Quincy City (part 1 of 12)

The Massachusetts Fields

Durin@ the afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 3%, 1621, a large sail-boat, or shallop, as it was called, came into Boston harbor from the southward. The exploration. They were complete strangers in those dians living there. Accordingly they did not deem it safe to pass the night on the main shore, but seeing a sheltered cove on the easterly side of Thompson's, or the Farm School Island, they came to anchor in it.

touched the soil of what is now the town of Quincy. As soon as those composing the little party felt the pebbles of the beach under their feet, they began to look about for something on which they could make Presently they found a number of

| lobsters, which the savages had caught and piled towith the natives with a view to trade. Neponset, which to them seemed to be " the bottom | of the bay," it was too late to do much in the way of | gether ready to be taken away, and these they quickly disposed of. They had no time to lose. So, as soon as might be.after breakfasting, they arranged to explore the country; for they had come not out of curiosity or a spirit of adventure, but to open relations Accordingly two men were posted as sentries on the landward side of the cliff to secure the shallop from surprise, and any one had ever lived there. Calling it the Island Trevore, after one of their number, the party returned on board their shallop and passed the night. In all there were thirteen of them. Ten were Europeans and three Indians, the latter having been brought along to act as guides and interpreters. Miles Standish, then a man of thirty-four, was in command, and among the others there is reason to believe were ernor of the Plymouth colony, as they were also its The party had left Plymouth, then a settlement only eight months old, shortly before Tuesday midnight, and, taking advantage of an ebb tide, expected to reach their destination at the Massachusetts, as Boston Bay was called, betimes Wednesday morning. They found they had been misinformed as to the distance.

as they then were with primeval forest, must have glowed in the mellow richness of autumnal tints. Opposite to where the shallop lay, and close at hand, company and Squanto, one of the Indian guides, went inland. They had gone no great distance when they met an Indian woman, who was on her way to get the lobsters they had found. They told her that they had eaten them, and gave her something in return, with which she seems to have been well content, for she then pointed out to them where her people were. This would seem to have been on the other side of the Neponset, at Savin Hill or Dorchester Heights; for when she returned thither Squanto went with her, while the rest of the party retraced their way to the Their explorations, so far as the territory of what is now Quincy was concerned, were therefore limited to a brief morning's walk, and covered only a portion of

The remaining adventures of the party it is not necessary here to recount. They do not belong to the history of Norfolk County. Itis sufficient to say that Standish and his companions visited the sachem Obbatinewat and induced him to swear allegiance to King James; then, guided by him, they went in search of the squaw sachem of the Massachusetts up the valley of the Mystic, and passed a delightful September day rambling among the Middlesex hills. Presently they returned in safety to Plymouth, full of admiration of the noble harbor and the fair country surrounding it which they had then for the first time seen, and " wishing they had been there seated."

Such was the first recorded visit of Huropeans to Quincy, and the name of the peninsula which the party visited still stands as a memorial of the event. That it was then called Squantum is not certain, though the explorers not improbably did at that time vive those names of Allerton and Brewster, which they have borne ever since, to points in the bay.

Chappel, and more recently Squantum. ble that this was its Indian name, just as Neponset was the name of the river which separated it from the opposite locality known as Mattapan. The word, too, was one familiar enough in the Indian tongue, being an abbreviation of Musquantum, meaning he is angry, he is bloody-minded, and representing one of the infinite moment, it was so made ready in the case of Squanto. It is scarcely too much to say that but for his timely intervention the Plymouth colony could is found in the pages of Bradford, who wrote of him, on behalf of the Pilgrims, "' He was their interpreter, and was a special instrument sent by God for their good beyond their expectation. He directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities, and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places for their profit, and never left them till he died.''?

At the time of Standish's visit the territory since called Quincy was occupied by a poor remnant of the Massachusetts tribe of Indians, some forty to sixty in number. The them. Some years before he had dwelt at Mount Wollaston, which had then been cleared and cultisachem Chickatabot ruled over vated, and the shell-heaps still to be found thereabouts indicate that it was a favorite Indian resort. North of Mount Wollaston, and between it and the Neponset, in that region since locally known as '"' The Farms," was, and still is, a broad, open plain called the flourishing days of the tribe to have been its gather- their time in games and feasting. Indeed, the name of the tribe is supposed to have been derived from the small savin-crowned hummock, lying between the Fields and Squantum, and bearing in its shape some more or less fanciful resemblance to an arrow's head.* It would thus appear that not only was the name of the commonwealth derived from a spot within the limits of Quincy, but it was within those limits also that the Massachusetts tribe found that common gathering-place which was to them what the Isthmian fields were to the Greeks. The eastern slope of the Blue Hills and the shores of Quincy Bay were the cradle, the home, and the grave of the race.

At one period, also, and that not long before the visit of the Plymouth explorers, the Massachusetts were a flourishing and warlike tribe. They occupied the whole of Eastern Massachusetts, north of what is now the Plymouth boundary, including the present counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Middlesex, and Essex. He had waged war with the Taratines of the Penobscot in 1615, and was killed by them at his home in Medford in 1619. In the days of this sachem, it is said, the Massachusetts could put three thousand fighting men into the field. Yet, prior to 1620, we get from the early records but few glimpses of them, and those broken and learned gentleman of Boston. His words are these: 'The sachem, or sagamore, who governed the Indians in this part of the country when the English came first hither had his seat on a small hill or upland, containing perhaps an acre and a an o nasal; anda hill in their language is " wetuset,'' pronounced according to us " wechuset."" Hence this great sachem's seat was called Moswetuset, which signifies a hill in the shape of an arrow's head, and his subjects the Moswetuset Indians, frour whence, with a small variation of the word, the province i . | received the name of Massachuset.' " which afforded an inexhaustible supply of those shell- | | American Antiquarian Society" for October, 1867, there is a paper on the name '"' Massachusetts." The Society referred the question to J. Hammond Trumbull, who, under date of Noy. 2, 1867, wrote as follows: ' I should say, then, that ' Mas-

(Massachuset), in which he who first used it blended, through ignorance of the language, the description of the place (m'sadchu-ut) at the 'great hill' (or ' hills') with the tribal name of the Indians who lived thereabouts, M'sadchuseuck, ' great hill distorted. In 1614, Captain John Smith had voyaged | along the New England coast in an open boat, trading | and exploring. He then saw something of the Massachusetts, and he described them as a " goodly, strong, and well-proportioned people," dwelling in a region - which impressed itself upon him as " the paradise of all these parts, for here are many isles, all planted with corn, groves, mulberries, salvage-gardens, and good harbors." He speaks of the Indians, too, as | "very kind, but in their fury no less valiant ; for upon a quarrel that we had with one of them, he | only with three others crossed the harbor of Cohasset

There can be little doubt, though it cannot be positively asserted, that in the course of this expedition Smith landed in Quincy and had dealings | with the savages, for on the rude map of the coast which he then drew, "from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor,' Quincy and Weymouth Bays seem to be clearly indicated. Neither could the appearance of a European trader in those waters, | have been at that time an unusual event, for the har- | bor was already well known and frequently visited. Indeed, Smith mentions the fact that a French vessel had preceded him only a short time before, effectually spoiling his market, so far as furs were concerned. It had left little in that way for him. But he then saw the tribe of the Massachusetts in the full pride of its savage strength.

A "tawny" race of "tall | and strong-limbed people," they were the possessors of 'large corn-fields," dwelling in plantations which covered the islands in the bay. Apparently they were as prosperous as any New England tribe, and, so far as Kuropeans were concerned, as peaceably disposed.

On the contrary, | the Indians were, after their nature, cunning, cruel, and vindictive, while the traders were coarse, reckless, avaricious.

In their way they were worse than the savages. They were wholly unscrupulous in their | methods of dealing, for not only did they rob and | cheat, but they sold the savages rum and weapons. - Outrageous cases of wholesale kidnapping also were | not infrequent. Smith accordingly had his skirmish the scene of a terribly tragic incident. It would | seem that a French vessel had looked into the har- - bor. As she lay at anchor under Pattuck's, appa- rently unsuspecting, the savages conceived the idea of capturing her. Their plot was simple enough, and its very simplicity probably made it the more dangerous. Throwing a quantity of furs into seyeral canoes, they paddled out to the anchored vessel. Their bearing was wholly friendly, and no weapon was to be seen; but beneath their robes, belted about their loins, they carried their knives. Coming quietly alongside, they flung their furs on the deck of the trader ; and then in the usual way proceeded to chaffer over the price. Meanwhile, with Indian cunning, they watched their opportunity. Suddenly the signal was given, and they thrust their " knives in the Frenchmen's bellies." The surprise was complete. Most of the vessel's crew seem to have been dispatched out of hand; but the master, less fortunate

_than the others in that he was only wounded, concealed himself in the hold, whither the savages did not dare to follow him. There for a time he hid.

the tide swept her on the beach, where she "lay upon her side and slept." Presently the unfortunate master, whether induced by persuasion or compelled by pain, hunger, and despair, came on deck. He, too, was killed. Then, after the sachem had divided among his followers everything which could be taken away, the stranded vessel was fired and destroyed. A number of years later, in 1631, an early settler in Dorchester, while laying the foundations of a house, turned up under a deep covering of soil several French coins. Not improbably they were a part of the plunder taken from the unfortunate trader nearly twenty years before. a

When the capture of this French vessel took place the tribe of the Massachusetts were already on the Yet never had they been so prosperous or so powerful. Indeed, there is a legend that they held in wretched captivity some two or three

One of these had saved a book, supposed to have been the Bible, in which he often read; and learning at last the language of his captors, he rebuked them and predicted God's wrath upon them. But they laughed at his threats, boastthey made savage sport.

