Full text of "The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880"

BOSTON

PUBLIC

LIBRARY

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

It does not fall to every one's share to have the books cited ; and some of them are rarely to
be seen in New England : besides, the collating many things thus together will save both time and
pains to such as have libraries and want leisure to search them. PAUL DUDLEY, 1731.

GOVERNOR WILLIAM SHIRLEY.

ARMS OVER THE PROVINCE HOUSE PORCH. CROSS FROM LOUISBURG CHAPEL. ARMS IN KING'S CHAFKL.
SHIRLEY HALL, LATER GOVERNOR EUSTls's HOUSE, ROXBURY.

THE

MEMORIAL

HISTORY OF BOSTON,

INCLUDING

SUFFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
1630 1880.

EDITED

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. II.
THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

C. C. C. II. MB2ARY
50 \7est E roadway
South Bostpn, Mass.

Issued under the business superintendence of the projector,
CLARENCE F. JEWETT.

A. C. C. H. LIBRARY -s O ^

SOUTH BOSTON, MASS.

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY.

1881.

07855

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

FRONTISPIECE. Governor Shirley, Shirley Hall (or Eustis House) , the Province
House royal arms, the Louisburg cross and Shirley's arms (described
on p. 62) Facing titlepage

INTRODUCTION.

ESTATES AND SITES, i ; MAPS AND PLANS, xlix ; GENEALOGICAL REFERENCES, Ivi ;

THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT. The Editor Iviii

ILLUSTRATIONS. MAPS IN FAC-SIMILE : Franquelin's Map of 1693, ^ i Earliest
Survey of the Harbor (1705 ?), heliotype, Hi; Burgiss's Map (1728), heliotype,
li ; Price's Edition of Bonner's Map (1769), heliotype, Iv.

SKETCH MAPS : North End, iv ; Dock Square, etc., xiv, xxii ; Washington
Street, etc., xxv ; South End, xxxvi ; Fort Hill, xl ; Beacon Hill and West
End, xlii ; Bonner's Water Front (1714), Hi.

SECTIONS OF BONNER'S (1722) MAP: North End, vii ; Dock Square, Corn-
hill, etc., xiii ; Summer Street, etc., xxvii ; Fort Hill, xxxviii ; South End,
xxxix ; West End, xlix.

AUTOGRAPHS IN GROUPS : Overseers of Captain Keayne's will, xvi ; Project-
ors of Long Wharf, xx; Sufferers by the fire of 1711, xxxv ; Petitioners of
Long Lane, xxxv.

AUTOGRAPHS (Alphabetical) : Samuel Adams, xxxv, xl ; John Alden, xlviii ;
Bozoune Allen, x ; Henry Alline, xli ; John Anderson, x ; William Aspinwall,
iii, xix ; Theodore Atkinson, xviii ; John Baker, ix ; James Barnes, xx ; John
Bateman, xxxii ; William Baulston, xxi ; William Beamsley, ix ; Alexander
Beck, xviii ; Edward Belcher, Sr., xxxv ; Edward Belcher, Jr.. xxxv ; Penel-
ope Bellingham, xliii ; Richard Bellingham, xliii ; Edward Bendall, xxi; John
Briggs, xlix; Nathaniel Bishop, xxix; William Blaxton, xlvii ; Abraham
Blish, xxxv; John Bonner, liii; Nicholas Boone, xxxv; Nehemiah Bourne,
ix; James Boutineau, xxviii ; Richard Brackett, xxiv ; Simon Bradstreet,
xvi ; Thomas Brattle, xxi ; Henry Bridgham, xxix ; Edward Bromfield, xxviii,
xlv ; Thomas Broughton, viii ; James Brown, xviii ; Thomas Bulfinch, xlv ;
Thomas Bumsted, xviii ; George Burden, xxiii ; John Buttolph, xxi ; Thomas
Buttolph, xxi ; John Button, xiii ; John Cambell, xxxv ; John Gary, v ; Mat-
thew Chaffe, xi ; Bartholomew Cheever, vi ; Ezekiel Cheever, xxxiii ;
Thomas Clarke, x, xxvi ; John Clough, xxxviii ; William Coddington, xxi ;
John Cogan, xviii ; Martha Cogan, xviii ; William Colbron, xxxv ; John Cole,
xliv ; Samuel Cole, xx; Elisha Cooke, xxviii ; Richard Cooke, xxviii ; William
Copp, vi ; William Corser, xxxii ; John Cotton, xliii ; Seaborne Cotton, xliv ;
Thomas Coytmore, ix ; George Cradock, xvii ; Thomas Creese, xxxv ; Isaac
Cullimer, x ; James Davenport, ix ; Humphrey Davie, xliii ; John Davis, v;

vi THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

AUTOGRAPHS (continued) :

