Boston City (part 27 of 67)

liut there was much to contend against at the outset. Thomas Dudley, who had c6me 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, 1 63 1, writes of the condition of things as follows : -

"We found the ("olony in a sad and unexpected condition, al)ovc eighty of them Imng dead the winter before, and many of those alive weak and sick ; all the com 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 ;;^2o a person, furnishing and sending over."

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 emancipate all who had survived the winter ; not from any abstract considerations of philanthropy, but from absolute inability to provide for their maintenance. 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: "Thursday, 17 (June). We went to Mattachusctts 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

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: -

"We, whose names are here undenvritten, 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."

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°. Winthrop to y*: I* 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

* (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 graduated at King's College, Cambridge. He was ordained at Charlestown, August 27, and again in Uostun in November. He rc(urnc<l to l''.ngland for his wife the next year, and was a third time installed in Novcml)er, 1632. - Ei).| 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 Uccijrds have the folhiwiiig a(:<c»uiil <»f il : " A tall end>i)sscd cup, with engraving and figures in relief. Weight, 16 oz., 1 dwt. No dale." - Ki).]

Boston Founded

very first matter propounded was. " How the Ministers should be maintained," - when it was ordered, that houses should be built for them with convenient speed, at the pubh'c charjje. ICverythin^ 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, when he entered in his Diary the following record of what was unquestionably the original temperance movement in Massachusetts, if not in America : - -

" 'Hie 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. William 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 vcs- «5cls arc 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 anchorage. The " Talbot," the vice-admiral, riding at anchor, hides Governor's Island from the spectator. 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 Elast Boston. - Ed.]

morning Mr. Isaac Johnson died ; his wife, the Lady ArbcHa, 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 company 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 Charlestown : -

"In the meantime, Mr. Blackslone, 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. Whereupon, 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 inhabitant of Shawmut, as the peninsula was called by the Indians, anfl 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.^ The name of Boston was specially dear to the Massachusetts colonists at length in Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr.*s section of Secretary of the Commonwealth, a heliotypc of the present volume. - Ed.] this famous order is herewith given. - Ed.]

from its associations with the old St. Botolph's town, or Boston, of Lincolnshire, England, from which the Lady Arbclla Johnson and her husband had conic, 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 Winthrop 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 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 Eliot, 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 i8th of May, 163 1, the second General Court was holden at Boston, when Winthrop was re-elected Governor, and Dudley Deputy- Governof', 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 Underhill 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.

" 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 Watertown, Roxbury, Boston, Saugus, Newtown, Charlestown, Salem, and Dorchester.

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 official 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 govemour, 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 govemour of Plimouth, Mr. William Bradford (a very discreet and grave man), with Mr. Brewster, the elder, and some others, came forth and met them without the town, and conducted them to the govemour'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 transchurch lot as existing at this time, but as made mitted his name to us. - Ed.]

I20 The Memorial History Of Boston

govemour of Plimouth spake to the question ; after him the elder ; then some two or three more of the congregation. Then the elder desired the govemour of Massachusetts 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 govemour 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 mpre 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 govemour 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 govemour 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, Sac. Wilson hangs in the Gallery of the Historical So- Proc, September, 1867, doubted its authenticity; dety. Drake, ///s/. 0/Bas/on, gives a poor wood- but see Pnfc., December, 1880, p. 264. - Ed.]

Boston Founded

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 controversies, 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 accordingly, - 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 fortyeight 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 Massachusetts, and, not long afterwards, of Connecticut The arrival of these important characters is thus chronicled by Winthrop in his Journal : -

"Sept. 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. HofTe, 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, in the meantime, 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, -

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 meditated such a flight.

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 Sermon 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 ministers 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 condition of the little Colony, - nothing less than the establishment of a Representative 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."^ Relieved from the cares of the chief magis-

* [Dudley lived where the Universalist Durrie's Index 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 printunder the building. Here he entertained Mian- ed his Magnolia, is given in the Mass. Hist. tonomohin 164a Hedied July 31, 1654. Drake, Soc. Proc., January, 1870, with notes and col- Tmvn of Roxbury, ^^. y^^y -^^Q', Ellis, AW^/ry latio»« with the text of the same given in Town, p. 97. The family line is traced in N. E. George Adiard's Suttdn-Dudleys of England. ^/x/.rt«i/d7/'«<r<i/. A»<?^.viii. and ix., supplementing Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, 1858. The Dean Dudley's Z>//i//<|'C^f«<rfl%/Vj, Boston, 1848. N» E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1856, There is a tabular pedigree in Drake's Boston, p. 342, has a paper on the portraits of the folio edition. Cf. Bridgman, Pilgrims of Boston ; Dudleys. - Ed.]