It was their numbers which in all probability led The filthiness of the Indian and the Indian village does not need to be here described. It is sufficient to say that New England savages lived more like swine than like human beings, and their habitations, reeking with smoke and alive with vermin, were surrounded with every description of decay- ing matter. to epidemics than were Europeans. followed that increase of numbers meant an increase of those conditions which are sure to breed disease, and the breaking forth of pestilence became a mere question of time. In 1615 the tribe was in its most flourishing state ; in 1616 a terrible mortality developed itself which raged for two years, and then seems which to feed. It left behind only a crushed and broken-spirited remnant of the Massachusetts. Nowhere does the pestilence seem to have done its work driven from his plantation at Passonagessit, as Mount Wollaston was called, and apparently took refuge at Squantum. Of his followers few survived ; for the wigwams were " full of dead corpses," and " they died in heaps as they lay in their houses ; and the living that were away and let them die, and let their carcasses lie above the ground without burial. For in a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left alive to tell what became of the rest. The living being, as it seems, not able to bury the dead, they were left for crows, kites, and vermin to prey upon. And the bones and skulls upon the several places of their habitations made such a spectacle after my coming into those parts, that as I traveled in that forest near the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new found Golgotha."

Such were the marks of the great pestilence of 1616-17, as seen by Thomas Morton when he first visited Quincy in the summer of 1622, less than a year after Standish and his party had visited Squantum.'

Further out were found boundless halibut, cod, and mackerel; while in the spring the streams were so packed with alewives that it seemed to the first settlers that "one might go over their backs dry-shod." Of bass Thomas Morton wrote that he had seen a school of them sufficient to load an hundred ton ship stranded in Black's Creek at the going out of the tide. devoted sportsman first occupied it.

But this did not take place until June, 1625. Meanwhile the neighboring territory on the other side of the Monatoquit - that portion of the township of Weymouth since known as Old Spain been twice occupied. In July, 1623, came Weston's party of adventurers, who went away in a body in the succeeding March.

They had been succeeded in the following September by the Robert Gorges colony, a small remnant of whom still remained there after their leader went home to England in the spring of 1624. But this is a portion of the history of Weymouth, and relates to Quincy only from the fact that away deeply impressed by what he had seen of the country on the south side of Boston Bay. He had come to it while it shone with the freshness of June, and, roaming through its unoccupied forest wilderness during the months of July and August, he had gone away just as the full ripeness of the summer was mellowing into autumn. to him an earthly paradise, and he could not find language glowing enough to do justice to it: of the place, with all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the known world it could be paralleled; for so many goodly groves of trees, dainty, fine, round, rising hillocks, delieate, fair, large plains, sweet crystal fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in fine meanders through the meades, making so sweet a murmuring noise to hear as would even lull the senses with delight asleep; so pleasantly do they glide upon and, hand in hand, run down to Neptune's Court to pay the yearly tribute which they owe to him as sovereign Lord of all the springs. fowls in abundance, fish in multitudes, and [I discovered], besides, millions of turtle-doves on the green boughs, which sat pecking of the full, ripe, pleasant grapes that were supported by the lusty trees, whose fruitful load did cause the arms to bend; while, here and there dispersed, you might see [also] lilies of

Going back to England he was eager to return to America; for not only was he fascinated with the country as a sportsman and lover of nature, but he confidently believed that a most profitable trade with Meanwhile Weston's enterprise came to a miserable end the following his own. He might naturally have applied to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who through all these years was laboring to bring about emigration to New England. But Sir Ferdinando had just before failed completely in his effort to support his son Robert's colony, nor could he have felt very kindly towards any one who had been connected with Weston.

the former had obtained leave to send certain munitions of war to New England and had then sold them to the French. For this act Sir Ferdinando, as head of dered to arrest the offender. An associate of Weston's could hardly, therefore, have expected to receive aid from Gorges ; nor indeed does Morton now appear He had consequently to find other associates. This he sailing into Boston Bay in June, 1625, in company with a number of adventurers, chief among whom was a Capt. Wollaston. with a body of articled servants, intending to establish Of Wollaston, the nothing, not even his Christian name, is known. Among the Plymouth people he bore the reputation of being "a man of pretie parts" and of " some eminencie,"' and it is possible that he may be the same person who Capt. John Smith in 1615 metas Lieut. Wollaston, serving under one " Capt. Barra, an English pirate, in a small ship, with some twelve pieces of ordinance, about thirty men, and near all starved." latter, they found their way into Boston Bay. Wessagusset, and the old stockade and buildings erected there three years before by Weston's people, they found occupied by what remained of the Gorges colony, accordingly sat down at a point called by the Indians Passonagessit, and ever since known as Mount Wollaston. The exact site of the house they built - the first house erected in Quincy - cannot be identified ; but tradition places it on the southwestern slope of ancient timbers turned up in the soil told that some edifice, of which no record remains, once had stood. In any event, it was in this vicinity that the adventurers established themselves ; nor for their purposes was the place badly chosen. They had come to trade. They meant to hold active commercial intercourse with the Indians, and Passonagessit was not only a favorite gathering-point of the Massachusetts tribe, but it stood in plain view of the entrance to the harbor. No ship could come in without being seen from thence. It had but one drawback, - there was no deep water. But anchorage, and Wollaston and his associates evidently thought that a boat communication between their trading depot and the shipping would answer every purpose.

During what remained of the summer of 1625 the party were busy providing themselves with shelter and laying outa plantation. Passonagessit was almost an island. Qn its northern side was a salt water creek, flanked with marshes and soon lost in the tangled swamps of the neighboring upland; while to the south and west was a broad basin, which emptied and filled with every tide, and about this lay other marshes reaching nearly across to the creek at the north. These marshes were thick with liquid mud, and nearly impassable from a dense growth of cedar and underbrush. Across them ran a few gravel ridges, affording the only practicable connection between Passonagessit and the upland., The peninsula itself, it has already been seen, had some years before been cleared of forest growth. It had then become the burialplace of the sachem Chickatabot's mother, over whose smal] profit and no pleasure for him in New England. So, early in 1626, he prepared to go elsewhere. Taking with him a portion of the articled servants, and leaving one of his associates, Rasdell by name, in charge of the plantation, he set sail for Virginia. There, if he did not find a place of settlement more to his taste than Passonagessit, he did find a ready market for those he brought with him, and he is said to have sold them, or rather his right to their labor under his contracts, on terms quite satisfactory to himself. He then sent back orders to Rasdell that he should put another of the associates, one Fitcher, in charge, and himself come to Virginia, bringing with him more of the servants. been sold. sonagessit was to be broken up.

other partners, for it was he who by his glowing account of the country had got them into their troubles. But Morton liked New England, and he evidently did At the time it was said that he could not go back there: that, in fact, he had been implicated in a murder, and had fled the country. Later, warrants certainly were out And yet there is no evidence in support of the charges, for though he was afterwards sent back to England under arrest, he never seems to have been tried; and, if he had committed the heinous crimes of which he was accused, they would seem to have been forgotten before he was arraigned to answer for them. But of Morton's earlier life not much is known. He seems to have had an education of some sort; for, though he could not write English, he was fond of quoting Latin, and he had a little knowledge of the law. Indeed, he called himself "of Clifford's Inn, gent.;" but that he ever really studied law, or had any recognized standing at the

London bar, is most improbable. An ingrained Bohemian and sportsman, he had come to New England to enjoy himself, and at the same time to make money; and it was of very little consequence to him

He accordingly saw with much disfavor every ar- Meanwhile, supplies were running short, and a spirit of Of this Morton took advantage, and gradually instilled into the minds of the few servants who were left the suspicion (for which there was undoubtedly excellent ground) that it would be their turn next to go to Virginia and be of the plantation, they might all dwell there together | Maremount, which, while it bore evidence to Moras equals, and not only enjoy life, but derive large profits from planting and trading. Exclusive of Fitcher, there were but seven men now left. All of these Morton seems to have won over, and at last to shift as best he could. Wessagusset, and thence found his way to Plymouth. Neither he nor Wollaston are again mentioned, nor do they seem to have made any attempt to re-establish themselves at Passonagessit.

establishment there, and he proceeded to make good his promises as respects both profit and enjoyment. With the Indians he was evidently the most popular of white men, for not only did he buy their furs on the most liberal terms, but he admitted them to the free life and noisy revels of the trading-post. English of those days, apart from the Puritan classes, is little doubt that he had a play upon words in his mind. Maremount and Merrymount were convertible. ; at another place and among his companions it was the latter.