William Davis, vi, xv ; Daniel Denison, xvi; Henry Dering, xxxv ; Father-
gone Dinely, xvii ; William Douglass, v ; Francis Douse, xxiii ; Shem
Drowne, xxviii ; Hugh Drury, xli; Nathaniel Duncan, xv ; Henry Dunster,
xviii; Jacob Elliot, Jr., xxxviii ; Mehetabel Elliot, xxxviii ; Susanna Elliot,
xxxviii ; Elizabeth Endecott, xxiv ; John Endecott, xxiv ; Madett Enges, xxx ;
James Everill, xxiv; Henry Faine, xlv ; Thomas Fitch, xxxvii ; Thomas
Fowle, xxxii ; William Franklin, xxi ; Theophilus Frary, xxxviii ; John Gal-
lop, xi; Joshua Gee, vii ; John George, xx ; John Gerrish, xx ; Elizabeth
Gibbs, xli ; Robert Gibbs, xli ; Edward Gibbons, xxi ; Benjamin Gillom, xli ;
Habakkuk Glover, xxiii ; John Glover, Sr., xxiii ; James Gooch, Jr., xx ; John
Gooch, xlviii; Edward Goodwin, viii ; Thomas Graves, ix; John Gray, xli ;
Joseph Green, xxxiv ; Enoch Greenleaf, xxxv ; William Greenough, viii ;
Richard Gridley, xl ; George Griggs, xxxi ; Hugh Gunnison, xxii ; Thomas
Hancock, xlvi ; John Harrison, xl ; Atherton Haughe, xxviii ; James Hayden,
xi; Daniel Henchman, xvii, xxxiii; Richard Henchman, xliv ; William Hib-
bins, xxix ; Valentine Hill, xxxiv ; Jeremy Houchin, xvii ; Thomas Hubbard,
xxxi; Francis Hudson, xi ; William Hudson, vi ; John Hull, xliv; Robert
Hull, xxxi; George Hunne, xxiii; Edw. Hutchinson, x, xli; Thomas Hutch-
inson, xi; Edmund Jacklene, xxvi; Edmund Jackson, xvii; David Jeffries,
xliii ; John Jeffries, xliii ; James Johnson, v, xvi ; John Joyleffe, xxix ; Robert
Keayne, xv ; Jacob Lager, xxiv ; John Lake, xxx ; Thomas Lake, xliv ; Christo-
pher Lawson, vi ; John Leverett, xvii ; Thomas Leverett, xv ; Ezekiel Lewis,
xxxv ; John Lovell, xxxiv ; Samuel Lynde, xxxv ; Thomas Makepeace, xxiii ;
James Marshall, xxxv ; Thomas Marshall, xii ; P. Mascarene, xxxiv ; Sara
Mather, xliv ; James Mattocke, xii ; John Mellows, xvii ; Henry Messenger,
xxxiii ; W. Molineux, xlvi ; George Monck, xxxiii ; John Mylom, xii ; Rob-
ert Nanney, xii ; Benjamin Negus, xxx ; Jonathan Negus, xxxiii ; Ann New-
gate, xlv ; John Newgate, xlv ; John Norton, xxviii ; Oliver Noyes, xx ; John
Odlin, xxxii ; Andrew Oliver, xxxvii ; Andrew Oliver, Jr., xxxvii ; Daniel
Oliver, xx; James Oliver, xix ; John Oliver, xii; Nathaniel Oliver, xxxv;
Peter Oliver, xxxv, xli ; William Paddy, xii ; Richard Parker, xvii ; Bar-
tholomew Pasmer. x; John Pears, xii; James Penn, xxix; John Phillips,
xv, xxxv ; Thomas Phillips, xxxv ; William Phillips, ix ; David Phippeny, xii ;
William Phips, viii; James Pitts, xlviii; William Price, liv ; Edw. Rawson,
xvi, xxviii; Edw. Raynsford, xxxii; Amos Richardson, xxx; Joseph Rocke,
xviii ; John Rowe, xxxi ; Owen Rowe, xxxii ; John Ruggles, vi ; William
Salter, xxxvii ; Richard Sandford, xlv ; Ephraim Savage, xxxv ; Thomas
Savage, ix ; John Scolle, ix ; Robert Scott, xv ; Joshua Scottow, xviii ;
Thomas Scotto, xxxiii ; Robert Sedgwick, xxxiv ; Hannah Sewall, xliv ;
Samuel Sewall, xliv ; John Shawe, xiii ; Jacob Sheafe, xv, xxxv ; Sampson
Sheafe, v ; Richard Sherman, xxviii ; Edw. Shippen, x ; Sampson Shoare,
xi ; Henry Shrimpton, xix ; Saml. Shrimpton, xlvi ; John Smibert, xviii ;
Francis Smith, xxvi ; Richard Smith, xx ; Cyprian Southack, liv ; John
Staniford, xlix ; Christopher Stanley, vi ; Anthony Stoddard, xix, xx ; Simeon
Stoddard, xlvi; Robert Stone, xix; John Synderland, xxviii; William
Tailer, xxiii; Evan Thomas, xxiv; Benjamin Thwing, xviii ; William Tilly,
xxi ; Benj. Tompson, xxxiii ; Richard Truesdall, xvii ; Daniel Turell. viii ;
Robert Turner, xxxiii ; Richard Tuttall, xxx ; Edward Tyng, xix ; William
Tyng, xxi ; John Underbill, xxiii ; Nicholas Upsall, xi ; Hezekiah Usher,
xviii ; Luke Vardy, xix ; William Vassall, xliv ; Isaac Vergoose, xxvi ;
Thomas Venner, xix; John Viall, xxxii; Robert Walker, xxxvi ; Benjamin
Ward, xli ; Gamaliel Waite, xxx ; Richard Wayte, xxx ; Henry Webb, xv ;
Samuel Welles, xxxviii; John Wendell, xvii; Nathaniel Williams, xxxiv;
Nicholas Willis, xiii ; Francis Willoughby, xxvi ; John Wilson, xvi, xviii ;
Eben r Winborn, xxxv ; William Winbourne, viii ; Deane Winthrop, iii ;
John Winthrop, xxviii ; Stephen Winthrop, xxviii ; John Woodmansey,
xxxiii ; Nathaniel Woodward, xxx ; Robert Woodward, xxxii.