Boston Founded. 1 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 person) 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 Winthrop 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: "Likewise 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 maintenance of free-schoolmaster for Mr. Daniel M^ude 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 unnecessary 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 suffice 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 ;^8o, with Dorchester and Newtown, out of the ;^6oo ordered to be " levied out of the several plantations," which were now twelve in number.

' [Sec further on this point in Mr. Scudder's The history of education is S|>ccia1ly treated by chapter. The list in question is printed in the Dr. Dillaway in Vol. IV. - Ed.)

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 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 admitted a member of the Church of Boston within a month after his arrival, and, before three months had expired, he and Peters had procured a meeting in Boston of all the leading magistrates and ministers of the colony, with a view to healing some distractions in the Commonwealth 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 discipline, 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 using this liberty for preaching and propagating 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 afterwards: '* 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 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, accordingly* John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley were chosen councillors for life. But the young Henry Vane was at the same time elected Governor of Massachusetts, - a signal proof of the influence and importance he had so 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 exceeded 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 the house where he lived, as fifty years ago house, by W. H. Whitmore, who {Sevmil Paand more still standing on the sloi)e back pers, i. 58-62) traces the estate down through 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 liberty, and as entitling htm 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. New 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 undoubtedly 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 disposed 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, 2i"<^ their relations were cordial and affectionate.

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 Winthrop as Governor. During this year the colony was called on to confront 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, diplomatic delays were interposed ; a humble petition was sent back, and the direct 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 colonics. 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 responsibilities, 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 Agawani 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 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 countenance 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 VVinthrop 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 Massachusetts. But it was writtat 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, compare, 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 successors." 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 Saltonstairs, a son of that good Sir Richard * who himself after a brief stay, left a part of his family behind him to perpetuate an honored name in the history of Massachusetts. The Book was principally 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 occasion 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 terminated 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 occasion. 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 regard to the *- Negative Voice," and to the final separation, by solemn order, of the Legislature of Massachusetts into two co-ordinate branches, - Magistrates 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 ihe 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 greatest and highest consequence, -

** 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 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 fiiU 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 th.it it was the year of the first Commencement of Harvard College. Endowed * Virgil, jEncidt bk. iii. lines J90-94. * Afasstuhusttts Colonial Records, ii. 58, 59^ by the infant colony in 1636, the College assumed a practical existence ii» 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 : -

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 confederations 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 by the famous Thomas Hooker, of Connecticut, in a remarkable letter, thanking him for the " special! 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 combynation 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 difficult 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 recently occupied the public mind in connection with foreigners and Papists, and which involved also some nice poiiits 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 Ix)rd hath brought us hither, through the swelling seas, through the pcrills of ])yrates, tempests, Icakcs, fires, rocks, sands, diseases, starvings; and hatli here preserved us these manyyeares 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 Indians, 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? "

The political year of 1644 opens with the election of Endicott.as Governor, 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 " Arbitrary Governm! described : and the Governmen* of the Massachusetts vin- 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 censorious 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, ^^^ 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 [l^/ank]. Other towns did the like, providing maintenance 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 colony, 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 magistrates. He went to Boston and laid his case before them. Tliey * 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 appearance 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 thejr 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 Wmthrof*^ ii. 440- throp, hi 1876, to the Public Library, where it 459. [The original manuscript, wilh all the now is. - Ed.] papers relating to it, was given by Mr. Win* '^ Vol. ii. p. 254.

uties, on their part, complied with the request, and sent a vote accordingly to tr e 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 petitioners' agents, who were then deputies of the Court, . . . thereupon singled out the Deputy- Governor [Winlhrop], and two of the petitioners undertook the prosecution.' TTie magistrates were loath to sanction so irregubr a proceeding ; but Winthrop desired to make his vindication, and the petitioners were permitted to have their way.