"Confirmed for a memorial to after ages in a solemn manner, with revels and merriment after the old English custom. [So they] prepared to set up a maypole upon the festival-day of Philip and Jacob, and therefore brewed a barrel of excellent beer, and provided a case of bottles, to be spent, with other good cheer, for all comers on that day. And upon May-day they brought the maypole to the place appointed with drums, guns, pistols, and other fitting instruments, for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of savages, that came thither A goodly pine-tree but which up to that time had been unknown, at any rate in New England. This recklessness culminated with the spring of 1627 in a proceeding which has passed into history.

May-day was then a great English merry-making. It came on what is now the 11th of the month, so that the season was considerably more advanced than about the anniversary much of the coarseness and goybtless among the earliest efforts of the New Engloose morality of the time. It was by no means the sweet, simple anniversary, devoted to innocent dancing about a pole wreathed with garlands of freshly-gathered wild-flowers, which the modern imagination has been wont to depict. On the contrary, it partook of the Roman worship of Flora; it was a sort of satur- Not without cause, therefore, did the Puritans nalia. Yet each recurring season the fishermen on the New England coast were wont to erect these poles at their stations, making merry about them as with noisy games and drunken revelry they greeted the return of spring.

been known only by its Indian name. solved to formally christen it, and selected May-day of 1637 for so doing. He says that he translated the name Passonagessit.

nailed on somewhat near unto the top of it, where it stood as a fair sea mark for directions how to find out the way to Maremount. They had [also] a poem in readiness, which was fixed to the maypole, to show the name confirmed on the plantation. There was likewise a merry song made, which was sung by a chorus, every man bearing his part, which they performed in adance, hand in hand about the maypole, while one of the company sang and filled out the good liquor, like Ganymede and Jupiter."

The poem, as he saw fit to call it, which Morton composed for this occasion, and the rollicking chorus to which his company danced round the maypole, are land muse. Yet they certainly are not its earliest effort. wife given to verse-making, but at least four years before Morton exercised his gifts at Mount Wollaston the Rev. Thomas Morell had wiled away a winter's tedium at Wessagusset in the composition of an elaborate Latin poem. It is not necessary, therefore, to here reproduce Morton's efforts, which can always be found in his book. They are only curious now; and, though at the time the Plymouth people

Had Morton and his companions been content with field-sports and the writing of verses, there is no reason to suppose that they might not have set up a new maypole at Mount Wollaston with every recurring spring, and sung and danced round it to their hearts' content. Doubtless he would have greatly seandalized his neighbors at Plymouth, and they might have gone even to the length of remonstrating But they were a quiet, forbearing people, with little that was aggressive about them, and it is not likely that they would have thought of a recourse to force. but amusements. He had a very distinct eye to Not only was he fully alive to the large profits then and since to be made out of the fur brought by Indians. Through Indians only could they be procured, and towards the Indians accordingly Morton adopted a policy which was natural enough for him, but which none the less imperiled the safety of all the settlers on the coast. In exchange for their furs he gave the savages fire-arms and ammunition. Up to that time guns had never been found in the hands of New England Indians. French on the coast of Maine and the Dutch in New York had begun to traffic in them, and in 1622 the practice had been forbidden by royal proclamation ; but in Massachusetts the bow, the knife, and the hatchet were the only weapons ever met with in the savages hands. Of fire-arms he stood in mortal dread ; and to this fact the Plymouth colony had owed its preservation. But now the red men had begun to grow familiar with the new weapons, and they were eager to possess them. When it came to trading, beads and colored cloth and hatchets no longer had their former attraction. They were very well, but two things the Indians coveted more, - weapons and spirits, - fire-arms and fire-water. For these they would give anything they possessed or could procure.

He does not deny that he used them as huntsmen, putting guns into their hands and teaching them their use. They proved apt pupils also. They knew just where to look for wild animals, and how best to approach them. sight. Knowing how to use the fire-arms, and seeing how deadly as weapons they were, the savages became crazy to own them.

the Indians all the guns he could spare, and, his avarice being now excited, he sent to England for a larger supply. He proposed to go into the business His establishurent also acquired a reputation - a bad one, it is true, but still a reputation - among the masters of the numerous vessels which then each year traded along the coast. They Merrymount thus " began to come forward," as Morton himself expressed it, and so elated was he by his success that he even extended his operations to the coast of Maine, where, in the summer following the erection of the maypole, he seems to have established a sort of branch trading-house on Richmond Island, close to Things, indeed, seemed to be moving prosperously with the remnant of Wollaston's company, and those of them who had put their trust in Morton doubtless began to feel that They looked forward to an undisturbed life, in which ever-increasing profit would be combined with pleasant license.

They reckoned without their host. To the whole coast from Plymouth up to Portsmouth, Merrymount became not only a nuisance, but a dangerous nuisance. Upon that coast there were not then many inhabited places; but there were a few. Plymouth was the most populous, and at Plymouth there may have been some two hundred souls in all, dwelling in two score houses encircled by a stockade half a mile in circumference. There was a smaller settlement at Weymouth, only a mile or so away from Merrymount, and scattered families lived at Thompson's Island, Shawmut, as the peninsula of Boston was ealled, and Charlestown and South Boston. There were a few more, traders chiefly, at Hull and upon Cape Ann, These people They were living And now Indians with guns in their hands were prowling through the woods. game only ; but it could not be long before they real- Behind the little settlements, ness, in regard to which the settlers knew nothing. The Massachusetts Indians were a weak, broken remnant ; but who knew what other tribes occupied the interior; nor could any one divine the conspiracies which might there be forming, ready to burst when least expected. The situation was alarming enough at best; the sense of the vast unknown doubtless made it more so, and Morton's proceedings were fast ren- The instinct of self-preservation whispered that something must be done, and that

The remedy for the evil was not equally clear. So far as Morton's immediate neighbors were concerned in case of atrial of strength, he, with his Indian allies, was probably a match for them all. tainers were likely also to increase in number, for, as would inevitably become the place of refuge for all the outcasts and runaways on the coast. The ships which yearly came there were manned at the best with a rude, lawless set of fellows; and such of these as the others would not tolerate were the very ones most likely to find their way to Mount Wollaston.

ities were asked to take the matter in hand. letter was accordingly drawn up and sent to Morton, after being jointly signed. but init Morton was enjoined to forbear his evil practices.

An answer was requested by the messenger who bore the missive. The result of the interview was far from satisfactory. Morton sent back word to the Plymouth magistrates that they were meddling in things which in no way concerned them, they having no jurisdiction over him or his plantation; further, he intimated that it was his intention to deal with the Indians as he saw fit.

Yet a second time Morton was sent to. And now they bade him be better advised. for the country could not bear the injury he was doing it. reminded also of the royal proclamation of 1622 forbidding the sale of fire-arms to savages.

into the interior in search of furs. Indeed there were but three in all left at the plantation. Standish found Morton at Wessagusset, whither he had gone, as he says, "to have the benefit of company," and there arrested him. It was not convenient to remove He, with a fine assumption of surprise and innocence, asked to know the reason of the violence to which he was subjected, and the names of those who had made charges against him; and when his captors declined to enlighten him on these points, he stood with much dignity on his rights as an Englishman, demanding that he should at once be set at liberty. Paying no attention to this, Standish made his arrangements to pass the night at Wessagusset. The prisoner was well guarded ; but a violent thunder-storm came up before morning, and in the midst of it he succeeded in making his es- ish and his party appeared. Walking directly up to the door of the house, they demanded to be let in. Their coolness and determination apparently had its effect, for of the three defenders of the place one at least was frightened, while another, in the endeavor to stimulate his courage, had got hopelessly and helplessly drunk. Morton thus had only himself to depend on. None the less he maintained a bold front, and to the demand that he should surrender returned a scofing reply. Standish then went to work to force in the door; whereupon Morton sallied out, followed by his single tipsy retainer. The struggle that followed was brief and ludicrous. Morton's gun, which he had aimed at Standish, was knocked up by one of days of June Capt. Miles Standish was sent up from Plymouth to Boston Bay, to summarily suppress the Mount Wollaston nuisance. He had with him eight men, and he evidently acted in full understanding with Morton's neighbers, who apparently, in attempting the arrest; wanted to take advantage of the fact that follower succeeded in running "his own nose upon the point of a sword that one held before him as he This was the only blood spilt, and Morton was now secured and safely carried to Plymouth. Thence he was presently sent to the Isles of Shoals, where he was put on an outward bound

It is not necessary to here discuss the justice or legality of this arrest of Morton. That has been fully done elsewhere.' It is sufficient to say that it seems to have been a mere act of self-preservation. Yet it is equally clear that the Plymouth magistrates had legally no jurisdiction over any part of Boston Bay. Their action could accordingly be justified only on the ground of necessity and might, for the limits of their territory, as expressed in such a

Both emanated from one source. Meanwhile, just before the arrest, the Council for New England, all the affairs of which were loosely managed, had issued another patent to those who afterwards became the Massachusetts Bay Company. This patent bore date an east and west line three miles to the southward of the southernmost part of Massachusetts Bay, as Boston Bay was then called. clearly within these limits, and thenceforth became subject to the jurisdiction of the patentees; unless there was some saving of rights under the earlier Wollaston grant. the case. On the 6th of September, almost three months after the arrest of Morton, Governor Endicott landed at Salem. He represented the new patent and the company of the Massachusetts Bay.

