had been modified by stress of circumstances, or, as some would even say, had failed. It is our phrase for designating the idea and the practical working of a sternly serious scheme of colonization on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, of which the town of Boston was the centre. Nor is it presumptuous in us to say that we ourselves are more favorably situ- ated for forming a fuller and more intelligible view of their object than they defined in such statements of it as they have left to us. Of course, they had what was to them a deliberately formed design, — clear in its main intent and distinguished in its chief purpose, however vaguely appre- hended, as to all the requisitions and conditions which would present them- selves in its practical working. We look back upon it, and, seeing what it involved of difficulties, embarrassments, and errors, we can judge it more wisely; and while generously appreciating its sincerity in their hearts, and the zeal and sacrifice which they devoted to it, we may account its qualified merits and success to causes which they did not take into view as likely to thwart their purposes. Following the wise counsel for guidance in such investigations ex- pressed in the maxim. Melius est petere fontes quam sectare rivulos, we must derive our idea of the intent and object and the animating spirit of the enterprise from those who as its foremost leaders planned and guided it, and from documents left by them which were contemporary with the movement. 142 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The leaders, the master spirits of it, were few in number; yet, the whole undertaking being at their charges and under their responsibility, they were entitled to authority in its direction. We must from the first distinguish carefully between the purposes and just rights of these responsible leaders, who embarked their worldly means and prospects in a scheme of their own devising, and the qualified interests of others — soon to become the major- ity — who, as associates, adventurers, servants, and subsequent members of the company, acceded to an influence over the development and fortunes of the enterprise without having the same ends in view, or the same interest at stake in it. The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay derived certain defined rights and privileges from a patent purchased by them of the " Grand Council of Plymouth," confirmed by a royal charter. It was the manifest intent of this charter to constitute and empower a trading company, to be resident and administered in England, with power to send its agents to transact and oversee its business in the waters and over the territory here assigned to it. The circumstances under which, contrary to the manifest intent of the charter, it was transferred here and used as the basis of a gov- ernment claiming its sanction, to be set up and administered on this soil, have been defined on other pages. ■' It is for us, at this point, to penetrate as thoroughly as we can into the avowed or secret purposes, so that we may apprehend the real motives of the chief and the responsible movers of the enterprise, — those who bore the cost of it, and claimed the authority to direct it. We have to guide us the significant fact that when, after due deliberation in private conferences and much serious consultation, the decision of transferring the charter and its administration was reached, there were some very important changes made in the membership and government of the company. We look for the master motive, and we question the leaders as to their spirit and pur- poses. The governor, John Winthrop, — the foremost of these leaders ; the wisest, truest, and most constant among those who formed and guided the enterprise, — on his voyage of permanent exile hither, having em- barked his whole estate in the venture, wrote in his cabin an essay, to which he gave the title: A Modell of Christian Charity? For tenderness and devoutness of tone, for gentleness and serenity of spirit, and for loftiness of self-consecration to unselfish, self-sacrificing aims, it will be difficult to find any like composition with which to compare it. In this, he writes : " For the worke wee have in hand, it is by a mutuall consent, through a special overvaluing providence and a more than an ordinary approbation of y' Churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and Consorte- shipp under a due form of Government both civill and ecclesiasticall. In such cases as this, y" care of y" publique must oversway all private respects by which not only conscience, but meare civill pollicy, dothe bind us." It hardly needs to be suggested that, while Winthrop was the master ' |Cf. Mr. Winthrop's and Mr. Deaiie's chapters. — Ed.| ^ | [„ ^ Mass. Hist. Col. vii. 31. Ed.] THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 143 spirit of the enterprise, he was by no means the arbitrary, autocractic dic- tator, asserting and securing for it the direction of his individual will. He was but one of a choice fellowship of intimate friends, animated by the same devout and generous aims. There is evidence enough in the con- ferences and debates above referred to that he and his chief associates had come into accord and mutual understanding by a deliberate weighing of proposals, a comparison of their several judgments, and a counting of costs. Winthrop makes a pointed reference, in his Modell of Chanty, to the close-drawn covenant of mutual fidelity which he and his brethren had bound between them. He says : " Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man. Wee must entertaine each other in brotherly aiifection. Wee must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for y'' supply of others' necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar converse together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience, and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make others' conditions our owne; rejoice together, mourne to- gether, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our com- mission and community in the worke, as members of y° same body, &c." With these helps for our- guidance (among which we must reckon the Conclusions for New England, described in the preceding chapter), we may proceed to indicate the main design of the leaders of the enterprise, and the method by which they aimed to accomplish it. One preliminary sugges- tion may not be out of place here. Among the censorious criticisms, the harsh judgments, and even expressions of contempt and ridicule, to which the " Puritan Commonwealth " and its leaders in Church and State have been subjected in later times, the candid and considerate student of their plans and doings is generally able to discern for himself the line of distinc- tion between what is fair and reasonable and what is simply misleading and unjust in the arraignment of them before their posterity. Certain it is, that no assailant of the motives, methods, and plans of these Puritan founders of a new State has ever charged himself with the obligation to show how any particular set and sort of men and women could have been moved by the purpose and inspired with the energy and zeal for such an enterprise, unless a profoundly religious spirit had quickened them ; nor how, with a series of failures before them as warnings, they could have failed to protect their hazardous venture against the risks of discord, sedition, and disaster to which it was exposed, by some such measures and safeguards as would have to those not personally in full accord with them the character of severity, bigotry, and stern intolerance. Their enterprise was arduous and full of perils. Failure would be ruin to them. Nor was it strange that, while they prepared for and faced the real dangers of their enterprise, they should have yielded also to timid apprehensions and anxious forebodings of possible perils. Though, as has been said, the "Puritan Commonwealth" was not a phrase adopted by the founders of Boston and Massachusetts as the title of the government and State which they set up here, there was a word of equal 144 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. significance and fitness which they did accept for that purpose, — the word " theocracy." From the most careful study of their motives and designs, as meditated by the leaders and tentatively carried out in their legislation and institutions, we draw this inference, — that it was their aim and effort to establish here a Christian commonwealth, which should bear the same rela- tion to the whole Bible, as its Statute-book, which the Jewish commonwealth bore to the Scriptures of the Old Testament.^ Their legislation and institu- tions were not founded upon nor guided by the spirit of the New Testa- ment distinctively. Had they been so, they would doubtless have been in several respects much modified. And though the founders did intend to distinguish between certain ceremonial and institutional elements of the " Old Covenant " which they believed to be abrogated and those which they regarded as of permanent and perpetual authority for " the people of God," they did not draw the dividing line so sharply or so indulgently on the side of larger liberty for Christians as it has been drawn, by general approval, in later times. The punctiliousness, the authority, the judicial severity of the old dispensation, and its blending of the functions of Church and State were adopted as vital principles of the Puritan theocracy. This fact appears alike in their long delay and reluctance to construct anything answering to a code of laws, and in the character of the code which they finally adopted. They felt it to be their solemn duty rather to put into force and require obedience to laws which, as they believed, God had already proclaimed for them than to enact laws of their own. So, while waiting deliberately before engaging in such legislation as the emergency of their condition might re- 1 [Perhaps the best explanation to be found in the end to be identical. The Pilgrims were in their own writings of the intent of our New separatists, professedly outside the pale of the England Puritan's system of church government, English Church; the Puritans but gradually as distinguished from that of the Church of Eng- emancipated themselves from its fetters. This land, is in John Cotton's Keyes of the Kingdom is the view taken in the following books : Dr. of Heaven, 1644, ^nd '" h'^ ^"7 of t^"! Churches Waddington's Tracks of the Hidden Church, and of Christ ill New England, T.6^c,. The prevailing more elaborately in his Congrfgational History, views of the following generation find record in of which there is in the Congregational Quarterly, Mather's Magitalia, and still later, with Baptist 1874, a searching review by H. M. Dexter, who tendencies, in Backus's Hist, of New England, also covers the ground in his Congregationalism and it was chiefly upon these two books that, at as seen in its Literature; articles by I. N. Tarbox the suggestion of Neander, Uhden wrote his on "Plymouth and the Bay" in the Ctf«^c^«//o«(r/ Geschichte der Congregationalisten in Neu Eng- Quarterly, xvii., and " Pilgrims and Puritans " in land bis 1740, of which there is an English the Old Colony Hist. Soc. Coll. 1878 ; Punchard's translation, with characterization of the chief History of Congregationalism, iii. 443 ; Benjamin authorities in an appendix. Views of the aims Scott in a lecture, London, i866, reprinted in and significance of the churches from the point Hist. Mag., May, 1867, from which is mostly taken by those holding with modern qualifica- derived an article, " Pilgrims and Puritans," in tions to their transmitted beliefs will be found Scribner's Monthly, June, 1876. Cf. also Hist. in Leonard Wood's Theology of the Puritans, Mag., May and November, 1867, October, 1869; and in Leonard Bacon's Genesis of the Neiv Eng- Baylies's Old Colony, i. ch. i. ; Barry's Massa- land Churches. The latter book aims rather to chusetts, i. ch. ii. ; Palfrey's Neisi Endand, i. ch. show how the neighboring colony of New Ply- iii. ; Essex Institute Hist. Coll. iv. 145, by A. C. mouth exerted an influence upon the gathering Goodell ; and Dr. Bacon on the " Reaction of churches of the Bay. A distinction has of late New England on English Puritanism in the been much insisted upon between the principles Seventeenth Century," in the New Englander, of these neighboring communities, which came July, 1878. — Ed.| THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 145 quire, they were content to understand that Scripture should furnish them guidance in their code. And when, after a long deferring of this need- ful work for their government, and many ingenious excuses for their pro- crastination, they were finally compelled by the impatient demands of the people to provide for them a " body of liberties," the influence of the lead- ing spirits prevailed to secure for their legislation a Jewish austerity, and to reinforce their authority by Old-Testament texts. ^ In our attempt to understand and to judge with fairness the intent and purpose of the founders of this New England theocracy, it is of course of prime importance that we view them la the light o{ their own beliefs and consciences.^ The fundamental condition of their rectitude and sincerity in heart and aim is put beyond all question by their efforts, their sacrifices, their exposing themselves and all they possessed in this world, and com- mitting their hopes for another to the stern deprivations, perils, and suffer- ings involved in their wilderness enterprise. And as to the Scriptural the- ocratical foundation which was the basis of the Puritan Commonwealth, — visionary and impracticable as the scheme seems to us in its own principles, in the discomfitures and errors attending its experimental trial, and in its confessed failure, — a wise review of the past and a knowledge of the work- ings of human nature will at least relieve the scheme of contempt and ridicule. Very many and very visionary, ranging all the way from a noble dignity to a manifest absurdity and folly, have been the theories which have inspired and beguiled companies of men and women for the disposing of themselves in communities with security, prosperity, and happiness. To say nothing of those which have been only set forth in theory and in imagina- tion, like Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, and Harrington's Oceana, we find enough of them that have been put on trial, from that of the Essenes to that of the Mormons, — with all that have been in actual experiment between 1 [John Cotton had drawn up a code on the years has put us in easy possession of their early pattern of " Moses his Judicials " in 1636, which laws. Professor Joel Parker has made their re- was not adopted ; but it was printed in London ligious legislation the subject of a lecture, which in 1641, reprinted in 1655, again in Hutchinson's is printed in the Lowell Lectures on Massachu- CoUedions, p. 161, and in Mass. Hist. Coll. v. 173. setts and its Early History. The abstract of the The first code adopted was the "Body of Lib- early laws which was printed in 1641 (copy in erties," drawn up in 1638 by Nathaniel Ward, Harvard College Library) has been reprinted which became authorized in Dec. 1641. Nine- in Force's Tracts, ii. Professor Washburn's teen MS. copies were distributed to the towns, yudicial History of Massachusetts will serve as None were printed. No copy of this was known a commentary. A statement of the early edi- till, about sixty years ago, a manuscript of it tions of the Massachusetts laws is in the was discovered in the Boston Athenaeum, and Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. ii. 576. Of the earliest in 1843 J' ^'35 printed in the 3 Mass. Hist, Coll. printed edition, 1648, no copy is known. A few viii. 216, with an introduction by Francis C. copies remain of the second edition, dated Gray. Cf. Poole's introduction to Johnson's 1660. See Mr. Winthrop's chapter. — Ed.| Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour, ^ [The most flagrant disregard of these con- and Historical Magazine, February, 1868. Barry, ditious has brought a great deal of censure upon A'i'r/.iT/'jI/rtJJ.i. 276, instances, as significant of the Peter Oliver's Puritan Commonwealth in Mas- really mild sway of New England Puritanism for sachusetls, Boston, 1856. Palfrey says it might thetimes, that the ''Body of Liberties "contained well have been written by a chaplain of James but twelve offences punishable by death, while IL Hildreth, in his History of the United one hundred and fifty were so treated in Eng- States, rather allows their faults to overshadow land. The printing of the colony records of late their virtues. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 19. 146 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. them, — to furnish us with sufficient illustrations of the ingenuity, the fertil- ity, the eccentricity of human inventiveness in this direction. In view of all these human devices, exercised in schemes for reconstituting and amending the social state, — whether having reference solely to mundane objects or fashioned by faith or superstition for religious ends, — it is not at all strange that the basis of a commonwealth on a theocracy or the Bible, such as was attempted here, should, in the developments of time and circumstances, have had its turn for a practical trial. Compared with many other of the vision- ary schemes of men, it has qualities august in nobleness and dignity. In accordance with this view, a considerate study of the better side and aspects of the Puritan scheme can hardly fail to impress us with a sense of the pro- found and enthralling earnestness, the thorough and intense sincerity, of the master spirits of the enterprise. There is something indeed that we may describe as awful in this their earnestness, the literal closeness and entireness of their religious believings, their unfaltering convictions as to their duty, and their purpose to perform it Now, it is to this full persuasion and intense earnestness of the founders of the Puritan Commonwealth that we may trace the occasion of their failure, and incidentally of the errors and wrongs into which their policy, legislation, and, so to speak, their consciences, consist- ently as they thought, but none the less fatally, led them. And to the same cause we are also to refer much that is uncharitable, unfair, and wholly un- just in the contemptuous criticism and severity of censure and ridicule which have been visited upon the Puritans in these modern times. The theocratic principles of these leading Puritans, and the legislative, social, and religious enforcement of them, were vitally dependent upon a form of belief and a rule of living which required perfect individual con- viction, and which could not be transferred or imposed upon such as rightly or wrongfully failed to share that conviction. Oppression and intolerance of all their associates who were outside of their covenant, however other- wise concerned for the common security and prosperity, as we shall soon see, were inextricably involved with — in fact were — the natural and necessary results of the Puritan administration. The attempt of the most earnest and austere of the leaders to enforce their own principles upon their servants and others — and indeed upon such of their own chosen fellowship as might falter or seem lukewarm in their constancy — led to manifest injustice, to bigotry, and to cruelty. And this same earnestness and consequent sever- ity of the leaders furnish the occasion of much of the harshness of judg- ment, the scorn, contempt, and ridicule that have been visited upon them. Not so much by any individual attainments of our own, but by our share in a general enlightenment and enfranchisement, it has come about that what to those Puritan legislators were the most august and solemn realities of belief and conviction are to us the merest superstitions and bugbears. Their harshness, bigotry, and intolerance were the results of what we re- gard as their false beliefs, their absurd credulity, their conceit that they were " God's elect." Yet their sincerity in their prejudices, convictions, THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. I47 and delusions does not a\ lil with all who criticise or judge them to relieve one whit the limitation of the wisdom of the Puritans, or to palliate the odiousness of their principles when put to trial. The enterprise of transplanting themselves and establishing a colony in the wilderness involved most grave and exacting conditions. It was costly, and beset by many contingencies and risks. It required all the previous forecast of calculating wisdom, a cautious apprehension of possible dis- comfitures, and a prudent watchfulness against external and internal foes. They had before them for warning the disastrous failure of like enteiprises at Virginia, St. Christopher's, Newfoundland, and on the coast of Maine, with only at that time the qualified success of the poor settlement at Plymouth. Encouragement and security in any like experiment could be looked for only by a watchful caution against the ill agencies which had wrecked all pre- vious ones. The master motive in the minds of the leaders here — those who embarked all their estates and prospects in life ia the undertaking — is admitted to have been a profoundly religious one, however qualified by its elements and limitations that type of religion may have been. But this religious intent was necessarily dependent upon financial or commercial conditions and accessories. It is to be admitted that only the minority of those who came in the first fleet, and who arrived in increasing numbers foi the next score of years, were primarily drawn hither by that master motive of zeal in their peculiar type of religion. Only the minority, too, from the first and onwards, embarked their whole worldly substance and their life- resolve and constancy in the enterprise. At the meeting of the company in England in which it was resolved to transfer the charter and to set up its local administration here, the religious motive prevailed over merely mercantile or thrifty objects, though the latter were recognized in their place. At that point the enterprise was in the hands, at the charges, and in the direction of its religious leaders. The security and success of the colony would depend primarily upon the condi- tion that these leaders should be intelligent, educated, and upright men, thoroughly conscientious and high-minded, sincerely devout, and seeking ends of public good. Those prime conditions would ensure the judi- cious exercise of the power which rightfully belonged to them, and would qualify the ill consequences of any arbitrary stretch of it. That these con- ditions were in the main generously and nobly met stands triumphantly certified in the fact that though there were many impediments, mistakes, and discomfitures, many incidental grievances and wrongs, the experiment was never abandoned. No crisis in its trial compelled any radical changes in it, except such as could be allowed without revolution, as in the time and circumstances of them necessary and wise ; and the success of it stands to-day a demonstration to the world. But these leaders, being the few, needed associates and helpers. Servants, " laborers, miners, and engineers," as the record reads, must be engaged, still at the charge of the responsible projectors and the pecuniary resources of the company. 148 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Thomas Foxcroft, the minister of the First Church in Boston, in a ser- mon preached by him on the first centennial of the settlement, speaks thus of the founders : " The initial generation of New England was very much a select and a puritanical people in the proper sense of the word. They were not (as to the body of them) a promiscuous and heterogeneous assem- blage, but in general of a uniform character, agreeing in the most excellent quahties, principles, and tempers ; Christians very much of the primitive stamp. As one of our worthies of the second generation ^ has aptly ex- pressed it, • God sifted a whole nation that he might send a choice grain over into this wilderness.' It was as little of a mixed generation, in regard of their moral character and religious profession, that came over first to New England, as perhaps was ever known in the earth. They were very much a chosen generation, collected from a variety of places, and by a strange conduct of Divine Providence agreeing in the same enterprise, to form a plantation for religion in this distant part of the world. Scarce any of a profane character mingled themselves with the first-comers ; and of those that came hither upon secular views, some were disheartened by the toils and difficulties they met with and soon returned, and others, finding this reformed climate disagreeable to their vitiated inclinations, took their speedy flight away. The body of the first-comers were men in their middle age or declining days, who had been inured to sufferings for righteousness' sake." Foxcroft adds, of his own time, " We are now become a very mixt generation; and may I not add, in consequence thereof, an apostate one? " The question naturally presents itself, as to what were the measures o' safeguards by which the leaders of the colony, its proprietors and officers sought to protect themselves and their scheme against the intrusion, the intermeddling, or the opposition of uncongenial and mischievous associates or interlopers ? They were eager to obtain renewing and reinforcing emi- grants. Indeed, it was essential that they should do so. But how did they plan to guard themselves against the wrong sort of comers ? Circumstances favored them in this respect better than any protective measures which they did or could enforce. It is understood that ttie Corporation held the absolute proprietary right to all the territory covered by their patent, and could also fix the conditions on which new members, freemen, could be admitted to the company, whose votes and action would afterwards imperil or secure all that depended upon that proprietary right. When the Cor- poration, through its Court, afterwards disposed of parcels of its land to in- dividuals or to townships, it still held, by the right of taxation, a sovereignty over the territory. They found in their Charter this assured privilege or authority for protecting themselves against all unwelcome or dangerous persons — "That it shall and may be lawful to and for y= cheife com- manders, governors, &c., of y" said company, resident in y" said part of New England, for their special defence and safety, to incounter, expulse, repell, and resist by force of armes, as well by sea as by lande, and by all fit- 1 Mr. Stoughton, in his Election Sermon. THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 149 ting waies and meanes whatsoever, all such person and persons as shall at any time hereafter attempt or enterprise y^ destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance to y^ said plantation or inhabitant." The authorities, in their wisdom, interpreted this positive charter privilege as empowering them to order and banish from their territory any one whose presence in it was not desirable to them. They availed themselves of it* from the moment of the first sitting of their Court, and proceeded to clear the place of all the squat- ters, scattered settlers, " old planters," and remnants of former companies of adventurers, who were judged " unmeet to inhabit in this jurisdiction." Still, there was from the first, from the stress of necessity, a door left open by which many persons but in partial sympathy with the aims of the Company, and some secretly or avowedly hostile to it, came in among them. It was essential to the unimpeded success of the Puritan Commonwealth, its firm basis, its fair development, its peace and security, that those who con- stituted it should be in accord and harmony, their loyalty to and love of it being assured by their "piety," — the piety of the Puritan pattern and spirit. It does not appear that the authorities were sufficiently rigid and watchful in imposing restrictions to an entrance upon their territory, such as would keep out mere adventurers, restless, discontented, and mischievous intruders. So they had to deal with such persons after they had more or less secured a hold by their presence and self-assertion. This was the first occasion of annoyance to them ; and the measures to which they had recourse were such as gradually, under the workings of human nature, involved severity, bitterness, cruelty, and matured into what we regard as their in- tolerant and persecuting spirit. It was quite far from their intent to offer a freehold or asylum for all sorts of unsettled, whimsical, and crotchety spirits. Yet a rare variety of such came in upon them. The Planter's Plea^ made the following somewhat generous, but still guarded invitation as to the sort of persons needed for the colony: " Good Governours, able Ministers, Physitians, Souldiers, Schoolemasters, Mariners, and Mechanicks of all sorts." Men free of ill humours " ought to be willing, constant, industrious, obedient, frugall, lovers of the common good, or at least such as may be easily wrought to this temper." It cannot be expected that all should be such, " but care must be had that y° principalis be so inclined. . . . Mutinies, which one person may kindle, are well nigh as dangerous in a Colony, as in an Armie. . . . Governours and Ministers, especially in New England, must be of piety and blameless life as patterns to y^ Heathens." Had the authorities of Massachusetts known what trouble they were to have from Roger Williams, they might from the first have declined to receive him ; for he was not one of those concerned in the enterprise, nor a freeman of the Company. They did not invite him here; but the way was free to him, and he came. It was the attempt of the most earnest and austere of the ' [This rare tract of John White's, printed the Brinley Catalogue, Nos. 373, 2,704), is re- in 1630 (of which Mr. Deane has a copy, and printed in Force's Tracts, ii., and in part in another is in the Lenox Library, and two are in Young's Chronicles of Mass. — Ed.] IjO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. authorities to enforce their principles and standards and tests upon their servants and others, and upon such of their own choicer fellowship as showed lukewarmness, or a failing " godliness," that heightened bigotry and prompted all degrees of harshness. This seems to be the fitting place to notice, by anticipation, the measure to which the legislators here had so soon a recourse in restricting the fran- chise to " Church-Members." In the lack of, or in the doubtful efficacy, of other securities, their first reliance was upon this. As has been already stated, their charter left them at full liberty to define the conditions on which, by making new members " freemen," they should admit to the company those who, as voters and candidates for office among them, should thus accede to influence and authority in disposing their affairs, their proprietary rights, and property. Our modern democracy makes quite easy the terms for the naturalization among us of foreigners who cast in their lot here, and who soon acquire the right to vote and to ask votes for themselves in all matters concerning our institutions and the property of the community. The franchise, on those easy terms, would have wrecked our colonial enter- prise jn its very start. It would soon have numbered among its full partners a heterogeneous multitude who would have had little idea of what " the pub- lic good " required, and less ability and will to labor and suffer for it. Se- dition, dissension, the strong assertion of individual variances of judgment believed to endanger the fabric of government or to provoke a party spirit, were evils which they had most reason to apprehend, and against these the leaders were most anxious to protect their enterprise, especially in its stage of uncertainty and peril. They would naturally, therefore, seek to hold new partners by some solemn pledge of fidelity, and to put this pledge into terms by which they might ever after challenge those who had voluntarily entered into it. So the condition on which they granted the franchise was not one dependent upon social rank, nor upon pecuniary means, but upon hearty sympathy and accord in the religious' intent of the enterprise, — that which consecrated it and, as they believed, could alone insure its success. They required that all who wished to share the civil franchise with them should enter into covenant with one of their churches. This rigid Puritan restriction of full civil rights to " church members " has furnished the oc- casion of the sharpest censure and reproach against those who imposed the condition. Waiving for a moment the rightfulness or expediency of the condition, it is enough to say that, having in view the chief intent of the founders of the Puritan Commonwealth, they would have stultified them- selves and confounded their scheme had they failed to impose it. There was no alternative open to them. Nor can the ingenuity of any censor of theirs in our own days propose any other condition of the franchise which would consist with the model of a Theocracy. None the less, however the condition proved on trial to work simply results of gross injustice and various forms of mischief and trouble. It was especially faulty and vicious in each of two evil consequences. First, the condition excluded from the THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 151 full rights of citizens a steadily increasing number of excellent, upright, and conscientious persons, who, for reasons satisfactory to themselves, could not and would not come into covenant relations with a church by the prescribed methods. Either lack of belief, or self-distrust, or scruples of conscience, restrained them from subjecting themselves to the ordeal of standing before a mixed congregation and revealing their innermost religious exercises and experience, with a profession that they had reached a certain stage in their conviction, and would henceforward put themselves under the watch and ward of the men and women under covenant. But as a second ill-working of this condition, while it excluded from citizenship some of the best persons, it afforded no adequate security against the inclusion of the worst. A hypo- crite might easily pass the ordeal under the lure of the consideration and privilege of which it was made the condition. One of the earliest and one of the most vexatious causes of strife and complaint, and a whole series of perplexities and embarrassments relieved only by the positive demand of Charles II. for the free allowance of the franchise, came from the imposition of this covenant condition. Persons who challenged scrutiny for the recti- tude of their characters and lives in vain petitioned for the rights of citizen- ship, as they shared all the public burdens. As the rite of baptism was allowed only to the children of parents who were under covenant, there was soon a generation of those born on the soil who neither were baptized themselves nor could obtain baptism for their children. The question be- came to them a pertinent one, whether they were Christians or Heathen. Such then was the quandary in which the Puritan leaders found themselves. To yield the franchise to the " uncovenanted " and the " unregenerate " was to subvert their Theocracy. To enforce the covenant condition was to risk the sure ruin of their Commonwealth. These preliminary suggestions, which present the aims and purposes of the responsible leaders in the enterprise that planted the town of Boston, — the germ of the State, — have been here advanced as setting forth that enter- prise, the spirit and the method of it, as it reveals itself to us in the retro- spect of history, with more of clearness and fulness than may have been enjoyed by those who planned and guided it. The writer of these pages, from as thorough a study of the original sources of information in our colonial history as was within his reach, has become convinced that a deep rehgious design in the purpose of the leaders is the key to the enterprise. We have to trace the process — one of arbitrary acts on the part of the leaders, and of obstructions and arrests on the side of opponents who stood for a more lawful authority — by which, through the temporary experi- ment of the Puritan Commonwealth, the corporation of the Massachusetts Bay Company became, by anticipation, the Commonwealth of Massachu- setts. Our starting point is from the obvious and undeniable fact that the charter was made to serve a use for which it was not designed or intended.^ ^ [Cf. Joel Parker's lecture on the charter the TuOvieW 'Lectwces, Massac/msetts and Us Earl} and religious legislation in Massachusetts, in History. — Ed.] IC2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Whatever, then, was found necessary, by forced construction, adaptation, oi supplementary provisions, to fit it for the purposes to which it was turned, involved, of course, trespass, disloyalty, and a breach of law. The charter was in this way perverted as a basis and medium for all such acts and measures and stretch of authority as it was made to sanction. Notwith- standing this, and the fact that the astute leaders must have been perfectly well aware that they had, so to speak, stolen a march upon their monarch by the transfer of the charter, and by the setting up, under their way of constru- ing it, such a government as they instituted here, they still clung to that char- ter, and professed to find in it their sufficient warrant. They seem to have per- suaded themselves — indeed they boldly insisted — that there was a pledge and potency in a quality which it derived from its seal of royalty, its kingly grace and covenant, that neutralized, or at least was not invalidated by, any strain or stretch of use of which, as they pleaded, they had found it abso- lutely necessary to avail themselves. The Chancery process, which in 1684 vacated and revoked the charter, was a decisive judgment of the authori- ties at home that the charter had been unlawfully perverted. This, how- ever, was only a final and effectual disposal of a controversy which had been from the first continuously in agitation. As soon as the royal councillors had knowledge of what was going on here under the assumed authority of the charter, a commission was instituted for examining and recalling it. More and more inquisitive and stringent measures by royal mandate and by later commissioners followed up the same attempt to bring the recusant Massachusetts legislators to a reckoning. Yet they still insisted upon that transcendent royal quality in the pledge of their patent just referred to. And they might well heighten its value to them by the plea which they more and more cogently and even piteously urged, about the sincerity of their reliance upon the royal covenant in the stern enterprise of coming over as " a poor distressed flock " into a desolate wilderness, at their own charges, among brute men and wild beasts, to found a civil State, and " to extend the bounds of the Gospel." It is evident, also, that the more of added value they had with pains and toil put into the venture, the more cogent would be their plea that the original covenant of their enterprise should hold inviola- ble. Nothing but the all-engrossing troubles and convulsions of the mother country, and the sympathy of the temporary Puritan Parliament and Pro- tectorate of Cromwell, would have availed, however, to secure to the exiles in Massachusetts time and opportunity for the rooting of their enterprise under the first charter. Whoever chooses by curious study to inform him- self of all the particulars incident to this lively episode in our history, about the challenging of the charter and the struggle to keep it, will find the story at least an entertaining one. He will find much that he may appreciate in the resolute, sturdy pluck and defiant obstinacy of the Puritan magistracy ; and he must be left free to form his own judgment of the casuistry and the strat- egy, and — to use plain words — the artifice and adroit trickery by which the charter administration was maintained till the catastrophe of its fall ; while THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH 153 the instrument itself was never wrenched away to cross the ocean on its return, but still hangs with its royal seal attached in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The King himself had no power, nor could he by prerogative have usurped or exercised it, to confer by charter on any sect or party of his subjects such an independency and such legislative functions as were actually assumed by the corporation of Massachusetts Bay when transferred here. Having transported themselves with their charter, the leaders of the enterprise seem to have taken for granted that they might extend and supplement their rightful authority under it so as to adjust it to the change of place and circumstances.^ It is, however, a curious fact, having a significance which each reader is at liberty to assign to it, that whatever may have been, consciously or unconsciously, the intent of the leaders of the Boston colony as to the setting up in Church and State an original and arbitrary pattern of their own, what they actually wrought out of this sort had been suspected of them and charged upon them as their real but covert design before their feet rested on the new territory for their experiment. Some persons in England whose attention had been drawn to the project before it was effected, and who were more or less informed of its preliminary measures, had expressed jealous misgivings lest the prime movers had secretly ifi view the actual scheme of separation and faction which was soon realized here. The anonymous Planter's Plea, written by that stanch friend and pro- moter of the enterprise, the patriarch and vicar of Dorchester, John White, was published in London in 1630, after Endicott had been heard from at Salem, and while Winthrop's company was on the ocean. One of the " objections " to the enterprise, which Mr. White tries to set aside, is thus expressed : " That religion indeede and y colour thereof is y° cloake of this work, but under it is secretly harboured faction and separation from y° Church. Men of ill affected mindes (some conceive), unwilling to join any longer with our assemblies, meane to draw themselves apart, and to unite into a body of their owne, and to make that place a nursery of faction and rebellion, disclaiming and renouncing our Church as a limbe of Antichrist." This objection Mr. White meets by referring to the affectionate and tender parting address of the governor and his associates, to " their dear mother, y' Church of England," and to the known "carriage of these persons in their owne country in former times, as not men of turbulent or factious dis- positions, impatient of y' present government, who have separated from our Assemblies, refused our Ministery, &c. . . . And yet, if some one or two, or ten of them should be factiously inclined, it were hard measure to condemn a whole Society, &c. . . I persuade myself there is no one Separatist knowne unto y" Governours, or if there be any, that it is as far from their purpose as it is from their safety to continue him among them." Yet the candid pleader, doubtless well knowing more than he cared to communicate, adds, 1 [The struggle to maintain tlie charter is more particularly explained by. Mr. Ueaue in another chapter. — Ed.| VOL, I. — 20. 154 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " I conceive we doe and ought to put a great difference between Separa- tion and Non-Conformity. There is great oddes between peaceable men, who out of tendernesse of heart forbeare y" use of some ceremonies of y" Church, and men of fiery and turbulent spirits that walke in a crosse way out of distemper of minde. I should be very unwilling to hide anything I think might be fit to discover y= uttermost of y'= intentions of our Planters, and therefore shall make bold to manifest not only what I know, but what I guesse concerning their purpose." Necessity, novelty, love of gain may draw some, " but that y" most and most sincere and godly part have y» advancement of y= Gospel for their main scope I am confident. That of them some may entertain hope and expectation of enjoying greater libertie there than here in y^ use of some orders and Ceremonies of our Church, it seemes very probable. Nay, I see not how we can expect from them a correspondence in all things to our State, civill or Ecclesiasticall. Wants and necessities cannot but cause many changes. But y' men are far enough from projecting the erecting of this Colony for a Nursery of Schis- matickes." Mr. White concludes " that y° suspicious and scandalous reports raysed upon these gentlemen and their friends (as if under y" colour of planting a Colony they intended to rayse and erect a seminary of faction and separation) are nothing else but y" fruits of jealousie of some distempered minde, &c." It is admitted that the wise and good of the company would naturally be followed "by a mixed multitude, as were y children of Israel out of Egypt;" and Mr. White forebodes that such "would prove refractory to Government, expecting all libertie in an unsettled body," and that the restraint of authority would cross their discontented humors, so that they would revenge themselves by being " ready to blemish y" Government with such scandalous reports as their malicious spirits can devise and utter." He anticipates that such will return or be sent back to England, revengeful and malignant with ill reports ; and he asks that they be not listened to till the authorities in New England shall send home true information. These frank pleadings, disclosures, and anticipations, made public while the adventuring company with whose motives, plans, and fortunes they were concerned were on their ocean passage, are certainly very noteworthy. Had Mr. White deferred writing till the experiment had been on practical trial for ten or twenty years, he could not better have described its real working as to the separation effected, the "novelties" reduced to practice, and the complaints carried back to England, which he endeavored to deal with by anticipation. It is needless to ask by what prescience or " jealousie " some in England found occasion to advance the objections, which proved to be so well grounded, to the schemes of the planters. Doubtless it was in part from some shrewd observation of the spirits and inclinations of the prime movers in the enterprise, and in part from inferences drawn from the characteristics of the previous similar experiments at Plymouth. The zealous pleading of the good patriarch White in his anticipatory defence of the colonists then on their passage to the Bay, taken in connec- THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 155 tion with the fact that on their arrival they immediately pursued the course the suspicion and intent of which he so boldly repudiated, present to read- ers of this generation a curious theme on which they are at liberty to exer- cise their own judgment as to the integrity or crookedness of the leaders of the enterprise. Sharp censures have been pronounced upon them, in- volving the imputation of gross hypocrisy in their tender and yearning ad- dress from the deck of their vessel as they left the shores of their native land. In this they said : " We esteem it our honor to call the Church of Eng- land, from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from our native country where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in y° common salvation, we have received in her bosom and sucked it from her breasts." They ask the prayers of their brethren, and promise their own for them, — " wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, &c." What then, it is asked, is to be said of the high-minded sincerity of men who, after uttering this pathetic strain, proceeded at once to lay the foundations in separation and schism of the Puritan Commonwealth? Something, doubtless, might be urged on their side by any one who should assume their defence or championship. What was to them the Church of England? It represented to them a lineage and communion of discipleship, in an organized institution, then in process of ref- ormation and purification from its late corruption under Popery. They had had part in zeal and suffering in advancing that needful reforming work to the stage which it had reached. For themselves, they hoped and expected that the purifying work would go on, as they believed there was need of it. They had a common interest in its membership. They had no idea that they were about to heathenize themselves by passing the ocean to another shore. They ever after maintained that they were seeking to advance an arrested process of reformation. They soon found that this involved for them sep- aration, which none the less they regarded as an enforced exclusion. When on the first year after the planting of their church in Boston they invited Roger Williams to be their teacher, the demand which he made on them as a condition of his acceptance, that they should renounce communion with the Church of England, met their decided refusal. And, further, any one who assumes their defence might proceed to urge that they de- parted only from the discipline of the Church of England, not at all from its doctrine; that changes in the mode of institution and discipline were inevitable, to meet the circumstances and exigences of their wilderness con- dition; that they had the example of the mother country to justify the connection of Church and State, and that they simply followed the leadings of Providence and the teaching of the Bible in adjusting their policy. We proceed now to trace the development of that policy in the organi- zation of the Puritan Commonwealth. The written charter was made its basis, but the limitations and deficiencies which at once showed that it was 156 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. to be put to uses not intended or provided for were recognized only to be neutralized by such devices as seemed necessary or available. By that charter a governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants were annu- ally to be chosen out of their own number by all who, as " freemen," had the franchise in the Company. Any seven of the Assistants, with either the Governor or the Deputy, meeting once a month, made a quorum, as an executive, for the transaction of business. Four Great or General Courts were to be held annually, to elect and commission the officers and to vote upon the admission of new members, or " freemen." As soon as the com- pany was established here, the Assistants obtained a unanimous vote allow- ing them to choose the Governor and Deputy out of their own body ; but when the Assistants were to be chosen, all the freemen were electors. In- stead of the full number of eighteen, only eleven or twelve of the Assistants came over, and the number was never afterwards filled up. The Assistants soon assumed the name of " Magistrates," with all the requisite and im- plied functions. They quietly kept their office, without re-election, for two years, and made the first laws for the colony. In the first year one hundred new freemen, many of them not members of a church, took the prescribed oath. But in 1631 church membership was made a condition of the franchise. It may be noted here, that as late as 1676 five-sixths of the men in the colony were non-voters, because not church members. In 1632 the freemen insisted on and secured their right to choose the Governor and Deputy; and the " Magistrates" so graciously, though grimly, yielded the point that they were re-chosen. The wide scattering of the colonists into different settlements helped for a while the centralization of power. As it became inconvenient for all the freemen to assemble at the courts, each local settlement, the nucleus of a town, delegated two persons to represent it. Meeting in Boston in 1634, these Deputies, early watchful against arbitrary power, demanded " a sight of the patent," and then, seeming for the first time to come to a full knowl- edge of their rights, they " confronted " the Governor. After parrying their complaints, he told them that so large a number of freemen in the com- pany had not been anticipated ; that their numbers and lack of qualifications unfitted them for making laws ; but that at the next Court some of them, summoned by the Governor, might come and judge of the taxes and revise the laws, though they could make no new ones, but might submit their grievances to the magistrates. The next month. May, 1634, twenty-four principal inhabitants appeared in Boston as representatives of the people, and disrupted the arbitrary exercise of power, and by exercising their deputed authority through the rights recognized in the Charter, they chose, as a new Governor, Thomas Dudley. They gained the point that the whole body of freemen should attend at the General Election, while being represented by their deputies at the three other Courts. The vigorous struggle in the next year was be- tween those who stood respectively for " strict discipline " or for lenity in THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 157 the management of " infant plantations." The decision was in favor of the rigid party. The Assistants or magistrates, in their tenacity of pur- pose to maintain an almost exclusive authority in disposing each successive measure which the expanding interests and the needful protection of their enterprise seemed to make essential, acted on the assumption that they had the same governing power over all their associates and subordinates on the spot as they would have had if they had been exercising their administrative rights in England over the employes which they had sent here. Up to 1644 the magistrates and the deputies of the people, meeting together, had ' [The death of Cotton, near the end of 1652, was, after the death of Winthrop, the loss that most closely affected the town. The superstition of the day found alarming portents in the hea- vens while his body lay ready for burial. Nor- ton, Life and Death of Coltoii, reissued with notes by Enoch Pond in 1S34; Samuel Clarke, Z/irj- of Ten EmineJit Divines, London, 1662 ; Ma- ther, Magnalia ; Emerson, First CInircli ; Snow, Boston, p. 133. Cotton's house stood not far from the southerly corner of Tremont Street and the entrance to Pemberton Scjuare. The estate ran back up the hill. Vane lived on it two years, and, at a later day, Judge Sewall. A portrait, said to be of Cotton, from which our cut is taken, belonged to the late John Eliot 158 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. acted jointly. In that year, as the result of another severe struggle as to the people's right to a negative voice, it was decided that each branch should meet by itself, and that a concurrent vote should be requisite in legis- lation. This was another stage in the process by which the business man- agement of a mercantile corporation was transformed into an administration leading on to the constitutional provisions of our existing Commonwealth. It was obvious from the first that the reduction of the paramount authority of the magistrates, or even the f)articipation in it to any great extent by the people at large, would imperil the rigid principles of Puritanism, so far as they were relied upon for bringing civil affairs under the absolute sway of the Church. It is observable that in all their pleas on their own behalf the magistrates emphasize their religious motives. Incidental to, or we should rather say as a most needful and vital ele- ment of, the fundamentals of the Puritan theocratic Corhmonwealth, was the habit of appealing to and of relying upon the ministers of the churches for advice and guidance, outside of their own special functions. The clergy constituted, so to speak, a body of spiritual peers in the Puritan parliament, only they had relatively a far more exalted and stringent professional influ- ence than has been yielded to the bishops of the English realm since the era of the Reformation. " The reverend elders " — " our brethren the elders " — constituted a body which, either in consultation by themselves or as called into the meetings of the Court, was appealed to for counsel and advice on all perplexed or critical matters. As pastors of the churches, whose mem- bers alone exercised the franchise, they would have had their full share of influence in preaching from their pulpits, and in their disciplinary visits from house to house. That they should have been recognized as jointly com- posing a fellowship qualified and entitled to have referred to them, impliedly for ultimate disposal, matters upon which the civil rulers were divided in judgment, is certainly the most significant token of the identity between the Puritan Church and State. It would have been consistently within the range of their clerical functions if questions of casuistry in religion, or of the inter- pretation and explication of Bible texts by whose guidance the people were generally disposed to be directed, were referred to them. But such ques- tions as the interpretation of the Charter, and how the continual attempts of the authorities at home to subvert and reclaim the administration set up under it were to be parried and thwarted, could be regarded as of fit refer- ence to a clerical body only under a theocracy. But these and like questions, Thayer, Esq., and now hangs in the residence of the old St. Botolph's Church in Boston Lin- of the Hon. Robert C Winthrop at Broolcline. colnshire, where Cotton preached before his Mr. Thayer, who was a descendant of Cotton, coming to America, was restored some years bought It more than twenty years ago, but I since, and a memorial tablet was erected in it have not been able to learn its previous history, to Cotton's memory, with a Latin inscription bv It was first engraved, on steel, in Drake's Boston. Mr, Everett. The list of subscribers is given in The Cotton genealogy is given in the N. E. the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, ,874, Htst and Geneal. Keg. i^ 164; also an account p. 15. A paper on Boston, England, and Cot- of his ancestry in the HeraUhc Journal, iv. 49, ton's career there, by the Rev G B Blenkin and a tabular pedigree in Drake's Boston. By Vicar of Boston, is in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal the care of Edward Everett and others, a chapel Reg., April, 1874. — Ed. 1 THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 159 which we should regard as strictly secular and related to civil polity, were seldom disposed of, in the first three decades of the Colony, till '' our honored Magistrates," or " the Court," had sought the advice of the " reverend elders." In fact, John Cotton, in discourses at the Thursday Lecture, was ever ready, not only to give decided counsels on secular mat- ters when his advice was asked, but, when some critical point was in contest before the Court, he would adjudicate on the subject, ostensibly of course, through his " exposition of the word of God." The early stages of the conflict between the magistrates for retaining their own legitimate and their constructive and. usurped authority, on the one side, and the inhabitants at large on the other, tended in many inci- dental matters to unite the non-voters with the freemen as an opposing party. So far, however, as this union was effective, it would prejudice the theocratical principles of the government. The records of the Court and many of the contemporary documents that are now extant reveal to us the fevered state of anxiety and agitation which grave questionings and sharp bickerings induced. Nor is it strange that there should have very soon begun a weeding-out process, not only in the forced exclusion of those whose presence proved objectionable, but in the voluntary withdrawal of others who conceived a strong distaste or disgust for the atmosphere and influences of the place. Some of these last are referred to in that very interesting pamphlet published in London as early as 1643, entitled New England's First Fruits} While the general account of prosperity and hopefulness in these pages is almost roseate, we read the following: "As some went thither upon sudden undigested grounds, and saw not God's leading them in their way, but were carried by an unstayed spirit, so have they returned upon as sleight, headlesse, unworthy reasons as they went. Others must have elbow-roome, and cannot abide to be so pinioned with the strict government in the Commonwealth, or discipline in the Church." Very tersely and aptly did one of the wiser of the Puritan company express the fervid working of the enterprise, in writing the brief sentence, " While the liquor is boiling, it must needs have a scumming." When we come to take note of the rigid proceedings of the Puritan legisla- tors against those who " disturbed their peace," we shall have to recognize the fact, which to a moderate extent may be taken as palliating their harsh- ness, that the victims of it were not members of their company, partners and freemen of the Commonwealth, but were, with rare exceptions, intruders among them, who themselves had nothing at stake in the enterprise. But little more than ten years had passed since the settlement of Boston and of the towns which were offshoots from it, before the Colony, in all the elements that constituted it, and in all its prospects for the future, passed through some experiences of gloom and darkness, the dismal impression ^ [This tract is reprinted in Mass. Hist. Coll. original edition is rare, but there are copies in i., and there is a separate modern reprint by the Harvard College Library and in the Prince Sabin, published in New York in 1865. The Library. — Ed.| l6o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. from which is most vividly presented on the pages of Winthrop. Though he nobly held to his constancy of purpose through the trying experience, it is evident that his hope faltered under the apprehension of the threatened failure and abandonment of the Colonial enterprise. It was not, however, mainly from the dissensions and discontents that had been developed among the struggling exiles here, but rather from the agitations and revolu- tionary throes of the mother country at that critical period, that Winthrop was compelled to face the appalling disaster to the fond venture in which he had staked his all. The tyrant monarch of England was at bay ; his subjects were winning the mastery over him ; the Parliament was above the throne ; and a work was brewing in which not only some restless spirits, but some heroic and earnest men who were fired by a holy and generous ardor, wished to have a part. Old England was then more attractive to such as these, than even the new Commonwealth rising in the free wilderness. The tide of immigration, which up to that time had set strongly hitherwards, was at once stayed.^ There was almost a tidal wave of return homewards. There were many of those who embarked, — hardly, however, the majority, — of whom the magistrates and elders might be glad to be well rid. But magis- trates and elders, as well as some men of weight, value, and high service, were among the returning company, not alleging that they were going merely for a visit, but intent upon remaining that they might have part and lot in the stir of affairs. It is of these that Winthrop, in his Journal, utters himself in touching pathos, as abandoning by a broken covenant those to whom, for good or for evil fortune, they had pledged joint endeavor and holy fellowship. The interests of the Colony were also temporarily prostrated from the suspension of foreign trade, the value of all products of the Colony depreciated, and debtors could not meet their obligations. It did, for the time, look as if the forests must be left to grow again over our clearings, and one more colonial failure be added to the melancholy list. Winthrop records not only the darkness of the surroundings, but also the spirit of resolve and trust which brought with it cheer and hope. He would abide in his lot and be the stay of others. Only after long and divided counsels did the Court resolve, under the depression of their fortunes, to send three agents to England to have in view the interests of the Colony. With the dignity of a noble pride the agents were strictly cautioned, thus, "that they should not seek supply of our wants in any dishonorable way, as by begging or the like; for we were resolved to wait upon the Lord in the use of all means which were lawful and honorable." The reader must look to the numerous and fuller sources of historical information, if he wishes to trace out all the stages and processes of the de- velopment in the minds and measures of the more responsible leaders of the scheme of the Puritan Commonwealth. Puritan ideas and institutions are 1 [Dr. Palfrey, Hist, of New England, Preface, this immigration ceased, are tlie ancestors of considers tliat the 20,000 persons which consti- the great body of our New England stock. — tuted the population of New England when Ed.] THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. l6l to be studied both through the kind of influence which they exercised and the strength of that influence. It contained in itself elements and agencies corrective of its own mistakes and ill workings. We may compare it in some respects to those fruits and berries which in their unripe and maturing stages are very acrid, but healthful and grateful after passing through the later processes. It is denied by no one, and with rightful boasting it is proudly maintained by the wisest and most candid philosophical historians, that the heritage assured to later generations by Puritanism, as softened and modified by the working of its own self-developed forces, is eminently fruitful in civil, social, and domestic virtues and prosperities. The awful sincerity of its stern disciples, and the lofty sanctity of the aims and motives which they avowed as having committed themselves in all things to a holy covenant with God and each other, secured them against the worst forms of disaster from self- seeking and corruption which would inevitably have fallen upon them. The Puritan Commonwealth may ever claim the honor of having trained the spirit and fostered the virtues which redeemed it from its own limitations and errors. A democracy was the product or result, not by any means the intent, of the enterprise when it was put on trial. On the first intimation or alarm of a tendency in that direction, John Cotton, the clerical oracle of the theocracy, wrote, " Democracy I do not conceive that God ever did ordain as a fit Government either for Church or Commonwealth." But, none the less, how democracy developed and established itself is not only traceable in every stage of its growth, in spite of the shock and the purposed resistance to it, but is also to be accounted to the natural and inevitable conditions of the experiment here on trial. The objects had in view involved democracy, and Were consistent only with democracy. The air of the sea and the wilder- ness, the atmosphere of exile, the withdrawal from the scenes, habits, re- straints, and safeguards of the old home, the essential equality of condition to which gentlemen and servants were alike reduced in exposures, straits, and occupations, levelled distinctions and compelled familiarity in intercourse. After the arrival of the colonists here, not one of them, however gentle his degree in England, was free from the necessity of manual labor in the field, the forest, and in building and providing for a home. The Governor's wife made and baked her own batch of bread, and from her dwelling, near the site of the Old South Church, would take pail in hand and go down to fill it from the spring that still flows under the basement of the new Post Office. The rapid decay of the sense of loyalty to the English monarch, of de- pendence upon or deference to his authority, which followed upon the breathing of this free air, and which antedated Independence long previous to its declaration, was also a direct influence for fostering democracy. The only substitute for allegiance to the King was obedience to laws of their own enactment. In their secret persuasion, the first colonists here probably regarded the claims of dominion of the English monarch over these wild realms as quite unsubstantial and visionary. The possession and subjectioh VOL. I. — 21. 1 62 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of them at their own charges, with that shrewd and scrupulous avoidance from the first of asking or receiving any help or protection from the monarch, gave them rights which they persuaded themselves overrode his. One who is keen in his search and reading in the more minute details of our history will meet some curious tokens of a seeming arrest of the democratic ten- dency here, and a temporary show of the revival of loyalty after the substi- tution of the provincial for the colonial charter. Self-governed by native magistrates of our own choice, we had become, to all intents and purposes, independents of the democratic pattern. The name of the monarch had been dropped from statutes and writs and legal processes. We had no courtly re- presentatives here, except nominal ones with popular titles and indorsements. Royal birthdays were not among our holidays. But when crown officers were put in authority over us, and came with their commissions, functions, and ceremonials, sometimes with a show of state, in robings, symbols, and equipages, the effect, perceptibly, on a class of the less sturdy among us was a little dazing and beguiling. The reminder came rudely and unwel- come to the majority, that rank and privilege and prerogative might still exert themselves against a pure democracy. A striking illustration of the collision between the intruding of a revived loyalty and the habit attending its previous decay here is presented in the jealousy and distrust — and even contempt on the part of many — for those two of the Royal Governors of the Province who made the most trouble for the people. These were Gover- nor Joseph Dudley and Governor Thomas Hutchinson, both of them natives of the soil, of the strictest Puritan stock and lineage, baptized and nurtured in the Puritan Church, and pledged by its covenant, and graduates of its college : they were none the less courtiers, and hated — perhaps unduly or unjustly — as recreant to their own heritage. These retrospects and revivals of a specious loyalty, after the change in the charter, attract notice by contrast only, as showing how firmly the spirit of independence and democracy had strengthened under the Puritan Commonwealth. The discomfitures which the theocratic system encountered, and the concessions which it was com- pelled to make to this same democratic spirit were the occasions of the modifications just referred to. Puritanism, like every other moral and reli- gious system, had to deal with human nature. Five years after the colony was planted, a paper was received by the au- thorities, .entitled " Certain proposals made by Lord Say, Lord Brooke, and other persons of quality, as conditions of their removing to New England." The object of those who made these proposals was to secure encouragement in a proposed coming hither, from the assurance that in the government to be here established the hereditary privileges above " the common sort " should be secured to those of gentle blood. Though the accession of such persons was very desirable, the authorities evidently felt embarrassed in the matter, and the answers exhibit a gingerly caution and a shrewd sagacity. They were ready to accord " hereditary honors ; " but " hereditary authority " was quite another matter. Nor could the magistrates admit that the freeholders, THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 163 or voters, should be those who owned a certain personal estate, for the con- dition of the franchise must be membership of some church. The only magistrates they could set in office must be " men fearing God " (Exodus xviii. 21), and these must be "chosen out of their brethren" (Deut. xvii. 15) "by saints" (i. Cor. vi. i). This frank and emphatic avowal that the Puritan State was founded on and was identical with the Puritan Church brings us back to the original intent in the minds of the chief spirits in the enterprise. The Puritan Commonwealth, as a theocracy, must be administered by " God's people" in church covenant. What was the material and constitution of the Puritan Church? Seven or more professing Christians, associating themselves together in covenant, constitute a Church for all the uses of Christian edification and enjoyment of ordinances ; nothing being between them and Christ. The Bible is their sole sufficient sanction, guide, and statute-book. In the sacred volume are to be found divine directions for the administration and discipline of the Church, a commission and instructions for its teachers and officers, the mat- ter of their teaching, the rule of believing and living for members, and the method of discipline. Men receive their authority and functions as ministers directly from God ; their qualifications of heart, mind, and spirit are from Him, in nowise dependent upon any allowance or transmitted privilege from their fellow-men. Such ministers, however, obtain an official position, op- portunity to teach and temporal support, from the free choice of a congre- gation desiring their services. God commissions the man, but the people set him in his place over or among them. The Puritans found a vast and sublime confirmation of their fundamental idea in the grand assertion by St. Paul, that the Gospel made each Christian to represent to himself the two highest offices, — those of "a King and a Priest unto God." The Protestantism of various communions has in later years certified and fol- lowed these principles of church institution, and has found no bar to the adoption of them, even when under methods of fellowship freely accepted among themselves very many individual churches have been united in a larger brotherhood. But the Puritan discipline proved, on trial, to be impracticable, as crude, incomplete, inconsistent, and hopelessly embarassed by collision with the civil rights of men. Had all the accepted freemen in the colony been members of one single all-inclusive Church, there might, for a time at least, have been a degree of harmony and success in the trial of the theory. But there were many churches soon organized after the Puritan pattern. The theory was that each of them was independent in choosing its pastor, in administering discipline, and in its relations to the civil power. All these assumptions proved misleading and fallacious under the Puritan Commonwealth. A church could not be constituted, and a pas- tor set over it, without deference to the Court or magistracy. It was found necessary that each and all the churches should be mutually answerable, that they should come into accord in doctrine and discipline, and should recognize each other through councils and synods, the authority claimed by 164 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. or yielded to these representative combinations being undecided and always likely to be contested. It would be neither interesting nor edifying to the general reader to follow the rehearsal of the discomfitures and contentions, the controversies and the alienations between brethren, and of the measures of offence and of opposition employed by those not of the brethren, which thwarted the experiment of a theocracy. The asserted right of private judgment did not then, any more than now, carry with it the wise exercise and use of it. Puritanism proved to be a nebulous fire-mist with marvellous potencies in it, requiring, in the processes of evolution from it, time and space and modifying conditions. The development of the theocratical experiment does not engage sympathetic or amiable feelings as we read it. Every session of the Court, every meeting of the Magistrates, the planting of each new Church, the arrival of each new group of men and women of independent or " nimtle " spirit, the ever restless inquisitions and searchings of thoroughly honest seekers for truth in the " Word," and the curious con- ceits and notions of all sorts of erratic and mystical idealists continually opened matter of contention, and the fissure was ever enlarging and deep- ening. The ingenious and acrimonious strifes which ensued from the con- flict of opinions, and the disputations about civil and religious polity stand illustrated to us in a marvellous wealth of technical terms, constituting a jargon, antique and comical in its quaintness, not found in the literature of the old English divines outside of the Puritan fold. The series of severe pro- ceedings which were instituted by the Puritan authorities against the repre- sentatives of the more alarming heresies and seditious theories must be noticed by and by. It is enough here to dismiss with the slightest recogni- tion the active workings of the causes already presented in proving how impracticable was the experiment of the Puritan Commonwealth. The Court records testify to the endless complications of the attempt to commingle civil and ecclesiastical legislation, with their multiplying statutes and penal- ties against undefinable heresies, moaning laments about " the decay of religion," with judgments of fines, imprisonment, and banishment. Under the first Charter, five "Synods" of the Churches, — respectively in 1637, 1648, 1662, 1679, and 1680, — were held in the vain attempt to harmonize variances and to construct a platform of discipline.^ Not gradually, but rapidly, the habits and feelings which had been identified with the religious and ecclesiastical associations of their old home yielded under the stress of changed circumstances and fresh elements of thought. Mr. Cotton divested himself of all that once characterized him as the vicar of a prelate with book-services and rites, and was prepared to " clear the Way of Congrega- tional churches." Only that " Way " was constantly obstructed by being coursed in every direction by by-paths and foot-tracks, by misleading sign- boards, and by travellers in all sorts of conveyances, very few of whom seemed to enjoy each other's company. Seven years after his arrival, Win- 1 [Dr. Dexter has examined the bearing of these Synods in Congregationalism as seen in its Literature. — Ed.] THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 1 65 throp wrote this distinct averment : "Whereas the way of God hath always been to gather his churches out of y" world, now y° world, or civill state, must be raised out of y= churches." It would on some accounts be desirable, in the writing of fresh pages for the perusal of the present generation, if the painful and darker incidents in the development of the Puritan Commonwealth could be passed without mention, or dismissed with a sentence in general terms of regret and pre- ferred oblivion. But one constraining reason, to say nothing of others, for pursuing a different course presents itself in the consideration that some of the most essential principles and elements of the stern system here set on trial were made to appear only in the sharp encounters with its opponents and assailants. Only when the Puritan Commonwealth was driven into self- defence against those who struck at its vitality, through denying its authority, insulting its dignity, and in successfully breaking its thraldom, can we under- stand it for what it was. Intolerance and bigotry might be regarded as allowable in defence of a form of Puritanism which held its disciples to lofty aims and found them cheerfully meeting pains and penalties in fidelity to it. But pitiless severity, running at last, by provocation and passionate indulgence, into acts of direful cruelty, brought humiliation upon our an- cient magistrates, left sad and dark stains on a few years of their record, and finally confounded and subverted the original scheme of their government. Yet that austerity of intolerance, that ruthlessness in punitive methods, could alone consist with sincerity and stern fidelity to the Puritan scheme and rule. Doubtless the odiousness of the Puritan discipline and legislation may be heightened by a trifling and scornful rehearsal of the follies and errors consequent upon it, especially in the outrages visited by it on individuals and classes who, however offensive in their heresies, were upright and pure in life. All harshness of censure, all contempt and ridicule poured upon the Puritan magistrates, is utterly unjust when it proceeds, as it generally does, upon the implication that the sort of persons whom they are charged with persecuting were in spirit and conduct then what the sort of persons are who are known among us now under the same names and as holding the same opinions. And those sharp criticisms are also equally unjust, when they transfer the standard of intelligence and judgment, and the social securities of our times, to the past of two hundred years. Nor, on the other hand, would any candid person be willing to set up a plea in justification of the Puritan magistrates, and so make himself a party to their harsh pol- icy. It is the simple facts of history that we want, and essential parts of those facts are to be found in the atmosphere of the times, the modes of thinking and believing, and the relations between men, as they then differed widely from what they are in these days. Anything that mitigates or re- lieves the severity of the proceedings against those who voluntarily courted the austere discipline of the Puritan magistracy may be alleged in the inter- est of both the sufferers and the inflictors of the wrong. The main intent and design of those who " enterprised " the Bay Colony l66 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. planting itself in Boston has been fully set forth, both as it was conceived by those who planned and guided it, and as the practical trial of it developed its elements and conditions somewhat more clearly than the founders had appre- hended them. Having insufficiently secured themselves at the start against the intrusion of uncongenial and obnoxious strangers, they would need to devise most stringent measures in dealing with them as they presented themselves. It is important to keep in mind the fact, that the repressive and punitive measures adopted against a succession of individuals and classes of persons who made protests and assaults against the civil or religious policy of the Commonwealth were all of them, in the full severity of their infliction, confined to the first thirty years of the colony. After that brief term there was a sensible relaxation of austerity, and an increase of allowance and tolerance. It is observable, likewise, that as the severe dealing with heretics and dissentients was mitigated, their zeal and fervor and offensiveness were sensibly reduced, and they ceased to present them- selves so obnoxiously. Here we note a very natural relation between the spirit of persecution and the spirit which obstinately and even wantonly or perversely provoked it. The fathers were anxiously, we say morbidly and timidly, dreading lest their bold venture in the wilderness should be pros- trated before it could strike root. Their first years were the years of its darkest uncertainty and its severest trial. Saving the slender colony at Plymouth, all other like enterprises presented to them only warnings, without a gleam of encouragement. The risk which they had most to dread was that from seditions and dissensions among themselves, coming from an assault upon their fundamental principles, — "godliness" and harmony. Their troublers came precisely in the form and shape in which they apprehended them, — in the form and in the sturdy and persistent protests of men and women against their civil and religious principles, and in the shape of active and irrepressible assailants of, and offenders against, their laws. As will soon appear, there was something extraordinary in the odd variety, the grotesque characteristics, and the specially irritating and exasperating course of that strange succession of men and women, of all sorts of odd opinions and notions, who presented themselves durino- a period of thirty years, seeming to have in common no other object than to grieve and exasperate the Puritan magistrates. We, indeed, can see that they had a higher and nobler mission. But those to whom they were so mischievous and hateful regarded them only as reckless and wanton dis- turbers of their peace. No sooner had one nuisance of this sort been dis- posed of, fined, banished, pilloried, whipped, and, in the last dread alterna- tive, swung from the gallows, than another, with a slight variation in the hue of heresy and the attitude of daring, presented himself. As travellers through the woods and bushes from Boston to Rhode Island in midsummer would then have been vexed by the whole brood of snakes and stingin insects, so that harborage of " conscientious contentious heretics " seemed to furnish an endless variety of the troublers of our Israel. Cotton Mather t> THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 167 said that Roger Williams " had a wind-mill in his head," and that if any- body had lost his conscience, he might find one of a sort to suit him in Rhode Island. A rich variety of specimens was certainly offered from that source to Boston. A reader of the old strange annals of those times may be moved to conceive what would have been the fate and fortune of the Puritan Common- wealth had it been put to the test of quite another set of spirits than those who triqd it. Suppose that a party had been developed among them who simply intensified Puritanism, as moping ascetics, devotees, exceeding in austerity and rigidness the tone and ways of their associates, rebuking their regard for worldly thrift, and exacting a piety even sterner than theirs : possibly their history might then have read somewhat differently. But if we would rightly read their history as it is written, we must now re- cognize the fact that those who experienced the most ruthless dealing from the Puritan magistrates presented themselves as representing opinions, no- tions, and practices which were at the same time most odious and alarming to the Puritans. The latter welcomed — indeed they perfectly revelled in — disputations confined to the exposition and interpretation of the Bible. They were ready on all occasions to entertain either with approval or assault anything offered to them as exposition or interpretation of Holy Writ. Texts were to them a legal tender in the currency of beliefs and obligations. But when assertion and argument took them outside of the Bible, either in the direction of ecclesiastical traditions and " Papistical claims," or of the asserting of special illuminations or " revelations," they were taken at a disadvantage ; variances then became embittered ; there was no recognized" umpire for adjusting the issues opened, and they had recourse to other weapons and methods than those of argument. Identifying civil order and security with the foundation and safeguards of their Commonwealth which they had drawn from and, as they believed, had squared by the Bible, all " heady notions," all eccentric individualisms, all mystical speculations, became, in their apprehensions, fomentings of sedition and revolution. Even in our own secure State, with all the interests and excitements of our heterogeneous population, we are not without experiences and memories of rancors and dreads caused by the wild vagaries and the fancied plottings of mischief of men and women who shock convictions or defy the laws, or threaten, instead of " prophesying," woes and calamities to the community. The range of life and the materials for mental occupation and excitement were exceedingly meagre for the hard-worked and anxious exiles of the Puritan colony. They were enthralled by all the superstitions of their own time, and additional clouds of gloom and fear came over them from their wilderness experiences. They became morbid, excitable, *and apprehen- sive, so that they persuaded themselves that an attitude of watchfulness for self-defence should keep them ever on their guard against visible and invisible foes, — fiendish powers of the air ; Indians who, if not victims of Satan, seemed to be in league with him; and evil men, disturbers and l58 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. fomenters of mischief. The magistrates and elders, with their fuller intelli- gence and a sense of their enhanced responsibility, realized that they had in charge many of " y" weaker sort " among the common people, who might easily be drawn away by the craft or subtilty of " erratic spirits," and they felt bound to guard them from the risks of contact with heretics. It is to be remembered, also, that in the mother country, where there seemed less reason for dreading the influence of fanaticism and the ingenuities of heresy, the authorities anticipated the course pursued in this colony in dealing with the same classes of offenders. The penalties of fining, imprisonment, scourging, and mutilations of the person inflicted here were in strict imitation of those inflicted in England on the strange fellowships of Ranters, Seekers, Anabaptists, Quakers, Muggletonians, Fifth-Monarchy men, &c., — saving only that Boston brought four of its most insufferable tormenters to the gallows. The wit of man in sanity or mildly crazed, working upon all the fancies and whimseys of the human brain, might well be challenged, even in these days so fertile in speculation and individual theories and crotchets, to match the productiveness of the enthusiastic and fanatical spirits of England just preceding and extending through the Commonwealth period of its history. Given the two chief factors or sources of material to be wrought with, — the Bible under each one's private inter- pretation to test what he could make of it, whether he could himself read it, or was dependent upon listening to it from others' lips ; and the fathomless chaos and medley creations of an overwrought, uninstructed mind, believed in each case to be illuminated and inspired by special divine communica- tions, — and we cease to marvel over the effervescing products of the com- bination. Human ingenuity, conceit, credulity, and self-delusion may be said to have exhausted their resources and capacities in the products of the time, which were wrought out by the abounding forms of eccentric sectarism and heresy. Out of the mountain heaps of pamphlets and tractates of the period, with which the busy presses teemed, enough are extant in these days to constitute in themselves a portent to be marvelled over. Indeed these extraordinary productions are now sought for and gathered up at large cost by curious collectors, fascinated by their quaint titles, their mystic dreamings, their extravagant vagaries, their intensity of conviction which would have made their disciples ready to bear the rack or the stake. One of the most profoundly engaging exercises in the study of the life of Milton, as illustrated by his times, is to note how his noble soul, in working out the grand immunity of the private conscience in its exercises of thinking and believing, was tormented by " the buzz and gabble," so noisy and teazing all around him. The effervescences and extravagances of what we call the religious spirit, working its wonderful manifestations among large numbers of ignorant and illiterate persons in that period, engaged many pens in the mere effort to catalogue and classify them, as one arranges strange specimens of Nature's productions in a cabinet. But these broods of sectaries were by no means in a fossil or inert condition. THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 169 They were very much ahve, and about equally engaged in prophesying their own oracles and assailing other peoples'. Certain names and titles have come down to us, and are in use to-day as designating religious sects, or denominations, cyr opinions, which were first adopted or assigned when those who bore them are supposed to have first espoused the beliefs or opinions which the words now designate. We read how ruthlessly the Puritan magistrates dealt with Antinomians, Baptists, and Quakers. But there are no persons now living who fully represent those who first bore these names, and carried with them the repute, and made such a manifestation of themselves, as did those who teazed and tormented the old magistrates. We should be greatly misled if we transferred to those who were once dealt with here as Baptists and Quakers the qualities, princi- ples, ways, and demeanor of those who now bear these names, seeing that the latter do not represent in spirit, word, or act the sort of persons of whom we read in our history. It would be enough to set us in the right point of view for seeing the real truth on this subject, if we should simply cull out the epithets and phrases for individuals, and for their opinions and behav- ings, which the magistrates and elders used in dealing with the objects of their stern discipline. The emphatic words employed make up a strange category. They are such as these : blasphemous, seditious, unsavory, ex- orbitant, monstrous, diabolical, impious, satanical, with many other sharp, stinging epithets. To say nothing of the absurdity of the supposition that any such terms should be applied to the opinions or practices of those known among us as Baptists and Quakers, it is more to the point to remind ourselves that even the Puritan magistrates themselves would not have used them if under those names they had had to deal only with such as now bear them. The explanation of the matter is not far to seek. While charging upon the intolerance and bigotry of the Puritan magistrates the utmost burden of blame for what there was in their stern principles which drove them to the unrelenting and distressing severity of their penalties, there is quite another element in the case for which candor must make a very large though undefined allowance as palliating their fault. ' If we should gather in a series the individuals and the classes of persons who were the victims of Puritan intolerance, we should have to recognize the fact that, with the single exception of the case of Roger Williams, — to be specially referred to in its place, — there were common qualities in those who provoked that intolerance which were peculiarly aggravating and hateful to the magistrates and ministers. There was in all of them a strong and ardent element of enthusiasm and fanaticism, and in most of them a claim to a special divine illumination and guidance in the form of " private revelations," the avowal of which goaded the Puritans to rage, and made those professedly so " inspired " the objects of mingled contempt and dread. A thorough and faithful study of the records of the Court, of the pamphlets and tractates of the time, of the extant manuscripts which preserve the language and fervor of the sharp conflicts, and a perusal of the historical VOL. 1. — 22. lyo THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. digests whose writers, in their earnest championship of the respective par- ties to the strife, have taken care that either side shall have a fair and full hearing, — while it may or may not be regarded as rewarding the labor of the inquirer, will teach him a useful wisdom. He will find himself gradu- ally but sensibly taken into a very different range for thought, belief, and mental occupation from that in which we move and live. He will meet with no need or use for that sort of tolerance which consists with indiffer- ence. While wondering how human beings could work themselves into such fervors and fevers of zeal and passion about fancies and notions to us so remote from the range of reasonable and healthful interest, we often find ourselves admiring them for their manifest sincerity and constancy. Nor are there lacking among them the evidences of a rich ingenuity and ideality in fashioning out of misty speculations the shapings of some august truths. We are not infrequently awed by catching from the lips of illiterate persons, in their seeming delirium from their oracles, the proof of a marvel- lous insight in the region of elevated ideas. We are led, perhaps, to a better appreciation of the cautious sagacity of Erasmus in .protesting against Lu- ther's resolve to offer the Bible in the vernacular to the free perusal of the common people. But we are also impressed with a sense of the inner fecun- dity and the quickening spirit of the Bible for earnest and restless minds, who received it as if passed to them in a cloud from the hand of God, to be read and brooded over as a private message, direct and sufficient. One of the most picturesque characters for us in our early chronicles, though he had quite another aspect and personification for the old magis- •7 trates, was Samuel Gorton. He is described by ^ afniw^-fr^ ^'^^"^ ^^ representing " the very dregs of Famil- ^^ aj ism," — an insufficient portraiture for our days. y He was a " clothier from London." We first hear of him as appearing in Boston in 1636, and as shortly going to Ply- mouth, whence he was soon expelled for holding some strange and, to us, unintelHgible heresies. Next, he was whipped in Rhode Island for calling the magistrates "just-asses," and found refuge with Roger Williams in Providence. In a controversy with our authorities about the lands on which he and others had settled, he was seized, and with ten of his followers was brought to Boston, where, for his " damnable heresies," he was put in irons, confined to labor, and whipped, and then banished on pain of death if he appeared here again. His heresies were reputed as proving him a disciple of the fanatic David George, of Delft, the founder of the " Family of Love," who called himself the " Messiah." It was said that Gorton could neither write nor read. If the charge had been that what he did write was utterly unintelligible for its mystical and cloudy rhapsodies and dream- ings, it would have been more to the point. On a visit which he made to England, he engaged the countenance of the Earl of Warwick to redress his wrongs; and he wrote, or published, tractates and expositions of his fancies, from which one in these days will hardly succeed in drawing out THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 171 Aff-"^ ^j^'^m anything but darkness. Yet he founded a sect which bore his name in Rhode Island for a century, and proved in private and civil capacities to be a useful man. Any one who, in these days, may be curious to inform him- self about the opinions of this reputed " Familist " may find them in books bearing his name, such as Simplicitie s Defence against Seven-Headed Policy ; Aft Incorruptible Key composed of the CX. Psalm, &c. His writings are accessible, but they do not obtrude themselves on the present generation.^ The first serious trouble, engaging severe measures in the action of the Court, was that of Roger Williams. Though he was not and never became a member or freeman of the Company, he was welcomed on his arrival. He came here on his own prompting, and of course could remain only on sufferance, if he should prove a desirable person. Arriving with his wife in Boston, in 1631, while Wilson of the First Church was absent in England, Williams was invited to become its teacher. He says that he refused the invitation because the members- of the church would not make humble confession of sin in having communed with the Church of England. He was not then known, as in the after years of his life, for his sweetness of spirit, his breadth of liberality, and his noble magnanimity, but seems to have most- impressed those who met him as holding " singular opinions," and being " very unsettled in judgmente." He was more wel- come in Salem, where he first went, than he proved to be at Plymouth, where he made a short stay, and whence he returned to Salem in 1634. The gentle Elder Brewster, fearing that he would " run a course of rigid Separation and Anabaptistry," was glad to facilitate his removal from Plymouth. There are, of course, two ways of telling the story of his troubles with the Massachusetts authorities. One, a plea in his defence 1 [The sources of knowledge of the Gorton printed in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. ; in Force's controversy are Winthrop's New England, Sav- Tracts, iv., and edited by W. T. R. Marvin, Bos- age's edition, ii. 6g; documents in Hazard's ton, 1869. Winslow replied in his New Eng- Collections ; Johnson's Wonder-working Provi- land's Salamander, 1647, of which there is a //«?f^, Poole's edition, p. 185, and the several copy in Harvard College Library; reprinted in controversial tracts of the time. In 1646 Gor- 3 Mass. Hist. Coll ,\\. Gorton took exception to ton printed his defence of his own conduct in ?, by being told that it signifies a denial of, or opposition to, legalism, or a subjection to the law of works as the duty of a Christian. " Antinomians " were understood to hold that one who believed himself to be under a " covenant of faith " need not concern himself to regard " the covenant of works." In other words, those who internally and spiritually had the assurance that they were in a state of "justification" might relieve themselves of all anxiety as to their " sanctifi- cation." It is easy to see what possible mischief of dangerous self-delusion and utter recklessness about the demands of strict virtue and even common morality was wrapt up in this beguiling heresy. Some private mystical ex- perience, real or imagined, that one was in a " state of grace," might secure a discharge from scrupulous fidelity of conduct. Thus, that sad reprobate, Captain Underbill, — a member of the Boston Church, and very serviceable in his military capacity, — when detected in gross immorality, had the assurance to tell the pure-hearted Governor Winthrop, " that the Spirit had sent in to him the witness of Free Grace, while he was in the moderate enjoyment of the creature called tobacco," — that is, while he was smoking his pipe. This dreaded heresy came to the ste.oiJ'uritans of Boston associated with grossly licentious professions and indulgences among fanatics in Germany and Holland, and was by no means unknown by such tokens in old England. But allowing for very exceptional cases, like that of Underbill, no such scandals attach to the names and conduct of the Antinomians who were so ruthlessly dealt with in Boston in 1636. The most prominent among the Antinomians here, — the one who "broached the heresy," and whose name is the synonym of it, — was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a pure and excellent was for political reasons chiefly; and this is der Congregationalisten in Neu England, and the view in J. A. Vinton's article in the Congre- Masson's Life and Times of Miltoti, iii. .S. G. gational Quarterly, July, 1873. Of the lives of Drake, in the Hist. Mag., December, 1868, ex- Williams, Knowles's, 1834, is based on authentic amines the question of the authenticity of an material ; Gammell's is briefer and is in Sparks's alleged portrait of Williams, which first, and Amer. Biography; Elton's, 1852, brings forward properly, did service for Franklin in Watson's new facts, which are also used by Guild in his Annals of Philadelphia, 1830. The same plate, introduction to the Narragansett Club publica- with Williams's name under it, served some tions, 1865. The relations of Williams and the years afterwards as his likeness in the Welsh Boston authorities are also discussed more or less Magazine, published in New York. Later, a fully in Bancroft, i. ch. ix. ; Palfrey's New Eng- painting was made to match the Franklin head; /<;«£/, i. ch. X. ; ArnoM's Jihode Island ; Budding- and this painting was engraved as a portrait ton's First Church in Charlestown, p. 200; Felt's of Williams in Benedict's Ilistory of the Bap- Eccles. Hist, of N. El. i. ch. ix. ; Sprague's Annals tists, 1847. The fraud was first exposed by of the American Pulpit, vi., &c. For foreign Charles Deanc in the Cambridge Chronicle in views see Gervinus's introduction to his History 1850. The painting was recently in existence of the Nineteenth Century; Uhden's Ceschichte in Roxbury. — Eii.| 174 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. woman, to whose person and conduct there attaches no stain. She first became known for her kind and helpful services, friendly and medical, to her own sex in their needs. She is described as a woman of " nimble wit" and a high spirit, gifted in argument and ready speech. She was inquisitive and critical, — perhaps censorious. But her most alarming quality was that she " vented her revelations; " i. e., in a form of prophecy sometimes threatening and denunciatory gave utterance to forebodings of judgment and disaster to come upon the Colony, as revealed to her by special divine communications. While no claim to such privileged illumination could for a moment stand with the Puritans as even possible of proof, the assertion of it was of the very essence of fanaticism. Yet the weak and credulous might be ensnared by it, and then there was no setting limit or restraint to the ruin and woe which might come upon them. Having made herself trusted and esteemed by many of the principal women of the town, Mrs. Hutchinson drew groups of them around her to discuss the sermons delivered by the elders.^ It soon appeared that by her judgment most of these preached a " covenant of works." The theme of earnest debate, and the vehicle which it found in tongues not always discreet or charitable, soon made itself a power outside of the women's meetings. The- spark was set to inflammable materials. The whole community was in a fever of mutual distrust, jealousy, and dread of impending catastrophe. Had Boston at the time been the only local settlement in the colony, or isolated from connection through the Court with others, it seems as if its goodly birth and hope would have been darkly and dismally succeeded by a most gloomy blight and extinction. It was saved from absolute ruin by its neighbor settlements, which had not been so stirred by the matter of strife. As the dealings of the Court and the Church with Mrs. Hutchinson and her party became more and more embittered and stern, it was found that she had a very strong following. The two associate elders Cotton and Wilson, and the two Governors, Winthrop and Vane, each respectively took dif- ferent sides in the contest. Many of the principal inhabitants of Boston warmly espoused the. views of Mrs. Hutchinson.^ As the dispute came to who had come over with Winthrop, and for some years had been a prominent resident and merchant of Boston. Me is said to have built the first brick house erected in the town. He , was dropped from the government when Win- throp was elected over Vane in their memorable contest, but the freemen immediately returned him as a Deputy. In April, 1638, he, with others, removed to the island of Aquidneck, and founded the State of Rhode Island. A portrait of him hangs in the Council Chamber at Newport, and is engraved in Bryant and Gay's Uiiited States, ii. 44. For Coddington's origin, see N. E. Hist, and Gmeal. Reg: , January, 1S74, p. 13. He was from Lincolnshire, and the Ply- mouth Dr. Fuller, in his letter to Bradford, calls him .1 " Boston man," — as Dr. Haven. explains in his chapter. — Eu.J ' [Mrs. Hutchinson lived at, or rather her husband's lot formed, the corner of the pres- ent Washington and School streets, where the "Old Corner Book-store" stands, nea'rly oppo- site Governor Winthrop's house, which was on the other side of Washington Street. William Aspinwall, one of her adherents, was a near neighbor, and lived on Washington Street, just south of School Street, his land e.xtending back to the Common. Snow, Boston, p. 118. — Ed.] 2 [Among them was William Coddington, /f>S/^y>^>« — THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 1 75 the knowledge of the " common sort of people," it gained new elements of fear and passion, partly because there were real elements of lawlessness involved in it, and for the rest because so many who were heated by the strife had really no intelligent idea of the terms and significance of the controversy, so that they could distinguish between its practical and its panic qualities. The sentence against Mrs. Hutchinson stands thus in the Court record, that, " being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country, she declared voluntarily her revelations for her ground, and that she should be delivered and the Court ruined with their posterity; and there- upon was banished," &c. The Church excommunicated her for " having impudently persisted in untruth." Two of her followers were both dis- franchised and fined, eight disfranchisedj two fined, and three banished. Seventy-six inhabitants of Boston, in sympathy with her, were disarmed.'^ The reason given by the Court for this last sentence of disarming was, — " as there is just cause of suspicion that they, as others in Germany, in former times, may, upon some revelation, make some sudden irruption upon those that differ from them in judgment." The special and distinguishing feature in the matter of this Antinomian controversy as presented by Mrs. Hutchinson, her friends and opponents, was that the civil and ecclesiastical penalties of Puritanism were inflicted in their full severity upon members of their own community; most of them also in full church covenant. Other of the sufferers by the Puritan dis- cipline were for the most part strangers and intruders, who had neither part nor lot here, and whose presence and disturbing influence were regarded as simply acts of effrontery and wanton interference with what did not con- cern them. The Antinomians, so called, had been in kindly neighborly relations, fellow-believers, under the freeman's oath to the Commonwealth, and bound with them in " the fellowship of the saints." The more harrowing and distressing, therefore, was the antagonism that rose up between them. We apply the terms " intolerance and persecution" to the party which car- 1 [The lists of the disarmed and of /^ those who recanted, as shown by the enu- ^^YfAy^ t meration in Ellis's Anne Hutchinson and ^^y^^t^'T^^^^ in Drake's Boston, embrace some of the ^^ ' leading townsmen, a few of whom we can note with interest in their own autographs. ^^ Underbill was the same who had done good ^1 ' -^ »f ^& ^/'C^^£' 'Jl^H^a.Tn jmgt, of Winthrop, and we shall read more of him in the chapter on Philip's war. Raynsford was an elder of the church and the head of a respect- able family, and an island in the harbor still preserves in its name the record of his former ownership. Aspinwall is a name not yet died service in the Pequot war. Savage was the out among us. Cf. Savage, Genealogical Dic- progenitor of the late James Savage, the editor tionary. — Ed.] 176 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ried with it the balance of power. But the magistrates and the elders would not have regarded those terms as fitly characterizing their measures. And it might be questioned which party was the more intolerant ; for certainly neither of them was tolerant. It was the dread of those " revelations " from which there was no telling what might come that overbore the conflict of opinions. Though Mrs. Hutchinson's ultimate fate in another colony — fall- ing with all her family save one child in an Indian massacre — was most deplorable, it is pleasant to know that most of those who suffered with her expressed their regret and penitence and were restored. In defending the order of the Court in 1637, to the effect that " none should be allowed to inhabite here but by permission of the Magistrates," and in thus vindicating the banishment of the Antinomians, Winthrop dis- tinctly fell back upon what he believed the proprietary right conferred by the Charter, previously defined. The incorporators, he urged, had secured a common interest in land and goods and in means for securing their own welfare ; and without their full consent no other person could claim to share in their privileges. The welfare of the whole could not be hazarded for the advantage of any individuals. No one, without permission of the proprietors, could come on their soil, take land, or intermeddle with their affairs. It followed, of course, that the proprietors were free, and indeed were bound to keep out and to expel from their society any persons who would be harm- ful or ruinous to them. " A Commonwealth," he added, " is a great family," and as such is not bound to entertain all comers, nor to receive unwelcome strangers. To this defence Sir Henry Vane wrote a strong and adroitly argued answer, but Winthrop backed his former plea with a rejoinder. By the expansion and warrant of the liberal views which we have reached, through the failure of all restrictive measures for controlling or suppressing perfect religious liberty, we should, of course, assign to Vane the nobler argument. But Winthrop had in view the security of an imperilled State, rather than restraints on conscience.^ ^ [The original authorities of this contro- growing out of his connection with the synod for versy are these : Winthrop's New England, confuting the heresy, accounts of which are found with Mr. Savage's appendix of papers ; an in Winthrop's New England, i. 237 ; Cotton's anonymous book, issued in 1644 in London, Way Cleared, &c. p. 39; Johnson's Wonder- as Antinomians and Familists, and the same working Providence ; Mather's Maa-nalia vii. year reissued from the same type, but with ch. iii., &c. The proceedings of the General the changed title of A short story of the Rise, Court, which pronounced banishment upon Mrs. reign, and mine of the Antijiomians, Familists, Hutchinson and Wheelwright, are given in Win- and Libertines that infected the Churches of A'ew throp, i. 248, and in the Records of Mass. i. 207. ^«^'/(?rj, p. 401 ; Backus, church records of his sudden death is given in New England, \. 245. the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, i88o, "Ju An J^(fflx>'<^ The death, in 1663, of p- 89, and in July, 1859, an early pedigree owned John Norton (who, four by Prof. C. E. Norton of Cambridge. — Ed.] THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 183 fanatics, easily rid themselves of the first of the sort, as they arrived by sea. They were retained on shipboard ; and the masters of vessels who brought them hither were compelled, under penalty, to carry them away. SIR RICHARD SALTONSTALL. 1 [The present representative of the family, Leverett Saltoiistall, Esq., kindly furnished a photograph of the original portrait of his an- cestor by Rembrandt, from which this engraving is taken. It is in his possession. There are copies of it in the gallery of the Historical So- ciety and in Memorial Hall at Cambridge. It has been engraved on steel in Drake's Boston, p. 122, and elsewhere. Saltonstall came over with Winthrop, but returned to England tlie next year. He was born in 1586, and died about 1658. The family descent is followed in the iV; E. nisi, and Gaieal. Reg., 1847 ; Bond's Water toion : and Di"al^ Q^TflJ/rr^ •^ - v5. n'^ to Williams. Leverett wrote a reply. Neither of these letters is known to be extant. Williams, having seen this correspondence, wrote an " Answer,' which was printed in Boston by John Foster. This has been reprinted in the from two women, and dated " from your house Ji. /. Hist. Soc. Proe. iZ-jCf-jd. There are letters, of correction, where we have been unjustly &c., of Williams's in Ibid. 1877-78. — Ed.] restrained." It was on the occasion of this ex- 2 [The crowd of North-enders was so great ecutinn that Mary Dyer sat on the gallows with returning from two of these executions, Oct. 27, a rope about her neck while the others were 1659, when William Robinson and Marmaduke swung off. She was sent out of the jurisdiction, Stevenson were hung, that the drawbridge on but, returning the next June, finally suffered the Ann Street (now North Street), over the canal last jjenalty. There is in the Mass. Archives, x., which made the North End an island, fell a petition from her husband, W. Dyer, asking through under the weight. Strange to say, the that his wife may be spared. Dr. Ellis prints it VOL. I. — 24. 1 86 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. cessive inflictions to which Puritan legislation vainly had recourse to be rid of an intolerable plague. It was denounced upon such as, returning a fourth time after punishment and banishment, refused, even when on the gallows, to keep their lives on condition that they would not again obtrude them- selves where they were so unwelcome. Their refusal to comply with this condition convinced the magistrates, who " desired their lives absent rather than their deaths present," that " they courted death and thrust themselves upon it." Some readers may find relief in the fact that, even after the long trial of the patience of the magistrates, the infliction of the death penalty was effected only by the vote of a bare majority of the Court, and was most vehemently opposed by earnest remonstrances from some of the best peo- ple.^ Our historian, Hutchinson, rightly balances " the strange delusion the Quakers were under in courting persecution, and the imprudence of the authorities in gratifying this humor as far as their utmost wishes could carry them." One may all the more regret the heady temper, the rancor, and the violence shown on either side, because the parties were so admirably The Treatment of In- p. 123. Her story is in his Lowell lecture on truders and Dissentients told in PiXiderson's MemoraMe Women of Puritan Times. A posthumous tract by Marmaduke Stevenson, entitled A Call from Death to Life, London, 1660, is one o£ the rarities of Americana. Cf. Menzies Catalogue, No. 1,903, and Brinley Hist, and Geneal. Reg. v. 465 ; Drake's Boston, p. 345. An account of Upsall, with a view of the y^'f- t-* a^U~ 3 lb Co Catalogue, No. 3,571. It has appended to it two letters from Peter Pearson, giving " a brief re- lation of the manner of the martyrdom " of Stevenson and Robinson. It is noted in the Seviall Papers, i. 82, 91, that in- 16S5 the Quak- ers asked permission "to enclose the ground the hanged Quakers are buried in, under or near the gallows, with pales " It was denied " as very inconvenient;" but nevertheless a "few feet of ground was enclosed with boards." — Ed.) ^ [Longfellow makes the Governor express this aversion in his Jokn Endicott : — " Four already have been slain ; And others banished upon pain of death. But they come back again to meet their doom, Bringinj]^ the linen for tlieir winding sheets. We must not go too far. In truth I shrink From shedding of more blood. The people murmur At onr severity." But Endicott was the most bitter and persistent advocate of extreme measures. The Nicholas Upsall of this tragedy, who was imprisoned and banished for harboring Quakers, was a veritable citizen, whose blood still runs among us. N. E. stone on his grave in the Copp's Hill burial-ground, is given in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, 1880. There is in the Mass. Ar- chives, X., a petition from his wife Dorothy, liis son-in-law William Greenough, and Upsall's children, asking for the revoking of the decree of banish- ment. The Court refused it. Mr. Rowland H. Allen, in his New England Tragedies in Prose, Boston, 1869, has followed out the historical iiv cidents which Longfellow weaves into his plot. Hawthorne uses these Quaker persecutions as the basis of his " Gentle Boy," — one of his Twice Told Tales. — Y.\).\ THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 187 qualified for testing their issues by disputation and the tongue. Richard Baxter foiled the weapon of one very persistent Quaker, who had been arguing that all men were illumined by the inner light, by asking the question, "If all have it, why may not I have it?"^ What would have been the final working out of the pitched conflict between Quaker contumacy and Puritan persistency, had they been left to the action of their own energies without the intervention of an external mediating agency, it would hardly have been difficult for any but the most resolute and stern of the magistrates to have forecast. The Quakers would have conquered by simple endurance. Their weapons were what in the immediate future were to be recognized as vital and effective truths. But one of the suff'erers having gone to England and gained access to Charles II. brought back from the monarch a peremptory command that the death penalty against the Quakers should be no more inflicted, and that those who were under judgment or in prison should be sent to England for trial.^ The King's interference with the stern rule of the Puritan Commonwealth also involved the immediate removal of the restriction of the franchise to church- members, and its extension to all citizens who were in other respects entitled to it. The Court, however, managed to evade the concession here required of them, by substituting conditions which substantially retained the rigid 1 [It is not worth while here to follow out the bibliographical intricacies of the literature of these Quaker persecutions. The reader is referred to Dr. H. M. Dexter's Bibliography of CoiigregatioHalism ; J. Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books ; and some of the rarer books noted in the Brinley Catalogiie, ii. 100. Of the older books, G. Bishop's New England yudged. Part I., 1661, and Part If., 1667, — both parts with additions, 1703, of which a cojjy, with many other of the Quaker productions, is in the pos- session of Dr. Ellis, — puts the Quakers' side, while the Boston minister, John Norton, on whom the burden of the unhappy conflict fell, in behalf of the churches offered their apology in his Heart of New England rent at the Blas- phemies of the Present Generation^ Cambridge, 1659, — a book published by authority and at the public charge, and for which the Court made him a grant of land. Not much reading on either side is edifying, and the joint production of John Rous and others. New England a Degenerate Plant, London, 1659, is worth attention chiefly for its record of the laws and proceedings of the colonies against the Quakers. We also owe to Rous, Fox, and others another harrowing narra- tive of their sufferings, printed in London in 1659, as The Secret IVorkes of a Cruel People. Their own later chroniclers always cover these New England experiences, as in William Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1722, &c., fourth and fifth books, and Jos. l^^z^t' s Sufferings of the People called Quakers, London, 1753, each depending largely on G- Bishop's book ; and such more recent works as Janney's Hist, of the Friends, i. ch. xiii.- XV., and Gough's Quakers, ch. xiv. Our New Eng- land historians all follow the story with more or less consideration for the authorities. Hub- bard, New England, ch. Ixv. ; Mather, Magnulia, vii. ch. iv. ; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay; Bancroft, United States, i. ch. x., ii. ch. xvi., and centenary edition, i. ch. x. ; Palfrey, New England, ii. 452, — a careful account with some detail; Bryant and Gay, United States, ii. ch. viii. and ix. ; Barry, Massachusetts, i. ch. xiii. ; P. W. Chand- ler, American Criminal Trials, i., with an ap- pendix of documents; Dexter, As to Roger Williams, pp. 105, 124, &c. Dr. Ellis has written a history of the subject, which is still in manu- script. — Ed.] 2 [Dr. Palfrey, Hist, of New England, ii. 519, says: "The resolution to abstain from further capital punishments had been taken some months before, though the magistrates, perhaps, were not indisposed to appeal to the King's injunction, rather than avo^v a change of judgment on their own part." The letter of the King was intrusted to one Samuel Shattuck, who had been banished, and he, with other Quakers, arrived in Boston in 1661. One of the disturbers at least, Win- lock Christison, recanted a little too early, or he might have enjoyed the triumph of his release without so satisfying the magistrates as he did. — Kd.] i88 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. method of securing the ballot. On this point — the vital and all-essential security of their original polity — they were soon compelled to yield, because the royal mandate was reinforced by so strong a party of the uncovenanted non-voters within the colony insisting upon their rights. Not till the provincial was substituted for the colonial charter was the spell of the Puritan domina- tion effectually broken ; and then the Puri- r\ ^ n!> "N^ v\Vv I ^'"^ Commonwealth was prostrated. The sur- >^ I f\^ I vival from it in tradition, in influence, in the sway of manifold habits and customs, and in the lessons of childhood retaining their power over those who lived to advanced age, per- petuated very much of its austere and char- /^ f^ - pj [ acteristic qualities in this community. Nor / ^ \v9 ■C -v ■ ^ "K even in these days, among the mixed and diversified elements of our population and all the relaxing and liberalizing results of the most radical social change, is the fire in the ashes of Puritanism wholly extinguished. It may have been well that, in the train and succession of the experimentings on the theory of the model for planting a State, secure and prosperous, what we regard now as fundamen- tally an erroneous and impracticable one was so thoroughly tested. An earnest and lofty purpose, demanding high vir- tues, zeal, self-consecration, and stern fidelity could alone have prompted the master spirits of this colony, and sus- tained them under the exactions of their enterprise. They were, for their time, intelligent and wise men; and by the best standards of any age their char- acters in their intents and aims — of integrity, sincerity, devoutness, and un- selfishness — must be adjudged to have been elevated and pure. They showed heroic powers of endurance ; they were simple and frugal in their mode of life ; " they scorned delights and lived labori- ous days ; " and in their generation, more resolutely and disinterestedly than any other community of men and women known to us, they had regard, in all that they devised and did, far more for the welfare and advantages of their THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH. 189 posterity than for their own. How far their erroneous and impracticable experiment of constructing a State from a Church was the consequence or the cause of the Hmitations of wisdom, the superstitions, and the errors which appear in their poHcy, it might be difficult fairly to decide. Their thorough trial of what proved to be an impracticable theory may help to reconcile us to all the risks and exposures of our present system, which recognizes only secular interests. Large allowance should be made by us for what was so ungenial, gloomy, and repulsive in the Puritan character, as manifested dur- ing the brief period of intolerance and severity in their history, on the score of the harshness and rudeness of the circumstances under which the first generation born on the soil grew into life. The first comers had sweet and tender memories of dear old England. Their children had none of these. Their childhood was not nursed on milk. They saw no games or pageants, no holidays or festivals, no gray old churches or ivy-clad castles. They had no picture-books or romances. The shadows of the wilderness hung over them, and the ways through it were lonely and full of terrors. A som- bre domestic discipline saddened their years of subjection. The weariness of their long day-tasks was compensated by no evening jollities. These sober and grave influences clouded their lives, and passed into maturer austerities in their characters. Religion had to them more of frights and bugbears than of fair visions and sweet solaces. The charter of the colony assigned the terms for holding its Courts, as " Hilary, Easter, Trinity, and Michaelmas." But only in the charter, not elsewhere in the records, do those words and the things and associations of which they are the symbols appear. The children grown here never heard thern. The dispensation of religion to them offered them lessons above their comprehension, divested of all attractions in the mode of their teaching, — dry, dreary, and saddening. There is an offset of a generous and grateful character to be made for all that is just in the severity of censure visited upon these Puritan legislators for their narrowness and bigotry, their rigid and harsh austerity against those who disturbed their peace, and yet so patiently suffered the penalties of their protests, their dissent, and their heresies. These disturbers were dealt with as enthusiasts and fanatics, at a time and under circumstances of dread experience that made enthusiasm and fanaticism most alarming in their impulses, methods, and tendencies, as destructive of domestic, social, and civil order. But while the Puritan outlook was narrow in that direction, it was broad and generous in another. They did not stand as champions of ignorance, indifference, or the conservatism of prejudice and error. While we call them superstitious, we have to remind ourselves that there was noth- ing to them more odious or debasing than what they themselves, by the degree of their enlightenment, had come to regard as superstition. This they identified with ignorance and folly. And it was because of this that the Puritans came nearer than any other class of religionists to making an idol of knowledge, of the exercise of mental freedom and vigor, and of the education of the young. The unrest of Puritanism, its constant labor to igO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. verify and certify its fundamentals of doctrine and dispensation, kept the intellect in full vigor, and prompted the inquisitive spirit which gradually released it from a slavish bondage. Certain it is, that wherever in Christen- dom we trace the presence and influence of the doctrinal system and disci- pline characteristic of Puritanism, — as in Geneva, Holland, Scotland, Old and New England, — we find tokens of intellectual vigor in the commanding minds of statesmen, scholars, and men of affairs. And consequent upon this quality has been their noble zeal to promote education, knowledge, learning, in all their ranges, so that their elevating influence may be shared by all classes of the people. The college planted in the wilderness by the magistrates of Boston, and the system of common schools provided by the Court of the Puritan colony, attest that its founders recognized in edu- cation the only safeguard of liberty. They would not have dreaded lest freedom in thought and policy should exceed due restraints, provided only that they could anticipate and guide its development by true enlightenment. It is easy to reconcile the professed heavenly-mindedness of the Puritans with their manifest regard for worldly thrift. They confessedly recognized the mundane virtues ; and we, their posterity, share largely in the account of their having done so. There was candor as well as shrewdness in the avowal made by the patriarch White for our colonists, that " nothing sorts better with Piety than Competency," — a truth which the prophet Agur had, long before their day, uttered by inspiration. As to the character of the community, — the qualities and habits of the people ; the tone of daily life ; the relations between individuals and classes ; the public and private virtues, with the offset of evils and errors, which especially manifested themselves in this Puritan Commonwealth in anything peculiar and distinctive, — it would require more space than can here be given for a fair exposition of the subject. One might be prompted to institute a comparison, either in general terms or in details, with other contemporary colonial communities where quite other than Puritan princi- ples and usages controlled the religious, civil, and social life of the people. This, too, would take us beyond our limits. Had this old town of Boston, with the surrounding municipalities which are essentially its offshoots, been left to a natural process of development by modifications workino- from within of its original elements, and an increase of its homogeneous stock by generations, keeping its homogeneous character, we might then have been able to trace and define our essential Puritan heritage in its pres- ent fruitage. The flood of foreign immigration which has poured in upon us since the beginning of this century has vastly qualified, though it has not neutralized, the original qualities of the old stock. We must reconcile ourselves to any regrets over a promising but arrested development from our heritage by gratefully recognizing its attractiveness for aliens. ^^^,^<£. ^^- CHAPTER IV. THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS, AND THE ESTABLISH- MENT OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. BY THE REV. HENRY W. FOOTE. Minister of King's Chapel. THE noble vision of the Puritan Commonwealth, compacted of souls united in faith and doctrine, in which Church and State should be substantially one, proved impracticable before the first generation of the Puritans had begun to pass from the stage. It has been related in a for- mer chapter-' how the successive controversies with the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, with the Baptists, and with the Quakers, demonstrated more and more clearly the impossibility of such a permanent accord of the whole population on religious questions as was vitally necessary for the perman- ence of the Theocracy. The fixedness with which the policy of repression was pursued until the English Government interfered, although ineffectual to do more than postpone the religious disintegration which nothing could ultimately prevent, had one further effect of immense importance. It secured time to impress on the community a marked character which two centuries since elapsing, with all their modifications of faith and of the population, have not been able to efface. During nearly half a century the Puritan spirit had exercised an unrestricted sway, while the new com- munity was hardening from gristle into bone. The Boston of 365,000 inhabitants to-day, with its mingling of many races and all religions and no religion, is marked profoundly by its inheritances from the temper, spirit, and belief of the Boston which, at the close of the seventeenth century, was a little town of less than 7,000 souls. The period of forcible repression of dissent from the Established Church of New England was succeeded by a period in which the Protestant bodies gained a firm and recognized footing in Boston. The history of the succes- sive steps by which this was established, much against the will and to the sore reluctance of the dominant powers, is of course less picturesque and exciting than the chapter of punishments, oppositions, and even martyr- doms in which the Quaker and the Baptist conquered by enduring. It is, however, an important chapter in the history of Boston, and interesting not only as a chapter of ecclesiastical antiquities, but as illustrating how, in the 1 [Chap. III., by Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D.] 192 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. field of this narrow peninsula, the victory of a policy of religious tolerance was established as a fact for all New England. The growth of the town in numbers had necessitated the organization of a second church in 1650. For twenty years the "Old Meeting-house" had accommodated the whole population. No record exists of the first occupation of the Second Church, which was built of wood at the North End (North Square), and thence derived the name, the " North Church," by which it was usually known.