" * The day appointed being come, the Court assembled in the meeting-houst at Boston. Divers of the elders were present, and a great assembly of people. Tlic Deputy-Governor [Winthrop], coming in with the rest of the magistrates, placed himself 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 pbce for an accused person, and that, * if he were upon the bench, it would be a great disadvantage to him, for he could not take that liberty 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 particulars laid to his charge ; as that, upon credible information of such a mutinous practice 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 was under debate, says Palfrey, for more than seven weeks, with only one week's intermission, and was at length adjusted by an agreement on all hands for a complete acquittal of Winthrop, and for the punishment 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) obtained 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 meeting-house of its First Church, before the assembled General Court of Massachusetts, on the 14th (24th) of May, 1645. In the Modern Universal History * it is given at length, and pronounced " equal to anything of antiquity, whether wc consider it as coming from a philosopher or a niagis- 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 magnanimous 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. ITie 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 exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse 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.

** ITie 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, 'lliis 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 tlie 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, and 1648, successively, he was elected Governor 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 (alse 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 ^S\.y householders, shall then forthwith appoint 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 prudentials of the town shall appoint ; provided those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can liave them taught' for in other towns.

" And it is further Ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families 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 dwe 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 example, 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.^

" 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; two Dal ton'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 England, too, Massachusetts seems to have derived her earliest suggestions and encouragements in regard to the dreadful delusion which was soon to pervade the colony. The records of the May session of 1648 contain this clause : -

" Tlie 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 1 8*1' of the 31* mo., and that the husband may be confined to a private room, and he also then watched."

It only remains for us to close this summary sketch of the foundationperiod of Massachusetts and of Boston by some notice of the death of him 1 Macaulay, in 1S47, i^^ "*y ^^^ hearing.

Huston Fuunded

who has often been called tlie Father of both. Governor \Vintlirop*s last entry in his Journal bears date the i itli of January, iG4£>, or as we now count it, Ifif 2lHt uf JftmiMry, 16,19. 11 ji^ wa^ the very last day of his sixtyiitsi year. A letter to his eldest son, Ijeariny dale, in inudeni sLyie> Bos- ton, Feb. 10, 1649, is the last written evidence of his being in life and health, \Vc licar next of his having; " a cold widch turned into a fever," and that he *' lay sick about a month.'' Five or six years before he had written of himself,^" Age now conie*^ upon me, ainl inrirniities tlierewilhaf, which makes me apprehend that the time of my cjcpartmc out of tllis world

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 ot 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-Governor 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 occupied 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 Boston 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 letter^ 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 statement 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 occasion above said, - the Court doth think meet 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." ^ since he landed with the Company at Salem, bringing the charter of Massachusetts with him. During that period he had been twelve times reelected as Governor, three times chosen Deputy-Governor, and in all the few other years had served at the head of the Board of Assistants. Meantime 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 contained 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." '

" 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 sentiments 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 generations - owe much of what is best within him, and in the circumstances about him, to the benevolent and courageous wisdom of Jom* 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.

referred to by Mr. Winthrop in the preceding chapter, is taken from a facsimile of the entire letter, 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 Paper Office, is given in the same place. It may be interesting in this connectioi. to recall the fact that Isaac Johnson, before leaving England, made a wilt, 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 a ringe of.** 3 Mass, Hist. Coil., viii. 244, 245. See Mr. Winthrop's account of a portrait of Hampden in the White House at Washington, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Froc., June, 188 1, p. 436. - Ed.]

Chapter Iii By George Edward Ellis

THE colony or local government established here by the original settlers and founders was not by themselves called " The Puritan Commonwealth ; " 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, contempt, or satire associated with it have led them to repudiate it

The title, however, is one assigned by a later age, and after the experiment 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 situated 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, tliey had what was to them a deliberately formed design, - clear in its main intent and distinguished in its chief purpose, however vaguely apprehended, as to all the requisitions and conditions which would present themselves 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 expressed in the maxim, Melius est petere f antes quant sectare rivulosy 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.

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 majority - 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 government 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 purposes. 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 embarked 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 Consorteshipp 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."