There is reason to suppose that the evil reputation of the Wollaston plantation was at this time well known in London. quarters a close watch was kept over events in New England. Accordingly, it would seem probable that Endicott came bringing definite instructions as to the course he was to pursue toward Morton and his following. Whether this was the case or not, he certainly took prompt action. As soon as he landed at Naumkeag - having passed the outward bound Morton in mid-ocean - he must have heard of the action taken by the Plymouth authorities, for the dwellers on Cape Ann had been parties to it. Typical Puritan as he was, - harsh in temper, decisive in action, and merciless in the infliction of punishment, - Endicott doubtless approved of all that had been done, though he probably regretted that a more condign treatment Nor did he delay to do what was still in his power to prevent any settlers there. for their profaneness and evil doings, but he caused the maypole to be felled to the ground. monishing them to look to it well that there should be better walking, he went back to Salem, leaving

According to Bradford, "some of the worst of the (Merrymount) company" dispersed during this summer, betaking themselves elsewhere, while "' some of

The place was not wholly de- Among the worst who went elsewhere was, probably, Walter Bagnall, who about this time took up his permanent abode on Richmond Island. He was commonly known as 'Great Walt," and seems to have been a rude frontier trader of the most worthless sort. He carried the Merrymount methods with him to his new home, where he prospered greatly, getting together what was for those days considerable possessions in money and goods; until at last, in October, 1631, the Indians set upon him and killed him.' The only other follower of Morton of whom there is any record was Edward Gibbons, apparently one of the more modest who kept the house. Ata later day Gibbons was a prominent member of the Massachusetts community, rising to the high rank of majorgeneral ; and in 1649 he succeeded Governor Endicott - in command of the military forces of the colony. But Gibbons' later career was not particularly associated with the town of Braintree. Shortly after the hewing down of the maypole he went over to Salem, where, listening to the preaching of the Rev. Francis Higginson, he underwent a change of heart and became a member of the church. But still the original Merrymount spirit from time to time showed itself

It was in the autumn of 1629 that Endicott hewed down the maypole. Six months later, in April or early May, there is reason to believe that another and

"When the ark was placed in his temple, Dagon fell, and the palms of his hands were broken off.' (1 Samuel, v. 2-4.) "It was on a feast-day to Dagon that Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple at Gaza." (Judges xvi. 25-26.)

has since figured largely in American works of fiction. The two for nearly a year lived together, it has been surmised on the savin-covered hummock not far east of the Old Colony railroad bridge across the Neponset, on its Quincy side. The magistrates then learned that two women in England claimed to be married to Gardiner. A warrant for his arrest was accordingly issued ; but he, being on his guard, escaped the ofhcers and lay hid in the woods for a month, until the He was sent back to Boston, and subsequently took his departure to Maine, and thence to England. He seems to have been the first Huropean resident in the northern limits of Quincy, for David Thompson, and his widow after him, lived on the island which bears

It is also a curious fact that both Gardiner and his companion were members of the Church of Rome, which thus early obtained a footing on Quincy soil, - a hold

When Gardiner fled into the forest in March, 1631, there is reason to believe that the whole region between Neponset and the Monatoquit was left without asingle Kuropean occupant. His own dwelling was deserted, and the house at Mount Wollaston had a month previously been burnt to the ground. During the summer of 1629 - nearly a year and a half before - Thomas Morton had found his way back from England. While there no charge had been brought | as he could. For a time he seems to have been tolerated; and he even attended a general meeting of the planters at Salem, in which he made all the trouble in his power, refusing to conform to the company's trade regulations. About Christmas Endicott sent over a party to arrest him. But he was on the watch and eluded them, so that they were only able to ransack How many followers he now had does not appear; proba- So he In the spring Gardiner came and established himself not anxiously looked for the arrival of a long talked-of outfit which was to take final possession of the region around Boston Bay in the interest of Gorges. It was well known that Endicott and his people at Salem extremity. A remnant of them barely struggled Unless aid came soon the settlement would cease to exist. But instead of a Gorges expedition, on the 17th of June Governor John Winthrop, who had arrived at Salem five days before, came shallop with anxious eyes as it worked its way in front of Mount Wollaston up the channel to the mouth of the Mystic. Its appearance in those waters boded him no good.

Yet he was not at once disturbed. A few days later the whole fleet made its appearance, and discharged its thousand passengers, the first installment there, - " as it were to nose them," Bradford said. - For Morton to remain long in Plymouth was out of | the question, nor probably did he have any desire to | He wanted to get back to Merrymount. | Thither he accordingly went in the autumn of 1629, | and there he remained all through the following win- |

1 A detailed account of Gardiner and his experiences in New England is to be found in vol. xx. of the " Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society." was in confusion, and the confinement and salt food diet of a long sea-voyage was succeeded by exposure on shore, and too great indulgence in the wild fruits and berries of a new country. Dysentery naturally set in, and soon took the form of pestilence: Not until the 23d of August was any meeting of the magistrates held. | Morton's arrest was then ordered. He seems to have made no attempt to elude the officers or resist them. He probably realized that it would be useless. So two weeks later, on what would now be the 17th of September, at the second session of the magistrates, he was arraigned.

He can scarcely be said to have had a trial, the proceedings were so very summary. He seems to have made some attempt at a defense, in the midst of which he was bidden to hold his peace and listen to his sentence, which was pronounced by Winthrop. It was sufficiently severe. He was ordered to be set in the stocks, to be sent prisoner to England, to be deprived of all his possessions, and to have his house burnt to the ground, to the end that "the habitation of the wicked should no more appear in Israel." sentence also was literally carried out. There was some delay about sending him back to England, the master of one vessel refusing to carry him. At length, in January, 1651, a passage was secured for him on board the " Handmaid," and not until then, and while

Mount Wollaston

It did overleap it in 1635. The region south of the river was then known to have a fertile soil, but through Morton's doings it had gained an evil name. The course of emigration set along the Charles into the interior, and up the Mystic to the north. The leading men of the Massachusetts Bay Company belonged to the class of English gentry, and they brought with them to America that land-hunger which they inherited direct from both Saxon and Norman ancestry. 'They were eager to secure vast estates for themselves and their descendants. Accordingly, grants were made to them of five hundred acres here, and one thousand acres, or two thousand acres, somewhere else. In this way the neighboring country was rapidly parceled out, and the peninsula of Boston being

"constrained to take farms in the country." Then at last people began to look across the Nepon- Accordingly, at the May session of the General nor, indeed, to Hingham and Weymouth, and what little intercourse there was between these places was kept up by boat across the bay. The Indian trail followed the shore, but it could not be called a path.

bounds, and to report the same, with an accompanying plan or map, to the next General Court. This committee did the work assigned to it, though of neither its report or plan is there any record. Yet both papers seem to have been presented to the court and adopted, for in the records of the session held in forest, the mere ghost of a dying.race; but between the Neponset and the Monatoquit there were absolutely no white inhabitants. In 1634 a man named Alderman lived at Hingham, or Bear Cove, as it was then called. undertook to return home by the trail. In doing so he lost his way, and for three days and two nights he wandered through woods and swamps without fall- Then, starved and weary, with torn clothing and bruised body, he struggled out of the wilderness to find him- Scituate.

held on the 8th of December following, a formal grant of land of Mount Wollaston was made to the Rev. He, therefore, was the first Quincy landowner under the Massachusetts charter.