^ This part of the town held at this time about thirty householders, and there was prospect of a speedy increase. The first sermon in the new house was preached June 5, 1650. The services were conducted by one of the brethren, Michael Powell, till 1655, when the Rev. John Mayo was ordained as its first minister. The splendid roll of its ministers gave it a special dis- tinction: it has been called "the Church of the Mathers," four of its early pastors having belonged to that family, who held the pulpit for seventy- three out of the first ninety-one years of the church. But the era of peace within the Puritan ecclesiastical community was now to be rudely broken. Of the third church gathered in Boston, Rev. Dr. Wisner^ says: "Like too many other churches of Christ, it originated in bitter contentions among those who are bound by their profession, as well as by the precept of heaven, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." These contentions "were not local or of sudden production, but originated in the first ecclesiastical institutions of the country, and were spread through the whole of New England." The limitation of the political franchise to those who were church- members, made by an order of the second General Court in 163 1, continued in effect until the Charter Government was dissolved, since even after it was apparently repealed at the urgency of King Charles II., in 1664, a certificate was required from the ministers to the " orthodox principles " and good lives of candidates for freedom. From the beginning, a consider- able and ever increasing number of inhabitants were disfranchised by this test; many of the children of the early settlers could not satisfy the tests for admission to the church when they grew up ; and as baptism could not be had for the children of those who were not church-members, a genera- tion arose who were largely excluded alike from religious and civil privi- leges. An earnest effort, led by Robert Child and others, was made in 1646, by a petition to the General Court, " that civil liberty and freedom might be forthwith granted to all truly English ; and that all members of the Church of England or Scotland, not scandalous, might be admitted to the privileges of the churches of New England." The petitioners, who 1 It was burned in 1676, but soon rebuilt. Briclc Cliurcli in Hanover St., retaining the name Tliis later edifice, though in a condition to last and records of the Second Church, many years longer, was destroyed for fuel by the ^ //istory of the Old South Church in Bos- King's troops during the siege of Boston in 1775. ton, 1830, p. 4. We have largely followed Dr. The congregation then united with the New Wisner's account of this controversy. THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 193 threatened to appeal to the Parliament of England, and who represented a wide-spread discontent, were denied, their papers seized, and themselves fined; while the political troubles in the mother-country rendered all appeal hopeless.^ But a grievance so well grounded could not be permanently repressed. The growing sentiment that " all baptized persons, not scandalous in life and formally excommunicated, ought to be considered members of the church in all respects except the right of partaking of the Lord's Supper," though strenuously opposed by lovers of the old way, finally induced the Court of Massachusetts to call a General Council in 1657, which met at Boston, delegates from Connecticut also taking part. This Council deter- mined that those who had been baptized in infancy were therefore to be regarded as members of the church, and entitled to its privileges, with the exception of the Lord's Supper, including baptism for their children. Such an innovation on the earlier practice roused yet more bitter opposi- tion. A second Synod was obliged to be held in 1662, at which this decision was substantially reaffirmed. Vigorous protest was, however, made by some of the most eminent pastors, who published writings in opposition ; and among them Rev. John Davenport of New Haven, " the greatest of the anti-synodists." The churches of Massachusetts were divided among themselves, whether to receive or reject conclusions of the Synod. In the First Church of Boston, while a majority favored them, the influence of their pastor, the venerated Wilson, preserved the peace. His death, Aug. 7, 1667, at the age of seventy-nine,^ left a vacancy which was filled by the choice of Mr. Davenport, then seventy years old. The prominent position of this eminent man as - an advocate of the stricter side in the con- C^^nr\. i^cJUlna^xl^g^ troversy which was agitating New England '' occasioned the most earnest opposition to his settlement. The church was divided, the former minority becoming the majority. Mr. Davenport accepted their call and came to Boston, where he died little more than a year after beginning his ministry.^ But the dissatisfied minority did not ^ [Beside Child, William Vassal! and Sam- ministers of Christ, rested from his labors and uel Maverick were engaged in this movement, sorrov^es, beloved and lamented of all, and very DraJie, Boston ; Sumner, East Boston ; Win- honourably interred y" day following." N. E. throp. New England, &c. Cf. Colonel Aspin- Hist, and Geneal. Reg., ]\i\y,i?>?iO,^.2<)y. Seethe wall on "William Vassall no factionist," in genealogy in the jTira/^/^V y«' and Government, but Christ himself, for of all the Inhabitants of this Prov- ince, being about flour Thousand in number, not above Three Hundred Christned by reason of their Parents not being Members of their Church. I have been this 16 Months perswading the Ministers to admitt all to the Sacrament and Baptisme, that were not vitious in their Uves, but could not prevaile upon them, therefore with advice of 1 Tanner, MS. xxxii. 5, in Papers relating 2 Jenness, Transcripts, &c. p. 126; Edward to the Hist, of the Church in iVuss., 1676-1785, Cranfield to Com. for Foreign Plantations, Dec. I, p. 643, edited by W. S. Perry, U.D., [^73. 16S2. THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. I99 the Councell made this inclosed Order. Notwithstanding they were left in the intire possession of their Churches and only required to administer both Sacraments, ac- cording to the Liturgie of y" Church of England, to such as desired them, which they refuse to doe, and will understand Liberty of Conscience given in his Maj'= Commission, not only to exempt them from giving the Sacrament according to the Book of Comon Prayer but make all the Inhabitants contribute to their Maintenance, although they refuse to give them the Sacrament and Christen their Children, if it be not absolutely enjoyned here, and in other colonies, that both Sacraments be administered to all persons that are duly qualified, according to the form of the Comon Prayer, there will be per- petual dissentions, and a totall decay of the Christian Religion." ^ In New Hampshire Cranfield tried to put these principles into practice with no more success than was to be looked for when the Governor chose to strike against the Puritan rock. In December, 1683, he ordered the ministers to admit all persons not scandalous to the sacrament and to baptism, and to use for these sacred offices the English liturgy when desired, under penalty; and he commanded Rev. Joshua Moodey, of Portsmouth, to read this order from his pulpit. A few days later he sent Moodey notice that he with some of his coadjutors — who, if tradition is to be believed, could scarcely claim to be " not scandalous persons " — " would receive from him the sacrament according to the liturgy of the Church of England the next Sunday." Moodey declined to violate his conscience, and went to prison for it with a stout heart. Nothing is so stimulating to religious convictions as the sight of a worthy martyr; and the latent Puritanism was doubtless quickened in many lukewarm spirits in Boston, when like wildfire the news spread of what had been done, just beyond their jurisdiction, by the overbearing Governor who had been seen in their own streets. In October, 1683, Randolph brought the threatened guo warranto against the charter, which in October, 1684, was abrogated at last. The liberties of the Puritan State had fallen with those of the ancient boroughs of England be- fore the corrupt decision of courts which were the tools of the Stuart tyranny. And Massachusetts was now a Royal Province, to be ruled by a Governor sent from over seas, — a representative of the King, who must needs have, therefore, a sort of vice-regal court, and must worship after the forms of the Established Church. Still a little further delay ; for Charles II. was sum- moned to the bar of the King of kings, — in that sudden hour of which John Evelyn has left so impressive an account. Charles died in February, 1685. Just before his death he had shown what his temper towards New England was, by commissioning the brutal Colonel Piercy Kirk to be Governor with unlimited authority. He was to have a council of his own appointment, and all lands granted here were to pay a royal quit-rent. One of the three Boston churches was to be seized for the service of the Church of England, a point on which Randolph's persistency with the Royal Council and the prelates had succeeded. But though James II. confirmed Kirk's appoint- ment, he soon found that he should need him for a tool of oppression in ^ Jenness, Transcripts, pp. 147, 148. Cranfield to Committee, Jan. i5, 16S3. 200 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. England.^ In the year's delay which yet intervened, the following record from the Journals of the Privy Council shows what preparations were making there : — " Novr 1 685 : Ordered, that ... his Mas stationer do forthwith provide and de- liver to the Right Rev. Father in God, Henry, Lord Bp. of London, ... six large Bibles in folio, six Common- Prayer Books in folio, six books of the Canons of the Church of England, six of the homilies of the Church, six copies of the xxxix Articles, and six Tables of Marriage, to be sent to New-Eng., and there disposed for the use of his Mais plantation, as the said Bp. of London shall direct." ^ On May 15, 1686, there entered Boston Harbor a vessel "freighted heavily with wo " ^ to " the Bostoneers," as Randolph called them. For this " Rose " frigate brought a commission to Joseph Dudley as president of Massachusetts, Maine, Nova Scotia, and the lands between: she also brought the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe, the first minister of the English Church who had ever come so commissioned to officiate on this soil. The Puritan diarist,* who has left an invaluable chronicle of this period, sup- plies the record of the ensuing ecclesias- tical steps, not without ample indication of the course of his own sympathies : ^^ 'J^^fft " 1686. Tuesday, May 18. A great Wedding from Milton, and are married by Mr. Randolph's Chaplain at Mr. Shrimpton's, according to yf Service-Book, a litde after Noon, virhen Prayer was had at ye Town House : Was another married at ye same time ; The former was Vosse's son. Borroowd a ring. Tis s'' they having asked Mr. Cook and Addington, and yy declining it, went after to ye President and he sent y™ to y° Parson." No sooner had Dudley assumed his office than Mr. Ratcliffe waited on the Council, and Mr. Mason and Randolph proposed that he should have one of the three congregational meeting-houses to preach in. This, how- ever, was denied ; but he was allowed the use of the library room in the ' In the light of Colonel Kirk's infamous happening here in an order, signed by S. Pepys, record there is a grim humor in Randolph's de- appointing " Our Shipp the ' Rose,' Cap' John scription of him, writing to Dudley : " . . 9, 11, George, Commander, to attend our Collony of '84. His Majesty has chosen Coll. Kerke, late New England," Nov. 28,1685. — i, Mass. Hist. governor of Tangier, to be your governor. He Coll. ii. 234. The change of government was is a gentleman of very good resolution, and, I duly celebrated in Boston by the proclamation of believe, will not faile in any part of his duty to James II , April 20, 1685, when there may have his Majesty, nor be wanting to doe all good offices been in the Puritans a momentary hope of relief, for your distracted colony, if, at last, they will ^ Palfrey, New England, iii. 484. hear what is reason and be governed " ' Greenwood, History of Khi'^'s Chapel, It is interesting to note a momentary con- p. 15. nection of the racy diarist Pepys with the events ^ Sewall, Diary. THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 20I east end of the town-house, which stood where the Old State House now stands, " untill those who desire his Ministry shall provide a fitter place." " Sabbath, May 30* 1686. My son reads to me in course y" 26"" of Isaiah, — In that day shall y° Song, &c. And we sing y" 141 Psalm both exceedingly suited to y'' day wherein therein to be Worship according to y° Chh of Engld as 'tis call'd, in y° Town- House by Countenance of Authority. Tis defer'd till y° 6"' of June at what time y" Pulpit is provided ; it seems many crowded thether, and y" Ministers preached forenoon and Afternoon. Charles Lidget there. The pulpit is movable, carried up and down stairs, as occasion serves." ^ There for the first time the liturgy was read, — and on June 15, 1686, " the Church of England as by law established " was organized in Boston, — as appears from the first record in the parchment-bound folio constitut- ing the earliest record-book of King's Chapel. Besides Mr. Ratchffe and Mr. Randolph, there were present Captain Lydgett, Messrs. Luscomb, White, Maccartie, Ravenscroft, Dr. Clerke, Messrs. Turfery and Bankes, and Dr. BuUivant. It was voted to defray the expenses of the church by a weekly collection at evening service. Dr. Benj. Bullivant and Mr. Richard Bankes were elected the first church-wardens. It was also voted humbly to address the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, " to implore their favor to the church, and that all other true sons of the Church of England might join in the same." Also : " Agreed, that Mr. Smith the Joyner do make 12 formes, for the servise of the Church, for each of which he shall be paid 4s. Sd., and that the said Mr. Smith be paid 20s. quarterly for placing and removing the Pulpit, formes, table, &c." Another meeting is recorded on July 4, 1686, at which it was agreed to pay Mr. Ratcliff"e ;^50 per annum beside what the Council might allow him. The earliest funeral administration of the church offices is recorded in Sewall's Diary : — "Aug. 5 [1686]. M'' Harris, boddice-maker, is the first buried with Common Prayer : he was formerly Randolph's landlord." The first observance of the Lord's Supper was held on the secSnd Sunday of August. This, too, was noted by the observant Puritan eye : — " Sabbath-day, Aug' 8. 'Tis s"* y" Sacramt of y' Lord's Super is administered at y'' Town H. Cleveriy there." 2 The Episcopalians set about the undertaking of a church for themselves, without delay. "Aug' 21, Mane. Mr. Randolph and Bullivant were here. Mr. Randolph men- tion'd a Contribution toward building them a Chh, and seem'd to goe away displeas'd bee. I spake not up to it." ^ 1 Sewall, Diary. 2 Ibid. ' Ibid. VOL. I. - 26. 202 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. But Randolph had other designs for them, involving the seizure of one of the Congregational meeting-houses, and the support of the Church of Eng- land at the cost of those who hated it. Here, however, his purposes were crossed, and his brief partnership with Dudley speedily gave place to hostihty, as the possession of coveted power gave the pliant son of stern old Thomas Dudley the opportunity to displease all parties in serving himself Randolph wrote to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, July 28, 1686: " The proceeding of the governor and councill . . . are managed to the incouragement of the independant faction and utter discountenancing both the minister and these gen- tlemen and others who dare openly profess themselves to be of the Church of Eng- land, not making any allowance for our minister, more than we rayse by contribution amongst ourselves.'' Randolph had supposed it to be part of the implied contract with Dudley that the Church of England was to be installed in power on his accession. But the following letter gives a vivid picture of his disappointment, as well as of the difficulties with which the new church had to contend : ^ — " Boston, New England, Aug' 2°'^, 1686. "... As to M' Dudley, our Presid', he is a N. Conformist minister, and for sev- eral years preachd in New Engl'l till he became a Magistrate, and so continued for many years ; but, finding his interest to faile among that party, sett vp for a King's man, and, when in London, he made his application to my Lord of London, and was well liked of by some about his late Ma"° ; where vpon he was appointed for this turn to be president, who, at my arriual, with all outward expressions of duty and loyalty, receiued his Ma"^^ Commission, Sweetned with liberty of conscience : and now we believed we had gained the point, supposing the President our own for y'' C. of Eng^'. At the opening his Ma''°^ commission, I desired M'' Ratcliffe, our minister, to attend the ceremony and say grace, but was refused. I am not to forgett that in the late Rebellion of Munmouth, not one minister opened his lipps to pray for the King, hop- ing that the time of their deliverance from monarchy and popery was at hand. Some tyme after y^ settlement of y^ gou"', I moued for a place for the C. of England men to assemble in ; after many delays, at last were gott a small room in y"^ town house, but our Company increasing beyond the expectation of the gou"' , we now use y'^ Exchange, and haue f Common-prayer and two sermons euery Sunday, and at 7 a clock in y" morn- ing on Wednesdays and frydays the whole service of y' Church ; and some Sundays 7 or 8 persons are in one day Baptis'd, and more would dayly be of our communion had wee but the Company and countenance of the President and Councill ; but instead thereof wee are neglected and can obtain no maintainance from them to support our minister. Butt had wee a gen" gou' we should soon haue a larg congregation and also one of the Churches in Boston, as your Grace was pleased to propose when these matters were debated at y= Councill Table.'^ I humbly remind your Grace of the money granted formerly for evangelizing the Indians in our Neighborhood. It's great pitty that there should be a considerable stock in this country (but. how imployed I know not) ' Other letters from him are largely quoted ' See Hutchinson's Col/. 0/ Papi'rs, \ip. 549, by Dr. Palfrey, /'a.vj-;>«, going over essentially the 550, of the original edition; ii. 291, 292, of the same ground, in Hislory of New England, iii. Prince Society's reprint. THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 203 and wee want 7 or 8oo_;^ to build vs a Church. Their ministry exclaim against y' Com- mon Prayer, calling it man's invention, and that there is more hopes that whoremongers and adulterers will go to heaven than those of y" C. of Eng". By these wicked doc- trines they poison the people, and their ministry carry it as high as ever. . . . Your grace can hardly imagine the small artifices they haue vsed to prevent our meetings on Sundays, and at all other tymes to serue God. They haue libelled my wife and our Min- ister, and this is done (as credibly beleiued) by ye minister of the frigott,^ yett it 's coun- tenanced by the faction, who haue endeavoured to make a breach in my family, betwixt me and my wife, and haue accomphshed another design in setting vp and supporting Capt. Georg, Commander of the ' Rose ' frigott, against me. . . . " It 's necessary that y" gou'' hcence all their ministers, and that none be called to be a pastor of a Congregation without his approbation. By this method alone the whole Country will easily be regulated, and then they will build vs a church and be wiUing to allow our ministers an honorable mamtenance. " Wee haue a sober, prudent gent, to be our minister, and well approved ; but, in case of sickness or other casualtyes, if he haue not one soul from Engl to helpe him, our Church is lost. 'Tis therefore necessary That another sober man come ouer to assist, for some tymes 'tis requisite that one of them visit the other Colonyes to bap- tise and administer the Sacrament ; and in regard we cannot make 40'!' a yeare start by contributions for support of him and his assistant, it would be very gratefuU to our church affaires if his Ma''= would please to grant us his Royall letters. That the three meeting houses in Boston, which seuerally collect 7 or 8^ on a Sunday, do pay to our church warden 20s. a weeke for each meeting house, which will be some encour- agement to our ministers, and then they can but raile against y" Service of y'= Church. They haue great Stocks, and were they directed to contribute to build us a Church, or part firom one of their meeting houses, Such as wee should approue, they would purchase that exemption at a great rate, and then they could but call vs papists and our Minister Baal': Priests." ^ It is evident enough, from the letters of the most resolute enemy that New England had, that the Church was pushed here by Randolph in no small degree as a political engine, rather than for religious and devout ends. The clear-sighted and conscientious Puritans who were opposed to him saw this very plainly. The wonder is not that they opposed the church so cham- pioned, but rather that it took root at all under such malign auspices. The congregation of the Church of England in Boston was now organized and established, and would soon have had a religious home of its own but for a new political event. Within five months, on December 20, 1686, Sir Edmund Andros superseded Dudley and became the first Royal Governor of the Province. It is beyond the scope of this narrative to give in detail the history of the high-handed ways in which Governor Andros faithfully carried out his master's policy. His proceedings in the State were paralleled by his course in ecclesiastical affairs. On the very day of his landing, the Governor endeav- ored to make an arrangement with the ministers for the partial use of one ' The Rev. Mr. Buckly was the chaplain of Tanner MS. xxx. f. 97, quoted in Perry's Papers the " Rose " frigate. relating to the History of the C/mrch in Mass. 2 Randolph to Archbishop of Canterbury, in pp. 653-656. 204 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of the meeting-houses for Church of England worship. The pithy con- densed entries in Sewall's Diary give us an invaluable picture of the course of the negotiation and of subsequent events; and there are few more dramatic incidents in our history than the moment when the English ruler and the Boston clergy confronted each other. "Monday, Decemb: 20, 1686. Gov' Andros comes up in y" Pinace. . . . " . . .it seems speaks to y° Ministers in y" Library abt accoinodation as to a Meeting-house, yt might so contrive ye time as one House might serve two Assem- blies. "Tuesday, Dec' 21. There is a Meeting at Mr. Allen's of ye Ministers, and four of each Congregation to consider what answer to give ye Gov' ; and 'twas agreed yt could not with a good Conscience consent yt our Meeting-House should be made use of for ye Comon-prayr worship. "Dec' 22. . . . In ye Evening Mr. Mather and Willard thorowly discoursed his Ex- cellency about ye Meeting-Houses in great plainess, shewing they could not consent : This was at his Lodging at Madam Taylor's ; He seems to say will not impose. " Friday X' 24. About 60 Red-coats are brought to Town. . . . "Satterday, X' 25. Govf goes to ye Town-House to Service Forenoon and after- noon, a Redcoat going on's right hand and Capt. George on ye left. Was not at Lec- ture on Thorsday. Shops open to-day generally and persons about y' occasions. Some but few Carts at Town with wood tho" y" day exceeding fair and pleasant. Read in ^e morn ye 46 & 47 of Isa." So ended what must have been an exciting week in the httle Puritan community. But they were thankful that things were no worse. Mr. Sew- all doubtless expressed the general mind when, meeting Governor Andros in the street, — " Friday Jan. 7"' 1 68f . I thankfully acknowledged ye protection and peace we enjoyed under his Excellencie's Government.'' The Puritans knew very well the temper of the men whom they were fight- ing. The controversy was one which no soft words would heal. It waS at bottom nothing less than a deadly strife as to which of two opposing principles should govern Massachusetts. The unanimous mind of those who came here to execute the court policy was expressed by Governor Cranfield, of New Hampshire, who, in a letter dated at Boston, June 19, 1683, wrote to Sir LI. Jenkins, — "... There can be no greater evill attend his Maj''° affairs here, then those perni- cious and Rebellious principles which flows from their CoUige at Cambridge which they call their Uniuersity, from whence all the Townes both in this and the other Colonys are supplyed with Factious and Seditious Preachers who stirr up the people to a dislike of his Maj"^' and his Goum". and the Religion of the Church of England, terming the Liturgy of our Church a precident of Superstition and picked out of the Popish Dunghill ; so that I am humbly of opinion this Country can never bee well settled or the people become good Subjects, till their Preachers bee reformed and that Colledge suppressed and the severall Churches supplyed with Learned and Orthodox Ministers from England as all other his Maj"" Dominions in America are. THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 205 " The Country growes very populous, and if Longer left ungoverned or in that man- ner as now they are I feare it may bee of dangerous consequence to his Maj"* concerns in this part of the World. ... If the Boston Charter were made void and the Cheif of the Faction called to answer in their owne persons for their misdemenors and their Teachers restrained from Seditious preaching, it would give great encourage- ment to the Loyall Party, to shew themselves, who haue hetherto beene kept under and greatly oppressed and from all places of proffitt and trust. . . ." ' A school of historical students has sprung up in this country who teach that the Massachusetts policy was a self-seeking and hypocritical one. The fact simply was that the Massachusetts policy was imperious, as it was necessary to be when in collision with imperiousness, and its assertors were in a way sagacious, as those must be who have to outwit unprincipled craft ; their course was narrow, as a sword must be if it is to have a cutting edge. The Puritan idea tended to make men freemen ; the courtly idea of the court of Charles II. tended to make them slaves. In that interest the courtier party here bent all their efforts to break the Puritan idea to atoms. On the other hand, the Puritan idea was based on the supposition that this should be a colony of Puritans, — that they could keep out everybody else. And thus when the land filled up with churchmen and loyalists, the injus- tice followed that there was a multitude of disfranchised persons ; so that it came to pass that the courtier party, from having fought against liberty at home, were obliged to fight for liberty here. To our forefathers it seemed that these men were wholly evil ; but as dispassionate historical students we should judge them more fairly. That little group of men " in the library of the town house " brought the antagonist forces face to face. Confronting the new power that was bent on subverting the cherished system of the Colony was a little company, resolute, uncompromising, devoted to the Puritan idea, — in the five ministers of Boston. They were the steel point of the spear which Massachusetts held steadily before her breast, ever on the guard, though not thrusting against her enemy as yet. The clergy had possessed a supreme influence from the beginning of the colony. The ablest men had found in that profession their largest opportunity. Many a man whose ambition led him later into public life set his foot first on that firm stepping-stone to power. George Downing, who passed from his Cambridge study of theology, by way of a chaplaincy in Cromwell's army, to success as one of the ablest politicians in England, whose baseness in betraying his former friends to a traitor's death when he joined Charles II. was only paralleled by his refusal to allow his mother the pittance needed in her old age; Joseph Dudley, nursed in the very bosom of Massachusetts, and turning to give her the deadlier sting with talents and powers which made him one of the ablest men of his time; William Stoughton, the rich, sour old bachelor, who never repented of his dark part as judge in the Salem witchcraft tragedy, and whose character ' Jenness, Transcripts, p. 150. 2o6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. is crabbedly portrayed on the walls of the Cambridge dining-hall, — these, and such as these, began as New England ministers. The sceptre of dominion was to pass forever from the Massachusetts clergy with the generation now on the stage. But the five ministers of the Boston churches are worthy to wield it. They face Andros, when he demands one of their churches, with a will as resolute as his own. Four of them were now hard upon fifty years old ; the fifth made up for the brevity of his twenty-four years by a precocity which was the wonder of the town. Two were joint-ministers of the First Church, two of the Second, and one of the Third, or South, Church. Rev. James Allen, an ejected minister and Oxford Fellow, came to New England soon after the accession of Charles II. At the period of our narrative he had been eighteen years a minister of the First Church, having been installed as its teacher Dec. 9, 1668, at the same time that Davenport was inducted as its pastor. He was destined to continue in his sacred office until his death, at the age of seventy-eight, Sept. 22, 1710. John Dunton, in' his Life and Errors, says: "I went to visit the Reverend Mr. Allen. He is very humble and very rich, and can be generous enough when the humor is upon him. His son was an eminent minister here in England, and deceased at Northampton." The historian of the First Church thus writes concerning him : — " He was equally moderate and lenient in his concessions to others, on the score of individual freedom, as he was strenuous for the enjoyment of his own rights. He was willing to render to Csesar all proper tribute ; but he was unwilling that Caesar, in the capacity of civil magistrate, should ^yt) A^ ^VL /1-— — .^ interfere in holy things. He was equally / yf ^^^ ^^""^""^ desirous of shielding the Church against Lcty*t\,'*^ JtUUt'Ti— *'^^ power of the Clergy, as against that of \j . the civil ruler. [He] enjoyed a long, virtu- ^u*f>ud, 'yKioBiUc^ Qyg^ ^j;j(j happy life of seventy-eight years, jfityJ^t-^^x C^^^e^^fey forty-six of which he had been a member, yy^ // and forty-two a vigilant ruler and instructer A M^ ''OLitjiit'y' '^'^ '•'^^ Church. His wealth gave him the /#/i^*'^r*" '^ ' power, which he used as a good Bishop, to ^ be hospitable." His colleague, Joshua Moodey, was a man of 'the stuff" that martyrs are made of, and had himself shown a willingness to die, if need be, in this very cause. During his imprisonment by Cranfield at Portsmouth, he wrote from prison a letter worthy to be enrolled with the Acts of the Martyrs: " The good Lord prepare poor New England for the bitter cup which is begun with us, and intended (by man at least) to go round. But God is faithful ; upon whose grace and strength I beg grace to hang and hope." This letter he signed " Christ's prisoner and your humble servant." ' ' 4 Mass, ffist. Soc. Coll. v. 120. 7^^r THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 20/ After three months' incarceration he had come to Boston, and had been invited to remain as Mr. Allen's assistant. It is not less to his honor that in 1692 his opposition to the witchcraft delusion was to cause his removal again from Boston, returning to Portsmouth, where he died July 4, 1697. The renowned ministers of the Second Church — the Mathers, father and son — are considered in a later chapter of this work. The son, indeed, has given a fantastic tinge to the name, which clouds over his real claim to hon- orable memory. Cotton Mather had grave faults, — his conceit of learning, his credulity, his monstrous part in the witchcraft tragedy. But lovers of books ought to judge leniently of the man who wrote more than three hun- dred ! And the part which he played in his later years in the introduction here of inoculation for small-pox, when the fury of the mob imperilled his very life, entitles him to grateful remembrance. When he stood before Andros, only twenty- four years old, his faults were not yet so evident, and his promise seemed to have no limit. Of the father. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, — and one of the most eminent who have ever filled that office, — a powerful preacher to the age of eighty-five, agent of Massachusetts at the court of King James II. and at that of William and Mary, his distinguished reception there testi- fies to the impression which he made on nobles and princes. He lived to be the last possessor of the almost absolute power of the old Puritan clergy. When he faced Andros he was the very incarnation of the Puritan temper. He addressed a town-meeting in Boston when there was question of giving up the charter, in 1683-84, and opdnly counselled that they should return Naboth's answer when Ahab asked for his vineyard, — that they would not give up the inheritance of their fathers.^ Randolph, who knew men thoroughly, paid Increase Mather the compli- ment of hating him and fearing him as he did no other man here. " The Bellowes of Sedition and Treason,"^ he called him ; and when after the down- fall of the Andros tyranny he was safely lodged in prison and had leisure to contemplate the bringing to nought of his fifteen years of busy scheming, he wrote from the " Goal in Boston, May 16, '89," to the Gov"^ of Barbados, "... They have not yet sent to England, expecting Mather, their Mahomett." ^ The Mathers also were quite capable of a hatred which they perhaps thought to be only righteous indignation. Increase Mather, with all his dignity, observed this in his famous letter to Governor Dudley, nearly twenty years later than this time, — in which he raked together all Dudley's political and personal sins in a pile of red-hot coals, by no means of the kind which the apostle commands to heap on an enemy's head. It is not difficult to imagine what was the temper of such men as these, when they saw that 1 In any other country of the civilized world the most dreaded scourge, and where lived his the veriest stranger would read inscriptions re- father. Increase Mather, the leader of Massa- cording where the house stood in which Cotton chusetts Puritans in this great contest. Mather inoculated his own child to prove the ^ Mather Papers, p. 525. safety of the process, and by so doing mitigated ^ Hutchinson, Coll. of Papers, ii. 315. 2o8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. nothing but their firmness and skill could save from destruction all that they held dearest. Last of the five ministers was he of the South Church, — Rev. Samuel Wil- lard, son of Major Simon Willard, one of the principal citizens of Concord and prominent in civil and military life. He had been a Fellow of Harvard College and subsequently the second minister of Groton, where his ministry was ended by the destruction of the town by the Indians in ^■toi^c^^ March, 1676, when he had removed to Boston and, being settled as colleague to Rev. Thomas Thacher, was soon left the only minister of the South Church, which place he occupied until Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton 'vas settled as his colleague in 1700. From Sept. 6, 1 701, to Aug. 14, 1707, he filled the ofiice of Vice-president of Harvard College, while retaining his pastorship. He died Sept. 12, 1707. " Well furnished with learning," says Dunton, he " has a natural fluency of speech and can say what he pleases." ^ During the witchcraft delusion he bore himself prudently and firmly. Pastor of three of the special judges of that tribunal, " he has as yet," says a contemporary, " met with little but unkindness, abuse, and reproach from many men." Calef says that once " one of the accusers cried out publicly of Mr. Willard, as afflicting of her." He published many works, of which the chief was his Complete Body of Divinity, the first folio volume of theology published in this country, in 1726.2 These were the men who, with a constituency of laymen behind them, had to foil Andros and Randolph if they could.^ 1 Dunton's Letters, edited by Mr. Whitmore, one of your publick Meeting-Houses or in any p. 175. other convenient place, where all who are de- 2 [The portrait of Willard, given in this sirous to come may have liberty, and let the volume, is a reduced heliotype from the engrav- time be as soon as may, as either to day in ing which stands as a frontispiece to this folio, the Afternoon, or to morrow in the Fore-noon ; There is a portrait in Memorial Hall, Cam- but rather then fail, if ye will give me any as- bridge. — Ed.] surance to have a meeting with you, I will attend 3 The lofty bearing which these Puritan your leasure for two or three days to come, pro- ministers could assume is shown in their an- viding once this day ye send me your positive swer to the Quaker, George Keith, just after answer ; an3 if ye give me a meeting with you, this time. Keith's book was called The Presby- I proffer in true love and good-will, by the terian and Independent Visible Churches in ^eto divine assistance, to show and inform you that ffiiiglanli And else-where. Brought to the Test, &c. ye teach and preach unto the People many false Philadelphia, 1689. and unsound Principles contrary to the Doc- It contained the following letter: — trine of Christ, sufficiently declared in the holy "To James Allen, Joshua Moody, Samuel Wil- C"P "res. lard. Cotton Mather, Preachers in the Town It is an interesting illustration of the doctrine of Boston in New England. then taught in the Boston pulpit, that among his " Friends and Neighbours : — twelve points of complaint, besides asserting his '■■' I being well assured, both by the Spirit of doctrine of the " Inner Light," he mentions that God in my Heart and the Testimony of the holy "^^y '^^'^^ ~ Scriptures, that the Doctrine ye preach to the " That there are reprobate Infants that dye People is false and pernicious to the Souls of in Infancy, and perish eternally, only for Adam's People in many things, do earnestly desire and Sin imputed unto them, and derived into them. entreat you, and every one of you, the Preachers in the Town of Boston, to give me a fair and " That Justification is only by Christ's publick hearing or meeting with you, either in Righteousness, without us,' imputed unto us, ^Vp V*******^^ -> Jf^2 ^*»**' ■»"• (.5- N <4i - *vtv(r« Jiw>, -^v >■*? -wfi ^ c-1 fesiiiSii^ THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 209 Of those who were with these ministers, — the shaft to their spear-head, we can now call up only few and shadowy glimpses. We know, indeed, the names of a few of the gentlemen who were on the side of the native cause ; but with the exception of Judge Sewall there is hardly one whom we can vividly picture to ourselves. The great men of the former genera- ^TJP ^-1 SIMON BRADSTREET. tion had passed away. With the death of that grand old Commonwealth soldier, Governor Leverett, nine years before, the last of the heroic group had gone. The most venerable figure whom we now see is old Simon Bradstreet, full of years and of dignity. When Andros is overthrown and received by Faith alone, and not by any Righteousness of God or Christ infused into us, 01" wrought in us." The answer of the Boston ministers was brief and to the point : — " Having received a Blasphemous and Heret- ical Paper, subscribed by one George Keith, our answer to it and him is, — If he desires Con- ference to instruct us, let him give us his Argu- ments in wiiting, as well as his Assertions: If to inform himself, let him write his Doubts; If to cavil and disturb the Peace of our Churches (which we have cause to suspect), we have VOL. 1. — 27. neither list nor leasure to attend his Motions : If he would have a Publick Audience, let him Print : II a private Discourse, though he may know where we dwell, yet we forget not what the Apostle John saith, Ep. ii. 10. "James Allen. " Joshua Moody. " Samuel Willard. " Cotton Mather. "July the I2ti\ 16S8." The final Scriptural reference is this : " If there come any to you and bring not this doc- trine, receive him not into your house, neither give him God-S]5eed." 2IO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. in 1689 he will be placed at the head of the government, though weighed down with the snows of ninety years. We prize the few words in which the Labadist missionaries describe him,i "an old man, quiet and grave, dressed in black silk, but not sumptuously." Venerable, but not forcible, his memory was long cherished, largely because he had the happy fortune to linger the last survivor of a band of remarkable men. He seemed to concentrate in himself the dignity and wisdom of the first century of Mas- sachusetts life. But the strength of the opposition which the ministers headed was really the same which made the strength of the Revolution, and again of our own War for the Nation. It was the tough persistence of the common people. The yeomen of New England knew perfectly what they wanted ; and they wanted no bishops nor tithes, nor forced loans of their churches. They might bend a little for a moment ; but they would only spring back the harder ; and they would never break ! The strange law by which the Old South Church was brought, in this earlier time of revolution as well as in the later ninety years afterward, into a sort of representative attitude as the special antagonist of the alien in- fluences, is strikingly exemplified in the person who stands in history as the typical Puritan of his time. It is not because Samuel Sewall was the most prominent man in Boston ; for that he was not, at the time where we are, though he was a man of wealth and influence and of the real Puritan character. But it is, above all, because he kept a diary ! His ink had a wholesome human tincture in it which has prevented it from fading through two centuries. Judge Sewall is the Pepys of New England. His diary is as quaint and racy, and as full of delicious bits of self-revealing as was that of his English contemporary. But how unlike to that other Samuel in all the nobler aspects, all of which are mirrored in those brown old pages, — his prayerful temper, his loyalty to God and to the God-fearing Puritanism which he loved so well ! ^ The Governor waited yet three months with a patience hardly in accord with his impetuous character, and showed himself a good churchman in the shorn observances in the town-hall. Sewall records : — " [1686-7]. Tuesday, January 25. This day is kept for s' Paul and y'' Bell was rung in y" Morning to call persons to service ; The Gov' (I am told) was there. " Monday, January 31. There is a Meeting at y^ Town house forenoon and after- noon. Bell rung for it ; respecting -f beheading Charles y" first. Gov' there." But when the solemn days of the Church at the close of Lent drew nigh, there seemed a special unfitness in their celebration by the representative of the King and by the authorized ritual of England in a place devoid of all sacred associations, with a few " benches and formes," while around the Governor were commodious houses of worship tenanted by a form of re- hgion which at home had no rights, — not even the legal right to exist. 1 Long Island Hist. Soc. Coll. i. ^ [Cf. Mass. Hist. Sac. Proc, February, 1S73. — En-f THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 211 No reason is given why the South Church was selected to be the very unwiUing host of the new Episcopal Society ; but it may be conjectured that it was either because it was the nearest to where Sir Edmund lived, — in what was then called " the best part of the town," and near where the Province House afterwards stood, — or because the South Church only had one minister, while each of the others had two, i. e., twice as many persons with troublesome tongues. Then, too, Randolph had doubtless told the Governor how the South Church rose out of a bitter quarrel, and he may have thought that the other two churches would look on its vexations with more composure of spirit. To be sure, in 1682, when ominous clouds were gathering over the prospects of New England Puritanism, the First Church had proposed to the South Church " to forgive and forget all past offences," and to live " in peace for time to come." But it may well have been sup- posed that the old gulf had not wholly closed. Sewall again notes in his diary : — "Tuesday, March 22, i68f. This day his excellency views the three Meeting houses. Wednesday, March 23. — The Gov' sends Mr. Randolph for y" keys of our Meetingh. y' may say Prayers there. Mr. Eliot, Frary, Oliver, Savage, Davis, and my self wait on his Excellency ; shew that y" Land and House is ours, and that we can't consent to part with it to such use ; exhibit an extract of Mrs. Norton's Deed and how 'twas built by particular persons as Hull, Oliver, loo;^' a piece, &c. "Friday, March 25, 1687. The Gov' has service in ye south Meetinghouse; Goodm. Needham [the Sexton] tho' had resolv'd to ye Contrary, was prevail'd upon to Ring ye Bell and open ye door at ye Governour's Comand, one Smith and Hill, Joiner and Shoemaker, being very busy about it. Mr. Jno. Usher was there, whether at ye very begining, or no, I can't tell." From this time, during the remainder of Andros's administration, — that is, for a little over two years, — the Episcopalians had joint occupancy of the South Church with its proper owners, though against occasional protests. It was something, indeed, for which the Puritan congregation had reason to be grateful, that they were allowed to worship at all in their own meeting-house by the representative of a government which at home had set so many marks of scorn on dissenters from the Church of England. Nevertheless, on the special days of the Church they were subjected to grave inconveniences. On Easter Sunday, 1687, the Governor and his suite met there again at eleven, sending word to the proprietors that they might come at half-past one ; " but it was not until after two that the Church service was over;" owing, says Sewall, to "the sacrament and Mr. Clarke's long sermon ; so 'twas a sad sight to see how full the street was with people gazing and moving to and fro, because they had not entrance into the house." The Puritan diarist, to whose invaluable pages we are indebted for the history of this obstinate contest, follows it further step by step with his pithy narrative till the end of October, 1688, in passages which we have not space to quote. The pressure of imposition on the one side and of resistance on 212 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. the other grew more urgent. In April, 1688, the Governor gave his definite promise that they would "build a house;" but the further long delay led to hot remonstrances and an angry dispute between the high-tempered soldier and the Puritan owners of the South Church, who were stubborn for their rights. To this enforced tenancy of the South Meeting-house we owe some of the most picturesque passages in the religious history of the period. We quote Sewall again : — " Monday, May 16, 1687. This day Capt. Hamilton buried w"' Capt. Nicholson's Redcoats and y= 8 Companies : Was a funeral-sermon preach'd byy'= Fisher's Chaplain : Pulpit cover'd with black cloath upon w'''' scutcheons : Mr. Dudley, Stoughton & many others at y' Coiiion Prayer, and Sermon : House very full, and yet ye Souldiers went not in." But the most impressive scene which it witnessed was the funeral of Lady Andros. The rigid Puritan diarist gives us an unconscious glimpse into his feelings of indignant sorrow for New England, in his private entry on this event : — " Feb. 10, 1685. Between 4 and 5. 1 went to y" Funeral of y' Lady Andros having been invited p ye Clark of ye South- Company. Between 7. and 8. (Lychus illuminating ye cloudy air) The Corps was carried into the Herse drawn by six Horses. The Soul- diers making a Guard from y'' Governour's House down ye Prison Lane to ye South-M. House, there taken out and carried in at ye western dore, and set in ye Alley before ye pulpit w"' six Mourning women by it. House made light with candles and Torches ; was a great noise and clamor to keep people out of y'^ House, y' might not rush in too soon. I went home, where about nine a clock I heard y° Bell toll again for ye Funeral. It seems Mr. Ratcliff's Text was. Cry, all flesh is Grass. The Ministers turned in to Mr Willards. The Meeting House full, among whom Mr. Dudley, Stoughton, Gedney, Bradstreet &c. On Satterday, Feb. 11. y" mourning cloth of y'^ Pulpit is taken off and given to Mr. Willard. My Bro'. Stephen was at y" Funeral, and lodged here." Another illustration of the bitter conflicts of feeling here is found in the account of the funeral of a person named Lilly, who had left the ordering of this to his executors. Mr. Ratcliffe undertook to read the service at his grave, he having been one of the subscribers to the church, but the execu- tors forbade him ; and when he began, Deacon Frairey of the South Church interrupted him and put a stop to the service, for which the deacon was bound to his good behavior for twelve months. This was deemed of suf- ficient importance to be reported to the Privy Council in England. The Governor on one occasion requested the South Church minister to begin his service at 8 A.M. for the convenience of the Episcopalians, and promised that it should be the last time. But still the church was occupied in this way till just before the popular uprising which overthrew Andros's government, on the news of William of Orange's landing in England. It is a chapter of outrageous wrongs which Andros wrote here, and there is cause for lasting regret that the origin of so good a thing as religious THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 213 freedom under the stern old Puritan regime should have been sullied by his despotic acts. But it is satisfactory to remember that ninety years .later King's Chapel willingly expiated this injustice by opening its doors wide to the Old South Congregation, when dispossessed of their own church by the later revolution. It should be said, too, that the character both of Andros and Randolph doubtless had a better side than they showed to these troub- lesome (as they must have seemed to them) and rebellious colonists. They were pupils in a bad school, — the household of the Stuarts.^ As a matter of policy, it was obviously unwise for Andros to irritate the town by for- cing his form of worship into a meeting-house against the will of its lawful owners. He had to build his own church at last. But we should fall into a great error if we should measure his act by the standard of toleration of our modern day. The enforced tenancy of the South Meeting-house did not wait to be brought to a close till the downfall of Governor Andros in April, 1689. The fact that the first wooden church was already nearly finished at that time is sufiicient proof that the interference with property which gave such offence was a temporary though high-handed obedience to supposed neces- sity, and not a step towards confiscation. The foundations of the new building had been laid before the middle of October, 1688, and the frame was raised soon after. The last record by Sewall concerning the unwel- come tenants of the South Church reads thus: " Ocf. 28 [1688]. N. It seems y^ Gov"^ took M''- Ratcliffe with him [on a journey to Dunstable], ^ Randolph was probably in the family of the about him, now absent or dead." — Greenwood, Duke of Yorl< before he became James II., while JCing's Chapel, p. 36. Andros had begun life as a page to Charles I. Sir Edmund had delayed too long. The They were loyal to church and king after building which at an earlier day must have been the old High Tory fashion. Randolph is de- accepted as a proper recognition of the State scribed by Dr. Ellis as " a persistent and pester- and the religion which the Governor represented, ing, if not unscrupulous, man." Of Andros Mr. was now considered to be his reluctant conces- Whitmore, in his Andros Tracts, says there is sion to public opinion. One of the complaints " no evidence that he was cruel, rapacious, or dis- most urged against him before William the honest," or immoral, and that "a hasty temper is Third was, "That the Service of the Church of the most palpable fault to be attributed to him." England has bin forced into their Meeteing But the domineering will of both Andros and Houses." Randolph came out in its harshest colors when Andros justified his course in his official brought in such collision with the will of the report to his superiors at home as follows : Puritans, whicli was as unyielding as the granite "The Church of England being unprovided of a of New England itself. place for theyr publique worship, he did, by These advocates were not such as wise men advise of the Council], borrow the new meeting- would have chosen, ]5ut the cause which they house in Boston, at such times as the same was were advocating, though blindly, was of the best, unused, untill they could provide otherwise; And doubtless not a few of those who first met and accordingly on Sundays went in between in this way had a spirit worthy of the cause, eleven and twelve in the morning, and in the " In the most contentious and stormy periods," afternoon about fower. But understanding it says Dr. Greenwood, " I doubt not that a holy gave offence, hastned the building of a Church, calm was shed upon the heart of many a wor- w<:'' was effected at the charge of those of the shipper as he offered up his prayers in the way Church of England, where the Chaplaine of the which to him was best and most affecting, and Souldiers p'^formed divine service and preach- perhaps the way in which, long years ago, he ing." — Sir E. Andros's Report of his Adminis- had offered them up in some ivy-clad village \x3.'C\onm Documents Relating to Colottial Hislory church of green England, with many dear friends of N. V., vol. iii. 214 THE MEMORIy\L HISTORY OF BOSTON. SO met not at all distinct in our House y" day: Several of y'^ w"' us in y^ afternoon. Col. Lidget, M'' Sherlock, Farwell in our Pue, went to Contribution." As the custom was for the contributors to go up in the presence of the congregation, and give what they had to offer in the sight of all, this was a conspicuous act. It is pleasant to know that High Churchmen though these men were, and among those whom they loved not, they were Christian enough to join in the worship of the Puritans, and to contribute for its support, — an example of charity which it is to be hoped that some of those with whom they thus held communion would have been willing to imitate in turn. Worship was first held in the new church on Sunday, June 8, 1689. It stood on a corner of the old burial-ground, covering the space now occupied by the tower and front part of the present King's Chapel. ' The Governor had first tried to purchase a site for the new church on Cotton Hill, nearly oppo- site ; but Judge Sewall, who had no liking for Andros or for Episcopacy, felt that it would be a desecration of the ground on which Sir Henry Vane had built a house, and which on leaving the country he had given to John Cotton, He was more than once approached on the subject, and once particularly by Mr. Ratcliffe, but constantly replied that he " could not; first, because he would not set up that which the people of New Eng- land came over to avoid, and second, because the land was entailed." Finally the Governor and Council seem to have used their authority, as the supreme governing body, to appropriate a part of the corner from the old burying-ground, which probably was then but thinly tenanted. Ill-na- tured question is sometimes made of the rightful tenure of th;s spot by the church, but the question seems to be fairly answered by two facts: first, ' [The liule vignette sliowing this original Whitinoic, and othcf.s, is really taken from wltat wooden edifice, \vith I'eacon Hill bej'oird, and is known as Pi'ice's View of Boston, cif a dale given by Dr. Greenwood in his /-fis/. of Kiin^'s probably a few years later than 1720, and of C/iafcl 3.S taken from an old print of lioston of which a later issue of 17.^3 is now onlv known 1720, and which has been copied by Drake, so far as has been discovered. — Eli.] THE FIRST KING S CHAPEL.-" THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS. 215 only the smaller moiety of the land on which the present King's Chapel ' stands was obtained at that time, the other portion having been bought from the town when the present church was built, at an exorbitant price, suffi- cient to cover the fair value of all the land ; second, if the town had power to sell to the church in 1749, the Governor and Council, being the only law- ful authorities at the time, had the right to convey a piece of the public land in 1688. If it had not been so considered, the act would surely have been at least impugned, if not annulled, after the overthrow of Sir Edmund Andros. But no attempt to do so appears, even in Sewall's Diary? Here, then, the modest little church was built at a cost of ;^284 i6s. or $1,425. To defray this expense, pinety-six persons throughout the colony had contributed .^256 pj., the balance being given by Andros on his depart- ure from the country, and by other English officers later. There was poetical justice in the fact that Andros and Randolph never entered the building which they had done so much to obtain. They were punished for their misdeeds of oppression by not enjoying their good deed, or seeing established the emblem of that form of religion for which they really cared. The church-book, on the next page to that which states the cost of the house, contains the following: "Note that on 18° Aprill pre- seeding the date on th' other side, began a most impious and detestable rebellion ag'' the King's Majes'"'' Government ; the Govern' and all just men to the same were brought into restraint." There can be little doubt where the sympathies of the writer lay. If he was the Senior Warden it is not strange, as Dr. BuUivant had been one of those imprisoned. The storm of that time had well-nigh driven the little ark of the church from its anchorage. Even now, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, it is impossible to read the Andros Tracts without feeling the ground-swell of those waves of passion which tossed so fiercely in the little town of Boston. In July, 1689, Rev. Robert Ratcliffe returned to England. It is very un- likely, in the angry state of public feeling, that there was any public dedica- tion, or perhaps any consecration at all, of the wooden church. The very building itself seems to have been in some danger, for in those days there was such a power as the " Boston Mob." A pamphlet published in London in 1690, entitled New Etigland's Faction Discovered , by C. D., states that " the church itself had great difficulty to withstand their fury, receiving the marks of their indignation and scorn by having the Windows broke to pieces and the Doors and Walls daubed and defiled with dung and other filth in the rudest and basest manner imaginable, and the Minister for his safety was forced to leave the country and his congregation and go for England."^ 1 As enlarged in 1754. the Committee of Seven, but make no mention 2 The charges against Andros and others, of the taking of land for the Church, — which given in Andros Tracts, i. 149-173, from Mass. they would surely do if that had been regarded Archives, Inter-Charter Papers, xxv. 255, bring as a usurpation. together everything which could be collected by ' Andros Tracts, ii. 212. 2i6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The church, however, survived to be fostered by the care and honored with the gifts of the successive monarchs of England, from William and Mary to George the Third. Under the long ministry of Rev. Samuel Myles it won the respect, if not the love, of its neighbors. The plain building was the only place in New England where the forms of the court church could be witnessed. The prayers and anthems which sounded forth in the cathedrals of the mother country were here no longer dumb. The equipages and uniforms which made gay the little court of Boston brightened its portals. Within, the escutcheons of Royal governors hung against the pillars ; at Christmas it was wreathed with green ; the music of the first organ heard in New England here broke the stillness of the Sabbath air.^ The religious struggle of twenty-five years was over. If it be asked which party won in it, the answer must be, — Neither, and both. The despotism of Andros was overthrown ; the charter never was restored in its first fulness, but its work was wrought ; a people had been trained to great traditions of freedom, and these survived eighty-six years more and then burst into blossom and fruit. On the other hand the religious despotism of Puritanism was broken forever. Baptists, Episcopalians, Quakers, might henceforth worship as they would ; to-day, everything, anything, or noth- ing may be believed where for nearly sixty years the Calvinism of New England was all in all. c/^^W.^ fUcdU^ Jx}-6^ _ ' This organ was the gift of Thomas Brattle. A Mr. Price was the first organist. Greenwood, King's Chapel, p. 75. CHAPTER V. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. BY CHARLES C. SMITH. Treasurer of the Massackttsetis Historical Society. WHEN Winthrop and his company cast anchor in Salem harbor, in the summer of 1630, it was their intention to remain together and begin only a single settlement. With this view an exploration of the neighbor- hood was begun three days after the arrival of the " Arbella." ^ But circum- stances over which they had no control soon compelled them to relinquish this purpose. " We were forced," says Deputy Governor Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, " to change counsel, and for our present shelter to plant dispersedly, — some at Charlestown, which standeth on the north side of the mouth of Charles River ; some on the south side thereof, which place we named Boston (as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on) ; some of us upon Mistick, which we named Medford ; some of us westward on Charles River, four miles from Charlestown, which place we named Watertown ; others of us two miles from Boston, in a place we named Roxbury; others upon the river of Saugus, between Salem and Charles- town ; and the western men four miles south from Boston, at a place we named Dorchester."^ Accordingly, at a Court of Assistants held at Charles- town on the 7th of September, 1630, Old Style, which corresponds with the 17th of September as time is now reckoned, it was ordered "that Trimoun- tain shall be called Boston." ^ This order is the only act of incorporation which Boston had under the colony charter. What was the extent, and what was the source of the powers, which the towns of Massachusetts exercised is by no means clear. It has been asserted by high authority that the principle on which the Plymouth Colony was founded, — and the remark is equally true as to the Massachusetts Colony, — required that while the inhabitants of the town "should remain a part of the whole, and be subject to the general voice in relation to all matters which concerned the whole colony, they should be allowed to be what their sepa- rate settlements had made them ; namely, distinct communities, in regard to ' Winthrop, New England, i. 27. The party 2 j ]\jass. Hist. Coll. viii. 39 ; Young, Chron- was absent three days, went up Mystic River, «V/w ij/'j^aw. pp. 313, 314. and visited Noddle's Island and Nantasket. ^ Mass. Col. Records, i. 75. VOL. I. — 28. 2i8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. such affairs as concerned none but themselves." ^ There was no sharply- defined line separating the powers which the town and the colony might respectively exercise ; and the limitations with which we are familiar grew up by slow degrees, or were created by orders of the General Court or the Court of Assistants, sometimes limited to the towns named in the order, and some- times of wider application.^ So late as October, 1662, the General, Court passed an order reciting that, notwithstanding the wholesome orders hither- to made by the selectmen of Boston against fast riding, many persons fre- quently galloped in the streets of that town, to the great danger of other persons, especially children; and ordering that no one should, in future, gallop any horse there under a penalty of three shillings and four pence for each offence, to be paid, on conviction before any magistrate of the town, to the treasurer of the county of Suffolk.^ And at a still later period, in Octo- ber, 1679, the General Court passed the following order: — " For prevention of the profanation of the Sabbath, and disorders on Saturday night, by horses and carts passing late out of the town of Boston, it is ordered and enacted by this Court, that there be a ward from sunset, on Saturday night, until nine of the clock or after, consisting of one of the selectmen or constables of Boston, with two or more meet persons, who shall walk between the fortifications and the town's end, and upon no pretence whatsoever suffer any cart to pass out of the town after sunset, nor any footman or horseman, without such good account of the necessity of his business as may be to their satisfaction ; and all persons attempting to ride or drive out of town after sunset, without such reasonable satisfaction given, shall be apprehended and brought before authority to be proceeded against as Sabbath-breakers ; and all other towns are empowered to do the like as need shall be." * The passage of such orders as these shows how undefined was the extent of the powers which the colonial authorities exercised in the first half- century after the settlement of the town. The need of some sharper distinction between the powers which the colony reserved to itself and those with which the town was invested seems to have strongly impressed the inhabitants of Boston. Twice, at least, during the ' Paper by Professor Joel Parker on "The towns, not repugnant to the laws and orders here Origin, Organization, and Influence of the Towns established by the General Court ; as also to lay of New England," in Mass. Hist. Soc- Proc, Jan- mulcts and penalties for the breach of these uary, i866, pp. 29, 30. [Cf ., further, Mr. Winsor's orders, and to levy and distrain the same, not references in the chapter on " Colonial Litera- exceeding the sum of twenty shillings ; also to ture" in the present volume. — Ed.] choose their own particular officers, as consta- 2 The most important of these orders was bles, surveyors for the highways, and the like." adopted by the General Court at the session in {Mass. Col. Records, i. 172.) In Quincy's Mun- March, 1635-36. It begins by reciting that "par- icipal History of Boston, p. i, the date of this ticular towns have many things which concern order is misprinted 1630. The order was not only themselves, and the ordering of their own passed until Boston had been settled between affairs, and disposing of business in their own five and six years. The true date is of import- town." Therefore power was granted to them ance in tracing the history of town governments " to dispose of their own lands and woods, with in Massachusetts. all the privileges and appurtenances of the » Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 59, 60. said towns, to grant lots, and make such orders ■! Ibid. v. 239, 240. [See Mr. Scudder's as may concern the well-ordering of their own chapter in this volume. — Ed.| BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 219 colonial period they petitioned for an act of incorporation. In May, 1650, in answer to a petition from the inhabitants of Boston, the Court declared a willingness " to grant the petitioners a corporation, if the articles or terms, privileges and immunities thereof, were so presented as rationally should appear, respecting the mean condition of the country, fit for the Court to grant ; " and the petitioners were required to present their propositions at the next session.^ So far as now appears, nothing further was done at that time; and in May, 1659, the Court, in answer to a request of the town of Boston to be made a corporation, granted them " liberty to consult and advise amongst themselves what may be necessary for such an end, and the same to draw up into a form and present the same to the next session." ^ Again, three years later, in May, 1662, in answer to a petition of the inhabi- tants of Boston " for some further power in reference to the well ordering of trade and tradesmen, and the suppressing of the vices so much abounding there," a committee was appointed " to peruse the charter now in Court, and consider how far it is meet to be granted, or what else they shall judge meet for the attaining of the ends above mentioned, and to make return of what they shall conclude upon to the next Court of Election." ^ In October, 1663, the same committee was reappointed, with the same instructions, ex- pressed in almost precisely the same words ;^ but it does not appear that any report was ever made by the committee, and here the matter apparently dropped. It is curious to notice how little trace of these applications has been left on the town records. There is not a single entry in them near the date of the orders of the Court which can be directly connected with these petitions for a charter ; and the only votes of the town which can be supposed to have even a remote reference to the matter were in October, 1652, and October, 1658.^ But in May, 1677, the town instructed her depu- ties to the General Court to use their endeavors " that this town may be a corporation, or made town and county." ^ In the original laying out of the towns the bounds were very loosely described, and controversies naturally arose at a very early date between adjoining towns as to the extent of territory belonging to each. The pen- insula of Boston touched only one of the neighboring towns, Roxbury ; but from the narrow limits which Nature had assigned to her, her inhabitants were forced to seek "enlargement" beyond the peninsula, — and Noddle's Island and extensive tracts at Pullen Point, Mount Wollaston, and Rumney Marsh were at different times granted to Boston by orders of the General Court' Questions of boundary frequently arose under these grants, and committees were appointed by the Court, or by the town, to settle ' Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 9. The ° Second Report of the Record Commissioners, charter which was asked for at this time is pp. 112, 148. printed in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg. '' MS. Records of the Town of Boston (in the xi. 206-210. [The original document is in the office of the City Clerk), ii. 106. Secretary's office at the State House. — Ed.| " Mass. Col. Records, i. loi, 1 19, 130, 189. [Cf. ''■ Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 368. also Wood's New England's Prospect, a quota- 8 Ibid. vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 56. tion in Shurtleff's Description of Boston, p. 41 j « Ibid. p. 99. also pp. 32, 33. — Ed.] 220 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. the differences and establish the boundaries. So early as December, 1636, a committee was appointed at a general town-meeting to consider about form- ing a town and church at Mount Wollaston, with the consent of the inhabi- tants of Boston ;i and three years later, in January, 1639-40, the selectmen entered into an agreement with a committee acting in behalf of the residents at the Mount, by which Boston, in consideration of certain payments into her treasury, consented to the formation of a new town there, " if the Court shall think fit to grant them to be a town of themselves." ^ At the session of the General Court, in the following May, " The petition of the inhabitants of Mount Wollaston was voted, and granted them to be a town according to the agreement with Boston, — provided that if they fulfil not the covenant made with Boston, and hereto affixed, it shall be in the power of Boston to recover their due by action against the said inhabitants, or any of them ; and the town is to be called Braintree." ^ Muddy River had probably belonged to Boston from the first settlement of the town ; but the first mention of it in the Colony Records is in September, 1634,* when the General Court, at a session held in Cambridge, ordered " that the ground about Muddy River, belonging to Boston, and used by the inhabitants thereof, shall hereafter be- long to New Town, the wood and timber thereof growing and to be growing to be reserved to the inhabitants of Boston ; provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that if Mr. Hooker and the congregation now settled here shall remove hence, that then " the ground at Muddy River shall revert to Boston.^ Hooker and most of his congregation removed to Connecticut in the sum- mer of 1636;^ and the title of the lands accordingly reverted to Boston. Muddy Brook continued to be a part of Boston until 1705, when it was made a town by the name of Brookline.' Rumney Marsh and the adjacent territory remained for a still longer period under the jurisdiction of Boston ; and it was not until near the middle of the last century that these lands were set oif from Boston, and incorporated under the name of Chelsea.^ In each of these outlying districts grants of land were made by the town, sometimes of extensive tracts to prominent individuals, and sometimes, especially at Muddy River, to " the poorer sort." For instance, in October, 1634, a grant was made to Mr. Wilson, pastor of the church, of two hundred acres of land at Mount Wollaston, in exchange for an equal quantity of land on Mystic River previously granted to him by the General Court.^ Subse- 1 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, building the house of William Amory, Esq., in p. 14- Longwood. Pierce, Address, p. 8. — Ed.] 2 Ibid. p. 47. '^ Mass. Col. Records, \. \z^, iTfl. [The town 3 Mass. Col. Records, i. 291. of Brookline printed, in 1875, such extracts from * [Two yeai's before this, in 1632, Winthrop the Boston Records as pertain to Muddy River, in his Journal had mentioned that ten Sagamores together with the records of the town to 1877 and many Indians were gathered at Muddy under the title of Muddy River and Brookline River when Underhill, with twenty musketeers, Records, 1634-1838. Ed.] was sent to reconnoitre their camp. H. F. 6 winthrop, New England, i, 187. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, p. 10, 7 Brookline Records, p. gi. says vestiges of this old Indian fort on a knoll in 8 Province Laws, ii. 969-971. the great swamp were discernible up to 1844-45, ° Second Report of the Record Commissioners, when the ground was levelled in preparation for pp. 2, 3; Mass. Col. Records, i. 114. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 221 quently the town relinquished to him all claims to the land at Mystic, in con- sequence of defects in the title to the land at Mount Wollaston, which had THE OLD ASPINWALL HOUSE. ^ 1 [This old house, still standing near the Episcopal Church in Longwood, was built by Peter Aspinwall about 1660, and has descended through lineal descendants (Samuel, Thomas, Dr. William) to the late Colonel Thomas As- pinwall. Though still owned by the family, the last of the name to occupy it lived there till 1S03. The original deed of the land from Wil- liam Colburn to Robert Sharpe is dated 1650, and is in the family's keeping. YiooAs, Brookline, ch. V. A famous elm, of which the stump still remains, once shaded the house. According to the IVo. Anier. Kev., July, 1844, it sprung up about 1656; but Dr. Pierce, Historical Address, p. 38, says it was planted about 1700. Mr. G. B. Emerson says that " it was known to be one hundred and eighty-one j-ears old in 1837, and then measured twenty-six feet five inches at the ground, and sixteen feet eight inches at five feet. The branches extended one hundred and four feet from southeast to northwest, and ninety-five feet from northeast to southwest." — Trees and Skrjibs in Mass., &c., ii. 326. Our cut follows a photograph taken before i860, and before the great tree fell, which was in September, 1863; and at that time it measured twenty-six feet girth at the ground, and sixteen feet eight inches at five feet from the ground, showing much the same dimensions as twenty-five years before. — Ed.] 222 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. involved him in some expenses.^ In December, 1635, a committee of five of the freemen was appointed at a general town-meeting, to " go and take view at Mount Wollaston, and bound out there what may be sufficient for Mr. William Coddington and Edmund Quincy to have for their particular farms there ; " to " lay out at Muddy River a sufficient allotment for a farm for our Teacher, Mr. John Cotton ; " and also to lay out farms there for Mr. William Colburn, and for the two Elders, Mr. Thomas Oliver and Thomas Leverett. At the same time it was voted, " That the poorer sort of inhabitants, such as are members or likely so to be, and have no cattle, shall have their propor- tion of allotments for planting ground and other assigned unto them by the alloters, and laid out at Muddy River by the aforenamed five persons, or four of them ; those that fall between the foot of the hill and the water to have but four acres upon a head, and those that are farther off to have five acres for every head."^ Provision was likewise made for laying out the allotments at Rumney Marsh. The committee apparently made no report until January, 1637-38, when the allotments were entered at length in the town records.^ From her favorable position at the head of the bay Boston could scarcely fail to become, and continue to be, the chief place in the growing colony ; and so early as October, 1632, the Court agreed, "by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay." * Previously to that time, however, it had been a matter of uncertainty wheth- er Boston or Cambridge would be the seat of government ; and the sharp controversy between Dudley and Winthrop, growing out of the failure of the latter to remove to Cambridge, is one of the most curious incidents in their personal relations : but it need not be considered here.^ It is sufficient to say that the purpose to make Cambridge the capital was relinquished, and steps were taken at an early date to secure Boston from attacks by sea as well as by land. From Winthrop's Journal we learn that a fort was begun on the eminence known to the first settlers as the Corn Hill, but which was called in later time Fort Hill, toward the end of May, 1632, and that the people of Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Dorchester worked on it on successive days.^ The work was not completed at that time ; and in the following May the General Court ordered " that the fort at Boston shall be finished with what convenient speed may be, at the public charge." '' A few months later it was ordered that " every hand (except magistrates and min- isters) shall afford their help to the finishing of the fort at Boston, till it be ended." ^ This was not all that was deemed necessary for defence on the water side ; and in July, 1634, the Governor and Council, several of the min- isters, and other persons met at Castle Island, and there agreed to erect 1 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, « Winthrop, New England, i. 77. P- 6. 7 Mass. Col. Records, i. 105. 2 Ibid. p. 6. 8 Ibid. p. 108. [Cf. Shurtleff's Desc. of Bos- 3 Ibid. pp. 22 et seq. ton, p. 164. The records mention, in 1635-36, 1 Mass. Col. Records, i. loi. "y= ingineer Mr. Lyon Garner, who doth see ■^ Winthrop, New England, i. 82-86. [Cf. freely offer his help thereunto." Lyon Gardiner Mr. R. C. Winthrop's chapter in the present was, a little later, prominent in the Pequot war. volume . — Ed.] See Mr. Bynner's chapter. — Ed. ] BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 223 " two platforms and one small fortification to secure them both ; and for the present furtherance of it they agreed to lay out £^ a man, till a rate might be made at the next General Court." ^ Accordingly, at the General Court in September, it was ordered " that there shall be a platform made on the northeast side of Castle Island, and an house built on the top of the hill to defend the said platform." ^ In the following March, it was ordered by the General Court " that there shall be forthwith a beacon set on the Sentry Hill at Boston, to give notice to the country of any danger, and that there shall be a ward of one person kept there from the first of April to the last of September ; and that upon the discovery of any danger the beacon shall be fired, an alarm given, as also messengers presently sent by that town where the danger is discovered to all other towns within this jurisdiction." ^ In March of the following year, 1636, the Court granted to the inhabitants of Boston the use of six pieces of ordnance, and gave them thirty pounds in money toward the making of a platform at the foot of Fort Hill, requir- ing the inhabitants of the town to finish " the said work at their own proper charges before the General Court in May next."* The defence of the town on the land side began at a much earlier period ; and in the April after their arrival Winthrop wrote in his Journal, but afterward for some unknown reason erased the entry, " we began a court of guard upon the neck between Roxbury and Boston, whereupon should always be resident an officer and six men." ^ These ample preparations, however, were not always kept up ; the fortifications frequently fell into decay, and the garrisons were with- drawn, to be renewed whenever a new occasion of alarm arose. The colony and the town were equally reluctant to spend money on defences for which there seemed to be no probability of an immediate need ; but they were always on the alert whenever a new danger arose. Thus in May, 1649, the Deputies voted, that " there being many ships in the harbor, and divers of them strangers, the Court judgeth meet to order that a military watch be forthwith appointed in Boston and Charlestown, to continue till any four magistrates shall see cause to alter it." ^ So little did the founders of the colony anticipate the establishment of numerous and scattered settlements, that at the first Court of Assistants, in answer to the question how the ministers should be maintained, " it was ordered that houses should be built for them with convenient speed, at the common charge ; " and in answer to the further question, what should be their present maintenance, after enumerating what should be given them, it was added, " all this to be at the common charge, those of Mattapan and Salem only excepted." ' It is not much to the credit of the first settlers of Boston, that when Mr. Cotton came over a few years later they desired to have this precedent apply to his support; but on "second thoughts" the 1 Winthrop, Mew England, i. 137. * Ibid. p. 165. 2 Mass. Col. Records, i. 123. [Sliurtleff, p. ^ Winthrop, New England, i. 54. 475, traces in some detail the history o£ this for- * Mass. Col. Records, iii. 162. tification. — Ed.J ' Ibid. i. 73. The exception was probably ^ Mass. Col. Records, i. 137. because these places already had ministers. 224 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. council did not see any sufficient reason why the colony treasury should con- tribute to the support of a minister for Boston.^ Though the Boston minister soon ceased to derive any part of his support from the colony rates, his suc- cessors continued to exert an important influence on colonial politics till the very end of the charter government. From Winthrop's language it would appear that the first meeting-house in Boston was not built until the town had been settled for nearly two years, and that the cost, both of the meeting- house and of a house for the minister, was defrayed, in part at least, by a voluntary contribution.^ The same course was pursued some years afterward, when it became necessary to build a new meeting-house in place of the old one. " The church of Boston," says Winthrop, under date of February, 1640-41, "were necessitated to build a new meeting-house, and a great dif- ference arose about a place of situation, which had much troubled other churches on the like occasion ; but after some debate it was referred to a committee, and was quietly determined. It cost about ^looo, which was raised out of the weekly voluntary contribution without any noise or com- plaint, when in some other churches which did it by way of rates there was much difficulty and compulsion by levies to raise a far less sum."^ During the first ten years the town grew rapidly in wealth and popula- tion, and it has been estimated that before the breaking out of the civil war in England about twenty thousand persons had emigrated to New England.^ Of these a much larger number settled in Boston than in any other place. But with the meeting of the Long Parliament the immigration nearly ceased. " The Parliament of England setting upon a general reformation both of Church and State," says Winthrop, in June, 1641, "the Earl of Strafford being beheaded, and the archbishop (our great enemy) and many others of the great officers and judges, bishops and others, imprisoned and called to account, this caused all men to stay in England in expectation of a new world ; so as few coming to us all foreign commodities grew scarce, and our own of no price." ^ The assessments of the colony taxes will afford an ap- proximate idea of the relative wealth and population of the several towns. In October, 1633, it was ordered that ^^400 should be collected from eleven plantations " to defray public charges." Of this sum Dorchester was to pay .^80 ; Boston, Roxbury, Cambridge, Watertown, and Charlestown, ;^48 each ; and Salem, £2^.'^ In September of the following year a tax of £600 was ordered to be levied. In this assessment Dorchester, Cambridge, and Boston were each to contribute .£80 ; Roxbury, ;^7o; and Salem, ;^45.'' In 1 Winthrop, New England, i. H2. Hutchin- 2 Winthrop, New England, i. S7. son, who published the first volume of his His- 8 Ibid. ii. 24. See also Emerson's History tory of Massachusetts Bay in 1764, says : "The of the First Church, -^.dt^. ministers of the several churches in the town of < Hutchinson, Hist, of the Col. of Mass. Bay, Boston have ever been supported by a free p. iii. (preface). This estimate has been adopted weekly contribution. I have seen a letter from by Dr. Palfrey and by other writers, and has been one of the principal ministers of the colony ex- made the basis of some curious calculations, pressing some doubts of the lawfulness of receiv- ^ Winthrop, New England, ii. 31. ing a support in any other way." [Hist, of the « Mass. Col. Records, i. no. Col. of Mass. Bay, from 1628 to 1691, p. 427.) ' Ibid. p. 129. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 225 May, 1636, the General Court appointed a committee "to require the last rates of each town in the plantation, and to find out thereby, and by all other means they can according to the best of their discretion, the true value of every town, and so to make an equal rate." ^ A similar vote was passed in the following September ; ^ but in neither instance was any change made in the last rate of assessment. In April, 1637, the Court ordered a levy of soldiers for the Pequot war. The whole number to be raised, in- cluding those already in the service, was 211. Of this number Boston was to furnish 35 ; Dorchester, 17 ; Charlestown, 16; Roxbury, 13; Cambridge, 12 ; and Salem, 24, — fourteen towns being included in the levy.^ The next colony tax was in August of the same year, when in an assessment of ;^400 Boston was required to pay .£'59 4s.; Salem, £4^ 12s.; Dorchester and Charlestown, ^42 6s. each; Roxbury, £T)0 8s.; and Cambridge, ;^29 I2J.* From a comparison of these figures it would appear that in 1637 Boston was not only the most populous, but also the wealthiest town in the colony. In May, 1640, — not quite ten years after the settlement of Boston, — a tax of ;£'i200 was ordered to be levied on seventeen towns. Of this sum Boston was to contribute £179, or almost exactly fifteen per cent; Braintree, which it will be remembered was set off from Boston in the same month, £2$ ; Cambridge, ;^ioo; Dorchester, £gs ; Charlestown, ii^QO; Roxbury, £j$; and Salem, ;£'iis.* The first windmill was erected in August, 1632, having been brought down from Cambridge, because, where it first stood, " it would not grind but with a westerly wind." ^ Four years later another windmill was erected ; ' and subsequently other windmills were built on the various hills in the town,' and tidemills were also introduced. For the purpose of encouraging the erection of a watermill, the town granted, in July, 1643, ^^^ the cove and the salt marsh bordering upon it northwest of the causeway leading to Charlestown, together with three hundred acres of land at Braintree, on condition that the grantees should, within three years, erect one or more corn mills to be maintained forever.' The cove thus granted was known, down to our own time, as the mill-pond ; and, in order that the grant to the mill-owners might not interfere with the rights of other persons, the grantees were required to make and maintain forever a gate ten feet in width, to open at flood tide for the passage of boats, so that they might arrive at " their ordinary landing places." It is not known when the first wharf was built; but in January, 1638-39, the town granted " to the owners of the wharf and crane one hundred acres 1 Mass. Col. Records, i. 175. ' Winthrop, New England, i. ig6. About 2 Ibid. p. 180. the same time a windmill was erected at "• Ibid. p. 192. Charlestown. * Ibid. p. 201. * [So late as 1824 a large windmill stood at ' Ibid. p. 294. Windmill Point, on the easterly side of the South " Winthrop, New England, i. 87. This wind- Cove, and is shown in the view of Boston en- mill appears to have been placed on Copp's Hill graved that year in Snow's Histmy. — Ed.| (see Wood's New England's Prospecl, in publi- ^ Second Report of the Record Commissioners, cations of the Prince Society, p. 42). p. 74 [See Mr. Bynner's chapter. — Ed.| VOL. I. — 29. 226 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of land at Mount Wollaston, next to the allotments already granted, toward the repairing and maintaining of the said wharf and crane." ^ It seems probable, therefore, that there had been a wharf for a sufficient length of time for it to fall into decay and to need " repairing." Not long afterward a much more comprehensive scheme was planned for facilitating a com- mercial intercourse with other places. In November, 1641, the town granted to Valentine Hill and his associates and successors a considerable tract of " waste ground " near Dock Square, for a specified term of years, dependent on their purchase of various wharf-rights, and on the cost of repairs and other charges incurred by them ; and, in consideration of the improvements which they proposed to make, the grantees were authorized to collect tonnage and wharfage dues from all persons who should land goods there, except persons whose lands bounded on the granted territory, who might land, free of charge, goods for their own use, but not for sale. Provision was likewise made for the valuation of the warehouses and other buildings to be erected, and for keeping the wharves in repair, all of which were to become the property of the town at the expiration of the period covered by the grant.^ The proper charges for the use of these and other wharves were regarded by the colonial authorities as matters within their discretion; and in October, i64i,the General Court appointed a committee " to settle the rates of wharfage, porterage, and warehouse hire, and certify the next General Court, — and the order to stand the meanwhile." ^ In November, 1646, the Court adopted a minute schedule of charges, to re- main in force until the Court of Election in 1648; and the owners of wharves, whether at Boston or at Charlestown, were " required to attend to these rules for wharfage of such goods." * From time to time new rules and regulations on the subject were made by the same authority. But by far the most important enterprise of this kind was undertaken near the close of the colonial period, and was designed partly to secure the town from any attack by a hostile fleet, and partly to encourage maritime trade. In the summer of 1673 the Court of Assistants recommended to the town to cause a sea-wall or wharf to be erected in front of the town, from the Sconce to Captain Scarlett's wharf, or to adopt some other means for securing the town against fire ships in case of the approach of an enemy. At a town-meeting held in September it was voted not to carry on so extensive an undertaking at the public charge ; but the selectmen were authorized to make such a disposition of the flats as they might think best for promoting the execution of the proposed work by private enter- prise. Accordingly, a few days afterward, the selectmen issued proposals for the construction of a wall or wharf of wood or stone from Captain Scarlett's wharf, which was at the foot of Fleet Street, in a straight line to the Sconce, or south battery, near the head of India wharf, — a distance of about twenty-two hundred feet. The wall or wharf was to be twenty-two 1 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, p. 37. 3 Mass. Col. Records, i. 341 2 Ibid. pp. 63, 64. * Ibid ii. 170, 171. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 22/ feet in breadth at the bottom and twenty feet at the top ; and it was supposed that the necessary height would be fourteen or fifteen feet, with a breastwork for cannon, and suitable openings for the passage of vessels. In consideration of the execution of the work in the manner proposed, the undertakers were to have a grant in perpetuity of all the flats within the wall, with liberty to build wharves and warehouses for a distance of two hundred feet back from the wall, the remainder to be kept as an open cove, but with the reservation of certain rights to those persons who already abutted on the shore line. And the undertakers were to have all the income which they might derive from anchorage or wharfage dues from vessels sheltered within the cove, or from grants of the privilege of fishing there. ^ Under these proposals forty-one subscribers undertook the work, in sections vary- ing in length from twenty to one hundred and fifty feet.^ The work was prosecuted with very little energy ; but at the General Court held in May, 1 68 1, — more than seven years afterward, — an order was passed setting forth " that, at the great cost, pains, and hazard of said undertakers, a sea wall hath been built, and almost finished, for the safety of said town and this his Majesty's colony;" wherefore "the said undertakers, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, or major part of them, shall have power to make orders for finishing and preserving the said wall, the regu- lating of themselves, and appointing persons among themselves to manage their affairs," &c.^ Fortunately, the wharf was never needed for purposes of defence, and it soon fell into decay. It is shown on Franquelin's map of 1693 ; but on Bonner's map of 1722, and on Burgiss's map of 1729, only its general outline can be traced, and probably neither of these is accurate in its delineation.* A little more than two months after the town was settled, arrangements were made for setting up a ferry between Boston and Charlestown ; and at a Court of Assistants, Nov. 9, 1630, it was ordered " that whosoever shall first give in his name to Mr. Governor that he will undertake to set up a ferry betwixt Boston and Charlestown, and shall begin the same at such time as Mr. Governor shall appoint, shall have one penny for every person, and one penny for every hundred weight of goods he shall so transport." ^ In November, 1637, the Governor and Treasurer were authorized to lease the ferry for the term of three years at the rate of ;^40 per annum ; ^ and at the expiration of that time it was granted to the college.' In September, 1638, the General Court ordered a ferry to be set up " from Boston to Winnissim- 1 MS. Kecords of the Town of Boston, ii. Whaif, ran pretty nearly in the direction of the 81, 82. present Atlantic Avenue. Portions o£ it forin- ^ Ibid. pp. 82, 83. ing island wharfs are seen in the map of 1S24 in ^ Mass. Col. /Records, \. ;^io, 2,11. Snow's Boston. Cf. Shurtleff's Description of * [It is also shown between the South Bat- Boston, p. u8. — Ed.] tery and Long Wharf in Bonner's sketch of the * Mass. Col. Records, \. 81. waterfront, made in 17 14, and figured elsewhere •• Ibid. p. 208. in this work. This "out-wharf," as it was some- " Ibid. p. 304. See also Quincy's A'i'rfOT-j' q^ times called, of which a portion was still con- Harvard University, ii. 271, 272. The college cealed in the .structure known in our day as T enjoyed this income until 1785. 228 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. met, Noddle's Island, and the ships; the person to be appointed by the magistrates of Boston."^ Three years later the Court passed a general order regulating the use of ferries, and providing that every person to whom a ferry was granted should have " the sole liberty of transporting passen- gers from the place where such ferry is granted to any other ferry, or place where ferry-boats used to land, and that any ferry-boat that shall land passengers at any other ferry may not take passengers from thence, if the ferry-boat of the place be ready; provided that this order shall not preju- dice the liberty of any that do use to pass in their own or neighbors' canoes or boats to their ordinary labors or business."^ In November, 1646, an order was passed prohibiting the overcrowding of ferry-boats, and regulating the manner in which passengers should go on board.^ It seems to have been tacitly recognized that the establishment and regulation of ferries were exclusively within the powers of the colonial government ; but in two or three instances the town seems to have set up a ferry by its own authority.- In January, 1635-36, Thomas Marshall was chosen to keep "a ferry from the mill point unto Charlestown, and to Winnissimmet; " in December, 1637, it was agreed that Edward Bendall should keep "a suffi- cient ferry-boat to carry to Noddle's Island and to the ships riding before the town; " and in January, 1646-47, George Halsoll was ordered to " keep and employ a passage boat between his wharf and the ships where the ships ride," and no other person was " to make use of his wharf or landing place for hire or reward, but it shall be lawful for any seamen or others to pass to and fro from said landing place in their own boats without paying any- thing for themselves or friends." * It is probable, however, that these ap- pointments were either temporary, or were made subject to the action of the General Court. From the first the town was careful to prevent encroachments on the streets and highways, and to keep them clean ; but she does not seem to have been equally careful to keep them in a safe condition. For this neg- lect Boston was frequently fined, or threatened with a fine, by the General Court; and she was also required from time to time to build or repair bridges and highways, or to contribute a proportionate part of the expense of building or repairing them. For instance, in March, 1634-35, it was or- dered that a sufficient cart bridge should be built over Muddy River " before the next General Court, and that Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, New Town, and Watertown shall equally contribute to it." ^ In December, 1638, the town was fined ten shillings for defective highways and want of a watch-house, and allowed until the next court to remedy the neglect.^ Apparently the town paid little or no attention to this order, and in the following June " Boston was fined twenty shillings for defective highways, and enjoined to repair them, upon the penalty of five pounds." ^ Six months later, " Boston, 1 Mass. Col. Records, i. 241. 5 _;/,„,. (^„i K^cords, i. 141. 2 Ibid. p. 338. 6 ]]ji(]. p ,^^_ 3 Ibid. ii. 170. 7 Ibid. p. 266. ^ Second Rep'' t of the Record Com. pp. 7, 22,89. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 229 for defect of their ways between Powder-Horn Hill and the written tree, is fined twenty shillings, and enjoined to mend them ; " but on a representa- tion that the ways were " new laid out," the town was allowed, in October of the next year, further time to repair them.^ At the expiration of that time the General Court passed a more peremptory order, " that the highway between the written tree and Winnisimmet should be made sufficient for carts, horses, and men by Boston, within three months, upon pain of twenty pounds."^ Again, in May, 1670, the Court passed an order that, "Whereas the country highway over some part of Rumney Marsh was laid out long since, from a point of upland to the written tree, and the said way was never made passable, but in stead thereof a causey or bridge hath been made in another place, which hath been made use of, but is now and hath been often out of repair : it is ordered that the selectmen of Boston shall take speedy care to make and maintain a sufficient causey or bridge over the marsh and creek where the way was laid out first, or to see and cause the causey and bridge that is already made to be sufficiently repaired, and so. kept from time to time." ^ On the other hand the town passed numerous orders for the abatement of nuisances in the thickly settled neighborhoods ; and in Octo- ber, 1649, the selectmen made a general order "that no person whatsoever shall suffer any stones, clay, timber, or firewood, boards or clapboards, or any other thing that may annoy the town's streets, to lie above forty-eight hours, upon penalty of five shillings for every default." * To a similar pur- pose is the following order passed by the selectmen in January, 1657-58 : " Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have re- ceived hurt by boys and young men playing at foot-ball in the streets, these are therefore to enjoin that none be found at that game in any of the streets, lanes, or enclosures of this town, under the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence." ^ From a very early period the town began to take precautions against the harboring of strangers who might become a charge; and in May, 1636, " it was ordered that no townsmen shall entertain any strangers into their houses for above fourteen days, without leave from those that are appointed to or- der the town's businesses."^ At a later period, in March, 1647, the scope of this order was somewhat enlarged, and a definite penalty for any neglect to comply with its provisions was established. At that time it was " ordered that no inhabitant shall entertain man or woman from any other town or country as a sojourner or inmate with an intent to reside here, but shall give notice thereof to the selectmen of the town for their approbation within eight days after their coming to the town, upon penalty of twenty shillings." At the same time it was ordered that no inhabitant should let or sell to any person any house or houses within the town, "without first acquainting the 1 Mass. Col. Records, i. 285, 310. [The " writ- ^ Second Report of the Record Commissioners, ten tree " was on the present bounds between p. 98. Everett and Revere. — Ed.] '' Ibid. p. 141. - Ibid. p. 338. ^ Ibid. p. 10. " Ibid. vol. iv. pt. ii p. 450 230 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. selectmen of the town therewith." ^ In March, 1652, both of these orders were re-enacted.^ Some years later, — in June, 1659, — at a general town- meeting further orders were made on the subject, reciting that, " Whereas sundry inhabitants in this town have not so well attended to former orders made for the securing the town from sojourners, inmates, hired servants, journeymen, or other persons that come for help in physic or chirurgery, whereby no little damage hath already, and much more may accrue to the town : for the prevention whereof it is therefore ordered that whosoever of our inhabitants shall henceforth receive any such persons before named into their houses or employment, without liberty granted from the select- men, shall pay twenty shillings for the first week, and so from week to week twenty shillings, so long as they retain them, and shall bear all the charge that may accrue to the town by every such sojourner, journeyman, hired servant, inmate, &c., received or employed as aforesaid." ^ Provision was made, however, that if a satisfactory bond were given to the selectmen to secure the town from all charges, and the persons received were not " of notorious evil life and manners," the fine might be remitted ; and if any one who had given such a bond should give " such orderly notice to the select- men that the town may be fully cleared of such person or persons so received," his bond should be given up. Meanwhile, as a further precau- tionary measure, it was ordered, in March, 1657, "that henceforth no per- sons shall have liberty to keep shops within this town, or set up manufac- tures, unless they first be admitted inhabitants into the town." * On the breaking out of Philip's war the town took steps to prevent being burdened with charges which properly belonged to the whole colony ; and under date of November, 1675, the town clerk made the following record: "An humble request was presented to the General Court to settle some general way whereby those persons or families who by the outrage of the enemy were bereaved of all means of their subsistence, or forced from their habi- tations, many whereof have come into this town, may find such relief and redress that no particular town may be burdened thereby." ^ After the great fire of 1676, which destroyed among other buildings the Second Church and Increase Mather's house,® an order was issued by the Court of Assistants, or Council, as it was often called, restraining any per- son from building within the burnt district before the next General Court, " without the advice and order of the selectmen." Subsequently the select- men widened the street, now known as Hanover Street, to what was probably a nearly uniform width of twenty-two feet ; and thereupon the Court passed an order that " The act of the council and return of the selectmen of Bos- ton, as above, being read and perused by the Court, who took notice that the street, as now laid out, is made wider and more accommodable to the 1 Secoiul Report of the Record Commissioners, » MS. Records of the Town of Boston, ii. 94. P- 90- " Hutchinson, Hist, of the Cot. of Mass. Bov, - I^'d. p. 109. p. 349, „ote: Cotton Mather, Parentator, p. 79; 3 Ibid. p. 152. Sewall, Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll. v. 29. |See 1 Ibid. p. 135. Mr. Lynner's chapter. — Ed.1 BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 23 1 public, and due satisfaction given and received by all persons concerned, one only excepted, the Court approves of the act of the selectmen, and orders it to be proceeded in, and the person that hath not consented, to have the like proportionable satisfaction tendered him for so much of his land that is taken and staked out to the street."^ A few months later, after the fire of 1679 which destroyed eighty dwell- ing houses and seventy warehouses, — " the most woful desolation that Bos- ton ever saw," ^ — the General Court passed the first building law for the town: "This Court, having a sense of the great ruins in Boston by fire, and hazard still of the same, by reason of the joining and nearness of their buildings, for prevention of damage and loss thereby for future, do order and enact that henceforth no dwelling-house in Boston shall be erected and set up except of stone or brick, and covered with slate or tile, on penalty of forfeiting double the value of such buildings, unless by allowance and liberty obtained otherwise from the magistrates, commissioners, and selectmen of Boston or major part of them." ^ At the same session an order was passed that certain persons were " under vehement suspicion of attempting to burn the town of Boston, and some of their endeavors prevailed to the burning of one house, and only by good Providence prevented from further damage," and therefore the Court ordered ten persons, within twenty days, to " depart this jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Colony ; and in case of the return of any of the abovesaid persons without license first had from the governor and council, such offenders shall be committed to close prison until they pay the sum of twenty pounds in money, and give good security to depart this jurisdiction, and not return again contrary to this order."* In the follow- ing May the Court, on a petition from some of the inhabitants setting forth that many persons, in consequence of their heavy losses, were not able to rebuild with brick and stone, suspended the operation of the law " for the space of three years only, when it is to be in force, and all persons are required then carefully to attend unto the same." ^ At the expiration of that time, in December, 1683, the Court again attempted to legislate on the subject, and passed an order that " This Court, being sensible of the great ruins in Boston by fire at sundry times, and hazards still of the same, by reason of the joining and nearness of buildings, for the prevention of 1 Mass. Col. Records, v. 139, 140. dustry and cost, many of them standing upon '^ Hutchinson, Hist, of the Col. of Mass. Bay, piles, close together on each side of the streets p. 349, «o/^. [See Mr. Bynner's chapter. — Ed.J as in London, and furnished with many fair 3 Mass. Col. Records, v. 240. Describing shops; their materials are brick, stone, lime, Boston in 1665, the Royal Commissioners, or handsomely contrived, with three meeting-houses some person employed by them, wrote : " Their or churches, and a town-house built upon pillars, houses are generally wooden, their streets where the merchants may confer ; in the cham- crooked, with little decency and no uniform- bers above they keep their monthly courts, ity." (Hutchinson, Original Papers, p. 421). Their streets are many and large, paved with Josselyn, who was here a short time before, pebble stones, and the south side adorned with probably drew on his imagination, or trusted gardens and orchards." (3 Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. to an imperfect recollection, when he wrote : 319.) "The houses are for the most part raised on * Mass. Col. Records, v. 250, 251. the sea-banks and wharfed out with great in- ^ Ibid. pp. 266, 267. 232 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. damage and loss thereby for the future, do order and enact, that henceforth no dwellinghouse, warehouse, shop, barn, stable, or any other building, shall be erected and set up in Boston except of stone or brick, and covered with slate or tile, on penalty of forfeiting one hundred pounds in money to the use of said town for every house built otherwise, unless by allowance and liberty obtained from this Court, from time to time." Some other provisions then followed, and the building law of 1679 was expressly repealed.^ A few months later the law was amended by the enactment of the important provision that half of any parti-wall might be set on the adjoining estate, and that when it was built into, one half of the cost of the wall should be paid for by the person using it.^ The subsequent legislation on this subject does not fall within the period covered by this chapter. Three or four years after the settlement of the town, — in March, 1633-34, — the Court ordered a market to be kept at Boston every Thursday.^ It was not till November, 1639, that the first post-office was set up in Boston. The General Court at that time passed an order to give notice " that Richard Fairbanks's house, in Boston, is the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas, or are to be sent thither, are to be brought unto ; and he is to take care that they be delivered or sent according to their directions ; and he is allowed for every such letter a penny, and must answer all miscarriages through his own neglect in this kind, — pro- vided that no man shall be corhpelled to bring his letters thither, except he please."* It is not known how long Mr. Fairbanks held this office; but in June, 1677, the same difficulties which had led to his appointment compelled the merchants of Boston to petition for some further action of the General Court. From the statements then made it appeared that " many times letters are thrown upon the exchange, that who will may take them up ; " and the Court thereupon appointed Mr. John Hayward, the scrivener, as a " meet person to take in and convey letters according to their direction."^ Three years later he was re-appointed to this office.® The first act of incorporation affecting Boston was passed in October, 1648, when " upon the petition of the shoemakers of Boston, and upon consideration of the complaints which have been made of the damage which the country sustains by occasion of bad ware made by some of that trade," the General Court granted an act of incorporation for three years to certain persons, " and the rest of the shoemakers inhabiting, and housekeepers in, the town of Boston, or the greater number of them (upon due notice given to the rest)," empowering them to choose "a master and two wardens, with four or six associates, a clerk, a sealer, a searcher, and a beadle, with such other officers as they shall find necessary." These officers were to be chosen annually and to be sworn before the governor or one of the magistrates ; and they were to have power to make orders for the government of the company and the regulation of the trade, which 1 Mass. Col. Records, v. 426. 4 Mass. Col. Records, i. 281. 2 Ibid. p. 432. 6 itid. V. 147, 148. 3 Ibid. i. 112. 6 Ibid. p. 273. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 233 orders were not to be in force until approved by the County Court or the Court of Assistants. The company was also authorized to impose fines for any infractions of its orders, " provided always, that no unlawful combina- tion be made at any time, by the said company of shoemakers, for enhanc- ing the prices of shoes, boots, or wages, whereby either their own people or strangers may suffer," and provided also " that no shoemaker shall refuse to make shoes for any inhabitant, at reasonable rates, of their own leather, for the use of themselves and families only, if they be required thereunto." ^ At the same session of the General Court, " upon petition of the coopers inhabiting in Boston and Charlestown, and upon consideration of many complaints made of the great damage the country hath sustained by occa- sion of defective and insufficient casks," the coopers also were incorporated, with similar powers, " for the space of three years, and no longer, except this Court shall see cause to continue the same ; " and with a proviso that none of the orders of the company, " nor any alteration therein, shall be in force before they shall have been perused and allowed by the court of that county where they shall be made, or by the Court of Assistants." It was also provided " that no unlawful combination be made at any time by the said company of coopers for enhancing the prices of casks or wages, whereby either our own people or strangers may suffer; " and that "the priority of their grant shall not give them precedency of other companies that may hereafter be granted." ^ A few years later, — in June, 1652, — the General Court granted an act of incorporation to " inhabitants of the Conduit Street in Boston," to pro- vide a supply of fresh water for their families, and especially for use in case of fire. The nature and extent of the powers which it was intended to confer on the corporation are involved in some obscurity ; but the corpo- rators and their associates were authorized to elect annually two of the proprietors to be masters or wardens of the water-works, with power to arrange for the payment of the annual rent of their land, to make all necessary repairs on the water-works, to assess the proper sums for these purposes, and to admit new members of the corporation. If any persons should be found guilty of corrupting, wasting, or spoiling the water, or water-works, or injuring the pipes, cisterns, or fountains, the warden for the time being might prosecute the offender ; and if any person should take water from the conduit without license, the warden might confiscate " such vessels from them as they shall bring to carry away such water with." The wardens could also allow poor persons to take water " for a time " without charge.^ Under the authority of this act, or perhaps just before its passage, it seems that a reservoir was constructed near the corner of the streets now known as Union Street and North Street, and that it was supplied by pipes * Mass. Col. Records, ii. 249, 250. ^ Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 99, 2 Ibid. pp. 250, 25:. 100. VOL. I. — 30. 234 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. leading from wells or springs in the neighborhood.^ It is not perhaps strange that "water-works" on so simple a plan should have failed to answer any useful purpose, and that they are scarcely mentioned in the town records. In September, 1670, the town found it necessary to supplement the existing means for extinguishing fires by passing an order, which shows how simple and inadequate these means still remained. The order recites : "Whereas, it is found by experience that in case of fire breaking out in this town the welfare thereof is much endangered for want of a speedy supply of water, it is therefore ordered that after the first of March next, and so forward to the first of November in every year, every inhabitant in this town shall at all times during the said term have a pipe or a hogshead of water ready filled, with the head open, at or near the door of their dwelling-houses and warehouses, upon the penalty of five shillings for every defect." ^ From time to time persons were fined for having defective chimneys, and were required to have them put in order and swept; and in December, 1676, the colony council recommended to the town the appointment of certain per- sons who were named, or other persons instead of them, to see that the chimneys in the town were kept properly swept. The suggestion proved agreeable to the town, and the appointments were accordingly made.^ The colony grew so rapidly that in 1643 there were thirty towns within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and the need of further organization was felt. Accordingly, in May of that year, the General Court divided the whole plantation into four shires or counties. Seven towns were associated with Boston under the designation of Suffolk County. These were Rox- bury, Dorchester, Dedham, Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, and Nantas- ket.* The origin of the English counties is lost in the obscurity of Anglo- Saxon history ; but their privileges and obligations were well understood, and for this reason, probably, there is in the order creating the Massachu- setts counties no enumeration of the powers which the towns thus united might exercise. Closely connected with the division of the colony into counties was the creation of a military organization; and a few months afterward an elaborate plan was adopted by the Court for this purpose, on the ground that " as piety cannot be maintained without church ordinances and officers, nor justice without laws and magistracy, no more can our safety and peace be preserved without military orders and officers." ^ In the or- ders now adopted it was expressly declared that no war ought to be under- taken without the authority of the General Court; but as emergencies might arise requiring immediate action there was to be a council, of which the Governor should always be one, with authority to raise the whole force of the country, or any part thereof, and to make such disposition of the 1 Shurtleff, TofO!;raphkal and Historical De- H. Whitmore contributed to the Mass. Hist. Soc ScriptlOn of Boston, r>-p. AOl-AOT,. Pror Fplirmnr iSt-, ., ^ lU ■ ■ c 2 ;i^c /. , y.i m r r, .. ' ^^L>"i"y. "^73, ii paper on the origin of MS. Records of the Toimi of Boston, ii. 54. the names of these and other towns in Massa- " Ibid. pp. too, loi. chusetls. — Ed.1 * Mass. Col. Records, ii. 38. [IVIr. William 5 Mass. Col. Records, ii _|- BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 235 soldiers thus raised as they might think best " for the necessary defence of the country." There was also to be a " sergeant major-general to lead and conduct their forces levied, and to execute all orders and directions of the council." In each shire or county there was to be a lieutenant with power to act independently when timely notice could not be given to the Governor and Council, and there was also to be " one sergeant-major to command, lead, and conduct the forces of that shire, being called together," and to act in the absence of the lieutenant.* Other regulations were adopted to secure the effective disciplining of the forces in each shire, and the defence of each shire by the local military officers. The idea of local self-government was becoming rapidly developed, though it was long before it was fully recog- nized and firmly established. A precedent for this action of the General Court in the establishment of counties and the distribution of the military powers, if any were necessary, may be found in the orders passed in March, 1635-36, providing for the holding of local courts at Ipswich, Salem, Cambridge, and Boston, for those towns and the towns in their immediate neighborhood. In these orders it was declared that the courts thus established " shall be kept by such magistrates as shall be dwelling in or near the said towns, and by such other persons of worth as shall from time to time be appointed by the Gen- eral Court, so as no court shall be kept without one magistrate at the least, and that none of the magistrates be excluded who can and will intend the same ; yet the General Court shall appoint which of the magistrates shall specially belong to every of the said courts. Such persons as shall be joined as associates to the magistrates in the said court shall be chosen by the General Court, out of a greater number of such as the several towns shall nominate to them, so as there may be in every of the said courts so many as (with the magistrates) may make five in all." ^ This limited right of local appointment for the associates curiously illustrates the tendency of colonial politics to enlarge the powers conferred by the charter, and to adapt it to the wants of a growing colony. There was no provision in the colony charter expressly authorizing the creation of any legislative body other than the Court of Assistants ; but there was nothing in it inconsistent with the establishment of a representa- tive body in which the freemen who could not be personally present in the General Court might express their will through regularly appointed dele- gates. With the rapid growth of the colony it soon became impracticable for all the freemen to meet together in the General Courts for which express provision was made in the charter, and the establishment of some system of representation became a necessity. So early as May, 1634, the General Court met the difficulty, and solved it, by ordering " that it shall be lawful for the freemen of every plantation to choose two or three of each town before every General Court, to confer of and prepare such public business as by them shall be thought fit to consider of at the next General Court, 1 Mass. Col. Records, ii. 42. ^ Ibid. i. 169. 236 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and that such persons as shall be hereafter so deputed by the freemen of [the] several plantations, to deal in their behalf in the public affairs of the commonwealth, shall have the full power and voices of all the said free- men, derived to them for the making and establishing of laws, granting of lands, &c., and to deal in all other affairs of the commonwealth wherein the freemen have to do, the matter of election of magistrates and other officers only excepted, wherein every freeman is to give his own voice." ^ Various orders were passed subsequently as to the manner in which the dep- uties should be paid for their necessary expenses; and in March, 1638-39, " it was ordered that no town should send more than two deputies to the General Courts."^ At length, nearly forty years afterward, the town of Boston instructed its deputies to have the number of deputies from the town augmented, as the number of freemen had much increased.^ No immediate action appears to have been taken on the subject; but in March, 1680-81, the Court granted the town liberty to send three deputies in future.* At first the magistrates and deputies sat together, the former claiming the right to negative the votes of the deputies; but in March, 1643-44, after a contro- versy which belongs to the history of the colony rather than to the history of the town, the Court passed the following preamble and order: "For- asmuch as, after long experience, we find divers inconveniences in the manner of our proceeding in Courts by magistrates and deputies sitting together, and accounting it wisdom to follow the laudable practice of other States who have laid groundworks for government and order in the issuing of business of greatest and highest consequence, — it is therefore ordered, first, that the magistrates may sit and act business by themselves, by draw- ing up bills and orders which they shall see good in their wisdom, which having agreed upon, they may present them to the deputies to be con- sidered of, how good and wholesome such orders are for the country, and accordingly to give their assent or dissent; the deputies in like manner sitting apart by themselves, and consulting about such orders and laws as they in their discretion and experience shall find meet for common good, which agreed upon by them, they may present to the magistrates, who, according to their wisdom, having seriously considered of them, may consent unto them or disallow them ; and when any orders have passed the approbation of both magistrates and deputies, then such orders to be engrossed, and in the last day of the Court to be read deliberately, and full assent to be given, provided, also, that all matters of judicature which this Court shall take cognizance of shall be issued in like manner." ^ These orders of May, 1634, and March, 1643-44, formed the basis on which, with only a single important modification, the system of town representation in Massachusetts rested down to our own time. Almost nothing is known about the places in which the General Court 1 Mass. Col. Records, i. 118, 119. 4 i^j^iss. Col. Records, v. 305. 2 Ibid. p. 254. 5 iijjd. ji js^ ^g^ ' MS. Records of the Town of Boston, ii. 105. BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 237 held their sessions during the first twenty-five years after the settlement of the town. It is stated, indeed, by Johnson, that the first Court of Assistants, August 23, 1630, was held on board the " Arbella ; "^ but as his work was not published until 1654 the statement is of doubtful authority. In May, 1634, the Court was held in the meeting-house in Boston ; ^ and this probably continued to be its place of meeting, for according to Lechford — who was here for about four years, and whose Plaine Dealing ; or Newes front New England was published in 1642 — "the General and Great Quarter Courts are kept in the church meeting-house at Boston." ^ In at least one mem- orable instance, in May, 1637, the Court of Election was held in the open air.^ But in 1658, when the first town-house was erected in Boston, the town was required to provide suitable accommodations for the courts as one of the conditions of receiving aid from the colonial treasury. At its session in May of that year the Court passed the following order : " In answer to the request of the selectmen of Boston, the Court judgeth it meet to allow unto Boston, for and toward the charges of their town-house, Boston's pro- portion of one single country rate for this year ensuing, provided that suffi- cient rooms in the said house shall be forever free for the keeping of all courts, and also that the place underneath shall be free for all inhabitants in this jurisdiction to make use of as a market forever, without paying of any toll or tribute whatever." ^ According to the contract with the builders it was to be " a very substantial and comely building," sixty-six feet in length, and thirty-six feet in breadth, set upon twenty-one pillars ten feet in height between the pedestal and capital. The building was to be a story and a half in height, with three gable ends on each side ; and the principal story was to be ten feet high. On the roof was to be a walk fourteen or fifteen feet wide, with two turrets and turned balusters and rails around the walk. The contract price was four hundred pounds, — the town fur- nishing all the mason's work and materials, all the iron-work, lead, glass, and glazing. The cost was to be defrayed in part from a legacy of three hundred pounds left to the town by Captain Keayne, and in part from a voluntary subscription.^ It does not appear whether the town intended that any part of the cost should be raised by a direct tax ; but the contrac- 1 Wonder-working Providence, p. 37. country's account, and the rather in regard that 2 Winthrop, N'ew England, i. 132. the town of Bostonhave long since covered the ' 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. 84. east staircase of said house at their own cost ■• Hutchinson, Hist, of the Col. of Mass. Bay, and charges." Mass. Col. Records, v. 501. p. 61, note. " Papers relating to the Boston Town House 5 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 327. in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, IVIarch, 1858, pp. 337- In consideration of the joint occupancy of the 341. (Keayne is famous for having left the town-house, the colony recognized the obligation most voluminous will known on our records. It to keep the building in repair, and in Septeml^er, fills 158 pages ; was executed Dec. 28, 1653, and 16S5, the following order was passed; "The proved May 2, 1656. Court, considering the necessity of covering the Cf. Savage, Win- ^ Sfjrh 't/Sfi'^nu- west staircase of the town-house with lead, — the throp's Hist, of N. /V '\Zr3-' wooden covering, being deficient, lets in the rain, P.. i. 378. Keayne which decays the main timber ihcreof, — itisord- lived opposite the old market-place (old State ered that it be done with all speed, and that the House lot), c n the south corner of Washington Treasurer defray the charge thereof upon the and State streets. Shaw, y^M/o//, p. 117. — Ed.| 238 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. tors claimed a much larger sum in the final settlement, and in January, 1660-61, the town voted to allow them six hundred and eighty pounds in full.i In at least one instance the colony made a specific grant to Boston in aid of a purely local institution. At the session in October, 1660, the General Court, in answer to a petition of the town of Boston, granted to the town one thousand acres of land " for their furtherance and help to discharge the charge of a free school there." ^ On the other hand, the town was not back- ward in contributing to general colonial objects. In December, 1652, at a public town-meeting a committee was chosen to receive any sums of money which any persons might subscribe " toward the maintenance of the Presi- dent and Fellows or poor scholars of Harvard College."^ In July, 1654, another committee was chosen " to collect the several sums subscribed for the use of the college by the selectmen."* In November, 1656, " a rate for town and country and college " was committed to the constables for collec- tion ; and in the following month it was voted to discharge the constables of this rate, — the whole amount apparently having been collected-^ But the relations of the town and the college will be treated at length in another chapter of this History ; and these votes have been cited only to show that the town had helped to support the college even before she received aid for her free school. All through the colonial period Boston clung to the charter with an un- questioning devotion ; and it was no doubt with a smile of grim satisfaction that the town-clerk placed on record the unanimous decision of the town- meeting in January, 1683-84, against a surrender of the charter: — " At a meeting of the freemen of this town upon full warning, — upon reading and publishing his Majesty's declaration, dated 26th of July, 1683, relating to the quo warranto issued out against the charter and privileges claimed by the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, it being put to the vote whether the freemen were minded that the General Court should make a full submission and entire resignation of our charter and privileges therein granted to his Majesty's pleas- ure, as intimated in the said declaration now read, the question was resolved in the negative, nemine contradiceiite." ^ During all the anxious period when the charter was in danger, the town constantly instructed her deputies to the General Court to do nothing to abridge the liberties of the country, and to give their consent to no laws repugnant to the charter." In the period of misgovernment after the first charter was vacated, and before the second charter was granted, the hand of arbitrary power did not 1 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, i Ibid. p. 120. ]). 158. I See further on this town-house in Mr. ^ Ibid. pp. 132 ti-!. Ijynner's chapter in this volunie.-ED.j 6 jifs. Records of the Town of Boston ii ic.; 2 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 444. . [Tliis struggle for the maintenance of ihe Second Re/orf of the Record Commissioners, charter is fully described in another chapter of P- "3- this volume. — En.l BOSTON AND THE COLONY. 239 spare the inhabitants of Boston ; and it is significant of the changed con- dition of things to read in the town records a formal confirmation, by the President and Council, of rates voted by the town for finishing the alms house and for maintaining the poor, and of an order made many years be- fore for regulating the manner in which gunpowder should be kept.^ It is no matter for surprise, but it is one for deep satisfaction, that Boston was foremost in the resistance to Andros, and that the New England Revolution of 1689 was the result of a great popular uprising in Boston. With the loss of the colony charter one period in the history of Boston, as well as of Massachusetts, closed : with the grant of the province charter a new era opened. In reviewing the details which have been brought together here to illus- trate the relations of the town to the colony down to the end of the colonial period, no one can fail to be impressed, above all else, by the slow and steady growth of the institutions with whose later developments we are familiar. The founders of the colony and of the town brought with them no elaborate plan of colonial or town government; and the institutions which they established here were the natural growth of the circumstances in which they were placed. It is needless now to discuss the question whether the colony charter merely created a trading corporation to reside in England and transact all its business there, or whether it conferred on the company the power necessary to establish a colonial government here and to make all necessary laws under it not repugnant to the laws of England. The deliberation with which the transfer of the charter to New England was ordered shows that Winthrop and his associates accepted the latter view ; and they and their successors acted on it until the charter was vacated. The charter was, it is true, only a clumsy and ill-contrived foundation on which to erect such a superstructure as was built up here in half a century ; but as each necessity arose for the exercise of new powers the magistrates and the people deduced the requisite authority from the acknowledged pro- visions of the charter. This development went forward in two directions, — one toward local self-government in the management of town affairs, and the other toward the establishment of a strong central authority which recog- nized no appeal to the mother country. Thus, by slow degrees, the colony became "A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent." In this gradual development of free institutions during the colonial period Boston had a conspicuous part. As the most important town in the colony, in respect both to wealth and population, she could not fail to exert a large influence in colonial politics. There are no records now extant to 1 MS. Records of the Toiun of Boston, ii. 176, 177. Other orders were confirmed at the same time. 240 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. show when the first board of selectmen was established in Boston ; but such a body was in existence in September, 1634, when the town records begin, and Winthrop, who had been Governor in the preceding year and was now one of the Assistants, was a member.' This fact shows how close were the political relations of the colony and the town. It was only a single step from the office of governor to that of selectman. Not a few of the ques- tions which most largely influenced the course of colonial politics were pri- marily Boston questions. The disarmament of the followers of Wheelright, in 1637, was the result of the controversy in the Boston church over the theological speculations of Mrs. Hutchinson. The separation of the magis- trates and deputies into two bodies, in 1643-44, was finally brought about by the strong feeling which had been aroused by a series of lawsuits in Boston over a stray pig.