The Puritan Commonwealth

spirit of the enterprise, he was by no means the arbitrary, autocractic dictator, asserting and securing for it the direction of his individual will. He W.1S but one of a choice fellowship of intimate friends, animated by the same devout and generous aims. There is evidence enough in the conferences 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 Charity^ 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 affection. 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 cache other; make others* conditions our owne; rejoice together, mourne together, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission 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 suggestion 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 distinction 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 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 relation to the whole Bible, as its Statute-book, which the Jewish commonwealth bore to the Scriptures of the Old Testament.^ Their legislation and institutions were not founded upon nor guided by the spirit of the New Testament 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-

> [Perhaps the best explanation to be found in their own writings of the intent of our New England Puritan's system of church government, as distinguished from that of the Church of England, is in John Cotton's Keyes of the Kingdom of f/eavent 1644, and in his IVay of the Churches of Christ in Neio Englandy 1645. The prevailing views of the following generation find record in Mather's Afagpuiliti, and still later, with Baptist tendencies, in Backus's Hist, of New England^ and it was chiefly upon these two books that, at the suggestion of Neander, Uhden wrote his Geschichte der Congregational isten in Neu England bis 1740, of which there is an English translation, with characterization of the chief authorities in an appendix. Views of the aims and significance of the churches from the point taken by those holding with modern qualifications to their transmitted beliefs will be found in Leonard Wood's Theology of the Puritans, and in Leonard Bacon's Genesis of the Neio England Churches, The latter book aims rather to show how the neighboring colony of New Plymouth exerted an influence upon the gathering churches of the Bay. A distinction has of late been much insisted upon between the principles of these neighboring communities, which came in the end to be identical. The Pilgrims were separatists, professedly outside the pale of the English Church; the Puritans but gradually emancipated themselves from its fetters. This is the view taken in the following books : Dr. Waddington's Tracks of the Hidden Church, and more elaborately in his Congregational History, of which there is in the Congregational Quarterly, 1874^ ^ searching review by If. M. Dexter, who also covers the ground in his CongregatiotMlism as seen in its Literature; articles by I. N. Tarbox on " Plymouth and the Bay" in the Congregational Quarterly, xvii., and *' Pilgrims and Puritans " In the Old Colony Hist, Soc. Coll. 1878; Punchard's History of Congregaliofuilism, iii. 443 ; Benjamin Scott in a lecture, London, 1866, reprinted in Hist. Mag., May, 1867, from which is mostly derived an article, " Pilgrims and Puritans," in Scribner^s Monthly, June, 1876. Cf. also Hist. Mag., May and November, 1867, Octolicr, 1869; Baylies's Old Colony, \. ch. i. ; Barry's Massachusetls, i. ch. ii. ; Palfrey's New England, i. ch. iii. ; Essex Imtitute Hist. Coll. iv. 145, by A. C. Goodell; and Dr. Bacon on the ** Reaction of New England on English Puritanism in the Seventeenth Century," in the New Englandtr^ July, 1878. - Ed. I quire, they were content to understand that Scripture should furnish them guidance in their code. And when, after a long deferring of this needful work for their government, and many ingenious excuses for their procrastination, they were finally compelled by the impatient demands of the people to provide for them a '* body of liberties," the influence of the leading 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 /n 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 cRbrts, their sacrifices, their exposing themselves and all they possessed in this world, and committing their hopes for another to the stern deprivations, perils, and sufferings involved in their wilderness enterprise. And as to the Scriptural theocratical 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 workings 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 imagination, 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

^ (John Cotton had drawn up a code on the jrears has put us in easy possession of their early pattern of " Moses his Judicials " in 1636, which laws. Professor Joel Parker has made their rewas not adopted ; but it was printed in London ligious legislation the subject of a lecture, which in 164T, reprinted in 1655, again in Hutchinson's is printed in the Lowell Lectures on Massachu- ColUctiotUf p. 161, and in Mass, Hist. Coil, 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 164 1 (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 7Va<-/x, ii. Professor Washburn's teen MS. copies were distributed to the towns. Judicial History of Massachusetts will serve as None were printed. No copy of this was known a commentary. A statement of the early editill, 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 >^ ^^' 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 i66a See Mr. Winthrop's chapter. - Ed.| Wonder-working Providence of Zion*s Saviour, * [The most flagrant disregard of these conand Historical Maj^atine, February, 1 868. Barry, ditions has brought a great deal of censure uixm //»i^^il/axx. 1.276, instances, as significant of the Peter Oliver's Puritan Commotrwealth in Meureally mild sway of New England Puritanism for sac/tusetts, Boston, 1856. Palfrey says it might the times, that the ** Body of Liberties " contained well have been written by a chaplain of James but twelve offences punishable by death, while H. Hildreth, in his Hisloty 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. 1. - 19.

them, - to furnish us with sufficient illustrations of the ingenuity, the fertility, 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 visionary 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 profound 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 belicvings, 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, consistently 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 unjust in the contemptuous criticism and severity of censure and ridicule which have been visited upon the Puritans in these modern times.