When Mr. Wilson went to take possession of his erant, which lay apparently in the north part of the present township of Quincy, he was confronted by an Indian title. 'This he had to extinguish. It was the They all held same with the other original grantees. Court. But thirteen months seem to have elapsed after the grant to Wilson before further grants were made. Then at last, at a meeting held on the 4th of January, 1636, the point which still bears his name was allotted to Atherton Hough; and at the same meeting, instead of making other individual allotments, a comnittee of five, clothed with full powers,

Wollaston, beyond Mr. Wilson's, in the country adjoining Dorchester. Mr. William Hutchinson, thus made a neighbor of the Rev. John Wilson, was the husband of Mistress Anne Hutchinson, between whom and the wright, shall have an allotment of two hundred and fifty acres laid out for him at Mount Wollaston." In a history like the present it is neither interesting nor profitable to give to each of these allotments its precise place on the map of to-day. It is sufficient to

Coddington, Wheelwright, and Hough had all been provided for at the 'the Mount," and that they were in 1637 neighbors in what is now Quincy. John Wheelwright was the first clergyman settled within the present limits of the town; and, while officiating most momentous discourse ever delivered from the With the Rev. Mr. Wheelwright and his little congregation the consecutive civil history of Quincy may be said to open.

June, 1636. During the following month he was admitted to membership in the church. It has already been mentioned that the Rev. Jobn Wilson was the pastor of that church, the only one in Boston ; with him the Rev. John Cotton was associated as teacher. Boston was then a small, newly built, seaport settlement, numbering a few hundred inhabitants.

about a barrack-like structure which served as a meeting-house. In that early and pious community it does not need to be said, though it has ever to be borne in mind, everything centred about the church. Its membership carried with it political rights. The The meeting, the sermon, and the lecture were the events of the

At the time Wheelright landed in Boston, Sir Henry Vane was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, having just been chosen to succeed Haynes. Winthrop, the first Governor, had for the time being It was said that he had been too lax in his administration of the criminal law, and dislost his popularity.

posed to overlook transgression more than a Puritan magistrate should. The leading men had, some of them, grown jealous of him, while the body of the there a companion of Cromwell, and on the football ground it is said that he and the future Lord Protector often encountered each other. After graduation Wheelwright became vicar of Bilsby, a little village not far from the place where he was born. He was not only a rigid Puritan, but essentially a contentious man. been engaged in controversy ; often with his brother early in 1636 he determined to emigrate to America. He had then passed his forty-fourth year, and, his first wife dying, had married Mary Hutchinson, of Alford, a sister of William Hutchinson, who, with his wife Anne, had gone to New England two years before. Wheelwright landed in Boston on the 26th of

Within the church Mrs. Hutchinson was making her presmore uncertain than they were generous. ence felt. At that time a woman of less than forty years of age, she had followed Cotton, her favorite preacher, to New England, and at Boston found herself in just the position she would naturally have craved as that best suited for the full display of her peculiar powers. She was an intellectual woman, with a great social faculty, and an inordinate love of notoriety and prominence. A born intriguer, she delighted in talking and making her influence felt. Accordingly, she had not been long in New England when she began to hold a series of exclusively female gatherings, and then of gatherings at which men as well as women were present. The original idea of these meetings was that an opportunity would thus be afforded for the recapitulation of the sermons of the preceding Sabbath for the benefit of such as had been unable to be present at their delivery. Gradually these meetings assumed the form of an active re- and openly resisted the proposal. Governor Vane supported it. The weight of opinion was decidedly in favor of Wheelwright, and much feeling was manifested at Winthrop's course ; but, according to the rule of the Boston Church, it was sufficient that grave opposition was expressed. The proposal was dropped.

The large majority of the Boston Church was in sympathy with him. Among these were a number who had recently received land allotments at Mount Wollaston, which they were then engaged in developing.

were practically cut off from all religious privileges. Poor men, with families, they were ten or twelve miles from the meeting-house. Accordingly, the gathering of a new church at Mount Wollaston had already been under discussion. It was opposed on the living at the Mount, or having holdings there, should pay a small yearly church and town rate to Boston, which was fixed at sixpence an acre on land lying within a mile of the water, and threepence for land further back. mutation tax.

It was a species of non-resident com- This arrangement imposed in turn on the Boston church a well-understood obligation to in some way provide for the religious needs of the out- In those early days of sparse settlement the situation was not an unlying region thus tributary to it.

usual one, and it was the custom in such eases to establish branch churches, or " chapels of ease," as they were called. Some elder, or a gifted brother was wont to hold forth, or to prophesy, as it was phrased, at these each ordinary Sabbath, while at stated periods the sacrament was administered in the meeting-house of the mother church.

As soon as Winthrop's dissent had put a final stop to the project of choosing Wheelwright associate teacher in Boston, the friends of the former south of the Neponset took action. At the same meeting of the church its records show that " our brother, Mr. John Wheelwright, was granted unto for the preparing for a church gathering at Mount Wollystone, upon a petition of some that were resident there." This vote was passed on the 19th of November, 1636.

If he entered upon his duties immediately, - and there can be little question that he did, - John Wheelwright ministered to those settled at Mount Wollaston months. But there is neither local record nor tradition of him or of his flock could boast of a meeting-house. It is not at all impossible that services may have been held during the first winter at the dwellings of different members of the little congregation; while the following summer the pastor preached " abroad under a tree," just as Wilson and Phillips had preached at Charlestown during the first months of the settlement. If a church edifice was then erected, it must have been a very simple and temporary structure, built of logs the crevices between which were sealed with mud, while the roof was covered with thatch. It is not likely that it was more than twenty or twenty-five feet square, and there can be little doubt that it stood at the most convenient point on the old Indian trail, then rapidly widening into a road between Plymouth loose rein. No longer cuntent with attacking her own pastor, she now boldly assailed the body of the clergy, all of whom had evinced their sympathy with him. To venture on such an attack required no small amount of courage, for the clergy were little less than a sacred caste in the early settlement of Massachusetts. 'Tio shake their hold over affairs in church and state was almost impossible. But it is not likely that Mrs. Hutchinson realized this, or ever calmly counted the cost of what she was doing. She went on heedlessly. those immediately around her in Boston. She could count on the support of Governor Vane, and his popularity throughout the colony was so great as to be still a thing not easy to account for. Many others of the magistrates and deputies were with her. <Accordingly, she went on step by step, making herself boldly declared that not only Wilsou, but the whole body of the clergy, excepting only Cotton and Wheelwright, were under a covenant of works. Those two, and those two alone, walked in a covenant of grace. Mere theological jargon now, in 1663 these words had a deep significance. In so using them, Mrs. Hutchinson did little less than openly express her belief that the whole body of the clergy, two only of matter wasin him. Not so he who labored under a covenant of works. He might be a very worthy, well-meaning, pious man, doing his best according to his lights; but his lights were of the earth, earthy. God's voice was not in him. It was the blind leading the blind.

| in number, gradually, under the influence of their felt. As the twig was bent, the tree inclined. Wheelministers, awoke to a consciousness of what was going on, and they rallied to the support of the clergy. Winthrop was deputy-governor, and recognized as Wilson's main support in the Boston Church; accordingly, his popularity underwent a revival and he was brought to the front once more as the exponent gave utterance to her judgments, incredible as it now seems, nearly the whole of the inhabitants of Boston lent believing ears to her. On one side were her ad- popular idol of the new movement. Thus matters stood all through the winter of 1636-37. The agitation was continually on the increase, and it seemed as if men were fairly bereft of their senses, as indeed they were. They argued fiercely about the unknowable in language the terms of which they did not indulging in wild dreams of ambition on her own account, had persuaded herself and others that she was inspired, and the first movement of her inspiration was to drive Mr. Wilson, whom she did not like, out of his pulpit.

During this time of rising tumult Wheelwright was ministering at the Mount, whither he had removed with his wife and family. In December, at the time of the meeting of the General Court, he attended an angry conference of the clergy, which resulted only in a widening of the breach. For a admonished by the teacher. It clearly was not in Wheelwright's nature to remain silent in the background during such a controversy; and even if he made an effort at self-restraint, Mrs. Hutchinsoa had conferred a dangerous prominence upon him when she classed him, with Cotton, as being alone of all the clergy under a covenant of grace. She had thus made him the centre upon which the anger of his His position was unlike that of Cotton. Cotton was recognized by his brethren as the first and most He was regarded with reverential respect. Him above all they wished to save. But they greatly needed a scapegoat, and a scapegoat they found ready to their hands in the pastor at the Mount. Nor was he a man to avoid the attack.

and the colony of Massachusetts Bay in particular. Not only were the churches at home torn with dissension but Indian troubles were impending, and

There was nothing in the fast-day sermon which in itself, and delivered at any other time and place, would have excited general notice. Except in parts it isa very dull performance, and, unless delivered for the Puritan to use and to hear, it belongs to an artificial form of composition which may have its day, but is afterwards sure to be forgotten. In a few years it becomes not less antiquated than last century minds of those who listened to it is indisputable ; but that is expected in all occasional discourses. As a sharp, vehement arraignment of those who walked in a covenant of works, it will not be pretended that Wheelwright ought then to have preached this sermon in Wilson's pulpit. To do so was, to say the least, in very bad taste. But beyond this the sermon is not open to just criticism. either intended or calculated to excite sedition, nor is there any reason to suppose that it at the time Wilson throp had been made to listen to what the mass of the congregation regarded as some thoroughly sound religious doctrine. But the latter was not sufficiently stirred up by the fact to make any mention of it in his diary, and there is no reason to suppose that either his safety or that of the settlement were put in jeopardy.