^ Wilson and Cotton were acknowledged forces in shaping the colonial polity ; at a later period the Mathers showed that the Boston ministers had lost none of their interest in politics ; and, it may be added, the first governor under the province charter owed his appointment to the good offices of Increase Mather, the minister of a Boston church. So close, indeed, were the relations of the colony and the town, and so nearly identical were their interests during the earlier part of the colonial period, that it is not easy to write the history of Boston without writing also the history of Massachusetts. But as the number of towns multiplied, and the aggregate population and wealth increased and became more widely distributed, the limits of the central power and of the local power were, more exactly defined. The General Court confined itself more and more to matters of general importance ; and the town was left more and more to regulate her own affairs. The relations of the town and the colony changed somewhat in character. There was little of direct interference on either side ; but neither the colony nor the province ever relinquished the authority which might be claimed under the respective charters, and the town never ceased to take the liveliest interest in all matters which concerned the other towns as well as herself A reciprocal influence took the place of the more direct and positive relations which had existed at first; and from the time when the extent of the powers which the town might rightfully exercise was defined with some approach to accuracy, the separate history of the town and of the colony or province may be traced along parallel lines, with little fear of confusion of statement. 1 [Cf. Snow's Boston, p. 56, and the facsimile Winthrop's Life of John Winthrop, 1630-49, of thepage inanotlier cliapter. — Ed.] ch. xviii,, and in his cliapter in this volume'. '^ [See the curious story recounted in R. C. — Ed.] CHAPTER VI. THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS. Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society. IT seems to have been allotted to the first colonists in the settlement of Boston to establish the precedent which has ever since, in the suc- cessive advances of our race over the continent, been adopted as an example, or regarded as certified by experience, — that civilized men and barbarians cannot live peacefully as neighbors. Whether this issue was prejudiced at the start by ill advice or wrong action, and whether a different principle or method in the treatment of the Indians, by those whose ruthless dealing with them justified itself by the assumed necessity of their extinction or removal from proximity to a white settlement, would have in any way modified the subsequent relations between the aboriginal and the intruding races on this continent, it might be profitless now to inquire. Certain it is that two facts of a most decisive significance are certified to us by full historical testimony of the past, and by the course of things which has been followed up to this current year of time. The first is, that when the magistrates and fighting men of Boston came into actual warfare with Indian tribes, even at a considerable distance from their own original plantations, they acted as if under the stress of a necessity to secure a complete riddance of their red foes, putting as many of them as possible to death, and reduc- ing the remnant to abject and humiliating slavery, — a few being scattered among the settlements, while the greater number were transported to be sold in foreign plantations. The second fact is, that as the white men, steadily advancing their borders across the vast expanses of continent to- wards the further ocean, over each mountain range and valley, have come in contact with survivors of tribes previously driven to refuges in the West, or with new hordes of wild roamers, the precedent has been invariably fol- lowed. There has been no sharing of the heritage with the original oc- cupants ; they have had to move out and to move on. With consummate assurance the abler race has spoken its command to the savage in the tone and language of the old Prophet, — " The place is too strait for me ; give room that I may dwell." This assurance of the right, as well as of the ability, of the civilized man to dispossess the red man of his territory has rested itself, from the time VOL. I. — 31. 242 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of the first foreign discovery of this continent down to recent years, upon two grounds of justification, quite different in their character, but each of them, under the circumstances of the times and the views of those who adopted it, believed to be of axiomatic truth. One of these was simply a matter of opinion, firmly and devoutly held, indeed, but still only a way of thinking which took for granted its own rightfulness. The other ground of the white man's justification — that which came in season to serve when the former might be questioned or discredited, and which abundantly supplied its place — may be regarded as certifying itself by actual and decisive experi- ment in continued conflict. Amid all the sharp and bitter variances between the creeds of the Roman- ist and the Puritan, there was one point of pious belief held in common between the sanguinary Spanish invaders of the more tropical realms of this continent and the stern Protestant heretics who planted their colonies on the rough borders of the Bay of Massachusetts. Equally, and, so to speak, honestly, were they assured that as Christians they had by the law of Nature and of " Grace " dominant rights over heathen, not only to the soil but to everything beside, including even existence. The Spaniard said to the wild native, " Be converted or die ; " without, however, allowing time or mercy for the saving process. The Puritan avowed it to be his main intent to con- vert the savage, but was too dilatory or too inefficient in the attempt for its success. But from the moment when the Puritan had experience of Indian warfare, the savage became to him rather a heathen to be put to the slaugh- ter than a subject of salvation by the method of the Gospel. Modern readers of our early local literature sometimes find it difficult to relieve the writers of it from the imputation of the grossest bigotry and hypocrisy, when, without misgiving, regret, or one breathing of tender human yearning for their wretched victims, they speak of themselves as merely fulfilling the will and purpose of heaven against heathen outcasts, children of the Devil. But we cannot question the thorough sincerity of the belief which found expression in these dismal and to us often revolting declarations. It was of the very fibre and texture, of the very vigor and essence of the faith of the Puritan exiles, that, in coming to occupy these wild realms where the imbruted savages roamed, they were fortified by the same Divine rights and held to the same solemn obligations as were the chosen people of old, of whom they read so trustfully in their Bibles. It was one of the profoundest and most vital sources of their courage, heroism, and constancy in their enterprise, their refuge and solace in all their straits and hazards, that God was leading them and using them for his own purposes to reclaim a blasted region of the earth and to set up his kingdom there. They, too, were to dis- possess and drive out the heathen, and to put them to the sword, to form no truce with them, and to exterminate even their offspring. When that stanch old Puritan captain, John Mason, had burned up some seven hundred of the Pequots in their own fort and wigwams, and the wretched victims were writhing impaled upon their own palisades, he wrote of the scene, " Thus THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 243 was God seen in the Mount, crushing his proud enemies." The enemies of the Puritans were the enemies of God. But even while the Puritan was finding a full justification of his exter- minating work against the Indians as doomed and uncovenanted heathen, another conviction grew strong in his mind, which has ever since, and never more effectually than to-day, furnished to the civilized man a justi- fication for the same course against the savage tribes as his border set- tlements advance towards them. The different mode of life, and the dif- ferent uses which the land and the water-courses of the earth are made to serve for the white and the red man, make it impracticable and indeed im- possible for them to live even within miles of intervening space in the same territory-. The savage needs that Nature should be and should forever remain in its wild, primeval condition. The native forests must stand in tlieir dark and tangled luxuriance, sheltering the game and bearing fruit and berry. They must be unopened by highways ; coursed only by leafy and mossy by- paths. The winds and breezes must not be tainted by the effluvia of hu- manity ; they must be silent, except only from their own murmurs or the gusts of storms. The waters must be left to flow freely, that the fish may visit them for spawning. The dam or mill which obstructs their course, and defiles or clogs them with rubbish or saw-dust, at once destroys their value to the savage. But the white man's first necessity is a clearing. His axe breaks the solitude. The wild creatures in the forest are to him not only game for his partial subsistence, but vermin destructive of his flocks and poultry. The white man never by preference would live wholly on the food of the woods. The meat of the ox, the sheep, and the swine is far more congenial to his palate and physical system than that of the native wilder- ness. He must fence and plant grounds, raise cereal crops, textile fibres and domesticated animals, and open highways over his scattered settlements. He must put the watercourses to use, must dam the streams, and raise the clatter of the mill. The white man, in the regions where the heats of sum- mer and the frosts and snows of winter divide the year, must be thoughtful and provident. He must fill his barn and cellar, and attach himself per- manently to one spot. As now, in our most secure and crowded rural com- munities, a strolling tramp is an object of suspicion and fear, so on all early and recent border settlements the known proximity of few or many vagrant savages, prowling in the shadows of the forest and bent on ventures for stealing the live-stock, or firing the corn-rick, or frightening the inmates of the cabin, was an experience to which the white man never could reconcile himself. So the condition was very soon certified, and has never since been qualified, that if the white man resolves to occupy any region of territory, the red man, if in transient possession, must move wide-away. From this anticipation of what proved to be the experience of the first colonists, we start for the beginning of their story. We are naturally prompted to ask, with what expectations and intentions as regards their relations with the natives whom they might find here the 244 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. first colonists to the Bay prepared to meet them ? On this matter there is to be noted some confusion of statement. Over and over again, in very positive and earnest terms, the purpose is avowed, as indeed the prompting and con- secrating aim of the enterprise in the Colony, to civilize and Christianize the barbarous heathen inhabiting here. But, again, we meet with frequent ref- erences to the fact that before the planters left England they had learned that the natives in these parts had been almost exterminated by some desolating plague or disease, so that they were not likely to meet with any embarrassment from such a remnant of them as they might encounter. Governor Cradock, in his letter to Endicott, March, 1629, bids him to " be not unmindful of the main end of our Plantation, by endeavoring to bring the Indians to the knowledge of the Gospel," and to keep a watchful eye over our own people so that they may be just and courteous to the In- dians, winning their love and respect and getting some of their children to be trained in learning and religion. The Charter emphatically recognizes this obligation towards the natives ; and those who availed themselves of the privileges which it bestowed professed with seeming sincerity, and with re- iteration, that they expected to be missionaries of the Christian religion, and heralds of civilization to the heathen. It is observable also, that, up to the early period of fierce hostilities between the Massachusetts colonists and the natives, the former, when brought under question in England for their proceedings here, were gen- erally glad to lay the utmost stress possible upon their missionary errand and purposes. None the less, however, is it true that the colonists in this immediate neighborhood expected to find but very few, and those a feeble remnant, in possession here, and were persuaded that the fewer of them there were, the better for both parties. In the lack of particular and authen- tic information of the condition of the natives before the settlement at Ply- mouth and that at Salem, we have very imperfect knowledge about the des- olating plague which is said to have well nigh extirpated the natives just previously. Increase Mather distinguishes between a plague in Plymouth Colony and the small-pox in this region. Bradford says that the Pilgrims, before leaving Leyden, expected to find but a scanty number of natives on their arrival. The patriarch White, in the Planter s Plea, says : " The land afifords void ground " for more people than England can spare, " on account of a desolation from a three years' plague, twelve or sixteen years past, which swept away most of the inhabitants all along the sea-coast, and in some places utterly consumed man, woman, and child, so that there is no person left to lay claim to the soyle which they possessed." In other places, twenty or thirty miles up into the land, he says, not one in a hundred is left. Those of them who are left, he promises, we will teach providence and industry, which in their wastefulness and idleness they much need. Also, we shall defend them from the " Tarantines " savages, who have been wont to destroy and desolate them, " and have wonderfully weakened and kept them low in times past." But yet this stanch friend of the colonists, re- THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 245 minding himself of the stress which he had previously laid upon their pur- pose to convert the Indians, feels bound to meet the supposed objection as to how this is to be done, if they have been so nearly killed off. He therefore pleads that it is easier to begin the work with a few, and then to spread it to places better peopled. Besides, he suggests, there are enough of them near by in the Narragansett country. He grants that no progress had been made in converting the Indians in Virginia ; and that in New Ply- mouth, in ten years, not one of them had been converted. He accounts this to the difficulty presented by the Indian language, in which, he nal'vely suggests, the whites easily acquire enough facility for purposes of trade and for temporal matters, but not for making themselves understood about " things spiritual." Mr. Higginson, after his arrival in Salem, wrote in 1629, " The Indians are not able to make use of the one fourth part of the land ; neither have they any settled places, as towns, to dwell in, nor any grounds, as they challenge for their own possession, but change their habitation from place to place." The good minister made these somewhat fallacious state- ments in perfectly good faith, seeming not to have recognized the peculiar- ities in the habits of the savages just noted, as to their not confining themselves to any fixed residences, and their need of vast spaces of territory for their wild roaming life. We have no means of any trustworthy information as to the extent and effects inland from the coast border of the desolation made by the pestilence just previous to the coming of the colonists. The small-pox renewed its rav- ages in the immediate neighborhood very soon after their arrival. It is on record that many of the whites pitifully befriended the red sufferers in their bewilderment under loathsome disease when their own kith and kin deserted them in dismay. It is said that in some spots the ground was strewn with un- buried human bones. The most careful computation and inference from facts that afterwards came to the knowledge of the whites put the estimate of the number of the savages then within the present bounds of New England, where now are more than four millions of population, at about thirty thousand. This estimate is now believed to be an excessive one.^ 1 [The principal contemporary authorities on ton, New English Canaan ; Lecliford, Plaine the condition of the New England Indians at Dealing,^e.^x'w\\£&m'ii Mass. Hist. Co//., iii., and the time of the settlement are as follows : .Smith, ,recently edited by Dr. Trumbull ; a tract, N'nu Desc. of New England and Generall J-fistorie ; England'' s First Fruits, 1643, reprinted in I\Iass. Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, edited by C. Hist. Coll., \., and by Sabin, New York, 1865 Deane ; Mourt, Relation, &c., recently edited by (and the series of tracts on the conversion of Dr. H. M. Dexter; Winslow, Good Newes, re- the Indians referred to in a later note); the printed in the appendix of the Congregational "Briefe Observations of the Customes," ap- Board's edition of Morton's Memorial; the Ke- pended to Roger Williams's Key, reprinted in lation, 1622, by the President and Council of the R. I. Hist. Coll., 1827, and by the Narra- New England; Gor^^^ Briefe Narration ; Win- gansett Club, i856. Palfrey says "the only au- throp, Neiu England ; Higginson, New England thentic portrait of an historical Indian" is one Plantation ; Dudley, Letter to the Countess of painted for Governor Winthrop, of Connecticut, Lincoln, given in Young's Chron. of Mass., &c. ; of Ninigret, a Niantic sachem, which has been Johnson, IVouder-taorking Providence, reprint^ engraved -in Drake's Boston and elsewhere. A in 2 Mass /List. Coll.,\\., and recently edited by story, ascribed 60 one of the Mathers, that three Poole; Wood, A'ezo England^ s Prospect; ilor^ hundred skulls, supposed to be IncUan, had been 246 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Under this somewhat hazy and confused state of mind as to the numbers, disposition, and probable attitude of the Indians towards them, with the ,j- avowed intent of treating them 1v. L U 4A. lyiiuiw / jt.tJL' «tir>Wt , 34[«. /-«ut /Ivii tvt^iiX*- ii,iM\.tyiM^q kindly and of civilizing and Christianizing them, while still with the hope that there were • but few of them, the colonists planted themselves on this soil, and prepared, as the stronger party, for the encoun- ter. And now, on the other side, we have to inform our- selves, as satisfactorily as our means will admit, about the ideas and feelings of the In- dians towards the white com- ers on their first acquaintance. We have on this point (on this, as on every other occa- A ,1- ^ !■ d J ' II sion when it comes before us) *»vtr«u*L*A. ^ h t; .;^ /^^ 1/ _ •.*>.«lL /KvA.flLoCCAli'H^ Jl t/Ki- [v«J-* /Kv^t.♦^■ A-vo-vk. /itxi /,« to remind ourselves that the Indians have no historian of their own race, no one to state their cause, to stand for their side, or to represent their view on a single controversy or struggle between them and the whites. It is pleasant, however, to recognize the fact that the Indians from the first have never lacked friends, pleaders, or champions among the race which has spoiled them. By such men, just, candid, and prompted by considerate and merciful sentiments, facts have been left on record for us, and avowals and admissions of oppressive dealings by the whites have been made, from which we are able to gather as fair a statement of the Indian side in every quarrel and conflict as might have been looked for from the pen of an Indian advocate and historian. Our own historians, indeed, have not in all cases so guarded and qualified their relations of FROM CHARLES SPRAGUE's ODE, 183O.' dug up on Cotton (Pemberton) Hill, has been taken to show that the peninsula was at one time well populated ; but few or no evidences of that kind have been disclosed in the general excava- tion of the land which has from time to time been made all over the territory of original Bos- ton. — Ed.] 1 [This, one of the most fervent appeals for the Indian, is taken from the original manu- script of the centennial o'de delivered by Charles . Sprague at the celebration in 1830 ; and for the privilege of making the fac-simile we are in- debted to the courtesy of the son of the poet, Charles J. Sprague, Esq., of Boston. — Ed.] THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 247 the causes and the conduct of the English wars with the natives as to conceal from us the evidence that the civilized man was generally the aggressor, and that though he expressed horror and disgust at the bar- barous and revolting atrocities of savage warfare, his own skill and cruelty in wreaking vengeance hardly vindicated his milder humanity. The testimony on record in every case is complete, and without exception, to two facts, the significance of which, as setting forth the relations between the two races on this continent, can hardly be exaggerated. First, it is in evi- dence from the writings of all the voyagers, explorers, and colonists coming hither from Europe, beginning with those of the Spanish discoverers, that at every point along our whole coast, and on the shore of every inhab- ited island, the new-comers met a kindly reception from the natives. The sea-worn, feeble, and hungry adventurers, weakened by confinement and illness, craving fresh water, meat, and green vegetables, were made free partakers of the rude hospitality of the red man. In many instances, well authenticated, they would have perished from starvation without such succor. Second, it is also in evidence that in every case, with very rare exceptions, the kindness and hospitality of the savages were ill requited. Oppressive or cruel treatment was the base return. Nor do the exceptions which are to be allowed for present themselves in the journals of the. early visits made to the New England coasts by English adventurers. On the contrary, the wrong was committed here by them with all its aggravations. Natives enticed on board English fishing or trading vessels here were in three instances kid- napped, carried off, and sold into slavery. This was the method of the introduction of the white man to the red man. There are frequent and positive affirmations scattered over the writings of the first colonists of Massachusetts, that in no single instance did they assume the possession or occupancy of any parcel of land without the free consent and the fair compensation of the natives. The claim thus asserted, as if for the quieting of conscience, occasionally has the tone of a boast, as if indicating a supererogatory merit. At any rate the new-comers do not appear to have felt any reproaches at having displaced the original occu- pants. Among the grievances which the magistrates had against Roger Williams, in the first issue of contention opened by him, was his disputing the right of the English monarch to grant a patent to lands here without a recognition of the prior claims of the natives. It is observable, also, that, when under the so-called usurpation of Andros and the overthrow of the colony charter all the titles to land held by it were put in peril, the magis- trates of Boston made haste to secure a confirmation of the deed of the peninsula from the grandson of the old Sachem. If we examine closely the matter and contents of the contracts by which these purchases of land from the Indians were secured, and the consideration paid for them, we must keep in view the relations of the respective parties, the value of wild land to each of them, and the uses to which it had been and was to be put. It is evident that the whites regarded the territorial 248 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. rights of the Indians, in their mode of occupancy for the time being of any- particular region, as at best but vague and slender, while the way in which they scoured over it without in any way improving it, except by an oc- casional cornfield, did not insure ownership according to any test recog- nized by the law of nations. Our romantic notions of the aborigines assign to them in their tribes the long possession for generations of ancestral hunt- ing-grounds and burial-places. Well-certified facts that have been accumu- lating from all our knowledge of the relations of the Indian tribes on this continent before and since the coming hither of Europeans assure us that there is very much of mere fancy in those notions. In very rare cases, if, indeed, in any, — except as regards the Five Nations or Iroquois, of central New York, who had themselves farther back been intruders and conquerors, displacing previous occupants, — is there evidence of any long and quiet tenure of the same regions by the same tribe of savages. There was among them an endless and hardly intermittent internecine warfare. The tribes were constantly displacing each other. At the time of the colonization of New England, the Indians on its soil had been and were at feud ; some of them had conquered, subjugated, and brought under tribute their weaker neighbors ; and of once powerful tribes there remained but feeble remnants. As the whites came to the knowledge of these facts, they of course natu- rally drew the inference that any particular clan or tribe who happened to be here or there were transient roamers rather than old-time inheritors, tn 1633 the Court ordered " that the Indians had a just right to such lands as they possessed and improved by subduing the same. Gen. i. 28, ix. i." The condition demanded was actual occupation by tillage. The accepted rule was vacuum domiciliimi cedit occupanti. Plymouth devoted several necks of land to the Indians, and pronounced them inalienable. The whites regarded land strictly for its uses, and in a wilderness these were substitutes for title-deeds. They recognized the right of the old Patriarch, returning with his family from a sojourn in Egypt during a fam- ine, to repossess himself of Canaan and to drive out the heathen, because of a title to it assured by the three ancient tokens of ownership in the altar of Bethel, the well of Jacob, and the tomb at Macphelah. The Indians raised and left no such token, no land-mark, structure, or betterment. Oc- cupancy, improvements, and an added value to field and stream were the white man's tests of rightful tenure. They saw no evidences of these in the vast forests and reedy meadows where the Indians lurked. The Indians simply wasted everything within their reach. They skimmed what was on the earth's surface. They required enormous spaces of wilderness for their mode of existence, — depths in which the game for their subsistence, and the creatures and the food on which that game might subsist, roamed free for natural propagation. Under these circumstances, while we smile as in ridicule or contempt at the trifling compensation paid to the Indians in a purchase covenant for their lands, we must remember that the standard of values was quite unlike THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 249 our modern estimates. The deeds which are preserved, and the transactions on record from the earliest days, tell us of thousands and tens of thousands of acres being transferred for the consideration of a few utensils ; tools, gew- gaws, yards of cloth, blankets, or coats. But an implement of iron or steel, a pot, kettle, spade, axe, or hatchet, was to an Indian the representative of an untold value. It extended and intensified his own natural resources, as steam and labor-saving machines reinforce the abilities of civilized man. Probably, too, the whites, in many cases, regarded the title-deeds of lands thus transferred to them as of very dubious authenticity and validity. It was really questionable if the chief or sachem of a tribe had such a vested right in any particular portion of territory as to have authority, on the con- sideration of a few perishable articles, to alienate it for all time from his temporary subjects and their posterity. If the Indians really owned it in anyway equivalent to our own tenure of possession, it is evident that, if not a permanent annuity of perpetual benefit with a share to all, at least some better mode of compensation than that of a trifling gift so soon to perish in the using should have balanced the transfer. It soon appeared, however, in many cases, that the Indians supposed that these deeds of theirs to the whites merely conferred upon- the latter a right of joint occupancy with themselves. They seem to have had no idea that they had shut themselves out for all time from the liberty of roaming over their lands. King Philip, though he had been lavishly free in his gifts of large areas of land to the men of Plymouth, soon came to make bitter com- plaints against the white man's clearings and fences, as disabling the red man from using the regions in common. There is no early contemporary notice of any claim set up by Indians on the score of their territorial rights on the peninsula of Boston, nor of any negotiations for a purchase or payment by the whites. It was only after more than a half century had elapsed since its settlement, when, in 1684, such claim was asserted and satisfied, that we learn that it had been ad- vanced some time previously. Finding the spot desolate, except as Mr. Blackstone had a lonely residence here, the whites inferred that its former occupants had perished by the plague, or had deserted it, so that they them- selves were free to take possession. Nor do we know of the occasion which- prompted the demand for remuneration when it was subsequently made. There is in the Suff'olk Registry a copy of an Indian deed of Boston, record- ed in 1708. It appears that at a town-meeting on June 18, 1685, a citizen of Boston, who was joined by some associates, was charged with the office of purchasing any claim, " legal or pretended," which the Indians might advance to " Deare Island, the Necke of Boston, or any parte thereof" The Indian chief in the negotiation was Wampatuck, by the English called Charles Josias, grandson of Chickataubut, who, the deed recites, " upon the first coming of the English, for encouragement thereof, did grant, sell, alienate, and confirm unto them and their assigns forever all that Neck of land, in order to their settling and building a Town there, now known by the VOL I. — 32. 250 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. name of Boston, as it is environed by the Sea, and by the Hne of Roxbury, and the island called Deer Island, about two leagues easterly from Boston, &c., — which have been quietly possessed by the said English for the space of about five-and-fifty years last past." This deed — on the consideration of " a valuable sum of money," the amount not being stated — was signed by the marks of the chief and some of his Indian " counsellors," witnessed and acknowledged before magistrates.^ It is singular that neither the Court Records, Winthrop, nor any other writer at the time make any reference to the earlier transaction with Chickataubut, of whom, however, Winthrop has frequent mention during the three years in which he lived after the arrival of the English. Intimations have been dropped that this deferred record of a bargain with the Indians for the absolute ownership of the peninsula was shrewdly contrived by the astute authorities of the town, as they were trembling over the royal challenging of their Colony Charter, the fall of which might render worthless all grants of parcels of territory that depended upon legislation under it. Chickataubut resided at Neponset. As there is no evidence that he ever bestowed the land on the English by formal trans- fer, so it is certain that he never made objection to its occupancy by them, and that he never molested them. On the contrary, he seemed to welcome their presence, and put himself under their patronage. Such is the tenure of the white man's home on this ancient soil. There was never any serious collision on the spot between the natives and the occupants of Boston and its immediate neighborhood. The whites had to seek and destroy their enemies in places distant from these scenes when hostilities raged between them. There were occasional alarms in the early years, and measures of protection — like a night-watch, and orders re- quiring the colonists to have their arms in readiness — showed that the people were at times anxious and always on their guard. Very soon, however, the whites came to understand the relations between themselves and the rem- nant of the natives scattered in the neighborhood, and felt that they were reasonably secure from harm. The apprehension was rather from the mis- chief that might be done by strolling and pilfering individuals or small parties in the night or in the woods, the firing of scattered dwellings, or the murder of a traveller, than from any assault in force. Before Winthrop's party had occupied the peninsula, it had been visited, and the immediate surroundings by land and water had been explored, by a boat-load of men from Plymouth.2 There was not a single Indian found at the time on this 3 [This original deed is now in the possession v. 516, that, May 20, 16S6, a committee (.Samuel of General Charles G. Loring of Boston, and by Nowell, John Safifin, Timothy Prout) was ap- his permission is here given in heliotype, much pointed to receive from Rawson the secretary reduced. It is printed verbatim in the Mass. all such papers as referred to the negotiatioiis H,sL Soc. Proc, March, 1879, havmg been less to preserve the charter and to the Indian titles accurately prmted before by Snow in his Hist, of the land, and to preserve them —the "Mas- of Boston. Cf. Drake's Boston, p, 456. Mr. sachusetts books and papers "being about this Charles Deane has examined the question of the time transferred to the custody of Andros and comparative validity of the Indian and patent his secretaries. SewM Paf>ers,\. 16S. — Ed] titles to land, in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, Feb- 2 [jhis visit is recounted' in Mr. Adams's ruary, 1873. It appears by the Mass. Records, chapter of the present volume. — Ed.] ^ ^^^~ ^^ 5 E ^- A^ i^i^ h. 'liH t ■ 21 1^*3^ %'t. .•^l^'i 'i^f-.- '•:< t. ■ 00 I 00 VO I CM z; o o m O W ►J H M H O z; o u w C Q THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 25 1 peninsula. Some deserted wigwams were seen in various places. Weak and sparse groups of natives were met, or traces of their lingering presence were observed, up the banks of the Mystic and the Charles. The first sight of white men seemed always to alarm an Indian, and he was inclined to run away and hide himself. But the natives were generally reassured by a sign of amity. We read of some friendly manifestations, such as the exchange of a bass for an English biscuit, and of communications in answer to ques- tions so far as the parties could make themselves understood. Occasionally some native would appear wearing some article of European apparel, or having a foreign implement or tool, showing that the random intercourse of previous years, between foreign adventurers and fishermen, had already heralded the time for deliberate colonization. The people of Boston were soon well assured of the security of their own position. The easily-guarded peninsula hanging by the slender stem of a narrow neck of land to Roxbury, with tide-waters and flats nearly surrounding it, was safe against the artifices of Indian warfare. When settlements were made in the interior, the trees which were felled for a clearing were used for a stockade, — as, for instance, the present College Yard and Common at Cambridge were originally en- closed and fortified by palisades, the trees being driven closely into the ground, and their tops united by birch withes. Within this enclosure the people, when alarmed, took refuge, and the cattle, which browsed outside by day, were driven at night.^ Some months elapsed after the settlement before the whites had any intercourse with others of the natives than those who harbored north of Charles River. At the end of March, 1631, Winthrop mentions that " Chicatabot came from Neponset on the south, with his sannops and squaws," and presented him with a hogshead of Indian corn. The Gover- nor gave the party a dinner, with a cup of sack and beer, and to the men some tobacco. Three of the party remained over night. " Chickatabot being in English clothes, the Governour set him at his own table, where he behaved himself as soberly as an Englishman. The next day, after dinner, he returned home, the Governour giving him cheese and pease, and a mug and some other small things." The sachem repeated his visit in less than a month, wishing to trade with the Governor for an English suit. But Winthrop, reminding him that it was not seemly " for sagamores to truck," gave orders to his tailor, and had the chief " put into a very good new suit from head to foot." Food being put upon the table, the chief refused to eat till the Governor had said grace ; and after meat he was desired by the chief to return thanks. Winthrop received, as a return present, " two large skins of coat beaver." The Governor and the Court evidently tried to maintain relations of amity and equity with the natives near them. If a white man wronged an Indian he was duly punished, and required to make restitution. If the Indian was the trespasser, he in his turn suffered ; and if chastisement was the penalty decreed, another Indian was made to inflict it. 1 [Cf. Paige's Cambridge. — Ed.] 252 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. And here, with whatever of reHef the fact may afford us in a review of the fierce conflict with the natives at a distance in which, soldiers sent from Boston had a full share, it is to be frankly stated that the feuds and quarrels of contending Indian tribes furnished the occasion of the first, and one of the most ruthless, of our wars with the natives. Only because Indians were set against Indians, giving opportunity to the whites to find most effective allies in their forest warfare, could the early colonists from Spain, France, or England have been so uniformly the conquerors. It may safely be affirmed that if the natives of this continent had been at peace among themselves, and had offered a united resistance to the first feeble bands of European intruders, its occupation would have been long deferred. The region extending from the bounds of Rhode Island to the banks of the Hudson was at the time of the colonization held in strips of territory mainly by three tribes of the natives, who had long had feuds among themselves and with other tribes. They were the Narragansetts, the Mohegans, and the Pequots. The Mohegans were then tributaries of the Pequots, and were restive under subjection to their fierce and warlike conquerors, who were estimated to number at the time a thousand fighting men. Fair and fertile meadows, ponds, fresh and salt streams, and virgin forests made the region rich and attractive. To the mind and eye of the Puritan it would present itself as a portion of the heritage which God had given to his children, especially to his elect, which in this fulness of time was no longer to be scoured over by scant hordes of heathen barbarians, but to be turned to the uses of a thriftful civilization under the Gospel. The way in which this end was to be brought about would depend entirely upon the relation and attitude in which the savages should put themselves to the whites ; whether a friendly and docile one, — which would make them partners in a profitable trade, and easy subjects of conversion, — or one of hostility and resistance, using their own resources and modes of defensive and offensive warfare. The policy of the whites was to aggravate the dissensions of the tribes, and to make alliance with one or more of them. Winthrop records in March, 1631, the visit to Boston of a Connecticut Indian, probably a Mohegan, who invited the English to come and plant near the river, and who offered presents, with the promise of a profitable trade. His object proved to be to engage the interest of the whites against the Pequots. His errand was for the time unsuccessful. Further advances of a similar character were made afterwards, the result being to persuade the English that, sooner or later, they would need to interfere as umpires, and must use discretion in a wise regard to what would prove to be for their own interest. In 1633 the Pequots had savagely mutilated and murdered a party of English traders, who, under Captain Stone, of Virginia, had gone up the Connecticut. The Boston magistrates had instituted measures to call the Pequots to account, but nothing effectual was done. The Dutch had a fort on the river near Hartford, and the English had built one at its mouth. In 1636 several settlements had been made in Connecticut by THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 253 the English from Cambridge, Dorchester, and other places. John Oldham, of Watertown, had in that year been murdered, while on a trading voyage, by some Indians belonging on Block Island. To avenge this act our magistrates sent Endicott, as general, with a body of ninety men, with orders to kill all the male Indians on that island, sparing only the women and little children. He accomplished his bloody work only in part ; but after destroying all the corn-fields and wigwams, he turned to hunt the Pequots on the main. After this expedition, which simply exasperated the Pequots, they made a desperate effort to induce the Narragansetts to come into a league with them against the English. It seemed for a while as if they would succeed in this, and the consequences would doubtless have been most disastrous to the whites. The scheme was thwarted largely through the wise and friendly intervention of Roger Williams, whose diplomacy was made effective by the confidence which his red neighbors had in him. The Narragansett messengers then entered into a friendly league with the English in Boston.^ All through the winter of 1637 the Pequots continued to pick off the whites in their territory, and they mutilated, tortured, roasted, and mur- dered at least thirty victims, becoming more and more vindictive and cruel in their doings. There were then in r k fi Connecticut some two hundred and /> \)r\iti£^ ^^'^fn/tot. , / fifty Englishmen, and, as has been said, Qj ^ about a thousand Pequot " braves." /f^ The authorities in Connecticut reso- i^^Uryi -^^U^^''^-^ lutely started a military organization, f^^ giving the command to the redoubtable °,,, -r ^ ^ ... AUTOGRAPHS OF LEADERS IN THE WAR.^ John Mason, a Low-Country soldier, who had recently gone from Dorchester. Massachusetts and Plymouth contributed their quotas, having as allies the Mohegans, of whose fidelity they had fearful misgivings, but who proved constant though not very effec- tive. Of the hundred and sixty men raised by Massachusetts, only about 1 [This was in October, 1636. The famed in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. Cf. Arnold's Rhode Miantonomoh was the chief who came to Boston. Island, i. ch. iii. — Ed.I Savage's edition of Winthrop's New England, 2 [Mason's life has been written by Dr. Elh's i. 236. A view of the monument erected to in Sparks's series of biographies. He had lived Miantonomoh's memory is given in Bryant and in Dorchester from 1630 to 1635. The lines of _ his descendants are traced in the N. E. i-O^l H'^t- and Geneal. Reg., April, 1861, and ' 'int\\sHrcmoirofA/rs.MaryAnnaBoa>'d- man. New Haven, 1849. Stoughton was also a Dorchester man, and commanded the expedition that sailed from Boston in June, 1637, to follow up the successes of Gay's United Slates, ii. 95. As to the form of Mason. Gardiner was now a Connecticut man, Miantonomoh's name, see Dr. Trumbull in the but he had arrived in Boston and had been em- Hist. Mag. ii. 205. Letters of Roger Williams ployed as an engineer in planning the works on at this time are given in the " Winthrop Papers " Fort Hill in 1632. There is an account of him ■i(i>-nuiA^ .£^^t~^^M.SixUA*u^u^ 254 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. twenty, under Captain Underhill, — a good fighter, but a sorry scamp, — reached the scene in season to join with Mason in surprising the unsus- pecting and sleeping Pequots in one of their forts near the Mystic. Fire, lead, and steel, with the infuriated vengeance of Puritan soldiers against murderous and fiendish heathen, did effectively the exterminating work. Hundreds of the savages, in their maddened frenzy of fear and dismay, were shot or run through as they were impaled on their own palisades in their efforts to rush from their blazing wigwams, crowded within their frail enclosures. The English showed no mercy, for they felt none. The language and tone in which three of the leaders in the daring and desperate massacre have, as writers of little tracts, described the scene, indicate that they regarded themselves as engaged in a meritorious work, — in fact, as the willing agents of the Almighty, whose special providences were evidently engaged for their help. A very few of the wretched savages escaped to another fort, to which the victorious English followed them. This, how- ever, they soon abandoned, taking refuge, with their old people and chil- dren, in the protection of swamps and thickets. Here, too, the English, who had lost but two men killed, though they had many wounded, and who were now reinforced, pursued and surrounded them, allowing the aged and the children, by a parley, to come out. The men, however, were mostly slain, and the feeble remnant of them which sought protection among the so-called river Indians, higher up the Connecticut, and among the Mohawks, were but scornfully received, — the Pequot sachem, Sassacus, being beheaded by the latter. A few of the prisoners were sold in the West Indies as slaves, others were reduced to the same humiliation among the Mohegans, or as farm and house servants to the English, — a wretched fate for once free roamers of the wild woods. But the alliances into which the whites had entered in order to divide their savage foes were the occasions of future entanglements in a tortuous policy, and of later bloody struggles of an appalling character. Thus, in its origin, causes, and results, we read of the first fierce struggle of our ancestral stock with the aborigines on the soil which the new comers believed, or taught themselves to believe, belonged by the ordinance of Heaven to them. It is for later pages in this volume to follow their chronicles in a yet more desperate crisis, which brought extreme peril nearer to the homes and hearts of the people of Boston. ^ In all candor the admission must be made, that Christian white men, — Puritans, — with all the humanity which they practised towards their own brethren, and all the piety which they professed towards God, allowed themselves to be trained by the experience of Indian warfare into a savage cruelty and a desperate vengefulness, hardly distinguishing themselves at any point from the victims of their rage. This assertion covers not only the in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., x. Notes of his descend- furnished by Massachusetts, Boston supplied ants are given in Thompson's Hist, of Long twentv-six. — En.] Island, ii. 378, and in the Heraldic Journal, 1 [Chapter on " Philip's War," by the Rev. iii. 82. Of the one hundred and sixty men E.E.Hale. — Ed.] THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 255 infuriate warfare of our soldiers, but equally our legislative acts and meas- ures, and the temper and language of contemporary writers and historians, especially the foremost ones, who were clergymen, like Increase Mather and William Hubbard. The heat, the passion, the scorn, and the vindictiveness with which the last-named writers, for instance, have recorded our early Indian wars, certainly bring the frame of their spirits, if not their sense of humanity, under question.^ They and the English soldiers and magistrates whose deeds they record are entitled, however, to such palliating or explan- atory pleading in their behalf as their own circumstances and experiences, and the extremities of the situation in the times of which they wrote may fairly demand or allow. Our soldiers, magistrates, and early historians, if thus challenged, would have justified themselves, in the main, by referring to their own experience of Indian warfare, the atrocities and barbarities of which drove them to the desperate conviction that they were dealing rather with the fiends of hell — as indeed they said they were — than with creatures like themselves, however low in the scale of humanity. A review of our colonial and national history, reaching down to that of the years last passed, would present a mass of evidence to prove that white men on the border ^ [The principal early writers on the Pequot war are these : Mason wrote an account, which was given in good part by Increase Mather in his Relation of the Troubles in A^ew England, 1677, as being the work of John Allyn, Secre- tary of the Colony of Connecticut, but was printed from the original manuscript by Prince in 1736, and again, following Prince's edition, in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 120-153, ^'^^ once more reprinted by Sabinin 1869. Captain John Under- hill, of Boston, who had taken part in it, published News from America, London, 1638 (in Harvard College Library), which is reprinted in 3 Mass. Hist Coll. vi. Rev. Philip Vincent, also an eye- witness, published True Relation of the late Baitell fought in New England, London, 1637 (second edition, 1638, in Harvard College Library, and in the Prince Library), which is reprinted in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 29-43. Captain Lion Gardiner's Relation of the Pequot Wars was drawn up partly from old papers about twenty-three years after the war, and remained in manuscript till 1833, when it was printed in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 131-160. Drake thinks it the most valuable, in some re- spects, of all the early accounts. It is reprinted in the appendix of some copies of the edition of Penhallow's Indian Wars, edited by Dodge, Cin- cinnati, 1859. There are other contemporary accounts in Winthrop's New England ; and in Winthrop's letters given in Bradford's Plymouth Plantation, in R. C. Winthrop's Life and Letters of Winthrop, ii., and one of them in Morton's Memorial. Johnson, Wonder^^orkiiig Providence, gives some account; and a letter of Jonathan Brewster, describing its outbreak, is given in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, May, i860. Of the later narratives are Increase Mather's Relation, above mentioned, covering the Indian troubles, 1614-75, which has been of late years edited by S. G. Drake (in 1864). Cotton Ma- ther gives another account in his Magnalia, bk. vii. ch. vi. Hubbard's account covers 1607-77. The Boston edition, 1677, is called Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England, while there was an edition issued the same year in London under the title of The Present Stae of New England, being a Narrative, &c. Field, Indian Bibliography, p. 179, says there were two issues, if not two separate editions, in Boston in 1677, and he thinks the Boston and London edi- tions were in part printed simultaneously from copies of the same manuscript. S. G. Drake has edited it of late years, with a preface; and he says the best text is that of the second, 1677, edition, and that later editions have usually fol- lowed the inaccurate 1775 edition. Hubbard also gives a chapter to the Pequot war in his His- tory of New England. Hist. Mag., August and November, 1857 ; Sibley, Hai-vard Graduates, p. 60. M. C. Tyler, American Literature, ii. J35, characterizes these early chroniclers. Niles, " History of the French and Indian Wars," in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. and 4 ibid, v., is held by Palfrey to be not very accurate. The more ac- cessible modern writers are these : Drake, Book of the Indians, bk. ii. ch. vi., and " Notes " in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, 185"?, &c. ; Barry, Hist, of Mass. i. ch. viii.; Palfrey, New England, i. 456; Bryant and Gay, United States, ii. ch. i. ; Trumbull, History of Coitnec- ticut, iii. ch. v. ; G. E. Ellis, Life of John Mason, &c.— Ed.] 256 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. frontiers of civilization have steadily become more and more ruthless un- der these experiences of savage warfare. The complete extinction of the red race is the sole solution of the problem accepted by the vast majority of those soldiers or border settlers who have had to deal with savages. The Massachusetts Puritans may not have avowed this conviction so frankly as have many who have succeeded to them on this soil. But they seem to have acted in the full belief of it. It is observable in our early chronicles that the feelings with which our colonists regarded the natives, and the rela- tion in which they put themselves towards them, underwent a rapid change as the parties came into fuller acquaintance. At first the whites felt a vague sense of obligation to the savages on whose possessions they were entering, deeming themselves held, as superiors and as Christians, to offices of pity, help, and mercy to such forlorn heathen. Very soon, however, indifference, neglect, contempt, arbitrary assumption, and severe repression manifested themselves in all the white man's dealings with the Indians. Cotton Mather wrote of them: "These doleful creatures are the veriest ruins of mankind. One might see among them what a hard master the Devil is to the most devoted of his vassals." It was at once taken for granted by the colonists that the natives were natural subjects of the English monarch, bound to allegiance and obedience. So far as the savages comprehended the meaning of this assumption, they were at a loss to apprehend the grounds of it ; and though they were ingeniously induced to assent, it was evident that they were never really reconciled to it. The perplexity and the antagonism thus stirred in the breasts of the freemen of Nature were greatly strengthened when they came to learn that the English among them regarded them not only as fellow-subjects of the monarch across the sea, but as really their subjects, held to obedience and tribute to them, as their masters. The Indian was slow in coming to realize that the first appearance of a few not formidable parties of white men left here by vessels that at once sailed away, were but little ripples of one wave of the rolling tide which was soon to cover these shores and to surge on till it reached the further ocean. As soon as the ominous signs of the fate which awaited themselves were realized for what they foreboded, the savages were roused to a desperate but futile resistance. It was too late for them. The whites could not complain if against their implements of steel and their skill and firearms, the Indians made use of all the guile and strategy of their wilderness tactics, — the subtilty and secrecy of ambush, the midnight sur- prise, the arrow tipped with flaming tow to fire the thatched roof of the cabin, the skulking shot from behind a tree, and the arts learned from the couching and springing of the wild beasts of the forest. But the maxim that all tricks and frauds are fair in open war would not cover the revolting and torturous ingenuities of malice, rage, and fiendish cruelty by which the savages deferred the death and prolonged the exquisite torments of their victims. The midnight yells and shrieks which palsied with horror the in- mates of a rude cabin in the woods, the braining of infants, the agonies of THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 257 the gauntlet, the scornful mockings, aggravating death by slow fires, and all the cunning mutilations by which the savages surpassed the skill of the an- atomist and the vivisector in approaching but still avoiding the centres of vitality, naturally induced in the whites a belief that they were dealing with imps from Pandemonium. When report was made by two of the English, in a boat on the Connecticut, that they had seen the quartered bodies of two whites hanging on trees, and that Captain John Tilley, while fowling in a canoe, was seized by ambushed Pequots, who cut off his hands and feet, and praised him for his " stoutness '' under the torture in which he lingered for three days, white men, and white women too, were assured that humanity was left wholly out of the account, with every alleviating mercy of quick and painless death, in savage warfare. Instances are on record in our later annals of frontiersmen, who, having seen their wives and little ones subjected to all the barbarous outrages of Indian malignity, registered vows of vengeance, devoting the remainder of their lives to tramping and ambushing for the sole errand of destroying a holocaust of the red race. Our own colonists very soon came to regard the savages as simply the most noxious and ven- omous class of the vermin and serpents and wild-cats of thewoods. Happily it is not in our English, but in the Frenchman's chronicles of his retaliatory imitation of savage barbarities, that we read of the infliction by white men of the death by fire and torture of perfidious red men. But the records of the General Court of Massachusetts contain the tariff of premiums offered and paid for the scalps taken by our enlisted soldiers, or by our volunteers, from Indian men and women, boys and girls. It was the Rev. Solomon Stod- dard, of Northampton, who, after the horrors which Deerfield had twice suf- fered from Indian massacre, wrote to Governor Dudley, in 1703, a letter, from which the following is an extract, proposing that the English near him " may be put into y" way to hunt y" Indians with dogs as they doe bears," as is done in Virginia. He adds : " If y^ Indians were as other people are, and did manage their war fairly after y° manner of other nations, it might be looked upon as inhumane to pursue them in such a manner. But they are to be looked upon as thieves and murderers ; they doe acts of hostility without proclaiming war ; they don't appear openly in y° feeld to bid us battle ; they use those cruelly that fall into their hands ; they act like wolves and are to be dealt withall as wolves." ^ It is to be noticed also that, just pre- vious to our Pequot war, the colonists of Virginia had been nearly exter- minated by an Indian massacre, secretly and artfully planned, and awful in its havoc. We must turn now to another part of our theme concerning the relations between the colonists and the natives. Hardly more cheering is it in the review than that we have just rehearsed. Considering the emphasis laid upon the duty and purpose of efforts for the conversion of the natives in the charter of the colony, and by those who brought it with them, it must be admitted that little, if any, credit is due to them for labor spent or for ' 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. ii. 235-237. VOL. I.— 33. 258 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. success attained in that work. One signal achievement, a monument of holy zeal and pious toil, invested now with a pathetic interest, remains to us in Eliot's translation of the Bible into the Indian tongue, to testify to the consecrated labor of an individual to discharge a Christian obligation to the dark and doomed savage. A very few other names there are — like those of the Mayhews, Gookin, Cotton, Shepard, and Bourne — which deserve to be mentioned with respect and homage for their patient service in that unre- warding field. But neither the records of the Court, nor the attitude in which the large majority of the colonists put themselves toward the sacred task, or even towards those who assumed its heaviest responsibility, testify to any enthusiasm about it. It must be confessed, likewise, that the first general sense of obligation toward the savages was stirred by questionings and censures of the colonists from their friends in England, while, as may be considered pardonable on account of the poverty of our early days, the funds spent in the work came very largely from abroad. The colonists well knew how zealously, and with what in the view of the missionaries was regarded as rewarding success, the Franciscan and Jesuit priests in the French settlements had given themselves to the work of bringing savages within the fold of the Church. But neither the methods nor the fruits of this priestly zeal commended themselves to the Puritans. As we shall have occasion to notice, the Puritans thought an alleged convert made by the priests as hardly a whit better than a heathen. When John Eliot, of Roxbury, and Thomas Mayhew, of Martha's Vine- yard, almost simultaneously gave themselves to the work of converting the natives, some of the most inquisitive of the latter put to them the natural but embarrassing question, why the English should have allowed nearly thirty years, the period of a generation, to pass, since their first occupancy of the soil of Massachusetts, before beginning that work? The colonists had learned enough of the Indian tongue for the purposes of trade and barter. They had made the natives feel the power and superiority of the white man, who kept them at a distance as barbarians and pagans, holding them subject to his own laws for theft, polygamy, and murder, and waging dire war against them for acts which the Indians regarded as only a defence of their natural rights. Incidentally, indeed, the natives who had come into contact with the whites had received from them help, tools, appliances, and many comforts relieving the desolateness of their lot and life. But only after this long delay had the white man proposed to make the savages full sharers in his blessings of civilization and religion. The childlike sincerity of Eliot furnished him with a reply which best apologized for the neglect of the past by regret, and by the earnestness of his purpose for the future. The Presbyterian Baylie, in his invective against the New England " Church- Way," had charged upon its supporters that, " of all that ever crossed the America seas, they were the most neglectful of the work of conversion." He rests his charge upon quotations from the Key into the Language of America, written by Roger Williams on his voyage to England, in the spring THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 259 of 1643, which was pubhshed in London in the summer of that year. From another little essay of Williams's Baylie quotes the following sentences : " For our New England parts, I can speak it confidently, I know it to have been easie for myself long ere this to have brought many thousands of these natives, yea the whole community, to a far greater anti-Christian conversion than was ever heard of in America. I could have brought the whole countrey to have observed one day in seven, — I adde, to have received Baptisme; to have come to a stated Church meeting; to have maintained Priests and Forms of Prayer, and a whole form of anti-Christian worship in life and death. Wo be to me if I call that conversion to God, which is indeed the subversion of the souls of millions in Christendom from one false worship to another. God was pleased to give me a patient, painful spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes, to gain their tongue." By these censures the Court of Massachusetts may have been prompted to its action in March, 1644. Some of the sachems, with their subjects, were induced to come under a covenant of voluntary subjection to the Government, and into an agreement to worship the God of the English, to observe the com- mandments, to allow their children to be taught to read the Bible, &c. The county courts were ordered in the same year to take care for the civilization of the Indians, and for their instruction in the knowledge and worship of God. In the next year — 1645 — the Court desired that " the reverend Elders propose means to bring the natives to the knowledge of God and his wayes, and to civilize them as speedily as may be." President Dunster seems to have been regarded as eccentric in urging that the Indians were to be instructed through their own language rather than through the English. In November, 1646, the Court, admitting that the Indians were not to be compelled to accept Christianity, decreed that they were to be held amenable to what it regarded as simple natural religion, and so should be punished for blas- phemy, should be forbidden to worship false gods, and that all pow-wowing should at once be prohibited. "Necessary and wholesome laws for the reducing them to the civility of life " should be made, and read to them once in a year by some able interpreter. The ever-honored representative of Puritan zeal and piety in the service of the natives, who, with his co-workers, Mayhew and Gookin, can alone " match the Jesuit" in this work, was the famous John Eliot. Yet even he and his foremost assistants fell short of the extreme devotedness of the Jesuit, in lonely, isolated labor and peril, as in the depths of the wilderness he identified himself in manner of life with the savage. The modest Eliot, who had been called " the Indian Evangelist " in a tract by Edward Winslow, objected to bearing the title, as in use " for that extraordinary office men- tioned in the New Testament," and asked that the sacred word should " be obliterated in any copies of the books that remain unsold." What would Eliot have said to the title of " Apostle," which he has long borne, and will ever bear unchallenged ; or even to that of " the Augustine of New England," which M. Du Ponceau attached to his name? 26o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Eliot, born in 1604,^ came to New England in 163 1, and was settled as pastor in Roxbury the next year, having declined the office in the Boston Church. He served in his pastorate till his death in 1690, at the age of 86 ; his faithful partner, who had come over from England to be married to him, dying shortly before him, in her 84th year. From his first settlement, Eliot had given thought and heart to the welfare of the natives. As soon as his efforts seemed hopeful to himself, he met with incredulity and even oppo- sition from many around him. It must be confessed that only from a very few, and those most earnest in their own piety, did he ever receive full sym- pathy ; and this in but rare cases reached to enthusiasm. Winslow, the agent of the Colony in England, won friends for Eliot's object there, and brought about the incorporation of a society, in 1649, which furnished funds for its encouragement. To that same society Harvard College, in its early poverty and struggles, was more largely indebted than has been generally recognized. The Massachusetts Court, in 1647, voted Eliot a gratuity often pounds for his work. Eliot says that an Indian taken in the Pequot wars, and who lived in Dorchester, was the first native " whom he used to teach him words, and to be his interpreter." He took the most unwearied pains in his strange lessons from this uncouth teacher, finding progress very slow and baffling, receiving no aid from the other tongues which he had learned and taught in England and which were so differently constituted, inflected, and augmented. Though he is regarded as having gained an amazing mastery of the Indian language, he frequently, even at the close of a half century in his work, avows and laments his lack of skill in it. He secured from time to time what he calls the more " nimble-witted " natives, young or grown, to live with him in Roxbury, and to accompany him on his visits, to interchange with him words and ideas. A beautiful tribute was borne to him by Shepard, of Cambridge, who said that while some of the English exceeded Eliot in con- verse with the Indians about common matters, trade, &c., " in sacred lan- guage, about the holy things of God, Mr. Eliot excels any other of the English." Differences of judgment have been expressed as to the capacity 1 [An account of his ancestry is given in 1680, also gives an account of an interview. It "The Pilgrim Fathers of Nazing," in the N. E. is printed in the Long Island Hist. Soc. Coll., and Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1874. The will of extracted from in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, May, his father, Bennett Elliott, with notes, is given 1874. There are various later lives of Eliot, one in the Heraldic Journal, iv. 182. His descend- by Convers Francis ; another in Mass. Hist. Soc. ants are given in W. S. Porter's Genealogy of the Coll. viii.; one in the Methodist Magazine, 1818; Eliots, New Haven, 1854. The tabular pedigree others by Dearborn, Thornton, and N. Adams' given in Drake's Boston was prepared by William and a sketch by Miss Yonge in her Pioneers and H. Whitmore, who had printed ten copies of it Founders. A paper by the Rev. Martin Moore in a somewhat different form,previously, in 1857. on Eliot and his converts in the Amer. Quarterly He has also traced the family in the N. E. Hist. Register is reprinted in Beach's Indian Mis- and Geneal. Reg., July, 1869. The earliest life cellany. Cf. Biglow's Hist, of Natick, and the of Eliot is Cotton Mather's, 1691, afterwards accounts of Natick and Newton in the History embodied in his Magnalia, which is largely bor- of Middlesex County, ii. The general historians, rowed from by Dunton, who describes a visit to Hubbard, Palfrey, Barry, &c., of course deal with Eliot in 1686. Dunton's Letters, p. 192 ; Drake, the subject. — Ed.] Town of Roxbury, p. 185. Danker's Journal, THE INDIANS OF EAS'lERN MASSACHUSETTS. 261 and adaptability of the Indian tongue for converse on themes of dignity, in abstract discourse. Mr. Leverich, of Sandwich, a successful Indian preacher, highly commended the language for such uses. Eliot thought Mr. Cotton, of Plymouth, his own superior in the mastery of it. Only after two years THE APOSTLE ELIOT."" Study did he venture to preach in it, but even then he would not offer prayer in it. On the 28th of October, 1646, on a hill in Nonantum, Eliot first preached to the chief Waban and some of his subjects in their own tongue a discourse from Ezekiel, xxxviii. 9, of an hour and a quarter in length. ^ [This cut is made, by permission, from a photograph of a portrait owned by Mrs. William Whiting, of Roxbury, which bears the following inscription in the upper left-hand corner : "John Elliot, the Apostle of the Indians. Nascit. 1604. Obit, 1690," — which constitutes the only direct evidence of its authenticity. If authentic, it must have been painted in this country, for Eliot never returned to England. It would have been nat- ural for Boyle to have employed some one to portray the missionary in whose labors he had taken so much interest. In 1851 the late Hon. William Whiting, M.C., found the painting in the shop of a dealer in London, who seemed to have a notion that the " Indians " were East Indians. He could give no account of the source from which the picture came, having purchased it with others. — Ed ] 262 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. His prayer was in English, as he scrupled lest he might use some unfit or unworthy terms in the solemn office. This prompted an inquiry from his interested but bewildered listeners, whether God would understand prayer offered to him in the Indian tongue? His method in subsequent visits, when he gained more confidence, was to off"er a short prayer in Indian, to recite and explain the Ten Commandments, to describe the character, work, and offices of Christ as Saviour and Judge, to tell his hearers about the crea- tion, fall, and redemption of man, and to persuade them to repentance. He then encouraged them to put any questions that rose to their minds, prom- ising them answers and explanations. Some of their queries were so apt and pertinent, indicating much acumen, that their good friend was often puzzled to satisfy them. Cotton Mather, in commending Eliot's style in sermoniz- ing, said : " Lambs might wade into his discourses on those texts and themes wherein elephants might swim." Such a style must have been equally suited to his white and red auditors. Some of the leading men of the colony, magistrates and ministers, occasionally accompanied Eliot on his preaching visits, and however they may have fallen short of his enthusiasm and hopefulness, they gratefully appreciated his devotion and zeal. From the very entrance upon his work, Eliot set before himself an aim and plan, as the prime conditions of any successful eff"ort for the sure and permanent benefit of the natives, which put him and other Puritan, and indeed all Protestant, missionaries to the Indians into the broadest possible diver- gence from the methods of the Jesuits. These latter sought to interfere as slightly as possible with the native habits, the wild ways, the freedom and impulses of the savages. As a general thing all the French colonists, lay and clerical, associating with the Indians, compromised themselves and their own civilization by meeting the Indians more than half way, by living with them on easy if not equal terms, adopting their free habits, indulging their humors, and scrupulously avoiding all crossing their inclinations or shocking their prejudices. The Frenchmen did not bind the savages to fixed resi- dences, nor compel them to live in houses, to wear white men's clothing, to be scrupulous about cleanliness, or dainty in their food. They shared the natives' wigwams, their loathsome cookery, not troubled much by contact with their filth, vermin, and immodesty. A few simply ritual ceremonies, a repetition of prayer or chant, and the baptismal rite turned the doomed heathen into a lovely Christian, and set him in equality with the Frenchman. All didactic, moral, intellectual training was regarded as needless or unes- sential. The simplest assent to the chief and to a few subordinate doctrines or dogmas of the Church was all sufficient. A savage might, under the stress of circumstances, pass through the saving, and, so to speak, the con- verting and Christianizing, process within ten minutes, or even in one. Quite otherwise did Eliot apprehend the conditions of his exacting work, if it was to have any measure of assurance for success. He aimed to establish com- munities of the Indians in fixed settlements, exclusively their own with en- tirely changed habits of life, dependent no longer upon hunting and'roaming THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 263 but pursuing industrious occupations, with lands cleared and fenced, mod- estly clothed, living in houses, regarding propriety and decency. Ultimately they were to have local magistrates, mechanics, teachers, and preachers of their own race, with all the comforts and securities of the towns of the white men, and organized and covenanted churches. He wrote, " I find it abso- lutely necessary to carry on civility with religion." After deliberate exam- ination of several localities, Eliot made choice of a region which still bears its original name, Natick, for his fond experiment for the subjects of his care, who came to be known as " the praying Indians." A considerable company of the natives was gathered here in 1651. Eliot kept the General Court informed of all his proceedings, and sought its sympathy and aid. It is curious to read on the Records enactments by which portions of our wilderness territory, the whole of which had so recently been regarded by the savages as in their unchallenged ownership, were bounded off, as hence- forward to be their own for improvement. There does not seem to have been much heartiness^in this legislation, the kind purpose of which alternated with measures of apprehension, caution, and restraint. There was always a party in the colony, not wholly composed of the " ungodly," or the unfeel- ing and self-seeking classes, who looked with distrust, indifference, or avowed hostility upon the work of Eliot and his supporters. Such persons thought they had come fully to understand what an Indian was in blood and fibre, in native proclivity and irreclaimable savagery. Indeed, some of them saw in specimens of the first alleged converts to the white man's faith and ways satisfactory evidence either that the Indian could not really be transformed and renewed, or that he was not worth the labor spent on his conversion. The experiment at Natick, the first of a series of a dozen others made with degrees of completeness in plan in several places, was, like most of them, under the special care of Eliot. He was modest, unassuming, deferential, ready to yield his own preferen- m- J" Z'- wt" / ^ ces, and ever cautious, while seek- (yaJ^cA ^'^^'.z ' ' ing wisdom from others. At one / // interval he seems to have had ^ _ encouragement of full rewarding JT^"^ " success. While religiously faith- o/i^ c<,y<^/s^^ ^ /^ U^^^cJ^ ful to all the exacting routine of duty in his Roxbury parish, his rule was to visit Natick once a fortnight, visiting in the alternate week the wigwam of Cutshamakin, in Dorchester, in all weathers ; riding on his horse eighteen miles by a way through woods, over hills and swamps and streams, which his journeys opened into a road. He carried with him heavy and miscella- neous burdens. Though his own beverage was water, his diet the simplest, and he abhorred tobacco, he was willing that the Indians should in some cases have wine, while he himself replenished their pipes. He always had apples, nuts, and other little gifts for the pappooses. He had acquired that fine 1 [The letter to which this is the subscription inet, " Miscellaneous," 1632-1795, p. 9, and it is is in the Massachusetts Historical Society's cab- printed in Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 201. — Ed.] 264 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. accomplishment of being a graceful beggar of something from everybody, — his own comfort and needs dropping out of thought in his care for others. The cast-off clothing, and even much that had not come to that indignity, of his own parishioners and friends and the widest compass of neighbors, was solicited, and generally was borne on his horse's shoulders or crupper, to eke out the civilized array of his red pupils. Without over- wrought enthusiasm, and with meek patience and slow, steady advances, Eliot met all the obstacles which he looked for in dealing with an intracta- ble race. With the same mild virtues he parried the distrust and opposition of many around him. Even some sincere but misgiving lookers-on thought he was anticipating a work which should be deferred till the time was prov- identially reached " for the coming in of y' fulness of y" Gentiles." The worldHng complained of him for injuring the trade in peltry with the Indians. The magistrates were by no means always faithful in keeping even the letter of their covenants, and were cool as to the spirit of them. Meanwhile the Indian pow-wows, magicians, sorcerers, medicine-men, were secretly jealous, sometimes actively hostile. The sachems were deprived of tribute from their subjects. King Philip, hearing of the work across his borders, positively refused to entertain the missionaries, to listen to their teaching, or to allow his subjects to be approached by it. And he spoke in bitter contempt of the English creed and religion. Roger Williams wrote, in 1654, that in his recent visit to England he had been charged by the Narragansett sachems to petition Cromwell and the council in their behalf, that they should not be compelled to change their religion. King Philip, taking hold of one of Eliot's coat-buttons, told him he cared no more for his religion than for that. This desperate hard-heartedness in Philip prompted Cotton Mather to speak of him as " a blasphemous Leviathan." Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, forbade any proselyting work among his Indians. The bounds for the Indian town of Natick — "the place of hills" — were drawn by the Court in 1652. Over Charles River, which ran through it, sometimes fordable, sometimes swollen, the natives built a strong arched foot-bridge, eighty feet long, and eight feet high, its piles laden with stone. The rude builders were especially proud of their work, which stood firm, while in the next freshet an English bridge near by, in Medfield, was carried down the stream. Three wide parallel streets, two on one side and one on the other of the river, ran through the town. The territory was portioned into lots for houses, tillage, and pasturage. Fruit-trees were planted, with walls and fences. A palisadoed fort enclosed a meeting-house fifty feet long, twenty- five wide, and twelve high, built of squared timber, in English fashion, by the natives, with two days' aid from an English carpenter. The space within was to be used for a school, and for preaching and worship, while the attic, besides a store-room, contained a bed-room for Eliot ; for, unlike the Jesuit missionary, he insisted on his own privacy, and brought with him food pre- pared by his wife, as his English stomach would not bear the diet and culi- nary work and apparatus of the natives. His average Indian auditory was THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 265 about an hundred, a few whites being generally present The place soon began to wear the air of industry and thrift, with a show of comfort. The Indians were indulged in their antipathy to the English style of houses and lodgings, but cleanliness and decency, for which the natives were utterly and unblushingly wanting all sense, were rigidly insisted upon. Eliot established over them a theocratic and Jewish form of municipal government, by rulers of tens, fifties, and an hundred. They came to have magistrates and school teachers, of both sexes, of their own race. They entered into a solemn rehgious covenant. Sept 24, 165 1 , " with God and each other, to be governed by the Word of the Lord in all things." The most earnest efforts were made for the primer and catechetical teaching of the children in English, and also in preparing youth, by a dame and a grammar-school at Cam- bridge, for entering Harvard College, so that there might be well-instructed Indian and English preachers in both tongues. Eliot, by letter and report,^ steadily kept the society and its officers in England informed of the progress of his holy work. His letters, hopeful and genial, are also frank, candid, and not greatly over-colored. A series of now very rare tracts and essays were printed at the time, which modestly take their titles from the stages of advance, — as " The Day Breaks," " The Dawn Advances," " The Clear Orb appears and mounts to the Meridian." ^ The crowning aim for which the devout and single-hearted Indian Apostle was laboring — with no undue expectancy, well knowing that it must be de- layed and toiled for till it came with its own assurance of ripeness and joy — was that he might live to find all the needful sacred conditions fulfilled in which he might gather "a Church of Christ" after the Puritan fashion, composed of regenerated and covenanted Indian men and women, with the seals of the sacraments, and a baptized flock. This required "a company of saints by profession and in the judgement of charity." The strict observance of the Sabbath, family prayer, grace at meals, Bible-reading, a conviction of their sinful and lost state, spiritual experience of renewal, and a sincere purpose to lead a godly, consistent life were the means and stages of the culminating result. The Indian pastor must rival in ability, attainment, zeal, and piety the English minister, and, putting himself in communion with sister churches, his own flock must be equal to them in all gospel relations. The brethren and sisters, when thus covenanted, would have a strict watch and ward over 1 [Various letters of Eliot to the corporation them, and several are reprinted in 3 Mass. Hist. are printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc , November, Coll. iv. 1879. There are others in Birch's Life of Robert Dr. Trumbull's Origin and Early Progress of Boyle. — Ed.] Indian Missions in Ne^o England vias privately 2 [The bibliography of thi.s series of tracts Ts^rmte-Ami^iT^homthe Atner.Anliq. Soc. Proc. can be followed in Dr. Henry M. Dexter's ex- Single tracts have been printed or reprinted in haustive "Bibliography of Congregationalism," different places, as Eliot's "Dying Speeches of appended to his Congregationalism as seen in its several Indians," in the Sabbath at Home, r868, p. Literature, \.?&o. A very valuable series of copies 333, and in the Prince Society's edition of /??/«- is recorded, with notes by Dr. Trumbull, in the ton's Letters ; the " Clear Sunshine," in Thomas Brinley Catalogue, p. 52, &c. Cf. also Field's Shepard's Works, ii. ; and Eliot's Brief Narrative, Indian Bibliography. 1670, by Marvin of Boston, &c. See Dr. Trum- Sabin, of New York, has reprinted some of bull's chapter in the present volume. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 34. 266 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. each other, jealously guarding themselves against reproach or scandal, keep- ing all wrong-doers in awe, attracting the well-disposed, and proving them- selves a body of the elect. The wisest and most sincerely earnest and good among men, in all their private aims and public plans, have always found their accomplished results to fall widely short of their purposes; and in such disappointments of experience, all the noble and earnest effort that has been spent must be regarded as a moral equivalent to what was looked for as success. It can- not be claimed that on any large public scale, either of expense or interest, Massachusetts tried to fulfil its pledges or its obligations of humane. Chris- tian duty to the Indians. Indeed, some of the sharpest rebukes for its neglect and failure in this matter came from the more conscientious and scrupulous of its own people. Stoddard, of Northampton, wrote a lugubrious tract to prove that many of the severest calamities visited on the colony might be referred to the displeasure of Providence because so little had been done for the conversion of the savages. Notwithstanding all the justice of the admission thus made to the discredit of our fathers, it must still be affirmed that in full view of the difficulties of their position and of all the facts of the case, as we look back upon them, the efforts and toils of Eliot and his co-laborers, within the scale and with the means which limited their undertaking, were on the whole the most creditable, well-devised, and hope- ful enterprise of the kind ever put on trial on this continent. The labors of the Jesuit priests among the savages, heroic, self-sacrificing, and constant to death, were, in the view of the missionaries themselves, fully rewarded in their results. But religious Protestants at the time regarded the boasted triumphs of the Church and the Cross among the savages, and all the fond complacency of the priests, with simple disgust and contempt. Not the first step had in their opinion been taken, or even attempted, to secure what they believed to be the true process of saving conversion in the heart and conscience of the savage. He had been taught a few " mummeries," had been sprinkled with water in the outward form of baptism, and then had been left, in habit and way of life, as much of a savage as before. The task to which the Puritan missionary set himself, as conditioning his success, was a far more exacting and complicated one. Full civilization, if it did not with him take precedence of Christian conversion, was the essential accom- paniment of it. Cleanliness, decency, a humanized heart, monogamy, chas- tity, daily labor in some industrious calling, ability to read, and a quickened intellectual activity, could alone serve as a basis for the hopeful material out of which to make Christians. The Puritan was also vastly embarrassed and put at extreme disadvantage by his own creed, and by the requisitions which he felt obliged to make of converts through a training in doctrinal divinity and experimental religion. Calvinism has always proved hard teaching to heathens of any type, and the Calvinism of the Puritans was, as we shall soon see, offered to especially difficult pupils of it. The proffer to the sav- ages was a gospel of " Good-News," of joy and blessing. Its first message THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 267 to them was that they were all under the curse of the Englishman's God, and doomed to a fearful hell forever. They had not been aware of their dreadful condition in these respects ; and between the difficulty of making them understand and realize this their desperate state, and of bringing them to avail themselves of the method which alone promised deliverance from it, the Puritan set himself to a very hard task. Considering these facts in con- nection with the well-devised purposes of Eliot, the patient, persistent, and tentative plans which he pursued for realizing them must be held worthy of the distinctive commendation just assigned to them. Nor can the disas- trous failure of any long result from his labors, — attributable largely to the calamity of King Philip's war, — be regarded as essentially derogating from this commendation. It might be claimed that the Moravians among the In- dians of Pennsylvania had been more wise and successful in their work than was the Puritan Eliot. The Moravians have often been presented as models for Protestant missionaries among the savages. But it is to be remembered that their efforts were made later, with the help of much hard-earned expe- rience ; that the subjects of their noble labors were mainly remnants of tribes of humbled, subject savages, — "women," as their proud barbarian con- querors called them, — and that, if the Moravians proffered the same essen- tial creed for converts, they used it a little more manageably. But the Moravians gained much by making a common home with their wild pupils, as the Puritans did not. Though the culmination of his labors in a Christian church, in mem- bership, pastor, and officers composed wholly of Indians, was an object so dear to the heart of Eliot, and many of his converts were importu- nately impatient to realize the promised boon, his own good sense and well- poised discretion deferred the result for four full years. These years he had improved by secluding his converts from the white settlements, and by keeping them to hard labor, while they were diligently instructed. They showed considerable skill in handicrafts and also in municipal administration. In 1656 the Court had commissioned Major Daniel Gookin, a man of noble and lovable character, and Eliot's most attached co-worker, as the general magistrate of all the Indian towns. The income of the English society for converting and civilizing the Indians, — amounting to the then large sum of about seven hundred pounds, — was freely spent in the salaries of mission- aries and teachers, in printing, and in furnishing goods, tools, clothing, &c., for those under training. The first brick edifice in the college yard at Cam- bridge was built by the funds of this society, and was called " the Indian College," being designed to accommodate twenty native pupils. There the Indian Bible was afterwards printed, with primers, tracts, &c. A vessel lad- en with utensils and tools for Natick, sent over by this society, was wrecked on Cohasset rocks, but some of the freight was saved. Eliot told his bewildered converts that Satan, in his spite, wrecked the vessel, while God in mercy saved some of the cargo. Eliot's salary from the society rose from twenty to forty, and finally to fifty pounds. 268 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. On the very eve of the occasion for instituting the church at Natick, "three Indians of y= unsound sort, had got several quarts of strong water." The natural consequences followed. Of this Eliot says, " There fell out a very great discouragement, which might have been a scandal to them, and I doubt not but Satan intended it so. But the Lord improved it to stir up faith and prayer, and so turned it another way ! " Serene and mighty is that assuring trust which can thus allot the bane and blessing of human life to two agents, a lesser and a Mightier ! A suggestive scene is offered to an artist who would find a subject for his pencil in early New England History, in a visit received by Eliot at Roxbury, in 1650, from a most unwonted guest. In that year Governor D'Aillebout sent to the governors of this and of Plymouth Colony Father Druillettes, a Jesuit missionary among the Indians in Canada, to engage the English settlers in commercial relations, with a view also to secure them in alliance against the Mohawk Indians, the enemies of the French. There was then a law of our General Court that a Jesuit presuming to enter this jurisdiction should at once be banished, on pain of death if he ventured to return. Druillettes's diplomatic character was his security. He has left a charming letter in French describing his visit. Though he was unsuccess- ful in the object of his errand, he met with kind treatment and generous hospitality. Doubtless the Mass was for the first time celebrated in Boston by himself in a private room, with " a key " furnished him by his courteous host, Major Gibbons. Governor Endicott in Salem treated him in a friendly way, and talked French with him. Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, invited him to dinner, and, " it being Friday, entertained him with fish." The Father describes his visit to " Mr. Heliot " at Roxbury, who, it being November, invited him to stay with him, and thus defer his journey back to Canada through the wintry wilderness ; but the priest could not remain.^ The attractive scene for the artist is the interview between these two devoted missionaries to the Indians, who labored for them, each beyond the bounds of four-score years, representing the extremes and antagonisms of two creeds and policies in the method and aim of their work. Doubtless they conferred together as Christian gentlemen, perhaps on something in which they could accord, and oblivious of all that divided them. One loves to think of Eliot's humble cottage as thus graced. His Indian interpreter might have been crouching by the cheerful chimney; and one or more Indian youth, whom Eliot always had near him, might have looked on in wonder as the cassocked priest and the Puritan discussed the difficulties of the Indian tongues, in which both of them attained great skill, and accom- plished their ministry as translators and preachers. Eliot, in allowing and prompting his converts to ask questions, in order to make him sure that they understood his teachings, quickened in them a keen spirit of disputation and even casuistry. In the reports which he sent to 1 [See the conclusion of Mr. C. C. Smith's chapter in this volume, on "Boston and the Neigh- boring Jurisdictions." — Ed.] THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 269 England he often reveals some amusing illustrations of the acuteness and perplexity of the Indian intellect on the speculative and didactic themes of Calvinism. The excellent Gookin writes, " Divers of them had a faculty to frame hard and difficult questions, which Mr. Eliot did in a grave and Chris- tian manner endeavor to resolve and answer to their satisfaction.'' Being told that they were the children, not of God, but of the Devil, they were naturally interested chiefly in the latter. They asked, — ■ "Whether y" Devil or man was made first? Whether there might not be some- thing, if only a little, gained by praying to f Devil ? Why does not God, who has full power, kill y= Devil that makes aU men so bad? If God made Hell in one of the ' six days,' why did he make it before Adam had sinned ? If all y° world be burned up, where shall Hell be then ? Are all y- Indians who have died now in Hell, wliile only we are in y" way of getting to Heaven ? Why does not God give all men good hearts, that they may be good ? Whither do dying little children go, seeing that they have not sinned?" — "This question [says Eliot] gave occasion to teach them more fully original sin and the damned state of all men. I could give them no further comfort than that, when God elects the parents, he elects their seed also." " If a man should be inclosed in iron a foot thick, and thrown into the fire, how would his soul get out?" There is a sweet beauty in one of the questions put by a pupil of natural religion. " Can one be saved by reading y" Book of y° Creature? " [Na- ture.] Eliot says, " This question was made when I taught them that God gave us two Bookes, and that in y" Booke of y° Creature every creature was a word or sentence." The good Apostle records some that he calls " weak questions." Among these is the following : " What shall be in y roome of y" world when it is burnt up?" This he depreciates as a "woman's question," though it was not put by a woman. Only once does he record an instance of trifling : " We had this year a malignant, drunken Indian, that, to cast some reproach as wee feared upon this way, boldly pronounced this question : ' Mr. Eliot, who made Sack? Who made Sack?' [The word for all strong drinks.] He was presently snibbed [snubbed?] by y other Indians calling it a pappoose question, and seriously and gravely answered not so much to his question as to his spirit, which hath cooled his boldness ever since." The questioner was a sad reprobate. He stole, killed, and skinned a young cow, which he had the effrontery to pass off on President Dunster as a " moose." In deferring the entrance of his converts on a " Church Estate " till they were fully trained and disciplined, Eliot had to keep in view the coldness, jealousy, and still unreconciled opposition of many of his Puritan friends, who would be sadly affronted by any parody upon, or any debasement of the dignity of, their cherished institutions. But the day approached at last. In preparation for it Eliot painfully put some of his most promising subjects through the same process of " relation," " confession," and revealing of pri- vate religious " experience " which was required of members of his own 270 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. parish as a requisite to full church communion. A half dozen of these " exercises " he translated, wrote down, and submitted to his clerical breth- ren. Further " exercises " of the sort were called forth on a solemn Fast Day at Natick, Oct. 16, 1652. Still more " confessions " were heard at a great meeting of the Commissioners of the United Colonies at Roxbury in July 1654. Eliot said of some of his subjects, "We know y" profession of very many of them is but a meere paint, and their best graces nothing but meere flashes and pangs." " My desire is to be true to Christ, to their soules, and to y' churches." The listening to the confessions and to their interpretation was very tedious. " The work was long-som considering y° inlargement of spirit God gave some of them." Some of the English visi- tors "whispered and went out." Further delays occurred, and it was not till 1660 that a church of natives after the Puritan pattern was instituted at Natick. The marvellous accomplishment in Eliot's missionary work, — the trans- lation of the entire Scriptures into the Indian tongue, — so far from having been in his view when he began his labors, had been by him then regarded and pronounced an impossible task. The utmost he had hoped for was the translation of some parts of the Bible and of a few simple manuals. It is to be remembered that other conditions in his circumstances disabled him from the singleness of devotion enjoyed by a Jesuit priest. He was depend- ent for his support of himself and a family mainly on his salary as a hard-work- ing pastor in his own church. Besides a wife and a daughter, he had five sons, all of whom he trained for Harvard College. One of these died in his course ; the other four became preachers. Grammars and dictionaries of some of the native languages had been published in Spanish America a century be- fore Eliot began his labors. The English society cautioned him against putting any Scripture into print until he felt sure of his mastery of the In- dian tongue. A reviewer of Eliot's linguistic labors cannot repress the wish that he might have had the benefit and used the facilities of the modern art of phonography. It was found that while many of the English teachers spoke in Indian with great facility, in writing sentences of it they would use much diversity in the spelling and in the number of letters, and especially of consonants, guided, as they were, simply by the sound as they caught the gutturals and grunts of the natives. Thus on pages of the same book we find the two words aukooks and ohkukes, as the name of an Indian stone kettle. Cotton Mather thought that some Indian words had been lengthen- ing themselves out ever since the confusion of tongues at Babel. To us it seems as if an Indian root-word started little and compact, like one of their own pappooses, and then grew at either extremity, thickened in the middle, extended in shape and proportion in each limb, member, and feature, and was completed with a feathered head-knot. We might copy here some of their words, each of more than forty letters. The Jesuit Biard, in Acadia, says he was satisfied with translating into Indian, " y= Lord's Prayer, y" Salutation of y' Virgin, y"= Commandments of God and of y= Church, THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 27 1 with a short explanation "of y" Sacraments, and some Prayers, for this is all y= Theology they need." But Eliot, true to the Puritan idea that the Bible .ought to be to all Christians what the " Church " is to the Romanists, finally essayed a complete translation of both Testaments. So the patriarchal his- tory, the wars in Canaan, the Levitical institution, the Tabernacle and Tem- ple worship, the genealogical tables of Kings and Chronicles, and the technical arguments of the Epistles took their equal places with the Psalms of penitence and aspiration and of the sweet Benedictions and Parables of Christ. Eliot also made Indian catechisms and primers and a few devo- tional tracts, and put some psalms into Indian in metre. The restored King renewed the charter of the Parliamentary Corporation in aid of the Indian work which furnished type, paper, printer, and funds for the publica- tion of the Indian Bible. The New Testament appeared Sept. 5, 1661, the Old in 1663, and a copy, with a somewhat fulsome dedication, was richly bound and sent to Charles II. as the first European sovereign who ever received such a work with such " a superlative lustre " upon it from his sub- jects. As the book will be the appropriate matter for treatment in another place in this Memorial History, nothing more need be said about it here.'- It has now, in the score or more of copies of it which alone are extant, held at lofty valuations, but little other use than as the sight of it yields a sacramental power as a monument of holy — and must we say of wasted ? — toil. The reader may recall with quite other reflections the beautiful pas- sage in Hallam, as he notices the publication of the Latin or Mazarin Bible, " the earliest printed book, properly so called " : " We may see in imagina- tion this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicat- ing its first fruits to the service of Heaven." ^ What would have been the later working and the continuous and final results of the experiment tried among the Massachusetts Indians, had it been left to a peaceful development, is certainly a question of interest. It would find different answers according to the hopefulness or the distrust and misgivings which any one might bring to its consideration from his views of what has been or what might be the result of similar experiments. It is for us only to recognize the deplorable and disheartening catastrophe which brought such a grievous disappointment to Eliot and Gookin, with such bitter miseries on the " Praying Indians." That catastrophe was the outbreak of Philip's war, regarded by the whites as a conspiracy designed for, and at one interval darkly threatening, the utter extermination of the English settlements in New England. The outbreak occurred when about thirty years had passed in the trial of Eliot's fond experiment. There were then in the colony seven. tol- erably well-established villages of more or less civilized and Christianized ' [See the chapter by Dr. Trumbull on " The instruction in part of Job Nesutan, an Indian Indian Tongue and its Literature." Eliot is servant in his household. — Ed.] said to have learned the language under the " Literature of Europe, \. 2\\. 272 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. natives, and seven others in a crude state working toward that condition. The majority of the residents in the former of these villages had in the main abandoned a vagabond life, and were trying to subsist on the produce of the soil, on simple handicraft, and on wages paid them for labor by the whites, with occasional hunting and fishing. These more advanced villages had their forts, their outlying fields, fenced or walled, their more cleanly and decent cabins, their native mechanics, teachers, petty magistrates, and preachers, with schools and meeting-houses. Fruit-trees and growing crops gave a show of thrift and culture to the scenes. The subjects of all this care were, however, jealously watched and restrained in ways often irritating to them. There were rogues, pilferers, and nuisances among them. Doubtless they committed much mischief, and were suspected of some of which they were innocent. The old feehng of distrust, antipathy, and opposition to the experiment still lingered and perhaps was even strengthened among many of the English, who regarded the so-called " Praying Indians" a.s more of a nuisance than were those in a state of Nature, — as in fact mere hankerers for the " loaves and fishes," hypocrites, weaklings, shiftless and dependent paupers. Gookin's hopeful narrative of success could not have been long circulated in England before he was compelled, in 1677, to write a despond- ing one, which, remaining in obscurity in private hands for more than a cen- tury and a half, was only put in print as an antiquarian document in 1836.' Even at this day that later narrative will draw from the reader a pang of profound sympathy with the heart-agony of the writer of it. The gentle, earnest truthfulness, the sweet forbearance, the passionless tone, and the minute and well-authenticated matter of the record give to it a touching pathos and power. The substance of it is a rehearsal of the jealousies, apprehensions, and severe measures on the part of the authorities of Massa- chusetts in their dealing with the " Praying Indians " during the horrors, bar- barities, massacres, and burnings of the war instigated by the sachem of the Narragansetts with his red allies. Gookin and Eliot, perhaps over confident- ly, were persuaded that the Indians under their charge, in numbers, fidehty, and constancy, might have been most effective allies of the whites in the war, and that their settlements would be a wall of defence. But from the outbreak of that havoc of burning, pillage, and carnage, a panic-horror of dismay and awful apprehension seized many of the whites that the darkest treachery was working in the Indian towns among the viperous reptiles whom a weak sentimentality had warmed into life. Rumors filled the laden and melancholy air. A few certified occurrences there were which sufficed to warrant the darkest apprehensions. Tribes heretofore hostile to each other 1 [Daniel Gookin, in 1674, planned a history and Sufferings of the Christian Indians of New of New England, of which only the second vol- England," a manuscript written in 1677 and ume, " Hist. Coll. of the Indians in New Eng- dedicated to Robert lioyle, is printed in the land," is preserved and printed in i Mass. Archceologia Americana, ii. 423-564. A synopsis Hist. Coll. ;., and of this, chapter v. is given to of Gookin's historical writings is given in the the conversion of the natives of Massachusetts. N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1859 Cf. N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1859, There is a Gookin genealogy in the N. E. Hist. p. 347. His " Historical Account of the Doings and Geneal. Reg., 1847. — Ed-] THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 273 and harmless to the EngHsh were drawn into Philip's league. Just enough of cases of treachery occurred to confirm the panic-frenzy about the " nourishing of vipers." A few Indians slipped away from the towns, and were charged with burning barns and outbuildings, when possibly this was the work of malignant strollers, of whom there were enough in the woods. In no single instance, however, was a criminal act proved against any Indian that had had the confidence of Eliot or Gookin. Still, some of the natives under training, disgusted by restraint, or maddened by the jealousy and hate felt towards them, did leave the settlements ; and in the histories of some of our towns, published in recent years, we find antiquarian mention of one or more Natick, Grafton, or Marlborough Indians as seen among the files or ambushed parties of " the wily and hellish foe." There was no reasoning with the people under this panic. Eliot and Gookin became victims of dark animosity among the people, — the life of the latter being threatened in the streets because he pleaded so be- seechingly for confidence and mercy to his wards. Doubtless there would have been a popular rising if the Indians had been left in their towns. ^ The magistrates, to protect both parties, decided at first that the Indians should be moved from their distant settlements, and brought chiefly near the seaboard, — to Cambridge plains, Dorchester Neck, and Noddle's Island, and some to Concord and Mendon. This proposition only exasper- ated the residents in those towns, as it would but bring the dreaded scourge nearer. Finally it was decided to move the Indians from Natick, while their crops were ungathered, to Deer Island, then covered with forest trees and used for the grazing of sheep. A sad scene was presented in the autumn of 1675 at the site of the United States Arsenal, on Charles river, then called "The Pines." The Natick Indians, who had been temporarily brought there on foot, by horses and carts for the sick and lame, after a comforting prayer by Eliot, were, by the serving tide at midnight on October 30th, shipped in three vessels for the Island, — Eliot wrote, " patiently, humbly, and piously, without murmuring or complaining against y° English." They had a forlorn winter on the Island, which was bleak and cold and shelterless. Some of their corn was taken to them, " a boat and man was appointed to look after them." Their subsistence was largely from shell-fish. In the dire extremity of the continued war by Philip the English were finally in- duced to avail themselves of the service of a few of the " Praying Indians," for whose fidelity and constancy Eliot pledged himself. Indians again were used against Indians by the whites. The substitutes and allies, by their skill in forest strategy, proved of utmost use in the emergency. They stood nobly for their dubious benefactors, and some of them won special praise and rewards. They stripped and painted themselves, became Indians again like the enemy, tracked them to their lairs, brought home such captives as had not been massacred ; and so far as they were traitors it was to their own race. Gookin says that these red allies killed at least 400 of the 1 [Cf. Dr. Hale's section on "Boston in Philip's War." — Ed.] VOL. I. — 35. 2 74 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. enemy, " turning y balance to y'^ English side, so that y' enemy went down y" wind amain." The poor exiles from Natick were returned there in May, 1678. It was estimated at the time that about a fourth part of all the Indians in New England — those of Massachusetts being 3000 of that quarter — had been more or less influenced by civilization and Christianity ; and that had these been in full league with Philip, the whites would have been exterminated. After the war the stated places for Indian church settlements were reduced to four, while there were other temporary stations. There were ten stations in Plymouth Colony, the same number in the Vineyard, and five in Nantuck- et. President Mather, writing in 1687, said there were in New England six regular churches of baptized Indians, and eighteen assemblies of catechu- mens, twenty-four Indian preachers, and four English ministers who preached in Indian. A committee to visit Natick in 1698 reported a church there of seven men and three women (Indians), a native minister ordained by Eliot, 59 native men, 51 women, and 70 children. Up to 1733 all the town officers were Indians. The place was incorporated as an English town in 1762. In 1 792 there was in it but a single Indian family. At a local celebration there in 1846, the two-hundredth anniversary of Eliot's first service, a girl of six- teen was the only known native descendant. A copy of Eliot's Indian Bible, obtained from the library of the Hon. John Pickering for the purpose, was then deposited among the town records. No laments could deepen the melancholy in which this story finds its close. To moralize over it would be to open an inexhaustible theme. There were places in this State where feeble remnants of partially civilized natives remained a little longer than at Natick. But the longer they sur- vived the more forlorn was the spectacle they presented, as poor pension- ers and vagabonds, the virility of their native nobleness in the wild woods crushed in abject abasement before the white man, their veins mixed with African rather than with English blood. Humiliated, taciturn, retrospec- tive, and with no longer heritage, name, or progeny, they preached more suggestive and impressive sermons than were ever preached to them. Yet, as if in memorial of motives or compunctions which those who have driven them from the soil once' felt towards them, there are now vested charitable funds held for the benefit of those who are not here to receive it. "Alas ! for them, — their day is o'er, Their fires are out from shore to shore ; No more for them the wild deer bounds, The plough is on their hunting grounds ; The pale man's axe rings through their woods, The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods, Their pleasant springs are dry." ' -^^y^^. ^^^- 1 From Charles Sprague's Centennial Ode, 1S30. CHAPTER VII. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. BY CHARLES C. SMITH. Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society. FROM her fortunate position at the head of the bay, and from her comparatively large population and wealth, Boston was brought into more intimate relations with the neighboring English, French, and Dutch colonies than were sustained by any other Massachusetts town. But these relations arose mainly from the circumstance that the people of the town were led to engage in trade with the other colonies, partly by the ne- cessity of supplying the various wants of a growing community, and partly by the thrifty habits of the first settlers. With the Indians Boston seldom came into direct contact; and only once were there serious fears of an attack from them. This was in August, 1632, not quite two years after the settlement of the town, when "notice being given of ten sagamores and many Indians assembled at Muddy River,'' says Winthrop, "the governor sent Captain Underbill with twenty musketeers to discover, &c. ; but at Roxbury they heard they were broke up."^ While towns not more than twenty or thirty miles distant were the scenes of frequent alarms, Boston was happily preserved from the Indian torch and tomahawk. There was a limited trade with the Indians, but from the comparatively small number of them living near Boston it could never have been of much value to the town. The extensive maritime trade which sprang up at an early date had its origin, however, in a voyage to the Indian country. Only a few weeks after the naming of the town a vessel was sent south to buy corn. "About the end of October, this year, 1630, I joined with the governor and Mr. Maverick," says Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, "in sending out our pinnace to the Narragansetts, to trade for corn to supply our wants; but after the pinnace had doubled Cape Cod, she put into the next harbor she found, and there meeting with Indians, who showed their willingness to truck, she made her voyage there, and brought us a hundred bushels of corn, at about four shillings a bushel, which helped us some- what." 2 ^ Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 88. 2 Young, Chronicles of Mass., pp. 322, 323; 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii.42. 276 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. This expedition was more fortunate than that of the Salem people in the following year. In September, 1631, the Salem pinnace was sent out on a similar errand, but was driven by head winds into Plymouth harbor, "where," says Winthrop, "the governor, &c., fell out with them, not only forbidding them to trade, but also telling them they would oppose them by force, even to the spending of their lives, &c. ; whereupon they returned, and acquainting the governor of Massachusetts with it, he wrote to the governor of Plymouth this letter, here inserted with their answer, which came about a month after." ^ So far as is known, neither Winthrop's letter nor Bradford's reply has been preserved. But about the middle of Novem- ber, we are told, "the governor of Plymouth came to Boston, and lodged in the ship."^ The purpose of this visit was, no doubt, to settle the quarrel; and from that time the relations of the Boston and the Plymouth people were almost uniformly of a friendly, and sometimes of a very intimate character. In September of the next year Winthrop and Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, went on foot from Weymouth to Plymouth, where they partook of the communion with the Plymouth church, and afterward addressed the congregation.^ In June, 1647, Governor Bradford attended the synod at Cambridge as a messenger from the church of Plymouth.* In the latter part of 1646, Edward Winslow, at that time one of the Plymouth magistrates, was sent to England as the agent of Massachusetts to answer the complaints of Child and Gorton.^ At the very close of the colonial period the Plymouth Court passed a vote of thanks to-Increase Mather for his services in England, and desired Sir Henry Ashurst, who was made their agent, to consult with him about obtaining a charter for the colony;^ and it was mainly through Mather's efforts that Massachusetts and Plymouth were brought under one government.^ These instances are sufficient to show how intimate were the relations of the two colonies. The trade between Massachusetts and Virginia, of which Boston after- ward had the principal share, appears to have begun with Salem. In May, 1631, Winthrop records the arrival at Salem of "a pinnace of eighteen tons, laden with corn and tobacco. She was bound to the north, and put m there by foul weather. She sold her corn at ten shillings the bushel." ** It was probably some irregularity in the sale of this cargo which induced the General Court, at its next session, to order "that no person whatsoever shall buy corn or any other provision or merchantable commodity of any ship or bark that comes into this bay, without leave from the governor or some other of the assistants. "» In the beginning of 1632 a bark arrived here from Virginia, having been to the northern settlements and to Salem to sell corn. She remained in the harbor for nearly a month, when she 1 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 60. 6 Plymouth Col. Records, vi. 259, 260. ! ,\'^."?' P' ^''' ' Hutchinson, Hist, of the CoL of Mass. Bay, 3 Ibid. pp. 91, 92. pp. 405-407. * ^^'^- "■ 3°8- 8 Winthrop, H,st. of Xc,o England, i. 56. ^ Mass. Col. Records, ii. 162 ; Winthrop, Hist. 9 Mass. Col. Records, i. 88. of New England, ii. 298, 299. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 277 sailed again for Virginia, with Mr. Maverick's pinnace. ^ Not long afterward Captain Peirce arrived from England in the ship "Lion," and after discharg- ing his cargo and leaving his passengers, some of whom became prominent among the leading men in the Connecticut colony, he sailed for Virginia. In less than a week from the time of sailing his vessel was wrecked at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, to the serious loss of Boston and Plymouth. "Plymouth men," says Winthrop, "lost four hogsheads, nine hundred pounds of beaver, and two hundred otter skins. The governor of Massa- chusetts lost, in beaver and fish, which he sent to Virginia, &c., near ^lOO. Many others lost beaver, and Mr. Humfrey, fish."^ In the spring or sum- mer of 1644, after the great Indian massacre of that year, a considerable number of persons emigrated from Virginia to Massachusetts. The most conspicuous man among them was Captain Daniel Gookin, a name which will always be remembered in connection with the Christian Indians, of whom he was a steadfast friend. He is supposed to have arrived in Boston on the 20th of May, was made a freeman only nine days later, and was the last major-general in the colonial period.^ In May, 1642, about seventy persons in Virginia wrote to Boston, "bewailing their sad condition for want of the means of salvation, and earnestly entreating a supply of faithful ministers, whom, upon experience of their gifts and godliness, they might call to office." These letters were publicly read at the Thursday lecture ; and subsequently it was agreed that the ministers who could be spared best were Mr. Phillips, of Water- town, Mr. Tompson, of Braintree, and Mr. Miller, of Rowley, as each of these churches had two ministers. Various difficulties, however, arose, but finally Mr. Knowles, of Watertown, and Mr. Tompson, agreed to go, and in October they left for their new home, intending to embark at Narragan- sett.* Here they were wind-bound for several weeks, but in the mean time they were joined by another minister, — Mr. James, of New Haven; and after a long and perilous winter voyage they reached Virginia in safety. "There," says Winthrop, "they found very loving and liberal entertainment, and were bestowed in several places, not by the governor, but by some well- disposed people who desired their company." They were soon silenced, however, by the Virginia authorities, because they would not conform to the Church of England, and were ordered to leave the colony. They reached home in the summer of 1643.^ Puritanism could not thrive in Virginia under the shadow of Sir William Berkeley's administration. With North Carolina also Boston had early and intimate relations. Thirty years after the settlement of the town, just as the first generation had passed away, a party of emigrants, desirous, perhaps, of finding a more genial climate,^ established themselves at the mouth of Cape Fear River, 1 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 72. * Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 78. 2 Ibid. p. 102. ^ Ibid. p. 96; Hubbard, Hist, of New Eng- 2 Ibid. ii. 165, and Mr. Savage's note. [See land, in 2 Mass Hist. Coll., vi. 411. Dr. Ellis's chapter on "The Indians of Eastern ^ [Savage, Winthrop's New England, i. 118, Massachusetts." Ed.] has a note on the changes of climate. — Ed. | 278 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The enterprise met with l.ittle success, and in May, 1667, the General Court passed an order for the relief of the unfortunate settlement. " Upon the perusal of a letter sent from Mr. John Vassall, and the people with him at Cape Fear," the order recites, " directed to Major-General John Leverett, desiring that they may have some relief in their distress, and having infor- mation that the honored governor, deputy-governor, and some others of our honored magistrates encouraged a contribution for the relief of those peo- ple, the which contribution hath been made in many places, and hath been committed to the care of Mr. Peter Oliver and John Bateman, of Boston," — the Court ordered the said Mr. Peter Oliver and John Bateman to carry on the contributions, empowering them to receive the same ; and further order- ing them " to keep exact accounts of their receipts and disbursements, that they may render the same when they are called thereto by this Court." ^ This was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the contributions by which Boston and Massachusetts have afforded relief to other communities in times of sickness, famine, or disaster. In spite of the extreme aversion with which the settlers of Massachusetts regarded the Romish Church, there was some friendly intercourse with Maryland. In August, 1634, Winthrop records the arrival at Boston of a pinnace of about fifty tons " from Maryland upon Potomac River, with corn to exchange for fish and other commodities. The governor, Leonard Cal- vert, and two of the commissioners, wrote to the governor here, to make offer of trade of corn, etc., and the governor of Virginia wrote also on their behalf, and one Captain Young wrote to make offer to deliver cattle here. Near all their company came sick hither, and the merchant died within one week after."^ At a still later period, in July, 1642, there was another arri- val at Boston on a similar errand. "From Maryland," says Winthrop, "came one Mr. Neale with two pinnaces and commission from Mr. Calvert, the governor there, to buy mares and sheep, but having nothing to pay for them but bills charged upon the Lord Baltimore, in England, no man would deal with him. One of his vessels was so eaten with worms that he was forced to leave her." ^ Even more suggestive is a record which appears in October of the following year : " The Lord Baltimore being owner of much land near Virginia, being himself a Papist, and his brother, Mr. Cal- vert, the governor there, a Papist also, but the colony consisted both of Protestants and Papists, he wrote a letter to Captain Gibbons of Boston, and sent him a commission, wherein he made tender of land in Maryland, to any of ours that would transport themselves thither, with free liberty of religion, and all other privileges which the place afforded, paying such annual rent as should be agreed upon ; but our captain had no mind to further his desire herein, nor had any of our people temptation that way." * It would have been strange, indeed, if our Puritan ancestors could have so far overcome their aversion to Romanism as to leave a Puritan colony in ^ Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 337. s itij. ij, 72. 2 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 139. 4 i^jd. pp. ,48, 149. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 279 order to seek new homes in a colony founded and governed by Catholics. In spite of the ungenial climate and sterile soil of New England, there does not seem to have been much disposition among the first settlers to forsake Massachusetts for more attractive places. The removals from Cambridge and Dorchester to Connecticut are scarcely an exception to this statement ; and the number who went to the West Indies, to Long Island, or back to England, after the triumph of Puritanism there, was not large. Massachusetts had relations with the Swedes on the Delaware River at an early date, but an account of these relations belongs to the annals of the New England Confederacy rather than to the history of Boston.^ So early as 1 641 New Haven had established a trading-house there, near the Swed- ish fort, by the governor of which the New Haven people were badly treated. They made complaint to the Commissioners of the United Colo- nies, who wrote a letter to the Swedish governor, and sent an agent to treat with him for redress of grievances.^ Subsequently "the Swedes denied what they had been charged with," says Winthrop, " and sent copies of divers examinations upon oath taken in the cause, with a copy of all the proceedings between them and our friends of New Haven from the first; and in their letters used large expressions of their respect to the English, and particularly to our colony." ^ Early in 1644 a pinnace was sent from Boston to the Delaware to trade; but the voyage proved unsuccessful, partly through the refusal of the Dutch and Swedish governors to allow them to trade with the Indians, and partly through the drunkenness of the master. On the return of the pinnace the adventurers brought an action against the master, both for his drunkenness, and for not proceeding with the voyage as he was required to do by his charter. They recovered two hundred pounds from him, "which was too much," says Winthrop, " though he did deal badly with them, for it was very probable they could not have proceeded."* In the autumn a bark was sent from Boston, with seven men, for the same purpose. They remained near the English settlement all win- ter, and in the spring fell down the river to trade. In this they were so successful that in three weeks they had obtained five hundred fur-skins and other merchandise, when they were suddenly attacked by the Indians, who killed the master and three men, plundered the vessel, and carried away another man and a boy. Finally, the survivors were recovered by the Swed- ish governor, who sent them to New Haven. From that place they were brought to Boston.^ With the Dutch at New York there were various relations of trade and hostility. So early as September, 1642, the former had become so large that the General Court found it necessary to pass an order determining the value of Dutch coins; and they accordingly, "considering the oft occasions we have of trading with the Hollanders at the Dutch plantation, and other 1 [Cf. Frederic Kidder's paper on tlie Swedes ^ Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 140 ; on the Delaware, and their intercourse with New Plymouth Col. Records, ix. 13. England, in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan- ^ Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 157. uary, 1874, p. 42. — Ed.] * Ibid. p. 187. ^ Ibid. pp. 203, 204. 28o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. wise," ordered "that the Holland ducatour, worth three guilders, shall be current at six shillings in all payments within our jurisdiction, and the rix dollar, being two and one half guilders, shall be likewise current at five shillings, and the real of eight shall be also current at five shillings." ^ At a still earlier period, in August, 1634, we have Winthrop's testimony as to the extent and character of this trade. "Our neighbors of Plymouth, and we, had oft trade with the Dutch at Hudson's River, called by them New Netherlands," he writes. "We had from them about forty sheep, and beaver, and brass pieces, and sugar, &c., for sack, strong waters, linen cloth, and other commodities. They have a great trade of beaver, — about nine or ten thousand skins in a year." ^ In May, 1653, during the war between England and Holland, the General Court passed an order pro- hibiting all persons within their jurisdiction "from carrying provisions, as corn, beef, pease, bread, or pork, &c., into any of the plantations of Dutch or French inhabiting in any of the parts of America," under penalty of a fine of three times the value of the provisions carried in violation of the order.^ This prohibition remained in force until August, 1654, when the Court ordered that "the law made in May, 1653, prohibiting trade with the Dutch, be henceforth repealed." * When the Royal Commissioners sent over by Charles H. in the summer of 1664 visited Boston, one of the questions submitted to the General Court was whether the' Colony would send any men to assist in the expedi- tion against the Dutch of New Netherlands. This question having been decided in the affirmative, the Court, at the special session, August 3, ordered that there should be "voluntary soldiers raised in this jurisdiction for his Majesty's service against the Dutch, not exceeding the number of two hundred, to be ready to march by the 20th of this instant." ^ Accord- ingly officers were selected for " such forces as shall be raised in this juris- diction," and a committee was appointed to see if Mr. Graves would "dis- pense the word of God to such as are intended for this expedition." The volunteers were also to be allowed "an able chirurgeon, such as they can get, furnished with all things necessary for such service."'' Whether any volunteers actually enlisted in Boston under these and the other orders passed at the same time does not appear ; but the Royal Commissioners, when they left Boston, were accompanied by representatives from Massa- chusetts, and the Dutch did not venture to resist the force which shortly afterward appeared before the little fort on Manhattan Island. The Dutch settlements came under English control; and at a somewhat later period Boston and New York had the same governor. Both the colony of New Haven and the colony of Connecticut were set- tled in part from Massachusetts, and their relations with Boston were always more or less intimate ; but these relations, on one occasion, at least, ' Mass. Col. Records, ii. 29. 1 Ibid. p. 197. 2 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 138. " Ibid. vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 120. 3 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 120, « Ibid. p. 121. [See Mr. Deane's chapter in 121. the present volume. — Ed.] BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 281 were subject to colonial regulations which operated to the disadvantage of Boston, though for the general interest of the colony. In May, 1649, the General Court established retaliatory duties on " all goods belonging or appertaining to any inhabitant of the jurisdictions of Plymouth, Connecti- cut, or New Haven," imported into Boston or exported from any part of the bay.^ The occasion of the passage of this order was the approval by the Commissioners of the United Colonies of a duty on all corn or beaver skins belonging to the inhabitants of Springfield, which should pass the mouth of the Connecticut River. This duty was to be applied to the upholding of the fort at Saybrook, and not to be " continued longer than the fort in ques- tion is maintained, and the passage as at present thereby secured."^ Massa- chusetts, not unreasonably, objected that the fort was of little or no use for the purpose intended, and that the duty was continued after the fort was burned down.^ The passage of the retaliatory order must, however, have seriously affected the trade of Boston ; and at the session in May, 1650, in answer to a petition from the inhabitants of Boston for its repeal, the Court passed an order setting forth that "the Court (being credibly informed that the Court at Connecticut will, for the present, suspend the taking of any custom of us, and at their next General Court intend to repeal their order that requires it) do hereby order the suspension of that law of ours that requires any custom of the other confederate colonies until they shall know that Connecticut do take custom of us."