CONTENTS. Vll

CHAPTER I.
THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. William H. Whitmore

ILLUSTRATIONS: Sir Edmund Andros, 5; Great Seal of New England, 9; John
Nelson, 15; Order for the Frigate's Sails, 16.

AUTOGRAPHS: Captains of Military Companies (Anthony Checkley, Thomas
Savage, Benj. Davis, Jeremiah Dummer), 3; Jo. George, 13; Benjamin
Bullivant, 14 ; John Nelson, 1 5 ; Petitioners about the " Rose " frigate (Charles
Redford, Samuel Shrimpton, Jeremiah Dummer, E. Hutchinson, John Foye,
James Lloyd, John Nelson, Nathaniel Oliver, Peter Sergeant, Benjamin Al-
ford, Thomas Cooper, Benjamin Davies), 17; Commissioners for the Colo-
nies (Thomas Danforth, Elisha Cooke, Thomas Hinckley, John Walley,
Wm. Vaughan), 18 ; William R., 18 ; Petitioners from Castle Island (E.
Andros, J. Dudley, Ed. Randolph, J. Palmer, Ja. Graham, John West,
James Sherlock, George Farewell), 19; John Fayerweather, 20; Nathaniel
Williams, 20; Nathaniel Byfield, speaker, 23.

CHAPTER II.
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. George E. Ellis 27

ILLUSTRATIONS: The Provincial Charter, heliotype, 30; Sir William Phips, 36;
Shute's Commission, heliotype, 50 ; Governor Burnet, 55 ; Governor Belcher,
59; Governor Pownall, 63; Governor Hutchinson, 68; the Province House,
89.

AUTOGRAPHS : The Royal Governors (Sir William Phips, Earl of Bellomonr,
Joseph Dudley, Samuel Shute, W. Burnet, J. Belcher, W. Shirley, T. Pow-
nall, Francis Bernard, Thomas Hutchinson, Thomas Gage), 29; Jahleel
Brenton, 38 ; Signers of Instructions to Stoughton (Stamford, Lexington,
Ph. Meadows, Wm. Blathwayt, John Pollex, Sr., Abr. Hill, Mat. Prior), 42;
Queen Anne, 47 ; Sunderland, 47 ; William Tailer, 48 ; George the First,
48; William Dummer, 50; Spencer Phips, 58; Colonial and Provincial
Agents (Hugh Peter, Thomas Weld, Wm. Hibbins, Edward Winslow, John
Leverett, Richard Saltonstall, Simon Bradstreet, Henry Ashhurst, John
Norton, William Stoughton, Peter Bulklev, John Richards, Joseph Dudley,
Increase Mather, Francis Wilks, Elisha Cooke, Jeremiah Dummer, J.
Belcher, Christopher Kilby, Jasper Maudit, W. Bollan, Dennys De Berdt,
B. Franklin, Arthur Lee), 82, 83.