When hostilities are decided upon a pretext for open war is always at hand. A silent decree of the clergy had evidently now gone forth that Wheelwright was to be disciplined. His position invited attack, and his utterances in private, doubtless, as well as in public, afforded sufficient pretext for it. He had been set up against Wilson in Wilson's own church and by Wilson's people. Accordingly, when the March General Court met, action was taken on a certain sermon which Wilson had delivered before it in December, and for which it will be remembered he had subsequently been formally admonished in his own church by Teacher Cotton. The court now expressed its emphatic approval of this sermon. It then turned from Wilson to Wheelwright, and the matter of the In answer to a summons Wheelwright presently appeared. The notes taken at the time the discourse was delivered were produced, and he was asked if he admitted their correctness. In reply he gave the court his own manuscript.

A bitter wrangle followed which lasted through the sessions of several days. The conservatives at first thought to dispose of the matter behind closed doors. The proposal so to do excited strong opposition, and Wheelwright, while justifying all that he had said, It was then decided to go on publicly, and Wheelwright was again summoned. The room was thronged, for the court itself, magistrates and deputies, numbered some forty persons, and, besides others, nearly all the twelve or fourteen ministers of the province were present. The Again the sermon was produced Again he justified it; and, in answer to questions put him, he declared

1 Tt has been taken for granted that this sermon was preached at the Mount (Palfrey's ''New, England," i. 479, n.; Pattee's " Quincy," 186).

whether '' they in their ministry did walk in such a way." 'There was little room for doubt what the answer would be, for it was an ingenious way of securing at once both evidence of guilt and a verdict upon which lasted two entire days. Vane and Winthrop led the opposing forces, and for a time it seemed as though the party of the clergy would be thwarted. But at last they won over to their side two of the magistrates, and by a narrow majority the fast-day sermon was pronounced seditious. Yet no sentence was now passed upon Wheelwright. The contest had been long and severe, and the parties were so equally divided that it was not thought expedient to then proceed further. Wheelwright was accordingly simply ordered to appear before the next General Court, and he was not meanwhile silenced as a minister. His case was commended to the Boston church to be spiritually dealt with.

This was certainly a forbearing disposition to make of it. Not only was the church of Boston notoriously in sympathy with Wheelwright, but it had already so expressed itself. It*had done this, too, in a way not to be mistaken, and which was not forgotten ; for hardly had the court by formal vote pronounced the fast-day sermon seditious, than a petition, bearing the names of nearly all the most prominent members of the Boston church, had been presented to that same court. In this paper the case of Wheelwright was put an end to strife. When in the order of business Wheelwright's case came up, he appeared before the court. Among its forty-three members he saw only three faces friendly to him, but he was again allowed to depart until the autumn session. He was merely admonished to bethink himself in the interval of retracting his utterances and reforming his errors if he hoped to receive favor. istic.

His answer was character- If he had indeed, he said, been guilty of sedition, he deserved death; but if the court should proceed against him, he would take his appeal to the king. As for retraction, he had nothing to retract.

Quincy. It passed analien law. The tide of immigration was then setting strongly towards New England. All the towns were looking for additions to worded and to the point. At the moment it would not seem to have excited particular remark, and, received as a matter of course, it was placed on the files of the court. But priesthoods have long memories. That a long list of influential names was appended to this memorial was now noted down, and a few months later it was made the basis of a proscription.

confidently expecting the arrival of a portion of the church of a Mr. Brierly in England, who possibly may have been Wheelwright's successor at Bilsby. One party was already on its way, and reached Boston in July. With a view to this coming reinforcement of the minority, the General Court in May passed a law imposing heavy penalties in case strangers were harbored or allowed to remain in the province three weeks without a magistrate's _permission. All the magistrates belonged to one party, and were wholly devoted to it. Accordingly, when the body of immigrants from the Brierly church landed who met them on the shore, they were confronted with this law. In Boston their friends were in a large majority; yet their friends could not shelter excited. A collision was inevitable. the other had to establish its supremacy. The party of the clergy was unmistakably in the majority in all the towns except Boston, and this became apparent at the annual charter election. Held on the 27th [N. 8.] of May, under a large oak-tree on the edge of what is now Cambridge common, the election of 1637 was a memorable one. Winthrop, amidst an excitement which seemed at times about to result in violence, was then chosen Governor over Vane. left out of the magistracy. So, also, was Hough. The overthrow of the friends of Wheelwright was complete.

a habitation, or a vacant bit of land on which to erect one, without incurring a heavy and accumulative penalty. A delay of four months only in the enforcement of the law could be obtained. At the expiration of that time the new-comers had to be without the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. They submitted, for they had nothing to do except to submit. None the less the law remains one of the curiosities of There can be little room for doubt that the people thus driven away would, had

| Under these circumstances, those at the Mount being forced to deny even a resting-place to their own kin, power sparingly, and an earnest attempt was made to | ceeded at once to detect and spread upon its record, as then existing in primitive Massachusetts, no less than eighty-two 'opinions, some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe," besides nine " unwholesome expressions." With two exceptions, - Cotton and Wheelwright, - the ministers in the synod were of The proceedings consequently

A long discussion of controverted points ensued. No one in the assembly had any distinct idea of the subjects under debate. For the most part they were mere theological abstractions of the most metaphysical the like, and either immaterial or unknowable. At last Cotton, with a degree of worldly wisdom which did much credit to. his head, announced that he saw light. Wheelwright was of a less accommodating spirit; thoroughly stiff-necked and disputatious, he would not profess to yield. Accordingly, when the synod dispersed his enemies had gained their end. They had won over Cotton, whom they wished to save; while Wheelwright, whose utter destruction they sought, was left to confront them without a single friend or ally.

Events now moved rapidly to their foregone conclusion. Immediately after the adjournment of the synod the General Court chosen in May was dissolved.

to be put in force. So the old court was dissolved, and the election of a new one ordered. The result was all the conservatives could have hoped for. Of the thirty-three members of the court now chosen, no less than twenty-one were new; and all, old and new, save three alone, were strongly opposed to the Hutchinson party. Hough was among those left out ; Coddington was again returned by Boston.

The court met on the 12th [N. 8.] of November. It found Wheelwright still preaching the covenant of grace at Mount Wollaston. 'I'hough the clouds were gathering black over his path, he held straight on, rejecting all suggestions of compromise, as he sternly declared that the difference between him and his op- upon consultation, that two so opposite parties could not continue in the same body without apparent hazard of ruin to the whole, agreed to send away some of the principal."

And now the memorial from the Boston church, presented the day after the judgment of the General Court had declared the fast-day sermon seditious, was made to do yeoman's service. It also was pronounced seditious. No less than sixty of the leading men of Boston had affixed their signatures to it. In doing so they now found that they had committed a political offense, and might be visited with fine, imprisonment, and exile. The new court had contained originally three members, deputies from Boston, friendly to the Antinomians. 'Two of these were incontinently expelled: one because his name was signed to the church memorial, the other because from his place in the court he justified it, though his name was not on it. The tribunal before which he was to be tried being thus purged of all his friends, Coddington alone excepted, Wheelwright's case was called. He appeared, and was asked if he was prepared to confess his errors and submit himself to the court. Protesting his innocence, he refused. Then followed a long and angry parliamentary struggle extending into a Every ill which had befallen the settle- To such an second day. ment was laid at Wheelwright's door. indictment no defense was possible ; and so the court It was disfranchisement and exile. half of November, and the winter had set in with unusual severity, it was proposed that the time of the exile's departure should be postponed until March ; He was again,

Unlike the other exiles of the Antinomian controversy, Wheelwright did not turn his steps to Rhode Island. well sermon to his little congregation, he started northward to New Hampshire. It was the end of November, and the deepening snow was thick on the ground. He went alone, carrying with him a sense of burning wrong and endless persecution ; nor did he Early in the following spring his wife and children followed him, and for atime the family found refuge in the academic town of Exeter. The subsequent fortunes of Wheelwright are no part of the history of Quincy. It is sufficient to say that he survived his exile more than forty years, and when at last he died he, was the oldest minister in New England. But though he outlived every one of his contemporaries, and when he passed away the Antinomian controversy had beever again set foot in his old parish.

memorial only as late as May, 1640. Since then his parish - both while it was the North Precinct of Braintree and afterwards as the town of Quincy - showed always a noticeable leaning towards a liberal theology. It was never orthodox. In this respect it was in sharp contrast with its sister church of the Middle Precinct, and the ministers of the two, never changing sides, more than once engaged in sharp doctrinal controversy. And so each successive pastor influenced the people, and the tendency of the people

Wheelwright was also its most distinguished clergyman. <A Puritan, and a contentious one, he was essentially a man of force. Stiff-necked, unamiable, and far from lovable, his proper place was not the pulpit. He should have been a man of affairs, a law- . yer and a magistrate. There was about him scarcely a trace of the gentle spirit of Christ. Yet indications have not been wanting that in more than one way the brief connection of John Wheelwright with the young settlement at Mount Wollaston affected its subsequent character as a community through a period of more than two centuries. negatively has already been pointed out. In consequence of the Antinomian controversy the formation of the town was delayed, and the material composing it made different from what it otherwise would have been. More than this, there can be no doubt that Wheelwright's parishioners sympathized fully in his views. The first teacher of his church, when two years later it was formally gathered, was one of his supporters whose name was blotted from the famous order of things passed wholly away. It is, therefore, no improbable surmise that, a little leaven in this case also leavening the whole lump, the seed sown by Wheelwright in 1637 bore its fruit in the great New England protest of two centuries later, when, under the lead of Channing, the descendants in the seventh generation of those who had listened to the first pastor at the Mount broke away finally and forever from the religious tenets of the Puritans.