* This was the only instance in which Massachusetts levied retaliatory duties on trade with the other English colonies, and it is the only instance in which Boston appears to have made special complaint. There were, indeed, numerous colonial regulations affecting trade ; but they were almost without exception based on obvious reasons of expediency, or concerned the other towns in the colony quite as much as they did Boston. For in- stance, in March, 1634-35, the Court passed an order forbidding any person to go on board of any ship, without leave of one of the Assistants, until she had lain at anchor at Nantasket, or within some inhabited harbor, for twenty- four hours, under penalty of "confiscation of all his estate, and such further punishment as the Court shall think meet to inflict."^ At the same session it was ordered " that no person whatsoever, either people of this jurisdiction or strangers, shall buy any commodity of any ship or other vessel that comes into this jurisdiction without license from the governor for the time being, under the penalty of confiscation of such goods as shall be so bought, or the value of them." ^ The first of these orders was repealed in the following September ; "^ and the other in May, 1636.^ In November, 1655, the General 1 Mass. Col. Records, \\. 269. become the minister of tlie First Church; but 2 Plymouth Col. Records, ix. 93. the account of that important controversy be- ^ Ibid. pp. 90, 133. longs to another chapter of this history. [See * Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. II. It Mr. Foote's chapter. — Ed.] should not be forgotten that the formation of ^ Mass. Col. Records, i. 136. the third church in Boston, known to us as the ^ Ibid. p. 141. Old South, was owing to the invitation extended ' Ibid. pp. 159, 160. to the Rev. John Davenport of New Haven to ' Ibid. p. 174. VOL. I. — 36. 282 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Court, taking into " serious consideration the great necessity of upholding the staple commodities of this country for the supply and support of the inhabitants thereof," absolutely prohibited the importation of malt, wheat, barley, biscuit, beef, meal, and flour into the colony from any part of Europe, under penalty of confiscation.^ From the circumstances under which Rhode Island was settled, and the distrust with which that colony was regarded by her neighbors, Boston had much less intercourse with the inhabitants of that jurisdiction than with the other colonies ; but an account of the relations of Massachusetts and Rhode Island does not properly fall within the scope of this chapter.^ Roger Wil- liams was a resident of Salem when he had leave to depart out of this juris- diction ; and the dealings with Gorton's followers, which have been made the ground for much reproach, were in exact conformity with the orders of the colonial authorities or of the Commissioners of the United Colonies. With the settlements in New Hampshire and Maine Boston had more fre- quent relations ; and it was to New Hampshire that Wheelwright and many of his followers betook themselves when they also had license to remove themselves and their families out of Massachusetts. But both New Hamp- shire and Maine were, during a part of the colonial period, under the juris- diction of Massachusetts ; and everything relating to them belongs to the history of the colony rather than to the history of the town. With the French colonies Boston had so frequent and various relations that the whole colony came to be known as the colony of Boston, or Bas- ton, as the name was commonly written ; ^ and the inhabitants of Massa- chusetts, and even of the other colonies, were designated as Boston men, or " Bostonnais." Schemes for its capture more than once formed part of the ambitious designs of the French chiefs at Quebec* It was probably to these schemes that we owe at least two of the most interesting of the early maps of Boston.^ Indeed, the relations of Boston and of Massachusetts to the quarrels of two rival French governors of Acadia (La Tour and D'Aulnay) form one of the most curious and interesting episodes in the early history of the town and of the colony.^ The questions growing out of the rivalry of these ambitious and unscrupulous men fill a large space in our colonial annals ; but, as they are questions which originated in the desire of the Boston merchants to increase the foreign trade of the town, they may very properly be treated 1 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 246. * Parkman, France and England in North 2 It is worthy of remark, however, that in America, pt. v. pp. 382-384. the Winthrop Papers, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., 6 Franquelin'smap of 1693, of which a helio-- vol. vi., there are thirty-nine friendly letters type reproduction has recently been prepared, from Roger Williams to the elder Winthrop, for the Trustees of the Boston Public Library written after Williams settled at Providence. and his map of 1697, both of which are repro- 3 [This form, Baston, simply preserved the duced in this volume. broad French sound [Bawston] .-is their equiva- 6 The names of these rivals are variously lent of the colloquial English pronunciation, written in the contemporaneous documents The Canadians towards the Pacific coast and Winthrop frequently wrote D'Aulney but the the Indians of that region call Americans Bos- weight of authoritv is in favor of the spelling tons to this day. — Ed.] here adopted. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 283 here at some length. In the discussion of them, party lines were for the first time drawn between town and country. The course which the colonial government followed was in accordance with the wishes and with the appro- val of the people of Boston, while the remonstrances came from Ipswich and Salem and other places which could expect to derive little benefit from an increased trade with the French colonies. " I must needs say that I fear we shall have little comfort in having anything to do with these idolatrous French," Endicott wrote to Winthrop, in June, 1643.1 In saying this, he only expressed an opinion very generally entertained away from Boston. Here the drift of opinion was naturally in the opposite direction. By the treaty of St. Germains, concluded between France and England March 29, 1632, the whole of the French territory in America which had been conquered by England was restored to the former country ; and shortly afterward the Chevalier Rasilli was appointed by the King of France to the chief command in Acadia. The new governor designated as his lieutenants Charles de la Tour for the portion east of the St. Croix, and Charles de Menou, Sieur d'Aulnay-Charnis^, for the portion to the westward as far as the French claim extended.^ The latter is said to have been " a zealous and efficient supporter of the Romish Church;"^ but "La Tour pretended to be a Huguenot, or at least to think favorably of that religion." * A belief that La Tour sympathized with their religious opinions no doubt had weight with the colonial authorities in determining the policy to be pursued with regard to the rivals ; but it seems more than probable that he cared very little about what he professed to believe. He was so cautious, or so indiffer- ent to political obligations, that he obtained grants from Sir William Alex- ander, who derived his title from James I., and also from the French gov- ernment.^ The first appearance of either of the rivals in our history is in November or December, 1633, when Winthrop writes that news came of the taking of Machias by the French: " Mr. Allerton, of Plymouth, and some others had set up a trading wigwam there, and left in it five men and store of commodities. La Tour, governor of the French in those parts, making claim to the place, came to displant them, and, finding resistance, killed two of the men and carried away the other three and the goods." ^ The first appearance of the name of D'Aulnay, nearly two years later, is accompanied by equally unpleasant circumstances. In the summer of 1635 he seized the Plymouth trading-house at Penobscot, and sent the traders home with many fair promises, but without making payment for the prop- erty he had taken. This greatly excited the Plymouth colony, — " so as they resolved to consult with their friends in the bay," says Bradford; "and, if they approved of it (there being now many ships there), they intended to ' Hutchinson, Coll. of Original Papers, 113. ^ Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. Bay, p. 127. 2 Hutchinson, Hist, of Mas^. Bay, p. 128. See also Slafter's Sir William Alexander and ' 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. 90. American Colonization, pp. 73-80. * W\i\.Q!t{\n%Q\-\, Hist, of Mass. Bay,'p.\'},2. See ^ Winthrop, Hist, of Neto England, i. 117. also a letter from John Winthrop, Jr., in 4 Mass. See also Bradford's Plymoutli Plantation, in 4 Hist. Coll., vi. 519. Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 292. 284 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. hire a ship of force, and seek to beat out the French, and recover it again." ^ The Massachusetts authorities sympathized cordially with the proposed movement, but they were unwilling to bear the cost of an expedition mainly designed for the benefit of Plymouth. However, at the September session of the General Court it was " agreed that Plymouth shall be aided with men and munition to supplant the French at Penobscot." ^ At the same session it was further agreed that the commissioners for martial discipline " shall have full power to assist our neighbors at Plymouth for the supplanting of the French at Penobscot or elsewhere, in any other business of that nature that maybe occasioned thereby."^ It was probably after the passage of these votes that the Plyniouth people entered into an agreement with one Girling, the master of the " Great Hope," — a well-armed ship of above three hundred tons, — "that he and his company should deliver them the house (after they had driven out or surprised the French), and give them peaceable possession thereof, and of all such trading commodities as should there be found, and give the French fair quarter and usage, if they would yield." * With him they sent their own bark, with twenty men under the command of Captain Miles Standish, to aid in the capture of the place, if necessary, and " to order things if the house was regained." But the expe- dition failed, through the incompetence or bad faith of Girling; and, upon its failure, a second application was made to Massachusetts. On receiving this new application, the Governor and Assistants re- quested Plymouth to send commissioners to Boston, with full authority to treat of the whole subject. Accordingly, Thomas Prence, who had been governor of the colony the year before, and Captain Standish were em- powered to conclude an arrangement for the further prosecution of the enterprise. When they met, however, says Winthrop, the Plymouth com- missioners " refused to deal further in it otherwise than as a common cause of the whole country, and so to contribute their part. We refused to deal in it otherwise than as in their aid, and so at their charge ; for indeed we had then no money in the treasury, neither could we get provision of victuals, on the sudden, for one hundred men, which were to be em- ployed." ^ The expedition was accordingly abandoned; and it does not appear that after that time Plymouth had any direct relations with either D'Aulnay or La Tour. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of the relations of the Massachusetts colony with them. The next mention of D'Aulnay is in connection with circumstances of a more friendly character, though they were afterward made ground of com- plaint. Writing only a few weeks later, — in November, 1635, — Winthrop records that " the pinnace which Sir Richard Saltonstall sent to take pos- session of a great quantity of land at Connecticut was, in her return into England, cast away upon the Isle Sable. The men were kindly enter- 1 A Mass. mst. Coll., iii. 333. ^ Bradford, PlymcUh Plantation, in 4 Mass. "■ DTass. Col. Records, 1. i6o. Hist. Coll., iii. 333. ' ^'^'^- !'• ■^'- ^ Winthrop, Hist, of New Ens^laml, i. i6g. before, our governor y^ 3. D'Aulnay) to send ^«< ^2^^^;^ ;ome before." ^ In the ^ BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 285 tained by the French there, and had passage to La Have, some twenty leagues east of Cape Sable, where Monsieur, commander of Roselle, was governor, who entertained them very courteously, and furnished them with a shallop to return to us, and gave four of their company passage into France, but made them pay dear for their shallop ; and in their return they put into Penobscot, at such time as Girling's ship lay there ; so that they were kept prisoners there till the ship was gone, and then sent to us with a courteous letter to our governor. A little before, our governor had written to him (viz., Mons. them home to us, but they were come 1 letter, however, of the Governor and Council to D'Aulnay in 1643, "your taking of the goods of Sir Richard Saltonstall, knight, and the imprisoning of his men, who suffered shipwreck upon the Isle of Sables eight years past," are mentioned first among " the particulars wherein we conceive our- selves, friends, and confederates to be by you injured, and for the which we never yet received satisfaction." ^ Nothing of importance seems to have occurred during the next few years; but in November, 1 641, La Tour sent one of his people — a Protestant from Rochelle, named Rochett — to conclude a treaty of com- merce and alliance with the Massachusetts colony. The authorities were wiUing to grant liberty of commerce ; but they declined- to furnish aid to La Tour in his war against D'Aulnay, or to allow him to bring goods out of England by our merchants, on the ground that the envoy had no proper credentials.^ In the following year another embassy came, with a new re- quest for assistance against D'Aulnay, and remained about a week, leaving a very favorable impression behind them. " Though they were Papists," says Winthrop, " yet they came to our church meeting ; and the lieutenant seemed to be much affected to find things as he did, and professed he never saw so good order in any place. One of the elders gave him a French Testament with Marlorat's notes, which he kindly accepted, and promised to read it." * In June, 1643, La Tour himself made a visit to Boston, in a ship from Rochelle, — the master and crew of which were Protestants, but having as passengers two friars and two women sent from France to wait on Madame La Tour. On the arrival of the vessel a curious incident occurred, which gives a very vivid idea of the life of the town at that time and of its de- fenceless condition. The wife of Captain Gibbons, with her children, was going down the harbor to visit her husband's farm at Pullen Point, when she was recognized by one of the gentlemen on La Tour's vessel, who knew her. Thereupon, La Tour manned his shallop to go and speak with her. Mrs. Gibbons, on seeing so many foreigners approach, was alarmed, and hastened to land at the governor's garden, now the site of Fort Winthrop. Here she found the governor and his wife and two sons and his son's wife. Presently La Tour landed, and, after saluting the governor, told him the 1 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 171. ^ Winthrop, Hist of New England, ii. 42, 43. 2 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. loi. ^ Ibid. p. 88. 286 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. cause of his coming, — that this ship had been sent to him from France, but his old enemy, D'Aulnay, had blockaded the river at St. John's, so that she could not get in. He had accordingly slipped out of the river in a shallop by night, and had come to ask help from Massachusetts. After supper, the governor went up to the town in La Tour's boat, — having previously sent Mrs. Gibbons home in his own boat. In the mean time news of the arri- val of a strange ship had spread through Boston and Charlestown ; and " the towns betook them to their arms, and three shallops with armed men came forth to meet the governor and to guard him home. But here the Lord gave us occasion to take notice of our weakness, &c.," says Winthrop ; " for if La Tour had been ill-minded towards us, he had such an opportunity as we hope neither he nor any other shall ever have the like again ; for com- ing by our castle and saluting it, there was none to answer him, for the last Court had given order to have the Castle Island deserted, — a great part of the work being fallen down, &c., — so as he might have taken all the ord- nance there. Then, having the governor and his family and Captain Gib- bons's wife, &c., in his power, he might have gone and spoiled Boston ; and having so many men ready, they might have taken two ships in the harbor, and gone away without danger or resistance ; but his neglecting this oppor- tunity gave us assurance of his true meaning." ^ On landing, La-Tour was escorted by the governor and a guard to his lodgings at the house of Captain Gibbons. The next ^/S'-' ^t*oO'n.?P day the governor called together all the magistrates whom he was able to notify, to consider any proposals which La Tour might submit. The latter was present with the master of the vessel, who exhibited a commission from the Vice-Admiral of France, authorizing him to convey supplies to La Tour, his Majesty's Lieutenant of Acadia. A letter from the agent of the French company for the coloniza- tion of Acadia was also shown, in which La Tour was addressed as Lieu- tenant-General, and informed of the injurious practices of D'Aulnay. These documents satisfied the magistrates that La Tour was not a rebel, as D'Aulnay had called him in a letter to the governor the year before, and that he was in good standing at the court of France. The colonial authori- ties did not feel at liberty, however, to aid him directly, without the advice of the Commissioners of the United Colonies ; but they readily granted him permission to hire any vessels in the harbor. His men were also allowed to come on shore to refresh themselves, " so they landed in small companies, that our women, &c., might not be affrighted by them." ^ The next week, the training-day occurred at Boston ; and La Tour, having expressed a wish to exercise his men on shore, was allowed on that occasion to land forty men. They were escorted to the field by the Boston company, which num- bered one hundred and fifty men. After the exercises were over, La Tour 1 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 107. cords, as cited in Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, [This incident prompted tlie authorities to re- pp. 482-84. See Mr. Bynner's chapter. Ed.] pair the fortifications on the island. Cf. Re- 2 Winthrop, Hist, of Nexo England, ii. 108. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 287 and his officers were invited home to dinner by the Boston officers, and his soldiers by the Boston soldiers. In the afternoon the Frenchmen went through a variety of military movements in the presence of the governor and magistrates, who were much interested in what they saw. La Tour remained in Boston for about a month. " Our governor and others in the town," says Winthrop, " entertained La Tour and his gentlemen with much courtesy, both in their houses and at table. La Tour came duly to our church meetings, and always accompanied the governor to and from thence, who, all the time of his abode here, was attended with a good guard of halberts and musketeers." ^ Meanwhile, the reports of what had been done in Boston created a lively excitement in the other towns of the colony ; and one minister, whose name has not come down to us, but who is vouched for as "judicious," when he heard that the strangers were to go through their military exercises on shore, predicted that before the day was ended much blood would be spilled in Boston. Letters poured in on the governor, — some setting be- fore him " great dangers, others charging sin upon the conscience in all these proceedings." Accordingly, he wrote and circulated at least two answers to these complaints.^ For further satisfaction, another meeting of the neighboring magistrates, deputies, and elders was held, at which two questions were discussed: "(i) Whether it were lawful for Christians to aid idolaters, and how far we may hold communion with them? (2) Whether it were safe for our state to suffer him to have aid from us against D'Aulnay? " The arguments on the one side and the other extend over several pages of Winthrop's journal, and are in a large part derived from Old Testament pre- cedents about Jehoshaphat and Ahab and Ahaziah and Josias, and the King of Babylon, and Pharaoh Necho, and Solomon, and the Queen of Sheba, and other precedents of a similar character, the relevancy of which is not very apparent. The final issue was that the line of policy previously marked out remained unchanged. The colony gave no direct aid to La Tour ; but he was allowed to make any arrangements that he could with the inhabitants of Boston and the masters of the vessels in the harbor. On the 14th of July he left Boston, — " the governor and divers of the chief of the town accom- panying him to his boat. There went with him four of our ships and a pin- nace. He hired them for two months, — the chiefest, which had sixteen pieces of ordnance, at two hundred pounds the month (yet she was of but one hundred tons, but very well-manned and fitted for fight), and the rest proportionable. The owners took only his own security for their pay. He entertained also about seventy land soldiers, volunteers, at 40s. per month a man ; but he paid them somewhat in hand." ^ 1 Wmthrop, I/i'si. of New England, ii. 109. and part-owners of the ship "Seabridge," ship 2 For one of these letters see Hutchinson, " Philip and Mary," ship " Increase," and ship Coll. of Original Papers, pp. 121-132. " Greyhound," for this expedition, dated June 30, 8 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 127. 1643, is recorded in the Suffolk Registry of The contract between La Tour and Captain Deeds, and is printed in Hazard's Historical Col- Edward Gibbons and Thomas Hawkins, masters lections, i. 499-502. 288 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The sudden appearance of La Tour's fleet in the eastern waters was a surprise to his rival, who, on seeing them, attempted to escape to the west- ward with two ships and a pinnace. Being closely pursued, D'Aulnay ran his vessels ashore, and began to fortify himself; on which a messenger was sent to him with letters from the governor of the Massachusetts colony and Captain Hawkins. The messenger was led blindfold into the presence of D'Aulnay, who showed him the original decree against La Tour, and sent a copy of it to the governor ; but he would not make peace with La Tour. The latter then endeavored to persuade our men to attack D'Aulnay, which they declined to do ; but with Hawkins's consent about thirty volunteers joined La Tour's men in an attack on a fortified mill belonging to his rival, which was taken and set on fire. Some standing corn was also burned ; one pris- oner was taken and carried on board the vessels, and three Frenchmen on each side were killed. About the same time our ships captured D'Aulnay's pinnace, with four hundred moose skins and four hundred beaver skins. These they divided, — one-third and the pinnace to La Tour, one-third to the ships, and the remainder to the men. After this, nothing more was done ; and at the expiration of the time for which they were chartered the ships returned to Boston. The pinnace, before leaving for home, went up the river some twenty leagues, and loaded with coal; and her men also procured a piece of limestone, — possibly the first coal and limestone brought into Boston from that part of Nova Scotia now called New Brunswick.''- In the following summer La Tour came again to Boston to obtain further assistance. On hearing his statement, most of the magistrates and some of the elders were in favor of helping him, partly as an act of charity toward a neighbor in distress, and partly in the hope of weakening his rival, whom ^.^<9 they regarded as an enemy, or, at least, ^^^^ Z/^C^ *^i^8y^»<-^ ^ dangerous neighbor. But as three ^* ^2'- VOL. I. — 37- 290 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of contract in not carrying her to her port. After a hearing, which lasted four days, the jury awarded her damages to the amount of two thousand pounds. She then caused the arrest of the master and the consignee, who were obhged to surrender the portion of the cargo already landed, in order to secure their release. Thereupon the master petitioned the General Court for his freight and wages. As the majority of the magistrates were of the opinion that nothing was due, and the majority of the deputies were of the opposite opinion, nothing came of it; and accordingly the captain brought an action before a jury at the next Court of Assistants. On the trial of the issue, whether the goods were or were not held for the freight, the jury found for the defendant. " This business," says Winthrop, " caused much trouble and charge to the country, and made some difference between the merchants of Charlestown (who took part with the merchants and master of the ship) and the merchants of Boston, who assisted the lady (some of them being deeply engaged for La Tour), so as offers were made on both sides for an end between them. Those of Charlestown offered security for the goods, if, upon a review within thirteen months, the judgment were not reversed, or the Parliament in England did not call the cause before themselves. This last clause was very ill-taken by the Court, as making way for appeals, &c., into England, which was not reserved in our charter." ^ It was not possible for the parties to come to an agreement, and Madame La Tour kept possession of the goods, and hired three ships which lay in the harbor to carry her home. Her opponents also sailed about the same time, in company with one of our own ships. On the arrival of the latter in London, two of the passengers — the recorder of the court and one of the jurymen who had given the verdict in favor of Madame La Tour — were arrested, and compelled to find sureties in a bond for four thousand pounds to answer to a suit in the Court of Admiralty. After much trouble and expense they were released, and returned home.^ They then petitioned the General Court for relief; but both the magistrates and deputies voted that they knew no way of help, except to certify the truth of the proceed- ings of the Court in Boston, which they were ready to do.^ In the mean time, D'Aulnay had sent a boat with ten men to Salem, where he had heard the Governor then lived. Among them was " one Marie, supposed to be a friar, but habited like a gentleman." On finding 1 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 200. in the other book." But Mr. Savage adds in There are two accounts of these transactions in .his foot-note, with characteristic accuracy Winthrop's History, differing in some slight par- " Some of this is not in the former book." The ticulars; but the differences are of very little most important variation is that in the first importance, except as showing how unlikely it account the captain is said to have brought his is that any one will narrate undoubted facts in suit in the Court of Assistants after his petition precisely the same way in two distinct accounts, to the General Court. In the second account it In the text I have followed the first account, is said that the suit was first and the petition mainly because, in the original manuscript now came afterward. This would seem to be the in the library of the Massachusetts Historical natural order of proceeding. Society, Winthrop erased the second account, 2 Winthrop, Hist. 0/ Ne^v England ii 248 and wrote in the margin: "This is before ^ Z -Wass. Hist. Coll., y\\ 105 106 ' BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 291 that Boston was the capital, Marie wrote a letter to the Governor, inquiring where he should wait on him, and the next day came to Boston with full credentials from D'Aulnay. Here he exhibited a commission from the King of France, under the Great Seal, with the Privy Seal annexed, verify- ing the proceedings against La Tour, and commanding his arrest and that of his wife, who had fled from France against special order. He then com- plained of the assistance afforded to La Tour in the previous year, and offered to enter into a treaty of peace and amity. To these complaints it was answered that several of the ships and most of the men did not belong to the Colony ; that they had no commission from the authorities, and no permission to use hostility ; and that the authorities were very sorry when they heard what had been done. With this he professed to be satisfied. To his proposals for a treaty, it was answered that nothing could be done without the advice of the Commissioners of the United Colonies.^ To these propositions two others were added by him, — that La Tour should not be aided, and that D'Aulnay should be. On the part of the Colonial Govern- ment strong efforts were made to bring about a reconciliation between the rivals ; but D'Aulnay's agent was not prepared to yield anything. If La Tour would submit voluntarily, his life and liberty should be assured ; but if he was taken, he was sure to lose his head in France. As for his wife, her chances were still worse; for " she was known to be the cause of his contempt and rebellion, and therefore they could not let her go to him." If she were sent in any of our vessels the vessels would be taken, and if any goods were sent to La Tour they should be taken, and no satisfaction allowed for the capture. Finally an arrangement was made within less than a week after his arrival, drawn up in Latin, and executed by the Governor and six of the magistrates in behalf of the Colony, and by M. Marie in behalf of D'Aulnay. This agreement, which bears the date of October 8, 1644, contains reciprocal promises to maintain a firm peace, with a right to each of the contracting parties to trade with the other, and if any occasion of offence should happen, there should be no hostile acts unless an expla- nation had first been asked and satisfaction refused. There were two pro- visos, — that the Massachusetts Government should not be obliged to restrain their merchants from trading in any place to which they might choose to go, or with any persons, whether French or not, with whom they might wish to trade ; and that these articles should be subject to the confirmation of the Commissioners of the United Colonies. This confirmation was not given until September in the following year.^ The articles of peace, with the ratification of the Commissioners, were sent to D'Aulnay shortly afterward, with the expression of a readiness on the part of the Massachusetts Colony to hear and settle all complaints for 1 The New England Confederacy had been ^ Wiiithrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 196, formed about a year and a half before the date 197 ; Hutchinson, Coll. of Original Papers, ])p. of these negotiations, the articles of confedera- 146,147; Acts of the Commissioners in /7)'«;»«//; tion being dated May 19, 1643. Col. Reeords, ix. 5G-60 2g2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. injuries, and to keep the peace if he would subscribe to it. D'Aulnay treated the messenger with great courtesy, but refused to sign the articles until all differences had been composed, and sent back an insulting answer to the effect that " our drift was to gain time," and that " we should find that it was more his honor which he stood upon than his benefit." Under these circumstances, he would wait until spring for an answer to his com- plaints. On the receipt of this message there was an animated discussion in the General Court, from which it appeared that wide differences of opin- ion existed as to the proper course to be pursued. It was finally decided to send Deputy-Governor Dudley, who was then upward of seventy years of age, and two other prominent men — Mr. ^^.^jri-^^ x^^^ Q Hawthorne and MajorDenison — to D'Aul- Af/ ~^r«-4^'K!''W) ^^^^ ^j^j^ f^jj powers to treat of all mat- ■^ ^y^ ters of difference.! ^g goon as information ■^ . a , • of this appointment reached the French Governor, he ^CO^S^t/- XiiyXofOTt, professed to feel highly honored, and expressed a wish to save the Colony from trouble, offering to send two or three of his own people to Boston to settle the matters at issue.^ Accordingly, in the fol- lowing September, — almost exactly two years after the negotiation of the treaty, — " being the Lord's Day, and the people ready to go to the As- sembly after dinner," three of D'Aulnay's principal men arrived in Boston. The next day they presented their credentials, and on the third day the negotiations began. While here the messengers were treated with great respect. " Their diet was provided at the ordinary," says Winthrop, " where the magistrates used to diet in court times, and the Governor accompanied them always at meals. Their manner was to repair to the Governor's house every morning about eight of the clock, who accompanied them to the place of meeting; and at night either himself or some of the commissioners accompanied them to their lodging." At first their de- mands were set pretty high. They claimed great injuries and damages from the acts of Captain Hawkins and his men, for which they desired to hold the Colony responsible ; but after a protracted discussion, in which the colonial authorities denied all responsibility either by commission or permission, and contended that the treaty of peace had been concluded without any reservation as to these matters, the extravagant demands of the French envoys were abandoned. " In the end they came to this conclu- sion," says Winthrop. " We accepted their commissioners' answer in satis- faction of those, things we had charged upon Monsieur D'Aulnay, and they accepted our answer for clearing our government of what he had charged upon us." It was agreed that a small present should also be sent to D'Aul- nay to make amends for the acts of Captain Hawkins ; and, in accordance with this understanding, " a very fair new sedan (worth forty or fifty pounds where it was made, but of no use to us)," which had been taken in the West Indies, and given to the Governor, was sent to D'Aulnay." The agreement 1 Winthrop, Mis/, of Xew England, ii. 259, 260. 2 Ibid. pp. 266, 267. 3 ibjd, j,p 273, 274. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 293 was then signed and executed, and in about a week after their arrival the French Commissioners returned home. In the mean time D'Aulnay waged an active warfare against his rival ; and while the latter was absent on a trading voyage, his fort at St. John's was attacked and taken by assault. Madame La Tour fell into the hands of her enemy, and died in less than three weeks afterward. By the capture of his fort La Tour lost jewels, plate, furniture, and other movables valued by him at ten thousand pounds, and was for a time rendered utterly help- less. His debts to the Boston merchants were very heavy, and to one of them alone (Major Gibbons) he owed upward of twenty-five hundred pounds. This was a total loss ; and, from the want of money to pay his adherents, his men became scattered, and he was himself obliged to seek shelter in Newfoundland. The Governor, Sir David Kirk, promised him assistance ; and subsequently he came to Boston, and was hospitably enter- tained at Noddle's Island by Maverick.^ In the midst of his distress La Tour was not without friends in Boston, who furnished him with trading commodities of the value of four hundred pounds. With these he sailed on a voyage to the eastward ; but when he reached Cape Sable, " which was in the heart of winter," he conspired with the master and a part of the crew, seized the vessel, and put the Boston men ashore. "Whereby it appeared (as the Scripture saith) that there is no confidence in an unfaithful or carnal man," Winthrop sadly writes. " Though tied with many strong bonds of courtesy, &c., he turned pirate." Our men wandered about on the land for two weeks, when they met some friendly Indians, who furnished them with a shallop, food, and an Indian pilot, and at length they arrived home in safety.^ D'Aulnay reappears only once more in our history. In March, 1646-47, Captain Venner Dobson fitted out a small vessel, and obtained a license from the colonial authorities to trade in the Gulf of Canada. Stress of weather compelled him to put into harbor at Cape Sable. Here he traded with the Indians for some skins ; and information of this fact having reached D'Aulnay, the latter immediately sent a party of men through the woods to put a stop to the transactions. Circumstances favored D'Aulnay's party, and through gross negligence the ship and cargo, valued at a thou- sand pounds, were captured. As a matter of course both were confiscated, and the men were sent home in two old shallops. The Boston merchants were exasperated at this, and petitioned the General Court for redress, proposing to send out a good vessel to make reprisals on some of D'Aul- nay's vessels. " But the Court," says Winthrop, " thought it not safe nor expedient for us to begin a war with the French ; nor could we charge any manifest wrong upon D'Aulnay, seeing we had told him that if ours did trade within his liberties, they should do it at their own peril. And though we judged it an injury to restrain the natives and others from trading, &c. (they 1 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 238. See also Hubbard, Hist, of New England, in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 497, 498. ^ Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 266. 294 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. being a free people), yet, it being a common practice of all civil nations, his seizure of our ship would be accounted lawful, and our letters of reprisal unjust. And, besides, there appeared an overruling Providence in it, other- wise he could not have seized a ship so well fitted, nor could wise men have lost her so foolishly."^ In 1650 or 165 1 D'Aulnay died, and in 1652 his widow married La Tour.^ By this marriage he had several children, and the race is not yet extinct in Nova Scotia. With this romantic termination of a long rivalry, which had largely influenced colonial politics, the names of D'Aulnay and La Tour disappear from our annals. As has been stated already, the course pursued by the colonial authorities caused much dissatisfaction at the time. In the vigorous protest signed by the younger Richard Saltonstall and six others, in July, 1643, sometimes called the Ipswich letter, the writers argued with great ability against this course, and shrewdly remarked that neither D'Aul- nay nor the French Government was so weak in intellect " as to deem it no act of State, when upon consultation with some of our chief persons, our men are suffered, if not encouraged, to go forth with our provision and munition " to help La Tour. The course of the Government was not im- properly regarded by the writers as little short of an act of war ; and the grounds of a war, they maintained, ought to be just and necessary. But New England had no sufficient information to determine positively as to the justice of the war in which the colony had been invited to take part. In the next place, they argued, "wars ought not to be undertaken without the counsel and command of the supreme authority whence expeditions come," and in the then existing relations of France and England there ought not to be any act of hostility by the subjects of one against the other without a public commission of State, or unless it was in defence against a sud- den assault. They then proposed three questions: (i) If D'Aulnay or France should demand the surrender of any persons who went on the ex- pedition, on the ground that they were enemies or murderers, what was to be done? "(2) If any of the parents or wives shall require their lives at our hands, who shall answer them? (3) If any of their widows or children shall require sustenance, or any maimed soldier in this expedition call for main- tenance, who shall give it them? Or if taken captive and made slaves, who shall rescue or redeem them? " In the third place, the ends of a war ought to be religious ; but the writers failed to see what honor was intended to God, and how peace was to be settled by engaging in this conflict. Fourthly, there ought to be probable ground for thinking the undertakings of a war to be feasible ; but this expedition did not seem so to the remon- strants. Finally, "according to Scripture and the custom of religious and ingenuous nations " there ought to be a previous summons and warning before beginning a war ; the defendant should have an opportunity to state 1 Winthrop, Hist, of N'rai England, ii. 309, Williamson, Hist, of Maine, i. 323; Mr. Shea's 310. See also 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., i. 158. notes to Charlevoix's Hist, of New France, iii. 2 Sullivan, Hist, of the Dist. of Maine, p. 282 ; 131, 132. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 295 his case, and there should be an offer of terms of peace, and instructions to the men engaged, — neither of which preliminaries could be observed in this instance " without a professed embarking ourselves in the action, which, it seems, is wholly declined on our parts." ^ In our own time the action of the colonial authorities has been criticised by Mr. Savage in his notes to Winthrop's History, and by other writers ; and it must be conceded that there are strong grounds for adverse criticism on the course pursued by them. The distinction which they attempted to draw between the acts of the Colony and the acts of individuals hired in Boston by La Tour is not a valid defence ; and the action of the Colony in this particular was censured by implication when the Commissioners of the United Colonies ordered, in September, 1644, "that no jurisdiction within this Confederation shall per- mit any voluntaries to go forth in a warlike way against any people what- soever, without order and direction of the Commissioners of the several jurisdictions."^ But it should be observed that both La Tour and D'Aulnay claimed to be acting under the authority of the French Crown, and that Massachusetts was justified in treating the whole matter as a personal quarrel, and in maintaining that nothing which she did or permitted could give just ground of offence to France. Moreover, the Colony had good reason for complaining of the hostile acts of D'Aulnay, and would have been justified in making reprisals on him. Whether any real advantage was gained for Massachusetts or for Boston by the course pursued is, per- haps, doubtful. But there was a wide-spread belief that D'Aulnay was likely to become a dangerous neighbor, and his proximity to the English settle- ments made him much more an object of fear than La Tour. " If a thorough work could be made," Thomas Gorges wrote to Winthrop, in June, 1643, " that he might utterly be extirpated, I should like it well." ^ The most important event in the history of the relations of Boston with the neighboring colonies was the formation of the New England Confed- eracy in 1643. The plan of this confederation appears to have originated with Connecticut, who was anxious to strengthen herself against encroach- ments from the Dutch. In August, 1637, after the close of the Pequotwar, some of the ministers and magistrates of that colony came to Boston to attend the synod called to consider the theological errors spread through the country by the Antinomians. While they were here a meeting was appointed " to agree upon some articles of confederation, and notice was given to Plymouth that they might join in it ; but their warning was so short as they could not come."* Nothing, therefore, was done, and the matter rested until June, 1638, when a plan of confederation was partially agreed on ; but this plan finally failed to obtain the necessary ratifications. It was afterward claimed by Massachusetts, and denied by Connecticut, that the chief obstacle was the levying of a duty by the latter, as has been 1 Hutchinson, Coll. of Original Papers, pp. ' Hutchinson, Coll. of Original Papers, p. 115-119. 114. 2 Plymouth Col. Records, vs.. 22. < Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 237. 296 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. mentioned in another place, on vessels passing the fort at Saybrook.i ^t the close of the negotiations the Deputy-Governor of Connecticut wrote a letter in the name of their Court, which Winthrop characterizes as so harsh in its tone as to preclude a reply ; but, in order to prevent an open rupture, the latter wrote a private letter to the Governor of Connecticut, stating our view of the case, and pointing out the mistakes of the Connecticut authori- ties. Commenting on this transaction he adds : " These and the like mis- carriages in point of correspondency were conceived to arise from these two errors in their government : ( i ) They chose divers scores men who had no learning nor judgment which might fit them for those affairs, though other- wise holy and religious. (2) By occasion hereof the main burden for man- aging of State business fell upon some one or other of their ministers (as the phrase and style of these letters will clearly discover), who, though they were men of singular wisdom and godliness, yet, stepping out of their course, their actions wanted that blessing which otherwise might have been expected." ^ The scheme was again revived in the early part of the follow- ing year, when Haynes, the Governor of Connecticut, Hooker, her most prominent minister, and others came to Boston, and stayed a month. They were unwilling, however, to move in the matter, though the idea of union was favorably entertained by Massachusetts ; ^ and again it failed to be consummated. Here the matter stood until September, 1642, when Connecticut sent new propositions for forming a confederacy.^ These propositions were referred to the magistrates in and near Boston, and to the deputies from Boston and the neighboring towns, to confer with any commissioners from Plymouth, Connecticut, or New Haven, and to take such action as might be thought necessary, " so as they enter not into an offensive war without order of this Court." * Winter was then approaching, and nothing more was done until the following spring; but at the General Court in May, 1643, commissioners appeared from Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, accompanied by George Fenwick, of Saybrook.' On their arri- val the General Court appointed a committee, consisting of the Governor and five others, " to treat with our friends of Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth about a confederacy between us." " The result of the discussions was that, in two or three meetings, articles of union were agreed on, and signed by all the commissioners except those from Plymouth, who were only authorized to treat, but not to sign any agreement. The articles of confederation were then submitted to the Courts of the several colonies and duly ratified by them. The settlements in Maine under the patent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges " were not received nor called into the confederation," says Winthrop, " because they ran a different course from us both in their 1 Plymouth Col Records, ix. 90,91, 123. [An 3 ibij. p 299. account o£ the first attempts at negotiation will * Ibid. ii. 85. be found in the New Haven Col. Records, edited « Mass. Col. Records, ii. 31. by Hoadley. — Ed.] (i Winthrop, Hist, of New England, ii. 99. 2 Winthrop, Hist, of New England, i. 286. ' Mass. Col. Records, ii. 35. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 297 ministry and civil administration." ^ Probably not one of the colonies would have been willing to unite with Rhode Island. Early in 1642 Gov- ernor Bradford, of Plymouth, wrote to Bellingham, the Governor of Massa- chusetts : " Concerning the Islanders, we have no conversing with them, nor desire to have, further than necessity or humanity may require." ^ Massachusetts had already declared her unwillingness to join with Rhode Island in any confederacy. The act of union bears the date of May 19, 1643, Old Style, and recites in words that ought not to be forgotten the reasons which moved the colo- nies to take this important step, — the precedent for a far more important union which separated a larger confederation from the mother country. It declares that, "Whereas, we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with peace ; and whereas, in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dis- persed upon the sea-coasts and rivers than was at first intended, so that we cannot, according to our desire, with convenience communicate in one gov- ernment and jurisdiction; and whereas, we live encompassed with people of several nations and strange languages, which hereafter may prove inju- rious to us or our posterity ; and forasmuch as the natives have formerly committed sundry insolences and outrages upon several plantations of the English, and have of late combined themselves against us ; and seeing by reason of those sad distractions in England which they have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered from that humble way of seeking advice, or reaping those comfortable fruits of protection which at other times we might well expect : We therefore do conceive it our bounden duty without delay to enter into a present consociation amongst Ourselves for mutual help and strength in all our future concernments, that as in nation and religion, so in other respects, we be and continue one according to the tenor and true meaning of the ensuing articles. Wherefore it is fully agreed and concluded by and between the parties or jurisdictions above named, and they jointly and severally do by these presents agree and conclude, that they all be, and henceforth be called by the name of, the United Colonies of New England." ^ Then followed eleven articles, commonly counted with the preamble as twelve. Of these, the first — numbered II. in the Plymouth copy of the Articles of Confederation — simply declared that the United Colonies joint- ly and severally united into a firm and perpetual league, both offensive and defensive, "for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospel, and for their own mutual safety and welfare." The next article pro- vided that each colony should have exclusive jurisdiction within its own territory ; that no new member should be admitted into the confederation, 1 \^'m\!mo^, Hist, of Nroj England, \\. \oa. ^ Plymouth Col. Records, ix. 3; Hazard, 2 Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, in 4 Mass. Historical Collections, ii. i, 2. [See Mr. Wiii- Hiit. Coll, iii. 388. throp's chapter. — Ed.] VOL. 1. — 38. 2g8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and no two colonies should be united under one government, without the consent of the rest. Provision was made by the next article that the charge of all just wars, offensive or defensive, in which any member should be involved, should be borne by all the colonies in proportion to the number of male inhabitants in each between the ages of sixteen and sixty. The fifth article provided that if either of the colonies should be invaded, the others, upon notice and request of any three magistrates of the invaded colony, should forthwith send aid, — Massachusetts sending one hundred armed men, and each of the other colonies forty-five, if so many should be required. 1 At the next meeting of the commissioners the cause of the invasion was to be duly considered, and if it should appear that the colony invaded was in fault, no part of the cost of the war was to be charged to the other colonies. If any colony should anticipate an invasion, and there should be sufficient time to call the commissioners together, a meeting was to be summoned by any three magistrates of the colony so threatened. The next three articles provided that there should be two commissioners for each colony, to meet once a year, — the first two meetings being held at Boston, the third at Hartford, the fourth at New Haven, and the fifth at Plymouth. Boston was always to be the place of meeting for two consecutive years. The concurrent votes of six of the commissioners were to be sufficient to secure the adoption of any measure ; but if six members failed to agree, the matter was to be referred to the four General Courts, and the agree- ment of all the Courts became necessary. A president was to be chosen at each meeting, whose duties and powers were to be merely those of a presid- ing officer. The commissioners were specially empowered " to frame and establish agreements and orders in general cases of a civil nature, wherein all the plantations are interested for preserving peace among themselves, and preventing as much as may be all occasions of war or differences with others ; " and express stipulations were also made for the rendition of fugi- tives from service or justice. By the ninth article, the confederate colonies bound themselves not to undertake a war, except in a sudden emergency, without the consent of six commissioners ; and no charge for even a defensive war was to be made on any of the colonies, until the commis- sioners had met and approved of the war, and agreed on the proper amount of money to be levied. The tenth article provided that in extraordinary occasions, if any of the commissioners after being summoned failed to appear, four of the commissioners should have power to direct a war which could not be delayed, and to send for the several quotas of men ; but to approve of the war, or allow the cost, or "cause any levies to be made 1 Johnson, whose Wonder-worJiirig Providence than the least of the other, and any one of the was pnnted in 1654, quaintly says (p 182) : " But other as likely to involve them iii a chargeable herein the Mattachuset had the worst end of the war with the naked natives, that have neither staff, in bearing as much or more charge than plunder nor cash to bear the charge of it; nay, all the other three, and yet no greater number hitherto the most hath arisen from the lesser of commissioners to negotiate and judge in colonies, yet are the Mattachusets far from de- transacting of affairs concerning peace and war serting them." BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 299 for the same," required the votes of not less than six members. The eleventh article provided against infractions of the agreement ; and by the last article it was agreed that if the General Court of Plymouth should not ratify the articles of confederation, they should nevertheless be binding on the other three colonies.^ These articles were signed on the 19th of May, Old Style, by the Secretary in behalf of the General Court of Massachusetts, and by the commissioners for Connecticut and New Haven. Subsequently the articles were approved by the General Court of Plymouth, and by all the townships in that colony ; and by an order dated the 29th of August, Edward Winslow and William Collyer were authorized to ratify them, and were appointed commissioners for Plymouth. The 19th of May, however, was regarded by all parties as the date of the formation of the confederacy ; and in 1843, the 29th of May, which is the corresponding date, as we reckon time, was selected by the Massachusetts Historical Society for their bi- centennial celebration of this great event in New England history.^ The second meeting of the commissioners was held in Boston, Sept. 7, 1643. After the transaction of some formal business, they took up the matter of the war between Uncas and Miantinimo, reaching the very harsh conclusion "that Uncas cannot be safe while Miantinimo lives, but that either by secret treachery or open force his life will be still in danger. Wherefore they think he may justly put such a false and bloodthirsty enemy to death, but in his own jurisdiction, not in the English plantations; and advising that in the manner of his death all mercy and moderation be shown, contrary to the practice of the Indians, who 'exercise tortures and cruelty."^ The commissioners then recommended that each General Court should see that every man kept by him a good gun and sword, one pound of powder, four pounds of shot, and suitable match or flints, to be exam- med at least four times a year, and that each colony also should keep a stock of powder, shot, and match ; that there should be a uniform standard of measure throughout all the plantations in the United Colonies ; and that there should be at least six training-days yearly in every plantation. They then determined the proportion of men to be furnished by each colony in any present danger; and taking into consideration the complaints against 1 [The articles are given at length in Pulsifer's style into new style. The Proceedings of the His- edition of the Records of the Commissioners, torkal Society, ii. 243, 244, note, contains Mr. vol. ix. (r643-52) and x. (1653-79) of the Ply- Adams's letter accepting the invitation to de- moutli Col. Records ; in Brigham's edition of liver the address, and a letter from Mr. Savage, Plymouth Laws ; in Bradford's Plymouth Plan- at that time President of the Society, pointing tation, p. 416; in Hazard's Collections, W. Pal- out the principal authorities for the history of frey, New England, ii. ch. i., makes a survey of the confederacy. [Hubbard, in New England, the condition of the colonies at this time. — ch. lii., gives an account of the donigs of the Ed.] confederacy, and later accounts are given in 2 On that occasion an address was delivered Bancroft's United States, i. ch. x. ; Chalmers's in the First Church in Boston by John Quincy Polit. Annals, ch. viii. ; Palfrey's New England, Adams, which is printed in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., i. ch. xv ; Baylies's Old Colony, pt. ii. ch. xiii.; ix. 189-223. In Mr. Adams's Memoirs (vol. xi. Barry's Massachusetts, i. ch. xi. ; Bryant and Ijp. 372-379) are some interesting notes about Gay's United States, ii. ch. ii., &c. — Ed.] the preparation and delivery of this address, and ^ Plymouth Col. Records, ix. 11, 12; Hazard, the perplexity which he felt about changing old Historical Collections, ii. 9. 300 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Gorton and his company, the commissioners declared that if Gorton and his followers stubbornly refused to obey the summons of the General Court of Massachusetts, the magistrates of that colony might proceed against them with the full approval and concurrence of the other jurisdictions, provided nothing was done prejudicial to the land-claims of Plymouth. Finally, it was ordered that letters should be written to the Dutch and Swedish governors, complaining of the injuries done to the Hartford and New Haven men at Delaware Bay and elsewhere.^ CP 7 '^r ^'0i/m^ -/^^.' <§^^ e^^ SIGNATURES OF COMMISSIONERS, 1646.^ Meetings of the commissioners were held annually, and sometimes more frequently, for upward of twenty years; but in September, 1664, — a few weeks after the arrival of the Royal Commissioners sent over by Charles II., — it was ordered that henceforth the meetings should be held only once in three years.^ At the same time provision was made that the number of the commissioners should be reduced, in case the Connecticut and New Haven colonies should be united under one government.* Six years afterward, at a meeting held in Boston in June, 1670, the articles of agree- ment were renewed, again entered on the record, and ordered to be pre- sented to the several General Courts.^ In the new compact the order of the articles was changed, some new provisions were inserted, and some of the powers heretofore exercised by the commissioners were transferred to the General Courts of the United Colonies. Hartford and New Haven • Plymouth Col. Records, ix. 11, 13. points of the Royal Commissioners in 1663, as 2 [Endicott and Pelliam represented Massa- indicating tlie colony's assumption of the King's chusetts; John Brown and Timothy Hatherly, prerogative. — Ed.] Plymouth; the others, Connecticut and New ^ Plymouth Col. Records, x. -^i^. Haven. — Ed.] 5 ibid. 334-339 ; Hazard, Historical Collcc- 8 [This confederacy was made one of the Ao/w, ii. 511-516. BOSTON AND THE NEIGHBORING JURISDICTIONS. 301 having been consolidated under the charter granted by Charles II., in 1662, the number of commissioners was reduced to six. They were to meet only once in three years; and of every five regular meetings, two were to be held in Boston, 'Ifb'. two in Hartford, and one in Plymouth. But the strength and glory of the old Confed- eracy had departed, and the new union had only a short existence. The commissioners met in September, 1672, and formally ratified these articles ; and they met also in the fol- lowing year, on a special call from the governor and magis- trates of Connecticut, in consequence of the capture of New York by the Dutch. Their only other meetings were in 1675, 1678, 1679, 1681, and 1684. Their last act was the issuing of a recommenda- tion to the several colonial gov- signatures of commissioners, seft. 165 7.» ernments for the appointment of the 22d of October, 1684, as a day of solemn humiliation, "to the end that we may meet together in united prayers at the Throne of Grace, for the more effectual promoting of the work of general reformation, so long discoursed of amongst ourselves (but greatly delayed) ; and that we may obtain the favor of God for a farther lengthening out of our tranquillity, under the shadow of our Sovereign Lord the King; and that God would preserve his life and establish his crown in righteousness and peace, for the defence of the Protestant religion in all his dominions." ^ The death of that worthless sovereign a few months afterward, the accession of James II., and the appointment of Sir Edmund Andros as governor of all New England put an end to the New England Confederacy. With the expulsion of Andros, who imitated on a narrower field the tyrannical acts which led to the expulsion of James II. from England, the colonies resumed their charter governments ; but the Confederacy was not revived. It had accomplished the purpose for which it was formed ; but it was never a strong organization, and it had the inherent defects of every simple confederation. Even if the growing jealousy of the colonies which existed in the mother country would have permitted its re-establishment, public 1 [Bradstreet and Denison represented Mas- Haven colonies, not then united as a single juris- sachusetts Bay; Prince and Cudworth, Plymouth diction. — Ed.] Colony; and the others, Connecticut and New ^ Plymouth Col. Records, x. 411, 412. 30-2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. opinion on this side of the ocean was not yet ripe for the formation of a union in any considerable degree free from the interference and control of the colonial legislatures. In its early days, however, the Confederacy had exerted a powerful influence in making the colonies feared and respected by their Dutch and French neighbors, and by the Indians within their own borders. As the principal town in the most important colony in the Con- federacy, Boston shared largely in the benefits which Massachusetts derived even from this imperfect union; and in any enumeration of the causes which have combined to make Boston what she now is, the formation of the New England Confederacy of 1643 cannot be overlooked.^ 1 Any account of the relations of Boston with the neighboring jurisdictions would be incom- plete which did not include some reference to the two abortive missions of Father Druilletes to Boston and Plymouth in 1650 and 1651. Four years after the formation of the New England Confederacy, Governor Winthrop wrote to the Governor of Canada projjosing a free trade be- tween the colonies. Apparently no answer was returned to this proposition during Winthrop's life; but in 1650 Gabriel Druilletes, one of the Jesuit fathers, was sent to New England by his superior, with the concurrence of the Governor, to negotiate on the subject. The chief object of Druilletes seems, however, to have been to engage the New England colonies in a war with the Mohawks for the advantage of the Abenakis; but his mission failed to produce any result, though he says he had a moral assurance that three of the four colonies were favorable to his plans. In his narrative he represents the Gov- ernor of Plymouth as urgent in the affair, and he had strong hopes that the younger Winthrop would give his aid, "after the letter which I wrote him praying him to finish what his father began." Of Boston he writes: "The Vice- Governor of Boston, named Mr. Endicott, who is now probably Governor, has pledged his word to do all in his power to bring the Boston magis- trates to consent and unite with the Governor of Plymouth. All the Boston magistrates write that they will recommend it earnestly to the deputies Boston's interest is the hope of a good trade with Quebec, especially as that which It has with Virginia and the Isle of Barbadoes and St. Christopher's is on the point of being destroyed by the war excited by the Parliamen- tarians to exterminate there the authority of the Governors who still hold for the King of England. This interest has made the Boston merchants say in advance, that if the republic makes any difficulty about sending troops, the volunteers will be satisfied with a simple per- mission for the expedition." While here, he visited Salem, and was hospitably entertained by Endicott, who, he says, "speaks and under- stands French well." He also went to Plymouth to see Governor Bradford, whose influence, every one told him, was all-powerful. At Roxbury he spent the night with the Rev. John Eliot, "who was instructing some Indians," and he adds: " He treated me with respect and affection, and invited me to pass the winter with him." In Boston he was the guest of Major-General Gib- bons, who "gave me the key of a room in his house, where I might in all liberty pray and perform the exercises of my religion, and he be- sought me to take no other lodgings while I re- mained at Boston." Druilletes was very nat- urally impressed by these attentions ; but the failure of his mission shows that he was over- confident in his expectations. It is not at all probable that the United Colonies had any in- tention of attacking the Mohawks. In the following year he came again under the authority of a regular appointment from the Government of Canada, accompanied by the Sieur Godefroy, one of the council. But their mission also failed of success. (See Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. Bay, pp. 166-171 ; 2 Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc, iii. 305-328 ; Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc. for Oct. 1869, pp. ■5--154; Plymouth Col. Records, ix. 199-203.) [Note. — La Tour's story is the subject of an essay by Henry Winsor of Philadelphia, con- tained in Montrose and Other Biographical Sketches, Boston, 1861. There i? a paper on D'Aulnay in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. 462, translated by Dr. William Jenks from CEuvres de I'/iisfoire dela Maison de Menon, Paris, 1852, p. KjS- A con- siderable number of original papers relating to La Tour and D'Aulnay are preserved at the State House in Mass. Archives, vol. ii. — Ed.] CHAPTER VIII. FROM THE DEATH OF WINTHROP TO PHILIP'S WAR. BY COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. WINTHROP died in 1649. The best picture left to us of the wondefful transformation which he had seen wrought in the New England wilds since his coming is to be found in the quaint narrative by Edward Johnson, The Wonder-working Providence, probably written about 1650. He says of the condition of the Colony : — " The Lord hath been pleased to turn all the wigwams, huts, and hovels the English dwelt in at their first coming into orderly, fair, and well-built houses, well furnished many of them, together with Orchards filled with goodly fruit trees, and gardens with variety of flowers. There are supposed to be in the Mattachusets Government at this day neer a thousand acres of land planted for Orchards and Gardes, there being, as is supposed in this Colony, about fifteen thousand acres in tillage, and of cattel about twelve thousand neat, and about three thousand sheep. Thus hath the Lord incouraged His people with the encrease of the general, although many particu- lars are outed, hundreds of pounds, and some thousands, yet are there many hundreds of labouring men, who had not enough to bring them over, yet now worth scores and some hundreds of pounds. " And those who were formerly forced to fetch most of the bread they eat, and beer they drink, a hundred leagues by Sea, are through the blessing of the Lord so encreased that they have not only fed their Elder Sisters, — Virginia, Barbados, and many of the Summer Islands that were prefer'd before her for fruitfulness, — but also the Grand- mother of us all, even the fertil Isle of Great Britain ; beside Portugal hath had many a mouthful of bread and fish from us in exchange of their Madeara liquor, and also Spain." ^ And, speaking especially of Boston, he thus rejoices in its growth : — " The chiefe Edifice of this City-like Towne is crowded on the Sea-bankes, and wharfed out with great industry and cost, the buildings beautifuU and large, some fairely set forth with Brick, Tile, Stone, and Slate, and orderly placed with comly streets, whose continuall inlargement presages some sumptuous City. . . . But now behold the admirable Acts of Christ : at this his peoples landing, the hideous Thickets in this place were such that Wolfes and Beares nurst up their young from the eyes of all 1 Johnson, Wonder.] FROM DEATH OF WINTHROP TO PHILIP'S WAR. 305 and faithfully guarded ; there was an outward acquiescence in the search, but " the Colonels," as they were habitually called, were always warned and removed in ample season. Their names were as well known on the lips of the people as those of Endicott and Winthrop ; they remained a traditional phrase down to this present generation : I can distinctly remember to have heard from the lips of country people, in my childhood, the oath " By Goffe- Whalley ! " 1 But even the testimony of " the Colonels " did not readily convince the people that the Restoration was a permanent thing. Affairs in the mother country were full of changes, and this might be but one change more. Then followed trials and executions that affected New England as well as Old. Sir Henry Vane, once Governor of Massachusetts, the defender of Quakers, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, the opponent of slavery and of Cromwell himself when needful, — Sir Henry Vane suffered death at the block. Hugh Peter, once the minister of Salem and one of the founders of Harvard College, was hanged; his last words to his friends being, "Weep not for me, my heart is full of comfort; " and to his daughter, " Go home to New England and trust God there." These events must have touched the hearts of the Colonists very nearly; but the ocean then seemed very wide ; a passage of six weeks was considered short; Europe was far more remote in those days of Colonial dependence than in these of National separation. This had already taught Massachusetts men the habit of evading some troublesome problems by simple delay; so they let a year pass befor^ they sent a congratulatory address to the newly made King. When the time for writing the letter came, it seemed necessary to put some loyalty into their words, if there was not much in their actions. The 1 [Colonels Goffe and Whalley had ar- regicideswere, it wouldseem, visited at Hadley by rived in Boston July 27, 1660, and were kindly Governor Leverett, and by Mr. Richard Salton- received by the principal people ; but they very stall (son of Sir Richard), who left ;^ 50 in the soon removed to Cambridge, and when the Act hands of Edward Collins, of Charlestown, for of Indemnity, in which they were by name ex- them when he went to England in 1672. Their cepted, arrived from England, they relieved the story is succinctly told in Dr. Chandler Robbins's magistrates of embarrassment by dej^arting in lecture, " The Regicides sheltered in New Eng- February, 1661, without their jurisdiction. It land," in the course before the Lowell Institute, was one of the charges raised against Massachu- Cf. also President Stiles's Hist, of the Judges ; setts Bay a year or two later that " Whaley and Palfrey's New England, ii. 495 ; Trumbull's Goffe were entertayned by the magistrates with Connecticut, i. 242 f F. B. Dexter's memoranda great solemnity, and feasted in every place ; " in the New Haven Colony Hist. Soc. Papers, Cartwright's account, in N. Y. Hist. Coll., 1869, vol. ii.; N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,']-a\.y, 1868, p. 85. When the Royal order was received by p. 345; Sibley's Harvard Graduates, i. 115, &c. Endicott for their arrest, the Governor de- Bostonians find more interest, however, in a spatched two commissioners to find their hiding- third of the regicides, though he was never in place, but they returned to Boston without Boston, but lived and died in New Haven under accomplishing their purpose. The pursued men the name of James Davids. He was the progeni- finally found refuge in Hadley, but kept up a tor, through a correspondence with friends in England through female line, of .fl_n /yn c ff i. Of 2 [Endicott did not long survive the Commis- the Endicott portrait, Mr. William C. Endicott sioners' visit, — he died March 2 j, 1665. There is wrote, in 1873, in relation to a copy then pre- an account of Endicott in J. B. Moore's Gover7iors sented to the Amer. Antiq. Society (see their of New Plymouth and Mass. Bay, p. 347. He had Proceedings, Oct. 21, 1873, p. 1 13) : " The original, removed to Boston from Salem before he was now in the possession of my father, William P. chosen Governor in 1644. His will, dated at Bos- Endicott of Salem, descended to him as the ton, May 2, 1659, mentions his house on Cotton oldest son of the oldest son direct from the gov- (Pemberton) Hill. In 1721 the family of Endi- ernor, together with the sword with which the cott had no nearer representative in Boston than cross was cut from the king's colors. It was Mr. John Edwards, who that year applied to painted in 1665, the year of the governor's death, have possession of the tomb of the Governor in and the tradition in the family declares it to the Granary burying-ground. A genealogy of have been a most admirable likeness. I do not his family is i^rinted in the N. E. Hist, and know when the several copies in the Senate Geneal. Reg., October, 1847, and a memoir of the Chamber, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Governor was given in the July number of the and the Essex Institute were made, but they are same year, with a steel plate (also in Drake's all more or less imperfect and inferior." — Ed.] 3IO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. What neither Church nor State nor days of fasting could convey to the minds of the Commissioners was apparently made plain by this one herald's proclamation. Sermons and prayers were unavailing, but the sound of a trumpet seemed significant. " Since you misconstrue our labors," said the Commissioners with dignity, " we shall not lose more of our labors upon you." This was precisely what the Colony wished. It proceeded to show its loyalty in its own way; sent provisions to the English fleet in the West Indies, and sent a ship-load of masts to the navy in England, — an act which Pepys describes as " a blessing mighty unexpected, and but for which we should have failed next year." But Massachusetts persisted in her protest against the Commissioners, and nothing ever came of their enterprise. It was not until many years later, after a season of cruel Indian wars and the death of King Philip, that the English Ministry, which had done noth- ing to help the Colony through its struggle, at last fulfilled for a time its purpose " to reassume the government of Massachusetts into its own hands." CHAPTER IX. BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. BY THE REV. EDWARD E. HALE, D.D. Minister of the South Congregational Church. ON the twenty-first of June, 1675, an express which had started from Marshfield, in Plymouth County, early that morning, came clattering over the Neck, and delivered to Governor Leverett, at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, a letter from Governor Winslow of the Old Colony. The original letter is still preserved.^ It annouriced .that Philip and his band of Indians had n alarmed the \\t,uA^ jL^M j/ ' ^HX^^^^^O /^ people of^ /P9 IT^\D ^^^^22^^^ «^«*^'f Swansea, and V. ' — -r^ *-aj *• that these had retreated their block- house. This was on Sun- day, the day ' e-i^'^ ay ^nvL^zr r^^f^ before. Winslow's letter says, manfully, that the Plymouth Colony will give a good /y CJ ^ account of Philip in a few days if the Mas- 2./. f^ sachusetts will see that the Narragansetts 1/ _ and the Nipmucks do not act to assist that chieftain. He also says that the Old-Colony people had been taking all precautions not to insult or injure Indians. But the war with Philip had had along prelude, and in this very month of June the Indian murderers of Sausaman, or Wussausman, one of Eliot's disciples, had been executed. One of them had testified before his death that his father, /^AJ^j^ j. u.XMf**yyy\f^^^t a counsellor and friend of Philip, had a t'OTVUinAJ J^T^/ hand in that murder, which was supposed to have a political character. 1 [In the Mass. Archives, Ixvii. 202. A fac-simile of the subscription is given above. — Ed.] 312 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. .^. Sic^^^^ Their twenty-first of June corresponds to our first of July, and the reader must imagine hot July days in the mustering of hosts which followed. Leverett's house stood at the corner of Court and Washington Streets, where the Sears building now stands.^ We can well imagine that the Marshfield express, as he passed through the little town with the tidings of war, did not make the least of them. He had made good time on his sad errand. Lev- erett summoned his Council at once. We have the list of those who at- tended, — and, as these Boston members of the Council became in practice the military committee who carried on the war, the names are worth record- ing here. They were Samuel Symonds, Simon Bradstreet, Richard Russell (who was Treasurer), Thomas Danforth, William Hathorne, Edward Tyng, Wil- liam Stoughton, and Thomas Clarke, with Edward Rawson, the Secretary. One fancies Stoughton picking up the news as the express passed him in Dorchester, and coming in to the Council on that sum- mons. John Hull was soon after added, as treasurer for the war. The Council immediately engaged Edward Hutchinson (a young captain), Seth Perry, and William Powers, to go to the Narragansetts, bidding them to call on Roger Williams ^ on the way, and avail themselves of all his influence in persuading or ordering the Narragansetts not to come into any alliance with Philip. Horses were impressed for them, and they started on their errand. From day to day, further news was received from Swansea, where the Plymouth forces were gathering around Philip ; and meanwhile two mes- sengers were despatched to Mount Hope, with some expectation of negoti- ation with him. But these messengers found, on the twenty-fourth, that the war was begun. One of the Swansea men had wounded an Indian who was killing his cattle, and the Indians had retaliated by killing some of the Swansea men. Boston was all alive meanwhile ; drums beat for volunteers ; in three hours' time one hundred and ten men were mustered. Meanwhile, the regular train-bands were notified that they must be ready for draft ; and the whole history shows that their organization was complete, and that they were ready to meet such demands with promptness. Winslowhad not asked for military assistance. But, in the note sent to him in reply to his first despatch, Leverett had assured him that the larger colony would send him any arms or ammunition which he required. As accounts of real war came in, the Council organized an aggressive expedition. To the command of it they appointed Captain John Richards to go " as cap- tain of the foot ; who shamefully refused the employment." ^ Captain Daniel 1 [Drake, Landmarks, p. 83. See Introduc- ^ [The original minutes of this meeting, as tion to vol. ii. for the site of Governor Leverett's taken by Rawson the secretary on a bit of pa- house. — Ed.] per, are preserved in the Mass. Archives, Ixvii. 2 [Cf. Williams's letters in the Winthrop 204, and this reproach seems to have been inter- Papers, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. — Ed.] lined later, as the fac-simile shows. — Ed.) BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 313 Henchman was then chosen to " go forth as the captain of one hundred men for the service, and Captain Thomas Prentice to be captain of the horse." These titles were given them because they were already captains in the train-bands. Orders were given to the militia of Boston and of all the neighboring towns to furnish such a number of able soldiers as should make one hundred in all for Henchman's command, to be ready at an hour's notice. Each soldier was to have his arms complete and knapsack ready to march, " and not fail, but be at the randyvous." On the twenty-fifth, these men were summoned to appear " at their colors in the market-place at six in the evening, with their arms ready fixed for service." On the next day, Daniel Denison was appointed commander- - in-chief of all the forces of the colony.^ Henchman and Prentice marched on the twenty-sixth with their men. When they reached Neponset River, at a point about twenty miles ^ from Boston, there happened a great eclipse of the moon, which was totally darkened above an hour. William Hubbard says that some melancholy fancies thought the eclipse ominous, and conceived that in the centre of the moon they discerned an Indian scalp. He adds that they might rather have thought of Crassus's joke when the moon was eclipsed in Capricorn, that he was more afraid of Sagittarius than of Capricornus. Cotton Mather improves on Hubbard enough to say that some of the soldiers did think of Crassus. Henchman had been master in the Latin school, and may have remembered the story. j>y QA^ ^^ /j/^ / The next day Samuel Mosley ^J/'£z/Tj L<>^~^ C^/ ^^^^^^^^^^^ and his company overtook the C/ ^^ advance. He had beat up for volunteers in Boston, and with one hundred and ten men, who were called " Privateers," ^ had made a quick march ; so that he and Henchman and Prentice all arrived together at Swansea. It is no part of this Memorial History to trace the details of the history of Philip's war, except so far as Boston took part in it. But as the gov- 1 [Cf. an account of Denison by D. D. Slade ^ [So Hubbard says. — Ed.] in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1869. ^ Probably as a synonym for "volunteers,'' Drake, Tenon of Roxbury, p. 90. — En.] — not because they had served at sea. VOL. I. — 40. 314 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ernor of Massachusetts and the miUtary committee were Boston men and as the commissioners for the united colonies met in Boston most of the orders for the war went out from the council chamber m the Boston Town Bof^rL O^/^&nrt^^'L .1 ^/S- yi^ -m^ ZjJL <5t-v*^ '-^^ House. Boston, Rox- bury, Dorchester, and Charlestown furnished a considerable propor- tion of the Massachu- setts contingents, who were always ready with a singular promptness, which shows that the people must have lived as in the presence of an enemy. To describe the arrangements thus made for war in the cap- jf ^^ ^^ — N ' ital, with such thread of \\n rH "^C^ITl^nC^ctH^ ^^^ history in the field ^y " / as may be necessary " * ' to explain them, is the object of this chapter. Everything in the history shows that the colony at this time was fairly in the second generation from the settlement. There is nothing of the polish and state of the beginning, but there is in all the despatches and letters the vigor, not to say the rigor, of a generation only too well trained by hardship. John Leverett, the governor, was such a man as repubhcs are apt to put in the front. He was born in the English Boston in 1616, was trained under Cotton's preaching, and seems to have crossed the ocean in the same ship with him and with Governor Haynes. He returned to England in time to serve through the whole Civil War as a Captain of Horse, and he acquired the confidence and friendship of Cromwell. In 1655 he was sent to England as the colony's agent, and he remained there till Charles II. was well seated on his throne. Very likely the old sol- dier would have been glad to lead this campaign himself. But at sixty years of age he did not take the field, and the immediate direction of aff"airs fell to younger men. His own letter to the Government of Connecticut, written on the 28th of June, is a good description of the energetic activity of those first days : — " Upon the 2 ist instant, about three o'clock, came an express to me from the Gov- ernor of Plymouth, signifying that upon the Lord's day before an armed party of Philip's men attacked two houses not far from Swansea, and drove the people out of SIGNATURES OF THE COMMISSIONERS. BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 315 them, who fled to the town and gave intelligence thereof ; and accordingly Swansea men sent a post to the Governor of Plymouth to acquaint him of their needs, — with all in- timating that the Indians were marching to Swansea. The Governor thereupon ordered some relief to be sent to Swansea, as he informed us. The armed Indians marched up to the bridge at Swansea, but 40 of the English of Swansea being posted at the bridge the Indians retreated to Mount Hope again ; but since have made several -J GOVERNOR JOHN LEVERETT.^ excursions in small parties, and have plundered several houses not far from Swansea. And afterwards, about the 24th and 25th and 26th day of this instant, have killed about 5 or 6 persons in all in a skulking way, and barbarously taken the head, scalpe, and hands of two persons, and some within sight of a Court of Guard, — others they have wounded about twenty ; and a house they have fired, and daily we hear of the increase of trouble. The Governor of that colony has frequently solicited us for aid, which as soon as we could possibly raise we have sent to them. It is certified from Plymouth ^ [A portrait of Leverett is preserved in the gallery of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. He was the Governor from 1673- 78. He died March 16, 1679, and the order of march at his funeral is given in Snow's Boston^ p. 170. Dr. N. B. Shurtleff gives an account of him and his family in the N'. E. Hist, and Gencal. Reg., 1850, p. 125; cf. also October, 1858. A communication on the seal and family of the Governor is in the Heraldic Joiiynal, i. %'}y. A Memoir of Sir Johft Leverett and of the Family generally, by Rev. C. E. Leverett, was printed in Boston in 1S56. Two of the three preserved portraits of the Governor are engraved in this memoir. Mr. Leverett also prepared the tabu- lar pedigree in Drake's Boston, folio edition. J. B. Moore has a memoir of the Governor in his Goz'ernors of Plvniouth and Mass. Bay. — Ed.] 3l6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and Swansea that both Narragansetts and Nipmucks have sent aid to Phihp ; we sent messengers to Narragansetts and Nipmucks to warn and caution them not to help Philip, and if any were gone to command to return. Our messengers are returned from both these places. The Nipmucks speak fair, and say they are faithful to their engage- ments and will not assist Philip. The Narragansetts say they will not meddle ; but there is more reason to suspect the latter, and we believe they are not unconcerned in this matter. All our intelligence gives us ground to believe that the poor people in these parts are in a very distressed condition in many respects. Their houses burned, their people killed and wounded, and they not able to make any attempt upon the Indians, wanting for victuals, amunition, and arms. We have occasion to send greater force for their relief We have sent about three hundred foot and about eighty horse, besides several carts laden with munition, provisions, and armes. Moreover we are sending two vessels with provision and munition to supply their forces, the vessels to serve as there shall be cause. We sent Captain Savage and Mr. Brattle four days since to speak with Philip, who are returned, but could not obtain speech with him. The Coun- cil has appointed a fast to-morrow to seek God in this matter for a blessing upon our forces. How far this trouble may speed, it is with the Lord to order. There is reason to conceive that if Philip be not soone suppressed he and his confederates may skulk into the woods and greatly annoy the English, and that the confederacy of the In- dians be larger than yet we see. Major-General Denison was chosen for the general of these forces, but he being taken ill Captain Savage is sent commander-in-chief Captain Prentice is Commander of the Horse, and Captain Henchman and Captain Mosley Captain of the Foot. Our eyes are unto the Lord for his presence with them, and hope you will not be wanting in your prayers and watchfulness over the Indians, and particularly request you to use your utmost authority to restrain the Mohegans and Pequods." John Richards the captain, who is spoken of so cavalierly as having shamefully refused the command, was a person of a good deal of note, and does not seem to have lost in public estimation by this refusal. He was chosen an Assistant from 1680 to 1686; in Andros's time he was a "high friend of liberty," in Mr. Savage's phrase; was a Judge of the Supreme Court, and when he died was buried with all the honors. The " shameful refusal" to take command of the foot may be the testy memorandum of an excited day. BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 317 The captains of the eight companies in Boston were Thomas Clarke, Thomas Savage, James Oliver, William Hudson, Daniel Henchman, John Richards, John Hull, and [John?] Clarke. Failing Richards, as has been said, the command of the infantry was given to Henchman, and that of the horse to Thomas Prentice of Newton. Daniel Denison, the major-general, was not well, and the general command was transferred to Savage, the father. Daniel Henchman first appears in our local history as the assistant teacher in the Latin School, then under the charge of Robert VVoodmansey. In 1669 he was appointed on the committee ^^^ /I for the survey of a new plantation, and from ^L\f ^Ti/*Jla77iJUi7^ the history of Worcester it appears that he ^^^^"-^^^^ n- was one of the most important persons in laying out and settling that town. He died there in the year 1685. He was a connection of Judge Sewall, and there was in Sewall's house a room called by his name. Everything in his letters shows that he was a good soldier and a prompt executive man, and he is, perhaps, the most prominent representative of Boston as the war goes on. Like other commanders he is often blamed. Doubtless he made mis- takes like other men. But there is a manliness in his treatment of the Christian Indians which conciliates respect. Both the Savages, father and son, appear in these campaigns with dis- tinction. The son, Perez Savage, who was an ensign, was but a young man ; and in one of the very first encounters he was badly wounded in the thigh by a shot from his own party. He was wounded again in the Narragansett fight, but recovered and died twenty years after, a captive in Mequinez in Barbary. He had probably been taken by the Algerines in his trade with Spain. Thomas Savage, the father, was one of the men whom the General Court disarmed in the Wheelwright troubles. He had at one time retired into Rhode Island. He lived to revenge himself on his old persecutors by leading their army with courage, prudence, and skill. He became now the commander of the whole contingent into Plymouth County. He made his will on the 28th of June, the day he marched to the war; and on the 25th of June he was appointed one of the committee for the war, and had all the accounts of the military expenses confided to him. The next May he was appointed treasurer, as successor to Richard Russell. John Hull, another of the captains, was the mint master. It is clear that his services as treasurer wereso essential that it was out of the question that he should march with the troops. No suggestion of other reason appears in the record. The various companies did not take the field as such this year, but after October they were ready to do so. They were three times drafted for this war : once for the first expedition, and once for troops to the east- ward ; again for the attack on the Narragansetts. The whole number was probably about 850, — of whom the greater part were called into one or another service during the war. For the sinews of war the proper taxes were levied, and a powder-mill was successfully established at Dorchester. 3i8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, The three companies arrived at Swansea in forty-eight hours from the time when they left Boston. There is an intimation in one despatch that Henchman's forces, though infantry, went as "dragoons," — by which phrase was then meant what we call " mounted infantry." If the first march were effected thus, their horses were sent back, for they certainly served after- wards as foot. They at once drove the Indians back from Swansea to Mount CAPTAIN THOMAS SAVAGE ' [This engraving follows an original paint- ing owned by his descendant, Colonel Henry Lee of Boston, who some years ago bought it of another descendant, Mr. William H. Spooner, in whose family it had descended. Beneath the arms in the upper right-hand corner is the in- scription :" ^la : 73. An? 1679." He is buried in the King's Chapel yard, and the inscription on his tomb, with the arms, is given in the Heraldic Journal, ii. zz. .Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. [95; Savage, Genealo.rical Dic- twnary, iv. zy. Whitman, Ancient a),d Honor- able Artillery Comtany. He li^-ed near the northerly corner of North and Fleet streets and had a shop near Edward Gibbons's house' He was a tailor. — Ed.] BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 319 Hope, in an action in which young Savage was wounded. His father, the commander-in-chief, arrived the next day, and led his force to an attack on Mount Hope. They found and destroyed Philip's own wigwam. But the enemy had flown. After a week's marching and countermarching, Hench- man with his force crossed into Rhode Island, and gave efficiency to the negotiation which Edward Hutchinson and Joseph Dudley had been directed to carry on with the Narragansetts. The Sachems of that tribe bound themselves not to enter into the war, and to detain any of Philip's subjects who fell in their way; to surrender any goods stolen from the English, and themselves to make war against Philip : for which they gave four hostages. This treaty was signed by Coeman, Taitson, and Tawageson, as " Councillors and Attorneys " to the six Sachems of the Narragansetts. It is dated on the 15th of July. While this was passing. Colonel Benjamin Church, in command of the forces in the Old Colony, had brought Philip and his men to bay at Pocasset, on Taunton River. So soon as Henchman returned, on the i8th of July, he undertook to besiege them there. Retaining his own company of foot he sent the other Massachusetts companies home. Prentice and his troop were ordered to Mendon, in Norfolk County. Philip outwitted Henchman. He waded the Taunton River at low tide with his warriors, leaving one hun- dred women and children behind. Henchman secured these, and learning that Philip was marching north-west followed with his company, about a day behind. He went to Providence in a sloop, " giving each one three biscakes, a fish, and a few raisons, with ammunition that may last two or three days." A party of Mohegans, on their way from Boston to reinforce him, cut off Philip's rear, and killed about thirty men. But Philip escaped further pursuit. Henchman was blamed for letting him escape. It seems clear that the blame, after the first mistake, was not well deserved. But Philip himself said, that when they were in Pocasset their powder was almost gone, and that if they had been pressed there they must have surrendered. The intense excitement in Boston, meanwhile, may be well conceived. As Leverett's letter has shown, the Council appointed a Fast for the 29th of June. But persons who suppose such appointments were very eagerly met must notice the memorandum on the Dorchester church records: "There was no meeting that day in this town, but people went abroad to meetings in other towns." Besides the troop of Prentice, Captain Isaac Johnson was ordered on the 15th to march with sol- ' T/^a.zt<— —i ,w-^->t^^^''71-' diers " listed under the order of Major J J '-Cc3^j/' from Boston into the Nipmuck country, to ascertain how those Indians were affected. Wheeler was wounded in the same ambush. Henchman and Mosley, with Boston soldiers, were moving backward and forward as occasion directed. Beers, Captain of Watertown, and Lothrop, at the head of the " Flower of Essex," were killed in that campaign. It was Captain Mosley's good fortune, hearing the musketry, to come to the relief of the wounded after the massacre at Bloody Brook. Lothrop lost fifty- nine men ; Mosley lost three.-' Of all these commanders, Samuel Mosley is he who would figure most brilliantly in a romance. He had, perhaps, been what we call a privateer. He had a rough-and-ready way with him, and indulged his prejudices to the country's injury. It was he who, in this western campaign, took fifteen friendly Indians from their fort at Marlborough, and sent them under guard, tied to each other, to Boston, to be tried for the attack on Lancaster. It was he of whom the old story is told, that he took off his wig and hung it on a tree that he might fight more coolly, — to the great terror of the enemy, who thought there was little use in scalping such a man. It was he who, next year, in proposing to raise another company, said he would take for pay the captives and plunder, — and was permitted to do so. He was a lesser Garibaldi, and, it need hardly be added, was always in hot water. Meanwhile, Boston had all the terrors and other excitements of a town which is a little removed from the scene of danger, where every rumor swells the truth, and people have not the safety-valve of vigorous work before an enemy. In August, when the Christian Indians at Marlbor- ough were tried on the charge of murder, John Eliot, the minister of Rox- bury, with Daniel Gookin, always the Indians' loyal friend, made every effort to save them from the popular fury, and succeeded with all but one, who was sold for a slave. There seemed some doubt of his innocence ; that of the others was certain. But their friends brought the indigna- tion of the mob on their own heads. Eliot happened to be run down in a boat, by a large vessel, and was almost drowned. Cotton Mather repeats with horror the exclamation of some man unknown, that he wished Eliot 1 Only two names are legible, — Peter Barron slain in the county of Hampshire 167 ■; is and John Vates. These, it will be observed, given in the Massachusetts Archives Ixviii.' -1% were privateers, or volunteers. [A list of the — Ed.] ' ' BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 32 1 had been drowned.^ The Indians, after acquittal, were let loose by night. This so inflamed the mob, that some thirty boys and young fellows called at nine o'clock at night on James Oliver, a magistrate, thinking he would lead them in an attack on the prison, that they might take and hang one remaining Indian. Oliver manfully took his cane and cudgelled them then and there, and " so far dismissed them." There was a clamor for " martial law." A few days after, when a Watertown man, named Shattucke, had said at the porch of the " Three Cranes," in Charlestown, that he would be hanged, if he would ever serve again if the Marlborough Indians were cleared, Gookin relates with satisfaction that within a quarter of an hour he was drowned by the sinking of the Charlestown ferry-boat. There were other men on board, but all were saved except him. Swayed by the popular resentment, or striving to satisfy it, the General Court made stringent orders about Indians. None were to enter the town unless with a guard of two musketeers; any Indian found in town without such guard might be arrested. And by another vote Eliot's colony of pray- ing Indians at Natick were removed to Deer Island, in Boston Harbor, with the consent of Mr. Shrimpton, who owned it. Prentice supervised the sad removal. The Indians made no opposition. Two hundred men, women, and children, they loaded their little possessions on six carts Prentice had brought with him, and at a place called "The Pines," at the Arsenal grounds, not far from Mount Auburn, they were put on boats for the Island. At " The Pines " Eliot met them to comfort and help them. On the 30th of October, at the full tide, they embarked at midnight and were carried to the Island. Another colony of friendly Indians and prisoners were afterwards sent to Long Island, in the harbor. They were kept at fishing and digging clams, and when the next summer came they broke up the land at Deer Island for planting. The Council ap- pointed two "meet men" to oversee them, and supply them with food. Before winter came, the number of the Deer-Island colony had enlarged to five hundred. It has been seen that Philip had abandoned his women and children with- out hesitation. These were made prisoners ; most of them seem to have been brought to Boston, as well as the prisoners of war. At first they were assigned to such families as would receive them ; but before the war ended they were sent into West-Indian slavery. " What was the fate of Philip's wife and child? She is a woman; he is a lad. They surely did not hang them? No. That would have been mercy. They were sold into slavery: West-Indian slavery ! An Indian princess and her child sold from the cool breezes of Mount Hope, from the wild freedom of a New-England forest, to gasp under the lash beneath the blazing sun of the tropics ! Bitter as death ! Ay, bitter as hell ! " These are Mr. Everett's indignant words in his Bloody-Brook address. Dear old John Eliot of Roxbury made his protest 1 [Eliot's own account of this incident is quoted in Dralce's Town of Roxbury, p. 183. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 41. 322 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. against this barbarity at the moment. A thousand pities that it was unheeded ! ^ Randolph picked up some of the gossip about Eliot and his friends, when in his report of September, 1676, he said : '* These have been the most barbarous and cruel enemies to the English/' — a charge which is wholly untrue. In the State archives are two weather-stained placards, duplicates in manuscript, posted on the walls to alarm Gookin and Danforth. They are in this language: — "Feb. 28, 1675. " Reader, thou art desired not to suppress this paper, but to promote the design, which is to testify (those traitors to their King and country) Guggins and Danford, that some ginerous spiritts have vowed their destruction ; as Christians we warn them to prepare for death, for though they will deservedly die, yet we wish the health of their souls, " By the new Society, A. B. C. D." ^ Richard Scott was imprisoned and tried for scandalous, reproachful, and vile execrations of several persons in authority. He pleaded that he was drunk, and was discharged on giving bonds for his good behavior. 1 It remains in his own manuscript in the archives of the State; never printed, indeed, until now : — *'To the Honorable Council sitting at Boston this 13th 6th 1675 : — "The humble petition of John Eliot showeth that the terror of selling away such Indians into the islands for per- petual slavery, who shall yield up themselves to your mercy, is like to be an effectual prolongation of the war. Such an exasperation of them as it may produce we know not what evil consequence upon all the land. Christ hath said : ' Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' This usage o£ them is worse than death. To put to death men that have deserved to die is an ordinance of God, and a blessing is promised for it. It maybe done in faith- The design of Christ in these last days is not to extirpate na- tions, but to gospelize them. He will spread the gospel round the world about. Rev. xi. 15 : 'The kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.' His sovereign hand and grace hath brought the gospel into these dark places of the earth. When we came we declared to the world, and it is recorded, yea, we are engaged by our Letters Patent from the King's Majesty, that the endeavor for the Indians' conver- sion, not their extirpation, were one great end of our enter- prise in coming to these ends of the earth. The Lord halh sn succeeded the work as that {by his grace) they have the Holy Scriptures, andsundry of themselves able to teach their countrymen the pood knowledge of God. The light of the gospel is risen among those that sat in darkness and in the region of the shadow of death. Andhowever some of them have refused to receive the gospel, and now are incensed in their spirits into a war against the English, yet by that good promise, — Psalm ii. i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, — I doubt not but the morning of Christ is to open a door for the free passage of the gospel among them, and that the Lord will publish the Word. Ver. 6 : ' Yet have I set my king, my anointed, upon the holy hill of 2ion, though some rage at it.' "My humble request is that you would follow Christ his designs in this matter to foster [?] the passages of religion among them, and not to destroy ihem. To send into a place a slave away from spiritual direction, to the eternal ruin of their souls, is as I apprehend to act contrary to the mind of Christ. Christ's command is we should enlarge the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Isay, liv. z : 'Enlarge the place of thy tent.' " It seemeth to me that to sell them away as slaves is to hinder the enlargement of his kingdom. How can a Chris- tian sell [except?] to act in casting away their souls for which Christ hath in an eminent hand provided an offer of ihe gospel ? To sell souls for money seemeth to me a danger- ous merchandise. If they deserve to die, it is far better to be put to death under godly persons who will take religious care that means may be used that they may die penitently. To sell them away from all means of grace when Christ hath provided means of grace for them is the way for us to be active in destroying their souls, when we are highly obliged to seek their conversion and salvation, and have opportunity in our hand so to do. Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. A fugitive ser- vant from a Pagan master might not be delivered to this master, but be kept in Israel for the good of his soul. How much less lawful is it to sell away souls from under the light of the gospel into a condition where their souls shall be utterly lost so far as appeareth unto men ! All men (o£ reading) condemn the Spaniard for cruelty upon this point in destroying men and depopulating the land. The coun- try is large enough. Here is land enough for them and us too. " In the multitude of people is the King's honor. It will be more to the glory of Christ to have many brought in to worship his great name. " I beseech the honorable Council to pardon my bold- ness, and let the case of conscience be discussed orderly be- fore the thing be acted. Pardon my weakness, and leave to reason and religion their liberty in this great case of con- science." 2 \Mass. Archives^ xxx. 193. Palfrey, iii. 20T, has a note of this incensed feeling of the popu- lace. The matter is also examined by Dr. Ellis in his chapter on "The Indians of Eastern Mas- sachusetts'* in the present volurne. — Ed.] BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 323 To return to the prosecution of the war in the field. The Commission- ers of the four united colonies determined to carry the war against the Narragansetts. It was charged that their young men had been found in the parties of wariike Indians. It was certain that they had not delivered up the Wampanoags, Philip's men, who had taken shelter with them. Far less had they held to the treaty made by their " attorneys," and carried on war against him. A new army of one thousand men was now called out, of which Massachusetts was to furnish five hundred and twenty-seven. Bos- ton, as she then was, furnished one hundred and eight. Charlestown fur- nished fifteen. Winslow was the commander-in-chief, one of the terrible days in our history. The lit- tle army marched from Bull's Fort, known to modern tourists as Tow- er Hill, on Narragansett Bay. Passing over Kingston Hill, in a cold snow- storm, they came upon the Indian fort in the midst of a swamp. The Stonington railroad of to-day passes close by the place. They stormed the fort at once. Johnson and Davenport were killed at the head of their men, in leading the attack. It was only after a severe battle that the place was taken, and the wigwams burned. The only vestiges to be found to-day are here and there a grain of Indian corn burned black in the destruction.^ The full loss of the army was thirty-one killed and sixty-seven wounded. Such, at least, was the official return at the time. Appleton of Ipswich had been withdrawn from ^ the west for this expedition, and Savage took his place. The power of the Narragansetts was thus broken. But war harried every frontier; and on the 28th of December the Council of Massachusetts passed an order to add three hundred more men to the army, of which Suf- folk should furnish one hundred and twelve. For this order the commission- ers thanked the Council the next day. The Suffolk militia had all been in readiness to take the field at once, since the session of the Court in October. The army with its reinforcements kept the field, much of the time in terri- ble weather, following the remnants of* the Narragansetts where it could find them. The men suffered a great deal from the cold. But on the 5th of February, when the army returned to Boston, there were not wanting critics ^ The names of the men who were killed, of The wounded from the same towns were Koston and towns now united with it, are: Captain John Blandon, James Updick, Sergeant Peter Isaac Johnson, of Roxbury ; Captain S. Daven- Bennett, Sergeant Timberly, James Lendall, Wil- port, of Boston ; Benjamin Langdon, John Far- liam Kejnble (servant to John Cheems), Ezekiel mer, Richard Barnam, Jeremiah Stock, Thomas Oilman, Mark Rounds (servant to Henry Kem- Browne (substitute for Paul Bat), Alexander ble), Alex Bogell, John Casey (servant to Thomas Forbes, James Thomas, Irland Trevor (substi- Gardiner), all of Boston ; Jacob Cook, of Charles- tute for Davis Turner), all of Boston ; John town ; John Speer, of Dorchester, and " sundry Watson, William Linckern, Solomon Watts, all others." The MassachusMs Archives contain of Roxbury ; John Warner, of Charlestown. various lists of this kind. ^a^tu-e^ A-yplfiltn. 324 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. who said they should have done something the army did not do. The severest part of the war, for whites and Indians both, was to be crowded into the next four months. Captain Hull's contemporary diary, kept in Boston, might show us the view of things by a bigoted and hard man of affairs there. But it follows the universal law of diaries ; namely, that when a man is busy he has no time or heart to write the record, and that it is only when he has nothing to say that he wastes his time in memoranda. For pages as crowded as ours, per- haps no briefer skeleton of the history could be given than his, which is here copied, with no abridgment : — " Several particular fasts this year. Feb. lo, Lancaster spoiled by the enemy. 2ist, Medfield in part burned by ditto. Mar. 13, Groton burned. 26th, Marlborough burned in part. 28th, Rehoboth assaulted. April 6, John Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, died in Boston. i8th, Sudbury part burned by the enemy. Capt. Wads- worth, Capt. Brocklebanck, and fifty soldiers slain. The second and third months were very sickly throughout this colony. April 25, Major Simon Willard, one of our magistrates, died, a pious Orthodox man. Mr. Peter Lidget died, an accomplished merchant. May 8, some houses burned at Bridgewater. nth, some also toward Plymouth. 14th, Mr. Hezekiah Usher died, a pious and useful merchant, isth, Mr, Richard Russell died, a magistrate and the county treasurer, a godly man. i6th, Mr. Joshua Atwater died. i8th, the Fall Fight, many Indians slain. 24th, Capt. WiUiam Davis died. June 29th, a day of public thanksgiving. Aug. 12, Sagamore Philip, that began the war, was slain." ' Twenty such entries, passing through the sad gamut of fasting and grief, but culminating in thanksgiving, are all the Boston merchant finds time for in seven months.^ The share which Boston took in such a season must be briefly told. The Fast Day in the old meeting-house on the 23d was interrupted by alarms, and on the 25th Major Savage marched again to the west, as far as North- ampton, which he relieved. John Curtis of Roxbury was " guide to the forces," and six friendly Indians from Deer Island went with them. All this year the " friendly Indians " are much more cordially spoken of; and before the war was over they were enlisted, and served with distinction and success. Meanwhile Philip and his men having pressed too far westward, in retiring from the English, were attacked by the Mohawks, whom he kept off by a short truce, but who afterwards fell on his women and children. A letter from Savage at Hadley, written in March, makes it almost certain that the Dutch traders supplied the Indians with powder. But Andros, who was Governor of New York, was very indignant when this charge was made.^ The Fall Fight — so called from the great Falls of Connecticut River, now known as Turner's Falls — was a victory over the savages; but it cost the hfe 1 [Hull's diary, edited by Mr. Hale, is printed more particular in its references to these events, in the American Antiquarian Society's Collections, — Ed.] 1)1. — Ed.] 3 [Several letters of Andros are in the Mas- 2 [Sewall's diary (Sewall Papers, 1.) is hardly sachusetts Arcliivcs. — Ed.] BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 325 of William Turner, a Boston captain. He was not a train-band captain, but early offered to raise a company of volunteers. Because he was a prominent Baptist his offer was at first slighted ; . .. but he had found his services more esteemed at ///t^*^ '^^'^Ot/n&T' the front, and at the time of the battle where Cy he lost his life he was commanding a company of Hadley, Hatfield, and Hampton soldiers. On the 20th of April another fast was held, close on the news of the loss at Sudbury; and on the 27th another " army " is raised for a westward expe- dition. April and May were very sickly months. In May alone fifty per- sons died in the little town, whose whole census, including its soldiers in the field, cannot have been six thousand. ^ On the 9th of May is another day of humiliation, attended at the First Church by the magistrates and General Court; and on the 21st of June one church in Boston held another. But by the 29th of June, as the reader has seen from Hull's journal, affairs had so far brightened that on that day, as the anniversary of the first fast day of the war, the Government ordered a day of thanksgiving. The Boston troops returned from an expedition to Mount Hope on the 22d of July, dissatisfied. But they had taken or killed one hundred and fifty Indians with the loss of only one man. With Philip's death the war, except at the ^/OM^^if O^^-m ^*^<^^ C£^m St- eastward, ended.^ So com- '''/ /) \\ ^ plete was the destruction of tv*,/ X^MHtj^S^ the Indian power, that in the • * , ,. r ^, , THE MARK OF PmLIP.' proclamation of the annual Thanksgiving in December it was said : " Of those several tribes and parties that have hitherto risen up against us, which were not a few, there now scarce remains a name or family of them in their former habitations but are either slain, captivated, or fled into remote parts of this wilderness, or lie hid, despairing of their first intentions against us." There was never again an important Indian rising, not instigated by Jesuit or French hatred. But the terrors of Philip's war were the origin of the horror and contempt with which for a century men regarded the Indians. For such local incidents, connected with this life-and-death struggle, as it has been possible to collect, the best authorities are the contemporary his- 1 Fifteen hundred families is the guess in a and hanged at the " town's end," Sept. 26, report to England. See Chalmers's ^kk«/j-. But 1676. — Ed.] in 1680 there were but eight hundred and sixty- ^ [This is taken from a deed of land in eight taxable polls, which gives the full num- Taunton, the original of which belonged to the ber of males above eighteen years of age. laie S. G. Drake (Drake, Boston, p. 387). The [Tax-lists of 1674-76 are printed in the First Rhode Island Historical Society have erected a Report of the Boston Record Commissioners, stone on the spot where he fell. Proccedins;!, — Ed.J 1877-78, p. 106. In 1680 four Boston merchants 2 [One of the most insolent of the Indians, bought a part of Mount Hope neck and laid Monahco, — or one-eyed John, — was marched, out the town of Bristol, and Colonel Benjamin with others who had been taken, through the Church settled there, Qi. Rhode Island Hist. Soc. Boston streets with a halter about his neck, /";•(;.:., 1874-75, p. 60. — -'^^•J 326 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. torks, Gookin's admirable narration of the praying Indians, the letters of the time, and the State archives. These have been freely used in this narra- tive. The church records afford Httle light on a struggle which was, how- ever, followed with intense interest in the- churches. " Ned Randolph," as he was called, in his spiteful review of the war, written the same year, says that the church members staid at home, and only " loyal " men went to battle. But this is not true, even as he meant it. It is clear that all classes shared in the dangers of the struggle. The churches contributed freely for the poor of the towns destroyed or depopulated. For instance, the Old South provided a house for the Rowlandsons after their captivity. The town records contain little more allusion to the war than a few ref- erences to the " settlement " of the poor people thrown back upon Boston. The knotty questions of "town settlement" and "State settlement," as we now define them, began with these experiences.^ Boston went into the encounter ready for war, indeed, but with little experience of it. Not a man fought who had ever been in battle, — unless he had seen it in fights with cavaliers in England. " Ned Randolph," an unfriendly critic, saw their army after a year's training in the field, and he says : "Each troop [of horse] consists of sixty horse besides officers ; and they are well mounted and completely armed with back, breast, and head-piece, buff coat, sword, carbine, and pistols, each troop distinguished by their coats. The foot also are very well furnished with swords, muskets, and bandoleers. The late wars have hardened their infantry, made them good firemen, and taught them the ready use of their arms." Of a population of perhaps twenty-five thousand, Massachusetts had lost in battle five or six hundred of her sons. The estimate frequently made, that she lost one tenth of her fighting men, is probably beneath the truth. Of that population Boston alone, as she then was, made perhaps one fifth. Her loss was nearly proportional to that of the others, though her troops were not in any one of the great massacres. Four of her captains Hutch- inson, Johnson, Davenport, and Mosley had been killed. When in October 167s, a special tax of ;^i,553 was ordered, Boston paid ^300, Charlestown ;^i8o, Dorchester ;^40, and Roxbury ;^30. This gave Boston a little more than one third of the tax, — about the proportion she pays to-day. With such diminution of resource the Uttle town and State were to turn to their harder battle against their king.^ <^^!W^^*^ c5^ /i^l^ 1 [As to the contribution sent to the colony Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1848, p. 245. from Ireland in 1676, to assist in the support of — Ed.] those weakened or famished by the war, see Mr. 2 [xhis struggle to maintain their charter is Charles Deane's communication in tlie N. E. narrated in Mr. Deane's chapter. — Ed.] BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR. 327 Editorial Note. — If the reader desires to follow out more minutely the events of this war, he will find one of the best general accounts of the causes of it in Palfrey's New England, iii. ch. iv. That historian does not believe it was a wide-spread, premeditated effort to expel the colonists. A Rhode Island Quaker, John East- on, wrote a Narrative of the Causes which led to Philip''s JVar,--which was printed in 1858, with notes by F. B. Hough. Easton did not think all the faults were on the side of the Indians. (Cf. Palfrey, iii. 180, on its supposed authorship ) Increase Mather, in his Early History of New England, of which Drake edited an edition in 1864, goes into the question of the origin of the war. Drake has followed the preliminaries in his " Notes " in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1858, January, April, and July, 1861. He also, in his Old Indian Chronicle, 1836, has re- printed several contemporary narratives, the original editions of which are preserved in Harvard College Library. They were written in New England, but printed in London. Some of them — like The present State of New England, 1675 ; ^ "^^ "'"^ further Narrative of the State of New England, i(rj6; IVarre between the Eng- lish and Indians in New England, 1 676 ; Mather's Brief History, 1676; News from New England, 1676; and Hubbard's Narrative, all which once belonged to Sir Walter Scott, and were given by him to Mr. Brevoort, of New York — were described by Baylies in his History of the Old Colony, i. p. x., while in the possession of J. Car- son Brevoort, of Brooklyn. It was ostensibly to correct the statements of one of these old narra- tives, some of which were ascribed to "a mer- chant of Boston " (see Palfrey's New England, iii. 151), that Increase Mather hastily prepared his Brief History of the War with the Indians in Ne-M England, from June 24, 1675, to Aug. 12, 1676, London, 1676, and Boston, same year (a copy, which belonged to Samuel Mather, and had been " revised and corrected " by the author, his father, is one of fourteen early tracts bound together by the son, being writings mostly by the father, the whole priced in 1876 by William George, bookseller, Bristol, at ^^350), — a reprint of which was edited by S. G. Drake in 1862, col- lated with Cotton Mather's account of the war in his Magnalia. This last account was written twenty years after the war, and its author availed himself, without giving credit, of Hubbard's Nar- rative of the Troubles with the Indians, — a better account than Increase Mather's. The ground is also gone over in Hubbard's New England, ch. Ixxi. Palfrey, Ne^o England, iii. 153, thinks Hubbard had good opportunities. The hero of the war was, perhaps. Colonel Benjamin Church, of Plymouth Colony, whose sword is preserved in the Historical Society's cabinet. (Cf. Proceedings, i. 379.) The history of the ordinary portrait, so called, of Church, — which is really a likeness of Charles Churchill, the English poet, with a powder-horn slung over his shoulder, — is given by Mr. Drake in the Hist. Mag., December, 1868, p. 27. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, March, 1858, p. 293. It was en- graved by Paul Revere, who also engraved a picture of " Philip, King of Mount Hope." Church's son, Thomas Church, wrote out for his father an account of the war, — Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War, — which was published long afterwards in Boston, in 1716, and often since; the best edition being that edited by Henry M. Dexter, 1865-67, in two volumes, including a memoir of Church. The original edition is very scarce ; Brinley, having watched forty years for a sale of it, secured it at last at Drake's sale. {Brinley Catalogue, No. 383.) A copy once owned by Dr. S. A. Green passed for $200 some years since into the hands of Sa- bin, who at that time had " never seen a copy for sale" (Sabin, Dictionary, No. 12,996), and from him passed to a Brooklyn collector at $400. Other original material, beside that at the State House, can be found, somewhat scattered : Records of the United Colonies, published by the State of Massachusetts ; Gookin, Historical Col- lections, and his narrative transmitted to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, printed in the Archceologia Americana; Mrs. Rowlandson's Narrative of her Captivity, an original copy of which is in the Prince Library, but it has been reprinted ; Captain Thomas Wheeler's narrative of the expedition to Brook- field, in the N. H. Hist. Coll. ii., and in Foot's Historical Discourse on the History of Brookfield : the Bradford Club, 1859, published Papers on the Attack on Hatfield and Deerfield ; the New Hampshire Provincial Papers, i. 354 ; the life of Major-General Denison in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1869 ; papers in the appendix of Drake's edition of Mather's Brief History ; a letter of Major Bradford is printed in Davis's edition of Morton's Memorial ; the Prince Cata- logue shows various' contemporary manuscripts ; Waldron's letter on the war at the eastward in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, 1853; a few original papers are given in a volume ("Miscellaneous Papers, 1632-1795") in the His- torical Society's cabinet. An examination of all the contemporary authorities is given in the Narrative and Critical History of America, iii. 360. Of the later historians, mere mention may be made of the following : Palfrey, New England, iii. ch. iv., who takes a low estimate of Philip's character, and gives an all-sufficient ac- count, with full references ; Drake, Book of the Indians, bk. iii. ; Baylies, Old Colony, with ad- ditions in Drake's edition, ii. ch. iv. ; Bancroft, United States, ii. ch. xii. ; Bryant and Gay, United 328 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Sillies, ii. ch. xvii., — a good account ; Barry, Nisi, of Mass., i. ch. xv., xvi. ; Theodore Dwight, Hisl. of Connecticut, ch. xxii., xxiii. ; Arnold, Rhode Island, i. ch. x. ; Potter, Early Hisl. of Narragansetl, p. 78; Uph am, &;/«?; Witchcraft, i. 1 18-134, &c. It would be too long a list to give all the local histories, which have told the part of many towns in the struggle. Fuller bibliographical detail on this subject can be found in Field's Indian Bibliography. Some of the rarer titles are given in the Brinley Catalogue, Nos. 382, &c. Convenient maps for the campaign will be found in Dexter's edition of Church, and the same in Drake's edition of Baylies ; also others in Hough's edition of Easton's Naj-rative, and in Ridpath's United Stales, p. 139. These may be contrasted with the map of New England which was issued in England at this time by John Seller, hydrographer to the King, accompanied by a description taken from Josselyn's Two Voy- ages, which shows the prevalent ignorance of New England geography in England ; there is a copy of it in Harvard College Library. The same cartographer issued a New England AI manac, 1685, which has a small sketch-map of New England; and Palfrey, Aizt/ England, iii. 489, gives a reduced fac-simile of a map of New England and New York, likewise by Seller. In some respects a more accurate though rude map of New England was issued, just at the close of the war, by Hubbard in his Narrative of the Troubles in New England, and it is said to be the first map cut in the colony. It is given en- tire in Judge Davis's edition of .Morton's New England Memorial, and in Palfrey's New Eng- land, iii. 155. William B. Fowle had a fac- simile made of it in 1846. Sections showing Boston Harbor are given in Lossing's Field-book of the Revolution, i. 446, and in S. A. Drake's New England Coast. A similar section is given herewith. Both Davis's and Palfrey's fac-similes are given, however, from the London edition of the book of the same year, for which the map was recut, and is to be known from the Boston edition by the substitution of " Wine Hills " for " White Hills." A copy of this London edition, with its map, is in Harvard College Library. In 1872 Henry Stevens, of London, had fac- similes made of both editions of the map, and he says : " The London edition, though a close copy, is entirely recut," and differs in minor par- ticulars. Cf. Stevens's Bibliotheca Ceografhica, p. 228 ; Field's Indian Bibliography, p. 178. A PART OF HUBBARD'S MAP OF NEW ENGLAND, 1677. I 00 u < CO H CHAPTER X. THE STRUGGLE TO MAINTAIN THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST, AND ITS FINAL LOSS IN 1684. BY CHARLES DEANE, LL.D. Correspatiditig Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society. THE Royal Charter of "The Governor & Company of the Massa- chusetts Bay in New England" passed the seals March 4, 1628-29, confirming to Sir Henry Rosewell, Sir John Young, Thomas Southcott, John Humfrey, John Endicott, and Symon Whetcomb, and twenty others, their associates, named, their heirs and assigns, a certain parcel of land in Massachusetts Bay in New England, extending from three miles south of Charles River to three miles north of Merrimac River, and in breadth from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea, — which land had been granted to these six persons named above by the Council for New England, March 19 in the preceding year. The Charter also ordained that these twenty-six persons and all such others as shall hereafter be admitted and made free of the Company shall be forever hereafter one body corporate and politic in fact and name, by the name above cited ; with power to make laws and elect officers for disposing and ordering the general business concerning said lands and the plantation, and the government of the people there.' The powers of government contained in this instrument have been ' Some authorities say that the charter cost be asked if the original parchment, in Hutchin- the Company two thousand pounds sterling. The son's day, was missing .' The charter, however, original instrument is at the State House in Bos- had already been printed eighty years before ton. It is beautifully engrossed on four sheets Hutchinson printed it, " by S. Green, for Benja- of parchment, the initial letter "C " containing a niin Harris, at the London Coffee House near representation of King Charles the First. It the Town-House in Boston, 1689," in 4to., 26 pp. was printed by Governor Hutchinson in his Col- See Catalogue of the Library of the Massachusetts lection of Original Papers in 1769, from a manu- Historical Society, vol. ii. p. 26. It was here script copy, each sheet of which bears at foot the printed from the duplicate of the instrument autograph signature of Governor Winthrop; it sent over to Governor Endicott in 1629, and now is attested by him at the end, under the date of in the Salem Athenaeum. The charter is also "this 19th day of the first month, called Feb- printed in Hazard, vol. i., from the "original," ruary, 1643-44." Here is an error in calling likewise in the volume of Charters and General February the first month, which Hutchinson Laws, Boston, 1814, and is also included in the corrects. This manuscript is in the Library of first volume of the Mass. Col. Records. the Massachusetts Historical Society. Hutchin- [A heliotype of the charter, as at present dis- son appends to his copy a note saying that the played on the walls of the Secretary's Office at charter had never been printed, that there were the .State House, is herewith given. A cut of but few manuscript copies of it, and he now pub- the heading of the document is given in Bryant lishes it as the most likely means of preventing and Gay's United States, ii. 376. The original is its being irrecoverably lost. The question might indorsed with the autograph of Wolseley, while VOL. I. — 42. 330 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. differently interpreted by different writers; and there has not been an entire agreement on the question as to the legality of the transfer of the corporation and charter to New England, which took place at the time of the Winthrop emigration. As to the latter branch of this subject, Hutchin- son says: " It is evident from the charter that the original design of it was to constitute a corporation in England like to that of the East India and other great companies, with powers to settle plantations within the hmits of the territory, under such forms of government and magistracy as should be fit and necessary. The first step, in sending out Mr. Endicott, appoint- ing him a council, giving him commission, instructions, &c., was agreeable to this construction of the charter." ^ This opinion has been concurred in by such historians as Chalmers, Robertson, Grahame, Hildreth, and Young, and by the distinguished jurist Story. On the other hand Dr. Palfrey, the eminent historian of New England, and the late Professor Joel Parker, of Cambridge, are of opinion that the charter was adroitly drawn, with a design on the part of the patentees to be used either in England or in New England, — there being an absence of any language locating the corporation in England.^ It does not come within my province here to write a history of the colony under this charter; but it is necessary that I should give a brief analysis of that instrument, and show what were the complaints of the home Government from time to time against the Colony for alleged viola- tions of it, and the attempts by legal process and otherwise to vacate its franchises, at the same time that I narrate the struggles of the colonists to maintain their privileges and their rights, finally wrested from them. the Salem copy bears his name in the scribe's of them down to i6S6, and it was done under the hand. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 19. supervision of Dr. N. B. Shurtleff. Cf. Chas. " Winthrop Papers," in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. W. Upham on "The Records of Massachusetts 159, note. The Brinley Catalogue, No. 2650, under the First Charter," in the i^jA 5^. Zow<;// calls the 1689 edition, above referred to, "ex- Institute Lectures, i86g. — En.] cessively rare." That edition had a woodcut of 1 Hutchinson, History, i. p. 13. See also the Massachusetts seal on the title, which is given his views more fully expressed in vol. ii. pp. in fac-simile in Drake, Boston, p. 840, who says i, 2. the seal was of silver, was sent over to Cover- ^ It may be mentioned that Attorney- nor Endicott in 1629, and continued in use till General Sawyer, in the subsequent reign, ex- Andros's time. Cf. T. C. Amory's paper on the pressed the opinion "that the Patent having Seals of Massachusetts in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, created the grantees, a7id their a.?signs, a body Dec. 1867, and the appendix to Felt's Currency corporate, they might transfer their charter and of Mass. The "Records of the Governor and act in New England." But Chalmers thinks Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New that he had probably neither perused the in- England " are preserved in the State House, strument with attention nor studied its history. An ancient copy of them, from the first meeting " It conveyed the soil," he says, " to the corpor- in London to Aug. 6, 1645, which supplies some ation and its assigns; it conferred the powers leaves wanting in the original records, belonged of government on it and its successors. And to to Governor Hutchinson, and later to Colonel As- all who have been accustomed to legal or ac'cu- pinwall, and passed with his library into the hand rate reasoning, these expressions must appear of S.X. M. Barlow, Esq., of New York. Mass. as different in sense as they are in sound The H,st Soc. Proc, July, 1855. Cf. Archarologia two Chief Justices, Rainsford and North fell Amencana,m. From a transcript of the original into a similar mistake by supposing that' the records of the Colony made by Mr. David Pul- corporate powers were to have been originally sifer, the State ordered, in 1853-54, the printing executed in New England." Annals, p 173 THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 331 As showing the process of issuing letters-patents, and as furnishing some evidence of the intention of the Crown as to the location of the cor- poration created by the Massachusetts Charter, it may not be inappropriate to give here a memorandum signed by the King's Solicitor-General, called a "docket," appended to the "King's bill," the latter being the first ofScial form in which the charter appears, — in the very words of the instrument itself, as subsequently issued under the Great Seal, — and the authority for its issue. In all chancery pro- ceedings, not to refer to others of a kindred nature, where papers are prepared for the King's signature, a memorandum is written at the foot of such documents by the Attorney or Solicitor General (sometimes by both jointly), addressed to the sovereign, briefly explaining to him the nature of the instrument he is about to sign. The following is the " docket " appended to the "King's bill" (or sign-manual) of the Massachusetts Charter, the spelling being here modei-nized:^ — Sign-Manuals. — Vol. X. No. 16. May it please your Most Excellent Majesty : — Whereas your Majesty's most dear and royal father did by his letters-patents in the eighteenth year of his reign incorporate divers noblemen and others by the name of the Council for the Planting of New England in America, and did thereby grant unto them all that part of America which lieth between forty degrees of northerly latitude and forty-eight inclusive, with divers privileges and immunities under a tenure in free socage and reservation to the Crown of the fifth part of the gold and silver ore to be found there, which said Council have since, by their Charter in March last, granted a part of that continent to Sir Henry Rosewell and others, their heirs and associates for- ever, with all jurisdictions, rights, privileges, and commodities of the same. This bill containeth your Majesty's confirmation and grant to the said Sir Henry Rosewell and his partners and their associates and to their heirs and assignees forever of the said part of New England in America, with the like tenure in socage and reservation of the fifth part of gold and silver ore, — incorporating them also by the name of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England in America, with such clauses for the electing of governors and officers here in England for the said Company, and powers to make laws and ordinances for settling the gov- ernment and magistracy for the plantation there,^ and with such exemptions from • See " Forms used in issuing Letters-Pa- fit and necessary for tlie said plantation and the tents," in Alass. Hist. Soc. Proc, Dec. 1869, p. inliabitants there," &c., in virtue of which the 172 [by C. Ueane]. Form of Government for the Colony, adopted 2 As I interpret the Docket, this last clause on the 30th of April, 1629, was established. In refers to the following in the charter : The Com- the charter granted to the "Council for New pany have power " to make, ordain, and estab- England," established at Plymouth, the same lish all manner of wholesome and reasonable power was given, namely, " to make, ordain, and orders, laws, statutes, and ordinances, directions establish all manner of orders, laws, directions, and instructions . . . for the settling of the forms instructions, forms, and ceremonies of govern- and ceremonies of government and magistracy ment and magistrac)', fit and necessary for and 332 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. customs and impositions and such other privileges as were originally granted to the Council aforesaid, and are usually allowed to corporations in England. And is done by direction from the Lord Keeper/ upon your Majesty's pleasure therein signified to his Lordship by Sir Ralph Freeman.^ (Signed) Ri. Shilton.' Indorsed : " 1628, Expedit apud Westm^ Vicesimo septimo die Februarij Anno Reg- CaroU quarto." * "g Woodward dep." The Charter gave power to the freemen of the Company to elect an- nually from their own number a Governor, Deputy-Governor, and eighteen Assistants, and to make laws and ordinances, not repugnant to the laws of England, for their own benefit and for the government of persons inhabiting their territory. Four meetings of the Company, called the " four great and general courts," were to be held in a year, and others might be convened. Meetings of the Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Assistants were to be held once a month, or oftener. The Governor, Deputy-Governor, and any two Assistants were authorized to administer to freemen the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. The Company might transport settlers not re- strained by special name. They had authority to admit new associates, and to fix the terms of their admission, and to elect such officers as they should see fit for the managing of their affairs. By a form of language used in all the English charters from that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert down to the Charter of Massachusetts, the franchise provided that all subjects of the Crown who should go to inhabit within said lands, and their children born there, or on the seas, going or returning, should enjoy all liberties of free and natural subjects within any of the dominions of the Crown, as if they had been born within the realm. The Company also were empowered, agreeably to the often-repeated phrase in previous and subsequent charters, " to encounter, repulse, repel, and resist by force of arms, as well by sea as by land ... all such person and persons as should at any time thereafter attempt or enterprise the destruction, detriment, or annoyance to the said Plantation or inhabitants," &c. No mention is made of religious liberty. Many of the powers which the Colony during the next fifty years pre- sumed to exercise, and for which they pleaded their charter as authority, were not specially granted in that instrument; and, at a later period, these powers were held to have been assumed. No authority is expressly given concerning the government of the said colony Attorney-General. He must have been con- and plantation," &c. suited, with his colleague the Solicitor-General, 1 Sir Thomas Coventry was at this time Lord when the application for the charter was before K^^P'^^- the Privy Council, and was also officially con- .2 Sir Ralph Freeman was " Auditor of Im- earned in drawing up the King's bill. P''«s's-" < The Writ of Privy Seal (Bundle 28r, 3 Sir Richard Sheldon, who signs this Docket, part 71) thus concludes: "Given under our was the Solicitor-General. In the Docket as Privy Scale at our Pallace of Westminster, printed by Chalmers, and in that in the Signet the eight and twentieth day of Februarie in Book, it says, "subscribed by Mr. Attorney- the fourth year of our Reigne." " AV.f//, 4 General." Sir Robert Heath was at this time Martii 1628." THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 2)33 to erect judicatories, or courts for the probate of wills, or with admiralty jurisdiction, nor to constitute a house of deputies, nor to impose taxes on the inhabitants, nor to incorporate towns, colleges, or schools, — all which powers had been exercised, together with the power of inflicting capital punishment. Most, if not all, of the powers here exercised were necessary to the government of a colony remote from the mother country ; and if the charter was issued for this purpose, as the colonists constantly claimed, they might well find a warrant for their exercise in the general provision authorizing them " to ordain and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, statutes, and ordinances, directions and instruc- tions, not contrary to the laws of this our realm of England, as well for the settling of the forms and ceremonies of government and magistracy fit and necessary for the said plantation and the inhabitants there," &c. The charter of Connecticut, granted at the Restoration, — the corporate powers of which were avowedly to be executed on the soil, — authorized a house of deputies and the erection of courts of judicature, but was silent as to many other specified powers, which were nevertheless exercised in common with Massachusetts. The coining of money by the Massachusetts Colony may well be re- garded as the exercise of a prerogative not conferred by their charter ; and some of their legislation was probably against the Navigation laws of the realm. The primary cause of the dissensions between England and her Ameri- can colonies, during the whole period of the existence of those relations, was the absence of any clear distinction between her imperial and their municipal rights. " Their early charters, faulty in many respects, were especially so in this particular, — that they left a wide and debatable ground between the local and imperial functions. Upon this ground, alternate inroads on either side produced irritation ; and a sort of border warfare was kept up, which naturally ended by bringing into collision the aggregate forces of each people, and involving them at length in implacable war." ^ The right to grant such a charter as this was regarded as one of the pre- rogatives of the Crown. " The title to unoccupied lands belonging to Great Britain, whether acquired by conquest or discovery, was vested in the Crown. The right to grant corporate franchises was one of the prerogatives of the King ; and the right to institute and to provide for the institution of colo- nial governments . . . was likewise one of the prerogatives. Parliament had then nothing to do with the organization or government of colonies." ^ The sovereigns of Europe assumed, in violation of natural rights, a claim of possession to all foreign lands discovered by their subjects, and not occu- pied by any Christian people. Agreeably to this rule, the kings of Eng- land assumed to grant patents for discovery, — of which the earliest relating 1 See Samuel Lucas's Introduction to Char- ^ Prof. Joel Parker, Lecture at the Lowell iers of the old English Colonies in America, &c,, Institute, on " The First Charter," &c., 1869, London, 1850, pp. 13, 14. p. 8. 234 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. to America, that to John Cabot and his sons, is an interesting example, — and to claim exclusive property in and jurisdiction over such lands, to the exclusion of the jurisdiction of the State. They called them their foreign dominions, their demesne lands in partibus exteris, and held them as their own. These were the king's possessions, not parts or parcels of the realm. So, when the House of Commons, in 162 1, made repeated attempts to pass a law for establishing a free right of fishing on the coasts of Virginia, New England, and Newfoundland, and claimed the jurisdiction of Parlia- ment over those countries, they were told by the servants of the Crown " that it was not fit to make laws here for those countries which are not yet annexed to the Crown." " That this bill was not proper for this House, as it concerneth America." Indeed, it was doubted " whether the House had jurisdiction to meddle with these matters." A petition to the House, three years later, to take cognizance of the affairs of plantations, was, " by general resolution, withdrawn." The King considered these lands his demesnes, and the colonists to whom he granted them as his subjects in these his for- eign dominions, — not his subjects of the realm or State. ^ "The confirmation, therefore, in the charter of the grant of the lands from the Council of Plymouth (which derived title from the grant of James I., and which could grant the lands, but could not grant nor assign powers of government), with a new grant in form of the same lands, gave to the grantees a title in socage, — substantially a fee-simple, except that there was to be a rendition of one-fifth of the gold and silver ores. The grant of corporate powers, in the usual form of grants to private corporations, conferred upon them all the ordinary rights of a private corporation, under which they could dispose of their lands and transact all business in which the Company had a private interest. And the grant of any powers of colonial government, embraced in the charter, was valid and effective to the extent of the powers which were granted, whatever those powers might be, — the whole, as against the corporation, being subject to forfeiture for sufficient cause." ^ " The grant and confirmation of the lands, and the grant of mere corporate pow- ers for private purposes, were private rights which vested in the grantees, and which the King could not divest, except upon some forfeiture regularly enforced. Upon such forfeiture the corporation would be dissolved, and all of the lands belonging to it would revert in the nature of an escheat. But this would not affect valid grants previously made by it. " The grant of power to institute a colonial government, being a grant not for pri- vate but for public purposes, may have a different consideration. Whether, by reason of its connection with the grant of the lands and of ordinary coqDorate powers, it par- took so far of the nature of a private right that it could not be altered, modified, or revoked, except on forfeiture enforced by process, or whether this part of the grant had such a public character that the powers of government were held subject to alteration and amendment, is hardly open to discussion. At the present day it is i Pownall, AJministration of the British Colonies, 5th ed., i. 47-50. - Prof. Parker, as above, p. 9. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 335 held that municipal corporations, being for public uses and purposes, have no vested private rights in the powers and privileges granted to them, but that they may be changed at the pleasure of the government. That principle seems to be equally appli- cable to a grant of colonial powers of government ; and the better opinion would seem to be, that it was within the legitimate prerogative of the King at that day to modify and even to revoke the powers of that character which had been granted by the Crown, substituting others appropriate for the purpose. " If the King had assumed to revoke the powers of government granted by the charter, without substitution, or if he had imposed any other form of government, by which the essential features of that which was constituted under the charter would have been abrogated, it might have been an arbitrary exercise of power. Justifying any revolutionary resistance which the Colony could have made. But the Crown, under the then-existing laws of England, must have possessed legally such power over the Colony as the legislature may exercise over municipal corporations at the present day. The charter, so far as the powers of government were concerned, could not be treated as a private contract." ' The transfer of the charter and government from London to Massa- chusetts Bay, previously agreed upon by a majority vote of the Company, was practically effected when Governor Winthrop sailed in 1630, with his fleet of fifteen ships, and nearly fifteen hundred passengers ; and on his arrival the subordinate government was abolished.^ " The boldness of the step," says Judge Story, "is not more striking than the silent acquiescence of the King in permitting it to take place." ^ The foundations of the government in the Colony had been laid by Endicott, to whom a duplicate of the charter, and a seal, of the Colony had been sent, but of whose brief administration no records exist.* The new order of things, under the Company's change of base, was silently, almost imperceptibly, inaugurated. The records of the Colony begin with the meeting of " the first court of Assistants holden at Charlton,^ August 23d, Anno Dom. 1630," — Winthrop having arrived at Salem June 12 preceding, had now taken up his residence at Charlestown. ' The accessions to the colony in 1631- were but few, but in the two following years they were more numerous; and in 1633 a welcome addition ^ Professor Parker, as above, pp. 9, 10. confirmed in that position, with the additional 2 A board of trade, or joint-stock company, authority of Governor of "London's Plantation was to be kept up in London consisting of five in Massachusetts Bay in New England," — a sub- persons who were to remain in England, and ordinate local government, established by the five who were expected to emigrate. It was a corporation in London agreeably to the provis- voluntary association, consisting of adventurers, ions of the Charter, and apparently intended as who contributed to a fund for aiding the colony, a permanent municipal -establishment. On the expecting to be remunerated, and at the end of arrival of Winthrop, and the transfer of the com- seven years a division to be made. The scheme pany to IVIassachusetts, the subordinate govern- seems to have come to naught. If not dissolved ment was abolished, and its duties were assumed heiore, the ^uo warranto of 1635 may have had by its principal, the corporation itself, which took its influence in dissolving the association. immediate direction of affairs. As the successor ' Commentaries on the Constitution, Book i. of Cradock, Winthrop was the second Governor chap. iv. sec. 66. of the Massachusetts Company, yet he was the ^ Endicott, who had been sent over originally first who exercised his functions in New England, as agent of the patentees, was subsequently * Charlestown was early so called. 336 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. was made by the arrival of a number of eminent clergymen and laymen, some of whom had with difficulty succeeded in escaping the surveillance of the High Commission Court. A few individuals found here by Governor Winthrop and his company, whose presence in the colony was unwelcome, were speedily sent away. Among these were Christopher Gardiner and Thomas Morton, who, arriving in England, failed not to make representations injurious to the Puritan settlement; and they were backed by the great interest of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and of John Mason. These representations had not been without effect, and well-founded apprehensions were now felt of annoyance from the home government. These persons actually prevailed to have their complaints entertained by the Privy Council, whose records show that, on the 19th of December, 1632, " several petitions " were " offered by some planters of New England, and a written declaration by Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knt.," when, " upon long debate of the whole carriage of the plantations of that country," twelve lords were directed to " examine how the patents for the said plantations have been granted and how carried," and to " make report thereof to this Board . . . for which purpose they are to call before them such of the patentees and such of the complainants and their witnesses, or any other persons, as they shall think fit." ^ Winthrop, under date of February following, notices these complaints, having intelligence thereof from his friends in England, namely, " that Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain Mason (upon the instigation of Sir Chris- topher Gardiner, Morton, and Ratcliff) had preferred a petition to the Lords of the Privy Council against us, charging us with many false accusations ; but through the Lord's good providence, and the care of our friends in England (especially Mr. Emanuel Downing,^ who had married the Gov- 1 Citations in Palfrey, i. 365, 366. The Rec- was accessible among the archives of the Coun- ords of the Council for New England show oil for New England if an inspection of it was that, before this date, the Massachusetts pa- all that was wanted. No copy of it now exists, tentees had had some grievances to allege It is cited in the royal charter of 4th March, against the Council. On the 26th June, 1632, 1628-29. Mr. Humfrey was requested to appear Mr. Humfrey, one of the original patentees, at the next meeting of the Council for New Eng- complained to the President and Council for land, and to bring Mr. Cradock with him. Two not permitting ships and passengers to pass days afterwards they appeared, and Mr. Hum- hence for the Bay of Massachusetts without frey was reproved " for charging Sir F. Gorges license first had from the President and Coun- falsely " at the last meeting, of writing him- cil, or their Deputy, they being free to go thither self the Lord Treasurer's letters to the officers and to transport passengers, not only by a pa- of customs, for not suffering any ships to pass tent from said Council, but by a confirmation for New England without license first obtained thereof from his Majesty. Hereupon some of from the President and Council for New England, the Council desired to see the patent obtained Am. Antiq.Soc. Proceedings, h.^x\\,\%(i^,^^^.w 6i" from the Council, because, as they alleged, "it 2 "A circumstantial account," says Hutch- preindicted former grants." Mr. Humfrey an- inson, ii. 2, "of an attempt to vacate it [the swered that the patent was in New England, charter], the second year after their removal that they had often written for it to be sent we have in a letter to the Governor from Eman- hither, but had not as yet received it. It seems uel Downing, father of Sir George Downing " to us strange that no record of the grant to the " I intended to have printed it, but it wa= un- Massachusetts patentees of 19th March, 1627-28, fortunately destroved." THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 337 ernors sister), and the good testimony given on our behalf by one Captain Wiggin, who dwelt at Pascataquack, and had been divers times among us, their malicious practice took not effect." When Winthrop made this entry in his journal, he had not heard of the report of the committee of the Lords made at a meeting of the Privy Coun- cil January 19th preceding. It was to this effect: The complaints against the Colony were dismissed for the reasons alleged in the order adopted by the Council, — " Most of the things informed being denied, and rested to be proved by parties that must be called from that place, which required a long expense of time ; and at the present their Lordships finding that the adventurers were upon the despatch of ■men, victuals, and merchandises for that place, all which would be at a stand if the adventurers should have discouragement or take suspicion that the State here had no good opinion of that Plantation ; their Lordships, not laying the faults or fancies (if any be), of some particular men upon the general government, or principal adven- turers (which in due time is to be inquired into), have thought fit, in the mean time, to declare that the appearances were so fair and the hopes so great, that the country would prove both beneficial to this kingdom and profitable to the particular adventurers, as that the adventurers had good cause to go on cheerfully with their undertakings, and rest assured, that if things were carried as was pretended when the patents were granted, and accordingly as by the patents is appointed, his Majesty would not only maintain the liberties and privileges heretofore granted, but supply anything further that might tend to the good government of the place and prosperity and comfort to his people there." * This result of the petition of the enemies of the Colony was received by Winthrop some time in May, 1633, and he makes this record concerning it: — " The petition was of many sheets of paper, and contained many false accusations (and among some truths misrepeated) accusing us to intend rebellion, to have cast off our allegiance, and to be wholly separate from the Church and laws of England ; that our ministers and people did continually rail against the State, Church, and bishops there, &c. ; upon which such of our Company as were then in England, viz. Sir Richard Saltonstall, Mr. Humfrey, and Mr. Cradock, were called before a Com- mittee of the Council, to whom they deUvered in an answer in writing ; upon reading whereof it pleased the Lord, our gracious God and Protector, so to work with the Lords, and after with the King's Majesty, when the whole matter was reported to him by Sir Thomas Jermin, one of the Council . . . that he said he would have them severely punished, who did abuse his governor and the Plantation ; that the defend- ants were dismissed with a favorable order for their encouragement, being assured from some of the Council that his Majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England upon us ; for that it was considered that it was the free- dom from such things that made people come over to us ; and it was credibly informed to the Council that this country would, in time, be very beneficial to England for masts, cordage, &c., if the Sound should be debarred." ^ Governor Winthrop's exultation on the receipt of this favorable intel- ligence was not concealed. He addressed a letter to his friend, Governor 1 Orders in Council, Jan. 19, 1632-33. ^ New England, i. 102, 103. VOL. I. — 43- 338 THE MEMORIAL HIST.ORY OF BOSTON. Bradford, of the Plymouth Colony, sending him a copy of the record of the Privy Council, and expressing the hope that he would join " in a day of thanksgiving to our merciful God " for so signal a deliverance from their enemies. But the enemies of the Colony were not to be so easily silenced. The accession of Laud to the Primacy, in 1633, was nearly contemporaneous with the renewal of emigration to New England, and this was the signal for the renewal of complaints at Court against the Massachusetts Company by the disaffected persons, who now secured a more favorable hearing. " The spirit of the Court,'' says Dr. Palfrey, " had now reached its height of arrogance and passion. It was at this time that ship-money was first levied, and the Star Chamber was rioting in the barbarities which were soon to bring an awful retribution. The precedent by which, in disregard of the chartered privileges of the Virginia Company, the government of Virginia had been taken into the King's hands, was urged in relation to the Massachusetts Company." An Order in Council was obtained, under date of 21 February, 1633-34, reciting that, — " Whereas the Board being given to understand of the frequent transportation of great numbers of his Majesty's subjects out of this kingdom to the plantation called New England, amongst whom divers persons known to be ill-affected and discontented, as well with the civil as ecclesiastical government, are observed to resort thither, whereby such confusion and disorder is already grown there, especially in point of religion, as besides the ruin of the said Plantation, cannot but highly tend to the scandal both of the Church and State here ; and whereas it was informed in par- ticular that there were at this present divers ships now in the river of Thames, ready to set sail thither, freighted with passengers and provision ; it was thought fit and ordered that stay should be forthwith made of the said ships until further order from the Board. And that the several masters and freighters of the same should attend the Board on Wednesday next in the afternoon, with a list of the passengers and provisions in each ship. And that Mr. Cradock, a chief adventurer in that Plantation, now present before the Board, should be required to cause the letters-patents for that Plantation to be brought to the Board." Chalmers says that Cradock's confession at this time, " that the charter was in the hands of the governor of the colony," discovered " what seems to have been hitherto unknown " to the government.^ In the following week, however (Feb. 28), an order for the release of the ships bound for New England was issued, the masters entering into bonds to cause certain rules prescribed to be put into execution, as to the use of the Book of Common Prayer at morning and evening service on board the ships, the requiring the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to be taken by persons to be transported, &c. " It was therefore, for divers others reasons best known to their Lordships, thought fit, that for this time they should be permitted to proceed on their voyage." ' Revolt, &'c., i. 49. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 339 But the progress of arbitrary power in England gave no assurance of peace to the Colony. "Annoyance from the home government was therefore to be expected by the colonists. For protection against it they were to look to their charter, as long as the grants in that instrument should continue to be respected. Against internal dis- sensions they had an easy remedy. The freemen of the Massachusetts Company had a right, in equity and in law, to expel from their territory all persons who should give them trouble. In their corporate capacity they were owners of Massa- chusetts in fee, by a title to all intents as good as that by which any freeholder among them had held his English farm. As against all Europeans, whether English or Continental, they owned it by a grant from the Crown of England, to which, by well-settled law, the disposal of it belonged, in consequence of its discovery by an English subject. In respect to any adverse claim on the part of the natives, they had either found the land unoccupied, or had become possessed of it with the consent of its early proprietors. . . . Their charter was their palladium. To lose it would be ruin. Whatever might imperil their possession of it required to be watched by them with the most jealous caution." ^ Mr. Humfrey, who arrived in July of this year, brought news of impend- ing danger ; and in the same month a letter was received from Mr. Cradock, addressed to the Governor and Assistants, sending a copy of the Council's order of the 21st of February, requiring the delivery of the patent. Mr. Cradock, who had " had strict charge to deliver in the patent," desired that it might be sent home. " Upon long consultation," says Winthrop,^ " whether we should return answer or not, we agreed, and returned answer to Mr. Cradock, excusing that it could not be done but by a General Court, which was to be holden in September next." They wrote letters " to mediate their peace," and sent them by Mr. Winslow. The alarm, however, in the Colony reached its height when intelligence was received of a design to send out a general governor, and of the creation of a special Commission, with Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at its head, to regulate all plantations, with powers to cause all charters, letters- patents, &c., to be brought before them, and if found to " have been preju- diciously suffered or granted ... to command them, according to the laws and customs of England, to be revoked," &c. A copy of the Commission itself arrived in the Colony in September.^ It bears date April 10, 1634. It had been previously announced by Thomas Morton, in a letter from London, dated May i, 1634, to his friend Jeffery, an old planter, who deliv- ered it to Governor Winthrop, in the early part of August. Winthrop has preserved this characteristic letter.* The writer had, or professed to have 1 Palfrey, New England, i. 387, 388. 264-268 ; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 502-506 ^ New England, \. I2i% iTiJ. (copied from Hubbard); Bradford, Plymouth ' This Commission is a document of some Plantation, pp. 456-460. Th'ere would seem to length. A copy in Latin is contained in Pow- be two English versions of the document. See Xi-AX?, Administration of the Colonies, 5th ed., ii. Bradford, as above, p. 456, note; Hubbard, p. 155-163; same in Hazard, Collectioiis, i. 344- (i<^,notea. 347; in English in Hubbard, A^e^v England, * New England, ii. 190. 340 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. had, information concerning the Commission before it was perfected in the public offices in London. On September 3, the General Court adopted orders for the erection of fortifications on Castle Island in Boston Harbor, and at Charlestown and Dorchester. The captains were authorized "to train unskilful men so often as they pleased, provided they exceeded not three days in a week." Dudley, Winthrop, Haynes, Humfrey, and Endicott were appointed " to consult, direct, and give command for the managing and ordering of any war that might befall for the space of a year next ensuing, and till further order should be taken therein." Arrangements were made for the collec- tion and custody of arms and ammunition.^ During the few following months no alarm came from abroad ; but in January, 1634-35, ^^^ the ministers, except Mr. Ward newly arrived, met the Governor and Assistants in Boston, to confer on the existing state of affairs. And to the question, " What we ought to do if a general governor should be sent out of England?" "they all agreed that we ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions if we were able; otherwise, to avoid or protract." ^ At the next General Court, in March, the same subject agitated their councils. It was ordered " that the fort at Castle Island, now begun, shall be fully perfected, the ordnances mounted, and every other thing about it finished ; " and the Deputy-Governor was authorized "to press men for that work," It was ordered " that there should be forthwith a beacon set on the centry hill at Boston, to give notice to the country of any danger, . . . and that, upon the discovery of any danger, the beacon should be fired." Musket-balls were made a legal tender at the rate of a farthing a piece, instead of coin, the circulation of which was forbidden. The " Freeman's Oath " was required to be taken by every man " resident within the jurisdiction," and being " of or above the age of sixteen years." A military commission was established, with powers " to dispose of all military affairs whatever;" "to imprison or confine any that they should judge to be enemies to the commonwealth, and such as would not come under com- mand or restraint, as they should be required, it should be lawful for the commissioners to put such persons to death." ^ No other notice was taken by the General Court of the demand for the transmission of the charter than what these proceedings intimate. The troubles which environed the government at home prevented the pursuance of a vigorous and consistent policy against the Colony. But the Lords Commissioners, in December, 1634, sent an order to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and other haven towns, directing that the officers suffer no person, being a subsidy man, to embark thence for any of the planta- tions without license from his Majesty's Commissioners ; nor any person, 1 Palfrey, New England, i, 394, 395, sum- 3 Palfrey, /fey ir«^/««fl', as above, and ^/^ -i-^ Jt, ^"'' ■^°'™ ^""' ^ ^''" ■'^^"' ■^'""- Currency. The coins are figured irfu^ versmith, and Robert in Drake's Boston, p. 330, and Landmarks, pp. Sanderson were placed 211, 237, and in Lossing's Field-book of the in charge of the minting, Hull being the mint- Revolution, i. 449, &c. Cf. John H. Hickox, master. Hull lived till 1683, and left a will. Hist. Ace. of Amer. Coinage, Albany. Hull is which is abstracted in Drake's Boston, pp. 329, supposed to have lived in Sheaffe Street ; he 450. His daughter Hannah, of whom the old lies buried in the Granary. A large prop'erty story goes that he gave her on her marriage a —350 acres— which he possessed in Long- settlement in pine-tree shillings equal to her wood was known as Sewall's Farm after it de- weight, was the wife of the famous Judge Sewall, scended to his son-in-law. Wood, Brookline, whose Diary (5 Mass. Hist. Coll , v.), and that p. 109. — Ed.] <^ THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 355 and was ready to renew the same whenever desired ; and that he pardoned all his subjects of that Plantation for all crimes and offences committed against him during the late troubles, except any such persons who stood attainted of high treason, if any such persons had transported themselves into those parts. These clauses in this missive of the King were then regarded by the colonists, and were often afterwards referred to by them, as a confirmation of their charter privileges and an amnesty of all past errors. , There were some things, however, in the King's letter, hard to comply with ; and though the authorities, agreeably to the King's command, ordered it to be published, it was with the proviso that " all manner of actings in relation thereto shall be suspended until the next General Court." After the expressions of favor above recited from the King's letter, his Majesty proceeded as follows : — " Provided always, and be it in our declared expectation, that upon a review of all such laws and ordinances that are now or have been during these late troubles in practice there, and which are contrary or derogative to our authority and government, the same may be annulled and repealed, and the rules and prescriptions of the said charter for administering and taking the oath of allegiance be henceforth duly observed, and that the administration of justice be in our name.-' And since the principle and foundation of that Charter was and is the freedom of liberty of con- science, We do hereby charge and require you that that freedom and liberty be duly admitted and allowed, so that they that desire to use the Book of Common Prayer, and perform their devotion in that manner that is established here, be not denied the exercise thereof, or undergo any prejudice or disadvantage thereby, they using their liberty peaceably without any disturbance to others ; and that all persons of good and honest lives and conversations be admitted to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; according to the said Book of Common Prayer, and their children to baptism. We cannot be understood hereby to direct or wish that any indulgence should be granted to those persons commonly, called Quakers, whose principles being inconsistent with any kind of government, We have found it . necessary,, with the advice of our Par- liament here, to make a sharp law against them, and are well content you do the like there. Although We have hereby declared our expectation to be that the Charter granted by our royal father, and now confirmed by us, shall be particularly observed ; yet, if the number of assistants enjoined thereby be found by experience, and be judged by the country, to be inexpedient, as We are informed it is. We then dispense with the same, and declare our will and pleasure, for the future, to be, that the number of the said assistants shall not exceed eighteen, nor be less at any time than ten, We assuring ourselves, and obliging and commanding all persons concerned, that, in the election of the governor or assistants there be only consideration of the wisdom 1 These are made the conditions of the Par- called a Letter, and certainly was not a Pardon don which the King may annex, as he thinks fit, under the' Great Seal. It is, however, often on the performance whereof the validity of the claimed as a Grant or Charter as well for the Pardon will depend. What follows seems to be remission of all offences as for the confirmation rather a requisition or recommendation of cer- of all Liberties and Privileges granted by Patent, tain acts upon the performance whereof depends (Hutchinson's note.) his Majesty's further grace and favor. This is 356 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and integrity of the persons to be chosen, and not of any faction with reference to their opinion or profession, and that all the freeholders of competent estates, not vicious in conversations, orthodox in religion (though of different persuasions con- cerning church-government), may have their vote in the election of all officers civil or military. Lastly, our will and pleasure is, that, at the next General Court of that our Colony, this our letter and declaration be communicated and published, that all our loving subjects may know our grace and favor to them, and that We do take them into our protection as our loving and dutiful subjects, and that We will be ready from time to time to receive any apphcation or address from them which may concern their interest and the good of our Colony, and that We will advance the benefit of the trade thereof by our uttermost endeavor and countenance, presuming that they will still merit the same by their duty and obedience." ^ Many of these requirements were grievous to our ancestors. " The agents met with the same fate," says Hutchinson, " of most agents ever since. The favors which they obtained were supposed to be no more than might well have been expected, and their merits were soon forgot; the evils which they had it not in their power to prevent were attributed to their neglect or to unnecessary concessions." Mr. Norton was so sensibly affected by the displeasure of his neighbors that he drooped and died in a few months after his return. Mr. Bradstreet was a man of more " phlem," and of less ability than his associate, and perhaps was regarded as less responsible.^ The only thing done at this session of the General Court, — held in October, 1662, — in obedience to the King's orders, beside making the letter public, was the ordering that "all writs, process with indict- ments," &c., be made and set forth in the King's name. At the next session, in May, 1663, a commission was appointed, after long and seri- ous debate, to consider what was proper to be done as to other parts of the letter ; and in the mean time both clergymen and laymen were invited to send in their thoughts, so that something might be agreed upon " satisfactory and safe, conducing to the glory of God and the felicity of his people."^ Notwithstanding the gracious expressions and promises in some of the King's letters to the Massachusetts authorities, it must be admitted that, from the Restoration until the vacating of the charter, the Colony never stood well in England, and the principal persons in the colony, both Church and State, were never without fears of being deprived of their privileges. The years 1664 and 1665 afforded them greater occasion for apprehension than they had met with at any previous period, — certainly since the time of the meeting of the Long Parliament. At a meeting of the Privy Council, Sept. 25, 1662, "The settlement of the plantations in New England [were] seriously debated and discoursed, and the Lord Chancellor declared then that his Majesty would speedily send commissioners to settle the respective interests of the several colonies. 1 Hutchinson, rafcrs, pp. 377-381. 2 Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 122, 223. 3 Ibid. p. 22-. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 357 The Duke of York to consider of the choice of fit men." At a meeting on the loth April, 1663, "A letter from New England, and several instruments and papers being this day read at the Board, his Majesty (present in Council) did declare that he intends to preserve the charter of the planta- tion, and to send some commissioners thither speedily to see how the charter is maintained on their part, and to reconcile the differences at present amongst them." These orders of the Privy Council were a foreshadowing of what was to come. In the spring of 1664 intelligence was brought that several men- of-war were coming from England, with some gentlemen of distinction on board. At the meeting of the Court in May, they order that " the Captain of the Castle, on the first sight and knowledge of their approach, give speedy notice thereof to the honored Governor and Deputy-Governor; and that Captain James Oliver and Captain William Davis are hereby ordered forth- with to repair on board the said ships, and to acquaint those gentlemen that this Court hath and doth by them present their respects to them, and that it is the desire of the authority of this place that they take strict order that their under officers and soldiers, in their coming on shore to refresh themselves, at no time exceed a convenient number, and that without arms, and that they behave themselves orderly," &c. A solemn day of humiliation and prayer was commended to be held by all the churches, " for the Lord's mercy to be towards us." And " forasmuch as it is of great concernment to this Commonwealth to keep safe and secret our patent, it is ordered, the patent and duplicate, belonging to the country, be forthwith brought into the Court ; and that there be two or three persons appointed by each House to keep safe and secret the said patent and duplicate, in two distinct places, as to the said committee shall seem most expedient; " and "that the Deputy-Governor, Major-General Leverett, Captain Clarke, and Captain Johnson are appointed to receive the grand patent from the secretary, and to dispose thereof as may be most safe for the country. The secretary, being sent for the patent, brought it into Court, and delivered it to the Deputy-Governor, Richard Bel- lingham, Esq., and the rest of the committee, in the presence of the whole Court, and was discharged thereof."^ The train-bands were put in order, and Captain Davenport was placed in command of the Castle. " Having trimmed their vessel, the wakeful pilots awaited the storm." ^ On Saturday the 23d of July, 1664, two ships of war, the " Guinea " and the " Elias," came to anchor before the town of Boston. They had sailed ten weeks before from Portsmouth, England, in company with two other ships, the " Martin " and the " William and Nicholas," from which they had parted a week or two before in bad weather. The fleet conveyed three or four hundred troops, and four persons charged with public business, viz., Colonel Richard Nichols, Sir Robert Carr, Colonel George Cartwright, 1 Mass. Col. Rec, IV. (ii.) 102. ^ Palfrey, New England.^ ii. 577. 258 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and Mr. Samuel Maverick.^ The two last named had arrived at Piscataqua three days before. They jointly bore a commission from the King for reducing the Dutch at Manhadoes (New York), and for hearing and de- . ^ g termining all matters CD\tAcOyK> 1^L^-^Cft(^ of complaint, and set- •^^ \_ ^ tling the peace and y^ "^ / / y^ security of the coun- h/mfUrT i/lZi^ try; any three or two ^J^ l/l/UJJ ^ C-^ ^ of them to be a quo- / J ■ I /y • yj rum. Colonel Nichols £^7r^47 A2/f^/7v'i^tjfi^^W- during his hfe being ^ (y C/ one. The commis- m J ^ /} ^'°"' ^^'^^^ April 25, / ^ /?r\ AA JL ^ 1664, is in Hutch- ^a '^CaAOI yria/l/\ )rt CMJL> i^son.^ Th.y also brought a letter from the King to the Governor of Massachusetts, of two days' earlier date, declaring the purpose of the embassy to be to obtain information for the guidance of his Majesty in his attempts to advance the well-being of his subjects in New England ; to suppress and utterly extinguish those unreasonable jealousies and malicious calumnies which' wicked and unquiet spirits perpetually labored to infuse into the minds of men, that his subjects in those parts did not submit to his government, but looked upon themselves as independent of him and his laws ; to compose such differences as existed upon questions of boundaries between different colonies ; to assure the native tribes of his protection ; to over- throw the usurped authority of the Dutch ; to confer upon the matter of his former letter sent by Bradstreet and Norton, and the Colony's answer thereto, of which he would only say that the same did not answer his expectations, nor the professions made by their messengers. The letter is in the Massachusetts Colony Records? They also had two sets of instruc- tions from the King; one set to be shown, the other for the guidance of the Commissioners.* At the wish of the Commissioners, the Governor called a meeting of the Council on Tuesday the 26th of July. The Commissioners then laid before that body their commission, the King's letter of the 23d of April, and part of their instructions, and proposed that the Colony should raise such a number of men as they could spare to assist in the reduction of the Manhadoes, to begin their march on the 20th of August; promising that in the mean time, if they could dispense with their services, they would give the necessary order. The Council replied that they would cause the General 1 [Cf. N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, doubt which once existed on that point has been 1854, P- 37S. Letters of Maverick during this dispelled by the petition of his daughter, IVIrs. period are in the C/«;-f«a'o« /'a/.frj-, printed by Hoolce. Ct?>n-a-mer, East Boston, \i. loj. — Ed.] the N. Y. Hist. Soc. in 1869. IVIavericlc, the - Mass. Bav, ii. 535. Commissioner, was the same person of that name ' IV. (ii). 158-160. whom Winthrop found on Noddle's Island ; any * See Brodhead, Documents, &c , iii. 51 et seq. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 359 Court to assemble on the 3d of August, and lay the proposal before them. The Commissioners then proceeded to the Manhadoes, intimating, on their departure, that they should have many more things to communicate to the Council at their return, and desiring that the King's letter of June 28, 1662, might, in the mean time, be further considered, and a more satisfactory answer than before given to it. On the assembling of the Court at the time appointed, they first resolved " that they would bear faith and true allegiance to his Majesty, to adhere to their patent, so dearly obtained and so long enjoyed by undoubted right in the sight of God and men." They then resolved to raise not exceeding two hundred men, at the Colony's charge, for his Majesty's service against the Dutch. As Manhadoes so soon surrendered upon articles, no orders were given for the men to march. The Court then pro- ceeded to consider his Majesty's letter of 1662, — the letter brought by Bradstreet and Norton two years before, — to which the Council's attention had been specially called. They repealed the law which confined the franchise to church membership, superseding it by another which provided that from henceforth all Englishmen, being twenty-four years of age, house- holders, and settled inhabitants, and presenting a certificate from the minister of the place that they were orthodox in religion and not vicious in their lives, and a certificate from the selectmen that they were free- holders and ratable to the value of ten shillings, should have the privilege of applying to be chosen freemen. The practical eff"ect of this law was to produce little change. Finally, the Court chose a committee of three, to draw up a petition to the King for the continuance of the privileges granted by charter. Two months were spent in preparing this petition, which is a paper of some length. It bears date Oct. 19, 1664. It sets forth, with considerable eloquence, the sacrifices by which the liberties hitherto possessed by the Colony had been purchased, and urged the injustice of the present proceedings against them. "This people," it said, "did, at their own charges, transport themselves, their wives and families, over the ocean, purchase the lands of the natives, and plant this Colony with great labor, hazards, costs, and difficulties ; for a long time wrestling with the wants of a wilderness and the burdens of a new plantation ; having also now above thirty years enjoyed the aforesaid power and privilege of government within themselves, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man." As to the King's letter brought by Norton and Bradstreet, the Court said : — " We have applied ourselves to the utmost to satisfy your Majesty so far as doth consist with conscience of our duty towards God, and the just liberties and privileges of our patent. . . . But now what affliction of heart must it needs be unto us, that our sins have provoked God to permit our adversaries to set themselves against us, by their misinformations, complaints, and solicitations (as some of them have made that 36o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. their work for many years), and thereby to procure a commission under the Great Seal, wherein four persons (one of them our known and professed enemy) are empowered to hear, receive, examine, and determine all complaints and appeals in all causes and matters, as well military as criminal and civil, and to proceed in all things for settling this country according to their good and sound discretions, &c. ; whereby, instead of being governed by rulers of our own choosing (which is the fundamental privilege of our patent), and by laws of our own, we are like to be subjected to the arbitrary power of strangers, proceeding, not by any established law, but by their own discretions." i- Nichols was now occupied at New York by the duties of his new government. The other three commissioners met at Boston in February following (1665), and thence immediately proceeded to Plymouth, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, to transact with these colonies the business of their mission, before making a final trial of their strength with the Massachusetts. With their reception in these colonies the commissioners, in their report to the King, express complete satisfaction. By the following May they had arrived at Boston, Nichols coming from New York to join his associates only the day before the meeting of the Court of Elections. The parties now entered with spirit into the contest, which was begun and ended in a month. The venerable Governor Endicott had died in the preceding , -. March, and he was succeeded 'f\,fCA.a.lc4 7^£//fk Palfrey, New England, iii. 333-338; Mass. Col. Rec. v. 270, 271, 287, 289. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 37 1 ities at home that it was now " in every man's mouth that they were not subject to' the laws of England, neither were those of any force till con- firmed by their authority." He was stimulated by his personal vexations, and sent home a memorial to the King, urging a proceeding against the charter by a writ of quo warranto. He made a series of charges, reduced to several heads ; the first of which was " that the Bostoneers have no right either to land or government in any part of New England, but are usurpers, the inhabitants yielding obedience unto a supposition only of a royal grant from his late Majesty." ^ He now left Boston, retiring for a season to New Hampshire. His letters produced their natural effect on the Government at home, and stimulated it to renewed activity against the Colony. On the 30th of September, 1680, the King addressed a letter to the Colony, charging them with neglecting to send over agents in the room of Stoughton and Bulkley, who obtained leave to return home ; and alleging that in other respects his directions to the Colony had not been complied with. He now commanded that agents be sent over in three months after the receipt of this letter, prepared also to answer a new claim which Robert Mason had made to lands between Naumkeag and Merrimack rivers. The King expressed " care and tenderness " for the Colony, and a desire to remove " those difficulties and mistakes that have arisen by the execution of the powers of your charter at such a distance from us, which by the first intendment and present constitution thereof (as by the charter appears) has its natural seat and immediate direction within our kingdom of England." ^ On the receipt of this letter, which was brought by Robert Mason himself,^ who arrived S^u^tt-^tx/fU, fh^t^fX^ December 17, a special session of the Court was called to meet Jan. 4, 1680-81. After considerable debate, two agents, William Stoughton and Samuel Nowell, were chosen. The former declined, and John Richards was chosen in his place. But the popular party inter- posed delays, and the elected messengers still remained at home. Randolph sailed for England before the Court broke up.* This emissary kept a constant watch upon the Colony, going to and fro continually, and always returning home with fresh complaints, thereby arming himself with new orders and powers. In a representation of his services subsequently made to the Committee of the Council he says he had made eight voyages to New England in nine years.^ He now lost no time in urging upon the Gov- ernment decisive action against the Colony. He said that a " quo warranto would unhinge their Government, and prepare them to receive his Majesty's further pleasure. I have often in my papers pressed the necessity of a General Governor as absolutely necessary for the honor and service of the Crown." 1 These charges, substantially repeated else- ^ Hutchinson, Coll. of Papers, pp. 524, 525. where in this paper, are copied by Palfrey, New ^ The heir to New Hampshire. England, iii. 339, from Colonial Papers; with * He sailed from Boston, March 15, 1681. which compare Hutchinson, Papers, p. 525 ; also ^ Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 329. He crossed Randolph's Narrative in Mass. Archives, cxxvii. the Atlantic eight times in nine years. Zl^ THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. As winter approached, Randolph again appeared in Boston. He was now armed with new power for mischief. He arrived December 17, 1681, with a commission as Deputy-Collector, or under officer, within all the colonies of New England, except New Hampshire ; William Blathwayt having been commissioned Surveyor, &c. He was coldly received, as his commission was looked upon as an encroachment on the charter of the Colony.^ He brought, at the same time, a long and remarkable letter from the King, which was well calculated to awaken serious apprehensions. The letter charged the colonists with having, " from the very beginning, used methods tending to the prejudice of the Sovereign's rights, and their natural dependence on the Crown." It recited the proceedings under the quo warranto in the tenth year of King Charles the First. It complained of the protection that had been afforded to the fugitive judges of that monarch ; of the hard treatment dealt to many of his subjects, who had been denied appeals to English courts ; of the ousting of Gorges and Mason from their estates, and the alleged usurpation of Massachusetts over the Eastern country ; of the opposition to the commissioners sent to New England by Lord Clarendon ; of the offences more recently brought to light, as illegal coining of money, violations of the laws of trade and navigation, and legis- lative provisions " repugnant to the laws of England and contrary to the power of the charter;'' of the pertinacious disregard of the royal command for an appearance of the Colony by agents, which continued to be evaded under " some frivolous and insufficient pretences ; " and, finally, of the offensive obstructions which had been placed in the way of the Collectors of the Customs. The peremptory conclusion of the letter was as follows : " These and many other irregularities, crimes, and misdemeanors having been ob- jected against you (which we hope, nevertheless, are but the faults of a few persons in the government), we find it altogether necessary for our service and the peace of our Colonies that the grievances of our good subjects be speedily redressed, and our authority acknowledged, in pursuance of these our commands, and our pleasure at divers times signified to you by our royal letters and otherwise ; to which we again refer you, and once more charge and require you forthwith to send over your agents fully empowered and instructed to attend the regulation of that our Government, and to answer the irregularity of your proceedings therein. In default whereof, we are fully resolved, in Trinity Term next ensuing, to direct our Attorney- General to bring a qiw warranto in our Court of King's Bench, whereby our charter granted unto you, with all the powers thereof, may be legally evicted and made void. And so we bid you farewell." ^ The sending over of agents could now no longer be delayed. At a Court called in February, 1681-82, at which the King's letter was read, after several ballotings, " by papers," they finally chose Mr. Joseph Dudley and Mr. John Richards as agents. > He says a law was revived to try him for ■ Chalmers, Annals, pp. 443-449 ; Palfrey, his life for acting by his commission before it N'ew England, iii. 350, 351 ; the letter was dated was allowed by them. Oct, 21, 1681. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 373 The design of taking away the charter became more and more evident. The requisition of the King, that agents should be sent over empowered to submit to regulations of government, meant, in other words, agents empow- ered to surrender the charter. The General Court, however, were unwilling to place such an interpretation upon the language, being contrary to the King's repeated declarations; and they instructed their agents to consent to nothing which should violate or infringe the liberties and privileges granted by charter, or the government established by it. To the charge of coining money, now added to the allegations, they excused themselves, " it having been in the times of the late confusions, to prevent frauds in the pieces of eight current among them, and if they have trespassed upon his Majesty's prerogative, it was through ignorance, and they humbly begged his pardon." ^ In an address to the King, the General Court entreated forbearance. They ordered the Acts of Trade and Navigation to be forthwith proclaimed in the market place in Boston. They appointed naval officers, repealed the laws under the titles " Conspiracy" and " Rebellion," and directed that the word "jurisdiction" should be substituted for " commonwealth," and revised the law of treason. But nothing could assuage the persevering hostility of Randolph. He had this year exhibited "Articles of high misdemeanor against a faction in the General Court," alleging their attempt to obstruct him in the business of his office, and refusing to admit his Majesty's letters-patent creating the office of Surveyor, &c., in America.^ The agents arrived in England after a long passage of nearly twelve weeks, and they immediately entered upon their labors of defending the Colony from the charges brought against it.^ In an elaborate paper they took up, in their order, the several allegations and' requisitions in the King's letter of July 24, 1679, and made a full answer to them.* As to the delay in sending agents, they urged the danger of the seas and' the extreme poverty of the Colony, having incurred a debt of twenty thousand pounds sterling for the expenses of the Indian war; that there was no law or custom in Massachusetts preventing the use of the English liturgy, or the election of members of the Church of England to office ; that the ancient number of eigh- teen Assistants had been restored, agreeably to the royal command ; that all official persons took the oath of allegiance ; that military commissions and judicial proceedings were in the King's name ; that " all laws repugnant to, or inconsistent with, the laws of England for trade were abolished ; " that Randolph's commission had been recognized and enrolled, and that he and his subordinates had been subjected to no penalties but such as were need- ful " to the providing damages for the officers' unjust vexing the subjects ; " and that in Massachusetts the Acts of Trade and Navigation had " been fully put in execution to the best discretion of the Government there." 1 Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 334, 335. < This paper, presented in August, 16S2, may 2 Hutchinson, Papers, p. 526. be seen in Chalmers's Annals, pp. 450-461. The 5 Theyarrivedabout Aug. 1682. Theirinstruc- summary I give is from Palfrey's New Enghmd, tions may be seen in Mass. Col. Kec. v. 346-349. iii. 369, 370. 374 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. They restated in full the position of their-Colony in relation to the claims of Gorges and Mason, and they concluded by expressing the hope that the de- mand for appeals to the King " in matters of revenue " might be reconsidered. All this, however, availed but little. The agents who had submitted their commission to Sir Lionel Jenkins, the Secretary of State, were soon told, as the decision of the Privy Council, that unless they obtained further powers without delay the Colony would be proceeded against upon " the first day of Hilary Term next," which fell upon the 23d or 24th of January; and " in the mean time the said agents were to continue their attendance here." ^ There was a determination now, on the part of the courtiers, to proceed to extremities. An order was sent to Randolph to return to England and prosecute a quo warranto. Letters were received from the agents, dated September 28 and October 3, representing the case of the Colony as des- perate, leaving it to the Court to determine whether it was most advisable to submit to the King's pleasure, or to suffer a quo warranto to issue. The General Court of the Colony met in March, 1683, and after "due consideration and debate " resolved on a humble address to the King, and a new commission and instructions to the agents. The agents were author- ized " to accept of and consent unto such proposals and demands as might consist with the main end of their predecessors in their removing hither with their charter, and his Majesty's Government here settled according thereto." But these new instructions imposed also serious restrictions to their powers. They were in no wise to consent to any infringement of their privileges of religion and worship. In a private letter the agents were authorized to dehver up to the King the deeds to the Province of Maine, if such a surren- der would help to save their charter, &c. Randolph sailed for England soon after the Court, whose proceedings have just been referred to, was dissolved. He was immediately closeted with the Attorney-General, and produced his proofs and charges against the Government of the Massachusetts. ^ The whole matter had been planned beforehand, and the proceedings were speedy. " Before Randolph had been a month in England he had virtually accomplished the purpose of his am- bition and revenge. The blow with which the Colony had been so long threatened was struck. The writ was issued which summoned it to stand 1 Orders in Council for Sept. 20, 1682. duty ; 7. They have estabhshed a Naval Office, ^ The following abstract of Randolph's with a view to defraud the Customs ; 8. No charges is taken from Chalmers's Annals, p. verdicts are ever found for the King in relation 462 : " I. They assume powers that are not to customs, and the Courts impose costs on the warranted by their charter, which is executed in prosecutors in order to discourage trials; 9. another place than was intended ; 2. They make They levy customs on the importatioij of goods laws repugnant to those of England; 3, They from England ; 10. They do not administer the levymoney on subjects not inhabiting the colony oath of supremacy as required by charter ; 11. (and consequently not represented in the Gen- They have erected a Court of Admiralty, though eral Court) ; 4. They impose an oath of fidelity not empowered by charter ; 12. They discoun- to themselves without regarding the oath of tenance the Church of England ; 13. They per- allegiance to the King ; 5. They refuse justice sist in coining money, though they had asked by withholding appeals to the King in Council ; forgiveness for that offence." These articles 6. They oppose the Acts of Navigation, and were exhibited in June, 1683. He arrived in imprison the King's officers for doing their England, May 28. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 375 for the defence of its political existence and of the liberty and property of its people, at the bar of a court in London." ^ The writ bore teste June 27, 1683, and was returnable in October following. The agents, Messrs. Dudley and Richards, now petitioned the authorities, " setting forth that a quo warranto being issued against the Charter and Government " of Massachusetts, " they are not willing to undertake the de- fence and management thereof, and therefore praying they may be permitted to return home to take care of their private affairs," and leave was granted. They arrived at Boston Oct. 23, 1683, and the same week Randolph arrived with the qiLo zvarranto; the Privy Council having ordered, July 20, " that Mr. Edward Randolph be sent to New England with the notification of the said quo warranto, which he was to deliver to the said Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, and thereupon to return to give his Majesty an ac- *count of his proceedings therein." He was furnished with two hundred copies of all the proceedings at the Council Board concerning the Charter of London, to be dispersed in New England. A " Declaration " was received from the King, by the same conveyance, to be spread among the people, promising that if the Colony, before prosecution, would make full submission and entire resignation to his pleasure, he would regulate their charter for his service and their good, and with no further alterations than should be neces- sary for the support of the government there ; declaring, at the same time, that all persons who are questioned in or by the said quo warranto, and shall maintain suit against the King, shall make their defence at their own partic- ular charge, and not at the expense of the Colony, and all persons who shall submit to the pleasure of the King shall be freed from all rates levied as contributions towards said suit.^ The Governor and a majority of the Assistants, despairing of any suc- cess from a defence, voted on the 15th November that a humble address be sent to his Majesty by this ship, saying that they would not contend with his Majesty in a course of law, as they relied on his gracious intimations that his purpose was only to regulate their charter, without any other alteration than what was necessary for the support of his government here. After a delay of fifteen days the deputies dissented, and the town of Boston, under the lead of Increase Mather, sustained them. Hutchinson says that if this vote of the Assistants had " been made an act of the General Court, it is doubtful whether the consequent administra- tion of government would have been less arbitrary than it was upon the judgment against the charter; but, upon the Revolution, they might have reassumed their charter, as Rhode Island and Connecticut did their respec- tive charters, — there having been no judgment against them."^ 1 Palfrey, TV^zc/ .ffw^/awa^, iii. 375, 376. the nation. The Massachusetts was decreed - Mass. Colatiy Records, v. 423. forfeited upon default of appearance. Not only ' Mass. Bay, i. 339. In a note, he adds : the charter of London, but all the charters in " However agreeable to law this distinction the King's dominions, I suppose (unless Ber- might be, yet equity does not seem to favor it. mudas is an exception), whether surrendered or The charter of London was adjudged forfeited whether there had been judgment against them, upon a long argument of the greatest lawyers in were reassumed, except the Massachusetts." 376 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The Court sent a letter of attorney to Robert Humphreys, Esq., of Lin- coln's Inn, bearing date December S, to appear and make answer for the Colony; and, in a supplementary letter to him, they say, — " We take not this course in law of choice, but of mere necessity, to save a default and outlawry for the present, until, if it be possible, we can find means, by an humble application, to satisfy his Majesty. Be sure you entertain the best counsel possible, and gain what time may be had, cundatido restituere rem, and that a better day may shine upon us." In an additional .letter of advice to Humphreys, of the same date, the General Court, through its secretary, suggested that there should be a plea made to the jurisdiction of the Court before whom their case was to be tried ; namely, — " Whether a charter and privileges granted thereby, being exercised in America, can be tried in a court in England, or by what authority the sheriffs of London serve a writ on persons who never were inhabitants there, and particular persons are only men- tioned in the writ, whereas we are to sue and to be sued by the name of the Governor and Company ; also, the writ was not served on the persons concerned until the time of appearance was past, and not served on our agents in England, nor any copy left with them by the secondary." ^ Randolph sailed for England soon after the decision of the deputies just narrated, dissenting from their brethren of the upper branch who had voted to yield and not to contend with the King. He embarked Dec. 14, 1683, and arrived at Plymouth after a tedious and very dangerous passage of two months, and lost no time in laying before Sir Lionel Jenkins an account of his doings in Massachusetts. His more formal " Narrative of the Delivery of his Majesty's writ of quo warranto" was presented to the Privy Council ; and by that body, five days afterwards, it was referred to the Lords of the Committee. Randolph at the same time presented a petition, setting forth the hazards and dangers he had encountered, both by sea and land, in his Majesty's service in the affairs of New England, together with his losses, amounting to two hundred and sixty pounds ; and he asked for money to indemnify him for the cost of having brought over two witnesses to make out the proof of what he had charged against the Colony.^ The intelligence that followed Randolph to England indicated no progress, on the part of the friends of the prerogative, in obtaining the submission of Massachusetts. Party spirit ran high in the colony. The Assistants could not prevail upon the deputies to surrender the charter. The General Court, May 10, 1684, sent another letter to their attorney, Mr. Humphreys, saying that they had not yet heard of his receipt of their former letters, and expressing the hope that he will use his endeavor " to spin out the case to the uttermost." ' The writ, in Latin, is in the Mass. Col. Rec, v. 421. 2 Palfrey, A^rtd' England, iii. 387. THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 377 "We question not," the letter proceeds, "but the counsel which you retain will consult my Lord Coke — his Fourth Part — about the Isle of Man and of Guernsey, Jersey, and Gascoine, while in the possession of the kings of England, where it is concluded by the Judges that these, being extra regnum, cannot be adjudged at the King's Bench, nor can appeal lie from them. Also, if there be such a thing as an appeal from a judgment in the King's Bench, by a writ of error to the Exchequer Chamber, we hope you will endeavor for us . . . whatsoever benefit the law affords." ^ They also sent another humble address to the King, in which they supplicate "that there may not be a farther prosecution had upon the quo warranto." This was enclosed in a letter to their agent, submitting it to his better judgment whether it were advisable to present it to his Majesty or to withhold it.^ Before these letters reached England, the fate of the charter had been substantially sealed. The proceedings by qtw warranto had been dropped, and a new suit by scire facias begun in the Court of Chancery. This Court made a decree, June 18, 1684, vacating the charter, directing "that judg- ment be entered up for his Majesty as of this term; but, if defendants appear first day of next term, and plead to issue, so as to take notice of a trial to be had the same term, then the said judgment, by Mr. Attor- ney's consent, to be set aside; otherwise the same to stand recorded." Record was made that the Governor and Company did not appear, but made default. "The first day of next term" (Michaelmas) was the 23d of October of this year.^ The intelligence of this conditional judgment against the charter reached Massachusetts in a private letter to Joseph Dudley in September, and by him it was communicated to the Governor. A special meeting of the Court was called for the tenth of the month ; but nothing was done regarding this business ejicept hearing the letter read and addressing a brief note to their attorney, expressing amazement at the information just received. An adjourned meeting was held five weeks later, — Octo- ber 15, — at which a humble address was ordered to the King, praying for his " clemency and justice," acknowledging " some unwilling errors or mistakes, for which we prostrate ourselves at your Majesty's feet, humbly begging and imploring your Majesty's pardon and forgiveness, with the continuance of our charter and privileges therein contained." A letter was also addressed to their attorney, Mr. Humphreys, expressing indignation at the proceedings against them, hoping they had not forfeited the privileges of Englishmen, and saying they are yet unwilling to despair of a further and a more favorable consideration of their case by those from whose jus- tice they implore relief. "We know not what could be done more, nor cannot direct for the future." Before these papers had been despatched from the Colony, the final step was taken in London. On the first day of Michaelmas Term (October 23), the counsel for the Colony moved in the Court in Chancery for a stay in the proceedings, as sufficient time had not 1 Mass. Colony Records, v. 439. ^ Ibid. pp. 440, 441. ^ Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i 340. VOL. I. — 48. 378 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. been given for procuring a letter of attorney from New England between the issuing of the writ and the day appointed for its return. But the Lord Keeper replied that no time ought to have been given, as all corporations ought at all times to have an attorney in court ; and the order for time to appear and plead was set aside, and final judgment entered for vacating the charter.^ 1 Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 339, 340 ; Mass. Col. Rec, V. 449, 451, 456-459 ; Palfrey, JVew England, iii. 393, 394. "Down to the time of Randolph's report to the Privy Coun- cil (Feb. 29, 1683-84), the proceedings against Massachusetts were under a writ of quo war- ranto, returnable into the Court of King's Bench. After that time we hear no more of that writ, or of proceedings in that court." What vacated the charter was a decree in Chancery in June of this year, confirmed in October. See Palfrey, iii. 390, 391, who has called attention to the perplexity in which this action of the au- thorities has been involved, and to the fact that Chalmers, Hutchinson, and Grahame, two of whom were bred lawyers, and one of whom was a Chief Justice, " all slur the matter over." Other writers have done the same, some of whom appear to have been unaware that the proceedings under the qiio warranto were not consummated by that process. Contemporary writers in New England understood the matter in a general way, if they did not comprehend all its legal aspects. The author of a " Brief Relation of the State of New England," prob- ably Increase Mather, says : " The Governor and Company appointed an attorney to appear and answer to the quo warranto in the King's Bench. The prosecutors not being able to make anything of it there, a new suit was commenced by a scire facias in the High Court of Chancery. But, though they had not sufficient time given them to make their defence, yet judgment was entered against them for default in not appear- ing, when it was impossible, considering the remote distance of New England from West- minster Hall, that they should appear in the time allowed." Andros Tracts, ii. 154, 155. The first writ of scire facias, directed to the Sheriff of Middlesex, bore teste i6th April, 36 Car. II. (1684), whereupon, on the 8th of May, a nihil was returned. An alias was directed to the same sheriff on the r2thof May, upon which the same return was made on the 2d of June. The agent of the Company now moved, by his counsel, for time (until Michaelmas Term next, about the''23d of October) to send to New Eng- land for a letter of attorney under seal to plead to these writs ; and, on hearing both sides, the Court ordered the conditional judgment cited above, which was finally confirmed on the first day of Michaelmas Term next. Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, i. 340 ; 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. 246-278. Dr. Palfrey, in his notes to his history of these transactions, discusses the reasons for the change of process from the King's Bench to the Court of Chancery. The sheriff's principal objection why he did not return a summons was that the notice was given after the return was past. " He did also make it a question whether he could take notice of New England being out of his bailiwick." Mr. Humphreys, the counsel of the Colony, had presented another difficulty, suggested in a letter to him from the General Court; namely, that "particular persons were only mentioned in the writ, whereas they were to sue and be sued by the name of the Governor and Company." He said he had no authority to appear in the Court of King's Bench except for the Governor and Company. In answer to the question why these infor- malities and defects were not cured by a new writ of quo warranto rightly drawn and served, instead of transferring the case by a scire facias to the Court of Chancery, Dr. Palfrey cites a letter from his learned friend, Mr. Horace Gray, — now Chief-Justice Gray, — to whom this whole matter was submitted, in which Mr. Gray sug- gests two answers: i. A decision of the case for the Crown in Chancery would be more sure and weighty than in the Court of King's Bench ; and, 2. It would be more effectual and decis- ive ; and on the latter head he proceeds : " Great importance was attached in those days to the actual possession of the charter. Now a judg- ment for the Crown upon a quo warranto moaXA have been only for a seizure of the franchises into the King's hands, but the judgment upon scire facias was not merely that the charter should be declared forfeited, but also that it should be cancelled, vacated, and annihilated, and restored into Chancery there to be can- celled. Blackstone, Commentaries, iii. 260, 262; 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. 278. Indeed, Lord Coke (4th Inst. pp. 79, 88), in enumerating matters within the jurisdiction of the Chan- cellor, put this first, and even derives his title from it, saying : 'Hereof our Lord Chancellor of England is called cancellarizts, a cancellando, i.e., a digniori parte, being the highest point of his jurisdiction to cancel the King's letters-pa- tents under the Great Seal, and damning the en- rolment thereof by drawing strikes through it like a lettlce.' " Professor Joel Parker, who has discussed this question in the lecture above cited, says : THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 379 " Thus ended," says Chalmers, " the ancient government of that colony by legal process, — the validity of which, however, has been questioned by very great authority." After the decree vacating the charter, several months passed before intelligence of it reached the colony. A special meeting of the Court was called by the Governor and Assistants for the 28th of January, 1684-85, in the record of which the following is the first entry : — " At the opening of this Court the Governor declared it, that on the certain or general rumors in Mr. Jenner lately arrived, that our charter was condemned, and judg- "The reason why the prosecutors could not make anything of it in the King's Bench may have been that suggested in relation to the former writ |in 1635], that, as the process of the court did not run into the colony, there could be no service there." As to the proceedings in the Court of Chan- cery, Professor Parker says : "The proceedings may have been instituted in that court upon the ground of an ancient jurisdiction of the chancel- lor to repeal grants of the King which had been issued improvidently. But the assumption to enter a decree that a charter granting lands, and corporate powers, and powers of government, and which had existed more than half a cen- tury, should 'be vacated, cancelled, and anni- hilated ' on account of usurpations, which in case of ordinary corporations may be a subject for proceedings by writ of quo warranto in the King's Bench, — and especially to do this upon a writ issued to the sheriff of Middlesex, in Eng- land, under such circumstances that there could be neither service nor notice, — would be of itself a usurpation. And this seems to be its true character, whatever might be the reason alleged. . . . " No judgment of forfeiture was entered, nor any decree ordering any person to bring in and surrender the charter, or to do any other act in relation to it. The Court adjudged that ' the letters-patent and the enrolment thereof be va- cated, cancelled, and annihilated, and into the said court restored, there to be cancelled,' but there was no attempt to enforce the latter part of the decree." It is certain that this parchment muniment of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay hangs to-day in the office of the Secretary of State in Boston, never having left the custody of its official guardian, and of course never hav- ing suffered the official mutilation decreed by the Court of Chancery ; and the same remark may be made of the parchment on which the "enrolment," subject to the same decree, is preserved, which now slumbers in its original entireness in her Majesty's Public Record Office in London, as inspected by the writer a few years ago. " If the colonial government," continues Professor Parker, " was exercising power in- consistent with the charter or with colonial dependence, the true remedy would at this day appear to have been, not by process to enforce a forfeiture or to vacate the charter, which, if effective, would leave the inhabitants without any legal government, but by an enforcement or amendment of the charter, in regard to its public powers and character, by the Crown, from which it was derived, or by an Act of Parlia- ment making the requisite provision for that purpose. " The better opinion may be that, meeting with technical difficulties in the court of law, resort was had to Chancery because of a better assurance of a speedy success. (Palfrey, New Eng- land, iii. 391-394.) . . . " The proceeding appears to have been no more effective in its character than might have been a judgment of seizure in a process at law ; and, in fact, little better than would have been an order of the King in Council, that the char- ter was forfeited, with a revocation of its powers. However, the decree answered its purpose. The colonists were not in a situa- tion to contest it." — Lecture before the Mass. Hist. Soc, pp. 45-47. After the Revolution, on the imprisonment of Andros in Boston, a provisional government was set up on the basis of the old charter, and an unavailing effort was made to procure its restoration. "The House of Commons, in- flamed, probably," says Chalmers, "by the just and general indignation against the violent pro- ceedings with regard to the corporations in England, at a subsequent period resolved, ' that those quo warrantos against the charters of New England were illegal and void.' But, when the judgment before mentioned was reconsidered by those eminent lawyers and Whigs, Treby, Somers, and Holt, they gave it as their opinion ' that, were it reversed, and the General Court exercised the same powers that before the quo warranto it had done, a new writ would issue against it, and there would be such a judgment as to leave no room for a writ of error.'" — Annals, p. 415. 38o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ment entered up, &c, they looked at it as an incumbent duty to acquaint the Court with it, and leave the consideration of what was or might be necessary to them, &c." ' They appointed a fast-day, to be held the following month, and made another attempt at pacifying the King, by a humble address, in which they say, as to the " scire facias late brought against us in the Chancery, ... we never had any legal notice for our appearance, and making answer; neither was it possible, in the time allotted, that we could.". A committee was also appointed to write a letter to their attorney, Mr. Humphreys ; and, in this - brief epistle, they say they have as yet received no particular information from him concerning their affairs, — being as yet advised only by rumor that their charter was condemned; and they enclose to him, for speedy presentation to his Majesty, the letter prepared for him. They express a wish to discharge all pecuniary obliga- tions to their attorney, whenever they shall learn the extent of their indebt- edness. For the reason that " several of our vessels yet behind in England, and so possibly we may yet hear further, either from Mr. Humphreys or some other, — we having as yet received no particular intelligence about the entering up of judgment against us, — it is therefore ordered and concluded that this General Court be adjourned till the i8th day of March next, being Wednesday, at one of the clock in the afternoon." Hutchinson says that the copy of the judgment against the charter was received by Secretary Rawson on the 2d of July.^ This must refer to the official notice. In the mean time King Charles the Second had died (Feb. 6, 1684-85) ; and Mr. Blathwait, one of the principal Secretaries of State, had written to Mr. Bradstreet, transmitting a printed copy of the proclamation of King James, issued on the day of his accession to the throne, directing that all persons in authority in his kingdoms and colonies should continue to ex- ercise their functions till further order should be taken. This was accompanied by an order to proclaim the new king. The Court met on the 6th of May, 1685, and registered the edict, and also made a record of the fact that the Governor had answered the letter of William Blathwayt, Esq., and informed him that the Government of the colony had already, on the 20th of April, proclaimed the new king, with all due solemnity, in the high street in Boston, — news of the death of Charles the Second and the proclaiming of his successor having been already received here by the arrival of a ship from Newcastle as early as the 14th of April. The Court met on the 21st of July, by adjournment, "to consult the 1 Mass. Colony Records, v. 465. other engravings of it in the N. E. Hist, and "- [Rawson, b. 1615, d. 1693, was for many Geneal. Reg., and in Drake's Boston. He is years Secretary of the Colony, 1650-1686. His buried in the Granary burial-ground. The portrait is preserved in the gallery of the Amer. present Bromfield Street bore his name, and was Antiquarian Society at Worcester, and there are known as Rawson's Lane up to 1796. Ed 1 THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST. 38i weighty concerns of this colony; " and Mr. John Higginson was asked " to seek the face of God for his special guidance and direction." Another humble petition to the King was written, substantially rehearsing the arguments which had already proved so fruitless. The elections in the colony took place this year as usual ; but there were 1VC 'kuTJo?^, all the symptoms of an expiring Constitution. The Government was now regarded as only provisional ; and they awaited with anxiety the arrival of a royal governor, in the person of the noted Colonel Kirke, as a much- dreaded infliction. Several towns neglected to send their deputies to the General Court this year; and, at the session July lo, they were warned to attend to their duty at their peril. On the 12th of IVTay, 1686, the last 382 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. election took place according to the provisions of the charter.^ On the 14th of that month the " Rose " frigate arrived at Boston, bringing the per- sistent Randolph, with an exemplification of the judgment against the charter,^ and commissions for the officers of a new government. Joseph Dudley was appointed President. News had already been received that a new governor was impending ; and it was a relief to know that Kirke had not received the appointment. The General Court was in session. On the 17th, a copy of the commis- sion was presented and read, and a reply made on the 20th, complaining of its arbitrary character, and that the people were abridged of their liberties. A committee was appointed " for a repository of such papers on file with the secretary as refer to our charter and negotiations from time to time for the security thereof, with such as refer to our title of our land, by purchase of Indians or otherwise ; and the secretary is ordered, accordingly, to deliver the same unto them." The concluding entry is as follows: "This day the whole Court met at the Governor's house ; and there the Court was adjourned to the second Wednesday in October next, at eight of the clock in the morning." But it never met. ' [Professor Emory Washburn has a paper, " Did the vacating of the Colony Charter in 1684, or the adoption oE the 1691 charter, annul the laws made under the former?" in the Mass, Hist. Soc. Froc, March, 1875. — Ed.J 2 By this instrument, printed in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. ii. 246-278, it will be seen that the causes of forfeiture, as set forth in the Court of Chancery, were : the assuming by the Governor and Company the power to levy money (by poll taxes and duties on merchan- dise and tonnage) ; to coin money ; and to require an oath of fidelity to the government of the colony. CHAPTER XI. CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. BY HENRY HERBERT EDES. THE territory now designated as Charlestown is a peninsula, lying be- tween the estuaries of the Mystic and the Charles,, containing less than a square mile of land. This now constitutes the third, fourth, and fifth wards of Boston, to which it was annexed in 1873. The oldest town, except Salem, in the Bay Colony, it was, in the year last named, the smallest municipality in the Commonwealth. At the time of its settlement, however, the area of Charlestown was much greater, including the whole or portions of the present cities of Somerville and Cambridge, and of the towns of Woburn, Burlington, Wilmington, Stoneham, Winchester, Melrose, Everett, Maiden, Wakefield, Medford, and Arlington. Woburn was the first town set off, — in 1642; and Somerville was the last, — exactly two centuries later. The two Indian nations which occupied the region around Boston Harbor at the time of the settlement were the Massachusetts and the Pawtuckets. Chikataubut, or House-a-Fire, was the chief sachem of the former tribe, whose domain extended from Charles River on the north and west to Wey- mouth and Canton on the south. Nanepashemit, or The New Moon, was the chief sachem of the Pawtuckets, whose territory reached as far east as Pis- cataqua, and as far north as Concord, on the Merrimac River. These tribes, prior to 1613, could each bring into the field three thousand warriors, but they were soon after greatly reduced by pestilence. Nanepashemit lived in Lynn, when in 1615 he removed to the banks of the Mystic, where he was " Thn \r.ti^.v^cfR6^»^ r< ^yno^'^i^ ^~^7^^^0yt^:3ZA£) then living, and from him, *^/ ff without doubt, many of these -j A(fnf , statements were procured. Mr. ________ Everett, in his address commemorative of the bi-centennial of the arrival of Winthrop at Charlestown, in speaking of the three brothers, Ralph, Rich- ard, and William Sprague, says they were " the founders of the settlement in this place," and "were persons of character, substance, and enterprise: excellent citizens ; generous public benefactors ; and the heads of a very large and respectable family of descendants." They arrived in Salem, — in 1628 says the record, but probably 1629 is the actual date of their coming, — and with three or four others journeyed through the woods " the same summer" to a " place situate and lying on the north side of Charles River, full of Indians, called Aberigians," whose chief at that time was Wonohaqua- ham (a son of Nanepashemit), called by the EngHsh Sagamore John, who lived either at Mystic Side or at Rumney Marsh (Chelsea), and owned land near Powder-Horn Hill. He was " a man naturally of a gentle and good disposition, by whose free consent they settled about the hill of the same place, . . . where they found but one English palisadoed and thatched house, wherein lived Thomas Walford, a smith, situate on the South End of the westermost hill of the East Field, a little way up from Charles River side." Mention is made of Thomas Walford in a previous chapter^ of this volume, as one of Robert Gorges' company which arrived at Wessagusset (Weymouth) in 1623, and that he removed to Charlestown about 1625-1627, after the abandonment of the Wessagusset settlement. Wal- ford had a wife, Jane ; and Sav- age mentions two sons, Thomas and Jeremiah, besides several daughters, all of whom married. His Episcopal tenets made him an un- desirable neighbor for the Puritan colonists of the Bay; and as early as 1 Pp. 371-387- ^ [By Mr. Adams, on "The Earliest Explorations in Boston Harbor."— Ed. 1 7^^ru^y^;^\\ 9nJ^I^ CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 385 May 3, 1 63 1, the General Court fined him forty shillings, and enjoined him and his wife " to depart out of the limits of this patent before the twentieth day of October next, under pain of confiscation of his goods, for his con- tempt of authority, and confronting officers." He paid the fine by killing a wolf. September 3, 1633, the Court ordered "that the goods of Thomas Walford shall be sequestered ... to satisfy the debts he owes in the Bay to several persons." He removed with his family to Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth), where he was much esteemed ; had grants of land ; was often one of the selectmen, or " townsmen ; " served on the grand jury ; took an active interest in public affairs; and in 1640 was one of the church wardens with Henry Sherburne. His will is dated Nov. 15, 1660, and was proved six days later. The precise date of Walford's removal to Portsmouth is not known. In a deposition dated 1682, Henry Lang- star, of Dover, testified that he knew Walford, of Portsmouth, fifty years before, which would indicate that 1632 was the year of his removal. In the Charlestown records, however, his name appears in a list of inhabitants on "the 9th of January, 1633-34," — four months after his goods had been sequestered. Probably he went to Portsmouth soon after this latter date, as his name does not again appear in our records. On the tenth of March, 1628-29, the Massachusetts Company in England engaged Thomas Graves, a skilful engineer, of Gravesend, in Kent, to go to New England in their interest and lay out a town. Graves arrived at Salem ^^^^^j'V in the fleet with Higginson in June, ^^^^^//tC' LjVTXMjCm^ 1629; and during the same month, or early in July, in company with the Rev. Francis Bright and about one hundred other persons (among whom prob- ably were the Spragues) he removed from Salem. to Charlestown. Prince gives the date of their arrival here June 24 (or July 4, New Style), 1629, which, says Mr. Frothingham, is "the only date for the foundation of Charlestown for which good authority can be adduced." The associates of the Spragues in the settlement of the town, whose names are recorded, were John Meech, Simon Hoyte, Abraham Palmer, Walter Palmer, Nicholas Stowers, John Stickline, Thomas Walford, " that lived here alone before," Thomas Graves, and the Rev. Francis Bright, who "jointly agreed and concluded that this place . . . shall henceforth, from the name of the river, be called Charlestown ; which was also con- firmed by Mr. John Endicott, Governor." Mr. Graves proceeded without delay to " model and lay out the form of the town, with streets about the hill," which described an ellipse of which what are now Main Street and Bow Street constituted the periphery. It was agreed that each inhabitant should have a two-acre lot to plant upon ; and all were to fence in common. These lots were at once measured off. Ralph Sprague and others began to build their houses on Bow Street, and to fence the field laid out to them, VOL. I. — 49. 386 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. which was situated on the northwest side of Town Hill. "Walter Palmer and one or two more shortly after began to build in a straight line upon their two-acre lots on the east side of the Town Hill, and set up a slight fence in common that ran up to Thomas Walford's fence; and this was V the beginning of the East Field." AHPa^/'i7(. -rp a£4l/ iS^ ^* "^^^ ^^'° ^^^ beginning of what ^"^ is now the Main Street. Graves, with " some of the servants of the Company of Patentees . . . built the Great House ... . for such of the Said Company as are shortly to come over, which after- wards became the meeting-house." That this building was the only one deemed worthy to be called a house at the time of Winthrop's arrival in June, 1630, seems to be proved by the statement of Roger Clap (who visited the town a few days previously) that "we found some wigwams and one house ;" unless, as Dr. Young^ suggests, reference was intended to Walford's house. The preliminary visit to the peninsula, and the final removal hither of Winthrop and his company are described in another chapter.^ It was intended to place here the seat of government ; but that purpose was speedily abandoned, chiefly on account of the lack of good water. The town records mention the arrival of Winthrop and of — "Sir Richard Saltonstall, Knight, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Dudley, Mr. Ludlow, Mr. Nowell, Mr. Pincheon [and] Mr. Bradstreet, who brought along with them the charter or patent for this jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay ; with whom also arrived Mr. John Wilson and Mr. [George] Phillips, ministers, and a multitude of people amounting to about fifteen hundred, brought over from England in twelve ships. The Governor and several of the patentees dwelt in the Great House. . . . The multitude set up cottages, booths, and tents about the Town Hill. They had long passage ; some of the ships were seventeen, some eighteen weeks a coming. Many people arrived sick of the scurvy, which also increased much after their arrival, for want of houses and by reason of wet lodging in their cottages ; and other distempers also prevailed; and although [the] people were generally very loving and pitiful, yet the sickness did so prevail that the whole were not able to tend the sick as they should be tended ; upon which many perished and died, and were buried about the Town Hill." The weather was hot, sickness prevailed, and a prejudice existed in the minds of many against water which was not taken from running springs. Only one of these could be found, and that " a brackish spring in the sands by the water side, on the west side of the North-west Field, which could not supply half the necessities of the multitude ; at which time the death of so many was concluded to be much the more occasioned by this want of good water." This spring, generally referred to as " The Great Spring," is believed 1 Chronicles of Mass., p. 349, note. ^ By Mr. Winthrop, on " Boston Founded." CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 387 to have been near the site of the State-prison.-' In this season of affliction Dr. Samuel Fuller came from Plymouth to minister to the sick ; but lack of proper medicines prevented his rendering much assistance : — " In the mean time, Mr. Blackstone, dwelling on the other side [of] Charles River alone, at a place called by y" Indians Shawmut . . . came and acquainted the Gov- ernor of an excellent spring there ; withal inviting him and soliciting him thither. Whereupon, after the death of Mr. Johnson ^ and divers others, the Governor, with Mr. Wilson and the greatest part of the Church [which had been gathered here July 30] removed thither [September 7] ; whither also the frame of the Governor's house, in preparation at this town, was also (to the discontent of some) can-ied ; where people began to build their houses against winter ; and this place was called Boston." ^ The first three sessions of the Court of Assistants were held in Charles- town : Aug. 23, 1630, when provision was made for the maintenance of the ministers, and the next session appointed at the Governor's hoilse at eight o'clock in the morning; also September 7, and again September 28. From and after October 19, however, the Court convened in Boston. The persons who came with Winthrop, but remained in Charlestown after his removal to Boston, were Increase Nowell, Esq., Mr. William Aspinwall, Mr. Richard Palsgrave, physician, Edward Converse, William Penn, William Hudson, Mr. John Glover, William Brackenbury, Rice Cole, Hugh Garrett, Ezekiel Richardson, John Baker, and John Sales. Besides these were also Captain Francis Norton, Mr. Edward Gibbons, Mr. William Jennings, and John Wignall, who " went and built in the Main on the north-east side of the north-west creek of this town." The Court early ordered the following grants of land : — September 6, 1631, the General Court granted to Governor Winthrop a farm of six hundred acres at Mystic, where his summer residence was located. Here he had built a bark of thirty tons called " The Blessing of the Bay," which was launched July 4th of the same year. The farm was called by the Governor " Ten Hills," from the number of elevations which could be counted upon it ; and what remains of it is so designated at the present day.^ July 2, 1633, the General Court ordered that "the gi-ound lying betwixt the North river and the Creek on the North side of Mr. Maverick's, and up into the country, shall belong to the inhabitants of Charlestown." This was the territory known as Mystic Side. March 3, 1635-36, the Court "ordered that Charlestown bounds shall run eight miles into the country from their meedng-house, if no other bounds intercept, reserv- 1 The site of the prison was, for more than a "fountains of living water;" but a later and better century, known as Lynda's Point. authority, Dr. Trumbull gives another meaning 2 Mr. Johnson's death did not occur till Sept. in his chapter of the present volume. 30, 1630. * By the courtesy of the Hon. Robert C. 3 A writer in Mass. Hist. Coll., xx. 174, thinks Winthrop, a reduced heliotype of a plan of this that " Mishawumut " means " a great spring," estate, made in October, 1637, is given in another and " Shawmut " (the Indian name for Boston), place in this volume. 388 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ing the propriety of farms granted to John Winthrop, Esq., Mr. Nowell, Mr. Cradock, and Mr. Wilson, to the owners thereof, as also free ingress and egress for the Servants and Catde of the said gentlemen, and common for their cattle, on the back side of Mr. Cradock's farm." Oct. 28, 1636, the Court granted Lovell's Island to this town. May 13, 1640, the Court made another grant to the town of " hvo miles at their head line, provided it fall not within the bounds of Lynn Village [Reading], and that they build within two years," — that is, begin the settlement of a town which subse- quently was set off, in 1642, as Woburn, or " Charlestown Village" as it was then called. On the Seventh of October following, the Court granted to Charlestown " the proportion of four miles square with their former last grant to make a village, /9 / whereof five hundred acres is granted to Mr. '' (^ Kr^cL^ (^o^'^o^^^ Thomas Coitmore,^ to be set out by the Court." ^ By the terms of this grant Cambridge line was not to be crossed; and the bounds of the tract granted were not to "come within a mile 'of Shawshine River; and the Great Swamp and Pond" were to lie in common. Nov. 12, 1659, the last considerable grant to the town was made by the General Court. It comprised one thousand acres at Sowheaganucke, on the west side of Merrimack River, and was laid out, " for the use of the school of Charlestown," in October, 1660. The affairs of the tovv^n vi^ere conducted by the freemen in general town- meeting until June 13, 1634, when " it was agreed and concluded that Mr. Thomas Beecher, Mr. William Jennings, and Ralph Sprague be at town- meetings to assist in ordering their affairs, and that they present this town at the General Court held at New Towne in September next in the quality of Deputies." A fine was early imposed for non-attendance upon town- meetings. Feb. 10, 1634-35, the famous town order creating a board of selectmen was passed.^ It is expressed in the following words : — " An ord' made by the Inhabitants of Charlestowne At A ffull meeting for the Gov- ernm't of the Towne by Selectmen : " 1634. — In consideration of the great trouble and chearg of the Inhabitants of Charlestowne by reason of the Frequent meeting of the townsmen in generall, and y' by reason of many men meeting things were not so easily brought unto a ioynt Issue : It is therefore agreed by the sayde townesmen ioyntly that these eleuen men whose names are written one the other syde, w"" the advice of Pastor and teacher, desired in any case of conscience, shall entreat of all such busines as shall conscerne the townsmen. The choise of officers excepted. And what they or the gi-eater part of them shall con- clude of, the rest of the towne willingly to submit vnto as their owne pper act, and these 13 {sic\ to contineu in this imployment for one yeare next ensuing the date hereof, being dated this : 10* of February, 1634. 1 Cf. N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., xxxiv. accompanies this chapter. Mr. Frothingham ziT,etseq. gave a lithographed fac-simile in his History 2 A heliotype of what remains of the origi- of Charlestown. ^f. Anur. Antiq. Soc. Proc, nal document and the signatures attached to it Oct. 21, 1870. f/*,. ' ■■^^y*^^^ '^^•*^ '^J^^ >^P>'*1^ ^^**y^-^^^\j''^*A^PUi ^ j^rJ^y ''^^ -Ap/^ B^^t^t^ — '*^^*^p'/^ ♦» ''^M,^^ 1<7 '*!ro^. ' y <>' ^A f- ,(:]^&^ ^ ' ^ -^1 J ^^. m,ii^—\ ''M-' J: j Feb. 10, 1634. 'Order Creating Board of Selectmen. I^Charkstown Records.) CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 389 "In wittnes of this agreement wee whose o' hands. William Learned robt. moulton William Johnson George Whitehand William Baker Robert Hale Nicholas Stower George Bunker John Hall Wilia". -f- Gnash Rice Coles Thomas Minor Richard Ketle RoBART Blot Edward Sturges George Felch Thomas Lincoln J Anthony ) I Eames j names are vnder written haue set to John Greene Abra : Mellows Will" frothingham Thomas Gobel Walter ~| Pope his mark Richard S Sprague [his mark] James 7,'J Pemberton his mark Thomas Squire William Sprague Thomas Piearce Edward Johnes Rice Mauris ROBEART ShORTTAS Geag Huchinson Richard Palgraue The eleven selectmen first chosen under this order were Increase Nowell, Thomas Beecher, Ezekiel Richardson, Walter Palmer, Ralph Sprague, Wil- liam Brackenbury, Edward Con- -^ verse, Thomas Lynde, Abraham -- — T^S/O "^^ <^^ ^^6^ -r^^^^ Palmer, John Mousall, and Rob- ^ , ert Moulton. '^f/ Mr. Nowell was the first Town Clerk of Charlestown. He was succeeded by Sergeant Abraham Palmer, who was chosen March 26, 1638. Elder Greene was the next incumbent of the office, upon which he entered Jan. ^_. 2, 1645-46. Captain Samuel Adams was Greene's successor; but I am unable to determine the precise date of his first service. He acted in the capacity of Re- iL corder as early as 1653 ; and a record is preserved of his election to office Jan. 3, 1658-59. He was a son of Henry Adams of Braintree; married (i) Rebecca Graves, eldest daughter of { ^^ ^ /n *^— • q^ the Admiral, and (2) Esther Spar- V^^-TvWd Clr^ VCt^-Uif^ jj^^j^ Qf Cambridge ; removed, prior to 1668, to Chelmsford, where also he was town clerk; and died Jan. 24, 1688-89, aged 72. Edward Burt suc- ceeded Adams. He was son of Hugh Burt of Lynn ; came with his father in the " Ab- igail" in 1635, then aged 8 years; had a patent to make salt granted him for ten years by the General Court, in 1652; and executed an agreement in that year with Governor Bradstreet, then of Andover, con- cerning salt works. He married Elizabeth Bunker daughter of George "Uw: k^4f~ ^^ 390 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Bunker, by whom he had an only daughter, Mary^ born in 1656. James Gary was the next Town Clerk. He JcUH^ ^e9aXA.i\;-rc^ ^*^ was a draper by trade; came from -fi^*yU. \^ the position nearly twenty years, with /\ the exception of a single year, — from June 1688 till June 1689, — when Samuel Phipps, the Schoolmaster acted as Recorder. Newell was a cooper, but appears to have been well descended. His father, Andrew Newell, was a merchant from Bristol, England ; and his mother was Mary Pitt, daughter of William Pitt, who had been sheriff of Bristol. Maud Pitt, who was the first wife of the Hon. Richard Russell, is believed to have been another daughter of the sheriff. Mr. Newell married Hannah Larkin ; and he died Oct. 14 or 15, 1704, aged 70 years and 2 months. One of the earliest orders of the town provided that " the ^reat Gorn- field shall be on the east side of the Town Hill, the fence to range along even with those dwellings where Walter Palmer's house stands and so along to-" wards the neck of land ; and that every inhabitant dwelling within the neck be given two acres of land for an house-plot and two acres for every male that is able to plant." This field was subsequently known as the " East field within the Neck." It embraced all that section of the town lying be- tween Main Street and Gharles-River Avenue on the .wqst and the Mystic River on the east, and was sometimes called the Town Field. Within its limits were three hills, — Bunker's,^ Breed's, and Moulton's, the last of which had formerly an elevation of thirty-five or forty feet. Breed's Hill was about sixty feet high, while Bunker's Hill — the highest land in the town — was one hundred and ten feet. In 1677 Moulton's Point Field is mentioned. It probably was the extreme easterly portion of the East Field. There were other " Fields " subsequently laid out, — East Field without the neck, which was sometimes known as Northfield and also as Highfield, was on the north side of Mystic River and extended to Penny Ferry; Waterfield, near Woburn; Menotomy Field, contiguous to Arlington; Mystic-Side Field, now in the town of Maiden ; Linefield, which included the West Field, without the neck ; Northwest Field, within the peninsula, 1 George Bunker, from whom the hill takes He died in Maiden in 1664. The Rev. Benja- its name, was one of the most wealthy inhabi- min Bunker (H. C. 1658), who died Feb. 3, tants, and one of the greatest landed proprietors. 1669-70, was his son. I> l£l^^* -I I ■ ;-^ ^^ ii J ^< « 5 o (-1 o O .i \ .''t r^?-m », CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 39 1 and located near Washington Street; besides other "Fields" of less ex- tent and importance. There was also the Stinted Pasture, so called, — a large tract of common land which lay between the Winter-Hill road and Cambridge. The first considerable division of land among the inhabitants generally was voted Jan.- 9, 1633-34, when it was ordered that ten acres be laid out to every inhabitant at Mystic Side. In 1635 twenty-nine persons voluntarily surrendered half of their allotments for the accommodation of new comers. This division appears not to have been recorded till 1637, and the date has given rise to an erroneous impression that the division was made in that year. In 1635 ^ large tract of " Hayground ... on Mystic Side" was laid out by a committee of the town to the inhabitants. In 1638 there was another considerable division of land on Mystic Side which was included in the tract set off to Maiden in 1726. On the 28th of October, 1640, two hundred acres were laid out to thirty-five persons ; and there was still another division in 1641. March i, 1657-58, another committee laid out "the wood and com- mons" on Mystic Side to two hundred and two families. In 1685 the Stinted Pasture was laid out to those having propriety in it; and the division of the common lands was thereby completed. The importance of preserving a record of the ownership and transfer of land in the colony was early recognized by the General Court, and legislation to that end was had. In Charlestown the compilation of the volume known as the " Book of Possessions " ^ was begun in 1638 by Sergeant Abraham Palmer, who was then the Town .^ ^ ^ Clerk. Mr. Palmer was a London ^^i^T ^cJCrrUX.}- t03^ merchant prior to his coming to New England. He was a member of the first assembly of Representatives in 1634, and was held in high esteem in the town which he faithfully served in civil and military capacities. He died in Barbadoes, in 1653. The Town Hill, upon which the present meeting-house of the First Parish stands, is sometimes called Harvard Hill. In early times it was called Wind- mill Hill, because of the mill upon its summit which William Tuttle had leave granted to him to build in 1635. I" 1646 it was ordered that the ground on the top of this hill should lie common to the town forever. The hill was originally much higher than it is now, — a great quantity of gravel having been dug from it, at different times, prior to the Revolution. Burial Hill, on the west side of the town, is first mentioned in the town records in 1648. Cobble Hill is the site of the McLean Asylum; Ploughed Hill, known later as Mount Benedict, the site of the Ursuline Convent which was destroyed in 1834; and Walnut-Tree Hill the site of Tufts College, — all in Somerville. Powder-Horn Hill, Prospect Hill, and Winter Hill, also referred to in the records, bear the same designations at the present day. The Land of Nod, so called, was a large tract now within the limits of Wilmington ; and Stoneham was at first known as " Charlestown End." ^ Printed in 1878 as the Third Report of the Boston Record Commissioners. 392 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The Training Field, used for military purposes, and now known as Win- throp Square, is also mentioned in our records for the first time under date of 1648. A diagram showing its shape, dimensions, and principal abutters in 1 71 3, found among the papers of the late Mr. Thomas Bellows Wyman, is here reproduced. The figures indicate the dimensions as shown by the surveys made in 1713-14 and 1802, respectively: — John Edes, who was the founder in New England of the once numerous family of this name in Charlestown, was born in Lawford, in the county of Essex, England, March 31, 1651, where his grandfather, of the same name, had been rector of the parish for forty years, ending with his death in 1658. ^^ The emigrant was the owner of the (y^^Tt. (^fi^MSS ■/. 'T^-^ O estate on the training-field as early as ■ 1687; but the records fail to show his title. The property remained in the possession of his descendants till 1790, when Stephen Edes, a great-grandson of the emigrant, sold the estate to the town. An alms-house was subsequently built upon a part of the pur- chase ; but it long since gave place to brick dwelling-houses. Its location may be seen by reference to Peter Tufts's plan of Charlestown in 1818, which will appear in a later volume of this work. " The Square " was for many years referred to as the Market Place, where " a market was kept constantly on the sixth day of every week." Wapping, or Wapping End, was the name given to a section of the town now included, for the most part, within the Navy Yard, and in the neighborhood of Wap- ping Street. Sconce Point lay between Wapping Street, Wapping Dock, the Town Dock, and Charles River; while Moulton's Point is identical with the region now known as " The Point," contiguous to Chelsea Bridge. The Great Ferry communicated with Boston where the Charles-River CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 393 bridge now is, It was established in 1631; and Edward Converse was the first ferryman. In 1640 it was granted to , Harvard College. Penny Ferry communicated ^7-^ V . i with Mystic Side, where Maiden bridge has since ^^-^i/h^X^^ O- been built. It was established April 10, 1640; -«:, r\ and Philip Drinker was appointed to keep it. tl| .jr^AAykiYn^ Jan. 6, 1672-73, the town ordered a bridge to be built over Wapping Dock, which was at the head of the Town Dock and north of Water Street. In 1677 the first dry dock in the country was built in this town, between Charles-River bridge and the Navy Yard. In 1670 the first survey and record of the streets and highways was made.'' The two principal ones were Main Street (otherwise known as Market Street, the Country Road, the Town Street, Fore Street, Street to the Ferry, and Wast Street) and Bow Street, also called Elbow Lane and Crooked Lane. The Great House, first used as the official residence of the Governor, was purchased in 1633, by the town, of John Winthrop and other gentle- men, for ^10, and used as a meeting-house until it was sold, for £"^0, to ^. Robert Long in 1635, when it became a tavern, L/t)u«V^J5^'3^*' — ' ' ^^ or "ordinary," sometimes known as the "Three ^ Cranes," from its sign. It stood wholly in the market-place, in front of the building, lately the City Hall, at the corner of Harvard Street. The tavern was kept by Mr. Long and his descendants till 171 1, when it was sold to Eben Breed, in whose family it remained until the land was bought by the town to enlarge the Square, after the Revolution. The building is believed to have been standing on the 17th of June, 177S, when the town was burned. In speaking of Governor Winthrop's discoun- tenance of the custom of the drinking or pledging of healths at table, Mr. Winthrop, in his charming biography of his illustrious ancestor,^ remarks that "there is reason for thinking that 'the Great House' in Charlestown was still the Governor's abode when this reform was first in- troduced into the social circles of New England." March 16, 1 680-8 1, the General Court passed an order regulating the number of taverns which might be lawfully kept in each town in the colony. Three were permitted to Charlestown, and their keepers and one retailer of wine were all to be licensed annually by the selectmen. The First Church of Boston was formed in this town July 30, 1630, when a covenant was entered into and signed by John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, Isaac Johnson, and John Wilson, the last named being chosen teacher of the church August 27th following.^ This was the third church established in the colony, Salem and Dorchester only taking precedence of Boston.* ^ Printed in tiie Third Report of the Boston tiie Spragues in tiie preceding year. He was Record Commissioners, pp. 186-188. from Rayleigh in tlie County of Essex ; leaned 2 Life and Letters of John Whithrop, ii. 53. towards Episcopacy; and Savage says he "tooli 3 The Covenant is given elsewhere. some discouragement and went home [to Eng- * A Rev. Francis Bright had come here with land] in 1630, in the ' Lion.' " VOL. I. — 50. 394 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The congregation worshipped under a large tree, more than once referred to as "Charlestown Oak," — which Dr. Bartlett^ located, from tradition, on Town Hill,— and afterwards in the Great House, until the removal for wor- ship to Boston, which took place in September. For two years those members of the congregation who remained in Charlestown attended wor- ship in Boston; but this was found inconvenient, especially during the winter, and on the Fourteenth of October, 1632, thirty-five members "were dismissed from the Congregation of Boston," at their own request. These persons chose the Rev. Thomas James, then recently arrived from England, as their pastor, and entered " into church covenant the 2d of the 9th month 1632," as the First Church in Charlestown, which thus became the seventh church established in the colony, — the churches in Watertown, Roxbury, and Lynn having been organized in this order after the founding of the First Church in Boston. The Great House was first used by the new church as a meeting-house. About 1636 another building appears to have been occupied by the con- gregation ; but its location — "between the town and the neck" — cannot now be determined. Nov. 26, 1639, William Rainsborough bought the old meeting-house for ;^iOO, which was used towards paying for " the new meet- ing-house newly built in the town, on the south side of the Town Hill." This building occupied a site on the north side of the Square, between the late City Hall and the entrance to Main Street, — about where Mr. Swallow's grocery now stands, — and was the last house of worship here built and occupied during the colonial period. Increase Nowell, a man of family and education, and of exalted position among the colonists, was the only "fO' f ^ oy? 'j^o *7 -^-f -y^ J ^5^ one of the Assistants who continued -^YL^-H. i-A-fi- '^OfC^*^~ ^° reside in Charlestown after the re- moval to Boston. He was the first ruling elder of the Boston church, but resigned the eldership upon a question being raised as to the propriety of his holding it while an incum- bent of a civil office. He was for many years secretary of the colony. Dr. Budington regarded him as " the father of the church and the town " here ; and in an elaborate note in his History of the First Church? he has given a sketch of Mr. Nowell's family and his public services. Mr. James's ministry appears to have been a short and troubled one ; and he was dismissed March 11, 1636. The Rev. Zechariah Symmes was next ordained teacher of the church, Dec. 22, "Zif^,: jyr»*0. 1634; and during his ministry the Antinomian controversy,^ which distracted the colony for some years, culminated, among other results, in the banishment of the Rev. John Wheelwright. A written remonstrance against this act of the General Court was presented to it. The document, 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., xii. 164. 3 Cf. Dr. Ellis's chapter on "The" Puritan 2 Pages igo-192. See also N. E. Hist, and Commonwealth" in the present volume. See Geneal. Reg., xxxiv. 253 et seq. [Cf. Mr. Whit- also the same writer's Life of Anne Hutchinson, more's chapter in the present volume. — Ed.] published in Sparks's American Biography. CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 395 which bore the signatures of several Charlestown men, was held to be seditious ; and the signers were called to account for having subscribed it. Ten of them acknowledged their " sin," and requested to have their names erased from the paper. George Bunker and James Brown, how- ever, maintained their position and refused to recant; whereupon the constables of Charlestown were ordered to disarm them unless they ac- knowledged their error " or give other satisfaction for their liberty." Deacon Ralph Mousall, another of the signers, " for his speeches in favor of Mr. Wheelwright" was dismissed from the General Court Sept. 6, 1638. Mr. Symmes died Feb. 4, 1671, aged 72. ^ The Rev. John Harvard was ad- mitted an inhabitant Aug. i, 1637, and "was sometimes minister of God's word " in this town during Mr. Symmes's pastorate ; but no account of his ordination has been preserved. He was highly esteemed for his scholarship and piety ; received grants of land from the town ; was placed on an im- HARVARD S MONUMENT." portant committee " to consider of some things tending towards a body of laws," April 26, 1638; and before his death, from consumption, Sept. 14 (24, New Style), 1638, he bequeathed, by a nunaipative \\A\\, to the proposed college, afterwards named in his honor, one half of his estate, together with his library. His house occupied the site now making the southerly corner of Main Street and the alley, ascended by steps, formerly called Gravel Lane, leading up to Town Hill. He was graduated at Emanuel College, Cambridge, is supposed to have been buried (somewhere about the foot of Town Hill, near the " Square "), but upon the highest ground on Burial Hill, which at the time of its erection commanded a view of the college. Cf. note in Scwall Papers, i. 447, and Budington's Hist, of First Church. 1 [Cf. The Symmes I\Iemorial. A Biographi- cal Sketch of the Kev. Zechariah Syvimes, with a Genealogy. By John Adams Vinton, Boston, 1873. For family alliances, see Mr. Whitmore's chapter in the present volume. — Ed.] ^ This monument was placed, not where he 396 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. in 1631, and proceeded A.M. in 1635. He was admitted to the church in Charlestown Nov. 6, 1637. His widow, Ann, married the Rev. Thomas Allen. A monument to his memory was erected in our ancient burial ground by graduates of Harvard College. It was dedicated Sept. 26, 1828, when an address was delivered by Edward Everett, and prayer was offered by Presi- dent Walker, who was at that time pastor of the Second (Unitarian) Church here. The next pastor, the Rev. Thomas Allen, came to New England in 1639 ; was installed the same year as teacher of this church, and continued as such till 165 1, when he was dismissed and returned to Eng- land, where he died Sept. 21, 1673, at the age of 65. During, his ministry occurred the troubles with the Baptists, of which there were many in the town. Stephen Fosdick was among the number. He was fined ;^20, and May 7, 1643, was excommunicated. But he was restored to mem- bership Feb. 28, 1663-64. Thomas Gould, who was pastor of the First ^ Baptist Church in Boston /f^o-T^^-Vct-fffpoo-i^cS^ I Oy/j. (which was organized in ^~^^ ^^ f ' Charlestown), was likewise a member of this church and, like Fosdick, was excommunicated for his heresy July 30, 1665. Thomas Shepard (H. C. 1653) was ordained April 13, 1659, and died of small-pox Dec. 22, 1677, at the age of 43. He was a man of great learn- ing and influence. He preached the Annual Election Sermon in 1672, and after his death '^' } / /O^ <-^ President Oakes delivered a Latin oration and cy /^^Tia/ ^X^^trt). composed an elegy upon him. He was suc- ceeded by his son, Thomas Shepard (H. C. 1676), who was ordained May 5, 1680, when he received the Right Hand of fellowship from President Oakes. He was the last minister installed here before the abrogation of the colony charter, and died June 7, 1685, aged 27.1 John Greene was the only ruling elder which the Charlestown church ever had. He was prominent in civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs, being ^Rn ^re.««' troop," — the only one in ^yS the colony. On Friday of each week there was a general "exercise'' of - yr> the train-band, "at a con- /n l^y^Xl/t^ ^QO/T^f'^A*-'^-^ /vy ^ venient place about the In- ^?^ . ^ yy dian wigwams," which began ^ — one hour after noon. This was in 163 1. Major-General Robert Sedgwick, a friend of Cromwell's, and the ancestor of a distinguished family, J y\ 1 ' D and Captain Francis Norton, also a man of {Ju -^a— \J I i-tr \l^ military ability, commanded the train-band at ^^y^ \ ^^y\ (-—^^^ different times during the first twenty years. ' C/ C^^ Sedgwick was one of the most distinguished men ever resident here. His house occu- ^'^ pied a site in the Square, near the Bunker- Hill Bank. Both Sedgwick and Norton were prosperous merchants. Deputy-Gover- nor Francis Willoughby^ was another. His wharves were upon either side of the ferry to Boston ; and his ship-yard was where the Fitchburg freight-station now stands. Sedgwick's wharves were near the Town Dock. The Hon- orable Richard Russell, the progenitor of a very distinguished family long resident here, was also much en- '^iXXa^ i£UM^^M^ : ^J"7 ^^^^'^ '" commerce, which, with agri- culture, chiefly engaged the energies of our people. The trades, too, were well represented. Mr. Frothingham says: "In 1640 there were in town tailors, coopers, rope-makers, glaziers, tile-makers, anchor-smiths, collar- makers, charcoal-burners, joiners, wheelwrights, blacksmiths ; there was a brew-house, a salt-pan, a potter's kiln, a saw^pit, a wind-mill, a water-mill near Spot Pond, and (certainly in 1645) the old tide-mill at the Middlesex canal landing." In 1636 five hundred acres of land were "reserved to further a flax trade," if such should be found useful; but I find no men- tion of the land ever having been improved for this purpose. 1 The best account of " The Irish Donation," ^ cf . TV. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., xxx. 67 et written by Mr. Charles Deane, was published in sei/., and xxxiv. 301, for notices of the Wil- the AT. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., !i. 245, 398. loughby family. ^anm'}(cfr{ -:^rr^ s?2^ i^^-ff^-. ^^ 400 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Captain Edward Johnson, an early inhabitant of Charlestown, and the father of Woburn, thus describes this town in his curious Wonder-working Providence, about 1650: " It hath a large market-place near the water side built round with houses, comely and fair, forth of which there issues two streets orderly built with some very fair houses, beautified with pleasant gardens and orchards. The whole town consists in its extent of about 150 dwelling-houses. Their meeting-house for Sabbath assembly stands in the market-place, very comely built and large. The officers of this church are, at this day, one pastor and one teacher, one ruling elder and three deacons. The number of souls are about 160. . . . Their corn-land in tillage in this town is about 1,200 acres." The same writer adds: "In the depth of winter, 1650," a "most terrible fire . . . by a violent wind blown" about consumed " the fairest houses in the town," notwithstanding the stringent measures regulating the sweeping of chimneys which were adopted by the town at a very early date. The colony was prosperous, and so was the town. The more wealthy inhabitants kept one or more slaves, and were enjoying the luxuries as well as the comforts of life at the time of the vacating of the Charter. Con- siderable wealth had been accumulated, during half a century, by thrift and foreign commerce.' The small-pox raged through the winter of 1677-78 and many deaths from it are recorded, — among them that of the Rev. Thomas Shepard. The disease was introduced from English ships. It had previously prevailed to an alarming extent during the winter of 1633-34 ; but at that time it attacked only the Indians. As early as 1634 it was ordered "that none be permitted to sit down and dwell in this town without consent of the town first obtained." This law was far from being a dead letter. Even hospitality was an expensive vir- tue ; for the town and colony laws alike prohibited the entertainment of strangers except upon stated conditions ; and guests could not be enter- tained more than one week, except by permission of the selectmen, without a fine being incurred by their hosts. ^/&i; October, 1S55, and January, 1S58. — Ed. J 4l6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. being the friend and protector of the Indian, he was the first to lift up his voice against the treatment accorded to the negro in New England, and offered to teach such in his neighborhood as might once a week be sent to him. Frugal and temperate through a long hfe, he never indulged in the luxu- ries of the table. His excellent wife, who died three years before him, and who skilfully dispensed medicines to the sick in her vicinity, managed his private affairs, so that he might devote his whole time and strength to his public labors. The death of this venerable and Christ-like man occurred May 20, 1690, at the age of eighty-six. Had he been a Roman Catholic he would assuredly have been canonized. After the decease of Danforth, Eliot's youngest son, Benjamin, was for some years his colleague. The church record kept by the apostle contains many curious and interesting particu- lars respecting the early inhabitants of the town. Saj>v./( ^a^^-ijR. Rev. Samuel Danforth, a native of Framlingham, England, was brought over by Nicholas, his father, in 1634, and graduated at Harvard College in 1643. In 1649 he became Eliot's assistant, so continuing until ordained his colleague, Sept. 24, 1650. Here he continued until his decease, "neither the incompetency of his salary nor the provocation which unworthy men in the neighborhood sometimes tried him withal could persuade him to remove unto more comfortable settlement." Cotton Mather also tells us that he was very affectionate irr his manner of preaching, seldom leaving the pulpit without tears; and, referring to his astronomical labors, a department of knowledge in which he excelled, quaintly adds, " several of his astronomical composures have seen the light of the sun." " Non dubium est quin eo iverit quo stellse eunt Danforthus qui stellis semper se associavit." He published a particular account of the comet of 1664, and a series of almanacs. In the church records, under date of Nov. 19, 1674, Eliot writes this touching passage : " Our reverend pastor Mr. Samuel Danforth sweetly ROXBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 417 rested from his labors. It pleased the Lord to brighten his passage to glory. He greatly increased in the power of his ministry, especially the last sum- mer. We consulted together about beautifying the house of God, and to order the congregation into the primitive way of collections. My brother Danforth made the most glorious end that ever I saw." Benjamin Thompson, a " learned schoolmaster and physician and y= renouned poet of New England," was son of Rev. William Thompson, of Braintree, where he was born in 1642. Graduating at Harvard in 1662, he taught school in various places, and finally in Roxbury, where he died, April 13, 1714. His principal poem, "New England's Crisis," has in it a strong vein of vigorous satire, and contrasts the degeneracy of his day with the good old times when, — " Men had better stomachs at religion Than I to capon, turkeycock, or pigeon, When honest sisters met to pray, not prate About their own and not their neighbor's state." Some of Thompson's verses are in the Magnalia, and in a poem pre- fixed to Hubbard's Indian Wars there are some sprightly and character- istic lines. By far the most eminent citizen of colonial Roxbury was Thomas Dud- ley, founder of a family that furnished two governors, a chief-justice, and a speaker of the House, all of whom played conspicuous parts in the affairs of New England. Thomas Dudley, second Governor of Massachusetts, and one of the most eminent of the Puritan pioneers, was the son of Captain Roger Dudley, who was " slain in the wars." Brought up as a page in the family of the Earl of Northampton, he was afterward a clerk in the office of Judge Nichols, where he acquired a knowledge of the law that was highly useful to him in his subsequent career. His intelligence, courage, and prudence, already strongly developed, procured for him, at the age of twenty-one, the captaincy of an English company which he led at the siege of Amiens under Henry of Navarre, and, later on, the stew- ardship of the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, which, by careful management, he succeeded in freeing from a heavy load of debt. A Puritan of the Puri- tans, and a parishioner of the famous John Cotton, he, with four others, undertook, although he was then fifty years of age, the settlement of the Massachusetts colony, and came over with Winthrop as Deputy-Governor in 1630. Dudley at first settled in Newtown, but removed to Roxbury to place himself under the ministrations of Eliot and Welde. In 1644, at the age of sixty-eight, he was chosen Sergeant-Major-General, the highest mil- itary office in the colonies. He was Governor in 1634, 1640, 1645, ai^d 1650, and Deputy-Governor or Assistant in the intervening years, and from the time of his arrival until his death, which took place on July 31, 1653, in his seventy-seventh year. VOL. I. — 53- 41 8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Dudley was a man of sound judgment, inflexible integrity, great public spirit, and exemplary piety. No one of his contemporaries was more strongly imbued with the intolerant spirit of his age, and he took a promi- nent part in the proceedings against Roger Williams, Wheelwright, Anne Hutchinson, and others. A Universalist church now occupies the site of the residence of one of the most intolerant of men. After his death these lines were found in his pocket : — " Let men of God in courts and churches watch O'er such as do a toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison all with heresy and vice. If men be left and otherwise combine, My epitaph 's I dy'd no libertine." With Governor Winthrop the arbitrary and hot-tempered deputy had fre- quent quarrels. One of these, described by the former, terminated thus : " So the deputy rose up in great fury and passion and the governor grew very hot also so as they both fell into bitterness, but by mediation of the mediators they were pacified." Their differences were finally and most appropriately ended at Concord, where each had a grant of land, and where the Governor yielded to Dudley the first choice. His daughter Ann, who married Governor Bradstreet, was famed in her day as a poet, a volume from her pen in 1650 being the first book of poetry published in America. Governor Joseph Dudley, his son, was a conspicuous actor in the later colonial and earlier provincial history of New England. A brief survey of the town and some of its principal features at the close of the seventeenth century may not be unacceptable to the reader. At the corner of Washington and Eustis streets is one of the oldest burial places in New England, the first interment in it having been made in 1633. The oldest remaining gravestone bears date 1653. Here, side by side with the apostle Eliot and Robert Calef, were laid the Dudleys, the Warrens, and others of lesser note. Here Lyon and Lamb he down together in fraternal harmony, peacefully commingling their ashes with those of Pigge and Pea- cock, while near them reposes the dust of Pepper and Onion, — savory con- junction ! Inseparable in life, even in death they are not divided.^ On entering the cemetery the first tomb that meets the eye, and the one upon the highest ground, is covered with an oval slab of white marble, bear- ing, the name of Dudley. In it were laid the remains of Governors Thomas and Joseph Dudley, Chief-Justice Paul Dudley, and Colonel William Dudley, a prominent political leader a century and a half ago. The original inscrip- tion plate is said to have been of pewter, and to have been taken out and run into bullets by the provincial soldiers during the siege. Near the centre 1 So far as is known, the first instance of Adams, of Roxbury, when Mr. Wilson, minister prayer at a funeral in Massachusetts occurrea of Medfield, prayed with the company before Aug. 19, 1685, at the burial of Rev. William they went to the grave. ROXBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 419 of the ground is the PARISH TOMB, in which are the remains of the pastors of the First Church, including the apostle Eliot ; and upon a slab of white marble are inscribed their names and periods of service.' Among the in- scriptions in this old burial-place, one of which — that of John Grosvenor — is accompanied with a coat-of-arms, are the following : — " Sub spe immortali y^ Herse of Mr. Benj. Thomson Learned Schoolmaster, & Physician & y''- Renouned poet of N. Engl. Obiit Aprilis 13, Anno Dom. 1714 & jEtatis §U£e 74. Mortuus Sed Immortalis. He that would try What is true happiness indeed must die." " Here lyes interred y= body of William Denison Master of Arts & Representative for y= town of Roxbury about 20 years wlio departed this life March 22d. 171 7-18 £etatis 54. Integer atque Probus Deus Pairia quefidelis Uixit nunc placide dormet in hoc iumulo.'" " Here lyeth buried y= body of Mr. John Grosvenor who dec'd Sept. ye 27th in y= 49th year of his age, 1691." ^ "The Free Schoole in Roxburie " originated in 1642 in a bequest by Samuel Hagburne of 20s. per annum, " when Roxburie shall set up a free schoole in the towne." In August, 1645, some sixty of the principal inhab- itants, " out of their religious care of posteritie," and considering " how necessary the education of their children in literature will be to fit them for publicke service in succeeding ages," bound themselves to the payment of certain sums yearly for the support of a free school, and in 1646 pledged their houses, barns, orchards, and homesteads to carry out their purpose. For near a century the school was managed by seven feoffees, ;^20 to .^25 per annum being allowed the teacher. One of these, Mr. John Prudden, in 1668, engaged at £2^, per annum to instruct the children " in all scholasticall morall, and theological! discipline, ABCDarians excepted." The standard of admission must originally have been of the simplest, since in 1728 it was so raised that only such were received as could spell common easy English words. The grammar school became a Latin school when, in 1674, the legacy of Mr. Bell became available, but of eighty-five scholars in 1770 but nine were students of that tongue. 1 [See papers regarding the Eliot tomb in given in the A^. E. Hist, and Gencal. Register, N. E. Hist, and Geiieal. Reg., July, i860; F. S. vols, vii., viii., xiv. Cf. .Shurtleff's Description of Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 100. — Ed.] Boston, ]). 270; F. S. Drake's Town of Roxbury, 2 [Inscriptions from this ancient ground are p. 95- — Ed.J 420 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Of John Eliot's active agency in the establishment of this school, and the high reputation it thus early enjoyed, Rev. Cotton Mather says: " God so blessed his endeavors, that Roxbury could not live quietly without a free school in the town. And the issue of it has been one thing that has almost made me put the title of schola illustris upon that little nursery ; that is, that Roxbury has afforded more scholars first for the college and then for the public than any other town of its bigness, or if I mistake not of twice its bigness, in New England." In 1663 the town gave for the use of the schoolmaster "forever," and " not to be sold or given away," the wood and timber on ten acres of its common land. In 1680 the parents were ordered to supply the school with fuel, either half a cord of wood or 4.?. for each child, excepting those who were too poor. This custom continued down to the close of the last century. The liberality of its founders and the generous gifts of Thomas Bell and others have made the " Roxbury Latin School," as it is now called, one of the best endowed institutions of learning in New England. Nine generations of Roxbury boys have imbibed freely at this fountain of learning, a goodly number of whom have reflected credit on their alma mater. " Father Stowe " and Joseph Hansford are the earliest mentioned of its teachers. Among those of a later date we find the names of Benjamin Thompson, " renouned poet of N. Engl. ; " Joseph Warren, the patriot and martyr, and Increase Sumner, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, both natives of Roxbury; William Gushing, afterwards a Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court; Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts ; and Ward Chipman, subsequently President and Commander-in-Chief of New Brunswick. In the early days the highways were let out by the year for pasturage, and were generally fenced across to keep in the cattle. In 1652 a commit- tee was appointed to stake them out and settle all questions respecting them. Among the twenty highways laid out in 1663 were those now known as Washington, Roxbury, Tremont, Dudley, Perkins, Centre, and Warren streets, and Walnut Avenue, four rods wide; and Parker, School, Boylston, Eustis, Dennis, Albany, Green, Heath, and Ruggles streets, two rods in width. The highway over the Neck, long known as " the town street," or Roxbury Street, now Washington, was frequently covered with water in the spring, rendering it almost impassable ; and in it, during violent snow-storms, travel- lers sometimes lost their way and perished with the cold. The common, an extensive tract of wild land near the centre of the town, now forms a portion of the beautiful Forest Hills Cemetery. The old Training Field, containing seven acres, formed the eastern por- tion of the triangle lying between Washington, Eustis, and Dudley streets. Captain John Underbill's company, composed of the freemen of Boston and Roxbury, trained here on the first Tuesday of every month. Underbill's ensign was Richard Morris, one of the founders of the Ancient and Honor- ROXBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 42 1 able Artillery Company, " a very stout man and experienced soldier." The Roxbury company, of which Joseph Weld was the first captain, was in 1636 included in the regiment, of which Winthrop was colonel and Dudley lieut.- colonel. There were ten Roxbury men in the expedition under Stoughton against the Pequods in 1637. In 1762 the old Training Field ceased to be public property. For more than a century the Greyhound tavern was the principal public- house in Roxbury. It stood on Washington Street, opposite Vernon, and was torn down during the Revolution. Its position on the only road leading out of Boston — there were then no bridges — made it a noted resort in the days when public meetings, festive gatherings, and other assemblages of a political, social, or business character were usually held in such places, and, being famed for the excellence of its punch, it was much frequented by the convivial spirits of Boston and vicinity. While tolerating the sale of wine and beer, drunkenness was severely dealt with by our Puritan fathers, who taught and practised the duty of self-control. March 4, 1633, the Court orders that " Robert Coles for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury shall be disfranchised, weare about his necke & soe to hange upon his outward garment a D made of redd clothe & sette upon white; to contynue this for a yeare and not to leave it off at any tyme when he comes amongst company under penalty of XLj. for the first offence & V. pounds the second, & after to be punished by the court as they think meet ; also he is to weare the D out- wards and is enjoyned to appear at the next General Court & to contynufe there until it be ended." From the earliest period leave was granted to " draw " wine and to brew and sell " penny beere." In 1678, soon after the close of the Indian war, intemperance had grown so prevalent that the town voted that neither wine nor liquors should be sold at any ordinary, and that there should be but one ordinary in the town. This prohibitory enactment did not long remain in force. The old school-house stood where the brick edifice, erected for the school in 1742, still stands in what is now Guild Row. The mansion built by Governor Dudley, famous in colonial and provincial days for the number of distinguished guests it had entertained, stood where the Universalist Church now stands, and was taken down during the siege of Boston. Its sightly and eligible location renders it quite probable that it was the spot selected by Pynchon for his own residence, and the fact that his departure occurred at the same time as Dudley's settlement in Roxbury serves to strengthen the supposition. Between it and the old school-house ran Smelt Brook, ahd adjoining it on the west was Meeting-house Hill and the church. Fronting it on the east was the home of John Eliot, whose garden extended along the north side of Dudley Street, across what is now the lower part of Warren Street, to the Training Field. Along the town street in the direction of Boston, the earhest settled part of Roxbury, were the homesteads of Weld, 422 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Heath, Denison, Bowles, Hewes, Hagborne, Peacock, and Captain John Johnson. Deacon Parke and the Williamses were on the Dorchester road (Dudley Street) ; Cheney, Leavens, and Bugbee on the Braintree road (Warren Street) ; Lamb, Gore, Pierpont, and Craft on the road to Cam- bridge (Roxbury and Tremont streets). South of Meeting-house Hill were the homes of Alcock, Newell, Morrill, Porter, and Dane. Ruggles, William and Peleg Heath, Philip Eliot, Seaver, and Bell were on the Ded- ham road (Centre Street) ; while at Jamaica Plain and beyond were Curtis, Brewer, May, Mayo, PoUey, Thomas, Davis, Lion, and Bowen. At the close of the colonial period a change had undoubtedly taken place in character and manners, owing, in part, to the close connection of Rox- bury with the metropolis. Everywhere the too rigid austerity of the social and religious life of the Puritan pioneers had given place to a freer and more unrestrained play of the social forces. Intemperance had greatly increased. Attendance at church had grown less constant. More costly dress and equipage, and greater refinement of manners began to be observable. Other changes of a beneficial character appeared. Farming was then and long continued to be the principal occupation of the people ; but the introduction of cloth manufacture, of tanning, and other industries to supply the wants of Boston, always a ready market for her agricultural products, gave the town an additional impetus, and added materially to her wealth and popula- tion. With respect to the latter, it must, however, be borne in mind that numerous emigrations, especially that of thirty families to Woodstock, Conn., ift 1686, had materially lessened her numbers. Notwithstanding this draw- back, Roxbury at this period was unquestionably a thriving and influential town. ,,^Lc^ <^^^'^^^^^ CHAPTER XIII. DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. BY REV. SAMUEL J. BARROWS. Minister of the First Parish. OF the suburban sections now included in the corporate limits of Bos- ton, Dorchester is one of the most beautiful. Its broad fields and meadows, its ancient homesteads the heritage of colonial estates, its well-kept lawns and fruitful gardens, its noble bay, its numerous rock-ribbed hills, and its general accessibility to the heart of the city have made it a favorite place of residence for many years. No district is more replete with lovely views than are furnished from some of these lofty hills, — command- ing the city, the harbor, the Blue Hills, Brookline, Cambridge, Milton, and a whole circle of neighboring towns. And there is no town so near the city which so long preserved its original simplicity and solidity. The town of Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870. It is to be remembered, however, that Dorchester, Roxbury, Charlestown, and Boston, prior to the town organizations, were all originally under the same general government in the earliest days of the colony, and that Dorchester formed a part of Suffolk County until 1793. Although now a silent partner in the new firm, it can point to a time when Boston itself was a stripling of no special promise, called Blackstone's Neck, — a neck without any body, so far as population is concerned, except that which Dorchester and Charles- town furnished. Boston bears a different relation to its suburbs from that of many large cities, where the centre has been first formed and the periphery afterwards, and the suburbs have been thrown off by a force of growth from within. In Boston two segments, Charlestown and Dorchester, were formed before the centre was even attempted. Dorchester was settled June 6 (o. S.), 1630, some weeks before Boston. Had not the waters of Dorchester Bay been more shallow than those on the other side of Dorchester Heights, we should probably have had to re- cord the annexation of Boston to Dorchester instead of the reverse. In fact there are many of the old residents of the place who prefer to consider the annexation in that light. The settlement of Dorchester arose from the same influences in England, which, two years before, had settled the town of Salem, and, ten years 424 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. earlier, had planted the Leyden refugees about Plymouth Rock. The conflict between Puritanism and the hierarchy had assumed threatening proportions. There were two solutions for distressed England. One was to be found in a Puritan sea-voyage; the other was furnished by the radical surgery of the New Model. Of the active promoters of Puritan emigration, Rev. John White, Rector of Trinity Parish, Dorchester, England, was the most prominent. The colonization of Massachusetts is a lasting memorial of his zeal, energy, and executive ability. It was he who gathered the company of emigrants in England and organized the church which settled Dorchester, and the town was in all probability named in his honor. Mr. White had early shown his sympathy in the emigration movement by giving of his heart and purse to help the settlers at Plymouth. He had encouraged the Dorchester fisher- men in their voyages to the American waters. One object of the settlement which he sought to make at Cape Ann, in 1624, under Roger Conant, was to furnish a depot for the fishermen on the coast. The practical failure of this enterprise only stimulated Mr. White to greater efforts, and the expedi- tions to Salem in 1628 and 1629 were prompted by his active exertions. With a persistent and contagious zeal, Mr. White immediately gathered another company of emigrants from the western counties of England, very few of whom had known each other before. This band assembled in the New Hospital, Plymouth, England. John White was present, and preached in the morning. In the afternoon a church was organized, and the Rev. John Maverick and Rev. John Warham were chosen ministers. On the 20th of March (o. S.), 1630, the company, numbering about one hundred and forty, sailed in the ship " Mary and John," a vessel of four hundred tons, under command of Captain Squeb. Roger Clap, one of the passengers, in his quaint memoirs, — the earliest contemporaneous document relating to Dorchester, — thus refers to the voyage: "So we came, by the good Hand of the Lord, through the Deeps comfortably; having Preaching or Expounding of the Word of God every day for Ten Weeks together, by our ministers." It was understood that the " Mary and John " was bound for the Charles River. Either through an ignorance which, in the absence of charts and maps at that time, might be considered pardonable, or through a perversity which the indignant passengers considered very unpardonable. Captain Squeb, says Roger Clap, " would not bring us into Charles River, as he was bound to do ; but put us ashore and our Goods on Nantasket Point, and left us to shift for ourselves in a forlorn place in this Wilderness." ^ The date of the arrival was May 30 (o. S.), 1630. It is well known that previous to the coming of the Winthrop fleet, of which the " Mary and John " was the first to arrive, a few adventurous planters, such as Tompson, Blackstone, and 1 [It^should be remembered, however, that whether at Light-house Channel or at Shawmut there was a diversity of opinion in those days as See Mr. Winsor's chapter on " The earliest maps to where the mouth of the Charles River was, of Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor "—Ed 1 DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 425 Others, had established themselves about the harbor for the purpose of trad- ing with the Indians.^ From one of these old planters the newly-landed emigrants at Nantasket procured a boat, and loaded it with goods. About ten men, well armed, under command of Captain Southcot, started for Charles River. They landed first at the peninsula afterwards called Charlestown. Here they found some Indian wigwams and a solitary EngHshman, who treated them to some boiled fish (which Roger Clap describes as bass), without bread, — afterwards a somewhat familiar and monotonous diet. The scouting party moved up the Charles River until the stream grew narrow and narrower, and finally landed at the present site of Watertown. The Indians quickly assembled, upon their arrival, to the number, as they judged, of about three hundred. But the mediation of an old planter (whom they had probably brought from Charlestown with them, and who could speak a little of the Indian language) prevented any hos- tilities. The next morning an Indian appeared, graciously holding out a fish, which he exchanged for a biscuit. From the very beginning the Dor- chester settlers seem to have had friendly dealings with the Indians. After spending a few days at the site of Watertown, and building a tem- porary shelter for their goods, the scouting party received word to return, as the main company at Nantasket had found a neck of land adjoining a place called by the Indians Mattapan, which would serve both to nourish their cattle and prevent them from straying. The exploring party re-em- barked for Dorchester, and thus Watertown lost the honor which it nearly achieved of being the second settlement of the Massachusetts Colony. A piece of land at Watertown, called " Dorchester Fields," long preserved the memory of this early expedition. A week from the arrival of the " Mary and John " at Nantasket the re- moval of the passengers' effects was completed, and Sunday, the 6th of June, was observed as a day of rest and thanksgiving. The settlement of the town is reckoned from that day. The south side of Dorchester Neck (South Boston) is supposed to be the landing-place of the first settlers. A week later they were gladdened by the arrival at Salem of the " Arbella," the admiral ship of the fleet, with Governor Winthrop on board. We are told that a few days later Winthrop, after exploring the Charles and Mystic to find a good place for settlement, returned to Salem by way of Nantasket, and com- posed the differences between Captain Squeb and his indignant passengers. Dorchester was thus the first settled town in Suffolk County. It did not receive its final baptism, however, until the fall, when at a meeting of the Court of Assistants, held at Charlestown, Sept. 7, 1630, it was ordered that " Trimountaine shalbe called Boston ; Mattapan, Dorchester ; and the towne vpon Charles Ryver, Watertown." ^ " Why they called it Dorchester," says James Blake, next to Roger Clap the earliest annalist of the town, " I never heard ; but there was some of Dorset Shire, and some of y" Town of 1 [Cf. Mr. C. F. Adams's chapter in this ^ [A fac-simile of this record is given in Mr. volume. — Ed.] R. C. Winthrop's chapter. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 54. 426 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Dorchester that settled here, and it is very Hkely it might be in honor of y' aforesaid Revd. Mr. White of Dorchester." When, in the fall of 1630, a few months after the landing, the Court of Assistants found it necessary to define and grant the privilege of freeman- ship, out of one hundred and eight persons who made application for this right, twenty-six were of Dorchester. " In our beginning," says Roger Clap, " many were in great Straits for want of Provision for themselves and their little Ones. Oh, the Hunger that many suffered, and saw no hope in an Eye of Reason to be supplyed, only by Clams, and Muscles, and Fish. . . . Bread was so very scarce that sometimes I tho'ht the very Crusts of my Father's Table would have been very sweet unto me. And when I could have Meal and Water and Salt boiled together, it was so good who could wish better? ... It was not accounted a strange thing in those Days to drink Water, and to eat Samp or Hominie without Butter or Milk. Indeed, it would have been a strange thing to see a piece of Roast Beef, Mutton, or Veal; though it was not long before there was Roast Goat." Yet the old Puritan grit and the Puritan faith did not wince under the most extreme hardship. " I took notice of it, as a Favour of God unto me," says the philosophical Captain Clap, " not only to preserve my Life, but to give me Contentment in all these Straits; insomuch that I do not remember that I ever did wish in my Heart that I had not come unto this Country, or wish myself back again to my Father's House." In these days, two hundred and fifty years later, when the Massachusetts Indian has nearly disappeared, and thou- sands of the western tribes would starve to death every winter if the Gov- ernment withheld the supply of food, it is interesting to recall the fact that the Massachusetts Indian established the kindly precedent by dividing his portion with the destitute white man. Roger Clap has embalmed this fact in a pious pun. " In those Days, in our Straits, though I cannot say God sent a Raven to feed us, as He did the Prophet Elijah ; yet this I can say to the Praise of God's Glory, that He sent poor raven-ous Indians, which came with their Baskets of Corn on their Backs to Trade with us, which was a good supply unto many." The relief ship which has sailed for Ireland this year is a reminder of the fact that two centuries and a half ago the dis- tressed colonists welcomed with joy a ship which brought them provisions from the Irish shore. The priority of settlement in favor of Dorchester, though only of a few weeks, was also marked by a priority of growth. A second ship-load arrived from Weymouth, England, in July, 1633, and brought eighty pas- sengers, who settled at Dorchester. In October of this year, from the assessments made by the Court, it appears that Dorchester was the largest or wealthiest town in Massachusetts. While Boston, Roxbury, Newton, Water- town, and Charlestown were each taxed ;^48, and Salem £2'^, Dorchester was assessed for £%o. Prince says, "in all military musters or civil assemblies where dignity is regarded, Dorchester used to have the precedence." DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 427 The distinguished honor is claimed for Dorchester of having the first special town government in New England. . During the early years of settlement the affairs of the colony were administered by the Court of Assistants. Such local authority as was needed beyond the orders of the Court was no doubt exercised by the clergymen, deacons, and magistrates. Meetings of the Dorchester Plantation were occasionally held. In the subsequent records there is reference to such a meeting in 1631, "to make and confirm orders for the control of their affairs." But no special town government existed. The necessity of some form of represen- tative local regulation was soon felt, and at a meeting of the " Dorchester Plantation" held Oct. 8, 1633, an order was passed which has become of such historic interest that we transcribe it in the original form : — " An agreement made by the whole Consent and vote of the Plantation, made Mooneday, 8th of October, 1633. "Imprimis. It is ordered, that for the generall good and well ordering of the affa)Tres of the plantation, there shall be every Mooneday before the Court by eight of the clocke in the morning, and presently upon the beating of the drum, a generall meeteing of the inhabitants .of the plantation at the Meeting House, there to settle and sett downe such orders as may tend to the generall good as aforesayd, and every man to be bound thereby without gainsaying or resistance." Another new feature was the appointment of twelve selectmen, who were to hold monthly meetings, and whose orders were binding when confirmed by the Plantation. This order, it will be seen, contains the germ of the New England town government, which was afterwards adopted by the other towns, and, as De Tocqueville promptly recognized, exercised " the most prodigious influence" on the history of New England. In the May of the following year, — 1634, — when it was ordered that four General Courts should be kept every year, at three of which every town should be represented by deputies, Dorchester sent three members, — Israel Stoughton, William Phelps, and George Hull. As we might expect from its size and importance, the town of Dor- chester figures very frequently in the old colonial records. Its name, as already noticed, was given at the second Court of Assistants, when Boston was also named. At the third Court, held Sept. 28, 1630, Thomas Stough- ton was appointed its constable, and six months later learned the limits and responsibilities of his office, when he was fined five pounds by the Court for taking upon himself to marry a couple, and was ordered to be imprisoned until the fine was paid. Some years later this fine was remitted. Most of the orders of the Court related to the appointment of officers, the mending of roads, the settlement of boundaries, the adjustment of disputes, &c., but the importance of Dorchester to Boston is seen in the order of Nov. 7, 1632, when the inhabitants of Boston were granted liberty to " fetch wood from Dorchester neck of land for twenty years, the property of the land to re- :Hmt 428 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. main with Dorchester." Its military importance was recognized in 1634 by an assignment of three pieces of ordnance, and leave was granted to the Deputy-Governor to have "his Indian trained with the rest of the company at Dorchester." The novel way in which the Dorchester poor-fund was recruited in 1632 leads us to infer that our early fathers considered that intemperance owed some reparation to poverty. It was ordered that " ye remainder of Mr. Allen's Strong-Water, being estimated about 2 Gallandes, shall be delivered into y' handes of the Deacons of Dorchester for the benefit of the poore there, for his selling of it dyvers tymes to such as were drunke by it, he knowing thereof" In 1645 an instrument called the "Directory" was adopted, containing regulations which the inhabitants bound themselves to observe in conduct- ing town meetings. The Directory provided that " Althings should be aforehand prepared by y" Selectmen; that all Votes of Importance should ^^ be first drawn in writing, and have 2 or 3 distinct /C«^'*S/' C^Ha^ Readings before y° Vote was called for; that ^ every man should haue libertie to speak his mind meekly and without noise ; that no man should •/' Y speak when another was speaking ; that all men would Countenance and Encourage all y" Town -. ^_ ^ Officers in y' due Execution of their Offices, and -4-» trtSb ^Jioivf?'^ i^ot fault or Revile them for doing their Duty." An order was also published that at all town AUTOGRAPHS OF EARLY meetings the selectmen were to appoint one of SETTLERS. thcmselves to be moderator. The first Dorchester record-book is the oldest town record in Massa- chusetts. Its six hundred and thirty-six pages cover the period from January, 1632-33, to 1720, and mainly contain lists of selectmen, orders relating to land-grants, fences, roads, &c., having an interest for the anti- quary, though but little for the general reader.^ There is one important ' [Roger Clap is the writer of the account of "^ [See N. E. Hist, and Ceneal. Reg., April, their early experiences, already quoted. Clap 1867, &c. U.se was of course made of them in was for twenty-one years (1665-86) captain of the the History of Dorchester, vih.\c\i was begun by Castle, and he is buried in King's Chapel yard, a committee of the Dorchester Historical and Shurtleff, 5'(7rfo«, pp. 195, 478, 490. He removed Antiquarian Society, in 1851, and completed in to Boston in 1686. He wrote his jI/otzoot about 1859. That Society, acting under the impulse 1676, and it was first printed from the original which the late Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, D.D., manuscript, edited by Thomas Prince, in 1731, gave to antiquarian study in his account of the and various times since, besides being printed by town in the Mass. Hist. Coll., ix., had already the Dorchester Historical and Antiquarian So- printed the Memoirs of Clap, the journal which ciety, and being included in Young's Chronicles Richard Mather kept on his voyage over, May- of Mass. Humphrey Atherton was a major- August, 1635 (also printed in Young's Chronicles general, and while returning home in the dark of Mass.), and a compilation, chiefly from the after reviewing his troops on Boston Common, Town Records, made by Captain James Blake his horse was struck by a stray cow. In the in the last century, and called Annals of Dor- collision he was thrown and killed, Sept. 16, Chester. The oration which Edward Everett, 1661. Shurtleff, Boston, p. 283, records his epi- who was a native of the town, delivered in 1855 taph. Parker was a lay preacher and trader be- ( IVorks, iii. 293), entitled " Dorchester, in 1630, tween Barbadoes and Boston. History of Dor- 1776, and 1855," is not without interest in this Chester, p. 70. — Ed.] connection. — Ed.] DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 429 order, however, which must not be overlooked. It is referred to by the oldest inhabitants with the greatest pride. I refer to the order making provision for a free school. On the 4th March, 1634-35, the General Court made a grant of Tompson's Island to the inhabitants of the town of Dorchester. On the 30th of May, 1639, four years after the grant, the town voted to lay a tax upon the proprietors of this island " for the maintenance of a school in Dorchester." From a later instrument we learn that those who paid rent numbered about one hundred and twenty, and therefore in- cluded the principal part of the adult male inhabitants of the town. This order, it is claimed, was the first public provision made for a free school in America " by a direct tax or assessment on the inhabitants of the town." The rent imposed on the island was £10, "to be paid to such a schoole- master as shall undertake to teach English, latine, and other tongues, and also writing." It was left to the discretion of the elders and the seven men for the time being, " whether maydes shalbe taught w* the boyes or not." In 1641, by another instrument, signed by seventy-one of the inhabitants of the town, it was agreed that the island and all profits and benefits thereof should be forever bequeathed and given away from themselves and their heirs unto the town of Dorchester, '' for the maintenance of a free schoole in Dorchester," with the proviso that the income should not be put to any other use. Rev. Thomas Waterhouse was the first teacher. In 1645, wardens were appointed to manage the affairs of the school, and various rules were adopted for its government. The schoolmaster was not to be chosen without the consent of the major part of the inhabitants. For seven months of the year the hours were fixed from 7 o'clock to 11, and from i o'clock to 5; for the other five months from 8 o'clock to 11, and i o'clock to 4. Every Monday, from 12 o'clock to i, scholars were called together and questioned upon what they had learned on the Sabbath day preceding, and on Satur- days, at 2 o'clock, were catechised in the principles of the Christian religion. Another rule was that the schoolmaster " shall equally and impartially re- ceive and instruct such as shalbe sent and Committed to him for that end, whither there parents bee poore or rich, not refusing any who have Right and Interest in the Schoole." When, in 1648, the claim of John Tompson to the island already named, by virtue of his father David's occupancy, was granted by the Court, a thou- sand acres of land were assigned to Dorchester in lieu thereof Individual bequests attest the great interest which the early settlers had in their free school. The earliest of these was the legacy of John Clap in 1655. The land he bequeathed at South Boston Point was sold in 1835 for the sum of $13,590.62. Another bequest, made in 1674, by Christopher Gibson, who was one of the first applicants for freemanship in Dorchester in 1630, now amounts to $17,575-79. and the ^150 given by Lieutenant-Governor Stough- ton towards the advancement of the salary of the schoolmaster has swelled to $4,140. When Dorchester was annexed to Boston these funds were made over to the city, but the income of the Gibson fund is appropriated 430 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. for the supply of the Dorchester schools with such library books and appar- atus as are not furnished by the city ; and the income of the Stoughton fund is credited annually to the appropriation for salaries of school instructors. The bold spirit of enterprise which, in common with an earnest religious faith, brought the colonists to New England, was not checked when they had landed on its shores. The people of Dorchester had hardly been settled three years before that westward movement began which was to result in the immediate foundation of Connecticut, and, fed by new and still flowing streams from Europe, was eventually to spread across the con- tinent. We have no space in this article to speak of that movement in detail. It must suffice to say that in 1633 the glowing reports brought by Indians and adventurous scouts of the fertility of the Connecticut valley, heightened by seeing specimens of its valuable furs, stimulated the enter- prise of the Dorchester people, and a Connecticut fever set in which was not easily abated. The colonial government strongly opposed the movement, but was finally obliged to consent. A trading-house established by the peo- ple of Plymouth in Connecticut in 1633, on or near the site of the present town of Windsor, became the nucleus of the new settlement in 1635. An advance party left in the summer of that year, and were followed in Novem- ber by sixty persons, with a large number of cattle. The journey was one of much hardship ; the winter which followed was marked by great suffering. Winthrop tells us that they lost near ;^ 2,000 worth of cattle, and were obliged to eat acorns, malt, and grains. Having been threatened with starvation in the early months of their settlements in Dorchester, it may seem strange that so many of the first planters should invite the same peril a second time. It is another illustration of their native pluck and deter- mination. Though most of the first party were obliged to return to Dor- chester, in the spring of 1636 they set out again, with Mr. Warham, the junior pastor of the church, and a large part of its members. With those from Dorchester were others from Cambridge and Watertown.^ The departure of the emigrants was facilitated by the fact that a vessel arrived in 1635 from England with Richard Mather and a large company, many of whom were prepared to buy the places of those who were going away. Notwithstanding the efforts of the colonial government to discour- age it, emigration did not finally cease till 1637. The original boundaries of Dorchester were of the most roving and all- embracing nature. From various grants of the Court, and the reports of committees appointed to adjust boundaries, we learn that by the year 1637 Dorchester occupied not only all the ground within its present Hmits, but also extended over the present towns of Milton, Canton, Stoughton, Sharon, Foxboro, and a part of Wrentham, — a district some thirty-five miles long, and running, as computed by a careful historian, to within one hundred and sixty rods of the Rhode Island line. In the year 1657, at the request of John Eliot, the town of Dorchester, warmly supporting his mission 1 [Cf. George E. Ellis's Life of John Mason. — Ed.] DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 431 to the Indians, set apart six thousand acres at Ponkapog for an Indian res- ervation. In the year 1713, when a new line was run, Dorchester lost, through the mistake of the surveyors, six thousand more acres of its ex- tensive territory. Johnson seems to have been struck by the form of the town, and thus mentions it in his Wonder-working Providence, published in 1654: — " The form of this town is almost like a serpent, turning her head to the northward, over against Tompson's Island and the Castle ; her body and wings, being chiefly built on, are filled somewhat thick of houses, only that one of her wings is clipped, her tail being of such a large extent that she can hardly draw it after her. Her houses for dwell- ings are about one hundred and forty, orchards and gardens full of fruit-trees, plenty of corn-land, akhough much of it hath been long in tillage, yet hath it ordinarily good crops. The number of trees are near upon 1,500. Cows and other cattle of that kind about 450." Wood, in 1633, Jri his New England's Prospect, describes Dorchester as " the greatest town in New England, well wooded and watered; very good arable grounds and hay-ground ; fair cornfields and pleasant gardens, with THE PIERCE HOUSE. 1 kitchen gardens. In this plantation is a great many cattle, as kine, goats, and swine. This plantation hath a reasonable harbor for ships, but here is no alewife river, which is a great inconvenience. The inhabitants of this 1 [This house was built by Robert Pierce in over on the voyage, which were exhibited when 1640. This Robert Pierce was the ancestor of Mr. Everett delivered an oration in Dorches- the late Rev. Dr. I'ierce of Brookline. The ter in 1855. Edward Everett, Works, iii. 325. emigrant preserved two sea-biscuit, brought — Ed.] 432 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. town were the first that set upon the trade of fishing in the Bay, who re- ceived so much fruit of their labors that they encouraged others to the same undertakings." The description of Josselyn, made in his second voyage to New England, in 1663, confirms that of the other writers : — " Six miles beyond Braintree lieth Dorchester, a frontier town pleasantly seated, and of large extent into the main land, well watered with two small rivers, her body and wings filled somewhat thick with houses to the number of two hundred and more, beau- tified with fair orchards and gardens, having also plenty of corn-land and store of cattle, counted the greatest town heretofore in New England, but now gives way to Boston. It hath a harbor to the north for ships." Of the one hundred and forty houses described by Josselyn in 1663 a few are now standing. The oldest of these is supposed to be the Minot house, on Chickataubut Street. The first houses of the settlers were probably THE MINOT HOUSE. 1 simple log cabins covered with thatch. As the colony grew, these soon gave way to more comfortable and pretentious structures, but still char- acterized by what we should consider to-day a barn-like simplicity. The 1 [This house stands in that part of the town /1/"a'', Septemljer, 1867, p. 169; ApplctotCs Joiiy- called Neponset. A cut showing its present «.;/, 1S74 ; //i;r/«-'j ffrt-Z'/j/, June 26, iSSo, where condition is given in Bryant and Gay's i'ltilcd the view is an erroneous one. The family cradle. States, ii. 55. The date of its erection is put by which has come down from the days of Elder some as far back as 1633, and it is called the old- George Minot, is in the possession of Miss Ra- est wooden house standing on the continent, irist. chcl Minot, of Neponset. — Ed. | DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 433 picture of the Minot house will be recognized by all old residents of Dor- chester as a faithful representation of this venerable building before it took fire in November, 1874. The exact date of its erection is unknown. It is placed by the descendants of the Minot family as early as 1640. Though to all external appearance nothing but a wooden house, its frame is filled in solidly with brick, either for greater durability or perhaps to render the walls bullet-proof The house has undergone a few modifications since it was first built. At present it is a mere shell, charred and blackened by the flames ; but its heavy brick-lined frame is still an interesting memorial of the early New England architects, who in more than one sense " builded better than they knew." Most conspicuous in the history of the house is the legend of a maiden's heroism during the war with Philip in 1675. One Sunday in July of that year, when the house was occupied by the family of John Minot, the maid-servant and two young children were left in the house without protection. An Indian straggler from one of Philip's bands suddenly THE BLAKE HOUSE. appeared and sought to gain an entrance. He was promptly discovered by the maid, who hastily put the children under two brass kettles, and ran up- stairs for a musket. The Indian fired his gun, but without effect. The courao-eous young woman returned the fire with more success, wounding 1 [A view of this house is given in A Geneal- and his Descendants, by Samuel Blake, Boston, ogical History of William Blake, of Dorchester, 1857. — Ed.J VOL. I. — 55. 434 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. the Indian in the shoulder ; and when, with a desperate indiscretion, he tried to enter through the window, she quickly seized a shovel of hot coals and threw them in his face. The assailant then beat a retreat, and was after- wards found dead in the woods about five miles away. The Blake house, illustrated on another page, is said to have been built by Elder James Blake prior to 1650. It stands on Cottage Street, near the Five Corners. It remained in the Blake family until 1825. As in nearly all of the old houses, the rooms are very low. THE 'J'OLMAN HOUSE. The Bridgham house, so named from the long occupancy of Jonathan Bridgham, who lived in it his whole life of ninety-one years, stood on Cot- tage Street, at the junction of Humphreys and Franklin, until May, 1873, when it was removed to widen the street. It was probably built prior to 1637, as Robert Pond, who died in that year, appears to have been its owner. The Tolman house stood on Washington Street, and was also built during the colonial period. It was taken down a few years ago. Although special attention has been paid in this article to the civil his- tory of the town, it would not be complete without some reference to its early religious history. In those days church and town were closely united, and their interests were identical. It is to be remembered, also, that the Dor- chester settlers laid so much emphasis upon the religious aims of their enterprise that they organized themselves into a church before leaving England. The establishment of a church in Dorchester is therefore coin- DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 435 cident with the settlement of the town itself. Dorchester had also the first meeting-house in the Bay. It was built in 163 1 on the plain near the corner of Cottage and Pleasant streets. The building was palisadoed and guarded against Indian attack, and was used as a depot for military stores. Its use as an arsenal was nearly fatal to its use as a meeting-house. While drying a little powder, which took fire by the heat of the pan and set off a small keg near THE BRIDGH.41M HOUSE. by, Mr. Maverick, the senior pastor, had his clothes singed, and the thatch of the meeting-house was blackened. VVinthrop, who relates this fact, has re- corded another which shows that the Dorchester people were rather unfor- tunate in trying to keep their powder dry. " One Glover, of Dorchester, having laid 60 pounds of gunpowder in bags to dry in the end of his chimney, it took fire, and some of it went up the chimney, other of it filled the room and past out at a door into another room, and blew up a gable 436 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. end." The house was not destroyed, but a maid was badly burned and died soon after, and two men and a child were slightly scorched. Though tried as by fire, the first meeting-house stood for fourteen years. During the first year of its existence the people of Roxbury, then without a church, joined with those in Dorchester in public worship. In 1645 it was agreed, " for peace and love's sake, that there should be a new meeting-house." Two hundred and fifty pounds were appropriated for this purpose. In 1670 tills building was removed to Meeting-house Hill, which has remained the church site for two hundred and ten years. The first ministers, Maverick and Warham, as already mentioned, were chosen pastors on the organization of the church in England. Winthrop tells us that Maverick was " a man of a very humble spirit, faithful in fur- thering the work of the Lord here, both in the churches and civil state." He died in February, 1636. Mr. Warham, the junior pastor, a man of strong influence and ability, removed to Windsor and remained there as pastor for thirty-four years. The death of Mr. Maverick, the removal of a large part of the church members to Connecticut, and the arrival of a fresh load of emigrants, occa- sioned the reorganization of the church in 1636. A written covenant was then adopted. Whether one had existed before is not known. It was the good fortune of Dorchester, among several claimants, to secure the services of Richard Mather as pastor a few months after the death of Mr. Maverick. The influence in Boston and New England of that distinguished family of which Richard Mather was the first is treated in another chapter of this book ; but, as with John White, the eminent services of this man to Dorchester deserve a special recognition in the Dorchester section. Mr. Mather was born at Lowton, in the parish of Winwick, county of Lancaster, England, in 1596. He very early displayed a great capacity for scholarship, and at fifteen years of age was master in a school at Toxteth Park, near Liverpool. He subse- quently entered Brazenose College, Oxford, and, after receiving ordination, preached for sixteen years at Toxteth, until suspended for non-conformity in 1633 and again in 1634. The increasing severity of the hierarchy decided him to remove to New England. He travelled to Bristol in disguise, sailed for America, encountering a terrible gale, which he described at length in his interesting journal of the voyage, and arrived in Boston Harbor Aug. 17, 1635. His rare abilities and scholarship were at once recognized in the colony. After his settlement in Dorchester he became a prominent leader in all ecclesiastical aff"airs. He was one of a committee appointed by the Cambridge council in 1646 to draft a model of church discipHne and polity. Among the several models proposed, that drafted by Mr. Mather was sub- stantially adopted. He was an influential member of the council which met at Boston June 4, 1657, and of nearly all other councils held during his ministry. The brethren of Connecticut sought his personal aid in settling the differences of the church at Hartford. Mr. Mather's theological and controversial writings in print and manuscript furnish additional DORCHESTER IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 437 evidence of his industry, ability, and zeal. His great interest in the political condition of England and the colony appears in the days of thanksgiving and prayer which were held by the Dorchester Church RICHARD MATHER.' 1 [This cut folloivs a photograph taken from the original picture in the collection of the American Anticjuarian Society at Worcester, which, with others of the later Mathers, was given to that Society by Mrs. Hannah Mather Crocker, of Boston. Nathaniel Paine, Portraits and Busts in Public Buildings at Worcester, Bos- ton, 1876, reprinted from the N'. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, 1876. A note on Mather's English ancestry is given in the Register, Janu- ary, 1879, p. 102. The will of Richard Mather is in the same, July, 1866. The Mather pedigree is followed in Drake's edition of Increase Mather's PJiilifs War. A Genealogy of the Mather Family was printed at Hartford in 1848, — quite inade- quate, however. There is an account of Richard Mather's tomb in Shurtleff's Boston, p. 2S5. W. B. Trask printed the inscriptions from the old burial-ground in the A^. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1850, &c. Some of the inscriptions, with the armorial bearings, are given in the Heraldic Journal, i. — Ed.] 438 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. at his instigation. The important petition made by the town of Dorchester to the General Court in 1664, signed by the principal inhabitants of the town, and praying that the liberties and privileges granted by the charter might still be continued, is in the handwriting of Mr. Mather. His farewell exhortation to the church and people of Dorchester was printed, and a copy given to each family. Mr. Mather's death, in the seventy-third year of his age, which occurred April 6, 1669, is thus entered in the church records: " The Rev. Richard Mather, teacher of the church of Dorchester, rested from his labors." The following anagram appears on the church records : — '^o ^i ^ <■ ^^ "f"^**^ -H. i^ t A ^^ ^^.^^ .^ ^^^ England's Dorchester 7J <. t-^u* V J ■'/yial^H.'i.'jC Was this ordainM minister. Vt" C\ <) TUX^^^Tr Second to none for fruitfulness, J^pyU'^^^J" '• Abilities, and usefulness. ^J& At« seven, O , _^. A ^ laj » <7 *f "" "^ Wise to win souls from earth to heaven; ? '\l' /CSa > Prophet's reward he gains above, i>'f If^ "*• '**** ■ '_ J But great 's our loss by his remove.'' An epitaph, different from the one inscribed on his tombstone, is also written in the church records : — " Sacred to God his servant Richard Mather, Sons like him, good and great, did call him father, Hard to discern a difference in degree, 'Twixthis bright learning and high piety. Short time his sleeping dust hes covered down, So can't his soul or his deserved renown. From 's birth six lustres and a jubilee To his repose : but laboured hard in thee, O Dorchester ! four more than thirty years His sacred dust with thee thine honour rears." Mr. Mather was assisted for a year and a half by Rev. Jonathan Burr, who was installed as colleague in 1640 and died in 1641. Governor Win- throp has recorded his piety and learning, and Cotton Mather his charity, sympathy, meekness, and humility. Rev. John Wilson, Jun., was ordained as " coadjutor of Mr. Mather, the Teacher," in 1649. After serving for two years he removed to Medfield, where he was pastor for forty years. ^/OL CHAPTER XIV. BRIGHTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. BY FRANCIS S. DRAKE. THAT part of ancient Cambridge lying soutti of Charles River, formerly- bearing the various designations of "The south side of the river," "The third parish," " The third precinct," " South Cambridge," or " Little Cam- bridge," and afterwards of Brighton, was set off as a separate parish April 2, 1779; was incorporated as the town of Brighton Feb. 24, 1807; and was annexed to Boston, of which it now constitutes the 25th ward, by an Act of the Legislature approved May 21, 1873, and which took effect Jan. S, 1874- It is bounded north and east by Watertown and Cambridge, from which it is separated by the Charles River; southeast and south byBrookline; and west by Newton. The dividing line between Brighton and Newton was established in 1662 substantially as at present, in consequence of a petition of the inhabitants of Cambridge Village (Newton) to be released from paying church rates to Cambridge, they having built a house of worship for themselves on account of their great distance from that at Cambridge. In 1688 they were set off and made an independent town. The Brookline boundary was settled in 1640. The eastern portion of Brighton is low and marshy, but towards the south and west it rises into beautiful eminences which command delightful views of Boston and its environs. The soil is naturally fertile, much of it having of late years been devoted to market-gardening and to extensive nurseries. Its small area comprises only 2,660% acres. The Charles River is here navigable its entire distance for sloops and schooners of several hundred tons burden. This stream, anciently called Quineboquin, was the natural boundary between two hostile tribes of Indians. It rises in Hop- kinton and, flowing in a circuitous course, enters Boston Harbor at Charlestown. Properly speaking, the history of Brighton dates from its formation into a parish in 1779. Its earlier history is included in the following brief sketch of that of Cambridge, of which it was for a century and a half a mere outlying suburb. Its settlement dates from 1635, when the farm 440 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. lands on the south side of the river were granted to such persons as desired them. The early inhabitants of Cambridge were clustered together in the district bounded north by Harvard street and square, west by Brattle Square and Eliot Street, south by Eliot and South streets, and east by Holyoke Street; so that their brethren across the river were socially and gepgraphically an isolated and distinct community. Spiritually and politi- cally they were one, and for more than a century the same schoolhouse and the same place of worship sufficed for both. So gradual was the growth of Brighton that in 1688, more than half a century after its settle- ment, it held but twenty-eight families and thirty-five ratable polls. Farming was the sole occupation of her people. ' Among the pioneers in its settlement we find' in Rev. Thomas Shepard's company the names of Champney and Sparhawk, two of the earliest families established on the south side of the river. Then came Richard Dana; and before 1639 John Jackson, Samuel Holly, Randolph Bush, William Redfen, and William Clements had homes here. Elder Richard Champney, who with Edward Oakes was in February, 1669, appointed to " catechise the youth of the town on the south side of the bridge," died in that year. Deacon Nathaniel Sparhawk, admitted a freeman in 1639, represented Cambridge in the General Court from 1642 until his death, June 28, 1647. Sparhawk, Champney, and Dana are all represented in Brighton by their descendants to-day. The descendants of Lieutenant Edward Winship, who settled on the college side in 1635, were early and largely represented here also in the succeeding generations. Cambridge, the mother town, — whose original limits included also Brighton, Newton, Arlington, Lexington, Bedford, and Billerica, — owes her origin to an agreement between Governor Winthrop and most of the Assistants and others, made Dec. 6, 1630, to build a fortified town for the seat of government upon the neck between Roxbury and Boston. Finding this location unsuitable, they resolved on the 28th, after examining else- where, to build " at a place a mile east from Watertown, near Charles River." Here they began the " newe towne," in the spring of 1631, Deputy- Governor Dudley and his son-in-law Bradstreet being the only members of the Government to fulfil their agreement to build themselves houses therein. Governor Winthrop did indeed build a house, but very soon removed it to Boston. A sharp controversy between Winthrop and Dudley, growing out of this apparent breach of faith, was decided by the elders in favor of the latter. In pursuance of its original design, the Court, in February, 1631-32, ordered a levy of £60, in the several plantations " towards the makeing of a pallysadoe about the newe towne." This defensive work was erected and a fosse dug, enclosing upwards of one thousand acres " paled in with one general fence " about one and one-half miles in length. It was to the opposition of Watertown to the tax levied for this purpose that our House of Representatives owes its origin. BRIGHTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 441 Quite an accession was made to the small population of Newtown in August, 1632, when, by order of the General Court, the Braintree Company (Rev. Mr. Hooker's), which had begun a settlement at Mount Wollaston, removed hither. Its numbers so increased that one year later it contained nearly one hundred families. In May, 1634, when Dudley was elected gov- ernor, it was made the seat of government as was originally intended, and the courts were held here until May, 1636, and again from April, 1637, un- til September, 1638. When, in the latter year. Harvard College was estab- lished, the name of Newtown was changed to Cambridge, out of regard for the place where so many of the chief men of New England had been educated. At the Court held May 14, 1634, leave was granted to the inhabitants of Newtown who complained of " straitness for want of land," to seek out some " convenient place for them, with promise that it shalbe confirmed unto them, to which they may remove their habitations or have as an addition to that which already they have, provided they do not take it in any place to prejudice a plantation already settled." After examining several places, " the congregation of Newtown came and accepted such enlargement as had been formerly offered them by Boston and Watertown." This " enlargement," which was on the south side of the Charles River, embraced the territory since known as Brookline, Brighton, and Newton. Still there was dissatisfaction, and the inhabitants continuing to have " a strong bent of their spirits to remove," a large number of them went to Connecticut before Sept. 3, 1635, ^""^ Mr. Hooker, with most of his con- gregation, followed in May, 1636. Their possessions in Newtown were purchased by Mr. Shepard and his company, who opportunely arrived in the autumn of 1635, ^^'^ early in 1636. The grant of Brookline had been forfeited in consequence of Mr. Hooker's removal; that of Brighton and Newton held good. The few Indians in Cambridge were subject to the Squaw-Sachem, formerly the wife of Nanepashemit, and maintained friendly relations with the whites. Those of Nonantum, at the western extremity of Brighton, were under Cutshamokin, who resided at Neponset. These, with other Indian rulers, in March, 1644, voluntarily placed themselves under the government of Massachusetts, having previously sold to her all right and title to their land. This had been done " to avoid the least scruple of intrusion," in accordance with the instructions of the Massachusetts Com- pany in England, dated April 17, 1629. Cambridge men actively participated in the civil, military, and religious events of the colonial epoch; in the Indian war of 1675-76 which threat- ened the colonists with destruction, and called forth their utmost exertions ; in the fruitless efforts of twenty years' duration to preserve the colonial charter which the home government sought to annul ; and finally, in the revolutionary movement by which the obnoxious government of Andros was overturned. VOL. I. — 56. ..2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The religious life of the town was formally begun Oct. ii, 1633, when the First Church was organized, over which Mr. Hooker and Mr. Samuel Stone, who had accompanied Hooker to New England, were respectively ordained pastor and teacher. A new church was organized Feb. I, 1635-36, to take the place of Mr. Hooker's, which had emigrated to Connecticut. Of this congregation, Rev. Thomas Shepard was pastor until his death August 25, 1649; Rev. Jonathan Mitchell from Aug. 21, 1650, to July 9, 1668; Rev. Urian Oakes, Nov. 8, 1671, to July 25, 1681 ; and Rev. Nathaniel Gookin from Nov. 15, 1682, to Aug. 7, 1692. Hooker, Shepard, and Mitchell were bright and shining lights of the New England pulpit, and were remarkable alike for learning, eloquence, and piety. The notable events in the annals of the Cambridge Church at this period were, the building of a new house of worship in 1650; the perse- cution of the Quakers in 1663 ; the division caused by the organization of a separate parish at Newton in 1664; and the strong opposition of Rev. Mr. Dunster to the ordinance of infant 'baptism, which caused his removal from the presidency of the college and from Cambridge. The inhabitants of Brighton formed a part of this congregation for more than a century. Prior to 1643 a grammar school, of which the celebrated Elijah Corlet was master, had been established to fit pupils for the college founded by John Harvard in 1638, the year in which, in this place, the first printing- press was set up in the English American colonies. This first school-house stood on the westerly side of Holyoke Street, about midway between Harvard and Mt. Auburn streets. The earliest school-house in Brighton was erected in 1722. The establishment of highways was among the first duties of the inhab- itants of the new town. As early as June, 163 1, a canal was made from Charles River to what is now South Street. In 1635 ^ ferry was established across the river from the foot of Dunster Street. Opposite this point was the road to Boston, called " the highway to Roxbury.'' This old road, which ran through the easterly portions of Brookline and Brighton, is now known as Harvard Avenue. Another early highway was " the Roxbury Path," a portion of what is now Washington Street, by which the Roxbury people went to the grist-mill at Watertewn. The path, now Market Street, laid out in 1656 through the land of Richard Dana, was known, after the first meeting-house was built in 1744, as Meeting-house Lane. The crooks and curves of these old thoroughfares sufficiently distinguish them from the straighter highways of a more recent date. To obviate the inconveniences and perils of a ferry over which there was a large amount of travel, especially on lecture days, a bridge was built in 1662 at a cost of ;£200 at the foot of Brighton Street, also connecting with the highway to Roxbury, and which, as it was the largest and finest then in the colony, was called the " Great Bridge." This was swept away by a high tide in September, 1685, from which time until it was rebuilt in 1690 ferriage was resumed here by Mr. Fessenden. BRIGHTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 443 The heads of families in Brighton in August, 1688, were : Thomas Brown, Samuel and Daniel Champney, Thomas Cheeney, James Clarke, Richard Jacob, Benjamin and Daniel Dany, John Francis, Joshua Fuller, Richard and John Haven, John Mackoon, Sr., John Mackoon, Jr., Thomas Oliver, John and Samuel Oldum, James Phillips, Nathaniel Rohbins, Ebenezer Ston, David Stowell, Samuel and Nathaniel Sparhawke, John and Henry Smith, John Squire, and Isaac Wilson. Samuel Champney settled in Brighton about 1667 ; was selectman eleven years between 1681 and 1694; muster-master in 1690 ; and representative from 1686 to his death in 1695. Daniel Champney, appointed by the Court in 1677 to redeem Indian captives near Wachusett, was selectman in 1684-87, and died in 1691. Francis Dana, chief-justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, member of the Continental Congress, and ambas- sador to Russia, was a grandson of Daniel, son of Richard, one of the first settlers. John Francis was the grandfather of Colonel Ebepezer, a revolu- tionary officer who fell at Hubbardston July 7, 1777. Thomas Oliver, of the distinguished family from which sprung Lieutenant-Governor Andrew and Chief-Justice Peter Oliver, was deacon of Newton Church, selectman of Cambridge in 1687, representative eighteen years between 1692 and 1 71 3, and died Nov. 2, 171 5. Deacon Nathaniel Sparhawk, selectman seven years, died in December, 1686. A few examples of its laws and usages will serve to convey a slight idea of the condition of a society in which the civil body and ecclesiastical structure were completely blended. No man could sell or let house or land unless to a member of the congregation. If a dog was seen in the meet- ing-house on the Lord's Day in time of public worship, the owner was fined. " Entertaining any stranger or family into the town " against the desire of the congregation, after due warning, was punished by a fine. Any man whose dog is used to pull off the tails of any beasts, and who does not effectually restrain him, shall pay for every offence of that kind 20s. Three persons were appointed by the selectmen, " to have inspection into famihes that there be no bye drinking or any misdemeanor whereby sin is committed, and persons from their houses unseasonably." No contemporaneous description of the town in its primitive days remains to us, but we can easily picture to ourselves a small rural settle- ment of scattered farms, with a river front of six miles or more ; its prin- cipal street running diagonally through it in the direction of the Watertown mill, and one other much-travelled highway connecting the seat of govern- ment of the colony with its seat of learning. The Sparhawk homestead, in which seven generations have resided, was on the corner of Washington and Cambridge Streets. On the opposite corner stood the Winship man- sion, latterly a hotel. West of Sparhawk's house, on what is now Market Street, stood the Dana mansion. Samuel Phipps' residence was also on Washington Street, where Allston Street now is. A number of settlers were clustered together in the northwest corner of the town, near Watertown 444 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. mill. Here was Nonantum Hill, in and around which was an Indian village, the scene of the first missionary labors of the Apostle Ehot. About on the site of the abattoir were " The Pines," a forest of pine trees, the place where the Christian Indians were embarked for Deer Island in October, 1675, as a place of refuge from the exasperated colonists, who, soon after the breaking out of Philip's war, wished to destroy them. Excepting the Champney house and the Dana house, each of which are two hundred years old, these and all other memorials of Brighton's colonial days have long ago ceased to exist. ,^l,.c^-er, the first settled minister of Chelsea, 1715. ' I Colony Ki'cords, p. 354. ■* 3 Ibid. p. 252. WINNISIMMET, ETC., IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 449 There are many facts preserved by Winthrop and others, respecting Sagamore John, which could properly find place in a history of the town. This most interesting of the Pawtucket Indians — the native chief of Win- nisimmet — died, as has already been stated, in 1633, and was buried by " Mr. Maverick of Winnisimmet." Who this Mr. Maverick was is by no means clear, though he has gene- rally been supposed to have been Samuel Maverick, of Noddle's Island, who, with John Blackleach, owned Winnisimmet, and sold the whole or the greater part of the same to Richard Bellingham in 1634. But there are circum- stances, not to be recited in this brief sketch, which point to Elias, rather than Samuel Maverick, as the friend of the Indians.^ When the ownership of the soil was settled in the inhabitants of Boston, the authorities, in 1637, proceeded to allot the lands on considerations not made the matter of record, unless we may be referred to the proceedings of the Company before the patent was transferred to New England. It is noticeable that no part of Winnisimmet, then owned by Belling- ham, was allotted ; nor was there at that time any recognition of his title or interest in the Maverick and Blackleach estate. But, in 1640, the title which he had received from them in 1634-35 was recognized by the town, so far as its entry in the Town Records as his was a recognition, — though there is no evidence of any grant 4:o the first recorded grantors. Were they some of the old planters of Winnisimmet, or owners under Gorges' patent, whose claim in this particular case was allowed to stand undisputed? Before any recorded grant of any portion of the soil, the General Court passed an order creating a preserve for game, in the following terms : " That noe pson w'soeuer shall shoote att fowle vpon Pullen Poynte or Noddles Island, but the s'' places shalbe reserved for John Perkins to take fowle w* netts.^ " The consideration for this unique grant does not appear. John Perkins is said to have come over with Roger Williams in 1 631, re- moved with John Winthrop, Jr., to Ipswich in 1633, and represented that town in the General Court in 1636. A few years later, a portion of this same territory was a common for pasturage; for in February, 1635, ^^ ^ general meeting upon public notice, it was agreed that certain barren and young cattle should be kept abroad from the Neck,' under penalty, and that there should be a little house built, and a sufficiently paled yard to lodge the cattle in of nights at Pullen Point Neck before the 14th day of the next second month.^ Nov. 30, 1635, the town made regulations respecting allotments to new comers, restricting them to such as were likely to be received members of the congregation.'' Dec. 14. 1635. "Item: that Mr William Hutchinson, Mr Edmund Quinsey, Mr. Samuell Wilbore, Mr William Cheeseborowe and John Olly- 1 [Sumner, East Boston, p. 162, gives the ^ l Colony Records, p. 94. Maverick genealogy, and avers that Elias was a ' i Town Records, p. 2. brother, probably, of Samuel. — Ed.] * Ibid. p. 3. VOL. I. — 57. 450 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ver, or four of them, shall, by the assignments of the Allotters, lay out their proportion of ahotments for farmes att Rumley Marsh, whoe there are to have the same." ^ It was not, however, before Dec. i8, 1637, that the great allotments at Rumney Marsh and Pullen Point were assigned, with specifications of quantity and bounds. In some cases, apparently, these assignments are in pursuance of earlier special grants by the General Court, but not recorded. The first name on the list is that of " Mr. Henry Vane " (better known as Sir Harry), who, though not then in the country, was set down for two hundred acres, — since well known as the Fenno Farm. How long he held this estate I have not ascertained, but in 1639 it was the property of Nicholas Parker. THE FLOYD MANSION.' The next in order, northerly, was an allotment of one hundred and fifty acres to "Mr. VVinthrop, the elder," —which in 1639, by an unrecorded deed, he sold to John Newgate. This, with other land, constituted what has been successively known as the Newgate, Shrimpton, or Yeamans farm, of about four hundred acres; and it includes the hill east of Woodlawn Cemetery. The tenth allotment on the list is that of three hundred and fourteen acres to "Mr. Robte Keine,"— which, with some additions, constituted the two great farms of Captain Robert Kcayne, which have a history. 1 T&iun Records^ p. 4. - [This house, which stands in Revere on the not far from the railroad bridge, was built about 1670, and may have been the residence of Cap- most northerly road leading to Revere Beach, tain John Floyd in 1685. — Ed.] WINNISIMMET, ETC., IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 45 1 Among the principal grantees of lands at Rumney Marsh or PuUen Point were William Stitson, Major Edward Gibbons, Richard Tuttle, William Aspinwall, William Dyer (husband of the unfortunate Mary Dyer), John Coggeshall, John Oliver, John Cogan, Samuel Cole, William Brenton, and Elias Maverick. Two of these were afterwards Governors of Rhode Island. Many of them were the friends of Mrs. Hutchinson, and shared the fortunes of <20o€tirTfl^^^'/ the Antinomians. For the most part they were non-resident proprietors, and as such \~7~O ^/)l^-^^"*'f *^''''^~ added little to the wealth or prosperity of U *^ ^% %J that section of the town ; and their farms y*^[^ ^^CC^iAJt^ ^W**^ were in the occupation of tenants or ser- —-7^ v* 'iS^xlryt vants, and perhaps served occasionally as (^^^ ^' jf summer residences, — as may be inferred jpCkTi^****^- ^ji^Cw^ from an incident recorded by Winthrop in ^I'f^^f^ ^{^Uo^'^'*'' 1643, of La Tour's meeting Captain Gib- Jr bons's wife and children as they were signatures of proprietors. going down the harbor in supposed se- curity on their way to their farm at Pullen Point. For particulars of this alarm see the chapter on " Boston and the Neighboring Jurisdictions." The Winthrop farm is well known, as including allotments to father and son. This son was Deane Winthrop ; and his name stands first among the entries on the Book of Possessions as owning " one farm at Pulling Point, containing about one hundred and twenty acres," — which in recent vears has again become the property of Boston. During the Colonial period, and even as late as 17 10, the inhabitants of the three precincts sought the privileges of religious worship in the neigh- boring towns where they had formed church connections ; and, as this was a condition to citizenship, this class embraced all the leading inhabitants. But, since many of the large estates were cultivated by the tenants or ser- vants of the proprietors, as early as 1640, in the church of Boston, " a motion was made by such as have farms at Rumney Marsh, that our brother Oliver may be sent to instruct their servants, and be a help to them, because they cannot many times come hither, nor sometimes to Lynn, and sometime nowhere at all." For the same period, the town, so far as I can discover, made no special provision for the education of youth, though, doubtless, they had the right to repair to the schools set up in the peninsula. But of even such as could afford the expense, few could avail themselves of this right, as the schools were remote, and the only practicable mode of access to them by ferry was uncertain, difficult, and costly. The first authorized ferry in New England — perhaps on the continent — seems to have been that between Boston, Charlestown, and Winnisimmet. As early as November, 1630, the General Court ordered, "that whoever shall first give in his name to Mr. Governor that he will undertake to set up a 4^2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ferry between Boston and Charlestown, and shall begin the same at such time as Mr Governor shall appoint, shall have i" for every person, and i" for every loo weight of goods he shall so transport." ^ Apparently, this offer was not accepted until June 14, 163 1, under which date is the following entry: " Edw. Converse hath undertaken to set up a ferry between Charlestown and Boston, for which he is to have ij'' for every single person, and i"" a piece if there be 2 or more."^ But, on the i8th May previously, it is recorded that " Thomas Williams hath undertaken to set up a ferry between Winnisim- mett and Charlestown, for which he is to have after 3'' a person, and from Winnisimmet to Boston 4^ a person."^ These dates seem to settle the question of priority in favor of Winnisimmet. In September, 1634, the General Court granted the ferry to Samuel Maverick, in fee, reserving the right to determine the rates of transporta- tion ; and the next year Maverick granted his interest to Richard Belling- ham, in whom it remained until his death. Such were the circumstances in which the inhabitants of this territory found themselves for sixty years after the settlement of the Bay. As agri- culturalists, they were undoubtedly prosperous ; but in all other respects less fortunate than those whose access to the peninsula was more rapid and less costly. Their relative wealth to Muddy River (Brookline) may be approximately determined by the following tax-rates: In 1674, Muddy River, ;^8 15^. ; Rumney Marsh, ;£'i2 is. In 1687, ;£'iO i8s. ^^d., as against ;^I5 io.f. 4d., for the other section; while the male inhabitants of sixteen years and upwards were forty-eight in Muddy River, and only thirty-five in Rumney Marsh. I Colony Records, p. 81. 2 jbid. p. 88. » jbid. p. 87. CHAPTER XVI. THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. BY JUSTIN WINSOR. Librarian of Harvard University. ACCORDING to the best information to be obtained,^ it appears that during the fifty years which passed from the setting up of the first press in New England to the close of the Colonial Period, there were is- sued in Boston and in Cambridge something over three hundred separate publications. Of these nearly two thirds were expositions of religious be- lief, or writings in defence of dogmas, or aids to worship, — and all in the English tongue. If we add a score or more of tracts, or books of similar import, but printed in the Indian language, we materially strengthen the proportion of theology and religion. It cannot be unnoticed that of the remainder much the larger part was a growth of the same soil. Thus the fifty-two almanacs, the thirty and more publications of laws and official documents, and the expositions of college activity, all indicated how much dogma and exhortation ruled the day. During these same years there were perhaps a score of issues that may be classed as history, or materials for the history, of the Colony; and these were not without something of the same flavor. Of all this rather surprising fecundity for an infant settle- ment, there is perhaps not a single native production that can be held to be a memorable addition to the world's store of literature ; and of such as were borrowed, an edition of Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, printed in 1681, is the only one of those books usually accounted famous.^ The censors suppressed another when they denied their imprimatur, in 1667, to a reprint of Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ. The same predominating spirit characterized most of the works of New England origin which for many 1 Cf. the Ante-Revolutionary Bibliography of The only copy which has been noted is one de- S. F. Haven, Jr., appended to the edition of scribed by Henry Stevens as in the Brinley Col- Thomas's History of Printing issued by the lection (not yet, however, entered in its catalogue, American Antiquarian Society. so far as printed), with the imprint " Boston in 2 Buuyan himself speaks of this Boston New England, Printed by Samuel Green, upon edition when he says, — assignment of Samuel Sewall, and are to be sold by John Usher of Boston, 1681." It was said to have the last leaf missing. Contributiom Asw be Trfiii'd, new Cloih'd" and Deck't wilh Gems." to a Catalogue of the Lenox Library, pt. iv. pp. 7, 8. 'T IS in New Eng and undei such advance, -j . u .1 1 1 1 r • • r^ . -j .■ „ . , ,, • „ ,.„„„„ said to have the last leaf missmg. Contributions Receives there so much loving countenance, & '-' 454 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. years after the introduction of printing into the colony were carried to England for publication. When George Herbert wrote, — " Religion stands on tip-toe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand," — he failed to comprehend all that this well-remembered couplet meant.^ Cotton Mather indicated it when he said, "The Gospel has evidently been the making of our towns ;" and what has sprung from the New England town all who have studied the history of our old Theocracy and of our popular assemblies may very easily determine.^ John Adams told a Virginian that the Old Dominion could become what New England is, when they knew what town-meetings and training days are, when they had town schools, and when they looked up to an old aristocracy, such as the ministers were to the Puritans, to speak ill of whom was a crime. These olden traits may have now disappeared ; but they have moulded a people. It was not because of any insufficiency of intellect and scholarly training in the first comers that a literature in any true sense failed to be developed. Their virility created not so much letters as empire ; it contributed to found a people rather than to stamp a literature. It has been computed ^ that nearly one hundred University men came over from England to cast their lot in the new colony between 1630 and 1647; and of these two thirds came from Cambridge, particularly from Emanuel College, — the Puritan seed-plot. This had been the college of John Cot- ton. Wheelwright, who sponsored in the new Boston the controversy of the Antinomians, had been the contemporary of Cromwell at Sidney Sussex. John Harvard, Thomas Shepard, Roger Williams, Henry Dunster, and John Norton — all with influence emanating from or directed upon the settlement at the Bay — had trodden the banks of the Cam with John Milton and Jeremy Taylor. President Chauncey had been a Fellow at Trinity with the saintly George Herbert. Richard Mather, the founder of an almost royal line in our theocratic history, and Harry Vane, the champion of Anne Hutchin- son, had been students at Oxford. The memories of the University were likewise borne across the sea by Winthrop, Saltonstall, and Bradstreet, by Wilson and Eliot. Of the forty or fifty Cambridge or Oxford men who were in Massachusetts up to 1639, Mr. Dexter computes that one half were seated within five miles of Boston or Cambridge. It was this leaven that 1 On their familiarity with the writings of Her- 381 ; Baylies, History of Plymouth Colony, i. 241 ; bert, see N. E. Hist, and Gcneal. Reg., October, W. C. Fowler in " Local law historically con- 1873, p. 347 ; andil/fijj. Hist. Soc. Proc. Jan. 1867. sidered," in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, ■^ The relation of our New England towns to 1871 ; De Tocqueville, Democracy in Amet-ica, the growth and spirit of New England has been Bowen's edition, i. ; Poole's edition of Johnson's of late considerably studied. Cf. Joel Parker, Wonder-working Providence, pp. xc, 175, and '•On the origin, organization, and mfluence of C. C. Smith's chapter on "Boston and the towns," in y1/rtM. //«/ .Soc. /"rac, January, 1 865; Colony" in the present work. Horace Gray, in Mass. Reports, 1857 ; Amer. ^ Professor F. B. Dexter on " The influence A7itiq. Soc. Proc, April 27, 1S70, and by R. of the English universities in the development of Frothingham, Oct. 21, 1870, and his Hist, of New England," in ^/(;jj.j%-.rA 5'<7f./';w., 18S0. Cf. Charlestown, p. 49; Palfrey, New England, i. also James Savage, in 3 yi-/(m.i%>^. CW/.,viii. 246. THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 455 determined the early New England history ; but it ran little into literature as such. Writing and book-making were but means to other ends than in- tellectual stimulation. Their aim was to, define theological dogma, and to enforce observances rigidly. The mental activity of the time meant cogni- zance of error and intolerance of misbelief. Where education of that sort did not exist, there were no such eager promptings to the study of polemics, and the dead level of intellectual content often enforced charity. The neighboring colony of Plymouth had hardly any learned men. They waited long to set up a schoolmaster, while the Bay so promptly founded a college ; but they gave Roger Williams an asylum.^ They had noble men; if uneducated, who counselled toleration of the Quakers ; and they hanged no witches. It was indeed fortunate for the Bay that the older colony was what she was. Her milder spirit in the end permeated the stronger colony, and Massachusetts Puritanism took on the hue of the Pilgrims' nobler inde- pendency. Still Massachusetts came out the stronger for the tribulations, endured and enforced, of her scholarly divines. Its fruit, however, Was in character rather than in letters. Nor were the books they brought with them more promising for us than those they wrote. A few lists of such are preserved. One is that bequest of three hundred and twenty volumes by which John Harvard, in 1638, laid the foundations of the great library at Cambridge. Another is a list of forty books which Governor Winthrop contributed to the same collection. Edward Everett could well congratulate his friend, the author of the Life of J^ohu Winthrop, while communicating the list from the college archives, that the honored magistrate had not transmitted the books to his descendant.^ Whatever of production there was, however, it was not for a long time permitted to Boston to print her own books. The Rev. Mr. Glover left the old country for New England in 1638, hav- ing with him on shipboard a press and one Stephen Daye to work it. Glover died on the voyage. Daye, with the consent of the magistrates set up the press in Cam- bridge, which Glover's widow continued to own. In October, 1638, Hugh Peter 1 They were not sorry, however, when he left the other h'st. A list of books left by Governor them. Williams, though an amiable man, was a Thomas Dudley is given in M. E. Hist, and disputatious one, and such men are always disa- Geneal. Reg., 1858, p. 355. The titles of ninety greeable. His defenders rightly say much in his books borrowed in 1647 by Richard Mather are praise, and his detractors have great grounds given in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. p. 76. Palfrey re- fer condemning his forward and militant discon- grets that we are not furnished with an Invoice tent. He was not a comfortable man to have of the books which Dunton, the London book- in one's neighborhood. seller, brought to Boston on a venture in 16S6; ^ The list of Harvard's books is preserved in and Mr. Whitmore, in his edition of Dunton, p. the College Archives. Quincy, History of Har- 314, supplies its place as well as he can with the vardUniversity,\.\o,%nz'i2.lit'«\.\X\ci,; they were list of what was another bookseller's stock-in- all burned with the College Library in 1764, save trade in 1700. A catalogue of Rev. Michael one book, which is still religiously preserved. Wigglesworth's library is appended to J. W. R. C. Winthrop,/;//^ of John. Winthrop, ^\s&% Dean's Sketch of his life, 1863. 456 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. cSfo^fmhu^ Ag^^. wrote to Bermuda, "Wee have a printery here and thinke to goe to worke with some special! things." ^ In March, 1639, the press was at work. An almanac, and a broadside oath^ for freemen to subscribe were the initial issues; and then followed the well known Bay Psalm Book, as it was called.^ The widow Glover now married Dun- ster, the first president of the College, and the substantial con- trol of the press passed into his hands, the sanction of the College being given by implication to what the press brought forth. In 1648-49 Samuel Green * succeeded Daye as the printer. In 1660 Mar- iSeinuof^ CltSff yy. maduke Johnson was sent over by the Corpora- tion for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Indians. He brought a new press, with new type, and was set to work in printing books for the natives to read.- The government control of production was more definitely fixed when, in 1662, licensers were named ; and to keep the matter still further in control, it was ordered in 1664 that no printing should be al- lowed in any town but Cambridge. This order held good for ten years longer, till, May 27, 1674, the General Court " granted that there may be a printing press elsewhere than at Cambridge." Under this permission John Foster set up to be the first Boston printer. He was a Dorchester boy, had graduated at the College in 1667, and then for a few years had taught j<~)J^^^^ /J^CS^Z^ school in his native town. In December, 1674, **-X ( / the " Sign of a Dove '' was hung out for his office, where he took in work for the press which he had just bought. It was natural enough, considering the times, that his first author and his last should be Increase Mather, and in the short interval — 1674-81 — during which Foster ran the press, Mather furnished the copy for about fifteen of the imprints. This first Boston printer was but thirty-three when he died ; ^ and on his foot-stone it ^7«/^5^; 1 Winthrop papers in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 99. Cf. the notice of Glover in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc, April 28, 1875, or N. E. Hist and Geneal. Reg., January, 1876, p. 26. 2 This was the oath established in 1634. No copy of this first broadside is known. The text of the oath can be found in Childe's New Eng- land's Jonas cast up in London, 1647 ; in Felt's Ipswich; in Charters and Laws of Massachusetts Bay ; in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Register, Jan- uary, 1849. This oath took the place of an earlier one, which, with a list of freemen, is given in the Register, iii. 89. •' Winthrop's Journal, March, 1639-40. * There is a note on Green's family in Sewall Papers, i. 324. 5 Judge Sewall, Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist Coll., V. 49, gives his death Sept. 9, t68i, as does his grave-stone in the old burying-ground at Up- ham's Corner, Dorchester : " The ingenious mathematician and printer, Mr. John Foster, aged 33 years, dyed Septr. 9*, 1681." On his foot-stone Ovid's " Ars illi sua census erat " is translated as in the itxt.— Epitaphs from the Old Burying-ground in Dorchester, Boston, 1869, p. II. The title (on the opposite page) of the first book he printed is somewhat reduced from a copy bought in 1879 from the Brinley Collec- tion by the Public Library of Boston. It was a presentation copy from its author to "y^ Rev* Mr. Higginson in Salem," and is so inscribed. It cost the library $92.50; and another copy, in exquisite binding, brought at the same sale, $140. Cf. Brinley Catalogue, No. 1,046; Sibley's Har- vard Graduates, i. 440 ; Nathaniel Paine's Mather Publications, p. 23. THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 457 Theiyic^ed mans 'P onion. OR A SERMON CPrtlchcd at the uaure in Bo^w m KaoEr.gUtid the i8ch iiyofthe t Moneth t674.whentwoaiea ' were tKic'"^- ^^° '"'' mmthtrii their Mafter.) Wherein is (liewed 7hm.€xcefe in mc^e'dnefs doth bring untimely Veath. is quaintly said of him, " Skill was his cash," — a very good capital for a printer in these days as in those.^ After Foster's death the care of the press was committed by the magistrates to Samuel Bewail, and it does not appear to have been altogether a nominal one. He remained in charge of it till 1684,^ working himself at the case, as it would seem. Boston, if she did not print, had certainly much ~ ~~ "I to do with the production of the first Anglo-Amer- ican book, — the Psalms turned into metre, as Gov- ernor Winthrop described it ; the Bay Psalm Book? or the New England Version of the Psalms, as it has been at different times called. The version of Sternhold and Hop- kins made a part of the Puritans' Bible ; * but there seems to have been a feeling among them By !NCRBASE M ATHE S, Itadiit of a Cbarch of Chrift. Pro». 10. 17. Tit fitr tjihi Ltri frolmiat iiijti, im thi jttti ,[iIh wickid fin/Hi /iirliud. Eph. 6. 1, %. HDmiirthy Fnhtr t»i thy Mtlhirfwiiehmitt fi'jl C mmt»imtinimiii frmi(i) th»t 11 maj iiwit wiii /iff, tiU ihcK mtfjl livt ling t» thi ga-th, 1>znaid piucos, metui ad omnes. that the words of Scrip- ture lost something of sanctity in the transmu- tations of that version. One cannot say how far this dissatisfaction may have arisen by an inci- dent which Josselyn re- cords. That traveller speaks, in 1638, of his arrival in Boston, arid of his caUing upon John Cotton, and of delivering to him " from Mr. Francis Quarles, the poet, the translation of the i6th, 2Sth, 57th, 88th, 113th, and releasing him from the BOSTON, TITLE OF THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN BOSTON. 1 Sibley, in the second volume of his //ar- vard Graduates, now in press, gives an account of Foster. The first type he used was pica ; but he did his best work with a long-primer font, bought in 1678. A list of the works printed by him is given in the Boston Daily Advertiser, May 9, 1875. Cf. Brinley Catalogue, No. 2669; Shurtleff's Boston, p. 284 ; Hist, of Dorchester, pp. 244, 492. ^ N. E. Hist, and Geueal. /leg., 1855, p. 287. There is, unfortunately, a gap in Sewall's Diary for these years. Cf. Colony Records, v. 323, Oct. 12, i68i. The order appointing him printer is given in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 57, where is also VOL. I. — 58. the order, Sept. 12, i charge of the press. ^ This designation seems to have been cur- rently applied to this book, whose title reads The whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English metre. As the Plymouth people used the Ainsworth Psalter, the designation was a natural one. Cf. Palfrey's New England, ii. 41 ; Samuel E. Staples on " The Ancient Psalmody and Hymnology of New England," in Worcester Soc. of Antiq. Proc. 1879. * The first American edition of Sternhold and Hopkins was not issued till 1693, at Cam- bridge. -^^da/r^ 7fl«-^/i^C 458 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. I3;th Psalms into English metre for his approbation." What return Mr. Quarks got we know not; but whatever it was we may well believe it gave the key to what others in New England thought of it. Roger Williams said that, in the opinion of some people, " God would not suffer Mr. Cotton to err." Governor Bradford records of him in his level verse, — " It 's hard another such to find." That John Cotton could be a critic in the belief of his contemporaries, as he could be and was an umpire in all else, admits of little doubt. We also know that if stirred, as he was when Thomas Hooker died in 1647, he could deliver himself of what passed with our Puritan Fathers for verse. So in due time the preparation of a new version more literal than melo- dious, as the versifiers confessed, was entrusted to a committee. Richard Mather, who had arrived in 1635, and was settled over the Dorchester parish, was the chief of them. He was a man with a " loud and big " voice, and, as Pro- fessor Tyler > well says of him, possessed the " faculty of personal conspicu- ousness," — a trait which descended to the son and grandson. His, we may infer, was the guiding spirit; and there exists to-day among the manuscripts of the Prince Library ^ what appears to have been his rough draft of the preface to the book, in some memoranda on " The Singing of Psalmes in setting forth the praises of the Lord." It seems likely from the super- scription of the draft, " For my reverend brother, Thomas Shepard," that the final plea, as it stands in the printed preface, may have had the revision of that Cambridge divine. The draft, as Mather leaves it, seems to indicate that Shepard would finish it from some memoranda which he had already presented. With Mather were ""Tflo • 1 flS joined the two ministers of the Roxbury church, — Eliot, later to be known as the Apostle, and Thomas Weld, who did not remain long in the Colony. As a specimen of English verse it is hardly possible to imagine any- thing much worse than this version. Grammar is tortured ; the ear is filled with dissonance ; the sense confused ; and the printer kept company with 1 History of American Literature, where will Literature, and Tarbox's article in the New be found a good description of the Bay Psalm Englajider, March, i88o. Book. See also Duyckinck's Cyc. of Amer. ''■ Prince Library Catalogue,^, i^. THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 459 the authors in scattering his points with utter disregard of propriety. Shepard, if he had a hand in the final fashioning of the preface, could not wink at the bad metre of the " poets," as he called them, and flung a squib at them in the shape of a quatrain, which is well known : — "Ye Roxbury poets, keep clear of the crime Of missing to give us very good rliyme ; And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen, But with the text's own words you will them strengthen." Still the work succeeded, by dictation if not by merit, and a second edition followed without much change, and Cotton was in due time able to write of it : " Because the former translation of the Psalms doth in many things vary from the original, and many times paraphraseth rather than translateth, besides divers other defects (which we cover in silence), we have endeavored a new translation of the Psalms into English metre, as near the original as we could express it; and those Psalms we sing both in our public churches and in private." ^ It gradually, however, became apparent that a " little more art " was necessary even in translating the inspired Word ; and so, after ten years, the book was committed for revision to President Dunster, who had the assistance of a young scholar, just from England, Richard Lyon. This edition — the third — contains some " spiritual songs," and was issued in 1650. Cotton now prepared the way for it by publishing " Singing of Psalms a Gospel ordinance," in which he made a special plea for the " little more art." Dunster claimed that he had added " sweetness of the verse " to the " gravity of the phrase of sacred writ." The book after- wards went through numerous editions, and became in later ones a consid- erable favorite in the mother country, some of the dissenting churches in England using it as late as 1725,^ while in Scotland traces of it are found as late as the middle of the last century.^ In Boston and vicinity it 1 Cotton, Way of the Congregational Churches, the library of the late E. A. Crowninshield, and p. 67. finally was lodged in the Brinley Collection ; and ^ Mr. Charles Deane has a " fifteenth " edi- when this was sold, March, 1879, it was bought by tion. London, 1725. Mr. Vanderbilt for iSi,200. A fifth (defective) 3 The original edition of 1640 is one of the copy passed from the Prince Library into the books greatly coveted by collectors of Ameri- collection of the late George Livemiore, where cana. The Prince Library (Boston Public Lib- it now is. Prince Catalogue, p. 7. A literal rary) had originally five copies. Two are now reprint of this edition was made in 1862 under in it. A third, of peculiar interest as having the supervision of Dr. Shurtleff. Memoir of been Richard Mather's own copy, passed by an George Livermore, by Charles Deane, Mass. understanding into the hands of the late Dr. Hist. Soc. Proc, January, 1869, p. 460. Brin- Shurtleff. On the scattering of his effects, the ley Catalogue, No. 84S. It is not quite certain deacons of the Old South Church, who are the whether the second edition, 1647, was printed owners in fee o£ the Prince Library, brought in Cambridge or in England. It is somewhat suit to recover this copy; but the statute of smaller in size, has some changes in spelling, limitations prevented their getting it. It was but is not otherwise different from the 1640 accordingly sold in 1876, and was bought by edition. The only copy known passed at the Mr. C. Fiske Harris, of Providence, for ^1,025, Brinley sale, i879,intothe Fiske Harris Library and has become the chief treasure of that gen- at Providence, bringing $435. Haven, Ante- tleman's very extensive collection of American Kevohuionary Publications; Brinley Catalogue, verse. A fourth copy passed similarly into No. 850. 46o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. remained in use quite as long. There exists a letter of a number of the first parish in Roxbury, addressed to their pastor in 1737, speaking of " The New England version of the Psalms, however useful it may formerly have been," as now "become, through the natural variableness of language, not only very uncouth, but in many places unintelligible." The letter sug- gests that the version of Tate and Brady be substituted.^ The change in this parish did not take place, however, till 1758, when Tate and Brady was first put in use ; but the Church Records add, " Some people were much offended at the same."^ There was, perhaps, a greater tendency in those days than even now to run into verse the record of daily occurrences, the outpouring of senti- ment, sympathy, and adulation. Allegory, anagram, and acrostic took everybody captive. The dead, memorable or not, must have their elegies. Every strange circumstance was a symbol of something to happen, or an in- terpretation of what had passed. If some credulous person reported to John Cotton upon a battle which had been witnessed between a snake and a mouse, the latter prevailing, the good teacher must find in it the conquest of the devil by the church. Interpretation, however, evinced the good man's skill far more than his verse; and even Cotton Mather found his grandfather's metrical lucubrations more sanctified with piety than elevated with poetry. The most noted versifier of the Colonial Period which Boston may claim is one whose grave-stone at Roxbury speaks of him as a " learned school- master and physician, and the renowned poet of New England." ^ This was — .^ Benjamin Tompson,* \-it^9Z.^ (J^. picturing the privations of the earlier times, when a Harvard graduate of 1662, who from 1667 to 1670 kept a school in Boston, but subse- quently removed from the town. His name is kept alive by what is us- ually quoted as " Our Forefathers' Song,'' a bit of verse with a ra- ther lively swing to it. " The dainty Indian maize Was eat with clam shells out of wooden trays, Under thatched hutts without the cry of rent. And the best sauce to every dish, Content." ' N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg. iii. 132. i C£. his family record in the N. E. Hist. 2 Drake, Roxhury, p. 296. and Gmeal. Reg., xv. 1 1 2. lie was also at one 3 Sluntleff, Boston, p. 277, and F. S. Drake's time a teacher in Charlestowii. See Mr. Henry chapter in this volume. H. Edes's chapter in the present volume. THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 46 1 ^rmit ^^z^^F/fU^ Boston can hardly claim Madam Anne Bradstreet, except as a passing so- journer, though Foster's press brought out the first American edition of her poems in 1678.^ She may have fol- lowed her husband, Simon Bradstreet, and her father, Thomas Dudley,^ when, with Winthrop, they passed over to Shawmut from Charlestown ; but Cambridge, Ipswich, and Andover claim her as a resident, though according to EUis,^ it is not at all unlikely her remains rest in the Dudley tomb at Roxbury, and John Norton, and Cotton Mather were but two of those who threw wreaths upon it in the shape of extravagant laudations. To the sulphurous production of Michael Wigglesworth, the Day of Doom, we may well be glad Boston lays no claim. Ezekiel Cheever, who after- wards became our famous schoolmaster, tutored the poet at New Haven ; Harvard educated him; Maiden listened to- his ministration, and all New England, with most constant so- ^)-2/>n«^ yt ^tav'/S^^l^ frUyC) licitude, hung upon his metric ■' ^ . I If the Day of Doom stands Jii<-R<3^l ULj^lfutrrl^ for the theology of the time, we have the same in a more dog- matic form in the sermons and warnings of Cotton, Norton, and the Mathers, of which the press was so prolific. " I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of Calvin," said John Cotton; and when Laud drove him out of Lincolnshire and England, the " Lantern of Saint Botolph ceased to burn When from the portals of that church he came To be a burning and a shining light Here in the wilderness." ^ Cotton's ascendancy seems to have been a purely personal one. Hub- bard speaks of his " insinuating and melting way." There is certainly little in his writings, as left to us, to fix our attention.^ The "walking library," as his grandson' called him, "the father and glory of Boston," seems like 1 It purports to have been corrected and en- that not a copy is known, according to Sibley, of larged by several poems found among her papers the irrst three editions. Cf. J. W. Dean's Memoir after her death (1672). There was a third of Wigglesworth in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Rfg., edition in 1758. April, 1863, and separately, two editions ; Brinley 2 It is interesting to note that her father's Catalogue, No. 89 ; Sibley's Harvard Graduates ; library contained one poem at least which may Tyler's American Literature, &c. Some of Wig- have gladdened her youthful muse, " Ye Vision glesworth's verses, not elsewhere printed, are in of Piers Plowman." Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, May, 1871. 8 John Harvard Ellis's introduction to his '" Longfellow, New England Tragedies,-^. 15. edition of her Poems, Charlestown, 1867. Cf. ^ Xhere is in the cabinet of the Massachu- also Professor M. C. Tyler, Hist, of Amer. Liter- setts Historical Society a MS. volume made by ature,\.2y&. Captain Robert Keayne, 1639, entitled, " Mr. 4 The poem went through eight American Cotton our Teacher, his Sermons or expositions editions, beside some English ones. Its popu- upon the Bookes of the New Testament." Cf, larity is best tested by the actual destruction of Ufass. Hist. Soc. Proc, April, i86S. the earlier issues in their gloomy service, so ' Cotton Mather, Mugualia. 462 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. one we would not know, when we read his defence of intolerance in his con- troversy with Roger Williams. His dismal scouring of the " Bloody Ten- ent" is curious as a study of the times, and is of some historical value, but unprofitable and almost unsupportable for all else. Of Hooker and Shepard Boston knew but little, except so far as Cambridge, so interlinked in all in- tellectual movements with the metropolis, lent a reflected light. Hooker comes down to us as a presence of mystical sanctity. What he wrote was clearly earnest, with not a little of the scholarly rhetoric of the Univer- sity. Shepard is a harsher and a darksome individuality.'^ Z^yio- f(.tktirS^ Norton came later, and removed from Ipswich to Boston in 1653, to make good, as he might, the place of Cotton. He signalized his reverence for his predecessor in a Life and Death of that deservedly fajnous Man of God, Mr. 'j^ohn Cotton, which he sent to London to be printed, in 1658. The admirer of a stalwart kind of chastisement finds all in him that Could be desired. The gloomy sectary wonders at the terror he caused to the impenitent. What he wrote was as sulphurous and as dry as a tinder-box, but in it dogma and conceit, it must be confessed, were at times somewhat amusingly jumbled.^ What Tyler ^ calls the Dynasty of the Mathers began with Richard, of Dorchester (1636-1669), whom we have already connected with the Bay Psalm Book. The Mather race gained a craftier power in his son Increase, who preached his first sermon in 1657; and when he printed his first book, twelve years later (1669), he began to manifest' that surprising fecundity which kept the presses of Boston, Cambridge, and London busy for more than a lifetime.* For nearly sixty years Increase Mather well-nigh ruled in the Boston, if not in the New England, theocracy. He was the first born on her soil to succeed to a power even greater than that of the early fathers. Springing from the times, he could never rise above their level. The son, Cotton (who falls, as an author, within the next period), proved a less vital force ; for the father was the clearer and abler writer, and in affairs much the stronger head. But both were unfortunately deficient in all that makes men able to lead their fellows to a higher plane. When we contemplate the power they possessed, we can but regret it was not spent to better advantage. Boston and New England were never lifted to any height, be it intellectual i His autobiography is printed in Young's ii., No. 2,659, &c.i H2Lve\\'s Ante-Revolzttionary Chronicles of Massaclittsetls, and liad previously Bibliography ; N. Paine's List of Mathers in the been printed by Neliemiali Adams, D.D., in a Amer.Aiiliq.Soc. Library. Ci. Proceedin«soi\.\\iA little volume in 1832. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. last Society, April 28, 1869, for Mather MSS., "■ 493- and the third part of the Prince Catalogue. The ••i There is quite enough printed of the ser- Mather papers have been printed by the Massa- mons of the time without going to the common- chusetts Historical Society. Increase Mather's place books of John Hull and others, which (ixsthookvi^s The Mystery of L^ael's Salvation ex- have preserved abstracts of many more. Hull's plained and applied; or a Discourse concernihg the notes are in the Prince collection. General Conversion of the Israelitish Nation. 3 History of American Literature. Being the substance of several Sermons preached by 4 See lists of his publications in Sibley's Increase Mather, M.A., Teacher of a Church in Harvard Graduates ; "izkiin' & Dictionary ; The Boston in New England. London, 1669. Mass. Prince Catalogue ; The Brinley Catalogue, i. and IList. Soc. Proc, November, 1874, p. -171. THE LITERATURE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 463 or spiritual, through the influence of the Mathers. So long as their influence prevailed, this people never saw the dawn of spiritual liberty; and never had taught to them the distinction between cultivation and pedantry. The only literature of the Colonial Period to be contemplated with much satisfaction is that which chronicles the history of its people, and tells the story of the " Empire in their brains," as Lowell phrases it. The Journal which Winthrop began on his embarkation and continued to his death, — the work of a grave, self-respecting gentleman, always moderate in expression, sometimes elevated, and not wholly free from incredible things vouched for by divers godly persons, — affords as noble a record of the beginnings of a people as any State could boast. The letter ^ of Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln (March 12, 1630) is replete with tenderest interest; and the story which it tells of hope and endurance is noble in its simplicity, written as it was, " rudely, having yet no table nor other room to write in than by the fireside, on my knee, in this sharp winter." We may not account the narra- tive which Roger Clap wrote for his children as contributing anything of literary value, but we should miss much that we know of the time and its trials were it omitted from our inheritance. Wood, who came over in 1629, and published his New England's Prospect in 1634, showed not a little delicacy in his descriptive touches, and we cannot but recognize in his pages something of the flavor of literary book-craft. There came over with Winthrop a Mr. Edward Johnson, who, after a ^ /I p little, returned to England. Again com- C:i y^W^TO- ^dAy^rOTK^ '"?> ^^ ''^^^ f^*" ^ ^^'^ y^^''^ at Charles- ^ U town (1636-42), and then removed to Woburn, to become its chief founder. Mr. Poole argues that he wrote his Wonder-working Providences of Sion's Savior'^ between 1649 and 165 1, when he was a resident of Woburn ; but he relies upon passages which might well have been inserted in a manuscript prepared as the events went on, as may be inferred from the marginal dates. It is only on this supposition that we can claim the book in part at least as a Boston emana- tion, — a book which, if Poole is not over-confident in his estimate, is the most important record of New England's life which the first hundred years brought forth. As a writer he is certainly not lovable ; he is awkward, 1 This first appeared in print in Massachu- sued by the younger Ferdinando Gorges in 1659, setts, or the First Planters of New England, 1696, under the title " America painted to the Life," and is reprinted in A/uiJ./i'/rf. Cff/Z.viii. Another purporting to be written by t lie elder and aug- manuscript, somewhat more extended, was fol- mented by the younger Gorges, is held to be for lowed by Farmer in New Hampshire Hist. Coll. the most part a fraudulent or ignorant issue of iv. ; in Force's Tracts,'\y.; and in Young's Chron- thesheetsof Johnson's book, which was reprinted ules of Massachusetts. \n z Mass. Hist. Coll. ii., iii., iv., vii., and viii. ; 2 Such is the running title, but A History of and again, edited, with 3 valuable introduction, A-^zcr £;?^/rt«(/ stands first on the title, — a sub- by W. F. Poole, Andover, 1867. Cf. Charles stitute very likely of the printer. The original Deane in No. Ainer. J?e-j., January, 1868, p. 319; edition was published at London, 1654. Tyler, E. A. Park in Congregational Quarterly, JdiUuary, American Literature, i. 137. What is known as 1868; J. D. Washburn in Am. Autic so SO" S«» Mr. Brinley, is one, — are in uniform smooth Ne qaofhkinnumui oaflipe \^aRinneua»h ^HglS'P ^ liOh a(aa Arctic tSo* JOHN ELIOT* S s«» So» SO« &o» &w so. S«>> S<» morocco, with gilt backs ••:' rAMBRJDGEt and sides and gilt leaves, «;, „., n,^ c ,^ 1. h aa j i 1 i^r^ §2 f <■'< j Ptioteuoop MUlpe Samml Cretn kJi M'Tituubilif {ilnfm,- Sw and were furnished with "" "^~ S«> s<» clasps. An English binder, V^i _ sg John Ratlife (or Ratclif- f^ff|f^f^^||^'^'f||^^^|f||^'|^|m|^||| fe), whom a prospect of , ' T •!• TT1 T TITLE TO THE INDIAN BIBLE.^ work on the Indian Bible brought to New England, was employed by Mr. Usher, and paid two and sixpence per Bible, he finding "thread, glue, pasteboard, and leather claps," for himself. In 1664 he addressed a memorial to the Commissioners of the United Colonies, complaining of the insufficiency of this pay. " I finde by in the Lenox Library, New York, and the library 1 [This and the other fac-similes in this sec- of the late Mr. John Carter Brown, of Provi- tion are taken from copies in the Mass. Hist, dence. Mr. Brinley's copy brought Jjyoo at the Society's library. The present is somewhat sale of the first part of his library, March, 1879. reduced. — Ed.] 470 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. experience," — he writes, from Boston, August 30, — "that in things be- longing to my trade, I here pay iSj. for that which in England I could buy for four shillings, they being things not formerly much used in this country." The Indian title is as follows : — MaMUSSE I WUNNEETUPANATAMWE | UP-BlBLUM GOD | NANEESWE | NuKKONE Testament | kah wonk | Wusku Testament. | — | Ne quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wuttinneumoh Christ | noh asoowesit | John Eliot. | — | Cambridge : | Printeuoop nashpe Samuel GreeM kah Marmaduke yohnson. \ r663. Literally : " The-whole Holy his-Bible God, both Old Testament and also New Testament. This turned [translated] by the-servant-of Christ, who is-called John Eliot," &c. At the end of the Old Testament are the words, Wohkukquohsinwog Quoshodtumwaemwg, i. e. " The Prophets are ended." The New Testament is followed by Eliot's metrical version of the Psalms : Wame KetooJwmae Uketoohoniaongash David (i. e. All the-singing Songs-of David) making one hundred double-column pages. They end on the second leaf of a sheet, and on its third leaf follows what has been called a " Catechism." It contains some rules for holy living, given as answers to two questions: I. "How can I walk all the day long with God?" II. "What should a Christian do, to keep perfectly holy the Sabbath day?" The paper used for this Bible was of excellent quality, of the size known to old printers as "pot" (from its original water-mark, a tankard), which should measure 12^^ by 15 inches, giving 6"%, by 7^ for the quarto fold. The type is described by Mr. Thomas as " full-faced bourgeois on brevier body." The first edition was exhausted in less than twenty years after its publication. Many copies were destroyed or lost during the Indian war of 1675-78.^ With the assistance of the Rev. John Cotton^ of Plymouth, ^ ^jl. Eliot undertook a thorough revision of the translation y^l^Jt (ffVUf^ for a new edition. Green, with his Indian journeyman ^ ' "James Printer," — the only man, according to Eliot, who was " able to compose the sheets and correct the press, with under- standing," — began their work on the New Testament in 1680, and finished it about the end of 168 1. The Old Testament followed slowly. Beginnino- in 1682, it was not through the press before the autumn of 1685. This edition was 2,000 copies. The Psalms in Metre (thoroughly revised) and the two-page "Catechism" follow the New Testament, as in the first edition. To the general title is added, after the name of the translator, " Nahohtdeu onchetde Printeuoomuk," i. e. " Second-time amended impres- sion." Green's name stands alone in the imprint: "Cambridge. Printeuoop' nashpe Samuel Green. MDCLXXXV." 1 [There seems also to have been some trouble 2 [He was the son of John Cotton, o£ Boston in the printing office at this time. See Green's Sibley, Harv^trd Graduates, p. 496, gives an ac- letter in the " Winthrop Papers" in 5 Mass. count of him, with references — Ed 1 Hist. Coll. i. 422. — Ed.] ■■' THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE. 47 1 At the end of the Old Testament are tables of the " Book-Names in the Bible contained, and who many Chapters in each Book." At the foot of this page an erratum in the impression of the New Testament is pointed out: "James I. 26. Asuhkaue wenan, ogketash, qut asookekodtam nehenwonche wuttah." Four words had been omitted in printing the verse referred to : " After tongue, read, but deceiveth his-own heart." In some few copies of this edition, a dedication to Robert Boyle and the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel to the Indians, printed on a single page, was inserted between the title and the beginning of the text. A few years ago Prince's copy (now in the Boston Public Library) was the only one in which this dedication had been found. Since then, at least two others have come to light : one is in the Lenox Library, New York ; the other, from the Marquis of Hastings's library, purchased by Mr. Brinley in 1869, — clean and fresh as when it left the hands of the Boston binder, — now belongs to the Hon. Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn, N. Y.^ An interesting paper might be made by bringing together such frag- ments of the history of all known copies of Eliot's Bible as could be gathered from the autograph names and notes of their former owners. One of Mr. Brinley's copies of the edition of 1685 belonged to the Rev. John Baily, of Watertown, and afterwards assistant minister of the First Church in Boston: "Jo. Baily, Jan. i, 8f. N. E." Secretary Rawson was its next owner, and then it passed to his son, Grindall, the minister of Mendon, who used to preach to the Indians in their own language, of which (says Mather) " he was a master that had scarce an equal." He wrote in it: "Grindall Rawson. His Indian Bible, Given him by his Father. 1712." Another copy in the same collection has the autograph of Governor " Wm. Stoughton," and below, that of the Rev. "John Danforth, 1713," — the son of Eliot's colleague in Roxbury. A third belonged, in 1759, to Zachariah Mayhew, who succeeded his father (Rev. Experience Mayhew) as Indian missionary at Martha's Vineyard. Several copies of the second edition — nearly all imperfect, soiled, and worn by use — bear the autographs of Indian owners. One of these is in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. Josiah Willard (the future Secretary) gave it 1 In neither edition can Eliot's Bible be re- Allan's collection, mentions his copy of the garded as a " veiy rare " book. Mr. Nathaniel Indian Bible, and remarks that one " was re- Paine, in 1873, printed a list of fifty-four copies cently sold at the sale of Mr. Corwin's collection owned in the United States, — twenty-six of the for two hundred dollars." Mr. Allan's copy — first edition and twenty-eight of the second. At one of the "royal" twenty — was sold, a few reast five or six copies might now be added to years later, for ^25, and was re-sold at a con- that list. The Lenox Library and Mr. Brinley's siderable advance. Mr. John A. Rice's copy have each two of the twenty "royal copies" was bought at auction for $1,135, ^nd sold, in (with the dedication to Charles II.) of the first 1870, for $1,050. Mr. Bernard Quaritch, the edition. But (as was observed of Roger Wil- well-known London bookseller, sold Mr. Petit's liams's Key) in apparent violation of a law of copy, a few years ago, for ;^2oo, and in his last trade, as copies multiply, the price rises. Forty General Catalogue (1874) marks a copy of the years ago a fair copy of "Eliot's Bible " — the first edition, with English title and dedication edition did not matter — would sell in a New (from the library of Trinity College), at ;^225. York or Boston auction-room, perhaps, for $40. If many more copies are found, nobody can In i860 Dr. Wynne, in an account of Mr. John guess how high the price will rise. 472 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. in 1706 to John Wainwright (probably the Harvard graduate of 1709, son of Col. John, of Ipswich), who wrote: " Joannis Wainwright Liber Donum Doiii Josiae Willard, Jan"" 10, i7of." A few years afterwards it came into the possession of "Josiah Attaunitt" alias "Josiah Ned," who left his name on several pages and scribbled memoranda on the margins. He seems to have been one of the Christian Indians who lived near Duxbury or at Mattakesit. In one place he wrote, "Josiah Ned, 1718;" in another, "Josiah Attaunitt yeu wutaimun in March 18 in . ..." i. e. "J. A. this belongs to him," &c. On the margin of one page is a note, dated " ut febnuany 7 tay 171 5." (The Massachusetts Indians did not pronounce the r, substituting n for it.) The writer was "at this time at the house of Pammohkauwut, who lives at Duxbury" (" ut ohquompi ut wekit Pammoh- kauwut noh pamontog ut Togspane"). In another place the name of Duxbury is differently spelled : — "fevuaiiy bwiiay 20 tay, 1715, ut wekit pamohkauwut ut tukspany kah yeu wutappin annis mommehthemmut unnoowau, nuttom nasit saup ; " (i. e. " February, Friday, 20th day, 1715, in the house of Pammohkauwut at Duxbury, and here lodged. Annis Mommehthemmut said, I am going to Nauset to-morrow.") One of the Connecticut Historical Society's copies — " Rec"^ from the Rev'^ Mr. Experience Mayhew by Mr. Ebenezer Allien, April, 1719 " — has two or three autographs of an Indian owner, probably of the Vineyard : " Nen elisha yeu noosooquohwonk," — i.e., "I, Ehsha, this my writing," and once, "thes my piple" (bible). In many places, particularly the books of Genesis and Isaiah and the Psalms, the paper is fairly worn out by use. A copy in the library of the American Antiquarian Society was the prop- erty of an Indian named " Josiah Spotsher," who left some •manuscript notes on its margins. Between the leaves of one of Mr. Brinley's copies was found an autograph letter from Zachary Hossueit, an Indian preacher at Gayhead, Martha's Vineyard, to Solomon Briant, the pastor of the Indian church at Marshpee ("Mespeh"), written in 1766. After mention of Eliot's version it would be unpardonable to omit the eel-pot story. Everybody knows it ; but then everybody expects either to tell or hear it again whenever the Indian Bible is talked of When Ehot — so the story goes — was translating Judges v. 28, — "The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice" &c., — he had some difficulty in finding the proper Indian word for " lattice." At last, after much questioning and describing, " a long, barbarous, and unpronounceable word " was given him, and took its place in the verse. Years afterwards he discovered that he had used for " lattice " the Indian name for an eelpot. The story is a good one, and the only fault to be found with it is, that, in the verse referred to, Eliot merely transferred the English word " lattice," without attempting to translate it : — "Ohkasoh Sisera sohhooquaeu ut kenogkeneganit, kah mishontooau papuslipe latttce-nt." THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE. 473 Eliot made, of course, some mistakes in translating, though the "eel-pot" lattice is not one of them. On the whole, his version was probably as good as any first version that has been made, from his time to ours, in a previ- ously unwritten and so-called " barbarous " language. It is certainly much better than some modern specimens of mission-translation. The most curious mistake I have detected is in the word used for " virgin." Among the Indians chastity was a masculine virtue, and Eliot's Natick interpreter did not understand that the noun wanted was, feinitmie. Subsequent instruc- tion doubtless made the matter clear ; but in the Indian Bible the parable in Matthew xxv. 1-12, is of "the ten chaste young men" (piukqussuog penompaog, — the syllable omp marking the masculine gender), — and so in every place in which " virgin " occurs in the English version, though in most cases the context clearly establishes the true gender. The right word was keegsquaji, which is to be found (though seldom used) in every Algon- kin language. Another little mistake occurs in 2 Kings ii. 23, where the bad boys say to the prophet, " Go up, thou bald head." In the Indian the last word is, literally, " 3fl//-head," pompasuhkonkanontup . Either the interpreter mistook the word as pronounced by Eliot, or he thought it well to aggravate the insult by likening Elisha's smooth head to a foot-ball ; for poinpasuhkonk denotes " a ball to play with." In the summer' of 1663, before the Indian Bible was out of press, Mr. Eliot began to translate Baxter's Call to the Unconverted. " The keen- ness of the edge and liveliness of the spirit of that book, through the blessing of God, may," he wrote, " be of great use unto these Sons of this our Morning." His translation was finished December 3 1 ; and before the end of August, 1664, a thousand copies were printed and distributed to Indian scholars. Perhaps not one of these is now in existence. Of a sec- ond edition, printed in 1688, in small octavo (pp. 188), several copies are preserved in American libraries. Mr. Eliot next undertook the translation of two treatises by the Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge, — -The Sincere Convert and 27?^ Sound Believer. But before he had these ready for the press he was requested by the Corporation in London (of which Robert Boyle was now the governor) to give precedence to Bishop Bayly's Practice of Piety. This work, now scarcely known to general readers, was for more than a century in high repute with all orthodox Christians of the Church of England. Before the death of its author, in 1632, it had reached its twenty-eighth edition, and had been translated into French, German, and Welsh. Bishop Bayly had been one of the domestic chaplains of James I. ; and several editions of The Practice of Piety were dedicated to Charles I., when Prince of Wales. This fact, perhaps, added to the popularity of the book after the Restora- tion, — a popularity which outlasted the century.^ Boyle and the Corporation — whose charter had been renewed by the 1 I have "the 69th edition," printed in 1743, and the seventy-first edition, of 1792, is in the library of Harvard College. VOL. I. — 60. 474 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. favor of Charles II. — thought it expedient that the work of a loyal Church- man should, in preference to one of Baxter's or Shepard's, have place next the Indian Bible. Baxter, in his Life and Times, alludes to this : " When Mr. Eliot had printed all the Bible in the Indians' language, he next trans- lated this, my Call to the Unconverted, as he wrote to us here : and though it was here thought prudent to begin with the Practice of Piety, because of the envy and distaste of the times against me, he had finished it before that advice came to him." It came, however, in season to stop the work on Shepard's treatises. In August, 1664, Eliot wrote to the Commissioners of the Colonies : " I have Mr. Shepard's Sincere Convert and Sound Believer almost translated, . . . yet by advertisement from the Hon'ble Corporation, I must lay that by, and fall upon the Practice of Piety, which I had intended to be the last," &c. The translation of the Practice of Piety — considerably abridged — was printed in 1665, under the title, Manitowompae Pomantamooiik, &c. A sec- ond edition followed the second edition of the Bible in 1685.^ Eliot's next work, undertaken on Boyle's suggestion, was The Indian Grammar Begun, or an Essay to bring the Ijtdian Language into Rules, &c. " They are pleased to put me upon a Grammar of this language," — he wrote to the Commissioners in August, 1664, — "which my sons and I have oft spoken of, but now I must (if the Lord give life and strength) be doing about it. But we are not able to do much in it, because we know not the latitudes and corners of the language : some general and useful collections I hope the Lord will enable us to produce." His eldest sons, John and Joseph, had for some years been his helpers in the Indian work.^ In the dedication to Boyle and the Corporation, Eliot puts a very modest estimate on the value of his work : " I have made an Essay unto this diffi- cult service, and laid together some bones and 7'ibs preparatory at least for such a work. It is not worthy the name of a Grammar'' It does not, it is true, compass all " the latitudes and corners " of the language, and is not to be regarded as the measure of Eliot's mastery of it in translation ; for in the Indian Bible he constantly uses forms of inflection and construction of which his Grammar makes no mention; but it continues to be an important " help of such as desire to learn the same." ^ 1 T\ie. first is extremely rare. The American HiHor^ of Prinling, i. 4S0, says that "it accom- Antiquarian Society has a copy, and another panied some editions of the Psalter, /. e. they (formerly Mr. Brinley's) is in the library of Yale were occasionally bound together in one vol- College. ume, small octavo." This is obviously a mistake, - [Sibley, Harvard Graduates, pp. 476, 530, since the Grammar is in quarto. 1 infer that he gives an account of these. — Ed.] had not seen a perfect copy, for he describes it 8 The Grammar was printed in 1666, by as of "about 60 pages," and places it among Marmaduke Johnson, in a thin pot-quarto of 66 books published by S. Green in 1664. Possibly pages and two preliminary leaves. It well de- some copies were bound with the quarto Psalter served the pains bestowed by I'ickering and of 1663. One bound with the New Testament Uuponceau in editing a reprint of it in 2 is in the library of the University of Edinburgh. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix The original edition was, In this country, the only copies I have heard of probably, of 500 copies. Of these 450 were are in the Lenox Library, the libraty of the bound separately, and a few were bound with American Philosophical Society, the late Mr. J. copies of the New Testament of 1663. Thomas, Carter Brown's, and the writer's. THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE. 475 The translation of Shepard's Sincere Convert — in Indian, Sampwutteahae Quinnitppekompauaenin — was not printed till 1689, when Eliot was eighty- five years old. It was revised for the press, and " in a few places amended," by the Rev. Grindall Rawson (a son of Secretary Rawson), the minister of Mendon, who had learned to preach to the Indians in their own language, and was for many years active in mission work among them. In 1691, the year after Eliot's death, Mr. Rawson's translation of John Cotton's Catechism, Spiritual Milk for Babes, drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments, for the Nourishment of their Souls, was printed, in a tract of sixteen pages (of which three are blank), by Samuel and Bartholomew Green, — the last Indian book that had the Cambridge imprint. The next — five sermons of Increase Mather's, translated by the Rev. Samuel Danforth — was printed in Boston, in 1698, in a small octavo of one hundred and sixty-four pages. -^ The same partners printed, in 1699, Grindall Rawson's translation of the Confession of Faith adopted by the Synod at Boston in 1680 ( Wjin- namptamoe Sanipooaonk, &c.), and in 1700 An Epistle to the Christian Indians, by Cotton Mather, having the Indian and English on opposite pages. Both these books have on their title-pages the Indian name for Boston, — Mushauwoniuk, denoting a " place to which boats go," or " the boat-landing place." The English colonists corrupted it to Shawmut, and on the other side of the Indian ferry, in Charlestown, to Mishawum. In Indian records at Martha's Vineyard the same word is found, without the locative suffix, — as, nieshawwamiic. The Hatchets, to hew down the Tree of Sin, whicli bears the Fruit of Death, was the odd title under which were published, in English and Indian, " The Laws, by which the Magistrates are to punish Offenders among the Indians, as well as among the EngHsh." Of this tract (pp. 16, sm. 8vo) I have seen only two copies, — one in the Antiquarian Society's library; the other (formerly Mr. Brinley's) is now in the Lenox Library, New York. It has no separate title-page. The colophon is, " Boston : Printed by B. Green. 