But though the most prominent and distinctive, Wheelwright was not the only resident or land-owner at Mount Wollaston the course of whose future life was changed by reason of the Antinomian controversy. It will be remembered that, besides Coddington and Hough, the husband of Mrs. Hutchinson also had an allotment just south of the Neponset. The subsequent and most tragic record of the Hutchinson family is one of the familiar pages in New England history. It does not need to be rewritten here. It is sufficient to say that when at last, in the early days of April (March 28th, O. S.), 1638, Governor Winthrop ordered Anne Hutchinson to leave the Massachusetts jurisdiction, she went in a boat across the harbor to the Neponset, and there landed near her husband's farm in what is now North Quincy. She had until the close of the month to leave the province. This was the first stage of her journey. Her plan was to join John Wheelwright's family, who had not yet left their home, and go with them by water to Portsmouth. But her own husband had in the mean time found an abiding-place more to his liking in Rhode Island, where Newport now is; so, changing their plans, the wife and children journeyed by land to Providence, aud thence passed across to the island of Aquidneck.

in the ownership of Mount Wollaston. And, singularly enough, the record of every annual townmeeting in Quincy at the present time bears recur- Since the year 1640, a portion of Coddington's grant has

Each year by a formal vote - the reason of which has passed into a meaningless tradition - the town of Quincy, as a tenant of the land thus held, appropriates to school purposes a sum of money'as a nominal rent therefor.

shown, he voluntarily shook the dust of Massachusetts from his feet. Alone of the exiles he had stood high in the councils of the Massachusetts colony, for through years he had been its treasurer, and it was he who built the first brick house in Boston. He now went to Rhode Island, where, forty years later, he died full of honors. ton Hough, and the heirs of Edmund Quincy, alone among those to whom large allotments had originally been made at the Mount, remained in possession of them even as late as the incorporation of Braintree. The Antinomian controversy had unsettled everything. Of these three, Wilson was left victor in the theological arena; but, pastor of the church in Boston all the remainder of his life, he gave small attention to his farm in Braintree, nor was his name in Quincy died in 1637 without having taken part in the Antiany way further associated with the town.

Old Braintree

Tuus in November, 1637, the little settlement at the Mount, as it was still called, was once more thor- The place seemed to be under a sort of blight. First the magistrates had rooted out Morton and the Merrymount company, obliterating in so far as they could every trace of the earliest settlement; and now they had also sent into exile a pastor and his parishioners, who had not a thing in any one of note or substance, except Wheelwright, had yet actually made his home in this region. Quiney and Hough, like Coddington and Wilson, lived in Boston ; and in Boston the Mount was looked upon as a remote, outlying dependency, to be reached

From one of those descendants, a great-grandson of the first Edmund, and in his day the successor of Morton and Coddington as the owner of Mount Wollaston, Quincy at a later period derived its name. Atherton Hough, like Coddington, was a warm supporter of Wheelwright; but, unlike him, he accepted defeat quietly, and made his peace with the dominant faction. He remained in quiet possession of his seashore allotment on Braintree Bay, and died in 1650, leaving sons and daughters. The name has since become extinct.

leading Boston personages. Benjamin Keayne, for instance, son-in-law to Governor Dudley, had meted out to him on his marriage, in February, 1638, "a great lot of meadow and upland," two hundred acres in extent, is now Braintree. Andrew Stoddard, a linen-draper, and at one time constable in Boston,'

1 There is in Winthrop an incident connected with this Stoddard, and his performance of his duties as constable, singularly characteristic of early Massachusetts. The constables, being chosen by the General Court, were among the chief people in their several towns. In 1641, Francis Hutchinson, son of Mistress Anne, and a son-in-law of hers, one Collins, came to Boston and "'reviled the church." 'They were both committed to prison; and it fell out that one Stoddard, being then one of the with youina church way.' For this insolent behaviour he was committed; but being dealt with by the elders and others, he came to see his error, which was that he did conceive that the magistrate ought not to deal with a member of the church be- So the next Lord'sday, in the open assembly, he did freely and very affectionately it much less, or rather remitted, seeing his clear repentance and satisfaction in public left no poison or danger in his example, nor had the commonwealth or any person sustained danger by it." Savage's " Winthrop," ii.* 39-40.

people," as they were called, who were coming over to New England in crowds. The custom was to allot these four acres a head for each person they brought with them; and in the case of Boston the smaller allotments were made largely at the Mount. Twentysix such are recorded in 1638, and fifteen more in 1639.

On the contrary, the names of only a small portion of them are at a somewhat later period to be found in the town and parish records. many received their allotments in one place, and, in those days of abundant land, preferred to settle elsewhere.

Nevertheless, a certain portion of these poorer people did go out and build dwellings south of the Neponset, and at last a decisive movement was made towards the establishment of an independent church there.

sufficed for the spiritual needs of a growing population. pied gap of heathendom long enough; for the Dorchester society, to the north, went back to June, 1630, while the societies of Weymouth and Hingham, on the south, dated respectively from July and September, 1635. Without, therefore, waiting for a formal adjustment of all questions with Boston, on the 16th of September, 1639, those dwelling at the Mount, in the words of Governor Winthrop, " gathered a of the pastor and teacher. It was drawn up in the simple but not unimpressive form then in common use, and by virtue of it those entering into the compact - poor unworthy creatures, who have sometime lived without Christ and without God in the world" - promised thereafter " to worship the Lord in spirit and truth, and to walk in brotherly love and the duties thereof according to the will of the gospel." In witness of which, they made public profession of faith in presence of those assembled, and gave to one another the right hand of fellowship. It was the fifteenth church which had been gathered in the province during the ten years of settlement.

The incorporation of the town followed hard upon the gathering of the church, for, at the following session of the General Court, that of May, 1640, the "netition of the inbabitants of Mount Wollaston was acceded to, and it was granted them to be a town, to be called Braintree." No satisfactory reason for the choice of this name has ever been given, nor is there any bond of connection apparent between the Suffolk Braintree, of New England, and the Essex Braintree, of Old England. The subject has more than once The more probable explanation is also the most natural. In 1632 a company of Essex people had come out with the Rev. Thomas Hooker, afterwards the renowned pastor of the church at Hartford. Winthrop refers to them as "the Braintree company.' They first went across the Neponset, where they began a they moved over to Cambridge. When, therefore, eight years later, the place was incorporated as a town, a name was given to it, probably at Winthrop's suggestion, connected with that " Braintree company which had begun to sit down at Mount Wollaston." But there is no reason to suppose that any of

The vote incorporating the town contained detailed reference to an agreement which had been effected between certain representatives of those dwelling at the Mount and the authorities of Boston. The vested interests of the latter place in the former had again been asserted, and the question thus raised proved one not easy to settle. There had evidently been much bickering. Appealing to the " enlargement" vote of 1634, it was contended on the one side that Boston and Boston church were being shorn of their proportions; while on the other side a growing population asserted their natural rights. The result was a compromise, the terms of which are by no means free from ambiguity. new township seem to have been released from a lia-

7th day of the following October, William Cheeseborough and Stephen Kinsley appeared, and took their seats as the first representatives of Braintree.

ment to Boston of a trifle over a shilling an acre on the land " formerly granted to divers men of Boston upon expectation they should have continued still with us," and three shillings an acre for every acre that had been, or thereafter should be, granted to any others not inhabitants of Boston. In other words, the actual settlers in Braintree were to pay into the Boston treasury a sum of money on their holdings in commutation. At the same time further large allotments at the Mount were made, including five hundred acres " for the use of the canoneere of Boston inhabitants of the newly created town failed to fulfil the covenant they had entered into, it should be in the power of Boston to recover what was its due by action against the Braintree people, collectively or individually. That the burden thus imposed on Braintree was an unusual and most oppressive one does not | at once that political privileges carried with them corresponding obligations, for by the same court they were assessed twenty-five pounds in a total levy of ounce, " good old Indian corn, being clean and merchantable," at five shillings the bushel, summer wheat at seven shillings, and rye at six shillings. In which of these several staples the whole or any portion of this earliest tax levy was paid nowhere appears. But that it was paid admits of no doubt; and at the next session of the General Court, held in Boston on the