1705." A manuscript note by T. Prince ascribes this tract to Cotton Mather; but I am confident that the translation was not made by him. Of several other books added, after 1700, to the "Indian Library," as Mather terms it, two are specially noteworthy, — the Massachusetts Psalter, translated by Experience Mayhew, and the Indian Primer of 1 720. The Massachtisee Psalter was printed in Boston, "by B. Green and J. Printer," in 1709. It has title-pages in Indian and English; and the 1 Masukkenukeeg Matcheseaenvog weque- encouraged to come to Christ and that NOW toog kah wuttooanatoog Uppeyaonont Christoh quicldy. ... By Increase Mather, Teacher of kah ne YEUYEU teanuk. . . . Nashpe Increase the Church in Boston. . . . These discourses Mather. Kukkootomvvehteaenuh ut oomoeuweh- are turned into Indian language by S. D. — In komonganit ut Bostonut, ut N'ew England. . . . Boston, it-was-prinled by Bartholomew Green Yeush kukkookootomwehteaongash qushkinnu- and John Allen. i6g8.] muiiash en Inciiane uiniontoowaonganit nashpe A copy of this first book printed in Boston S. D. — Bostonut, Printeuoop nashpe Barlliolo- in the Massachusetts language brought JSiro at mew Green, kah John Allen. 1698." the sale of the first part of Mr. Brinley's. library \TranslatioH : Greatest Sinners called and in 1879. 476 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Indian and English versions of the Psalms and the Gospel of John are printed in columns side by side. Mr. Mayhew, the translator, was a native of Martha's Vineyard, where he had been preaching to the Indians since 1694, and carrying on the work his grandfather began about 1642. Thomas Prince says of him : " The Indian language has been from his infancy natu- ral to him ; and he has been all along accounted one of the greatest masters of it that hath been known among us." Mafachufee PSALTER : ASU H. Uk-kuttoohomaongafh DAVID Wcche WUNNAUNCHBMOOKAONK Ne anfukhogup JOHN, Vt hdiaxe kah Endijht Nq>atuhquonkaiIi. ' T^e woh fogkdrapagunukhettit • - Kakoketaliceaekuppannegk, akctamunnat, kali wohwohumunat Wunnctuppancam- \vc Wufliikwhongafti. John*v. 39. t^atimexkontimotk Wuffuktahankaiiajh, tiemut- theutjeufh kuttutiHaittamumaet kuttahton- u>«9 micheme pettiantammieeuk ; kab nifih tiajhog wauvia»HukqueniJh. BgSTOtT, If.E. Upprimhomuniieau B. Green, kali J. Prhten wutche quhciantamwe CHAPANUKKEG wutche onchckchcouunnac wumiauncMni- mookaonk. uc Nirii>-£«g/a»«>Ai>4.*i* i-^a, ^^s "° titlepage ; but the first signa- •mi#4*4i**4**Hi**t*f' ture (eight leaves) is full. It has a ** i...uj.r_k::kT^^2C text in Indian, Proverbs xxii. 6, " Train X oparf»tBVV»xyZi ^ up a child, &c. This httle book (it ^ ' ' ^ measuresabout three and one-half inches * A B Ch D ET GH 1 K L M ^ by two and seven-eighths inches) con- 2 NOPQRSTLIVW 'ft' tains the alphabet, in Roman and Italic ; ^ X' Y ^» ^ spelling and reading lessons ; the Lord's ^ ^ Prayer, with a catechetical exposition ; ^ « if rf iff t « M »»'««;> -^ "The Ancient Creed," English and In- *»• \*i * 'ffv 9 xy z- ^ dian, with an exposition; "The Large Catechism" (fifty-nine pages); "A Short Catechism" (three pages); and "The Numeral Letters and Figures." The first reading lesson tells us (in ^^ ..1^ Indian) what was the course of in- ^ai au ci ^.^CiaoiOOQD 0U» ^ struction in the Indian schools. It S a^ says : " Wise doing to read Catechism. *nttftft|44ffffffHf*-* First, read Primer. Next, read Re- THE INDIAN PRIMER.^ pentance Calling {i.e., Baxter's Call). Then, read Bible." John Cotton's Catechism, Spiritual Milk for Babes, translated by Grindall Rawson, and printed at Cambridge in 1691, has been mentioned. In 1720 1 "The Indian Primer; or, The way of train- printed (Edinburgh, 1877), with an introduction ingup of our Indian youth in the good knowledge by John Small, M.A., librarian of the Uni- of God, in the knowledge of the Scriptures, and versify. in an ability to Reade. Composed by J. E. ... ^ [This is the full size of the second remaining Cambridge, I'rinted 1669." It has been re- leaf of the little book. — En] %^ • 1 - •"- W. - J ^ «► •m*- Uanontoon^a&ffi. 4i*- % a c i u. ** Neefoatcowaafh. THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE. 479 Bartholomew Green printed in Boston The Indian Primer or The First Book. By which children may knoiu truely to read the Indian Language. And Milk for Babes. This is a small duodecimo of eighty-four leaves, with English and Indian on opposite pages, the page-numbers (1-84) being double. On the verso of the Indian title is a representation of the seal of Massachusetts, and on the verso of the last leaf a ship bearing the name of " Royall Charles." Beginning with the alphabet and progressive spelling lessons from syllables of two letters to words " of fifteen syllables or parts," the volume comprises the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, with catechetical expositions; Cotton's "Milk for Babes;" a series of selected texts, arranged under several heads, — " General Duties," " God's Judgments against Disobedient Children," " The Promises of God which the poor Indians may hope to receive," " Against Idleness," &c., — forms of Prayer, and a few Psalms in metre. ^ As an example of the " Kuttoowongash nabo nishwe Syllablesooooash asuh Chadchaubenumooongash " (words of thirteen syllables or parts), take this : — Num-meh-quon-tam-wut-te-a-ha-on-ga-nun-no-nash, — meaning " our remembrances " or " recollections." The longest word (the only one that r&a.c\\es fifteen syllables) is — Nuk-kit-te-a-mon-te-a-nit-te-a-on-ga-nun-no-nash, — which means " our mercies; " but to the Indians it meant a good deal more than this, — having an exactness of denotation to which the English does not attain : ( i ) it distinguishes the mercies we receive from mercies we show or dispense to others; (2) it means our peadiar mercies, not shared by those to whom we speak, — " ours " only, not those which " you and we " enjoy in common; and (3) it designates these mercies as voluntarily he- stowed, — the manifestations of a merciful disposition. One might find it difficult to put all this in English in less than fifteen syllables. Cotton Mather added several tracts to " The Indian library." Perhaps he was not unwilling to display his acquaintance with a language '' wherein words are," he says, " of sesquipedalian and unaccountable dimensions." When questioning a bewitched girl, he discovered that the devils who tor- mented her " understood his Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; " but "the Indian language they did seem not well to understand." The devils who found Mather's Indian too hard for them were not without excuse. Judging from the specimens he printed, he had not mastered the rudiments of the grammar, and could not construct an Indian sentence idiomatically. It is not certain how much of these translations was his own work, and how much was ob- ^ A portion of this Primer (tlie spelling les- 1720 in the Prince Library (Boston Public Li- sons, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandnienls) brary), and another in the Lenox Library, New was reprinted in the second volume of the Massa- York. I have two copies ; and there are two or chusetts Historical Collections, 3d series, in Mr. three others in private libraries in this country. Pickering's Ajjpendix to Cotton's Indian Vociih- The British Museum has one (in the Grenville ulary. There is a good copy of this Primer of collection). 480 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. tained from incompetent interpreters. His Epistle to the Christian Indians, IViissiikwhonk en Christianeue asiih peantamwe INDIANOG, &c., was printed in 1700, and again in 1706; Family Religion excited and assisted, in 17 14; A Monitor for Communicants, in 1716; and "a taste of the language," of four pages, in his India Christiana (a discourse before the Commission- ers for Propagating the Gospel), in 1721. In all these the English and Indian are on opposite pages throughout. In 1707 Mather published Another Tongue brought in, to Confess the Great Saviour of the World, &c., — in " a tongue used among the Iroquois Indians in America," the first specimen of that language printed in this country.' In 1735 the Rev. John Sergeant began his mission work among the Housatunnuk Indians at Stockbridge. These Indians were Mohegans, or " Muhhekanneuk." Their language abounds in gutturals; and Mr. Sergeant had great difficulty in learning to speak and write it. In about five j'ears, however, he succeeded so well that the Indians used to say: " Our minister speaks our language better than we ourselves can do." About 1737, by the help of interpreters, he translated, first, some prayers, and afterwards Dr. Watts's shorter catechism into this language. These were printed, though whether before or after Mr. Sergeant's death in 1749 I cannot say. Two tracts, one of sixteen and the other of twenty-four pages, are stitched to- gether. Neither has title-page or colophon. One contains " A Morning Prayer," " An Evening Prayer," and " Catechism ; " the other, forms of Prayer, before and after Sermon, at the Sacrament, for the afflicted, of thanksgiving for recovery, &c. I do not find these tracts noticed by any bibliographer. They are very rare.^ In 1 795 The Assembly's Catecliism was printed at Stockbridge, by Loring Andrews, " in the Moheakunnuk, or Stockbridge Indian language," in an octavo' pamphlet of thirty-two pages, which contains also (pp. 27-31) Dr. Watts's Shorter Catechism for Children, — a revised reprint, apparently, of Mr. Sergeant's translation. The edition, probably, was not large, and copies are now scarce. ^-J^;^:^^ 7-*<*»7 i^C ^.^^^ 1 Some account of this very rare volume has Gospel among the Indians, 1670, London, 167 r. been given in the Catalogue of "Books and Of the series of tracts on Christianizing the Tracts in the Indian Language," &c., in the Indians, most will be found either in Sabine's Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, reprints or in the Mass. Hist, Coll., and to them No. 61 (October, 1873). [This account is by Dr. maybe added the reprint by Marvin. The ac- TrumbuU, and is the fullest yet published, and count which Mather's Magnalia gives of Eliot's gives the libraries which contain them. There labors is largely copied by Dunton. A letter of is a list comprising only the books printed by Eliot's, 1664, with a note on his iniblications by S. Green and M. Johnson, in Cambridge, given Dr. Trumbull, will be found m the A'. E. Hist. in Thomas's Hist, of Printing, new ed., i. 65. Mr. and Geneal. Reg. April, 1855. — Ed.] Whitniore gave a list of Eliot's publications in 2 j l<„ow of only two copies: one in the his edition of Dimton's Letters, p. 204, and it library of the Essex Institute, Salem, the other is copied by Mr. Marvin in his reprint, 1868, of belonging to Hon. Henry C. Murphy, of Brook- Eliot's Brief Narrative of the Progress of the lyn, N. Y. CHAPTER XVIII. LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. BY HORACE E. SCUDDER. TOURING the military occupation of Boston in the winter of 1775-76, ^-^ a two-story, wooden, frame house which stood under the shadow of the Old South, and had lately been the parsonage attached to it, was pulled down by the soldiers for firewood. It was then old and decayed, and there is no description of it by which one can accurately reproduce it to his mind,-' but for nineteen years it was the residence of John Winthrop, the foremost man in the colony of Massachusetts Bay; in it he died in 1649, and upon its walls hung the portrait of its owner, which is now in the Senate Chamber at the State House in Boston ; in its parlor gathered the chief men of the town to consult upon the solemnities of the dead Governor's funeral ; and here, during Winthrop's lifetime, was centred much of the social dignity of the town. The house, then not far from the centre of the town, must have been considerable in size, for his own household was large and he enter- tained many guests. On one occasion, when certain prisoners were brought to Boston, he " caused them to be brought before him in his hall, where was a great assembly ; " but that it was plain to severity may be inferred not only from Winthrop's conscientious economy, but from the reproof which he administered to his deputy in 1632, " that he did not well to be- stow so much cost about wainscotting and adorning his house in the begin- ning of a plantation, both in regard of the public charges, and for example," — a reproof, to be sure, which should not mislead us as to the deputy's ex- travagance or ostentation, since the wainscot was affirmed to be only clap- boards nailed upon the inside of the house to keep out the cold. We get a glimpse of the Governor's house and garden, and of his cere- monious hospitality, when we read in his history, under date of 1646, — • [It stood nearly opposite the foot of School street. The estate passed from Winthrop to his Street, end to the street; and while the land on son Stephen, whose widow conveyed it to John whichtheOldSouthstandswasagarden attached, Norton, pastor of the First Church; and by his the place was called " The Green." When the will and his widow's consent it passed, in 1677, British pulled down the house, they cut down to the Old South Church, and the house be- also a row of fine button-woods, which skirted the came its parsonage. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 61. 482 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " Being the Lord's Day, and the people ready to go to the assembly after dinner, Monsieur Marie and Monsieur Louis, with Monsieur D'Aulnay his secretary, arrived at Boston in a small pinnace, and Major Gibbons sent two of his chief officers to meet them at the water side, who conducted them to their lodgings sine strepitu. The public worship being ended, the Govemour returned home, and sent Major Gib- bons, with other gendemen, with a guard of musketeers to attend them to the Gover- nour's house, who, meeting them without his door, carried them into his house, where they were entertained with wine and sweetmeats, and after a while he accompanied them to their lodgings. . . . The Lord's Day they were here, the Govemour acquaint- ing them with our manner, that all men either come to our public meetings or keep themselves quiet in their houses, and finding that the place where they lodged would not be convenient for them that day, invited them home to his house, where they continued private all that day until sunset, and made use of such books, Latin and French, as he had, and the liberty of a private walk in his garden, and so gave no offence." ^ At the time of his death, the Governor's house could not have been the most substantial in the town. Already a traveller was speaking of Boston as a city-like town and calling attention to its beautiful and large buildings, " some fairly set forth with brick, tile, stone, and slate, and orderly placed with comely streets, whose continual enlargement presages some sumptuous city." ^ The harbor was marked by wharves, and lanes ran up from it past houses whose gardens extended to the water's edge, while on the streets were houses of shopkeepers who lived above their shops, as London trades- men then did almost universally. On either side of the cove in which the chief part of the town lay were a fort and a battery, with a second battery beneath the fort a little later, while a beacon rose from the hill behind, and Castle Island in the harbor suggested the possibility of other enemies than the Indians. There were pleasant farms at Brookline ; and the neigh- boring towns of Cambridge, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Charlestown had their own independent life and fortune. At the time of Winthrop's death the great flow of immigrants had sub- sided. The occupants of Boston were Englishmen in the prime of life, and a generation of young people born on the soil and receiving their first im- pressions from the circumstances of an intense settlement where the laws, customs, and opinions of the first settlers had not only full sway but all the activity which belongs to power at work upon plastic material. It is pos- sible to give but fragmentary pictures of a life which was restless, constantly changing, and mingling conservative and progressive characteristics, but the point of time which we have taken is perhaps the culminating point of col- onial life. After this, political, commercial, and social movements look for- ward to the provincial period. Before this, the elements of the colonial life had been in solution, and the immediate influence of England more em- MSeeMr. C.C.Smith's chapter on "Boston 2 Johnson, Wonder-working Providence p and the Neighboring Jurisdictions" in this vol- 43. [See Mr. Bynner's chapter in this 'vol- ume.— Ed.] ume. — Ed.] BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 483 phatic ; but now time had been allowed for a tolerably distinct community to assert its individuality. The town was still thoroughly English in its social traditions, but the democratic leaven was at work. The ampler scope for individual energy, and the sudden accession of political rights and commercial import- ance, began to tell upon manners. Already, in 165 1, the General Court was enacting that if a man was not worth two hundred pounds he should not wear gold or silver lace, or buttons, or points at the knees ; and, because of the scarcity of leather, they should not walk in great boots. Women not enjoying property to the value of two hundred pounds were forbidden to wear silk, or tiffany hoods, or scarfs. The distinctions of dress were familiar and accepted distinctions both of social rank and of occupation, and the ne- cessities of a primitive settlement emphasized them ; while the sumptuary laws borrowed from English legislation were inspired by Puritan repression, and aimed, not at destroying distinctions, but at regulating dress in accord- ance with sober and decorous principles. The statute-book shows the constant study of the magistrates to make the outward man conform to what was held to be the inward spirit of the community. As early as 1634, in view of " some new and immodest fashions," it was " ordered that no per- son, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either vi'oolen, silk, or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty or forfeiture of such clothes, &c. ; also, that no person, either man or woman, shall make or buy any slashed clothes, other than one slash in each sleeve, and another in the back ; also, all cutworks, embroid- ered or needlework caps, bands and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn, under the aforesaid penalty ; also, all gold or silver girdles, hat-bands, belts, ruffs, beaver hats, are prohibited to be bought and worn hereafter, under the aforesaid penalty, &c. . . . Men and women," however, had " liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of, except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great rails, long wings, &c." ^ Five years later a law was passed against " short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered in the wearing thereof," " sleeves more than half an ell wide in the widest place thereof," " immod- erate great breeches, knots of ribbon, broad shoulder-bands and rails, silk rases, double ruffs and cuffs," reasoning that " the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities " tended " to little use or benefit, but to the nourish- ing of pride and exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others." 2 The leaders of the colony, seeking first the kingdom of God, after their fashion, took very much to heart the injunction not to be distracted for the body what it should put on. There can be little doubt that high-spirited men like Nathanael Ward looked with indignation upon a petty regard for dress when God was " shaking the heavens over his head and the earth under his feet ; " but the unceasing agitation of these questions regarding dress in- 1 A/^ss. Col Records, i. 126. ^ Ibid. i. 274. 484 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. dicates the presence of an element in Boston life of that day which rarely found expression in literature, except in the objurgatory literature of its opponents. We confess to a lively interest in the men and women of Ward's time, who were obstinately letting their human nature skip about in fine clothes. They made a part of the community as clearly as did the Quakers, who wished to strip off all obstructions to the exhibition of nature, or the Puritans, who vainly sought for a perfect correspondence between the outer man and the inner sanctified spirit. Ward's fulminations were honest enough, and in his judgment altogether righteous ; but they are serviceable now chiefly as revealing the presence of the coquette and the fop in the Boston of 1645, as distinguished from the gentlewoman and gentleman. He writes : — " It is known more than enough that I am neither niggard nor cynic to the due bravery of the true Gentry. ... I honor the woman that can honor herself with her attire : a good text always deserves a fair margent. I am not much offended if I see a trim far trimmer than she that wears it : in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility will allow, I can afford with Lx)ndon measure. But when I hear a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week ; what the mediustertian fashion of the court, — I mean the very newest : with egge to be in it in all haste, whatever it be, — I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing ; fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honored or humored. To speak moderately [a delicious reserve !], I truly confess it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how those women should have any true grace or valuable virtue that have so little wit as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garbs as not only dismantles their native, lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gaunt bar-geese, ill-shapen shotten sheU-fish, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or at the best into French flirts of the pastry, which a proper English woman would scorn with her heels. It is no marvel they wear drails on the hinder part of their heads ; having nothing, it seems, in the forepart but a few squirrel's brains to help them frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another. . . . We have about five or six of them in our colony : if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my fancy of them for a month after." ^ And then he passes in his contempt to the long-haired men, who also were attacked in legislation at a later period ; for in 1675 the grand jury was empowered to present to the county courts, at its discretion, men wearing long hair like woman's hair, either their own or others, and who indulge in " cutting, curling, and immodest laying oiit their hair, which practice doth prevail and increase, especially among the younger sort." It is evident from the terms of the legislation that the Government was sohcitous to preserve the distinctions of social rank, and to check that equality of dress and custom which was the outcome of a growing equality of condition. The Court in 1651, when limiting the use of gold and silver lace, put upon record, as the occasion of its law, " its utter detestation and dislike that men or women of mean condition should take upon them the 1 The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, 26, 27. BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 485 garb of Gentlemen, by wearing gold or silver lace, or buttons, or points at their knees, or to walk in great boots ; or women of the same rank to wear silks, or tiffany hoods, or scarfs, which, though allowable to persons of greater Estates or more hberal Education, yet we cannot but judge it in- tolerable in persons of such like condition." A proviso, however, was added, which shows that the money test was only one convenient way of regulat- ing the dress; for it is stated that " this law shall not extend to the restraint of any magistrate or public officer of this jurisdiction, their wives and chil- dren, who are left to their discretion in wearing of apparel, or any set- tled military officer or soldier in the time of military service, or any other whose education and employments have been above the ordinary degree, or whose estates have been considerable though now decayed." A reference to the same matter occurs in an anonymous letter to Gov- ernor Winthrop, written probably in 1636-37: — "There is another thing that I have noted since I wrote the enclosed letter, that many in your plantations discover much pride as appeareth by the letters we receive from them ; wherein some of them write over to us for lace, though of the smaller sort, going as far as they may, for we hear that you prohibit them any other : and this they say hath very good vent with you. Non bene ripcB creditur. They write over likewise for cut-work coiffes, and others for deep stammel dyes ; and some of your own men tell us that many with you go finely clad, though they are free from the fantasticalness of our land." ' The repeal of the sumptuary laws in 1644, taken with other legislation, indicates that the colony was outgrowing its time of minority. The distinction of rank was further preserved by the separation in dress of the servants, who were clad chiefly in leather, and by the usual differences in fineness of material in all the parts of costume. The opportunity, indeed, for a separation of classes through dress was more abundant than it is to- day, inasmuch as dress itself was more elaborate and diversified. When the Massachusetts colony was forming, provision was made for the passage to America of emigrants, and the articles of dress allowed to each man include a somewhat formidable list, — four pairs of shoes, three pairs of stockings, a pair of Norwich garters, four shirts, a suit of doublet and hose of leather, lined with oilskin leather, and with hooks and eyes, a suit of Hampshire kerseys, four bands and three plain falling bands, a waistcoat of green cot- ton bound with red tape, a leathern girdle, a Monmouth cap, a black hat lined in the brow with leather, five red knit caps, two dozen hooks and eyes, and small hooks and eyes for mandilions, two pair of gloves, and handker- chiefs. These articles were sometimes in form or material exclusively used by the servants or laborers, and as soon as one begins upon the enumeration he discovers that under one title is included a tolerably wide range of style and service. The shoes of laborers were furnished with wooden heels, while peaked shoes, which made kneeling somewhat difficult, giving way finally to 1 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 450. 486 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. square toes, were the dress of the better class ; and high heels were a part of the style of the more fashionable ladies, and large knots of roses or ribbons were worn on the instep. Buckles were used, but shoe-strings were coming also into service, though rare enough to be mentioned as property in the estate of Mrs. Dillingham, at Ipswich, in 1645. We have already seen that great boots were not permitted except to those who had the wealth and social position to carry them off; but inventories of estates at this time con- tain repeated reference to buskins or half-boots. Hose was coupled with doublets, and the two articles were worn as a continuous dress ; but cloth and yarn stockings were common enough to be part of a laborer's outfit, and sold for thirteen pence a pair. The more expensive worsted and woollen stockings were described sometimes as roll-up, sometimes as turn- down stockings, — expressions which seem to us to belong rather to the other end of a man's dress. The main articles of dress were of course brought from England or sent thence to the settlers ; but it was not long before the colonists used their ingenuity and enterprise upon the plainer articles. In 1643 the writer of New England's First Fruits notices " that they are making linen fustian dimities, and looking immediately to woolen goods from their own sheep." Earlier in 1634, William Wood, in his New England's Prospect, advised those who might come to the colony to lay in sufficient store before starting. " Every man likewise must carry over good store of apparrell ; for if he come to buy it there, he shall finde it dearer than in England. Woollen- cloth is a very good coiSodity, and Linnen better; ^s Holland, Lockram, flaxen, Hempen, Callico stuffes, Linsey-woolsies, and blew Callicoe, greene sayes for Housewives' aprons. Hats, Bootes, Shooes, good Irish stockings, which if they be good are much more serviceable than knit-ones." For servants, as already said, there was provided a suit commonly of leather; but for others — indeed for all classes as an ordinary dress — the doublet, of what- ever material, served as our coat now serves : for laborers, indeed, it took the place also of our waistcoat. It was the ordinary covering of the Boston man at the period we are considering, and the color was almost always red. A buckled belt gathered it about the waist, and it was fastened below to the hose. Upon the doublet style set its mark by causing the sleeves to grow fuller and to be slashed for the purpose of displaying the linen below. The hose gradually were divided into small-clothes, which developed later into trousers, and stockings which shrunk into socks. Beneath the doublet was worn the waistcoat, which in the poorer dress was of cotton, — in the richer, was frequently of silk and much elaborated. By the inventory of dress furnished to emigrants, shirts appear to have been regarded as a mat- ter of course. The outermost covering of all was the cloak or mandilion. The bands of the working-man, secured by a cord and tassel about the neck, became the ruffs of the gentry, and both were starched to extreme stiffness. " Handkerchief" was the name given indifferently to that for the pocket or the neck. The Monmouth cap, of woollen or cotton probably, BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 487 and a knit cap, were the common wear of the poor, while worsted, velvet, silk, or fur covered the heads of the richer. The emigrant was also fur- nished with " a black hat lined in the brow with leather," made of wool, while his betters wore theirs frequently of beaver, bound sometimes with a black or colored, sometimes with a gold, band. The brims were gen- erally broad, and the crowns varied in height, there being apparently two distinct styles, — that of a square low crown, not unlike what is still seen on the heads of the beef-eaters in London Tower, and that of the sugar- loaf or high crown. The two styles seem to have met in the chimney-pot of the present day. By such random notes we have tried to hint at the appearance of Boston men and gentlemen ; but we retreat before the varying-forms and styles of woman's dress, only noting that the authorities seemed to be foiled in their vigorous attempts to prevent women from arranging their sleeves in the most captivating manner, slashing their gowns both in the arm and on the back ; that gowns were cut low in the neck in spite of frowns and threats from the Government, and that ingenuity was expended upon aprons, hoods with their wings, scarfs, mantles, and mantelets. In social intercourse the distinctions of rank were preserved also by titles. Now and then a baronet made his home for a time in Boston, but otherwise the highest title was Mr. or Mrs., and this title was applied only to a few persons of unquestioned eminence. All ministers and their wives took the title, and the higher magistrates ; but it was not given to deputies to the General Court as such. The great body of respectable citizens were dubbed Goodman and Goodwife, but officers of the church and of the militia werq almost invariably called by the title of their rank or office. Below the grade of goodman and goodwife were still the servants, who had no prefix to their plain names. A loss of reputation was attended by a loss of the distinctive title, and a Mr. was degraded to the rank of Goodman. The colony was from the first well provided with servants, and these appear as an important element in the common hfe of Boston. Wood writes in 1634: — " It is not to be feared that men of good estates may doe well there ; always provided that they goe wel accomodated with servants. In which I would not wish them to take over-many : tenne or twelve lusty servants being able to manage an estate of two or three thousand pound. It is not the multiplicity of many bad servants (which presently eates a man out of house and harbour, as lamentable experience hath made manifest) , but the industry of the faithfull and diligent labourer, that en- richeth the carefull Master ; so that he that hath many dronish servants shall soone be poore ; and he that hath an industrious family shall as soone be rich." ^ This was at the beginning of the period. Fifty or more years afterward, at the close of the same period, a French Protestant refugee, writing back to his countrymen a report of his observation, says : — ' New England's Prospect, pt. i. ch. xii. 488 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " You can bring with you hired Help in any Vocation whatever ; there is an abso- lute need of them to till the Land. You may also own Negroes and Negresses ; there is not a House in Boston, however small may be its Means that has not one or two.' There are those that have five or six, and all make a good Living. You employ Sav- ages to work your Fields in consideration of one Shilling and a half a Day and Board, which is eighteen Pence ; it being always understood that you must provide them with Beasts or Utensils for Labor. It is better to have hired Men to till your Land. Ne- groes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles [the pistole was then worth about ten francs] according as they are skilful or robust ; there is no Danger that they will leave you, nor hired Help likewise, for the Moment one is missing from the Town you have only to notify the Savages, who, provided you promise them Something, and describe the Man to them, he is right soon found. But it happens rarely that they quit you, for they would know not where to go, there being few trodden Roads, and those which are trodden lead to English Towns or Villages, which, on your writing, will immediately send back your Men. There are Ship-captains who might take them off; but that is open Larceny and would be rigorously punished." ^ A distinction must be made, socially, between the farm and house ser- vants employed by the colonists, and those denominated servants, who were more properly stewards or agents for stockholders in the Company. It was the case that some who invested in the enterprise of Massachusetts Bay did not themselves go thither, but placed their interests in the hands of servants who acted for them. These servants often issued after the term of their service as masters and householders, and perhaps there was too great haste sometimes ; for it became necessary for the selectmen of Boston to take notice of the imprudence of some, and to require that any who bought the time of a servant and discharged him of his obligation should be responsible that he did not speedily come upon the town. Winthrop relates a piece of grim pleasantry apropos of the high wages demanded by servants when their time was out and their services were greatly needed. He says : " The wars in England kept servants from coming to us, so as those we had could not be hired, when their times were out, but upon unreasonable terms, and we found it very difficult to pay their wages to their content (for money was very scarce) . I may upon this occasion report a passage between one of Rowley and his servant. The J [The subject of negro slavery in Massa- among the Puritans. Theodore Lyman, Tr chusetts has had a somewhat controversial treat- Report on free negroes and mulattoes to Massa- ment. George H. Moore, Notes on the History chusetts House of Representatives, Jan. i6, 1822 of Slavery in Massachusetts, \'&(,(i. Emory Wash- The earliest record of negro slaves is that of burn, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. ; Proc. May, 1857, Josselyn's statement regarding three owned by and his lecture m the series, Massachusetts and its Maverick of Noddle's Island, in 1638 A direct Early History. Historical notes in the Hist. Mag. importation seems to have t'aken place in 1641; 1863, Nov.; i864,pp. 21,169, 193; 1869, pp. 53, when a Massachusetts ship arrived bringine 135, 329- Moore's book is reviewed approv- two from Africa, which were the occasion of mgly m mst. Mag. im, supplement, p. 47, and a protest to the Court from Richard Saltonstall IS replied to in Boston DaUy Advertiser, re- (the son of Sir Richard), whereupon the Court printed in same supplement, p. 138, with Moore's ordered their return. Winthrop's New Fn. rejoinder, p. 186, also see p. 105. Sargent, &«-u^..»»- • „^ anb 6« ^ofc^vaw SeiH^ waif Pft> g nufti§vcb a3 in \%^ mavgen(, «n^ flv«? \o 6c^ ijaob oiibev nnb njcPP ro«bi{ii>H(b ai ♦Se' oPovePaib P^Qotf o£ "^l^V^ongevi anS AbweniuveJ "^^^'i ^•na.i en(V«»repftS ^ b«' f«- yrir — *" *" h^ ''(tb"'"^»£<^ *" ^E'ST^^ns f^'ia^i f'^^^ge fa»&i» yvimagt (^ (ij^o&ragtf atfu(tSfiKb. jf ti m^nei mfcvofiSe Qlf a(fi(v ov ^twPev of l^c- fa.-b ll/iy gal£.f^.vm«1> to J^v.f p3iPV.\\. c\v. 22. ceeded in religious matters, and so consequently ' [Dr. Dexter has shown the common notion, all the Churches of Christ planted in New Eng- that such a thing as the dismission of a pastor land, 'when they came once to hopes of being scarcely took place in the early days of New such a competent number of people as might be England, to be an error, disproving it by citing able to maintain a minister, they then surely numerous instances. Congregationalism as seen seated themselves, and not before; it being as in its Literattire, 586, 587. — Ed.] 512 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. proceeded against. For the first offence he was to be reproved by the magistrate. For the second he was to pay five pounds, or stand two hours openly upon a block four feet high, on a lecture day, with a paper fixed on his breast, with the words " A WANTON GOSPELLER " written in capital let- ters, that others might " fear and be ashamed of breaking out into the like wickedness." Indians were to be taught religion and laws, and to be brought under the same ecclesiastical discipline. Blasphemy, whether by Indian or white man, was punishable by death. Notorious and obstinate heretics were fined. The Church was regarded as an essential part of the State, and disregard of it was disregard of the plainest means of knowing the laws. "Seeing that the Word is of general and common behoof to all sorts of people, as being the ordinary means to subdue the hearts of hear- ers not only to the faith and obedience to the Lord Jesus, but also to civil obedience and allegiance unto magistrates, and to just and honest con- versation toward all men : it is therefore ordered and declared that every person shall duly resort and attend upon the Lord's Day, fasts and thanks- givings, or be fined." ' The Lord's Day was guarded by stringent regula- tions. " If any young person or others be found without either meeting house,^ idling or playing during the time of public exercise on the Lord's day, it is ordered that the constables or others appointed for that end shall take hold of them and bring them before authority."^ Within the meeting- house boys were also under watch. Indeed, the Puritan attitude towards boys generally is one of vast suspicion. They were in the eyes of the law a species of untamed beings, always bound for mischief, and capable of developing into good citizens only through a most restrictive process. There were regular officers, the tithing-men, employed to act as special police within the meeting-houses. "Sergeant Johnson and Walter Merry are requested to take the oversight of the boys in the galleries, and in case of unruly disorders to acquaint the Magistrates therewith."* " Jno. Dawes is ordered to oversee the youth at the new meeting-house that they behave themselves reverently in the time of divine worship, and to act according to his instructions therein."^ The boys in the galleries were spectators of the services that went on under their eyes. It is doubtful if they were regarded as themselves a positive part of the worshipping congregation ; but long before they came to their freedom they must have become familiar with the services on Sunday, and with the topics discussed from the pulpit. At first there was no bell to call people together, but a drum was beaten. It is probable that the first use of a bell was at the hands of the bellman going about the town as the hour for worship drew near.*^ The families 1 4th Nov. 1646. Dexter, in his Congregationalism as seen in its Lit- 2 There were two at this time, — 1656. erature, has a note, p. 452, on the devices used in 3 Boston Town Records, 131. calling the people to services on Sundays. Ed- 4 Ibid., March 27, 1643. ward Tyng, who lived on the upper corner of 5 Ibid., March 28, 1659. State Street and Merchants Row (which was then « [See, on early bells in Boston, N. E. the shore), where he had a warehouse and brew- Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1874, p. iSo ; also, house, maintained there a dial as early as 1643. E. H. Goss's Early Bells of Massachusetts. Dr. Record Commissioners,Second Rept., p. 75. — Ed.] BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 513 were divided, as one sometimes now sees them in New England country villages, — the men on one side, the women and girls on the other, and the boys, who made a third class, by themselves, with the tithing-man to super- vise them. The ruling, elders had a seat immediately below the pulpit, facing the congregation. They were raised apparently upon a platform ; and in front of them, upon a lower plane, yet still often above the people, sat the deacons in similar position. The dignity and social rank of the famiHes was indicated in the places severally assigned to them. The first service was at about nine o'clock in the morning. The pastor began with extemporaneous prayer, lasting about a quarter of an hour. After prayer, either the pastor or a teaching elder read a chapter in the Bible and ex- pounded it. A psalm was then sung, lined out by one of the ruling elders. The Psalms were something of a stumbling-block to the people. The Psalter, as used in the English church, wa& adapted to chanting, and more- over the associations with it were of prelacy. The Puritans, by the same instinct which led them to reprehend the reading of the Bible without comment as savoring of idolatry and the surrender of reason, wished to use the Psalms in a metrical version ; and in the early years of Massachu- setts Bay used either that of Sternhold and Hopkins, or that made by Ains- worth, of Amsterdam. The Plymouth people used the latter, Priscilla MuUins among them : — " Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth, Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together." The Bay Psalm Book superseded these in Boston in 1640. For a long time a very small number of tunes — of which York, Hackney, Windsor, St. Mary's, and Martyrs were the chief — were in use by congregations.^ Instrumental music was proscribed. There is little reference to the singing in churches in the early records, and the darkness is made more dense by this unex- plained passage in the records of the General Court, under date of June i, 1 641 : "Mr. Edward Tomlins, retracting his opinions against singing in the churches, was discharged." There is nothing to enlighten us as to the ground of Mr. Tomlins's objections; he may have murmured against the quality of the music, as people do to-day who are not arrested ; or he may have had painful doubts as to the propriety of singing at all. After the singing came the sermon, which was the pihce de resistance. When there was an affluence of ministry, one expounded the Word while another preached. The sermon was rarely written out in those days ; it was measured, not by the number of pages upon which it was written, but by the hour-glass which stood at the preacher's side. The minimum or regu- lation length seems to have been an hour, but Johnson ^ speaks of a listener to Mr. Shepard, of Cambridge, seeing the glass turned up twice; and on a special occasion, — the planting of a church at Woburn, — he relates that the Rev. Mr. Syms continued in preaching and prayer about the space of four ' See Coffin's History of Newbury, 185, 186. ^ Wonder-working Providence, bk. i. ch. xliii. VOL. I. — 61. 514 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. or five hours.i Following the sermon was a prayer by the teaching elder ^ and the blessing. Sometimes another psalm also was sung after the sermon. A second service, substantially the same in character, was at two o'clock in the afternoon. The mode of dispensing the sacrament of the Lord's Supper did not materially differ from that still in use in Congregational churches. Baptism was usually administered on Sunday in church, generally the Sunday near- est the birth of the child. Lechford, who is the authority for the mode of observances at this time, seems to imply that the rite was generally per- formed after service in the afternoon. It is done, he adds, " by either Pastor or Teacher, in the Deacon's seat, the most eminent place in the church, next under the Elder's seat. The Pastor most commonly makes a speech or exhortation to the church and Parents concerning Baptism, and then prayeth before and after. It is done by washing or sprinkling."^ The same writer does not fail to describe another part of the service which has always been conspicuous, and, because of its secular associations, perhaps especially interesting to the boys in the gallery, — "which ended," he says, directly after his description of baptism, " follows the contribution, one of the Deacons saying, ' Brethren of the congregation, now there is time left for contribution, whereof as God hath prospered you, so freely offer.' Upon some extraordinary occasions, as building and repairing of churches or meeting-houses, or other necessities, the ministers press a liberal con- tribution, with effectual exhortations out of Scripture. The Magistrates and chief Gentlemen first, and then the Elders, and all the congregation of men and most of them that are not of the church, all single persons, widows, and women in absence of their husbands, come up one after an- other one way and bring their offerings to the Deacon at his seat, and put it into a box of wood for the purpose, if it be money or papers ; if it be any other chattel, they set it or lay it down before the Deacons, and so pass another way to their seats again. This contribution is of money, or papers promising so much money : I have seen a fair gilt cup with a cover offered there by one, which is still used at the communion. Which moneys and goods the Deacons dispose towards the maintenance of the Ministers, and the poor of the church, and the church's occasions, without making account ordinarily." * Josselyn describes the scene even more graphically : " On Sundays in the afternoon, when sermon is ended, the people in the galleries come down and march two abreast up one aisle and down the other until they come before the desk, for pulpit they have none ; before the desk is a long pew, where the Elders and Deacons sit, one of them with a money-box in his hand, into which the people as they pass put their off"ering, — some 1 Ibid. bk. ii., ch. xxii. [Yonge, Life of Hugh distinction of elders and the " practical working Peters, gives a caricature of that preacher, turn- relation between the elders for ruling and the ing over his hour-glass, saying, " I know you are brotherhood," see Dexter, Congregationalism as good fellows ; stay and take another glass."— Ed.] seen in its Literature, p. 238. 2 This description applies to a church com- s Lechford, Plain Dealing, 18. pletely officered ; but all were not so. Upon the * Ibid. 18, 19. BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 515 a shilling, some two shillings, half a crown, five shillings, according to their ability and good will ; after this they conclude with a psalm." ^ Inasmuch as church membership was coincident with the right of suf- frage, the reception into the church was invested with much circumstance. Johnson has given a close account of the customary proceedings : — " After this manner the person desirous to join with the church cometh to the Pastor and makes him acquainted therewith, declaring how the Lord hath been pleased to work his conversion ; who discerning hopes of the person's faith in Christ, although weak, yet if any appear, he is propounded to the church in general for their approbation touching his godly life and conversation, and then by the Pastor and some brethren heard again, who make report to the church of their charitable approv- ing of the person. But before they come to join with the church, all persons within the town have public notice of it ; then publicly he declares the manner of his conversion, and how the Lord hath been pleased, by the hearing of his Word preached and the work of his Spirit in the inward parts of his soul, to bring him out of that natural darkness which all men are by nature in and under, as also the measure of knowledge the Lord hath been pleased to indue him withal. And because some men cannot speak publicly to edification through bashfulness, the less is required of such ; and women speak not publicly at all." ^ The public occasions in Boston centred about the church. Besides Sun- days, the great gatherings were at lectures, thanksgivings, and fasts, attend- ance at which was nearly as obligatory as on Sunday services. Days of fasting were not annual or fixed, but appointed from time to time by the General Court, and by special churches, with more or less fulness of explanation as to their occasion. " To entreat the help of God," one order reads, " in the weighty matters that are at hand, and to divert any evil plot which may be intended, and to prepare the way of friends which we hope may be upon coming to us." " For want of rain and help of brethren in distress, ... for the sad condition of our native country, . . . for drought and sickness at home and trouble in England," were others. Neither was Thanksgiving then set for annual observance at the end of harvest. June 13, 1632, one was ordered for " God's great mercy to the church in Germany and the Palatin- ate; '' in October, 1633, " for a bountiful harvest and the arrival of persons of special use and quality," — that was when Cotton and Hooker and Haynes came over; Sept. 8, 1637, " for success and safe return of the Pequot expe- dition, especially the success of the conference at New Town, and good news from Germany." The Thursday Lecture is an old Boston institution which dates from this time. " Upon the week days," writes Lechford, 1638-41, "there are Lec- tures in divers towns and in Boston upon Thursdays, when Master Cotton teacheth out of the Revelation." ^ The rage for lecture-going led people to 1 Two Voyages, 180. Congregationalism " in his Congregationalism as 2 Wonder-working Providence, bk. ii. ch. xxii. seen in its Literature. — Ed.] [Bacon, Historical Discourses, ch. v., describes ^ plain Dealing, 19. [Cf. Dr. Frothingham's early ecclesiastical forms and usages. See also discourse on the Second Centennial of the Thurs- Dr. Dexter's chapter on " Early New England day Lecture, 1833, and Dr. Waterston's on re- 5i6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. go from one town to another during the week, until the matter cameto be so serious that the magistrates were at first disposed to interfere,^ but the elders advised against anything that looked like discouraging the people from going to meetings. The Court did, however, in 1633, make a regulation that no lec- ture should begin before one o'clock, to prevent too great interference with business, but the law was repealed in 1640. There is a single reference in Winthrop ^ to a regular Saturday evening service, and the old New England custom of reckoning Sunday from sunset of Saturday to sunset of Sunday, has an indefinite origin.^ The excitement of meetings and lectures stood to the stricter sort as a recreation from their work. They were by the hard custom of their own minds, and by a bitter hostility to anything that looked like license, per- petually endeavoring to put down all amusements in the population outside of their small compact body. They boasted that none of the holidays of England had survived the passage of the Atlantic ; and, as Christmas lifted its head, they smote at it with a law. " For preventing disorders," reads the Record of General Court, May 11, 1659, "arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others : it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shillings as a fine to the county. And whereas not only at such times, but at several other times also, it is a custom too frequent in many places to expend time in unlawful games, as cards, dice, &c.," a pen- alty is imposed for that. It was plainly the intent of the Court to disgrace Christmas by associating it with lawless proceedings.* Other laws against cards and dice were very early passed. Bowling about inns was forbidden, and so, as we have seen, was dancing prohibited. Football was not forbidden except in streets, lanes, or enclosures.^ This regulation, like the one against fast driving in the streets of Boston, which the General Court found it de- sirable to pass in 1662, were in the interest especially of old people and young children. In that day also the Common appeared on the lighter side of life. Josselyn, describing the town as it was between 1660 and 1670, says : " Their streets are many and large, paved with pebble stone, and the south side adorned with Gardens and orchards. The Town is rich and very popu- lous, much frequented by strangers ; here is the dwelling of their Gover- suming it, in 1844. It was given up a few years ing to evening, he wrote arguments before his ago. — Ed.] coming to New England: and I suppose that 1 See Wmthrop, i. 324, 325. 't was from his reason and practice that the 2 Ibid. i. 109. Christians of New England have generally done 3 [Cf. Savage's Winthrop's New England, so too." — Ed.] i. 130. Cotton Mather says of John Cotton: * [See a curious instance in Bradford's Ply. "The Sabbath he began the evening before; mouth Plantation, -p. 112. —Y.Vi.] for which keeping of the Sabbath from even- » Boston Town Records, 141, 157. BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 517 nor. On the north-west and north-east two constant Fairs [ferries] are kept for daily Traffick thereunto. On the south there is a small but pleasant common where the Gallants a little before sunset walk with their marmalet madams, as we do in Morefields, &c., till the nine aclock bell rings them home to their respective habitations/ when presently the Constables walk their rounds to see good orders kept, and to take up loose people." ^ The first positive enactment by which the Common became a fixed tract of land, substantially as we now have it, was in March, 1640, when it was " also agreed upon that henceforth there shall be no land granted either for house- plot or garden to any person out of the open ground or common field which is left between the Sentry Hill and Mr. Colbron's end ; except three or four lots to make up the street from Bro. Robert Walker's to the Round Marsh." ^ From that time onward there were frequent votes and orders in town-meet- ing, all looking to a cleanly and orderly use of the Common. It was used then, as now, for trainings ; but the picture which Josselyn draws gives a better clew to the unfailing interest which the people have always taken in the Common. It is very clear that in the judgment of the law-makers industry and not amusement was the business of the young. Long and serious orders appear in the records looking towards the morals of young people, and safeguards were found in regular employment and in education ; perhaps it would be accurate to say that their idea of education included work as one of the primary methods of education. The state-and-church refused to delegate this instruction to families ; it conceived it to be a part of its own business to be a guardian of the young, whether these were in families or not. A succession of orders, extending over a series of years, will best illustrate this attitude of the government toward famihes and children. On the 14th of June, 1642, we read : — " This Court, taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents and masters in training up their children in learning and labor and other employments which may be profitable to the commonwealth, do hereupon order and decree that in every town the chosen men appointed for managing the prudential affairs of the same shall henceforth stand charged with the care of the redress of this evil, so as they shall be sufficiently punished by fines for the neglect thereof, upon presentation of the grand jury, or other information or complaint in any court within this jurisdiction ; and for this end they or the greater number of them shall have power to take account from time to time of all parents and masters, and of the children, concerning the calling and employment of the children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country, and to impose fines upon 1 [The nine-o'clock bell was instituted in 2 Josselyn's Two Voyages, 162. [This ac- 1649, ^"'i it remained a custom of the town till count is also largely copied by Dunton, in recent times. The morning bell at the same his Letters. — Ed.] time was rung " half an hour after four." In ^ [See Mr. Winthrop's and Mr. Bynner's 1664, an eleven-o'clock bell was ordered "for chapters in this volume. These lots will be the more convenient and expeditious despatch distinctly marked in the plans given in the of merchants' affairs." — Ed.] Introduction to vol. ii. — Ed.] giS THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. such as shall refuse to render such account to them when they shall be required. . . . They are to take care of such as are set to keep cattle, that they be set to some other employment withal as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weaving tape, &c., and that boys and girls be not suffered to converse together so as may occasion any wanton dishonor or immodest behavior ; and for the better performance of this trust commit- ted to them, they may divide the town amongst them, appointing to every of the said townsmen a certain number of families to have special oversight of. They are also to provide that a sufficient quantity of material as hemp, flax, &c., may be raised in their several towns, and tools and implements provided for working out the same." In 1646: " If any child or children above sixteen years old, and of suf- ficient understanding, shall curse or smite their natural father or mother, he or she shall be put to death, unless the parents have been unchristianly negligent or provoking by extreme and cruel correction." An incorrigible son could be presented by his parents and put to death, but the law re- mained, so far as evidence appears, a mere brutum fidmen. A more genial treatment of such cases is suggested by the order of August 22, 1654: " Magistrates have authority to whip divers children and servants who be- have themselves disrespectfully, disobediently, and disorderly toward their parents, masters, and governors." The selectmen again in 1668 are "re- quired to see that all children and youth under family government be taught to read perfectly the English tongue, have knowledge in the capital laws, and be taught some orthodox catechism, and that they be brought up to some honest employment." Marriage, as- performed in Boston, was made by the law of 1646 an act of the civil magistrate, " or such other as the General Court, or Court of Assistants, shall authorize in such place where no magistrate is near." ^ Mr. Savage could discover no " record of a marriage performed by a clergyman prior to 1686, except in Gorges' Province, by a clergyman of the Church of England." ^ The minister, if he were present, was sometimes calle^d upon to " improve the occasion." The old English custom of announcing the banns was retained, and on occasion of important pro- spective marriages the minister preached a sermon. Trumbull, in his notes to Lechford's Plain Dealing, instances such an occasion in 1640, when the minister gave a practical and pointed discourse from Ephesians, vi. 10, II, applying the text "to teach us that the state of marriage is a warfaring condition." ^ Finally, when the Boston man of the colonial period came to be buried, he went to his grave with all the uncircumstanced solemnity which he re- garded in life. He had stripped life of its decorations, and sought the solid uncompromising reality ; he asked for nothing else at death. There was no ^ Charter and General Laws of Massachusetts of marriage took place ; but custom forbade a Bay, p. 1 52. sermon at the espousals. Dr. Dexter corrects 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1858-60, p. 283. Mr. Savage in his confounding these two ceie- ^ [Preaching was allowed at the solemnity monies. — Congregationalism as seen in its Lit- called a " Contraction," a little before the rite erature, p. 45S. — Ed.] BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 519 necessity to advertise, " Friends are requested not to send flowers." Lech- ford's account has a real dignity in its brief statement : " At Burials nothing IS read, nor any funeral sermon made ; but all the neighborhood, or a good company of them, come together by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and there stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most commonly present." ^ REBECCA RAWSON.^ 1 Plain Dealing, 39. ^ [Notwithstanding the statement of the text that Savage could find no record of a marriage by a clergyman prior to 16S6, the accounts of the sad romance connected with the name of Rebecca Rawson fix her marriage, July i, 1679, " by a minister of the gospel, in the presence of near forty witnesses." This lady was the daugh- ter of Secretary Ra\'\'son, and was born May 23, 1656, and was brought up with care in the higher social circles of the town One Thomas Rumsey, who came to Boston imder the pretence of being a nephew of Lord Chief-Justice Hale, and calling himself Sir Thomas Hale, gained her affections. Being married, the young pair went to England. Upon landing, the scamp man- aged to secure the contents of her trunks, and escape. It was ascertained by the lady's friends in England that the fellow had already a wife in Canterbury. Pride kept the deserted woman in England for thirteen years, where, declining the assistance of her friends, she supported herself and child by painting on glass, and by the exer- cise of her other accomplishments. At length 520 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. We began this chapter with a reference to Governor Winthrop's death, for it is of Boston at that time that we have especially written. We may properly close with his funeral. " His body," we are told, " was, with great solemnity and honor buried at Boston, in New England, the third of April, 1649." ^ The only intimation of the ceremony above the ordinary silent entombment is in the order of the General Court sanctioning the action of the Surveyor General, who lent, on his own responsibility, a barrel and a half of powder to the artillery company to expend in solemnizing the funeral. ^ y^^jL C^C(^<>(-£Ce^ she took passage in a ship belonging to an uncle, to return to Boston ; but the vessel, making the voyage by way of Jamaica, was swallowed up at Port Royal, with passengers and crew, in the earthquake of June 9, 1692. Rebecca Rawson and her father, the Secretary, figure in Whittier's Leaves from Margaret Smithes yournaL See The Rawson Family, by Sullivan S. Rawson, Boston, 1849, and N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg. Oct. 1849. — Ed.] 1 Davis's Morton, p. 243. ^ [See Mr. Winthrop's chapter. When, in 1670, Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby died and was buried, we are told there were eleven full companies in attendance, and that "with the doleful noise of trumpets and drums, in their mourning posture, three thundering volleys of shot [were] discharged, answered with the loud waring of the great guns, rending the heavens with noise at the loss of so great a man." — N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., xxx 67-78. — Ed.] CHAPTER XIX. TOPOGRAPHY AND LANDMARKS OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. BY EDWIN L. BYNNER. NO picture, map, or satisfactory account of the ancient peninsula of Shawmut, as it appeared to Winthrop and his colonists, has been discovered ; but from the abundant descriptions of later times there needs no great effort of the imagination to bring it clearly to mind. From Captain John Smith we might fairly have expected a chance word of description, were it not for a reasonable doubt as to whether the great navigator ever penetrated our inner harbor, or otherwise came within view of the peninsula.! The visit of Miles Standish's exploring party, sent out from Plymouth in 162 1, was, as appears in an earlier chapter,^ scarcely more fruitful in result. The man, moreover, of all others, who was best fitted to speak with authority upon this pre-colonial period has left us nothing. William Blaxton, or Blackstone, the first white settler upon the peninsula, that doughty recluse who left his retreat upon the sunny slope of Beacon Hill, as he boldly avowed, to escape from the intolerant atmosphere of " the Lords Brethren," no doubt left much interesting matter touching his own history and his wilderness home among the papers which were de- stroyed by the burnings and ravagings of Philip's war. Failing all these sources of information, it is curious that we are left to the early impressions of " a romping girl " for our first description of the peninsula as it looked in its virgin wildness, which, although but an old lady's recollection of the scenes of her youth, recorded after the lapse of almost a century, is too graphic to be forgotten. Anne Pollard,^ the impulsive young woman who was the foremost to -leap ashore from the first boat-load of colonists as they passed over from Charlestown and touched at the North End, has described her girlish impression as of a place " very uneven, abounding in small hollows and swamps, covered with blueberries and other bushes." 1 [The question of Smith's entrance into the ' She lived to the e.xtraordinary age of one harbor is examined in Mr. Winsor's chapter on hundred and five years ; her portrait, taken just "The Cartography of Massachusetts Bay." — Ed.] before she died (in 1725), is preserved in the gal- 2 [By Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr. — Ed.] lery of the Historical Society. VOL. I. — 66. 522 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. This has a characteristic New England flavor, and is undoubtedly true to Hfe so far as it goes; but, topographically, the peninsula in those days must have had other and more prominent features to distinguish it from the surrounding country or the islands in the harbor, of which, but for the interposition of human hands, it would doubtless long since have swelled the number. Flung boldly out from the mainland, like a restraining arm to hold back the too eager rushing of the rivers Charles and Mystic to the sea, it formed an admirable natural barrier, and commanded the entrance to the rich and smiling country beyond. With no more symmetry of form than a splash of Iholten lead dropped into the cooling waters, it must neverthe- less have presented • — with its lofty hills, with its deep coves and smaller inlets, with its bristling headlands and its bold unwooded outline — striking and picturesque features to the eye. But we are not left long to imagination or surmise. The first visitor to the new colony who has given us a record of his impressions was William Wood, an intelligent young Englishman, who came over before 1630, and was in Boston so shortly after the settlement of the town that little or no change could have taken place in its general features. " Boston," he says, " is two miles North-east from Roxberry : His situation is very pleasant, being a Peninsula, hem'd in on the South-side with the Bay of Roxberry, on the North-side with Charles-river, the Marshes on the backe-side, being not halfe a quarter of a mile over; so that a little fencing will secure their cattle from the Woolues. Their greatest wants be Wood and Medow-ground which never were in that place ; being constrayned to fetch their buifding timber and fire-wood .from the Hands in Boates, and their Hay in Loyters. It being a Necke and bare of wood, they are not troubled with three great annoyances of Woolves, Rattlesnakes, and Musketoes." ^ In a note upon this passage Shaw disputes the statement that there never was any wood upon the peninsula, and asserts — upon what authority does not appear — that it had been cleared by the Indians for planting corn. He adds: "There were, however, many large clumps left, sufficient for fuel and timber. The growth was probably similar to that of the islands." There was undoubtedly some wood growing upon the Neck proper, for we find several entries relating to it in the early records ; but that there never was a great deal, and by no means " sufficient for fuel and timber," is evident from a passage in one of Winthrop's letters to his son in 1637: " We at Boston were almost ready to brake up for want of wood." The natural advantages of its position would seem to have been reason enough for the selection of the peninsula for a settlement; but Roger Clap, who came over shortly before Winthrop, and was present at the latter's arrival, intimates in his Memoirs that the spot was chosen because it was already cleared. " Governor Winthrop," he says, "purposed to set down 1 Wood, New England's Prospect. Cf. Lechford's Plaine Dealino, p. m. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 523 his Station about Cambridge or somewliere on the river; but viewing the place liked that PLAIN neck which was called then Blackstone's Neck." Most of the early writers, however, attribute the choice to the abundance of good water on the peninsula, and the want of it at Charlestown; and Prince, following the Charlestown Records, describes Mr. Blackstone coming over and informing " the Governor of an excellent spring there, withall inviting and soliciting him thither. [Upon which it seems that Mr. Johnson, with several others, soon remove and begin to settle on that side of the river, j " ^ Dr. Snow adds plausibility to this theory by giving as the mean- ing of the Indian name Shawmut, — " living fountains," which etymology, be it said, is disputed by excellent authorities.^ Before proceeding to record the rapid changes which took place in the outward aspect of the peninsula, and of the infant town that lay nestled among^ its hills, it may be well to review its physical characteristics, by which the better to note the effect of those vast modifications which in the course of years have changed it almost beyond recognition. And first, of its position with regard to the surrounding country, we have two early pictures, which can hardly be improved. In his Two Voy- ^ge^? Josselyn says : — " On the North-side of Boston flows Charles-River, which is about six fathom deep. Many small Islands lye to the Bayward, and hills on either side the River ; a very good harbour, here may forty Ships ride ; the passage from Boston to Charles- town is by a Ferry, worth forty or fifty pounds a year, and is a quarter of a mile over." Equally graphic is the description of the harbor given in the Neiv Eng- land' s Prospect, which still remains good after the lapse of nearly two centuries and a half: — " This Harbour is made by a great company of Hands, whose high Cliffes shoulder out the boistrous Seas, yet may easily deceiue any unskilful! Pilote, presenting many faire openings and broad sounds which afford top shallow water for any Ships, though navigable for Boates and small Pinnaces. " It is a safe and pleasant Harbour within, having but one common and safe 1 The "excellent spring" referred to was soon to be mentioned. \?i\\'ax^&¥i, Desc. of Bos- doubtless the "great spring" in Spring Lane, /ffw, ch. xxix., gives an account of the springs near which Governor Winthrop built his house, originally found in the peninsula. They are It is the best known and oftenest mentioned of marked by a blue cross in the map in this vol- all the original fountains. It was long ago filled ume. See Wheildon, Sentry or Beacon Hill, ch. up and a pump placed in its stead, which was xi., on " Beacon Hill Springs." There seems to standing within the memory of people still living, have been a spring or other source of water sup- It is supposed to have been the waters of this ply on Cotton Hill (Pemberton Hill), as will same spring that bubbled up when they were appear from a vote of the town later quoted in making excavations for the new Post Office in the text. — Ed.] 1869, in which building the water is still used. ^ [Cf. Dr. Trumbull's comments in his chap- Another noted spring was in Louisburg Square, ter of the present volume. — Ed.] by some thought to have been Blackstone's own, ^ [Besides being reprinted separately, this and still another where the Howard Athenseum necessary authority on early Boston is re- new stands, — all these besides the Town Pump, printed in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. — Ed.] 524 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. entrance, and that not very broad; there scarce being roome for three Ships to come in board-and-board at a time, but being once within there is roome for the Anchorage of 500 Ships." ' Of the general shape and size of the peninsula we have conflicting accounts. Wood calls it "in form almost square," while Johnson says " the forme of this Town is like a heart," — comparisons which, as we shall see, were both rather fanciful and wide of the mark. As to its dimensions, the most reliable estimates fix its original area in 1630 at somewhat less than one thousand, and probably about seven hundred, acres, — an area now very much increased by the encroachments upon the sea, made mostly during the present century. Chief among the natural features of " that plain neck" which Governor Winthrop so wisely chose, were its hills and coves. And of these it may be said the coves of Boston have swallowed up its hills, and this by the law of natural growth and necessity; and however much the latter may once have added to the beauty and picturesqueness of the town, we can scarcely regret their loss when we consider how much they have con- tributed to its material splendor and prosperity. The hills were named at first from convenience or association. "The building of the Fort," says Wheildon, in his admirable monograph upon Beacon Hill,^ " furnished a name for one of them, the Windmill for a time the name for another, and the central hill, with its three little hills, received the name of Tra- mount, which it retained until it was used as a look-out, — a place of observation and watching, — when it was called Sentry Hill. After the erection of the beacon in 1635 it received the name of Beacon Hill, and lost the name of Tra-mount, or Tremount, which it had conferred upon the town. So that we have had for this hill the names of Sentry, Tra-mount, and Beacon ; and for the settlement those of Shawmut, Tra- mountaine, and Boston." While Copp's and Fort Hills were single elevations of land standing apart, Beacon Hill embraced the high ridge of land which extended through ' the centre of the peninsula, from the head of Hanover Street south-west to the River Charles. " It was conspicuous," says Wheildon, " by its height and commanding prospect, and was made more so by its three peculiar summits, all of which — whatever regrets there may be concerning them have been made so available in the enlargement and improvement of the city." 1 [Wood's idea of the configuration of the in Young's Chronicles of Mass., p. 389, and in harbor and the adjacent coasts is seen in the cu- Palfrey's New England, i. 360. It was also re- rious map which appeared in his New England's produced in fac-simile by William B. Fowle in Prospect, with the title : The South part of New 1846. Frothingham, in his History of Charles- England as it is Planted thisycare, i^ZA- Itisthe town, p. 63, gives a section showing Boston oldest map known giving any, however inexact, Harbor. — Ed.] detail of the geography of the vicinity of Boston. 2 [Sentry or Beacon Hill, by W. W Wheil- A portion of this map is given herewith, in fac- don, Boston, 1877, — published under the aus simile, from a copy of the book owned by Mr. pices of the Bunker-Hill Monument Association. Charles Deane. It has been given in fac-simile — Ed.] n i , , -r-rgrp-p-j- i , 1^ i r~r to 8 o TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 525 Of these three " little rising hills " the easternmost was called Cotton Hill, from the Rev. John Cotton, who once lived upon its slope, — a name which we may be pardoned for regretting was afterwards changed to Pemberton. Its ancient summit, which is fixed by Drake at the southerly termination of Pemberton Square, rose eighty feet above the pavement of to-day. Beacon Hill, the middle peak, which has been aptly likened to a sugar-loaf and once soared to a similar height above its present level, or about one hundred and thirty-eight feet above the sea, was formerly flat upon the top " for the space of six rods at least." This plainly appears upon our earliest known plan of the town, published by Bonner in 1722, a section of which is given herewith. The third or westernmost peak was called at different times West Hill, Copley's Hill, Mount Vernon, and other names less generally known. This hill, although wisely chosen by Blackstone for his residence, seems afterwards to have been of less interest and importance than the others. It "was occupied by the British in 1775, and has, in the march of events, been dug down and thrown into Charles River to extend the city in that direction. The Tramount has been compared, not inaptly, to the head and shoulders of a man ; and this left shoulder, as we face the north, is said to have risen to its highest point somewhere between Mount Vernon and Pinckney streets; and we are told that " on the top directly opposite Charles Street meeting-house there was a boiling spring open in three places, at a height of not less than eighty feet above the water." Of Copp's Hill and the many associations clustering about it we have abundant records. Less high than Beacon Hill, less regular in shape than Fort Hill, it had an equal value in the general outline and configuration of the town. Rising precipitously from the water on the north-east to a height of fifty feet, it swept away in a long gentle slope toward the south and west, leaving its summit almost level. Here was set up the first windmill used in the colony, which "was brought down from Watertown in August, 1632, because it would not grind there except with a westerly wind ; " hence the 1 [This is the outline of the three summits from old descriptions. Between the two east- of the central ridge of the peninsula as given by erly summits, intersected or bounded by Somer- Snow, the point of view being the Charlestown set and Bulfinch streets, was a tract called "Valley peninsula. History 0/ Bos/on, pp. 46, 112. He Acre," which stretched down the hill towards calls it as " exact a representation as we have Howard Street. Cf. W. H. Whitmore in Se^vall b^en able to obtain," but it is probably drawn Papers, i. 63. — Ed.] 526 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ground obtained the name of Windmill Hill.^ It is said also to have been called Snow Hill before it received its present name of Copp's Hill. Of William Copp, from whom its name came, we read that he was a worthy SECTION OF BONNER's MAP, 1722.^ ■ [The second windmill was erected the next year (1633) i" Roxbury, by Richard Dummer, on Stoney Brook, where a dam existed till within a few years, not far from the Roxbury Station, on the Providence Railroad ; or it is possible a mill erected this same year at Neponset was the second within the present municipal limits. — Ed.] * [In Burgiss's map, made a few years later, in 1728, and reproduced in full in Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, the hill is given a rounder outline. The late Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch, who remembered the hill before it was cut down, spoke of it as of "a very peculiar conical shape, ... a grassy hemisphere," so steep that the boys could with difficulty mount the perfectly regular ciirve of its side. Accounts of its cutting down will be given in a later volume. — Ed.] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 527 DeT-n.e.3t. ese-x-uou-B JVtt. iJe-CTUJ-n. S"C. THE SUMMIT OF BEACON HILL.^ ^ [This cut shows, in the dotted line, the bounds of the original reservation of six rods square made by the town on its summit, the bea- con occupying the portion later held by the monu- ment. Mr. N. I. Bowditch traced the first grant of land about this reservation in his " Gleaner " articles, published in the Boston Evening Tran- script, in 1855, and is quoted in Wheildon, p. 90, and in Sumner's East Boston, p. 194. Robert Turner, a shoemaker, who is found in the colony as early as 1637, seems to have grad- ually extended his pasture up the slopes of the hill, so that he owned eight acres near the sum- mit at his death, his land stretching westerly nearly to Hancock Street. The oldest deed from the town to him bears date 1670. His son John sold to Samuel Shrimpton, in 1673, a gore of what is now the State-House lot, bounded east on the way leading from the Training-field (Common) to the Sentry Hill ; and this way, then thirty feet wide, makes the beginning of that part of the present Mount Vernon Street, which on the modern maps bends at a right angle and joins Beacon Street. John Turner dying in 1681, his exec- utors sold his land to the same Shrimpton, who thus acquired "all Beacon Hill." See Introduction to Vol. II. — Ed.] 528 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. shoemaker, and an elder in Dr. Mather's church. His title to the neigh- boring lot is sufficiently shown in the following extract from the town- records : — " The possessions of William Copp within the limits of Boston : One house and lott of halfe an acre in the Mill-field, bounded with Thomas Buttolph south-east : John Button north-east : a marsh on the south-west : and the river on the north-west." ' The third and last hill, of which no trace is now left, once formed, to the stranger sailing up the harbor, perhaps the most prominent feature of the town ; placed as it was in the very foreground, near the shore, and rising to a height of eighty feet above the level of the sea. First called Corn Hill from having been one of the early planting grounds of the col- onists, it afterwards received the name of Fort Hill from the defensive works built upon it about May 24, 1632. Like Copp's Hill it was rough and steep on its northerly and easterly sides, but declined in an easy slope towards the south and west. The approaches to it are shown on the map in this volume. Sl4^%^?# WEST HILL FROM BEACON HILL, 1 7 75.' Besides these there was formerly a small hill in the marshes at the bottom of the Common, of which we find frequent mention in the early records under the name of Fox Hill, which, however, like its loftier brethren, long ago fell an inevitable prey to the ravenous maw of the sea, and was dug down and flung into the marsh.^ 1 [This puts his lot just south-east of where Charles-River bridge bends into Charlestown Street. See the note on Copp's family in Sewall Papers, ii. 408. — Ed.] 2 [This cut follows a sketch made by Lieu- tenant Williams, of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, during the siege of Boston, — a date nearly one hundred and fifty years indeed after the settle- ment; but during that interval probably nothing had been done by man to change the outline of the eminence. Beyond is seen the Back Bay and the mouth of the Charles. The scarped char- acter of the northern side of the hill is shown distinctly. Towards the water it sloped sharply to a bluff, at the foot of which among boulders the waves washed, even within the memory of a generation but just gone. — Ed.| ^ [Leonard Buttall burned lime upon it in the early days, and in 1649 Thomas Painter was allowed "to erect a milne" there. Rec- ord Commissioners' Second Report, 56, 59, 66 97. — Ed.] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 529 Only inferior in topographical value to its hills were the coves of Boston. These deep inlets, worn by the sea wherever the yielding nature of the soil permitted, were, in 1630, fast changing the character of the place; and as the waves at high tide poured over the lowlands lying between Copp's Hill and the Tramount, and washed to a thihner^nd thinner thread its frail hold upon the continent, the peninsula already began to take on the semblance of two islands.^ At this point man steps in to arrest the progress of natural forces ; modern enterprise has achieved what the vain words of the old Danish king were impotent to effect. The course of the sea has not only been stayed, but turned back upon itself; and with immense effect. Noth- ing has so changed the outward aspect of Boston as filling up its coves ; no longer like two islands, no longer like a peninsula, Boston appears to-day firmly welded to the main land as part and parcel of the continent. Of these coves the most easterly, and from its position the most impor- tant, was the Town Cove ; stretching from a point near the base of Copp's Hill on the north to Fort Hill on the south, it swept inward almost to the foot of Brattle Street. The shape of this inward sweep, which was first known as Bendall's Dock, and then as Town Dock, is shown in the map in the present volume. The North Cove or Mill Pond, as it was afterwards called, once covered a large part of the area enclosed between Copp's and the point of upland that extended north-west from Beacon Hill, and is now one of the most busy and thriving districts of the North End. Divided from the sea on the north-west by a narrow causeway, — said to have been first used by the In- dians as a pathway across the marsh, — the course of which may in part still be traced in the general direction of Causeway Street, its southerly margin ran some distance inside of Merrimac Street ; on the west it followed a little outside the line of the lower part of Leverett Street, and on the east it swept somewhat beyond the line of Salem and Prince streets. When the Second Baptist Church was located in Baldwin Place, it stood in part over the water, and candidates for baptism are said to have been immersed at the rear of the church. " The station house of the Boston and Maine Railway," says Drake, " stands in the midst of this Mill Pond ; while the Lowell, Eastern, and Fitchburg occupy sites beyond the causeway rescued from the sea." Altogether the cove occupied an area a little larger than the Common. The third or South Cove, which, starting from Windmill Point very nearly at the junction of Federal, Cove, and East streets, swept away towards the South-Boston bridge and washed the eastern sands of the Neck, was of less interest and importance than the others, and has been more slowly filled up. Besides these large coves, there were numerous smaller inlets or creeks that added greatly to the broken and ragged appearance which the shore- 1 [It may be inferred from an order in the that so late as 1644 it was thought to be easier Town Records, granting permission to Nathaniel to keep a channel for the water which some- Woodward to lay " a water channell of timber times washed over the Neck, than to dyke it in one of the causewayes towards Rocksbury," out. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 67. 530 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. line originally presented. One large creek wound inward from Liberty Square along Water Street nearly to the Spring-gate. A branch extended across Congress Street and beyond Franklin. An aged inhabitant, quoted by Shaw, had seen a canoe sail at different times over the spot which now makes the corner of Congress and Water streets, while the same witness " remembers having heard Dr. Chauncy say that he had taken smelts " at the head of the other creek in Federal Street. These various inlets left, of course, corresponding headlands, several of which received names and were known as landmarks. We read of Blaxton's (or Blackstone's) Point at the West End, situated near West Cedar Street, between Pinckney and Mount Vernon, said to have been near the residence and not far from the famous spring of William Blackstone ; Barton's Point on the north-west, near Craigie Bridge, named from James Barton, a well- known rope-maker in his time, whose name is preserved in Barton Street ; Hudson's Point, where Winthrop landed, and where Anne Pollard leaped ashore, situated at the extreme north-east end and named for Francis Hud- son, the Charlestown ferryman, but originally called " Ye Mylne Point " in the grant of the Ferry to Thomas Marshall in 1635 ; Merry's Point, near the Winnisimmet ferry, named for Walter Merry, a neighboring shipwright; Fort Point, near Fort Hill, or the present Rowe's Wharf, and Windmill Point, before mentioned.^ Not less important than all these coves and hijls and headlands was that long narrow strip of land properly called " The Neck," which, begin- ning to narrow just south of Eliot Street, stretched away like a ribbon of varying width to the main land. Vastly different, however, to its present aspect was its condition in those early days when the road which trav- ersed it was well-nigh impassable in the spring, when the horses waded knee-deep in water at full tides, when the only timber upon the whole peninsula grew upon .the .Neck, and the marshes on either hand were the favorite hunting-ground of the sportsman. With such great unevenness of surface, with a coast line so abounding in irregularities, with a territory so narrow and circumscribed, it must be confessed that Boston in 1630 pi^sented to the statesman founding a colony destined in time to extend its influence over a continent, or even to the weary band of emigrants seeking a refuge and a home, a place which to our modern eyes seems rich chiefly in possibilities. Although Blackstone judiciously built his little cabin upon the westerly declivity of Beacon Hill, Winthrop and his associates pitched their tem- porary tents, and afterwards built their log-huts and houses, on the eastern side of the peninsula around what was called afterwards the Town Cove. " It is difficult," says Shaw, " to assign a reason for this, but the first paragraph in the town records establishes the fact that in 1634 this was ' the chief landing-place.' " 1 [The reader will find a more extended account of these natural landmarks in Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, ch. vii. — Ed.] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 531 It was the chief landing-place, it may be said, evidently because it was the most convenient ; while its proximity to the fountain of delicious water in Spring Lane, together with its position, — hedged about as it was by the three hills, and commanding the approach from the harbor, — would seem to afford reason enough for Winthrop's choice. The first houses were necessarily of the rudest description, and they seem to have been scattered hither and thither according to individual need or fancy. The early streets, too, obedient to the same law of con- venience, naturally followed the curves of the hills, winding about their bases by the shortest routes, and crossing their slopes at the easiest angles. To the pioneer upon the western prairie it is comparatively easy to lay out his prospective city in squares and streets of unvarying size and shape, and oftentimes, be it said, of wearying sameness ; to the colonist of 1630 upon this rugged promontory of New England it was a different matter. Without the power or leisure to surmount the natural obstacles of his new home, he was contented to adapt himself to them. Thus the narrow, winding streets, with their curious twists and turns, the crooked alleys and short-cuts by which he drove his cows to pasture up among the blueberry bushes ofBeacon Hill, or carried his grist to the windmill over upon Copp's steeps, or went to draw his water at the spring-gate, or took his sober Sunday way to the first rude little church, — these paths and highways, worn by his feet and established for his convenience, remain after two centuries and a half substantially unchanged, endeared to his posterity by priceless associations. And so the town, growing at first after no plan and with no thought of proportion, but as directed and shaped by the actual needs of the inhabi- tants, became a not unfitting exponent of their lives, — the rough outward garb as it were of their hardy young civilization. Convenience was the first consideration ; and we accordingly find that starting from the eastern cove the settlement gradually moved north and south, following the ins and outs of the sea-banks, and clinging so closely to the shore-line that for many years there was no buijding upon the sides of the hills. In all early views of the town, even down to a time long subsequent to the colonial period, this is apparent; and the houses are seen crowded thickly along the^j^ajer's edge, while Beacon Hill rises bare and blank in the background. To prove, however, that the early settlers were not without any care or consideration for the looks of their new home, we find that at a meeting of the overseers held in 1635 it was ordered: •* — " That from this day there shall noe house at all be built in this towne neere unto any of the streetes or laynes therein but with the advise and consent of the overseers of the towne's occasions for the avoyding of disorderly building to the inconvenience of streets and laynes, and for the more comely and Commodious ordering of them, 1 See also other orders to the like effect, made at the same and subsequent meetings for the year 1636. 532 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. upon the forfeyture, for every house built Contrarie to this order, of such sume as the ouerseers shall see fitting." At a subsequent meeting in the same month it was further provided : " Item : that John Gallop shall remove his payles at his yard's end within fourteen days, and to range them even with the comer of his house for the preserving of the way upon the sea-banke." Three public structures of a peculiar character, placed respectively upon each of the three hills, early combined to give character and variety to the little settlement. These were the fort, the windmill, and the beacon ; all of which gave names more or less enduring to the sites they occupied. The fort placed upon Cornhill and begun May 24, 1632, was a joint work, — Charlestown, Roxbury, and Dorchester taking part in its construction, each town working a day in turn. The windmill, as before stated, was brought down from Watertown and set up at the North End, where it will be safe to assume it soon found something other than " westerly winds " to set its huge clumsy wings whirling; while the origin of the beacon may be found in the following resolution of the Court of Assistants dated March 4, 1634 : " It is ordered that there shalbe forth with a beacon sett on the Gentry hill at Boston to give notice to the Gountry of any danger, and that there shalbe a ward of one pson kept there from the first of April to the last of September ; and that upon the discovery of any danger the beacon shalbe fired, an allarum given, as also messengers presently sent by that town where the danger is discov'ed to all other townes within this jurisdiccon." The beacon, as seen in the usual engravings of it, was simply a tall pole furnished with wooden rungs for climbing, with an iron pot filled with tar depending from a crane at its top. It is not known that the combustibles were ever fired. Flaming from a height of sixty-five feet from the ground, and over two hundred above the tide, the beacon would have furnished a conspicuous signal in case of alarm. 1 It is unfortunate that the only description we have of the town in its first decade is that of Mr. John Josselyn, a young Englishman who, although of sufficient intelligence and education, thought more of telling strange and curious things for his readers at home than of leaving reliable matter for history. On his arrival here in 1638 he says : " Having refreshed myself for a day or two upon Noddles Island I crossed the Bay in a small Boat to Boston which then was rather a Village than a Town, there being not above twenty or thirty houses." 'The editor of Winthrop's New England very properly reflects upon this statement, and accuses the author of having omitted a cipher from the end of his figures or of scorning to count the log-cabins in his estimate.^ In the early days before the settlement took form we find the different districts of the town called " fields," — as " The Neck Field " or " The Field 1 The lantern of the State House is about two hundred and twenty feet above the sea level 2 [Barry. Hist, of Mass., i 214, and others have made similar comments. — Ed] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 533 towards Roxburie " on the south, beyond Dover Street; " Coleborn's Field," lying about the present Common Street; "The Fort Field" on the east, "The Mylne Field" on the north, and "The New Field" on the west; to- gether with "The Gentry Field," which last alone still remains to us in substan- tially its ancient form, being in part the land now embraced by the Common. But this was only in the beginning; streets and highways were rapidly formed and named. At the North End there were very soon three princi- pal thoroughfares, — Fore, Middle, and Back streets, now known as North, Hanover, and Salem. In June, 1636, we find in an order of the Court which provides for " a sufficient footway to be made from William Coleborn's field,^ and unto Samuel Wilbore's field next Roxbury," the origin of our present Washington Street, in the part south of Castle Street, not for many years, however, to be known by its modern name. In " y° Mylne Street," a highway laid out in 1644 and conducting towards Windmill Point, we recognize the Summer Street of the present day. We learn furthermore from the Town Records that in March, 1640, a street was laid out to lead up over the hill, which followed the line of the present School Street. State Street was "a primitive highway" of very short extent, which led into the flats at Merchants Row, and was usually spoken of as the Water Street. Considerable change in the appearance of things at the North End about this time resulted from a grant of the town, July 31, 1643, to Henry Simonds, John Button, and others, of the whole area of land embraced by the North Cove, together with the marshes beyond. This was upon condition that the grantees should put up on the premises " one or more corn-mills, and main- tain the same forever." Leave was also given to them " to dig one or more trenches in the highways or waste grounds, so as they may make and main- tain sufficient passable and safe ways over the same for horse and cart." The grantees went speedily to work and dug the ditch, which soon acquired and ever afterward retained the name of the Mill Creek ; bridges were thrown across it at Hanover Street, and later, when they had filled in the marsh, at North Street, and mills were built upon the margin of the Mill Pond, and were called the South and North Mills,^ including in all a grist mill, a saw mill, and in later years a chocolate mill. The Mill Creek thus formed separated the town into two parts, and was for a long time considered the dividing line between the North and South ends. There is reason to believe that there had formerly been a small natural watercourse across the marshy neck, thus practically making an island of the North End, which indeed has even been called the " Island of Boston." ^ • [William Coleborn was a considerable man ^ [xhe position of these mills is marked on of the early days, and often conspicuou.s in mat- the map in this volume. — Ed.] ters relating to the south part of the town. * [Johnson, Wonder-working Providence, in Coleborn's field seems to have had for its centre 1648, says, "The north-east part of the town the hillock where Hollis-Street church now being separated from the other with a narrow stands, and to have extended to the shore on stream, ait throngh the neck of land by'industry, either hand, and as far south as Castle Street, whereby that part is become an island." There The road to Roxbury followed the easterly shore seems to have been a passage for the smaller through this space. — Ed.J craft well into the creek. Deeds of adjoining 534 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Besides these various mills, Winthrop tells of another windmill being erected in 1636, the location of which, although not given, was probably at Windmill Point, or perhaps near the spot now known as Church Green; while before 1650 there were three others stationed respectively at Fox Hill, at Fort Hill, and upon one of the elevations ^ in " the New Field." These, with that already mentioned upon Copp's Hill, sufficiently attest the growth and prosperity of the colony; and we may easily conceive that, perched thus upon their respective headlands, and all set whirling by an easterly wind, they must have given the town a curious and busy aspect to the traveller sailing up the harbor about the year 1650. Luckily we have a graphic description of the town at this very time in the often-quoted passage from Johnson's Wonder-working Providence : — " Invironed it [the peninsula] is with the Brinish flouds saving one small Istmos which gives free accesse to the Neighbour Townes by Land on the South side ; on the North-west and North-east two constant Faires [ferries] are kept for daily traffique thereunto. The forme of this Towne is like a heart naturally scituated for Fortifica- tions, having two Hills on the frontice part thereof next the Sea ; the one well fortified on the superficies thereof with store of great artillery well mounted, the other hath a very strong battery built of whole Timber and filled with Earth at the descent of the Hill [Copp's] in the extreme poynt thereof; betwixt these two strong armes lies a large Cove or Bay on which the chiefest part of this Town is built, overtopped with a third HiU ; all three like overtopping Towers keepe a constant watch to foresee the approach of forrein dangers, being furnished with a Beacon and lowd babling guns to give notice by their redoubled eccho to all their Sister-townes. The chief Edifice of this City-like Towne is crowded on the Sea-bankes and wharfed out with great industry and cost, the buildings beautiful! and large ; some fairely set fprth with Brick, Tile, Stone, and Slate, and orderly placed with comely streets." This account must appear somewhat rose-colored when compared with that of the Royal Commissioners written fifteen years later, who say with less enthusiasm that, " Their houses are generally wooden, their streets crooked, with little decency and no uniformity." And this, al- though not very flattering, seems a very natural first impression for the transatlantic visitor of two centuries ago, notwithstanding Mr. Josselyn's testimony at about the same time that " the Buildings are handsome, joyning one to the other, as in London, with many large streets, &c. ; " that there were " fair buildings,^ some of stone," together with the ac count of Mr. Gibbs's " stately edifice," ^ and the " three fair Meeting-houses land reserve " free liberty of egresse and regress 2 cf . John Dunton's Letters from New Eng- with vessells, not prejudicing the mill streame," land, p. 67. and a toll of sixpence was exacted " for such as 3 Robert Gibbs's house stood on Fort Hill, open the bridge." Second Report of Record and Josselyn adds, it " will stand him in little Commissioners, \T\, 177 The rapid current less than ;^3,ooo before it is fully finished," — through it caused it to be the only place (1656) a princely edifice for the young town, if we take into which butchers were permitted to throw into consideration the difference in the value of their garbage. — Ed.] money. Cf. John Dunton's Letters, p. 69, for a 1 [This was near the spot where the West similar description of the Gibbs House. [Of Church (Cambridge and Lynde streets) stands. Gibbs's family connections, see Mr. Whitmore's — Ed ] chapter. — Ed.] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 535 or Churches which hardly suffice to receive the Inhabitants and Stran- gers that come in from all parts." The tone of this as well as of the previous extract from Johnson is mis- leading, and can only be accounted for by a traveller's incorrigible habit of exaggerating. It is evident enough from facts in our possession, and from early views of the town, that "stone houses" and " stately edifices " were only too rare ; that the buildings were chiefly of wood ; ^ that they were generally small, unpainted, and unimposing, if not mean-looking ; and that, placed hither and thither in the crooked streets, they must have very dimly recalled London or any other continental city. In twenty years, however, the town had no doubt grown greatly, and many and striking changes had taken place in its outward aspect. It was beginning to have a settled, thriving, and prosperous look ; its principal streets had been laid out and " paved with pebble," docks and wharfs built,^ ferries established, and prominent public buildings added. Some of these deserve particular mention. The strong battery mentioned in Johnson's description above was that known for many years as the North Battery ; it was built about the year 1646,^ on the petition of the North-enders, and at their own expense, they praying that they might " for the future bee freed from all rates and assessments to what other fortifications bee in the towne until such time as the other part of the towne, not joyning with us herein, shall have disbursed and layed out in equall proporcion of their estates with ours as by trew account may appear." Although made only of strong timber filled with earth it was admirably located at Merry's Point above described, and with its " lowd babling guns " commanded not only the harbor, but the entrance to the river. Twenty years later, in 1666, there was built at the southern end of the cove upon the site of the present Rowe's Wharf, and imder the shadow of Fort Hill, a similar defensive work, — the famous Sconce or South Battery.* It is quaintly and sufficiently de- scribed in the Report of the Commissioners sent by the General Court to inspect it in 1666 : — " Wee enfed a well contriued fort, called Boston Sconce ; the artillery therein is of good force and well mounted, the gunner attending the same ; the former thereof suite- able to the place, so as to scower the harbour, to the full length of their shot euery 1 See in corroboration of this the Journal of ton, 126. The Town Records, under date of Jasper Dankers, who came to Boston in 1680. "8th of nth mo. 1643," show that a committee He says: "All the houses are made of thin (Captain Keayne, Captain Hawkins, Ensign small cedar shingles nailed against frames and Savage, Sergeant Hutchinson, Sergeant Johnson, then filled in with brick and other stuff ; and so and Sergeant Oliver) were named "for the order- are their churches." ing of which.'' Second Rept. of Record Cojmnis- 2 [The Town Records previous to 1650 show sioners,-]^. — Ed.] numerous permits given to "wharf out " before * [It was erected by Major-General John shore lands, particularly from the town dock to Leverett, afterwards Governor, and the report Merry's Point. — Ed] of the committee appointed to view it upon 3 [The town had had a warning of the neces- completion is printed in Shurtleff's Desc. of sity of such protection a few years earlier, 1644, Boston, 116. See also Snow, Boston, p. 127, 155. when the project was first mooted. Snow, .Sw- — Ed.] , . 536 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. way ; it is spacious w"'in, that the trauerse of one gunne will not hinder the other's course ; and for defence, the foundation is of stone and well banked w* earth for dull- ing the shott and hindering execution ; ffinally, wee app'hend it to be the compleatest worke of that kind which hitherto hath been erected in this country." Landward, a defensive work was very early established not far from the present Do^er Street. Shurtleff^ thus describes it: — " It was chiefly of brick with embrasures in front and places for cannon on its flanks, and a deep ditch on its south side ; and had two gates, one for carriages and teams, and another for persons on foot. Regular watches and wards were kept near it. A little to the south of this had been placed in earlier times a row of palisades. After the disappearance of the hostile Indians, the whole fortification fell into decay, and was not renewed till into the next century." In the harbor there was a fortification erected on Castle Island, and Johnson describes it as built on the north-east end of the island, " upon a rising hill." Views of the island taken in the next century show that in its present state it has been considerably cut down from its original height ; indeed, its name seems to imply a commanding altitude, for it was called Castle Island before a fortification was begun there, and while it was the intention of the colonists to make their seaward defence at Nantasket, — a scheme soon however abandoned. In the summer of 1634 Deputy Roger Ludlow was chosen to oversee the erection of " two platformes and one small fortification to secure them bothe." In October the General Court confirmed the action of the town, and directed a house to be " built on the topp of the hill to defend the said plattforme." In the following March, 1634-35, the Court ordered it to be " fully perfected, the ordnance mounted." A later commander, in speaking of its early days, says this primitive struc- ture was made " with mud walls, which stood divers years ; " but Johnson assigns as a reason of the decay into which it soon fell, that the lime used in its construction was " what is burnt of oyster shels." The earliest captains of it were Nicholas Simpkins (to 1635), Edward Gibbons (to 1636), Rich- ard Morris (to 1637) ; then, after an interval when private parties undertook to manage it, Robert Sedgwick in June, 1641. Fitful attempts were made to keep it in repair; it was finally rebuilt "with pine trees and earth," and in 1654 Johnson speaks of it as under the command of Captain Daven- port, " a man approved for his faithfulness, courage, and skill." The fort had then cost about four thousand pounds, and the barricade construction had given place to one of brick, with " three rooms in it, a dwelling-room below, a lodging-room over it, the gun-room over that, wherein stood six very good Saker guns, and over it on the top three lesser guns." In July, 1665, " God was pleased to send a grievous storm of thunder and light- ening, which did some hurt in Boston, and struck dead here that worthy renowned Captain Richard Davenport; upon which the General Court in Aug. loth following appointed another Captain." This was the narrator ^ Description of Boston, p. 140. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 537 we quote, Roger Clap, who held the office till 1686; and he adds that " when danger grew on us by reason of the late wars with Holland, God permitted our castle to be burnt down, which was on the twenty-first day of March, 1672-73." ^ The first town-house built in the market place at the head of State Street was undoubtedly an imposing edifice for its day, and gave character to the street. It was a wooden house " built upon pillars," and there seems to have been a sort of exchange for the merchants in the lower story with cham- bers above, where the monthly court held its sessions.^ It was built largely with money left for the purpose by Captain Robert Keayne, which was supplemented by later subscriptions from prominent and wealthy citizens. The fact that Josselyn speaks of "three fair meeting-houses" shows that his account must have been written in 1671-72, after his return to Eng- land and not on his arrival here in 1663; for the "Old South," or the South meeting-house as it was then called, the third church in order built in the town, was only just completed at that date, having settled its first minister in 1670. The other churches included in the account were the " Old North," the church of the Mathers, and the second in order of time, — a wooden building erected in Clark's Square (North Square) at the North End, about the year 1650, and the First Church before mentioned, — the rude little thatched building on State Street having been long since taken down, when a larger structure was built in 1640, on the site now occupied by Joy's Building on Washington Street.^ The opinion which Shaw advanced, that most of the first settlers soon removed to the North End, or beyond the Mill Creek, was questioned by Dr. Snow, who found the names of only about thirty residents in that part of the town. He very properly says, however, that about 1650, some twenty years after the settlement of the town, " An increase of business began to be perceived at the North End, and that removals began to be made into it which resulted in its becoming ' for many years the most populous and elegant part of the town.' " Snow's view is borne out by later study of the Book of Possessions. The maps which have been made from its descrip- tions do not show, however, that there were many, if any, house-lots farther west in the " New Field " than the line of Sudbury Street and the corner of Howard Street and Tremont Row. The allotments beyond were for tillage and mowing. No clear notion of the early aspect of the town can well be obtained without an understanding of the number, direction, and condition of its 1 Shurtleff traces the history of the Castle inson) was named " to consider the modell of in his Desc. of Boston, ch. xxxvii. Drake says the towne house to bee built, as concerning the that the burning was a year later, 1673-74, Hist, charge thereof and the most convenient place," of Boston, 396. &c. Mr. Whitmore has traced the subject ^ Cf. Neal's New England, ii. 225. [The thoroughly in the &OTfl// /fa/f^-j, i. 160. — Ed.] Town Records under date, "9: i: 56-57," ^ The first sermon was preached in it Aug. show that a committee (Captain Savage, Mr. 23,1640. No sketch of it, nor particular descrip- Stodard, Mr. Howchin, and Mr. Edward Hutch- tion, has been preserved. VOL. I. — 68. 538 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. highways. Unfortunately, no list of the streets as they existed during the colonial period is on record ; indeed, save in a few instances, they had not then been named, and we are therefore left for our information to such chance mention as can be gleaned from the Town Records, the Book of Possessions, and the written accounts of travellers. It must always be re- membered, however, that previous to 1684 only a very few of the principal thoroughfares deserved the name of streets ; the rest were, for the most part, rather lanes and by-paths more or less worn and frequented according to their locality. In May, 1708, there appears for the first time in the Town Records a list of the existing streets, lanes, and alleys, with their nam^s and boundaries ; and of these it may be safe to assume that certain of the chief routes and thor- oughfares, connecting old landmarks and important points of the town, were identical with those laid out and in use from the earliest days of the colony. A careful collation of the different entries in the town and county records bearing upon the point will help us in the study.^ Washington and Hanover streets were then as now the chief thorough- fares of their respective quarters of the town, — the former, laid out along the narrow stretch of level ground between the foot of Beacon Hill and the shore, wound away towards the south and was gradually extended across the Neck to Roxbury; the latter starting from the declivity of Cotton [Pemberton] Hill crossed the Mill Creek by a bridge and traversed the centre of the northern peninsula to the sea. One may easily conceive that in the latter half of the seventeenth cen- tury Washington — then called simply the high or main street, and later by a multiplicity of names ^ — may have justly deserved Johnson's epithet " comely," bordered as it was on both sides, from the market place to Milk Street, and even farther south to Boylston and Essex, with substantial frame-houses, many of them large and handsome, surrounded by fine gardens, where dwelt some of the most solid men of the colony. Here lived John Winthrop, the doughty first governor; here uprose the steeple of the first " South Meeting-House ; " here upon the site of the " old corner book- store " dwelt Mistress Anne Hutchinson, whose keen wit and sharp tongue set the town at loggerheads ; here, later in the period, stood the famous Province House, soon to be described ; here farther north was built the sec- ond house of the First Church, as before mentioned ; here at the junction with State Street stood the Town House before noticed and undoubtedly the finest public building of its day, while across the way appeared the res- idence of Governor John Leverett, who, in a varied exp'erience, directed the war against King Philip, and served under Cromwell ; here, in fine, thronged, 1 See the collation of extracts showing the it was known, as far back as 1708 by four dis course of Washington Street, printed in the tinct names - Orange, Newbury, Marlborough preface to the Report of the Committee on and CornhiU- along the successive sections of Nomenclature of Streets. (City Documents, the way, until all were at length united under the 119 1879. )_ ,. , .^ . present name, after the visit of General Wash- '■ btarting from the fortifications on the Neck, ington to the city in 1789. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 539 as occasion served, the cream of colonial social life, and for want of side- walks, " except when driven on one side by carts and carriages, every one walked in the middle of the street where the pavement was the smoothest." ^ State Street early rivalled Washington Street in interest, and surpassed it in importance. In one of the early views of the next century the street appears paved with pebbles and without sidewalks ; and so we may assume it to have been for some time previous to 1684. The buildings too, doubtless, more nearly answered Josselyn's description as standing " close together on each side of the street as in London, and are furnished with many fair shops." This was the busy bustling part of the town, the centre of commerce and trade ; here at its head was the first market ; ^ here, in the market place, was subsequently built the Town House with the Merchants Exchange as above mentioned ; and not far from here was the first post-office, estab- lished in 1639 by the following order of the General Court: — "For the preventing the miscarriage of letters, it is ordered, that notice bee given that Richard Fairbanks, his house in Boston, is the place appointed for all letters, which are brought from beyond seas or to be sent thither, are to be brought unto him, and he is to take care that they bee delivered or sent according to their directions ; pro- vided that no man shall be compelled to bring his letters thither except hee please." ^ Here, too, for nearly ten years succeeding the settlement, was the First Church where Wilson preached, and had for a colleague the Rev. John Cotton, sometime rector of St. Botolph's church in England, out of com- pliment to whom Boston is said to have been named,* — a man of excellent ability and unusual learning. And here, at last, before the very door of the sanctuary, perhaps to show that the Church and State went hand-in-hand in precept and penalty, stood the first whipping-post, — no unimportant adjunct of Puritan life. The early street as thus described must not be judged by the present. Much less in extent, not having yet been fully quadrupled in length by the building of Long Wharf, it was but a short way and by no means entirely given over to trade and public affairs. Many of the merchants lived over their shops, and it numbered among its residents several names well known in the history of the town. At the head of the street on the south-east cor- ner lived Captain Robert Keayne, a rich merchant and public-minded cit- izen, and the first captain of the " Ancient and Honorable Artillery," — all of which dignity however did not save him from being tried, convicted, and punished for making what was then thought an exorbitant profit upon his wares. The magnanimous Captain took an unusual but most worthy re- venge upon his busy-body townsmen, by leaving them a handsome legacy wherewith to build their town house, in a will of nearly two hundred pages, — 1 Quincy Memoir, — pertaining to a later, but thorities removed, granting her compensation in this respect not a different, period. therefor. — Ed.] 2 [The open space was at first, we may * Fairbanks lived on Washington Street, judge, somewhat encumbered with stationary * [This has often been the reason assigned ; shops; for the Town Records, 1645, show that but see Dr. Haven's chapter on the "Massa- the widow Howin had a shop here which the au- chusetts Company." — Ed.] 540 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. a large part of which was devoted to an elaborate defence of his mercantile honor, whereby he may be said to have had the last word in the dispute. In which respect, we may add, he came better off than in his famous con- troversy with the fair widow Shearman about the pig, which quarrel for a while set the whole town by the ears, and curiously enough is said to have resulted in the division of the General Court and the establishment of the Board of Deputies as a distinct body from the Magistrates, — the founda- tion of our present double legislative body.^ On the opposite corner of the street lived John Cogan, who has the distinction of being the father of Boston merchants ; and below him on the same side the Rev. John Wilson, the first pastor of the colony. Crooked Lane, which ran through his land from State Street to Dock Square, was afterwards called Wilson's Lane in his honor, and preserved its name until the street itself was lost in the extension of Devonshire Street. Tremont Street, which along the southern part of its course was little more than a straggling cart-road across the Common,^ early became, north of its junction with School Street, a favorite place of residence. On the slope of the hill which for a time was called in his honor, and near the easterly entrance to Pemberton Square, lived the Rev. John Cot- ton in the house previously occupied by that remarkable young man Harry Vane, and later by Hull the mint-master, who spoke of it " as greatly disadvantageous for trade," but being desirous of " a quiet life and not too much business, it was always best for me." After him it became the home of his son-in-law, who spoke of it as " considerably distant from other buildings and very bleake."^ This was the famous Samuel Sew- all, the first chief-justice of the colony; the same who sat in judgment upon the witches, and afterwards repented it ; who refused to sell an inch of his broad acres to the hated Episcopalians to build a church upon ; who was one of the richest, most astute, 'sagacious, scholarly, bigoted, and influential men of his day ; who has left us in his Diary, recently published,* a transcript almost vivid in its conscientious faithfulness of that old-time life, where he tells us of the courts he held, the drams he drank, the sermons he heard, with the text of each, the funerals he attended, at some of which they had scarfs and gloves, at some of which they had none, the squabbles of the council-board, the petty affairs of his own household and neighborhood, 1 See, for an account of this absurd yet fruit- the minute details of history. There seems to ful episode, Winthrop's New England, ii. 280, have been in Sewall a concentration of all that and Drake's Hist, of Boston, 260. [Cf. also Mr. there was in his age repulsive to our modern Winthrop's chapter in the present volume.— education; but his measure is to be taken ^^■^ ^oi'e exactly, no doubt, in a following volume. '•i V\f hich south of West Street was bounded A discriminating writer has, on the contrary ''^f?f"^rt.- , • spoken of him as "great by almost every meas- [See Mr. Whitmore s tracmg of the title of ure of greatness, — moral courage, honor benev- thisestatem^ra-a/Z/'fl/^^j-, i. 59. — Ed.] olence, learning, eloquence, intellectual force *■ [5 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. vi. vii. It must and breadth and brightness ; " but while one be-confessed that it is not easy to read this diary admits much in his favor, the diary' can hardlv without pity and disgust mingling with amuse- fail to show us his pettinesses See Tyler's ment and with that interest which belongs to History of American Literature ii 99— Ed] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLOJ^IAL PERIOD. 541 the occasions where he advised with the governor touching matters of life and death, and where he gravely admonished a neighbor's son upon the sinfulness of cutting off his hair. A little south of the Cotton-Vane place dwelt Governor Bellingham in a house which was standing, in a somewhat altered condition, a little more than fifty years ago.^ Two clergymen of note lived at different times upon this side of the street, — one, the Rev. John Davenport, the founder of the city of New Haven, Conn., and subsequently pastor of the First Church here, lived on an estate which long remained the property of his parish ; the other, the Rev. John Oxenbridge, also a pastor of the same church, and the fifth 2 in the notable succession of Johns who administered to that con- gregation within the first half-century of its existence, lived farther south near the present corner of Beacon Street, upon the spot previously occu- pied by Colonel Shrimpton. High above all these worthy and distinguished folk, perched upon the brow of the hill, as it were the presiding genius of the place, dwelt Governor John Endicott, the most stern and uncompromising Puritan of them all, who, we opine, never recovered from his chagrin that he could not make his darling Salem the capital of the colony, although he at length condescended to come to Boston and share the authority with Winthrop. He it was who packed all the Episcopalians home to England ; who cut the cross out of the flag in his insensate rage against the old faith ; who had a heated dis- pute with the Rev. John Cotton upon the vital question as to whether ladies should or should not wear veils over their faces ; who knew no fear of prince or potentate ; who dared do anything, or take any responsibility, for the good of the colony; and who was deservedly one of its most esteemed and respected leaders; Farther around the northern base of the hill, beyond the entrance to Pemberton Square, lived Captain Cyprian Southack, who afterwards gained repute in the Indian wars under Church, and in honor of whom Howard Street was originally called Southack's Court. Of the various cross streets leading between Tremont and Washington, beginning with Court Street, the northernmost, we shall find it known first as Prison Lane before it became Queen Street in the loyal provincial days. It was notable for containing the first prison of the colony, — a gloomy, massively-built old pile that stood upon or close to the spot now occupied by the County Court House, the sombre aspect of which latter building might well persuade "an extravagant and erring spirit" of those early days that he had fallen upon the veritable old-time home of colonial evil-doers. Here then, and in later days, were shut up the hapless witches and the notorious Kidd; where, perhaps with less innocent victims, they may have shivered through the freezing winter nights in dungeon cells 1 [See a note to Mr. Whitrhore's chapter. — Ed..] ^ Wilson, Cotton, Norton, Davenport, Oxenbridge. 542 THE MEJklORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " warmed only by a pan of charcoal." It had a considerable yard about it, as shown at a later day in Bonner's map, and as early as 1642 a "salt peter howse" was built in the yard, thirty by fourteen feet, " set upon posts seven foot high above the ground, with a covering of thatch, and the wall clapboarded tight from the injury of rayne and snow." ^ School Street was early laid out; at first known only as " the way lead- ing up Gentry Hill," it was soon called Latin-School Street, from the first school-house built there during the early years of this period. This build- ing, as we shall see, was subsequently taken down to make room for the enlargement of King's Chapel. Beacon Street was at first curiously enough "the way leading to the Almshouse," that institution being for a time indeed the sole or principal building it contained. Built in 1662, it stood for twenty years on the corner of Beacon and Park streets, and having been burned in 1682, like so many other of the early public buildings, it was replaced a few years later by a structure of brick.^ Park, then called Gentry or Sentry Street, was at the time of which we write but a foot-path over the hill. West and Winter streets, although mentioned and defined in the list of 1708, thirty or forty years earlier were nothing but grass-grown by-ways, the latter of which was known variously as Blott's, Bannister's, and Willis's. Lane ; while Boylston Street was a short cross-way ending abruptly in the marsh, and was called, doubtless with good cause, " Frog Lane." It was not, as now, the south- erly limit of the Gommon, for Robert Walker had a house and garden on the corner opposite the Hotel Pelham ; William Briscoe, a tailor, lived adjoining, where the deer park is ; while on the site of the burial- ground Gotton Flacke, a laborer, had a lot granted him in 1640, which was occupied a few years later by William Blantaine ; John Serch had a lot still further west. On the other side of the main street, the cross-ways leading south from State and east from Washington streets were cut short or turned aside from " the direct forthright " in many cases by the various marshes, creeks, and inlets there abounding. Starting at the southern end of Washington Street, and taking them in order, we find that Essex Street was a path towards the Windmill. Bedford, or as then known Pond, Street turned and followed nearly the line of Kingston Street to the shore, which it reached a little dis- tance north-west of the United States Hotel. It passed a small pond known as the town's " watering place," almost opposite the old English and High School-house, where we may imagine the thirsty cattle stopping to drink at sundown, on their way home from the hilly pastures of the Fort Field. Summer Street, which in early times was known as " Ye Mylne street," appears in the list of 1708 by its present name, where it is described as 1 Second Report of Record Commissioners,^. ^o. gory, a separate House of Correction was set 2 Early in tlie next century, when the town up in Park Street, to which later was added a fathers had discovered that poverty and vice do workhouse. See First Report of the Record not necessarily belong to the same moral cate- Commissioners, 78. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 543 " leading easterly from Doctor Okes his corner in Newberry Street,^ passing by the dwelling-House of Cap- Tim° Clark extending to y" sea." It was one of the earliest of the old highways, having been laid out in 1644; but all that distinguishes the street, even the reputed residence of Sir Edmund Andros, belongs to a later day. In the colonial period it was so near the extreme south end of the town as to be socially out of the world. High Street once led from Summer to the top of Fort Hill, and as long as the grassy hillside yielded abundant pasturage its old name of Cow Lane was doubtless a most apt one ; but to-day, when the last vestige of the old hill has been swept into the sea, its present has no more significance than its former name.^ One of the most important and interesting by-ways branching off from the main street was the ancient Fort, now Milk, Street, which led from Gov- ernor Winthrop's green (Old-South lot), and turning on the line of Battery- march Street led by the shore to the old Sconce or South Battery ; but, as in the case of the other South-End highways above mentioned, the many interesting associations to which its name gives rise belong to a later page, and will be noticed in due order. Of Spring Lane Drake has given a delightful picture. It recalls, he says, " the ancient Spring-gate, the natural fountain at which Winthrop and Johnson stooped to quench their thirst, and from which no doubt Madam Winthrop and Anne Hutchinson filled their flagons for domestic use. The gentlemen may have paused here for friendly chat, if the rigor of the Gov- ernor's opposition to the schismatic Anne did not forbid. The handmaid of Elder Thomas Oliver, Winthrop's next neighbor on the opposite corner of the Spring-gate, fetched her pitcherj like another Rebecca, from this well ; and grim Richard Brackett, the jailer, may have laid down his halberd to quaff a morning draught." But in our hasty march through the street 'we have passed the most noted landmark of the period. Turning back a few rods towards the south, on the opposite side of the way nearly fronting the head of Milk Street, we come upon the most interesting of all the colonial buildings which remained standing down to a very recent period, and is still freshly remembered by people now living, — the famous Province House. This fine old mansion was originally a private residence, built by Peter Sergeant, Esq., a wealthy merchant formerly of London, who bought the land in October, 1676, of Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, the great real-estate dealer of the day, for the handsome sum of ;£^3SO, by which the Colonel doubtless turned a pretty penny, inasmuch as the land came into his hands shortly before very much encumbered on the death of worthy Thomas Millard, its pre- vious owner. 1 One of the early names of Washington Gillom lived on the left, and on the right beyond Street. Richard Gridley came John Harrison, likewise 2 [As you left Summer Street, Benjamin with a shore front. — Ed.] 544 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Withdrawn from the street, raised above the level of the pavement, and standing in the midst of a well-kept green, the house formed a conspicuous feature of the neighborhood. It was built of brick imported from Holland, three stories in height, surmounted by a lofty cupola. Before the door was a handsome portico supported by wooden pillars, and crowned by a bal- cony formed by an iron balustrade of intricate pattern, into which, just over the entrance, were interwoven the owner's initials and the date of the building: " i6. P. S. 79." Leading down from the door was a flight of massive red freestone steps, while along the front of the lot, separating the garden from the road, stood an elaborate iron fence, at either end of which were small porters' lodges. But one house does not make a neighborhood ; and despite his fine walls and fences, his greensward and jealously-guarded gates, we may imagine the aristocratic Londoner's occasional disgust at his surroundings, as standing upon his stately balcony he gazed over at honest Francis Lyle, the barber, his next-door neighbor on the north, sitting in the midst of a family group upon the door-step in the cool of the evening; or turned his eyes southward and beheld Goodman Grubb, the leather-dresser, his nearest neighbor in that direction, smoking an evening pipe in not very immaculate shirt-sleeves at the garden gate ; or, fleeing for consolation to the rear, found nothing more comforting than the cross-legged figure of Arthur Perry, the town drummer and tailor, straining his eyes to put the last stitches to the waistcoat or small-clothes of some impatient customer, by the waning light. But Peter Sergeant in due time went the way of all the living, and was gathered in i/^to his fathers; his widowi married again and sold the grand old mansion to the State, whereupon it was fitted up for an official residence. These were the days of its glory and magnificence. Fain would we linger to lift the curtain upon the busy scene, to have a peep at the household economy of Shute, Burnet, Shirley, Pownall, Bernard, and the rest ! But this, as well as Hawthorne's quaint description of the " old Governor's house " in its decay, belong to a later chapter. On the opposite side of the way, a little to the south, down a narrow passage leading out from the main street, stood, towards the close of the period, another of the old taverns, — " The Blue Bell and Indian Queen." We may imagine its droll and gayly-colored sign, which doubtless pro- truded into Washington Street, and the queer appearance of the inn itself, hemmed into the narrow passage on both sides of which it was built. We have now come again to the Market Place, where, directly facing us and standing in the middle of the street, is an old landmark not to be 1 The bewildering snarl o£ widows and third also a widow, and even becominc^ his widowers suggested by Peter Sergeant's name widow, and lastly the widow of her third'' hus- is thus dearly unravelled by Shurtleff : " He was band." — Topog. and Hist. Desc. of Boston «■; as remarkable in his marriages as in his wealth ; [See also Mr. Whitmore's chapter in the present for he had three wives, his second having been volume and Mr. Savage's Genealorical Diction- a widow twice before her third venture ; and his ary. Ed.] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 545 omitted. This is the Town Pump, the water of which does not come from a natural fountain as at the Spring-gate, but from a well, the first known to have been dug in the colony. The old pump stood a great many years, for as late as 1760 we find an order leaving to the discretion of the select- men the question of repairing or discontinuing it. We are told that it became a nuisance ^ and gradually fell into disuse. It stood in the middle of Washington Street, a little north of the north-west corner of Court Street. Continuing now our progress through the highways, and proceeding down State Street, we find branching off thence to the southward, instead of the three long streets lined with stately buildings of marble and stone of the present day, but three insignificant lanes which are quickly lost in the creek or marsh. Devonshire, Congress, and Kilby streets, known in early times as Pudding, Leverett's, and Mackerel lanes, had previous to 1684 no features of interest. The first, as has been said, " is suggestive of good cheer ; " but it is not clear to what it owes its name, as none of the famous inns with which the neighborhood of King Street afterward abounded seem to have properly belonged to it. Congress Street was named in the first instance after Elder Thomas Lev- erett, the father of the governor, who owned the land thereabout, who was from the first one of the solid men of the colony, and had been a civic dignitary in old Boston in England. Kilby Street, known first by the unsavory name of Mackerel Lane, was very narrow, and indeed little more than an alley along the shore extending from State Street to Liberty Square, crossing the creek by a bridge. On the opposite side of State Street, branching off northward, there was, besides Wilson's Lane already noticed. Exchange Street, a by-way once so narrow that a cat could almost have jumped across it in the days when it was known as Shrimpton's Lane, — so called from Colonel Samuel Shrimpton mentioned above ; while below this on the same side ran Merchants Row, one of the very few of the old streets which have retained their old-time names. It was once the front or water street, and followed the shore-line to the Town Dock. This brings us to Dock Square. The very first entry in the Town Records, written in the hieroglyphic hand of Governor Winthrop, is an order appointing an overseer of this the town's chief landing-place, and directing the removal of timber, stones, and other obstructions about it.^ Here vessels were loaded and unloaded ; here was brought for awhile every- 1 [Cf. Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, ch. xxix. cistern, twelve feet deep or deeper, " at the The statements in Shurtleff regarding the early pumpe which standeth in the hie way neare to pumps seem to be erroneous in confounding the State armes Tavern, for to howld watter for them. The order of March, 1649-50, authorizing to be helpfull in case of fier unto the towne." Mr. Venner and neighbors to put a pump near Now the States Arms (not the King's Arms, as the shop of William Davis, instead of referring Shurtleff gives it) was on the lower corner of to the pump on Washington Street, opposite State and Exchange streets, the next lot to Court Street, pointed to one in State Street, just Davis's, and the order clearly refers to the pump below Exchange Street, where William Davis, already existing there. — Ed.] Jr., lived; and near this pump, in 1653, William ^ [^ facsimile of this entry is given in Mr. Franklin and neighbors were allowed to make a Winthrop's chapter. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 69. 546 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. thing that came into or went out of the town, and it at once became one of the chief centres of interest. It is hard for a modern citizen to realize the appearance of the old Town Dock. We have already described how the cove originally made in to the foot of Brattle Street and covered nearly all the district east of Union Street. But this early aspect of things soon changed when a swing-bridge was thrown across the dock, nearly in the line of Merchants Row, wharves were built on either side by private parties, and a market-place was set up. In 1657 we find a committee appointed " to gaine liberty in writing of Mr. Seaborne Cotton and his mother to bring water down from their hill to the conduit intended to be erected." This conduit was a reservoir of water, with raised and sloping sides and covered top, which stood in the midst of the market ; and originally built for use in case of fire, it seems to have served little other purpose than to afford a counter or trafficking place for the merchants upon market days.^ The building of the conduit was doubt- less occasioned by the "great fire" as it is called of 1654, concerning which, strangely enough, not much is known save that it was very destruc- tive.^ There had been previously several small fires which had caused no great alarm, but the extensive damage done by this first " great fire " seems to have created general concern, as is evidenced by entries in the Town Records, and precautions taken against the like danger in the future. Ladders, swabs, and a fire-engine were ordered, and measures taken to have the buildings of less combustible material.^ Two other " great fires " occurred during the colonial period, — one in 1676, "which began an hour before day, continuing three or four ; in which time it burned down to the ground forty-six dwelling houses, besides other buildings, together with a meeting-house of considerable bigness." This was the Mather church, the Old North. It burned Mather's house as well as his church, but spared his library. It would seem that Cotton Mather came naturally enough by the " bee in his bonnet," when we read that the Rev. Increase had had a premonition "that a fire was coming which would make a deplorable desolation." * The other "great fire" in 1679 was even more terrible in its ravage. " It began," says Hutchinson, " at one Gross's house, the sign of the Three Mariners, near the Dock. All the warehouses and a great number of dwelling houses, with the vessels then in the dock, were consumed, the most woful desolation that Boston had ever seen." " Fourscore of thy dwelling-houses and seventy of thy warehouses in a ruinous heap " is the estimate of loss made by the Rev. Cotton Mather in an apostrophe to Boston in the Magnalia} 1 C£. Shurtleff 's Desc. of Boston, 401, and p. « [See also Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston 40'? 233 of this volume. 640; Snow, Boston, 165. Mr. William H Whit 2 See Winthrop. Papers in 4 Mass. Hist, more printed in i&l2^n ffistorical Summary of C»//., VI. 155. fires in Boston. — -Ed] 3 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in the present ^ [gee Snow, Boston, 164; Drake, Land- volume. — Ed.] marks, 169 ; Sezaall Papers, i. 28. — Ed.]' TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 547 But to return to the conduit; from this point branched off Elm, Union, and North streets, the latter of which was, along a short part of its course, once known as Conduit Street. The Mill Creek, as before described, con- nected the Mill Cove with the Town Dock. From the list of 1708 we learn that later, if not at this time, the Fish Market was " The way from Mr. Antram's corner nigh the s'^ Conduit, leading from thence North-East'*' by y'' side of y' Dock as far as Mr. Winsor's warehouse ; " and Drake says : " All the north side of the Dock seems to have been known at one time as the Fish Market." Corn Market and Corn Court were on the south side. THE OLD FEATHER STORE.^ Facing Dock Square at the corner of North Street stood until a few years ago (i860) one of the most remarkable buildings in the town, known variously as the "Old Feather Store," the " Old Cocked Hat," &c. Luckily there was no doubt as to its age, for it bore the date of its construction, 1680, imprinted in the rough-cast wall of its western gable. The build- ing was of wood, covered with a kind of cement stuck thickly with coarse gravel, bits of broken glass, old junk bottles, &c. The lower story was rather contracted after a usual fashion of the time, and it may have been owing, perhaps, in this case to the limitations of the lot, which on the south and south-west abutted upon the dock ; but above this were jet- ties, that is, projecting stories, and a roof whose gables gave it the fancied resemblance to an old cocked hat. The house was designed for two tene- 1 [This cut follows a picture painted in 1S17, ously represented by engravings. There is one given to the Historical Society by Mr. William in Snow's Boston, and nearly all the later books H. Whitmore. The old building has been vari- describing Boston give it. — Ed.] 548 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. merits, and had separate entrances. It was used for many purposes in its long career.i At one time there was kept here the principal apothecary's shop of the town, while from 1806 for a long series of years it was occu- pied as a feather store ; hence one of its names. These were the principal streets in the more southerly parts of the town ; north of the Mill Creek we shall find many others of interest and importance. There can be no question that during the last years of this period the North End deserved for many reasons to be, as Josselyn calls it, " the most elegant and populous part of the town ; " and it must always be regretted that this portion of the peninsula — so beautifully situated, so admirably adapted for fine residences, with its easy slopes, its commanding view both seaward and landward, and its naturally-guarded precincts — should have been the soon- est deserted by fashion and given over in large part to poverty, squalor, and decay. Hanover Street, which has been twice widened, until now it forms one of the finest thoroughfares in the city, was in colonial days little more than a narrow lane. It is described in provincial times, in the list of 1708, as " the street from between Houchen's corner and y' Sign of y" Orange-tree, Leading Northerly to y' Mill-bridge." Houchen's, or Houchin's, was the southerly corner of Hanover and Court stteets, named for a worthy tanner who had his pits in the neighborhood. The "Orange-tree" was an old hostelry on the opposite corner, where early in the next century the first public coach ever known in Boston was set up. Thence traversing the narrow neck across which, as Johnson says, the Mill Creek "was cut through by industry," Hanover Street extended northward to the water, forming the highway to the Winnisimmet Ferry. On each side of this main thoroughfare, called from its position Middle Street, Fore and Back streets branched off to the right and left like the fingers upon a man's hand. All three streets bore at different times other names, frequently being called variously along different parts of their course. Thus Hanover was dubbed Middle Street in one place and North in another ; Back, now Salem, Street was once known as Green Lane ; while Fore Street, which, as its name signifies, was originally laid out along the water front, and was wharfed out as the town grew and need required, soon lost this early name, and in the list of 1 708 we find it called as follows : Ann Street being " the way from the Conduit in Union Street Leading Northerly over y° Bridge to Elliston's corner at y'' lower end of Cross Street; " Fish Street being "the street from Mountjoy's corner at the Lower end of Cross Street leading Northerly to y" sign of the Swan by Scarlett's Wharfe ; " and Ship Street being " the street Leading Northerly from Everton's corner nigh Scarlett's wharfe to the North Battry," — all together forming the one con- tinuous highway now known to us as North Street. Besides these principal thoroughfares running lengthwise there were va- * See for a list of its various occupants, and for a more detailed account, Shuftleff, Desc. oj Boston, ch.Xm.; Tliake, Landmarks, p. 133. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 549 rious cross streets which date back to the earliest times. Union Street, de- scribed later as " the way Leading from Piatt's Corner North-westerly passing by the Green Dragon to y Mill Pond," was from the first an important and much-frequented street; the presence in it of "The Green Dragon," per- haps the most famous of all the old-time taverns, and of Franklin's boyhood home and disputed birthplace are enough to invest it with lasting historic interest. Of these two places we shall in due order make further mention. Cross Street, as its name indicates, was a " way Leading from the Mill Pond South-easterly by y" late Deacon Phillips's stone house extending down to y° sea." This old house alone seems to have given the street character and importance ; it was a gloomy, massive building of rough stone undoubtedly dating back to the colonial period, as it is estimated to have been nearly two centuries old when it was taken down in 1864. The singularity of its con- struction and the uncertainty as to its origin and purpose have surrounded it with peculiar interest. There are suggestions that it may have been in early times a jail or a watch-house, as mention is made of loop-holes found in the walls. It is described as consisting " of two wings of uniform size, joining each other and forming a right angle. Each wing was forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and two stories high, the wings fronting the south and west. There was one door in the end of each wing on the first story, and a single circular window in the second story over the doors ; there were also two circular windows in each story of each wing in front, but neither door nor window in either wing in the rear. The foundation walls were four feet thick or more ; the walls above ground were two feet in thickness, and built entirely of small quarried stones unlike anything to be seen in this neighbor- hood, and were probably brought as ballast from some part of Europe." ^ "The Street Leading North-westerly from Morrell's corner in Middle Street pass-in by Mr. David Norton's, Extending to y" salt water at Ferry- way," was Prince Street, which with Hanover still curiously retains the name once given it out of compliment to royalty. It was formerly called Black Horse Lane from the old " Black Horse " inn, which was destined to become notorious in after years as a refuge for British deserters. Charter, Snow- Hill, and Lynn streets, if existing, had attained no prominence in colonial times. Hull Street ran from Snow Hill to Salem Street, and formed the southern boundary of the burying-ground. It was laid out through the field of old John Hull, whose name it bears, and whose daughter, wife of Judge Sewall, conveyed it to the town. This is no other than that Mistress Hannah Hull who upon her marriage with Samuel Sewall is said to have re- ceived for a dowry her own weight in pine-tree shillings. It was her father who coined these famous shillings ; and whether the story be true or not, it is certain that worthy John Hull, who was a man of substance, might easily have indulged himself in the whim if he had chosen.^ He was a silversmith, ^ Savage, Fa/ice Records and Recollections, ^ For a delightful imaginary account of this 294 ; Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 666 ; Drake, famous wedding, see Hawthorne's Grandfather's Landmarks, p. 155. Chair, p. 39. 550 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and set up at his own house in Sheafe Street the first mint in the colony, where he and his assistant bound themselves with an oath to make all their money "of the Just alloy of the English cojne; that every shilling should be of due weight, namely, three-penny troj weight, and all other pieces proportionably, so neere as they could." But it was in and around a little open space hedged about with substan- tial-looking buildings, lying upon the south-east declivity of Copp's Hill, that our interest with regard to the North End centres in these early colonial days, and in fact for a long time subsequent. Here was a spot which rivalled the famous precincts of Washington and State streets as a social centre. This was Clark's Square, afterwards, as we shall find, to be known by other names. But before entering the Square the early colonist beheld, fronting him on the corner of North and Richmond streets, a substantial brick building, which was a well known resort of the choice spirits of two centuries ago. This was the old " Red Lyon Inn," kept in the middle of the seventeenth century by mine host Nicholas Upsall, who seems to have been one of the soHd men of the town, for he owned a wharf just below his ordinary, besides considerable real estate. But, alas ! poor man, he was a Quaker, and was persecuted along with his fellows, at length dying a martyr to his faith and his philanthropy ; his first recorded offence was that of trying to bribe the jailer to feed a couple of starving Quakeresses in his custody.^ Here, facing the square, stood the " Old North," put up in 1650, burned in 1676, and at once replaced. This was the church of the Mathers, and all three lived hard by, — Increase in North Street, Cotton in Hanover, and Samuel on the corner of Moon Street Court. We can scarcely realize as we look upon the little circumscribed tri- angular enclosure now known as North Square, with its narrow entrance, how large a part it once played in colonial life ; that here and closely herea- bout lived the men of wealth and consequence who directed public policy and had the conduct of affairs. Yet it is evident that even at this day it retains something of its old look. Drake ^ has given a graphic and spirited description of the whole neighborhood, from which we make room for a short extract : — " Standing before an entrance still narrow, the relics of demolished walls on our right show that the original opening was once even more cramped than now, and scarce permitted the passage of a vehicle. The point made by North Street reached consid- erably beyond the present curbstone some distance into the street, both sides of which were cut off when the widening took place. This headland of brick and mortar jut- ting out into old Fish Street, as a bulwark to protect the aristocratic residents of the square, was long known as ' Mountford's Corner ' from the family owning and occu- pying it. "Within the compass of a few rods we find buildings of undeniable antiquity, 1 [See Dr. Ellis's chapter on " The Puritan spell his name Upshall, but his own sienature Commonwealth " and Mr. Whittier's Poem, in gives it as in the text. — Ed.] the present volume. The Quaker historians 2 Landmarks, 157. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 551 some extremely ruinous, with sliattered panes and leaky roofs, while others, improved upon to suit more modern tenants, have the jaunty air of an old beau in modern habiliments. One patriarch stands at the corner of Sun Court and Moon Street. Its upper story projects after the fashion of the last century ; the timbers, which tradition says were cut in the neighborhood, are of prodigious thickness, while the clapboards are fastened with wrought nails." A visitor to the neighborhood may still find a number of buildings and parts of buildings of undoubted antiquity, concerning which, however, it cannot now be ascertained which, if any, date back to the period we are discussing. AN OLD HOUSE IN SALEM STREET.^ One old house, which until a few years ago ( 1866) stood upon the corner of North and Clark streets, happily does not belong to this category : we mean the old Ship Tavern, or "Noah's Ark," as it was often called from the 1 [This house is still standing, and seems to belong to the late colonial or early provincial period. — Ed] 552 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. rough representation of a ship over the door. This old house is supposed to have been built previous to 1650; its first known owner was Captain Thomas Hawkins, a busy, restless ship-builder, who owned a ship-yard near his house, made many voyages, was cast away three times, and at length, as if determined to show that he was not born to be hanged, lost his life by shipwreck. In the apportionment of his estate " his brick house and lands " were set out to his widow, from whom indirectly it passed to one John Viall, or Vyal, by whom it was kept as an inn or ordinary as far back as 1655. It was in a room in this inn that Sir Robert Carr, the royal commissioner, assaulted the constable and wrote the defiant letter to Gover- nor Leverett.^ The house was built of English brick, laid in the English bond ; it had deep, projecting jetties, Lutheran attic windows, and floor timbers of the antique triangular shape ; it was originally only two stories high, but a third story had been added by a later occupant. A large crack in the front wall was supposed to have been caused by the earthquake of 1663, "which made all New England tremble." ^ Besides these various streets and highways there remain certain other im- portant topographical features of Boston still to be described, the first and principal of which is the Common. No street, section, or neighborhood of the city is so intimately connected with its life, so closely associated with all that is most sacred and glorious, humiliating and painful, in its history as this fifty acres of green-sward in its midst. While no quarter of the town has changed less perhaps in outward appearance (the same hills and valleys, the same slopes and curves appearing now as aforetime upon its sur- face), there is yet a vast difference between the beautiful park of to-day — with its arching elms and flowering lindens, with its fountains, its statues, its malls, and mimic lake — and the uninclosed waste, the stubbly cow-pasture, the bleak hill-side of two hundred years ago, when the wild roses bloomed upon its summit and the frogs croaked in the marshes at its base. Yet the Common is the Common still. The park of the nineteenth century is as much the heritage and property of the people as was the cow pasture of the seventeenth; and though we may no more drive our cattle ^ to feed upon its herbage, we may feast our eyes upon its verdure, we may escape from the hot and dusty streets and wander among its shady and fragrant paths, and our sons may still coast down its glassy sides in winter, to the imminent peril of their own necks and to the terror of every passer-by. Our title to the Common is easily traced ; it originally formed part of the possessions of William Blackstone, the first white settler, whose ownership was acknowledged and confirmed by an entry in the Town Records as early as 1633, by which it was " agreed that William Blackstone shall have fifty acres set out for him near his house in Boston to enjoy forever." The next 1 [See the chapters in the present volume by 2 D.^ke, Landmarks, p. 174. fe Charles Deane and Colonel Higginson. » Cattle were pastured upon the Common for ■■' 'wo or three years after the town became a city. TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 553 year, 1634, Blackstone sold the whole parcel of land to the town, excepting only six acres immediately adjoining his house.^ The land thus coming into the possession of the town as public property was directly committed (Dec. 18, 1634) to the care of Winthrop and others to divide, and to leave " such portions in common for y° use of newe comers and y° further bene- fitt of y° towne, as in theire best discretions they shall think fitt;" and six years later we find its alienation or appropriation to other purposes guarded against by an order passed March 36, 1640, to the following effect: — '" Also agreed upon y' henceforth there shalbe no land granted eyther for house- plott or garden to any pson out of y* open ground or Comon ffeild w'^'' is left betweene y' Gentry Hill and Mr. Colbroii's end ; except 3 or 4 lotts to make vp y" street from bro. Robt Walker's to f Round Marsh." " Upon Bonner's map, which, although published in the next century, affords the earliest satisfactory view of the town, there appear but three trees on the Common, — two of medium size at the upper or northern end, and the Great Elm so well remembered by all of this generation.^ Standing in the midst of the " Gentry," or " Century," or " Training Field," as the Common was variously called, the Great Elm was unquestion- ably the most conspicuous feature in the field, and the rallying point upon all occasions of public business and pleasure. Here Winthrop may have paused in the shade that August day in 1630, when he came over from Charlestown at the bidding of Blackstone to explore the spot ; here John Wilson may have preached his first sermon upon the peninsula ; here the dusky ancestors of Obbatinewat and the Squaw Sachem may have held many a savage feast and solemn pow-wow ; here, we have reason to believe, swinging from the sturdy branches, early culprits suffered the stern penalty of the law, and the hapless victims of bigotry met with a cruel martyrdom.* The area of the Common has been both enlarged and curtailed since the first purchase from Blackstone. In June, 1757, on the petition of various cit- izens showing the need of a place of interment at the South End, the town bought the land covered by the burying-ground — since diminished by tak- ing off the Boylston Street Mall — from Andrew Oliver, who held it in the right of his wife, a daughter of Colonel Thomes Fitch. In October, 1787, one William Foster conveyed to the town " a certain tract of land contain- ing two acres and one eighth of an acre, situated, lying, and being near the Common, and bounded E. on the highway 324 ft. ; North on the Common 1 The price paid by tlie town for the land as ^ These three or four lots reserved were be- well as the fact of its purchase are sufficiently tween the Common and Frog Lane or Boylston shown by the following extracts from the Town Street, as explained in an earlier note to this Records: "The lo"" daye of the 9"' mo. 1634. chapter. Item: y' Edmund Quinsey, Samuel Wilbore, ' [Concerning the age of this noble tree, Will"". Boston, Edward Hutchinson the elder, see the note to Professor Gray's chapter on the Will™' Cheesbrough the constable, shall make & " Flora of Boston." — Ed.] assesse all these rates, viz'' a rate of £ys to Mr. * It is supposed that all the early execu- Blackstone," &c. [See also the note to Mr. tions took place upon the Common. In many Adams's chapter. — Ed.] cases it is known that they did. VOL. I. — 70. 554 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 295 ft. s in. ; W. on the new bttrial-gi-ound 302 ft. 3 in ; S. on Pleasant St. 281 ft. 9 inches," which embraces the land now used for the deer-park.^ On the other hand, the ancient Gentry Field once extended as far north as Beacon and as far east as Mason Street, the Granary Burying-Ground and Park Street having been taken from it on the one side, while a goodly slice was shorn off to form Tremont Street on the other. North-west of it a high ridge — the West Hill described in the early part of this chapter, subse- quently cut down to form Charles Street — extended from near the junction of Beacon and Spruce streets, till it sloped to the beach near Cambridge Street. The lower part of the Common bordered upon the water ; and a part of the parade ground and all the Public Garden was nothing but a marsh, where in the next century extensive rope-walks were laid out. Other minor features are necessary to complete our picture of the early Training Field. There was Flagstaff Hill, which offered a vantage point to the British artillery during the Revolution, now crowned by the Soldiers' Monument; there were the three ponds. Frog, Cow, and Sheehan ponds, — the last two, and very likely the first, nothing but marshes which have long since disappeared, which, however, were once sufficient to furnish a watering, place for the cattle; there, too, was the Wishing Stone, near the junction of Beacon-Street Mall and the path leading to Joy Street, and, we are told, " the young folks of by-gone days used to walk nine times around this stone, and then standing or sitting upon it silently make their wishes." ^ That the town was, from the first, jealous of any abuse of the right of com- monage by the inhabitants, and watchful that the public domain should be kept in decent order and condition, appears from several entries in the Town Records. An order was passed in May, 1646, that all the inhabitants should have equal right of commonage, while at the same time it was voted that no one coming into the town subsequently to this date should be entitled to this privilege. Milch kine to the number of seventy were allowed pastur- age, but " no dry cattill, younge cattill, or horse shalbe free to go on y" coinon this year; but one horse for Elder Oliver." It was also strictly forbidden to throw any stones, trash, or other offensive matter upon the field ; and that these various orders were effectual in accom- plishing the desired end is evident from the account of Josselyn.^ Other open spaces devoted to public use were the burying-grounds, of which previous to 1687 there were three, — the " Chapel," the " Granary," and " Copp's Hill." The former was the first place of interment used in the town, and its origin and history may be called coeval with those of Bos- ton. Here, we are told by Chief-Justice Sewall, was buried Mr. Isaac John- son, perhaps the most important man in the infant colony. The story goes, that, after the peninsula had been determined upon as a place of settlement, Mr. Johnson selected for himself the land now occupied by the grave-yard ; _ 1 Dr. Sh«rtleff,_ Desc. of Boston, ch. xxi., Sewall (Diary, i. 377, ii. 344), mentions setting gives a very good history of the Common. out building stones there as late as 1693.-ED 1 [The Common seems to have had boulders 3 [See this quoted in Mr. Scudder's chap- and ledges of rock cropping out here and there, ter in the present volume. — Ed] TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 555 and on his death, which took place in Charlestown, Sept. 30, 1630, he was naturally buried in his own lot. Others dying subsequently requested to be buried near him ; and so the place came to be a common burying-ground. Many doubts attach to this story, inasmuch as the Diary of Chief-Justice Sewall, where it is told, was not written until many years afterwards, and there is no existing account of the burial of Johnson, which in the case of so prominent a man is somewhat remarkable, the rather that on the death in the following February of one Captain Weldon, a young and comparatively unimportant person, both Winthrop and Dudley give particulars of his in- terment. However that may be, there is no doubt that this wa§ the earliest, and for thirty years indeed the sole, burying-ground in the town. After the building of the Chapel it was used chiefly for those belonging to the faith of the Church of England ; but previous to that some of the sternest and most noted of the old Puritans found here their resting place. Here were laid John Winthrop, his son and grandson, all governors ; Parsons Cotton, Davenport, Oxenbridge, and Bridge of the First Church, all buried in the tomb of Elder Thomas Oliver, which became afterwards the property of the Church; Lady Andros, wife of the hated Sir Edmund ; Governor Shirley, Captain Roger Clap, Dr. Benjamin Church, and a host of others of the early and later periods less known to fame. " Copp's Hill," at first called the " Old North Burying-Ground," comes next in point of time, the original parcel comprising the north-eastern part of the present lot having been bought by the town in 1659-60. This was the extent of the ground in the colonial period ; other parcels have since been added. In 171 1 Samuel Sewall and his wife Hannah conveyed a part of what had once been the pasture of old John Hull the mint master ; in their deed there was a reservation of " one rodd square in which Mrs. Mary Thatcher now lyeth buried," which " rodd square " had pre- viously (in 1708-9) been conveyed by them "with no right of way except across the old burying-place," to Joshua Gee, — so that now, strangely enough, there exists a small parcel of private estate in the very midst of the ground upon which for all restrictions to the contrary the owners might erect a light-house or a cider-mill ! Situated upon the summit of one of the ancient hills, this cemetery occupies one of the most commanding and delightful spots in the town. The oldest inscription it contains is dated Aug. 15, 1662; those purporting to commemorate the death of John Thwing in 1620, and of Grace Berry in 1625, both some years before the founding of the colony, are thought to have been altered by a mischievous youth with his jack-knife. Of the many interesting associations that cluster around this cemetery and of the famous folk, not a few, buried within it, none belong to the colonial period. Of the humbler sort Drake gives the following droll list in his Landmarks of Boston : — " The singular juxtaposition of names strikes the reader of the headstones in Copp's Hill. Here repose the ashes of Mr. John Milk and Mr. William Beer ; of Samuel Mower and Theodocia Hay ; Timothy Gay and Daniel Graves ; of Elizabeth Tout 556 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and Thomas Scoot. Here lie Charity Brown, Elizabeth Scarlet, and Marcy White ; Ann Ruby and Emily Stone." " The Granary," ^ known in colonial times as the South Burying-Ground, was nearly contemporaneous in origin with the " Old North," having been established in 1660. It was originally, as has been said, a part of the Com- mon, from which it was very soon shut off by the erection along the line of Park Street of a row of public buildings, — the Bridewell, the Almshouse, and House of Correction already mentioned, to which afterwards the Granary was added, from which it took its present name. In early times the ground, like the Common, was bare of foliage, the trees within the inclosure, as well as the more celebrated elms of the Mall, having been set out long years after- ward. The oldest stone in the yard bears date 1667, and like the Old North all its more noted monuments belong to a later day. The most distinguished persons buried there previous to 1684 were John Hull, the mint master, and Governor Richard Bellingham. An incident connected with the Bellingham tomb would seem to prove that in early times the place was ill-chosen for a cemetery. The Bellingham family having become extinct, the tomb was given to Governor James Sullivan, who, on going to .repair it, found it partly filled with water, " and the coffin and remains of the old governor floating around in the ancient vault," — and this after being buried nearly a century. Such in brief was the outward physical aspect of the town of Boston in the colonial period. Such were its streets and buildings, in so far as our narrow limits give us scope to set them forth. The men were not yet born, the events had not yet come to pass, by association wherewith many of them were to become in after years illustrious. Wanting all these interesting details, which belong to succeeding epochs, we must rest content with such meagre descriptions as are to be found in the earlier writers, and rely upon an awakened imagination to fill out the picture. And yet we trust enough has been said to bring to mind a tolerably clear impression of the busy, thriving town of two hundred years ago with its windmills and batteries, its crowded meeting-houses, its busthng dock and market place, its stately mansions, its gloomy prison, its queer old taverns, its curious hanging signs, its crooked streets paved with pebble, its beacon^ its whipping-post, — all the outward features of a town " whose continuall inlargement presages some sumptuous city : the wonder of this moderne age that a few years should bring forth such great matters by so meane a handfull." 2 1 It was not called "The Granary" until nearly the middle of the next century. ^ Johnson, Wonder-working Providence. CHAPTER XX. BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. BY WILLIAM H. WHITMORE. Chairman of the Boston Record Commissioners. IT will, of course, be understood that the first settlers of Boston were animated by the current opinions of their time in regard to social distinctions. New England was constructed socially on the same system as Old England, with the fortunate exception that it lacked both extremes of the scale. We had here neither royal personages nor members of the titled aristocracy of England as colonists ; we were equally free from any considerable admixture of that poorest and most ignorant class which then tilled the fields of the mother country, and which is even yet but a few degrees above the serfs of other lands. The expense of emigration at that date, to say nothing of the comparative enterprise of mind and soul required to create a willingness to emigrate, was enough to prevent any undesirable elements from intermingling. On the other hand, there was no inducement held out for the members of the aristocracy to come hither. There were no laurels to be gained by war, no garnered wealth to repay the freebooter, no possibility of a life of ease amid tropical Edens. Life here was to be a constant toil, removed from the splendors of a court or the charms of civilization. The dangers were constant, but ignoble ; the rewards scanty and prospective. We may, therefore, accept as a fact that our colonists resembled the best elements of the country parishes of England. The squire, the minister, the yeomen, were the three representative portions of society there and here. Two of these classes, removed from a chance of a renewal here, remained constant during the whole Colonial period. Our gentry were the descendants of the few who carpe with the first colonists, as our great body of citizens was of those who were yeomen when they left England. The distinction was felt, though not offensively; and precisely as in England the aristocracy is constantly renewed from the commoners, while its younger branches steadily revert to that lower class, so here a constant intermingling of these two ranks occurred. Able men here, in each generation, rose to 558 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. the privileged positions, while poverty or decay removed the favored families which preceded them. It is a strange fact that no attempt has been made to prepare any record of the families of the settlers at Boston. The first and most flourishing genealogical society in the country was founded here, and for thirty-four years it has published a magazine here; but, as yet, few Boston families have been traced, even in special histories. Our town records are, indeed, very imperfect, but an earnest and quite successful effort is now making to supply the deficiencies from church records. But since the field has remained unexplored so long, it is very difficult for any one to attempt to select with certainty all of the leading men or leading families of any century of our history. It can be safely said that those of our colonists who were of the gentry at home, kept to the traditions of their class here, in a measure. They lived in better style than the others, they held most of the offices, and they intermarried so as to constitute an allied section of the community. The clergy and other graduates of Harvard were generally admitted to the same circle, and naturally the richest part of the merchant class could not be excluded. This tendency towards a local aristocracy increased during the eighteenth century, and just prior to the Revolution social affairs here were probably as they are to-day in the English colonies. The Governor was an English- man ; his council was made up from the local gentry, and all eyes were turned to the mother country as the source of honor. Officers of the army and navy stationed here contracted marriages with our native damsels; capital was increasing, and was seeking the truly British form of investment in land. All these developments were stopped by the Revolution, when the great portion of our leading citizens, in a social sense, emigrated. That part of the story must be postponed to another volume, but it adds to the difficulty of reproducing the history of the early days of Boston, that its chief personages have left no descendants here to preserve the tradition of ancestral glories. It is proposed, therefore, to place before the reader certain authentic sources of information in regard to the settlers here, with such fragmentary notes as contain the writer's estimate of the more prominent families. As it is a first attempt by any one to deal with the subject, omissions at least will not be surprising. An important source of information is the Book of Possessions, com- piled about A.D. 1645, and containing the names of the owners of land at the time. It has been published by the City, being the second report of the Record Commissioners. The following alphabetical list of the proprietors will be sufficient for our present purpose : — BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 559 LIST OF PERSONS DESCRIBED AS OWNERS OF LAND IN BOSTON IN THE BOOK OF POSSESSIONS. Anderson, John Arnold, John Aspinwall, William Baker, John Barrel], George Bates, George Baxter, Nicholas Beamont, Thomas Beamsley, William Beck, Alexander Belchar, Edward Bell, Thomas Bellingham, Richard Bendall, Edward Bennett, Richard Biggs, John Bishop, Nathaniel Blantaine, William Blott, Robert Bosworth, Zaccheus Bourne, Nehemiah Bourne, Garret Bowen, Griffith Brisco, William Browne, Edward Browne, Henry Browne, William Browne, James Burden, George Busbie, Nicholas Buttolph, Thomas Button, John Carter, Richard Chaffie, Matthew Chamberlaine, WiUiam Chappell, Nathaniell Cheevers, Bartholomew Clarke, Arthur Clarke, Christopher Clarke, Thomas Coggan, John Cole, John Cole, Samuel Cole, Coleborn, William Compton, John Cooke, Richard Copp, William Corser, William Cotton, John Cranwell, John Croychley, Richard Cullimer, Isaac Davies, James Davies, John Davies, William Davis, William, Sr. Davis, William, Jr. Deming(or Dening), William Dennis, Edmund Dinsdale, WiUiam Douglas, William Douse, Francis Dunster, East, Francis Eaton, Nathaniel Eliott, Jacob Everill, James Everill, James Fairbanks, Richard Fanes, Henry Fawer, Barnabas Fish, Gabriel Fletcher, Edward Fletcher, Roger Flint, Mr. Flint, Mr. Foster, Thomas Fowle, Thomas Foxcroft, George Franklin, William Gallop, John Gibones, Edward Gillom, Benjamin Glover, John Goodwin, Edward Greames, Samuel Gridley, Richard Griggs, George Grosse, Edmund Gross e, Isaac Grubb, Thomas Gunnison, Hugh Hailestone, William Hansett, John Harker, Anthony Harrison, John Haugh (or Hough), Atherton Hawkins, James Hawkins, Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Hibbins, William Hill, John Hill, Valentine Hogg, Richard Hollich, Richard Houtchin, Jeremy Howen, Robert Hudson, Francis Hudson, William Hudson, William, Jr. Hull, Robert Hunne, Anne, widow of George Hurd, John Hutchinson, Edward Hutchinson, Richard Ingles, Maudit lyons (otherwise Irons), Mathew Jacklin, Edward Jackson, Edmund Jackson, John Jephson, John Johnson, James Joy, Thomas Judkin, Job Keayne, Robert Kenrick, John Kirkby, William Knight, Sarah Lake, John Langdon, John Lavvson, Christopher Leger, Jacob Letherland, William Leverit, John Leverit, John Leverit, Thomas Lippincott, Richard Lowe, John Lugg, John Lyle, Francis Makepeace, Thomas Marshall, John Marshall, Thomas Mason, Raph 56o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Mattox, James Maud, Daniel Meeres, Robert Mellows, John Merry, Walter Messinger, Henry Mitchell, George Millard, Thomas Milom, John Munt, Thomas Nanney, Robert Nash, James Nash, Robert Negoos, Benjamin Negoos, Jonathan Newgate (or Newdigate), John Odlin, John Offley, David Oliver, James Oliver, John Oliver, Thomas Page, Abraham Painter, Thomas Palmer, John, Sr. Palmer, John, Jr. Parker, Jane Parker, Nicholas Parker, Richard Parsons, William Pasmer (or Passmore), Bar- tholomew Pease, Henry Pell, William Pelton, John Pen (or Penn), James Perry, Arthur Phillips, John Phippeni (or Phippeny), David Phippeni, Joseph Pierce, William Pope, Ephraim Rainsford, Edward Rawlins, Richard Reinolds, Robert Rice, Joanes Rice, Robert Rowe, Owen Richardson, Amos Roote, Raph Salter, William Sanford, Richard Savage, Thomas Scott, Joshua Scott, Robert Scott, Thomas Seaberry, John Sedgwick, Robert Sellick, David Sherman, Richard Shoare, Sampson Shrimpton, Henry Sinet, Walter Smith, Francis Smith, John Spoore, John Stanley, Christopher Stevenson, John Straine, Richard Sweete, John Symons, Henry Synderland, John Talmage, William Tapping, Richard Teft, William Thomas, Mr. Thwing, Benjamin Townsend, William Truesdale, Richard Turner, Robert Tuttle, Anne Tyng, Edward Tyng, William Usher, Hezekiah Vyall, John Waite, Gamaliel Waite, Richard Walker, Robert Ward, Benjamin Webb, Henry Werdall, William Wheeler, Thomas White, Charity Wiborne, Thomas Willis, Nicholas Wicks, William Wilson, John Wilson, William Winge, Robert Winthrop, Deane Woodhouse, Richard Woodward, Nathaniel Woodward, Nathaniel Woodward, Robert We now return to such evidence as we can obtain in regard to the social standing of the various persons named. Of the Governors prior to Andros the following lived in Boston : John Winthrop, Richard Bellingham, John Leverett, and Simon Brad- street. Of the Assistants we can claim also Atherton Hough, John Win- throp, Jr., William Hibbens, Edward Gibbons, Humphrey Davy, John Richards, John Hull, Thomas Savage, Elisha Cooke, Elisha Hutchinson, Samuel Sewall, Isaac Addington, John Walley. The Boston Representatives to the General Court were, during 1630-40: William Hutchinson, John Coggeshall, William Brenton, William Colbron, Henry Vane, William Coddington, Atherton Hough, William Aspinwall, John Oliver, John Newdigate, Robert Keayne, Edward Gib- bons, William Tyng, Edmund Quincy, John Underbill, Richard Bel- lingham. BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 56 1 During 1640-60: William Hibbens, James Penn, Anthony Stoddard, John Leverett, Thomas Clarke, Thomas Savage, Edward Hutchinson, William Tyng, Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Marshall. During 1660-80: Edward Tyng and John Richards, in addition to those before named. During 1680-1700: The new names are those of Elisha Hutchinson, Elisha Cooke, John Fairweather, John SafiSn, Isaac Addington, Timothy Prout, Adam Winthrop, Thomas Oakes, Penn Townsend, Theophilus Frary, Dr. John Clarke, John Eyre, James Taylor, Timothy Thornton, Edward Bromfield, Nathaniel Oliver, Nathaniel Byfield, Samuel Legg, John White, Andrew Belcher, David Allen, and Joseph Bridgham.^ The Selectmen of the town, as the uniform custom of New England witnesseth, were chosen from the citizens of the highest repute. They exercised very considerable powers. They were chosen by the free vote of the governed, and it is evident from many sources that they were the recognized leaders of the community. As no list of them is elsewhere avail- able, it seems judicious to print one here. 1 See 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. x. 23-29, for detailed possible to make of all holding office under the lists. [Mr. Whitmore's Massachusetts Civil List, Charter, or local government, during the Colonial Albany, 1870, is as complete a record as it is and Provincial periods, 1630-1774. — Ed.] VOL. I.— 71. 562 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. < O Q < o Pi Is o H in O W O W H U W w Si -3 i3 w j3 .2^ > I ■ 1? y Houchi as Clarke rd Parker ^ O E E c W « W c •i? ^^ rt ■-= J3 -^ s 0) Si a E E 2 - F H k% ^^ 5 ^h« A3 H S o 3 2 3 j; W pa "2 E rt « * S T3 O :^.o 3 E E m a, 1 S ^ PQ J E rt ffi B a V. .S 3 C 4) 'S (^ ■■s.-g ■s-pAS '=si'oS'£i'= = E c BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 56: e<3^ — S : M : M : M M >-• H M M M ++ \ ■ " : - „ M - ai & - ; ; - : „ „ . 6= - to _o> ■ " ■ : : " • •■"■"■ " " " ■ ■ " . „ - •■"■"■ " " '"' : : • • " " . H „ • • " " " : " " " • ^ : '" M M . H H M - S* M J VH ; ; •-< : : - --;;;: & M - - : ; - i - M : 1 1 J 1 a : " „ - ; - - ; en 03 " i M M 11 - ; - - - - ; ^_ 00 00 00 - " : ; - M M M - - - i «o „ „ : ^ M - - „ , ^ - * • H H II M ^m 1^1 III . 11 E • V. ta c ? • -^ ■ Sf S M (J tn * 111 to w H ^1 11 •C n C. »— . " g £.0 13 rt . 13 * C rt urea 5^& J3 e o^ c c "^ (u 0) a "aj at W « 1-U 13 564 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Prior to the date when the seven selectmen became regular officers, similar officials had served. The earliest entry preserved in the Town Records is dated Sept. I, 1634. We cannot, therefore, learn when the custom began of choosing selectmen, or townsmen. We find at that date, however, a board of ten citizens in office, — John Winthrop, William Coddington, John Underhill, Thomas Oliver, Thomas Leverett, Giles Firmin, John Coggeshall, William Peirce, Robert Harding, and William Brenton. Oct. 6, 1634. — Richard Bellingham and John Coggan were chosen in place of Firmin, deceased, and Harding, now in Virginia. March i, 1636. — Chosen : Thomas Oliver, Thomas Leverett, William Hutchinson, William Colburn, John Coggeshall, John Sanford, Richard Tuttell, William Aspinwall, William Brenton, William Balston, Jacob Eliot, and James Pen. Sept. 16, 1636. — Hutchinson, Oliver, Leverett, Colborn, Coggeshall, Sanford, Brenton, and Balston re-elected, and two new men added, — Robert Keayne and John Newgate. March 20, 1637. — Eight re-elected; Eliot and Pen returned in place of Keayne and Newgate, and Robert Harding added. In all eleven. Oct. 16, 1637. — Eleven chosen: ten re-elected, and William Aspinwall in place of Brenton. April 23, 1638. — Seven chosen : Oliver, Leverett, Kea5me, Colborn, Newgate, Pen, and Eliot, — all having served before. Nov. 5, 1638. — Seven chosen : six re-elected, with Robert Harding in place of Newgate. April 29, 1639. — Nine chosen : Oliver, Leverett, Keayne, Colborn, Harding, and Eliot ; Pen dropped ; Edward Gibbons, William Tyng, and John Cogan added. Dec. 16, 1639. — Nine chosen: Colborn, Harding, Eliot, Gibbons, Tyng, and Cogan re-elected ; Gov. John Wintlirop, Richard Bellingham, and WiUiam Hibbens, new members. Sept. 28, 1640. — Nine chosen for the next six months : Colborn, EHot, Gibbons, Tyng, Winthrop, Bellingham, and Hibbens, old members ; with John Newgate and Atherton Hough added. May 27, 1641. — Nine chosen: the seven old members, with John Oliver and James Pen for Newgate and Hough. March 6, 1641-42. — Nine chosen : eight re-elected, and Valentine Hill in place of Hibbens. Sept. 2, 1642. — The same nine re-elected for six months. March 20, 1642-43. — Winthrop, Bellingham, Tyng, Gibbons, Colborn, Eliot, Hill, and Oliver re-elected ; Hibbens put in place of Pen. Sept. 25, 1643. — Same nine re-elected. May 17, 1644. — Eight re-elected, with Pen for Bellingham. April 10, 1645. — Eight re-elected, with Edward Tyng for William Tyng. Dec. 26, 1645.- Winthrop, Hibbens, Gibbons, Colborn, Hill, Eliot, and Pen re-elected ; Oliver and E. Tyng dropped ; Robert Keayne and Thomas Fowle added. No election is recorded in 1646, though all but Fowle were serving Feb. 25, 1646-47. Probably some change had taken place about this time, as March 13, 1646-47, we find a board of seven acting, and the same seven were chosen five days later at a " general town's meeting warned from BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 565 house to house." From this time it seems to have been a settled custom to elect seven selectmen in March for the year ensuing.^ The following lists of the clergy prior to A.D. 1700 will give us that element in our social life : — FIRST CHURCH. John Wilson 1630-1667 John Cotton 1633-1652 John Norton 1656-1663 John Davenport 1668-1670 James Allen 1668-1710 John Oxenbridge 1671-1674 Joshua Moody 1684-1692 John Bailey 1693-1697 Benjamin Wadsworth 1696-1725 SECOND CHURCH. John Mayo . . 1655-1673 Increase Mather 1664-1723 Cotton Mather 1684-1728 OLD SOUTH CHURCH. Thomas Thatcher 1670-1678 Samuel Willard 1678-1707 king's chapel. Samuel Myles 1689-1728 The fact that church-membership was long a necessary preliminary to recognition as a citizen makes it very desirable for us to know who were the early members of our First Church in Boston. The list is often referred to by Savage and others, but has not been printed. We therefore present all of the record of admissions prior to A.D. 1640, believing that no more valuable document can be offered to the genealogist. We prefix numbers to the names for convenience. The first covenant is dated at Charlestown, Aug. 27, 1630,^ and is as follows : — " In the Name of our Lord jFesus Christ, and in obedience to His Holy will and Divine Ordinance : " Wee whose names are hereunder written, being by His most wise and good Providence brought together into this part of America in the Bay of Massachusetts, and desirous to unite ourselves into one Congregation, or Church, under the Lord Jesus Christ our Head, in such sort as becometh all those whom He hath Redeemed, and Sanctified to Himselfe, doe hereby solemnly and religiously (as in His most holy ' [Of. Mr. Scudder's chapter in the present which was an original draft of the document, volume. — Ed.] signed by a few of the leaders, before the entry 2 [This is the date as given in the Church was made of it in the Record book. See Mass. Records; but the date differs from that of a Hist. Coll.,m. 75; Bradford, Plymouth Planta- similar paper quoted in Mr. Winthrop's chapter, tion, p. 277, — Ed.) 566 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Proesance) Promisse and bind o' selves to walke in all our wayes according to the Rule of the Gospell, and in all sincere Conformity to His holy Ordinances, and in mutuall love and respect each to other, so neere as God shall give us grace. 1 John Winthrop, Governor Thomas Dudley, D. Governor Isaack Johnson (dead since) John Wilson s Increase Nowell Thomas Sharpe (gone since) Simon Bradstreete Willm. Gager (dead since) Willm. Colborne 10 Willm. Aspinall Robert Harding Dorothy Dudley, y"^ wife of Tho. Dudley Anne Bradstreete, y^ wife of Simon Bradstreete Parnell Nowell, y'' wife of Increase Nowell 15 Margery Colborne, y" wife of Willm. Colborne Elizabeth Aspinall, y= wife of Willm. Aspinall Christian Beecher Robert Hayle John Hall 2° Margarett Hoames John Sale Gregory Nash John Waters and Frances his wife (dead since) 25 Henry Kingsbury and Margarett his wife (dead since) Henry Harwood and Elizabeth his wife (dead since) Henry Gosnall and '^o' Mary his wife James Penne and Katherine his wife John Milles and Susan his wife 85 Willm. Waterbury and Alice his wife Frances, y'= wife of John Ruggle Willm. Baulstone and Elizabeth his wife (dead since) *" Phillip Hammond, widdow John Haukins, d. Samuell Cole and Anne his wife (dead since) Willm. Cheesborough and <^5) Anne his wife Thomas Alcocke Margarett, y"= wife of Jeffrey Ruggle Henry Bright Edward Deekes 5° John Gage Thomas Hewlett Thomas Hutchingson, d. George Hutchingson Francis Hesseldon, d. 55 Richard Garrett (dead since) Margarett Cooke John Underbill Sarah Woolrich Willm. Talmige "o Edmund Belcher James Browne Edward Ransford John Edmunds Richard Maurice and '^5) i^is yvife Edward Converse Willm. Hudson Abram Palmer and his wife '"' Nicholas Stowers John Dillingham, dead Raph Mousall and Alice his wife Willm. Frothingham and "5) Anne his wife Gregory Taylor Edward Bendall Sarah Cheesborough, dead Richard Sprage ^ Ezechiel Richardson and his wife Myles Reading Thomas Squire Sarah Converse 85 Thomas Matson, received by Communion of Churches from a Church in London Mary Morton Bithea Joanes, gone to Salem Isabell Brett, gone to Salem, d. Richard Wright ^^ John Cranwell Elizabeth Welden, gone to Waterton Willm. Coddington Anthony Chaulby John Boswell, dead "5 Joseph Reading Garrett Haddon John Biggs Zacheus Bosworth Margarett Wright "" Anne Needham Thomas Faireweather BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 567 Raph Sprage and Joan his wife Anne Peelers, received from y' Church of Salem 1"^ Richard Palsgrave and Anne his wife John Perkins and Judith his wife Ryce Cole "° John Eliott Margarett Winthrop Thomas Beecher Edward Gibbons Jacob Eliott "^ John Sampfort Margery Chauner James and Lydia Pennyman Isaack Perry 120 Elizabeth Webbe John Winthrop, Junior Willm. Dady Susan Hudson Henry and i^^s) Susan Peas John Baker and Charity his wife Thomas French John Ruggle 130 Martha Winthrop Robert Walker Thomas Oliver and Anne his wife, dead Margarett Gibbons 135 John and Jane Willise, dead since Robert Roys John Clarke John Audley i^" Amy Chambers Anna Swanson Ahce French Ehzabeth Wing Richard Brackett i<5 Gyles Firmin, Junior Mary, y" wife of Samuell Dudley Bridgett Gyver Anne, y' wife of John Ehott Thomas and i^^"' Elizabeth James Willm. Peirce Hereafter followeth y" Names of those whoe were further admitted and added unto the Church : — Mary Penne John Pemberton John OHver 155 Barnaby Dorryfall Mary Waters Gyles Firmin, Senior, d. Mary Coddington, y' wife of Willm. Cod- dington Anne Newgate, y= wife of John Newgate 1^" Thomas Grubbe and Anne his wife Richard Turner Anne Walden Mabell Marport Members admitted into Boston Church from y'= 8' of y^ 7"' moneth [1633] : — '^5 John Cotton, and on that day Sarah his wife Robert Turnor, our brother Edward Ben- dall's man-servant Grace Lodge, our Pastor John Wilson's maide-servant In y= 8' Moneth [1633] : — Thomas Leveritt and 1'° Anne his wife Richard Fairebancke Willm. Brenton Edward Hutchinson Willm. Cowlishawe and i'5 Anne his wife and Sarah Morrice, the said Anne's daughf- In the 9* Moneth [1633] : — Elizabeth Purton, a widdowe Elizabeth Fairebancke, y^ wife of our brother Richard Fairebancke Edmund Ouinsey and 130 Judeth his wife Atherton Haulgh and Elizabeth his wife Mary Downing, kinswoman to our brother John Winthrop, Governo''- Frances Hammond, our brother Thomas Leveritt's maid-servant 135 Elizabeth Woodroffe, our brother Ed- mund Quinsey's maid-servant Richard Topping and Judeth his wife Edward Baytes and Anthony Harker, our brother Thomas Leveritt's menservants 100 George Ruggell Willm. Letherland, one of M' Roe's men- servants, was admitted on y" 24. of y' Moneth 568 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Members further admitted upon y"= i=' of y" 10* Moneth [1633] : — Samuell Wilbore and Anne his wife The 8' of y" same Moneth : — Nathaniell Woodward and i'5 Anne Essex, servants to our brother Willm. Coddington The 15*- of -f same Moneth : — Elizabeth Ransford, y"= wife of our brother Edward Ransford Helena Underhill, y= wife of our brother John Underbill Sarah Hutchinson, y= wife of our brother Edward Hutchinson Robert Scott, late servant to our brother John Sampford '""' Gamaliell Wayte, servant to our brother Edward Hutchinson The 22"'- of y= same Monelh : — Elizabeth Wybert, maid-servant to our brother John Winthrop, Governor John Button, mylner, and Grace his wife The 29*- of y= same Moneth: — Margery Hindes, our brother John Un- derhill's maidservant "^"^ Grace Gridley, y'^ wife of our brother Richard Gridley Rebecka Merry, y= wife of Waters Merry, Ship-carpenter Marie Lukas, our sister Anne Newgate's maid-servant The s""- of y= ii""- moneth [1633]: — John Gallopp, Fisherman, and Cotton Flacke, Laborer The 19*- of y= same moneth: — 21" Willm. Browne and Thomasine his wife, servants to our brother John Winthrop, Governo'- The 26' of same Moneth: — Lettysse Button, y= wife of Mathew Butto[n] Esther Ward, our brother Atherton Haulghe's maidservant The 2"^- of y^ 12* or last Moneth [1633] : — Elizabeth Ruggell, y^ wife of our brother George Ruggell 21^ Thomas Mekins and Katharine his wife, servants to our brother Edmund Quinsey Bridgett Peirce, y= wife of our brother Willm. Peirce The 9*- of y= same Moneth : — Joan Wilkes, y" wife of Willm. Wilkes Willm. Wardall, one of our brother Ed- mund Quinsey's servants Waters Merry, Ship carpenter 22° John Webbe, a single man The 9* of y= first Moneth [1634] : — Robert Houlton, a Slater Robert Parker, servant to our brother Willm. Aspinall The i6*- of y'' same Moneth : — Stephen Winthrop, of y= sonnes of our brother John Winthrop, Governor The 23* of y= same Moneth : — Willm. Dennyn, servant to our brother Willm. Brenton The 30*- of y'= same Moneth: — 225 EHzabeth Newgate, daughter-in-law to our sister Anne Newgate Thomas Mekins, y<= younger, servant to our brother Edmund Quinsey The IS*- of y*^ second Moneth [1634]: — Richard Bulgar, Bricklayer Anne Nidds, maid-servant to our brother Willm. Brenton Mathewe Innes, servant to our brother Willm. Coulborne 2*' John Coggeshall, Mercer, and Marie his wife and Anne Shelley, his maid-servant, were this day received members upon letters of dismission from our sister Church of Rocksburie, and upon their owne open confessions and p'fession of faith in y= Lord Jesus Christ BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 569 The 22"'- of y= fourth Moneth [1634]: — Christovell Gallopp, y= wife of our brother John Gallopp Edmund Browne and 235 Jerrard Bourne, servants to our brother Willm. Coulborne Alexander Becke, a Laborer The 13*- of y= fift. Moneth [1634]: — John Handsett, servant to our Pastor John Wilson The 2o"'- of y' same Moneth : — James Everill and Elizabeth his wife 2^° Ollyver Mellowes and Elizabeth his wife Martha Blackett, maid-servant to our Teacher John Cotton The 27"i- of y" same Moneth: — Nicholas Willys, a Mercer Jonathan Negoose and 2*5 Grace Negoose his sister Richard Trewsdale and Margarett Burnes, servants to our Teacher John Cotton Anne Cogan, y= wife of John Cogan The J"*- of the sixt Moneth [[634]: — Richard Bellingham and 25° Elizabetli his wife John Newgate, Hatter Anne Willys, y= wife of our brother Nicholis Willys and Willm. Townsend, his servant Joan Drake, widdowe 255 John Cayle, servant to our brother John Button, d. Marie Bonner, maidservant to our Teacher John Cotton Elizabeth Chalmers, maidservant to our brother Willm. Baulston Edward Hitchen, a single man The lo"" of y= same Moneth: — Robert Reynoldes, Shoomaker 260 Edward Hutchinson, y=- younger, a single man Dorcas French, maid-servant to our brother John Winthrop, y= Elder VOL. I. — 72. The 28*' of y' sixt Moneth [1634]: — Philemon Pormont and Susann his wife Richard Scott, a Shoomaker 2^5 Richard Cooke, a Taylor Christofer Marshall, a single man Anne Ormesbie, widdow Marie Hudd, maid-servant to our brother John Winthrop, y^ Eld'- The last of y= same Moneth: — Edmund Jacklyn, Glasyer 2'° Thomas Marshall, a widdower The 7"" of y= seaventh Moneth [1634] : — Willm. Pell, Tallowchandlo James Davisse, a Marryno Judeth Garnett, our brother John Cogges- hall's maid-servant The 21* of y" same Moneth: — Thomasyn Scottoe, widdow The 2'' of eight Moneth [1634]: — 2'5 Richard Magson, servant to our brother James Everill Nathaniell Chappell, servant to our brother Atherton Haulgh Rebekah Dixon, our brother Richard Bellingham's maidservant Judye Smyth, our brother Edward Hutch- inson's maid-servant The 5"' of y= eight Moneth [1634]: — Zacharie Simmes and 280 Sarah his wife The 26"" of y^ same Moneth : — Willm. Hutchinson Beniamin Gillam, Shipcarpenter The 2'' of y= (f" Moneth [1634] : — Anne Hutchinson, y= wife of our brother Willm. Hutchinson Allen Willey, a husbandman 285 Anne Dorryfall, our brother Willm. Cod- ington's maidservant Nathaniell Heaton, Mercer, and Elizabeth his wife 57° THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The 9"" of y' same nyneth Moneth [1634] : — Thomas Wardall, Shoemaker Richard Hutchinson and 28° Francis Hutchinson, y= sonnes of our brother Willm. Hutchinson Faith Hutchinson, one of his daughters Anne Freiston, one of his kinswomen Henry Elkin, a Taylor Alice Willey, wife of our brother Allen Willey 295 Marie Gibson, our brother OUyver Mel- lowe's maid-servant The 28*- of y' Tenth Moneth [1634]: — Frances Freiston, one of our brother Willm. Hutchinson's kinswomen Bridgett Hutchinson, one of his daugh- ters Elizabeth Woolstone, our brother Nicho- lis Willis maid-servant The 11"' of y'^ eleaventh Moneth [1634]: — Theodorus Atkinson, servant to our brother John Newgate The 15"' of y= first Moneth [1635]: — ""^ Hanna Penn, our brother James Everill's maid-servant The 22* of y' same Moneth . — Edward Buckley, a single man Hugh Gunnyson, servant to our brother Richard Bellingham Dorothie Brenton, y" wife of our brother William Brenton The 5"^ of y^ second Moneth [1635]: — Willm. Beamsley, Labourer The 2'^- of y"= sixt Moneth [1635]: — ^"^ Elizabeth Boanes, one of our brother Richard Bellingham's maid-servants The 9* of y" same Moneth : — Willm. Leveridge, of Puscattna The 16 of y'= same Moneth : — Grace Holbech, one of our brother John Samford's family Susan Pease, our brother Henry Pease daughter The 6'- of y'= seaventh Moneth [1635]: — Willm. Wilson, Joyner, and 8W Patience his wife The 2o"'- of y" same Moneth : — Willm. Salter, a Shoomaker The 25* of y' eight Moneth [1635]: — Richard Mather and Katherine his wife Danyell Mawd The i"- of y" nyneth Moneth [1635]: — *'5 Henry Vane The 8' of y' same Moneth : — Alexander Winchester, servant to our brother Henry Vane Willm. Coursar, a Coblar Rachell Saunders, y"' wife of one Martin Saunders Dennys Taylor, widdowe, one [of] our Pastor John Wilson's family ^^^ Alice Brockett, y= wife of our brother Richard Brockett The 15* of y= same Moneth: — Henry Flint, a sojournor of our Elder Thomas OUyver's Edmund Jackson, Shoomaker The 6'- of y'' lo*' Moneth [1635]: — Jane Scarlett, widdowe, y: mother of our brother Edward Bendall Marie Martin, our brother John Cogges- hall's maid-servant The 13*- of y" lo"'- Moneth [1635]: — 826 Willm. Dyer, Myllinar, and Marie his wife The 27"'- of y same Moneth: — James Fitch, Taylor, and Abigail his wife Richard Tuttell, husbandman, and 88° Anne his wife The 3"- of y eleaventh Moneth [1635]: — John Mylam, Cooper, and Christian his wife BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 571 Members more admitted upon y^ same 3'' of y same eleaventh Moneth [1635]: — Thomas Savidge, Taylor John Davisse, Joyner '^^ Anne Gillam, y= wife of our brother Ben- iamyn Gillam Judeth Lyvars, our brother Robert Hard- ing's maid-servant The 10* of y= same Moneth: — Willm. Dyneley, Barber Anne Houlton, y= wife of our brother Robert Houlton The 24"'- of y"= same Moneth: — George Baytes, Thacker The 28"' of y= 12'" or last Moneth [1635] : — '*" Rachaell Newcombe, y' wife of one Francis Newcombe Margarett Vernam, widdow, one of our brother Thomas Leveritt's family The ao"- of y" first Moneth [1636]: — Robert Kaine, Merchant, and Anne his wife Elizabeth Wilson, y= wife of our Pasto' John Wilson The 10* of y= a'J Moneth [1636]: — 8*5 James Johnson, a Glover The 1 7"'- of y= same Moneth : — Raph Hudson, Woollen-draper Isaac Grosse, Husbandman The 24*- of y= same Moneth : — Poenelope Darloe, one of our brother Robert Keaines maidservants The 22*- of y= 3'' Moneth [1636]: — George Hunne, a Tanner '50 Thomas Hasard, Ship-carpenter The 29"' of y= same Moneth : — Robert Hull, blacksmith Edward Dennys, servant to our brother Willyam Hutchinson The la*- of y= 4"'- Moneth [1636] : — John Wheelwright and Marie his wife '55 Susanne Hutchinson, widdowe Valentyne Hill, Mercer The 19*- of y= same 4"'- Moneth: — Margarett Sheele, one of our Brother Wil- lyam Coddington's maidservants The i7"'-of y= 5"'- Moneth [1636]: — Thomas Matson, formerly received by Communion of Churches, but now as a member upon y= confession of his fayth and repentance and pfessed subiection to y" Lord Jesus Christ according to y= Covenant of the Gospell The 24"'- of y'^ same s"*- Moneth : — Robert Parker The 7*- of y= 6'- Moneth [1636]: — '^" Mathew Chafey, Ship-carpenter The 14 of y= same 6'- Moneth : — Elizabeth, y' wife of one Willm. Tuttell The 4"'- of y'' 7"'- Moneth [1636]: — Mabell Andrews, a single woman Alice Pyce, our sistar Judeth Quinsey's maidservant The II* of y= 7"^ Moneth [1636]: — Thomas Wheelar, a Taylor The 6' of y"= 9'^- Moneth [1636]: — 8«5 Anne Burdon, y= wife of George Burdon, Shoomaker The 11*- of y= lo*- Moneth [1636]: — Francis East, a Carpenter The 8' of y= ii"'- Moneth [1636]: — George Burdon, a Shoomaker Jane, y= wife of one John Parker, a Car- penter 572 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON Moneth [1638] [Ad- The 30*- of y' lo*' mis.]: — Henry Sandys, a Merchant, and "o Sibill his wife Margery Shove, widdow The 6'- of y ii"'- Moneth [1638]: — Willyam Stickney, a husbandman, and Elizabeth his wife Margarett Crosse, a widdowe s's Michael! Hopkinson, servant to our brother Jacob Elyott, and Richard Swanne, a husbandman The 27''"- day of y same ii"'- Moneth: — Thomas Allen, a Studyent The 3? of y la""- Moneth [1638]: — Mary, y^ wife of Raph Roote Martha Bushnall, widdow The & of y= same I2*- Moneth: — '80 Griffyn Bowen and his wife Margarett Henry Webbe, a mercer John Smyth, a Taylor, and Katherine, y^ wife of M'- Marmaduke Mathewes The lo""- of y' same I2*- Moneth: — '8^ Temperance, y"= wife of one John Sweete, a Ship-carpenter Katherine, y= wife of our brother Edward Hutchinson, y= younger Elizabeth, y" wife of our brother Robert Scott Dosabell, y= wife of our brother Henry Webbe, and Jane, y" wife of one John Lugge The 24 of y" same I2"'- Moneth: — '5° James Mattocke, a Cooper The 3'' ofy= r'- Moneth [1639]: — Richard Hollidge, a Labourer Willyam Ting, Marchant, and Anne, y" wife of our brother George Hunne The 10* Day of y^ P'- Moneth [1639]: — Anne, y= wife of our Brother Richard Hollidge 335 Elizabeth, y= wife of our brother Willyam Tinge, and M'^ Deliverance Sheffeilde The 24*- Day of y same i='- Mo, [1639]: — M'=- Elizabeth Allen M"- Penelope Pelham Elizabeth Storye The 31='- of y= same i='- Moneth: — ^M Phoebe Burley and Marie Chappell, maid-servants to our Teacher M' John Cotton The y""- of y^ 2^ Moneth [1639] : — Jane NichoUs, one of our Teacher's maid- servants The 14* Day of y= same 2aviio/^r^ ^^tc "K t/tfJurv*. became very prominent. He married Hannah, '' daughter of Captain Thomas Hawkins, and secondly Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Clarke, and widow of John Freke. His sons were Thomas and Edward, who married after 1700; and his daughters married Dr. John Clarke, John Ruck, and Colonel John Foster. Thomas was father of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, but this generation belongs in the record of the eighteenth century.* 1 \\\v& Symmes Genealogy, by John A. Vin- investigations into the family line both of William ton, was published in 1873. — Ed.] Hutchinson and his famous wife Anne, and pub- 2 [Sibley, Harvard Graduates, p. 525, gives \\^\iti.t'tvtra.miZ(£\\\ Notes upon the Ancestry oj an account of Elisha Cooke, with references. William Hutchinson and Anna Marbury. See — Ed.] also "the Hutchinson family of England and ^ [The Saltonstalls were a Watertown family, New England, and its connection with the Mar- aud an elaborate memoir of the line is in Bond's burys and Drydens," by Colonel Chester, in N. Watertown. See Heraldic yournal, i. 161, and E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. i856. Heraldic G. D. Phippen's tabular pedigree, 1857. — Ed,] Journal, ii. 171. William Hutchinson had grant- * [The Hutchinson family has been the sub- ed to him, probably not long after his arrival in jectof several genealogical essays, beginning with 1634, the lot now known as the "Old Corner a privately printed tract by Peter O. Hutchinson, Bookstore," but which then extended up School of England, a descendant of Governor Hutchin- Street to the City Hall lot ; and here he and his son, who made a Tour into the County of Lin- unfortunate wife lived. After his removal in coin for the Purpose of Hunting up Memorials oi 1638 to Rhode Island, his son Edward was al- the English ancestry of Thomas Hutchinson, the lowed, in 1639, to sell the lot to Richard Hutch- emigrant ancestor of Boston. Mr. William H. inson of London, linen-draper. Shurtleff, Desc. Whitmore reprinted from the N. E. Hist, and of Boston, p. 674. In 1870 Mr. Perley Derby Geneal. Reg., 1865, A Brief Geiiealogy of the De- printed The Hutchinson Family, giving 1404 de- scendants of William Hutchinson and Thomas scendants of another emigrant, Richard Hutch- Oliver. Colonel J. L. Chester made some special inson of Salem. — Ed.] 58o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 14. Elder Thomas Oliver came here an old man, with adult children.^ His son John married Elizabeth, daughter of John Newdigate ; Peter, another son, married her sister Sarah; James, the third son, was long a selectman. John Oliver, Jr., married Susanna Sweet, and his brother Thomas married and settled in Cambridge. Peter Oliver, /^O QKc, - /7/^ /^' ^°" °f '^^ emigrant, had three sons, of /■-^'^^*^^^ {iip//iUC*^V<-' whom Nathaniel married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brattle; James married Mercy, daughter of Samuel Bradstreet; and Daniel married Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew Belcher. Andrew, son of the last-named, was lieutenant-governor, and brother-in-law of Governor Hutchinson.^ 15. John Hull, the well-known mint-master, deserves notice as an assist- ant, though he was a trader, and not one of the gentry. His only child married Samuel Sewall, the chief-justice, who was of a Newbury family of similar social position.^ 16. Captain Thomas Brattle, merchant, of Boston, who died in 1683, was one of the wealthiest men of his day.* He married Elizabeth, daughter of Captain William Tyng. His son Thomas, who died unmarried in 1713, was treasurer of Harvard, and judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Suffolk. The second son was Rev. William Brattle, whose son William was the only heir of the name. Edward Brattle, third son, married Mary Legg, of Marblehead, but died s. p. Of the daughters, Elizabeth married Nathaniel Oliver; Katherine married, first, John Eyre, and had two daughters, — one the wife of David Jeffries, the other of John Walley; and the widow Eyre married secondly Wait-Still Winthrop. Bethiah Brattle married Joseph Parsons, and her sister Mary married John Mico. The family continued at Cambridge, and in female lines in Boston, in the next century. 17. There were two brothers here by the name of Tyng, William and Edward, — wealthy and undoubted leaders.^ Williar married Elizabeth, ' I He lived on Washington Street, his lot extending north from Spring Lane, nicluding the head of Water Street. — Ed.J 2 [See the Oliver genealogy by Mr. Whitmore in the N. E.Hist. and Ceneal. Reg., April, 1865, and a tabular pedigree in Drake's Boston, p. 293. — Ed.] 3 [Drake, Boston, p. 586, gives the Sewall pedigree ; but a much more extended account is prefixed to the first volume of Sewall's Diary, whereof the third volume is to be issued in 1880 by the Mass. Historical Society. Hull himself had married Judeth, a daughter of Edmund Quin- cy, the emigrant ancestor of that family, and he bestowed his wife's name upon a headland in the Narragansett country (where he owned lands) which is not of good omen to passengers by the Sound to New York in these days. See note to Mr. Deane's chapter. — Ed. | * [The Heraldic Journal, iii. 42, puts his estate at nearly ;^8,ooo, — thought to be the largest in New England at that time. Edward D. Harris printed, iii 1867, An Account of some of the Descendants of Captain Thomas Brattle. — Ed, I 6 [William Tyng lived on Washington Street, where, a few years ago, it turned into Dock Square, covering the foot of Brattle Street, now Adams Square. Here he had what was de- scribed as " one house, one close, one garden, one greate yard, and one little yard before the hall windowe." Edward Tyng lived on what was then the lower lot on the north side of State Street, near the corner of Merchants' Row, with his front " wharf ed out." Here he had "one house and yard, and warehouse and brewhouse." He was admitted a townsman in 1639. — Ed.J n* BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 58 1 daughter of Rowland Coytemore, and had Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Brat- tle ; Anne, wife of Rev. Thomas Shepard ; Bethiah, who married Richard Wharton ; and Mercy, who married Samuel Bradstreet. He had sons, — Edward and Jonathan ; and daughters, — Hannah, ^, who married first Habijah Savage, and secondly rvtV 0'f^*J Major-General Daniel Gookin; Deliverance, wife of Daniel Searle ; Rebecca, wife of Governor Joseph Dudley; and Eunice, who married Rev. Samuel Willard. Jonathan Tyng, son of the first Edward, was also of Dunstable, Mass., where he held a large estate. He married first Sarah, daughter of Hezekiah Usher; secondly, Sarah (Gibbons), widow of Humphrey Davie; thirdly, Judith, daughter of Rev. John Reyner, and widow of Rev. Jabez Fox. The name long remained at Dunstable, and has been revived in a female branch. 18. William Alford, a member of the Skinners' Company, of London, was a merchant here. His daughter Mary married first Peter Butler, and. secondly Hezekiah Usher; and Elizabeth married Nathaniel Hudson. Benjamin Alford — probably his son — married Mary, daughter of James Richards, of Hartford, and had a son John, who died s. p., but founded at Harvard the Professorship of Natural Theology which perpetuates his name. 19. Captain Samuel Scarlet, of Boston (from Kersey, co. Suffolk), died s.p. in 1675, leaving a good estate. His brother John had two daughters, — Thomasine Taylor and Fryer. 20. John Joyliffe, long in office here, married, in 1657, Anne, widow of Robert Knight, as she had been of Thomas Cromwell ; had an only daugh- ter, Hannah, who probably died unmarried. This Cromwell was a reformed free-booter, who settled in Boston, where he made his peace with the Church, and died in 1649.^ His widow, by her second husband (Knight), had an only child, — Martha, wife of Jarvis Ballard. Cromwell's only daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, married first Richard Price, and secondly Isaac Vick- ers, or Vickery. By each husband she had children, — Elizabeth Price, wife of Joseph Lobdell; Anna Vickers, wife of Benjamin Loring; and Rebecca Vickers, wife of Samuel Binney. 21. William Gerrish belongs rather to Essex County, though he lived in Boston, and married, in 1645, Joanna, widow of John Oliver. His son John was of Dover, and another son (Joseph) was minister at Wenham ; but grandsons returned to Boston, and kept the name alive here. 22. Tobias Payne, of Fownhope, co. Hereford, was a merchant in Ham- burg, later in Barbados, and came to Boston in 1666. He married Sarah (Winslow), widow of Captain Miles Standish,^ by whom he had an only child, William. His widow married Richard Middlecott. William Payne married Mary, daughter of James Taylor, in 1694. The family became extinct here in 1834.^ 1 [See note to Mr. Scudder's chapter in this ^ [The Payne and Gore families have been volume. — Ed.] traced by Mr. Whitmore in an article in Mass. 2 [Son of the famous Plymouth hero. — Hist. Soc. Proc, 1875, Vifhich has been reprinted Ed.] as a pamphlet. — Ed.] 582 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 23. Richard Middlecott had four children by this wife, — Mary, wife of Henry Gibbs, of Barbados ; Sarah, wife of Lewis Boucher ; Jane, wife of EHsha Cooke ; and Edward, who settled in England. 24. Hezekiah Usher, merchant, married, for a second wife, Elizabeth Symmes, and, for a third, Mary (Alford) Butler. He had two sons and two daughters, of whom Rebecca married Abraham Browne, and Sarah mar- ried Jonathan Tyng. His son Hezekiah, Jr., married Bridget, widow of Leonard Hoar, daughter of John Lisle, the regicide. They had no chil- dren. John, the other son, married Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Lidgett, and had Elizabeth, wife of David Jeffries. His second wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Allen, the proprietor of New Hampshire, by whom he had issue, still represented in Rhode Island. John Usher fills a large space in our annals ; and his wealth is evidenced by the fine house he built at Medford.i 25. David Jeffries, from Rhoad, co. Wilts, came here in 1677. By his wife Elizabeth (Usher) he had sons, John and David, of whom John was town treasurer for many years. The family is still represented in Boston, — being one of the few which have continued through all the changes of two centuries.^ 26. Peter Lidgett, freeman, 1673, — a merchant, and partner of John Hull, — married Elizabeth Scammon, and had, besides Elizabeth, wife of John Usher, a son, Charles, who died at London in 1698. This Charles married Mary, daughter of John Hester, of London, whose wife was prob- ably a daughter of Robert Sedgwick, as Mrs. Lidgett was a great-niece of Madam Leverett. Peter's widow married John Saffin. 27. John Saffin, speaker, councillor, and judge, married first Martha, daughter of Captain Thomas Willett, of Plymouth ; secondly, the widow Lidgett ; and thirdly Rebecca, daughter of Rev. Samuel Lee. He left no issue at his death in 17 10. 28. Captain Thomas Ruck, or Rock, married Margaret Clark in 1656, and had several children, one of them being Peter, — H. C. 1685. Savage notes the difficulty of distinguishing them from the Salem family of the name. 29. William Whittingham, of Boston, was the son of John Whittingham, of Ipswich, grandson of Dean Whittingham, of Durham. His mother was Martha, daughter of William Hubbard, sister of the historian. William Whittingham married Mary, daughter of John Lawrence, and left issue. 30. Henry Shrimpton, a brazier of London, came here by 1639,8 with wife Ehnor, and had a second wife Mary, — widow, first, of Captain Thomas Hawkins, and, secondly, of Captain Robert Fenn. His son Samuel, a coun- cillor, married Elizabeth, daughter of widow Elizabeth Roberts, of London, 1 [The Usher family is traced in an article by ^ [See an article in the N. E. Hist, and Mr. Whitmore in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Geneal. Reg., xv. 14, by Mr. Whitmore, and in Reg. xxni. 410, reprinted as a pamphlet. Heze- the Heraldic Journal, ii. 166. — Ed.] kiah Usher lived on the north side of State 3 [And bought, in 1646, a house and garden Street, opposite the market place (old State on the upper corner of State and Exchange House lot). — Ed.] streets. — Ed.1 BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 583 and left issue, hereafter to be noted. Henry had a nephew, Jonathan, of Boston, son of Edward S., of Bednall Green, who married Mary, daughter of Peter Ohver, and had several children, of whom Sarah married John Clarke. SIMEON STODDARD. 31. Anthony Stoddard, Recorder of Boston, and for nineteen years con- secutively chosen a representative, had four wives. ^ His first was Mary Downing, niece of Governor Winthrop ; his / n 1 i /1 second, Barbara, widow of Captain Joseph ,^r7iTn^^^y^ i:)jvclM^^>stsiL Weld of Roxbury ; his third. Christian ; <--^ his fourth, Mary, widow of Captain Thomas Savage. Of his children, Lydia 1 [He is called a linen-draper when admitted Exchange streets, and one on the east side of a freeman in 1639. He owned two houses and Washington Street, between State Street and gardens, one on the lower corner of State and Adams Square. — Ed.] 584 THE jMEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. married Captain Samuel Turell, and Christian married Nathaniel Pierce. Of his sons, Solomon was minister at Northampton ; Samson lived at Boston, and had a son Samson, H. C. 1701 ; and Simeon was of note as a councillor. This last married secondly Elizabeth, widow of Colonel Samuel Shrimp- COLONEI. SAMUEL SHRIMPTON.l ton, and thirdly Mehitable, daughter of James Minot, widow successively of Thomas Cooper and Peter Sargcant. The family still flourishes, though not in Boston." ' "^ 1 [Colonel .Shrimpton was among the earliest him : ■• Mr. Shrimpton has a very stately house to resist Andros. He bought Noddle's Island, with a brass kettle atop, to show his father was not ashamed of his original." Dunton^s Letters, J^eL^rncL^fdi p. 68. A Shrimpton pedigree is given in Sun.- ner's East Boston, p. 254. See also the Ge7ualogy of the Sumner Familv. — Ed.] - [An elaborate Stoddard genealogy has been A , .■ , , published, including Anthony Stoddard and De and at one time owned Beacon Hill. Sumner, .™/,/a;,/r New Yori< ,Sfir ''""'^" ""^ ^^- H^^East Boston,,..,. He died Feb. 8^ given ^^ ^Z2^:)i:^:st:t: ^"^^ l6<),-oS,- Se-;oal/Pa/^ers. ,. 470. Dunton says ot gives various other references. - Ed.] BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 585 32. Peter Sargeant, a famous merchant, married secondly Dame Mary, widow of Sir William Phips, and thirdly widow Mehitable Cooper. He died s.p. in 1714. He built the noble mansion afterwards known as the Province House, where successive governors dwelt and ruled. ^ 33. Jacob Sheaffe, who died in 1659, was reputed to be one of the wealthiest settlers. He was born at Cranbrook, co. Kent, — son of ^efe^^-^ ^yja.^a.iiyt MRS. SHRIMPTON. Edmund Sheafife. His widow married Rev. Thomas Thatcher ; and, of his daughters, Elizabeth was wife of Robert Gibbs, and secondly of Jonathan Curwin ; and Mehitable married Sampson Sheaffe. This Sampson was son of an Edmund Sheaffe, of Cranbrook and Boston, — brother or cousin of Jacob, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Sampson Cotton, of London. Sampson Sheaffe went to New Hampshire, where he was councillor and judge, but died in Boston in 1724. VOL. I. " 74. c85 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 34. Robert Gibbs, of a good family in Warwickshire, was a noted mer- chant here by 1640.1 Early historians say that his fine house on Fort Hill cost some three thousand pounds. He married Elizabeth Sheaffe, and had sons, — Rev. Henry, of Watertown, and Robert, who married Mary Shrimpton. The name continued till recently in Middlesex County. 35. Simon Lynde, often mentioned in our annals, married Hannah, daughter of John Newgate, or Newdigate. One of his daughters married George Pordage, and another a cousin Newgate. His son, Benjamin Lynde, — H. C. 1686, — studied law in London, and married, in 1699, Mary, daughter of William Browne, of Salem. There he settled, was Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, and had a son, Benjamin, who reached the same dignity. Nathaniel, another son of Simon, went to Connecticut, and married a daughter of Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby. 36. Edward Lyde, of Boston, married, in 1660, Mary, daughter of Rev. John Wheelwright, and had Edward, who married Susanna Curwen, and secondly Deborah, daughter of Nathaniel Byfield.^ This Colonel Byfield, who came here in 1674, was the son of Rev. Richard Byfield a famous Puritan, married Deborah, daughter of Captain Thomas Clark, and had an only daughter, as above. 37. Dr. John Clarke (1673) married Martha Whittingham, and had Elizabeth, wife of Richard Hubbard, and then of Rev. Cotton Mather. His son JohnC. — H. C. 1668 — was a physician, speaker, and councillor. He married, in 1691, Sarah Shrimpton, then Elizabeth Hutchinson, and thirdly Sarah, widow of President Leverett. Thomas Clarke, merchant, of Dorchester and Boston, colonel, speaker, and assistant, had several children, including Leah, wife of Thomas Baker, and Deborah Byfield. Thomas, presumed to be his son, was a wealthy merchant here, and left two daughters, — Mehitable Warren, and Elizabeth, who married first John Freke, and secondly Elisha Hutchinson. Another Thomas Clarke of Boston, son of William and Anne, was born at Salisbury, co. Wilts, in 1645, and died in 1732, aged eighty-seven. His first wife was Jane, by whom he had Jane, wife of Rev. Benjamin Colman. His second wife was Rebecca, widow of Captain Thomas Smith, by whom he had Anne, wife of John Jeff"ries. His third wife was Abigail Keach.^ 38. Rev. John Cotton,* as we know now, was of good family. He married at Boston, co. Lincoln, the widow of William Story. His children were Seaborn, John, Elizabeth, wife of Jeremiah Egginton, and Maria, wife of Rev. Increase Mather. Rev. Seaborn Cotton married Dorothy Brad- street, and secondly Prudence Wade. The family, however, soon passed from Boston. 1 [See JleraUic yoiirnal, iii. i6i. — Ed.] and the references in Whitmore and Durrie. 2 [Ibid. ii. 126. — Ed.] —Ed.] 3 [The Clarkes of New England have ancestors, * [For Cotton's residence and genealogy see not connected very likely ; and those interested this volume, pp. 157, 158. A portrait is given may trace the various branches through Savage, on p. 157. — Eo.j BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700. 587 39. Rev. James Allen.^ a graduate of Oxford, married first Hannah, daughter of Richard Dummer; secondly EHzabeth, daughter of Jeremiah Houchin and widow of John Endicott; and thirdly Sarah, daughter of (l^rU^^ (^icaUr_^ Thomas Hawkins and widow of Robert Breck. His son Jeremiah was treasurer of the province. 1 [Allen's house, considered the oldest stone was occupied by his descendants till about 1806. house in Boston, stood where the Congregational It shows in Price's View of Boston, 1743, and is House stands, corner of Beacon and Somerset marked " 59 James Allen, Esq'' House." Durrie streets, and Drake, Landmarks, p. 363, says it gives manyreferences to AUengenealogies. — Ed.] 588 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 40. Rev. Richard Mather, of Dorchester, was the founder of the line here.i His second wife had been the second wife of Rev. John Cotton, and his son Increase Mather married Mary Cotton, his step-sister. Increase married secondly the daughter of Captain Thomas Lake, widow of Rev. John Cotton of Hampton, nephew of Mather's first wife. Of the daughters of Increase, Maria married Bartholomew Green and Richard Fifield ; Elizabeth married William Greenough and Josiah Byles; Sarah married Rev. Nehemiah Walter; Abigail married Newcomb Blake and Rev. John White ; Hannah married John Oliver ; and Jerusha married Peter Oliver. Rev. Cotton Mather married first Abigail, daughter of John Phillips, of Charlestown; secondly Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. John Clark, widow of Richard Hubbard ; thirdly Lydia, daughter of Rev. Samuel Lee and widow of John George.^ The name, however, was soon lost to Boston, though descendants in Connecticut still bear it. I have thus singled out some forty families which seemed entitled to precedence. I do not say that there were not others perhaps of equal rank, but these were nearly all allied by marriage, and certainly held the largest share of public honors prior to A.D. 1700. I can only say in con- clusion, as I did at the beginning, that the materials are not yet collected to enable any one to do for our Boston families what Bond did for Water- town, or Wyman for Charlestown. That the work is begun, and that fair progress has been made, is certainly some satisfaction. I do desire to put on record here that the City Council of Boston for the past two years has been willing to vote all necessary money towards the completion of its records, and to say that I think that the desired end is within sight. 1 [A portrait of Richard and genealogical references will be found in Mr. Barrows's chap- ter. A portrait of Cotton is given in Mr. Foote's chapter. Other portraits can be found in Drake's Boston; his edition of Mather's Philip's War; N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1852, &c. The signatures beneath the portrait of Increase give, besides his ordinary autograph, the Latin form often used in his learned correspondence. There is another portrait in the Massachusetts His- torical Society's gallery ; and engravings of him are numerous. See Drake's Boston ; his edition of Mather's Philip's War ; N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1848; Andros Papers, &c. Mr. Nathaniel Paine printed in the Register, Jan. 1876, and separately, Boston, 1876, a pam- phlet on the Portraits and Busts in the Public Buildings in Worcester, in which he names the following as in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Collection, all the gift of Mrs. Hannah Mather Crocker, of Boston : Increase, from life (see preceding page) ; Cotton, by Pelham (see heliotype, p. 208) ; Richard, from life, engraved in Mr. Barrows's chapter ; Samuel, son of Cotton, from life ; Samuel, son of Richard, born 1626, died in Dublin, 167 1. The seal of Increase attached to his will is not identified. Heraldic Journal, ii. 7. The Mather tomb is in the Copp's Hill burial ground. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 205. — Ed.] 2 [Her connections are traced in the Sewall Papers, i. 148. — Ed.] INDEX. Contributors' names are in small capitals, followed by the titles of their chapters in quotation-marks, and titles of books are in italics. The lists of names in the last chapter are not included in this Index. Acadia, 282. Adams, C. F- Jr. "Earliest Explora- tions of the Harbor," 63. John Quincy, Address on the Confeder- acy^ 299. Samuel, of Charlestown, 389. Rev. William, 418. Addington, Isaac, 575 ; portrait, 576. Mrs. Jane, her portrait, 577. Agnese, Baptista, map, 42. Ainsworth psalter, 457. Alcock, George, 405. Alfonce in the bay, 43. Alford family, 581. Allen family, 587. Bozoun, 133. Rev. James, 194, 204, 206. Joel A., ** Fauna of Boston," g. Rev. Thomas, 396. AUerton, Isaac, 60, 82, no. AUerton point. See Point. Alexander, Sir William and his tracts, 61. Anabaptists. See Baptists. Anchor Tavern, 354. Ancient and Honorable Artillery Com- pauy, 510. Andros, Sir Edmund, Governor, 203, 213 ; and Philip's war, 324. Lady, funeral, 212. Antinomianism, 173, 411 ; authorities on the controversy, 176. Apothecary, 502. Appleton, Samuel, 323. Aspinwall, Peter^ 221. William, 174, 387 ; his autograph, 175 ; House at Muddy River, 221. Assistants, Court of, 156, 235. Atherton, Humphrey, 428. Atwater, Joshua, 324. Auk, the great, 11, 12. Aulnay. See D'Aulnay. Avery, John, 500. Bacon, Leonard, Genesis of the N. E. Churches^ 144. Baily, Rev. John, 471. Baker, John, 387. William, 389. Balch, John, 93. Ballot, protection of the, 408. Bankes, Richard, 201. Bannister's Garden, 84. Baptism denied, 151. Baptists, controversy with, 177 \ their first church, 195. Barber-surgeon, 501. Barberry, 20. Barlow, S. L. M., his maps, 38. Barnam, Richard, 323. Barron, Peter, 32. Barrows,' Samuel J. " Dorchester in the Colonial Period," 423. Barton's Point, 530. Bass, 14. Bateman, John, 278. Batteries, 535. Baxter, Richard. Call to the Uncon- verted, in Indian, 473. Bay psalm book, 456, 457. Bayly, Bishop. Practice of Piety, in Indian, 473. Beacon, 223, 510, 532 ; xxiv, 524, 527 ; view of, in 1720, 214. Beacon Street, 542. Beecher, Thomas, 388. Beer, William, 555. Bell, Thomas, 406, 420. Bellame the pirate, 58. Bellingham, Richard, 449, 452 ; gov- ernor, 128, 194 ; his house, 360, 541 ; tomb, 556 ; family, 575. Bellmen, 510. Bells, 508, 509, 517. Bendall, Edward, 228. Bendall's Dock, 529. Bennett, Peter, 323, Berry, Grace, 555. Bible, Indian, 467; fac-simile of title, 469 ; copies of, 471. Bigeiow, Jacob. Florula Bost., 19. Bill of lading (1632), 490. Birds, ir. Bishop, G. New England fudged, 187. Black-horse lane, 549. Blackleach, John, 449. Blackstone, or Blaxton, William, 387 ; 521, 552 ; in Gorges' company, 75 ; at Shawmut, 78, 83 ; his dwelling and lot, 84 ; removal, 84 ; his mar- riage, 84; his death, 84; invites Winthrop's Company, 116. Blackstone Point, 84, 530. Blaeu's map, 46, 59. Blake, William, 433 ; his house, 433, 434- Blandon, John, 323. Blantaine, William, 494, 542. Blathwayt, 372. Block, Adrien, 56. Blot, Robert, 389. Blue-anchor Tavern, 493. Blue-bell and Indian-queen, 544. Blue-fish, 15. Blue Hills, 37 ; Massachusetts Mount, 53 ; Cheviot Hills, 53, 61. Body of Liberties, 12S, 145. Bogell, Alex., 323. Bonner's map, section of, 526. Book of Possessions, persons named in* 559- Booksellers, 500. Books in vogue, 455 ; first printed in Boston, 456, 457. Boston, site of, in a region variously designated, 51 : where Smith puts the name on his map, 53 ; where subsequently placed, 56 ; founded, 99; called " Baston " by the French, 282 ; named, 87, 116, 217 ; early movements for incorporation, 219; settled by Winthrop's Company, 116, 387; made the capita', 119, 222 ; earliest records, xx, 122 ; early descriptions, 231, 303, 522, 534 ; Wood's map of its vicinity, 524 ; Indian deed of, 249, 250, — fac- simile of it, 250 ; relations with the Colony, 217; with the neighboring jurisdictions, 275 ; map of harbor (1677), by Hubbard, 328; its ap- pearance, 482 ; map, '* old and new," xxii ; first Church formed, 393 ; sources of Boston's history, xiii ; families, 557. Boston Bay, or Mass. Bay, 38. Boston men (Lincolnshire, etc.), 88, 97' 174- Boston, England,St. Botolph's Church, 117. Botero's map, 47. Boundary disputes, 219. Bourne, Nehemiah, 498. Eowen, A. Picture of Boston, xiv. Bowles, John, 405. Brackenbury, William,- 387. Brackett, Richard, 543. Bradford, Gov. William, 119; in Bos- ton, 68. Bradstreet family, 577. Anne, 461. Simon, 107, 312, 369, 469 ; gover- nor, 209 ;' portrait, 209 ; agent to England, 354, 356. Braintree, 220, 234. 590 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Brant Rock, 48. Bratde family, 580. Thomas, 216, 316, 580. Brazil, or Bresil, island, 30. Breed, Eben, 393. Breed's Hill, 390. Breedon, Thomas, 309. Brereton, Sir William, 78. Brereton's Relatioji^ 46. Brick house, first in Boston, 174. Bridgham, Jonathan, 434 ; his house, 434- Bright, Rev. Francis, 385. Brighton, account of, by F. A. Whit- ney, XV ; records, xxi, xxii ; in the Colonial Period, 439. Briscoe, William, 542. Brookline, 220 ; histories of, xv. Brown, James, 394. John, 300. Judah, 409. Kellam, loi. Thomas, 323. Building stones, 4. Bulkley, Peter, 365. Bullivant, Benjamin, 201, 215. Bunker, George, 389, 395- Bunker Hill, 390. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 453. Burden, George, 451. Burials, 518. Burr, Rev, Jonathan, 438. Bursley, John, 75, 76, 78, 83. Burt, Edward, 389. Burying grounds, 554. Buttall, Leonard, 528. Buttercups, 20. Button, John, 533. Bynner, Edwin L. " Topography and landmarks of the Colonial Period," 521. Cabot, John, 29, 334. Sebastian, 30, 35) 39 » portrait, 39 ; his mappe monde, 43. Cambridge, early history of, 440 ; first church, 442 ; school, 442 ; press of, 453, 467, 468 ; highways, 442 ; ferry, 442 ; bridgp, 442 ; Souih of . the Charles, 439. Cambridge, England, agreement at, 100 ; University, 454. Campbell, Duncan, 500. Cape Ann, called by the Spaniards Cabo de S. Maria, 44; seen by Champlain, 47 ; Cap aux Isles, 49 ; Cape Tragabigsanda, 50, 59 ; shore mapped by Gov. Winthrop, 61 ; settlers at, 79, 92 ; Thornton's Landing at, 92. Cape Cod, seen by Northmen, 25, 38 ; named by Gosnold, 36, 46 ; in Cosa's map, 39; called Cabo de Arenas, 41, 44, 46; C. des Sablons, 43 i C. de Croix, 43 ; Cabo de Santa Maria, 43 ; C de Trafalgar. 44; C. de S. Tiago, 46 ; called Modano, 47 ; Cap Blanc, 48 ; seen by Hudson, 49, 56; mapped by Smith, 51 ; called Cape James, 53 ; Caep. Bevechier, 57; called Nieuw Hollande, 56; an old passage through it, 58. Carr, Robert, 358. Cartwright, George, 358- Gary, James, 390. Casey, John, 323. Castle Island, 222, 286, 536. Castle Tavern, 493. Caterpillars, 409. Cattle in Boston, lo- Centennial Celebration in 1830, xiii. Gentry Hill, 223, 524. Chamberlain, Mellen. " Winni- sinimet, Rumney Marsh, and Fal- len Point," 445. Champlain on the coast, 47 ; in Boston harbor, 48; his maps, 48. Champney Daniel, 443 ; Richard, 440 ; Samuel, 443. Charles I., 331. Charles II., 304 ; gives names to the New England coast, 52 ; proclaimed, 349, 353" Charles Josias, the Indian, 249, 402. Charles River, 424, 439 ; explored, 68 ; confounded with the harbor and bay, 37 ; called R. de la Tourn^e, 43 ; R. du Guast, 48, 59 ; on Smith's map, 53, 56 ; called earlier Massa- chusetts River, 53. Charlestown in the Colonial period, 383 ; founded, 385 ; training field, 392 ; great house, 393 ; called Charl- ton, 56 ; or Cherton, 60 ; settled, 217; Winthrop at, 114; first meet- ing-house, 394 ; first church history, 396 : schools, 397 ; fortifications, 398 ; oak, 394 ; records, early nar- rative in, 51 ; histories of, xv; records, xxi, xxii. Charlestown end (Stonehara), 391. Charlestown village (Woburn), 388. Charter- See Massachusetts. Chaves map, now lost, 41. Cbeems, John, 323. Cheesahteaumuk, Caleb, 477. Cheeseborough, William, 553. Cheever, Ezekiel, 397, 461. Chelsea, 220, 445. Chickataubut or Chickatabut, 79, 80, 249, 250, 251, 383. 402. Child, J,, his I/ew England Jonas., T71. Robert, 192. Children, 518. Christison, Winlock, 187 ; and auto- graph recantation, 188. Christmas observances, 196, 516. Church, Col- Benjamin, 319, 327. Thomas, Entertaining Passages, 327- Churches in Boston, accounts of, xvi, 537- Church government in New England, 144 ; members the only freemen, J18, 150, 156, 163, 187, 192, 359, 515 ; the Puritan, 163* Clams, 15. Clap, John, 429. Roger, 424, 428, 537 ; his Memoirs, 428, 463 . Clarke family, 586. John, 178. Thomas, 312, 316, 368. Clark Square, sso. Clergy, Puritan, 158, 205, 511. Clifford, George, 510. Climate, changes of, 277. Coal brought to Boston, 288. Cobble Hill, 391. Codfish, 14 ; emblem of the, 47. Coddington, William, 107, 174, 185, 222- Cogan, John, 451, 540. Coining of money, 333> 3.';4- Coitmore, Thomas, 38S. Colebom, William, 101, 221, 222, 533. Coleborn's field, 533. Cole, Rice, 387, 389. Samuel, 493. 451- Coles, Robert, 421. Collins, Edward, 305. Columbus, Fernando, his map, 41. Commerce, early, 275. Commissioners of the United Colonies, signatures of, 300, 301, 314. Common, 123, 517, 552 ; the great elm on, 21. Conant at Cape Ann, 92, 93. Conduit, 233, 546. Confederacy of 1643, 295; signatures of the Commissioners, 300, 301, 314 Connecticut settled, 430 ; colony, 280. Converse, Edward, 387, 393, 452. CooK', Jacob, 323. Cooke, Elisha, 369 ; family of, 579. Coopers incorpora'ed, 233. Copp's Hill, 525 ; buTying-ground, 555. Copp, William, xxiv, 528. Corlet, Elijah, 442. Cornhill, 222. Corn market, 547. Corser, William, 494. Cortereal, 32, 40. Cosa, de la, map, 39. Cotton, John, 222, 458; arrives, 121; his views, 122; his Mases his Ju- dicials, 125, 145 ; his house, 126, 157. 214; his books, 144; his por- trait, 157; his death, 157; lives of him, 157 ; in Boston, England, and his memorial there, 158; his influ- ence with the magistrates, 159; his Bloody Tenent Washed, 172 ; his Spiritual Milk for Babes, in Indi- an, 475 ; Cariyle on, 87. John, of PI J mouth, 470- Josiah, 476. Fam- ily, 586. Cotton Hill, 525. Council for New England, 91, 92 ; arms of, 55, 92 ; their map, 60, 96 ; their records, 94, 97, 98 ; resign their patent. 341. Counties, 234, 397. Coves, 529. Cow Lane, 543 . Cradock, Matthew, 99, 102. Crane, 11. Cranfield, Governor of New Hamp- shire, 198, 204. Craft, Griffin, 401, 405. John. 401. Creeks, 530. Crier, 508. Crocker, U. H-, his map, 84. INDEX. 591 Cromwell, 121 ; portrait, 348; intend- ed emigration to America, 348. Cap- tain Thomas, 509 ; gift of Sedan chair, 292. Cudworth, James, autograph, 301. Curtis, John, 324. William, 404, 405 ; view of his house, 406. Cutshamakin, or Cutshamokin, 263, 441. Dandelion, 20. Danforth, Rev. John, 193. Rev. Sam- uel, 193, 416. Thomas, 312, 352, 369, 469. Papers, 363. Dana, Richard, 440, 443 ; his house, 443. D'Aulnay, 132, 282-295, 3°2, 482. Davenport, Rev. John, 193, 541 ; his death, 193 ; his family, 194. Nathan- iel, 323 ; in command of the castle, 357- Richard, 336. Davids, James, 305. Davis, James, 494. William, 324, 357, 502. Davy, Humphrey, 578; his orchard, 84. Dawes, John, 512. Day, Stephen, 455. Deane, Charles, "The Struggle to Maintain the Charter," 329. Dearborn, Nathaniel. Boston No- tioTiSj xiv. DeBry's maps, 46. Dedham, 234. Deer, n, Dighton Rock, 26. De Laet's Nienwe IVereldij 58. De Mont's Expedition, 47. Denison, Daniel, 292, 301, 313, 317. George, 409. William, 405, 419. Deputies, 130,255; from P.oston, 560. Dermer, Captain, 51, 59. Dexter, George. "Early European Voyagers in Massachusetts Bay," 23. Dial, Sun, 512 Dinely, William, 502. Dippers Dipt, 178. Dissenting Faiths, 191. Dixwell, John, 305 ; and his descend- ants, 305. Dobson, Venner, 293. Dock Square, 545. Dorchester, 234; settled, 88, 217, 423 ; in the Colonial Period, 423 ; Edu- cation in, 429 ; records, xxi, xxii, 428 ; sources of history of, 428 ; Meeting-house, 436 ; burial-ground, 437; fields, 425; men (Dorset, etc.), 88, 217. Downing, Emanuel, 336, 343. George, 205. Family, 577. Drake, Francis S., " Roxbury in the Colonial Period," 401 ; "Brigh- ton in the Colonial Period," 439 ; Town 0/ Roxbury, xv. Samuel A. , Old Landmarks, xiv. Samuel G., History 0/ Boston^ xiv. Drawbridge, 185. Dress, 483. Dresser, John, 410. Drinker, Philip, 393. Drogeo, 27. Druillettes, Father, 268, 302. Drummer, Town, 510. Drunkenness, 494. Dry Dock, 393. Dudley, Joseph, 31S, 369; agent to England, 372 ; President, 200, 202, 205, 207, 382. Robert, his maps, 44 ; his A rcano del Mare, 59. Thomas, 101,417; Letter to the Countess of Lincoln, 87, 113, 463; autograph, 114, 417; controversy with Win- throp, 120, 418, 440; governor, 122, 156; Life by Cotton Mather, 122; his library, 455; his house, 418, 421; his tomb, 418. Family, 122. Dunster, Henry, 178, 456, 459. Dunton, John, 500. Dutch in New Amsterdam, 279. Dyer, Mary, 185. William, 185. Eames, Anthony, 389. East Boston, history of, by W. H. Sumner, xv. See Noddle's Island. Easton, John, Narrative of Philips War, 327. Eaton, Theophilus, 300, 301. Ecclesiastical histories, xvi. Edes, Henrv H., " Charlestown in the Colonial Period," 383. John, 392. Education, 123, 133, 135, 238. Elders, 158. Elections, manner of, 504. Eliot, John, the apostle, 4i3i 458, 464; arrives, 118, 404; autograph, 206, 263, 414, 416 ; missionary efforts, 258,259, 271, 414; studies of the Indian language, 270, 466-473 ; his chair, 415 ; his bureau, 415 ; visit- ed by Druillettes, 302 ; his career, 260 ; his family, 26c ; lives of, 260 ; portrait, 261 ; his Indian Gram- tnar, 474 ; his diary, 408 ; his house, 421 ; his Christian Com- monwealth, 411 ; conduct in Phil- ip's war, 320-322. Sir John, 106, 140. Philip, 406. Ellis, C. M., History of Roxbury, XV. George E.," Indians of East- ern Massachusetts," 241; "The Puritan Commonwealth," 141. Elm, Aspinwall, 221 ; the great, 21, 553. Emanuel College, 454. Endicott at Salem, 82, 87, 94, 97, 109, 112, 113, 302 ; at Merry Mount, 82 ; portrait, 308, 309 ; accounts of, 309 ; his family, 309, 575 ; his house, 54»- Episcopal church founded, 191. Erik the Red, 23. Executions, 508. Fairbanks, Richard, 232, 539. Fall fight, 324. Familists, 171. Farmer, John, 323. Farms, 499. Fashions, 484. Fasts, 515. Fast driving, laws against, 218. Feather Store, Old, 547. Feeld, Robert, 494, Felch, George, 389. Fenno Farm, 450. Fenwick, George, 296. Ferries, 228, 392, 451. Fields, 533. Figurative map, 57, 58. Finffius, Orontius, map, 42. Fines, Charles, 109. Fires, 230, 234, 508, 546; precautions against, 40S. First Church, members of, to 1640, 565; covenant, 114, 565; meeting- house, 119, 224 ; Winthropcup, 114. Fisher, Daniel, 368. Fish market, 547. Fishing, rights of, 334. Fisheries, early, go. Fisher, 14. Fitcher, 8r. Flacke, Cotton, 54a. Flora, 17. Floyd house, 450. ■ Food, 493. Foot-ball, 229. FooTE, Henry W. " Rise of Dis- senting Faiths," 191. Forbes, Alexander, 323. Forefathers' song, 460. Fort, 532 ; Hill, 222. Fortifications, 222, 340. Fosdick, Stephen, 396. Fossils, none near Boston, 8. Foster, John, printer, 456, Thomas, 416. Foxcroft, Thomas, sermon on first Centennial, 148. Foxes, 10. Fox Haven, 57 ; Hill, 528. Frairey, Deacon, 212. Francis, John, 443. Franklin, William, 545, Franquelin's map, 49, 282. Freemen, limited to church members. See Church Members. Duties of, 504 ; oath of, 456. French visits to the harbor, 69 ; colo- nies, 282. Frothingham, William, 389. Fruits, 491. Fuller, Dr. Samuel, 120, 387, 501. Funerals, prayers at, 418. Furniture, 490. Gager, Dr. William, 116. Games, 516. Gardiner, Christopher, 336. Lyon, 222, 254, 255. Thomas, 325. Garrett, Hugh, 387. Gary, Samuel, 416. Gastaldi's map, 43, Gates towards Roxbury, 408. Gay, Timothy, 556. 592 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Gee, Joshua, 555- Geese, 13. Geology, i. George, Captain, 203, 204. Gerrish family, 581. Gerritz's maps, 58. Gibbins, Sarah, 184. Gibbons, Edward, 278, 285, 287, 293, 302, 387, 536, 578. Gibbs, Robert, 534- Family. 586. Gibson, Christopher, 429. Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 35- Gillom, Benjamin, 543. Gilman, Ezekiel, 323- Glacial period, 2. Gloucester harbor, 48. Glover, John, 587. Jose, 455, 468- Gobel, Thomas, 389. Go£fe and Whalley, 304, 35i- Goldsmith, Ralph, xxiv. Gomez on the Coast, 34, 41. Goodyear, Stephen, autograph, 300. ■ Gookin, Daniel, 277, 307, 369, 406, 464 ; agent for the Indians, 267 ; his publications, 272 ; genealogy, 272. Gore, John, 405. Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 72, 77 ; his autograph, 72 ; his family, 72; his patent, 73 ; his Brief Relation^ 73 ; and the Council for New England, 95, 336, 341, 364- Robert, 72, 75, 76, 96, 342. Gorton, Samuel, 170; his autograph, 170; his controversy, 171 ; his Sim- plicities s Defence, 171. Gosnold on the coast, 36, 46. Gould, Rev. Thomas, 396. Governor's pomp, 510. Granary burying-ground, 556. Gravestones quarried, 4. Graves, Daniel, 556. John, 404. Tho- mas, the admiral, 3S9, 499. Thomas, engineer, 385. Gray, Asa, " Flora of Boston," 17. John, 79- Thomas, 79, 83, Great elm, 21, 553. Green, John, Sr., 396. John, Jr. 384, 389. Richard, 71. Samuel, 456, 468. Greenough, William, 186. Greyhound Tavern, 421. Gridley, Richard, 543- Gross, Clement, 494. Groose, Isaac, 494. Grosvenor, John, 405, 419. Grouse, 12. Guilds, 232. Gunnison, Hugh, 494. Hagburne, Samuel, 419. Hakluyt, Richard, 35 ; his Divers Voyages, 44. Hale, Edward E., " Boston in Phil- ip's war," 311. Robert, 389. Hales, J. G. Survey of Boston^ xiv. Half-way covenant, 194. Hall, John, 389. Halsoll, George, 228. Hamihon, Captain, 212. Hammond, Lawrence, 390, 399 ; auto- graph, 399. Hampden, John, xo6, 121 ; letter to Sir John Eliot, 140. Hanover Street, 548. Hansford, Joseph, 420. Hanson, Captain, 75. Harbor, geological formation of, 3 ; depth of water diminishing, 7 ; ear- liest explorations of, 63 — by Stand- ish, 64; by the French, 69; old planters, 75 ; early described, 523 ; settlement by Weston, 70 ; by Gor- ges, 76 ; called Massachusetts Bay, 37) 38 ; visited by early fishermen, 40 ; called Baie de S. Antonio, 41 ; how far explored by Smith, 50 ; on his map, 53, 55; called Foxhaven, or Vos-haven by the Dutch, 57, 58, . 59 ; visited by Allerton, and other Plymouth men, 60. Harris, boddice-maker, 2or. Harrison, John, 499, 543, Harvard, John, 395, 455 ; his monu- ment, 395- Harvard College, 130, 204, 238 ; found- ed, 441 ; its library, 455 ; building for the Indian scholars, 267; press at, 456. Hatherly, Timothy, 300. Hathorne, WilHain, 292, 312. Haven, Samuel F. ** The Massa- chusetts Company," 87. Hawkins, Thomas, 287, 552. Hawthorne's Scarlet- Letter^ 360. Hay, Theodocia, 556. Haynes, John, arrives, 121 ; governor, 124 ; autograph, 124, 300. Hayward, John, 232. Heath, Isaac, 405. William, 404, 405. Helluland, 23. Henchman, Daniel, 313, 317. Herbert, George, 121,454. Hewes, Joshua, 406. Heyman, John, 499. Hibbins, William, 578. Higgins, Robert, 502. Higginson, Francis, 98, 116; his N, E. Plantation, 55, 98. Thomas W., " From the Death of Win- throp to Philip's War," 303. Highways, 420. Hills, 524; geological formation of, 5. Hinckley, Thomas, 314. Hingham, 234. Historia viundi, 56. Homem's map, 43. Hondius's maps, 46. Hood, Thomas, his map, 44, Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 121, 220, 441, 462. Hopkins, Edward, autograph, 300. Hore, Master, 35, Hough, Atherton, 121, 577 ; his family, 577- House of Representatives, origin of, 440. Houses, 531. Hoyt, Simon, 3S5. Hubbard, William. History of New England^ xvii ; Map of New Eng- land^ 328 ; Indian Wars^ 255. Huckleberries, 18. Hudson, Francis, 84, 85. Henry on the coast, 56, 59. William, 316, 387, 494 Hudson's Point, 530. Hull, George, 427. John, 317, 323, 354, 462, 540, S49» 555) 580. Hull, town of, 69, 78, 79, 83. Hulsius's edition of Smith's New Ejigland, 53. Humble Request, The, 107. Humfrey, John, 94, loi. Humphreys, Robert, 376. Hutchinson family, 579. Mrs. Anne, 173) 413; her home, 174. Edward, 312, 318, 320, 553. Elisha, 369- George, 389. Thomas, Collection of Papers^ xvii ; History of Mas- sachusetts Bay, xix. Ians, Matthew, 494. Immigration, cessation of, 160, 224. Indians, their fort at Muddy River, 220 ; relations with Boston, 275 ; of Eastern Massachusetts, 241 ; dis- possessed of their lands, 241 ; ex- termination of, 243, 256; missions among, 244, 257, 265, 266, 268 ; swept ofE by a plague, 244; authorities on their condition, 245; skulls found in Boston, 245 ; their numbers, 245, 251 ; pleas for, 246 ; kind reception of the English, 247 ; inhumanly treated, 247, 255, 257; deeds of land, 247 ; wars with, accounts of, 255 ; praying, 264", tracts on their con- version, 265, 480 ; at College, 477 ; in Roxbury, 402 ; deeds of land, 402; removed during Philip's war, 273j 320, 321 ; as servants, 123, 489 ; primers, 475. 478, 479 ; Bible, 270 ; catechisms, 478. Inoculation for smalt-pox, 207. Inns, 493. Insects, i6. Invertebrates, 15. Irish donation, 326, 399. Iron works, 500. Islands in harbor well wooded, 18. Jacobsz's map, 58. Jamaica Pond, 402. James II. proclaimed in Boston, 200, 380 ; autograph, 380. James, Rev. Thomas, 394. JefEery, the old planter, 339. JefErey, WiUiam, 75, ,b, 78, 83. Jeffries family, 582. Jennings, William, 387, 388. Jesuit missions to the Indians, 258, 262. Johnes, Edward, 389. Johnson, Edward, IVonder-^orking Providence^ ^tz. Isaac, 101,114, 116, 410. Isaac of Roxbury, 319. John, 405, 407, 409. Marmaduke, 456, 46S. William, 389. INDEX. 593 Josselyn, John. Rarities Discovered, 19; Voyages^ ig. JoylifBe family, 581. Keaynh, Robert, i30j237» 4S°j 461, Sio. 539. Keith, George, 208. Kemble, William, 323. ICempis, Thomas k. Imitation of Christ, 453. Kettle, Richard, 389. King's Chapel founded, 201; first building, 213, 214; burial-ground, 214. 555- King's-Head Inn, 493. Kirk, Col. Piercy, igg. Knight, Robert, S09. Walter, 79, Lamb, Thomas, 407. Land of Nod, sgi. Langdon, Benjamin, 323. Latin book, first written in this country, 464. La Tour, 132, 282-295, 302. Laud, Archbishop, 338, 339 Laws, early, 145. , Lawyer, 503. Learned, William, 389. Lechfurd, Thomas, 503. Leete, William, autograph, 301 Leif, 23 Leifsbudir, 24. Lendall, James, 323. Lenox globe, 40. Lescarbot's map, 49. Letters-patents, forms used in issuing, 331- Leverett, Gov. John, 209, 314, 349; his house, 312; portrait, 315. Thomas, 222 ; family, 315. 575. Levett, Captain Christopher, 75. Library, public, 501. LidgetorLydgett, Charles, 201. Peter, 324s family, 582. Life and manners of the Colonial period, 481. Lilly, 212. Linckern, William, 323. Lincoln, Thomas, 389. Lions, 9- Literature of the Colonial Period, 453. Lok's map, 44. Long, Robert, 393. Lord's Supper, 514. Lovell's island, 388. Ludlow, Roger, 122. Luscomb, 201. Lyde family, 586. Lyford, John, 79. Lyle, Francis, 544. Lynde, Simon, 448. Thomas, 389; family, 586. Lynxes, 10. Lynn village, 388. ^ Lyon, Richard, 459- Lytherland, William, 84, 85. Maccarty, 201. Mackerel, 14. VOL. I. — Ti, Mackintosh, D., on New England, 90. Madoc, prince, 26. Magistrates, 130, 156. Maine, acquired by Massachusetts, 367, 369. 370- Manufactures, 497. Maps, Collections of early, and the study of them, 38; of Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor, 37. Markets, 232. Markland, 24. Marriage, ig6, 418. Marshall, Thomas, 228. Martha's Vineyard, Indian dialect of, 476. Maryland, relations with Boston, 278. Mason, John, Captain, 242, 253, 255, 301. John, 336. Robert, 364, 371. Massachusetts Company, 87, 99, 329 j records, 97, 330 ; removal to New England, 100, 330, 335, 338; charter, possession of, 151 ; struggle to main- tain, 128, 152, 238, 307, 329, 410; heliotype of, 329; its intent, 142, 155, 176, 239, 307, 330 ; powers con- veyed, 332 ; its possession, 344, 347 ; rights under, 352 ; vacated, 377. Massachusetts Colony records, 330 ; bounds of, 97, 329 ; first governor o^ 98, 112, 335 ; Archives, xix ; records of, xix- Massachusetts Bay, early European voyagers in, 23 ; Cartography, 37 ; called St. Christoval, 41, 44; St. Christoforo, 45 ; Chesipook Sinus, 45 ; St. Christofle, 46 ; fields, 37, 64, 79; Indians, 37, 64, 71, 383; mount, 37 ; Psalter, 475 ; fac-simile of title, 476 : river, 53 ; seal, 330. Masts sent to the king, 363 . Matchlock, 66. Mather, Cotton, 207 ; Magnolia, xviii ; library, xviii ; manuscripts, xviii ; Epistle to ike Christian In- dians, etCf 475, 479, 480. Rev. Increase Mather, 194,204, 206, 207, 375) 456, 462 ; house burned, 230 ; portrait, 587 ; Early History of New England, 327 j War -with the Indians, 327 ; his library, xviii ; title of his first book printed in Boston, 457; his sermons in Indian, 475. Richard, 436, 458 ; Journal, 42S ; portrait, 437 ; his family, 437. Mathers, dynasty of, 462. Mattapan, 425. Matthews, Marmaduke, 138. Maude, Daniel, 123- Mauris, Rice, 389. Maverick, Elias, 449. Rev. John, 424, 436. Samuel, 193, 293, 358) 449' 452 ; in Gorges' company, 75 ; at Noddle's Island^ 78, 85 ; his family, 78 ; royal commissioner, 79, 358. Mayflower, 18. Mayhew, Experience, 477. Thomas, Indian missionary, 258. Mayo, Rev. John, 192. Medfordj 217. Meech, John, 385. Mellows, Abraham, 389. Mercator's map, 42, 44. Merry, Walter, 498 ; his point, 530. Merry or Mare Mount, 81 ; romance by Motley, 85. Mercurius Americanus, 177. Metellus's map, 45. Miantonomoh, 122, 253, 299. Middlecott family, 582. Military organization, 234. Milk, John, 555. . Mill Creek, 533 ; cove, 225 ; pond, 529. Millard, Thomas, 543. Mines, none near Boston, 4. Ministers, list of Boston, 565 ; main- tenance of, 223 ; power of, 240. Minor, Thomas, 389. Minot, Elder George, 438 ; bis house, 432- Mint, 354- Mlshawmut. See Shawmut. Mohegans, 252. Monahco, 325. Monatoquot River, 78, So. Monck, George, autograph, 494. Moodey, Rev. Joshua, igg, 206 ; auto- graph, 206. Moore, Benjamin, 398. Moose, II. Moravian missions, 267. Morel, Rev. William, in Gorges' com- pany, 75. 77» 78. J^orley, John, 3g7 ; Robert, 501. Morris, Richard, 406, 420, 536. Morton, Thomas, 80; his New Eng- lish Canaan, 80 : at Merry Mount, Si, 83. 336. Moses, his judicials, 125, 145. Mosley, Samuel, 313, 320. Moulton, Robert, 389. Moulton's Hill, 390. Mount Hope, 325. Mount Wollaston, settled, 79, 80, 220, 441. Mousall, John, 389. Ralph, 394. Mower, Samuel, 556. Muddy River, 220. Muggleton, Lodowich, 508. Munster's Cosmographia and Map, 42 Myles, Rev. Samuel, ■ 16, 398. Mystic, 118, 217; river explored, 67,', side, 387, 391. Nahant Bav, 57. Nanepashemet, ^, 67, 383. Nantasket, 234. See Hull. Narragan setts, 252, 316, 318, 319. Nash, William, 389. Natascot. See Hull. Natick, 263, 264, 274. Navigation Act, 306, 351, 366, 373. Nazing, England, 403. Neck, the, 530. Needham the sexton, 211. Negative Voice, 130. Nesutan, Job, 271. New Brick Church, 192, 594 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. New England, names borne by it at difterent times, 34, 51 ; named by Smith, SI ; called New Netherland by the Dutch, 51, 58 ; described by Johnson, 303 ; the coast divided among patentees, 74 ; council for, see Council ; confederacy, 131 ; ge- ology of, I. New England^ s First Fruits^ 159- New England version of the Psahns, 457- New Field, 533. New Haven colony, 280. Newport mill, 26. Newell, John, 390. Newgate, John, 451. Nathaniel, 510 : farm, 448, 450. Newton (Cambridge), 222. NicoiJs, Richard, autograph, 358. Ninigret, 245. Nipmucks, 316. Noah's ark, 551. Noddle, William, 78. Noddle's Island, 78. Nonantum, 261. Norse ship, a, 25. North Carolina, relations with Boston, 277. North church, 192. North End, 537, 548. Northmen in New England, 23, 38, 91. North Street, 548. North Square, 550. Norton, Francis, 387, 399. Hum- phrey, 184. John, 182, 184 ; his pedigree, 182 : his Heart of New England rent^ 187 ; his Latin reply to Appolonius, 464 ; agent to Eng- land, 354, 356; answers Pynchon, 405 ; his widow, 194, Norumbega, 35, 40, 45, 51. Nova Albion, 94. Nowell, Increase, loi, 387, 394 ; Samuel, 250, 371. Obbatinewat, 64, 66. Odiin, John, deposes about Black- stone, 84^ 85. Oldham, John, 79, 253. Old planters, 75. Old South Church, 192, 211 ; founders of) 573- Oliver, James, 316, 357. Peter, 278, 580; Pttriian Commonwealth yiAi'i- Thomas, 222, 443, 502. Family, 580. Orange-Tree Inn, 548. Ordinaries, 493- Ortelius, list of maps, 42 ; his maps, 44. Oviedo's description of the coast, 41. Oysters, 15. Painter, Thomas, 528. Palfrey, Peter, 93. Palisades, 251, 44o< Palmer, Abraham, 385, 391, 398. Walter, 385, 386. Palsgrave, Richard, 387, 389. Parke, William, 405. Parker, James, 428. Nicholas, 450. Parkman, Francis, his collection of manuscript maps, 38, 49. Pasonagesset. See Mount Wollaston. Payne family, 581. Pawtucket Indians, 3S3. Pearce, Thomas, 389. Pecksuot, 72. Pelham, Herbert, autograph, 300. Pemberton, Rev. Ebenezer, 208. James, 389. Thomas, Description 0/ Boston, xiii. Pemberton Hill, 525. Penguin, 13. Penn, James, 451. William, 387 Penny Ferry, 390, 393. Perkins, John, 449. William, 407. Pequot War, 225, 253 ; accounts of, 255- Perry, Arthur, 510, 542, 544. Selh, 312. Peters, Hugh, arrives, 124; executed 305- Phelps, William, 427. Philip, 264; war with, 230, 271, 311- 328, 410; killed, 325; authorities, 327 ; maps for the war, 328. Phillips, Deacon, his stone house, 549. George, 107. Samuel, 206. Phipps, Samuel, 389, 397, 443. Physician, 50 r. Pierce, Robert, 431 ; bis house, 431. Pierpont, John, 405. Pierson , Abraham, Some helps for the Indians^ 466. Peter, 409. Pigeon, wild, 14. Pigghogg, Mr., 501. Pilgrims land at Plymouth, 60, in ; at Cape Ann, 92 ; affect the churches of the Bay, 144 ; more tolerant, 455 ; and Puritans, 144. Pillory, 506. Pine-tree shillings, 354. Pines, 18. Pines, The, 273, 444. Plancius's map, 46. Planters Plea. See White, Rev. John. Ploughed Hill, 391. Plymouth, its harbor, 47, 48, 59 ; called Crane Bay, 57 ; the Pilgrims land there, 60 ; relations with Boston, 276; their trading station on the Penobscot, 283, 289 ; visited by Winthrop, 119, Point Allerton, or Alderton, seen by the Northmen, 25, 26, 39 ; named, 60, 63. Pollard, Anne, 84, 521. Pond, Robert, 434. Ponds, 542, 5S4. Ponkapog, 431. Pope Walter, 389. Pormont, or Pormort, Philemon, 123. Post-office, 232, 539. Poutrincourt, 48. Powder-Horn Hill, 391, 445. Powder-mill, 317. Powell, Michael, 192. Powers, William, 312. Pratt, Phinehas, his autograph, 70. Praying Indians, 272. Prence, Thomas, 301. Prentice, Thomas, 313. Press of Cambridge, 453 ; of Boston, 456. Price, 216, Prices, 497. Pri chard, 409. Prince, Thomas, his Chronological History, xviii. Pring on the coast, 47. Printer, James, 470, 477, Prison, 541. Prospect Hill, 391. Prout, Timothy, 250. Provisions, 491. Prudden, John, 419. Psalm-singing, 513. Ptolemy's geographies, 40, 43. Pudding Stone, 402. Pullen Point, 445. Pumps, 545. Punishments, 50S. " Puritan Commonwealth," by George E. Ellis, 141 ; by Peter Oliver, 145- Puritans and Pilgrims, 144; and the Church of England, 155, 205. Pye Bay, 57. Pynchon, William, 101, 401 ; portrait, 404 , Meritorious Price of our Redemption, 405. Quakers, 179, 350, 409 ; executed, 185; buried on the common, 186 ; litera- ture of the persecutions, 187 ; their first church, 195. Quarles, Francis, 457. Quincy, Edmund, 222, 553. Josiah, Municipal History of Boston, xiii. Quincy, town of, 79. Rainsborough, William, 394. Rainsford, Edward, 175. Ramusio's map, 41, 43, Randolph, Edward, 194, 196, 197, 201, 202, 213, 364, 366, 36S, 3;o, 371, 372, 373, 374. 375. 376, 382. Ranger, Edmund, 500. Rank, Social, 487. Ranters, 180 Rasdell, 81. Ratcliffe, John, bookbinder, 469. Ratcliffe, Rev. Robert, 200, 215. Ravenscroft, 201. Rawson, Edward, 3:2, 380; portrait, 381. Grindall, 471, 475. Rebecca, 519; portrait, 519. Read, Robert, 510, Red-Lion Inn, 493, 550. Reeves, John, 508. Regicides in New England, 304. Religious legislation, 145, 151, Remington, John, 412. Representative system, 122. Reptiles, 14, Revere, 445 Rhode Island Colony, 282 ; left out of the Confederacy, 297 ; as a ha:bor for heretics, 166. INDEX. 595 Ribero*s map, 41. Richards, John, 312, 316, 368, 371, 372 ; family, 578. Richardson, Ezekiel, 387, 389. Robinson, William, 185. Rock-Hill in Medford, 67. Rogers, Simon, 510, Rope-making, 499. Rose frigate, 200, 203. Rosewell, Sir Henry, 94. Rosier's True Relatioft, 47, 465. Rounds, Mark, 323 Rous, John, his New England ci Degenerate Plant, 187. Roxbury, 2x7, 234 ; in the Colonial Period, 401 ; Book of Possessions and Town Records, 407 ; first church records, 408 ; first meeting-house, 41 z ; first parish formed, 411 ; gram- mar school, 415. 419. 421 : burial- ground, 418; parish tomb, 419; training field, 420 ; histories of, xv ; records of, xxi, xxii. Royal Commissioners, 307, 357. Ruby, Ann, 556. Ruck family, 582. Ruggles, Samuel, 409. Rumney Marsh, 220, 229, 445. Ruscelli's map, 43. Russell, John, 195. Richard, 312, 324, 399- Rut, John, 35, 40. Ruysch's map, 40. Sabbath-breaktng, 218. SafEin, John, 250 ; family, 582. Sagamore, George, 447. James, 447. John, 384, 447. St. Botolph's church, 117, 158. Salem, early settlers, 93, 1 12 ; govern- ment at, 99, 113 ; Winthrop arrives at, 109 ; visits, 118. Salem Street house, 551. Sales, John, 387. Sanderson, Robert, 354. Saltonstall, Sir Richard, loi, 129, 284 ; his tolerance, 182 ; his portrait and family, 185, 579. Richard, Jr., 129, 294» 305. Sanson's maps, 61. Sassacus, 254. Saturday evening begins the Sabbath, 516. Saugus, 217. Saunders, 71, 72. Savage, Thomas, 175, 3i6j 3I7j 324; portrait, 318; family, 318. Perez, 317; fartiily, 578. Scarborough, John, 409. Scarlet, Elizabeth, 556 ; family, 581. Schouer's globe, 40. Schoolmasters, 123. School Street, 542. Scouces, 535- Scoot, Thomas, 556. Scotch prisoners in Boston> 304. Scott, Richard, 322. Scottow, Joshua, his Narrative, 97. ScuDDER, Horace E. "Life in -Bos- ton in the Colonial Period," 481. Second church, 192. Sedgwick, Robert, 399, 536. Selectmen, 505 ; first chosen, 388 ; hel- iotype of the order creating, 38S; list of Boston, 562. Seller, John. Map of New England^ 328. Serch, John, 542. Sergeant, Rev. John, 480. Peter, 585 ; his house, 543. Sermons, 513. Servants, 487. Sewall, Samuel, 354, 540 ; his farm, 354 ; the typical puritan, 210; print- er, 457- Shaler, N. S. " Geology of Bos- ton," I. Sharp, Robert, 22T. Thomas, loi. Shattuck, Samuel, xxiv, 187. Shaw, Charles, Description of Bos- ton, xiii. Shawmut, meaning of, 78, 387. Sheaile family, 585. Sheffield, Earl of, 92. Shell-fish, 15. Shepard, Thomas, 440, 458 ; auto- graph, 462 ; his Sincere Convert, etc., in Indian, 473. Rev. Thomas, the younger, 396, 400. Sherburne, Henry, 385. Ships of Winthrop*s fleet, 115 ; size of early, 50 ; building of, 497, 49S. Ship Tavern, 493, 551. Shoemakers incorporated, 232. Shops, 497. Short Story, etc., by Winthrop, 176. Shorttas, Robert, 389. Shrimpton, Henry, 195. Samuel, 527 ; portrait, 584. Mrs.,' portrait, 585. Family, 582 ; lane, 545. Shurtleff, N. B. Description of Bos- ton, xiv. Simonds, Henry, 533. Simpkins, Nicholas, 536. Skelton, Samuel, 98. Slavery in Massachusetts, 488 ; con- troversial literature of, 488. Small-pox, 400, 408. Smelt Brook, 402. Smith, Charles C, "Boston and the Colony," 217; " Boston 'and the Neighboring Jurisdictions," 275. John, on the coast, 49 ; his map of New England, 50, 52, 89; his writ- ings, 50 ;■ his Description of New England, 52 ; his escutcheon, 54. his portrait, 54, 55 ; his Generall Historie, 54 ; in Boston harbor, 67, 68. Margaret, 185. Snakes, 14. Snow, C. H. History of Boston, xiv. Snow Hill, 526. Social characteristics, 557. Southack, Cyprian, 541. Southcoat, Thomas, 94. Southcot, Captain, 425. South Boston, xv, 425. South Cove, 529. Sparkwell, Nathaniel, 440, 443 ; his house, 443. Speer, John, 323. Sprague, Charles, Centennial ode in 1830, facsimile of, 246. Ralph, 3S5, 388. Richard. 384, 389. Richard the younger, 399. Springs, 523. Spring-gate, 543. Spring Street, West Roxbury, 402. Squanto, 66, 68. Squantum, 37, 63. Squaw rock, 64. Squaw sachem, 66, 68,' 383, 441. Squeb, Captain, 424. Squire, Thomas, 389. Standish, Miles, explores Boston har- bor, 63 ; supposed portrait of, 65 ; his sword, 66 ; at Wessagusset, 7/ ; arrests Morton, 82 ; sent to the Penobscot, 284. State library begun, 136. State Street, 539. State's-Arms Inn, 493. Stebbins, Martin, 494. Stephanius, Sigurd, map by, 38. Stephenson, John, 84. Sternhold and Hopkins's version of the Psalms, 457. Stevenson, Marmaduke, 185, 1S6. Stickline, John, 385. Stinted pasture, 391. Stobnicza's map, 40. Stock, Jeremiah, 323. Stockbridge Indians, 480. Stocks, 506. Stoddard, Anthony, 497, 583. Simeon, portrait, 583 ; family, 583. Stone, Emily, 556. Stoughton, Israel, 254, 427. Thomas, 427. William, 205, 312, 314, 365, 369- Stow, John, 407. Stowers, Nicholas, 385, 389. Strangers, harboring of, 229. Stray sow, the, 130. Streets, 538 ; care of, 228. Sturgis, Edward, 389. Suffolk County,- 131, 234. Sumner, W. H. History of East Boston, XV. Sumptuary laws, 123, 483. Sunday Schools, 412. Swan, II. Swansea, 311, 312, 314, 318. Swedes on the Delaware, 279. Sylvanus's map, 40. Symmes, Rev. Zechariah, 394, 579. Syraonds, Samuel, 312. Thomas C, History of South Boston^ xv. Synods, 164, 193, 194. Tarrentines, 66, 67. Tate and Brady' s version of the Psalms, 460. Taxes, early lists, 325 ; proportion paid by Boston, 224, 225. Taylor, Madam, 204. Ten Hills, 387. Thacher, Rev. Thomas, 194, 208. Thanksgiving day, 118, 515. Thatcher, Mary, 555. 596 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Theocracy, New England, i44» 146) 150, 158, 163, 205. Thevet, Andr^, 35 Tlurd Church, 192. Thomas, Evan, 494. James, 323. Thomson, Benjamin, 397, 41?' 42O) 460 ; his epitaph, 419. David, 83 ; his island, 63, 83, 429. Thorfinn, 24. Thornfomb, Aadrew, 500. Thorne, Robert, his map, 40. Thornton, J- W., Landing at Cape Annei 92. Thorvald, 24; Three-Cranes Tavern, 393. Thursday lecture, 515. Thwing, John, 555, Timberly, Sergeant, 323. Tithing-men, 512. Tobacco, 495; laws, 123. Tolman house, 434. Tomlins, Edward, 513. Tout, Elizabeth, 556. Towns, origin of, 445, 454 , earliest, 427; powers of, 217; names of, 234 ; officers, 505. Town house, xxiv, 237, 537. Townsend, Penn, 575. Trades, 498. Trask, Mary, autograph, 185 Trevor Island, 63, 323. Trimountain, 116, 525. Trumbull, J. Hammond, "The Indian Tongue and its Literature," 465. . John, 406. Turfery, 201. Turkey, wild, 12. Turner, Davis, 323. John, 527. Robert, 494, 527, William, 325. Tuttle, William, 391. T>ng, Edward, 312, 512, 581; family, 580 Uhden's Geschichte der Congrega- tionalisten, 144. Ulpius's globe, 42. Underbill, John, 118, 173, 220, 254, 255, 420. Uncas and Miantonomoh, 299. University men among the early settlers, 454. Updick, James, 323. Upsal], Nicholas, 186, 493, 550; his family's petition, 186. Usher Hezekiah, 324, 46S, 500. John 211, 366, 453, 500; family, 582. Valley Acre, 525. Vane, Harry, 124; portrait and auto- grai^h, 125 ; governor, 125 ; his house, 126; return to England, 127 ; executed, 305. Vassall, John, 278. William, 101, 193. Vates, John, 320. Verrazano Giovanni de, 32, 35. Verrazann, Hieronimus, map, 41, 44. Viall, John, 552. Vincent, Philip, 255. Vinci,. Leonardo da, map, 40. Vinland, 24, 38. Virginia, early limits of, 51 ; relations with Boston, 276. Vischer's maps, 46. Waban, 261. Wages, 488, 497. Walford, Thomas, in Gorges* com- pany, 75, 76, 78 ; at Charlestown, 84, 384, 385- Walker, Robert, 542. Wampatuck, 249. Wapping, 392. Ward, Nathaniel, 128. Warham, Rev. John, 424, 436. Warner, John, 323. Warwick, Earl of, 96. Washington Street, 538. Watch, 510. Waterhouse, Rev. Thomas, 429. Water mills, 225. Wateitown, 217, 425. Watson, John, 323. Watts, Solomon, 323. Waugh, Dorothy, 184. Webcowit, 383- Weld, Joseph, 405, 407,* 409, 421. Thomas, 176, 411, 413, 458. Wessagusset settled, 69, 76, 78, 83. West, Nicholas, 101. Francis, 75. West Hill, 525, 528. Weston, Thomas, 69, 70, 72, 76. West Roxbury, recoids, xxi, xxii. Weymouth, 69, 71, 234 Weymouth or Waymouth, Captain, 47, 465- Whales, ir. Wharves, 225. Wheeler, Thomas, 320, 327. Wheelwright, John, 176. Whetcomb, Simon, 94. Whipping-post, 506. White, Rev. John, 89, 92, 93, 424 ; his Planter's Plea, 93, 149, 153. Mercy, 556. Whitehand, George, 389. Whitmore, William H. "Boston Families," 557 Whittingham family, 582. Whitwell, William, 494. Wiggm, 337. Wigglesworth, Michael, 461; his lib- rary, 4SS ; bis Day of Doom, 461. Wignall, John, 387. Wilbor, Samuel, 553. Willard, Rev. Samuel, 194, 204, 208; his Complete Body of Divinity^ 208 ; portrait, 208. Simon, 208, 324. Williams, Robert, 405. Roger, his character, 455 ; and the Quakers, 185 ; and the Winthrops, 282 ; and the Indians, 253,259,264, 312, 465 ; his Key, 466; at Plymouth, 119; escapes from Massachusetts, 124 ; his course in Massachusetts, 149, i55i i&6» ^7*; liis autograph, 171 ; literature of the controversy, 172; his Blondy Teneni, 172 , lives of him, 173 ; alleged portrait, 173. Thomas, 452. Willoughby, Francis, 399, 520. Wilson, John, 107, 540; autograph 114 ; his house. 119 ; no portrait of, 120 ; land at Mount Woiiaston, 220 ; makes a stuinp speech, iz6 ; death, 193. Rev- John, Jr ,438. Lambert, 501. Windmills, 225, 526, 532, 534. Winnisimmet, 445. Winship, Edward, 440; house, 443. Winslow, Edward, 276 ; his Hypocra- cie Ufitnasked^ 171 ; his Neiv Eng- land's Saiamanaer^ 171. Josiah, 31^ 314- WiNsoR, Justin, editor, Preface ; In- troduction ; "Maps of Massachu- setts Bay," 37 ; " Literature of the Colonial Period," 453. Winsor's warehouse, 547. Winter, mild, 409. Winter Hill, 391. Winthrop, Adam, his pot, 491. Deane, 451 ; his house, 44'7. John, loi ; at Charlestown, 114, 386; auto- graph, 114; his communion cup, 114 ; his fleet, 115 ; his controversy with Dudley, 120; his house, 138, 161, 481 ; his farm, 387 ; his labors, 496; joins the Mass. Co., 102; his ancestry, 103 ; made governor, 104 ; his Co7iclusiotis for New England^ 105, 140; sails for New England, 107 ; his Jourtial or History of New England^ xvi, 109, 463 ; his Model of Christian Charity^ 1 10, 142; his Short Story ^ 176? his map of Cape Ann, 6r ; impeached, 133', his death, 136, 250; his por- trait, 136 ; his character, 142 ; gives books to Harvard College, 455 ; his Arbitrary Government described, 132. John, Jr., 314. Margaret, 104. Robert C , " Boston Founded," 99. Wait, 314 ; family, 574. Winthrop, town of, 445. Wishing-stone, 554. Witchcraft, 136- Witherell, William, 397. Withington, Henry, 438. Witter, William, 178. Wituwamat, 72. Woad-waxen, 20. Wobble, 13. Wollaston's party, 79. Wolves, 10. Wonder-working Providence , 463, Wood, William, ■ New Ettglajid^s Prospect, 9, 56, 463, 465; map, 524. Wood and timber, 427, 522. Woodberry, John, 93. Woodmansey, Robert, 317. Woodstock, Conn., 422. Written tree, 229. Wussausman, 311. Wytfiiet's map, 45. Young, Sir John, 94, Yeaman house, 448. Zeni, the, 27 ; map, 39.