The North Precinct Church

THE original Braintree settlement was along the shore of the bay, and on the upland and in the valleys adjacent thereto. Only by slow degrees did population work its way back among the hills and interior valleys. In 1708 the church of Braintree was divided, and the original settlement became the North Precinct. In 1792 this North Precinct was set off | from the rest of the town, and became Quincy. The |

The original Braintree church, then, until 1708 was the one church of the town ; from 1708 to 1792 'it was the North Precinct church; from 1792 to 1820 it was the Quincy church. The revised Constitution of Massachusetts went into effect in 1820. Under its provisions a complete separation of church from state took place; but the habits of the people were fixed, and several years elapsed before this

In Quincy it was ten years before another meeting-house was built. Accordingly, the sole church of the Braintree of 1639 was still the sole church of Quincy until 1830.

buildings, the last of which was in 1830 almost new, having been finished only two years before. Built of stone, it was called a "temple," and it replaced an old New England meeting-house which for ninety-six years had stood on the training-field in the centre of

1So fixed was the belief that obligatory support of a church was essential to its continued existence that the late Judge Story voiced a very common sentiment when, at the time the amended constitution took effect, he expressed the opinion that in twenty-five years there would not be a church open in Massachusetts in which the old religious services would be held.

to have disappeared. The connecting link between | two chains was broken. one hundred and eighty-nine years which elapsed after | the gathering of the First Church of Braintree, and | before the pulling down and moving away of the third | ered by itself. It was not the less one and the same period because during it the colonies were severed from Great Britain, and Quincy was severed from | Braintree. So far as the people were concerned who | lived at what in 1635 was known as the Mount, these They hardly in any way affected the occupations of those people, or their modes of life and thought, or their social and material condition. 'The real elements of change in all these respects were not political; nor had they begun to make their presence felt when the eighteenth century | came to its close. Thirty years later it was no longer so. The Granite Railway was built in Quincy in 1826 ; the first Massachusetts railroad company was incorporated in 1830. These events marked epochs. | They from top to bottom altered that at the Mount, - which French and Indian wars, and wars of independ- | ence, and church and municipal divisions had scarcely | affected at all. The long period from 1640 to 1830 was therefore with the Massachusetts towns the primitive period, - that of formation. Though it led directly to the present, it had little in common with the present. Nevertheless, during that period five generations

Concerning them, there was, as a rule, little more to record. A simple, laborious, unaggressive race, they were born and died; each following generation was much the same as the generation which preceded it. With - similar utensils, they cultivated the same fields. They dwelt in houses built on the same model, and _pre- Wealth made itself little felt in the remote village commu- - nity ; and the village community in no way influenced the outer world. Few elements of change existed, and accordingly little change took place. The Quincy | of 1820 was only the Braintree of 1640, a little more thickly peopled and a little more prosperous.

The social and material conditions of the town during this period of one hundred and ninety years will be treated in another chapter. Meanwhile the year 1830 brought the early theological period to a_ close. Up to that time the history of the parish was | practically the history of the town, and until 1820 | town and parish were legally one. The history of |

In September, 1739, the Rev. John Hancock, father of the patriot and then the North Precinct minister, preached two century sermons in the meeting-house removed in 1828, but which then was new. In one of these sermons he said, - " This is the third house, in which we are now worshipping, that we and our fathers have built for the public worship of There is reason to suppose that the second of these three houses was built in the year 1666, as the quaint old weather-vane which surmounted it is still Of the first Braintree meeting-house - that in which Fiske and Flynt,

At the time this meeting-house was built the road could have been hardly more than a well-beaten trail, for it was not formally laid out until at least seven years later, in 1648. The brook, which for some distance higher up had forced its way through a well-nigh impenetrable tangle from which the larger forest animals had hardly vanished, and which yet swarmed with reptile life, here flowed over a hard gravel bottom between two converging bits of upland. It was a fording-place, - a natural point . of crossing. For that reason the meeting-house was there. It was a point convenient for those living on both sides of the water-course.

The meeting-house stood in the open, and when the "country highway" from Weymouth to Dorchester was formally laid out, in 1648, it here diverged, passing the building at both its ends, for it faced The diverging ways then shortly At no great distance from east and west. turned and joined again. the front of the meeting-house, looking westward, lay the tangled bottom through which the Town River sluggishly crept. Beyond this, and halfa mile or so away, rose the rough, heavily-wooded granite hills.

level, upland plain in the direction of Hingham and Weymouth. This also, at no great distance, was broken by the underlying syenite, which thrust itself boldly up in savin-covered heights. About a third of a mile further up the Town River stood the mill of Richard Wright, to whom a monopoly in grinding corn had been conceded; and from this mill, leaving the church on the left, there ran a way to the land-

In the humble church edifice, which, nevertheless, was "as fair a meeting-house' as that people could provide, William Tompson, ''a very holy man, who had been an instrument of much good at Accomenticus," was formally ordained as its first regular minister. At that time the gathering of a new church was a great event in Massachusetts, - another candle was lighted in the tabernacle. Nor was it a thing of frequent occurrence. That at Braintree, it has been noticed, was only the fifteenth since the settlement, and, was to be established in the Antinomian hot-bed. The last vestiges of the banished Wheelwright's teachings were to be eradicated. The event was one of

There is no record either of those who were present, or of those who took part in the services. would be not unsafe to surmise that Winthrop and Dudley, the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the universities and settled over English churches. A graduate of Oxford, Tompson had been the incumbent of a living in Lancashire, from whence he had came to New England, landing in Boston at about the time that the Antinomian Synod of 1637 was sitting. Settled at Braintree in September, 1639, in the following March Henry Flynt was ordained as teacher of his church, which would seem to indicate that the pastor from the very beginning proved unequal to the performance of all his duties; for the out comment, made a note of the event in his diary. Undoubtedly, Peter Hobart, that " bold man who would speak his mind,' came over from Hingham ; also from Dorchester came Richard Mather, together with his young associate, John Wilson, son of the pastor of Boston, and himself just graduated from Cambridge. The Rev. John Allen may have found

Karnest, devout men, they gathered from far and near in the primitive wilderness meeting-house on that September day, and there extended the right hand of fellowship to the little congregation crazy body," and his ministry at Braintree can be accounted successful neither for himself nor his people. He belonged to that earliest generation of New Eng- practically an associate pastor, and it is not likely that a poor community, such as Braintree then was, assumed without reason the support of two ministers. In any event the society seemed not unwilling to allow Mr. Tompson to seek other fields of usefulness, and in 1642 his brother ministers selected him with two others to go forth on a strange sort of missionary service among the Church of England heathen of Virginia. A cry had come up from them for " a supply of faithful ministers whom, upon experience of their gifts and godliness, they might call to office ;" and the choice fell upon the Braintree pastor, on the ground

Their journey was over what is now a familiar route, for they went by way of Newport and New York, or Aquidneck and New Amsterdam as these places were then called. To reach their Virginia destination took them nearly three months; for at first they were wind-bound in Narragansett Bay, and then, in passing through Hell-Gate, their boat was swept upon the rocks and so damaged that they barely succeeded in reaching the neighboring shore. Cotton Mather, in the verses already quoted from, says of Tompson in this emergency, -

The shipwrecked missionaries received " slender entertainment" at the hands of Governor William Kieft, the Dutch commandant at New Amsterdam, who indeed had no fondness for New Englanders ; then of New Haven, chanced to be there, and exerted himself greatly on behalf of his countrymen. Through his assistance another pinnace was procured, and in

Virginia. the difficulty and danger through which they reached their destination caused them to entertain grave 'question whether their call were of God or not." Once in Virginia, they were "bestowed in several

But Virginia has never proved a fruitful field for New England workers, and the civil authorities there now looked askance at this earnest attempt at propagandism. Accordingly they soon put a stop to the public preaching of the new-comers, on the ground that they did not conform to the orders of the Church of England. Yet, if we can believe the report made on their return by the missionaries, the people, " their hearts being much influenced with an earnest desire

"Tt fell out about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat, where many of the elders sat behind the It came in at the door where people stood thick upon Divers of the elders shifted from it, but Mr. Tompson, one of the elders of Braintree (a man of much faith), trod upon the head of it, and so held it with his foot and staff with a small pair of grains,! until it was killed.

itis out of doubt the Lord discovered somewhat of his mind init. The serpent is the devil; the synod, the representative the churches of Christ in New England. The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and dissoluof son and his associates back with their New England flocks ; nor can their Virginia labors have been accounted fruitful, inasmuch as they seem to have made but a single convert.