CHAPTER III.
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS. Thomas Wentworth Higginson 93

ILLUSTRATIONS : Sir William Pepperrell, 114 ; Colonel Josiah Quincy, 121 ; Gen-
eral John W T inslow, 123; PownalPs View of Boston (1757), 127; Map of
Castle Island, 127 ; North Battery, 130; Sconce, or South Battery, 130.

viii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

AUTOGRAPHS : Committee on the Expedition, 1689 (Bartholomew Gedney, Benj.
Browne, Charles Redford, Jo. Nelson, Nathl. Oliver, John Foster, John
Alden), 94 ; Nicholas Paige, 95 ; Frontenac, 97 ; Cyprian Southack, 98 ; Penn
Townsend, 98 ; Saml. Adams, 98 ; John W alley, 99 ; Ephraim Savage, 99 ;
Boston Capitalists, 1690 (John Richards, Edw. Bromfield, John Foster, Peter
Sergeant, Andrew Belcher, Edw. Gouge, Simeon Stoddard, Nathl. Williams,
Thos. Brattle, James Barnes, Robert Gibbs), 100; Silvanus Davis, 100;
W. W. Romer, 101 ; Committee of 1704 (John Higginson, Samuel Appleton,
Ephraim Savage, Samuel Browne, Samuel Clap), 101 ; Committee of 1706
(Elisha Hutchinson, Samuel Sewall, John Phillips, John Walley, John Hig-
ginson, Samuel Legg), 101 ; Benjamin Browne, 101 ; Andrew Belcher, 101 ;
Governor and Committee on Fortification (William Stoughton, John Fayer-
weather, Samuel Legg, Andrew Belcher, Timothy Clarke, John Eldridge),
102 ; Thomas Brattle, Timothy Clarke, 102 ; Commanders of ships (John
Foye, Timothy Clarke, Jeremiah Clap, Samuel White, John Russell, Thomas
Gwinn), 103; Benjamin Church, 104 ; Thomas Church, 104; William Tailer,
105; Royal Commissioners (Francis Nicholson, Samuel Vetch, Charles
Hobby), 106; Signers to proclamation (Francis Nicholson, Samuel Vetch,
countersigned, J. Dudley), 106; Zech. Tuthill, 106; John Borland, 106;
Andrew Belcher, 107 ; Vaudreuil, 108 ; John Lovewell, 109 ; Thomas West-
brook, 109; Petitioners, 1733 (Timothy Clarke, Samuel Hill, John Endicott,
Samuel Grant, Joseph Fitch, Shem Drowne, Jonathan Gunnysson, John
Franklin, Jonas Clarke, William Salter, John Hunt, Geo. Bethune, Richard
Clarke, Thomas Worth, Henry Howell, Samuel Adams, Nicholas Davis,
Matthew Adams, Edward Winslow, William Tyler, Jacob Wendell, Caleb Ly-
man, James Bowdoin, William Rand, John Salter, Samuel Sewall, Thomas
Brooks, Thomas Hubbard, Benj. Fitch, John Fayerweather, John Edwards,
John Phillips, John Dolbear, Jonathan Jackson), 110-112; Spencer Phi ps,
112; John Quincy, 112; Benj. Bird, 112; John Larrabee, 112; John Brock,
112 ; William Vaughan, 113 ; William Pepperrell, 113 ; Edward Tyng, 115;
Peter Warren, 116; Moses Bennett, 116; Richard Gridley, 117 ; Eben r Prout,
117; William Rand, 117; Council of War, 1745 (P. Warren, W. Calmaly,
James Douglas, Richard Tiddeman, Montagu, William Pepperrell, F. W r aldo,
J. Dwight, Samuel Moore, Andrew Burr, John Bradstreet), 1 18 ; Benj. Greene,
118; Committee (Jacob Wendell, Ezek. Cheever, Andrew Oliver, Thomas
Hutchinson, James Skinner), 119; Officers, etc., of Cadets, Jan. 2, 1748 (Ben-
jamin Pollard, Leonard Jarvis, Nathl Martyn, Joshua Blanchard, Thomas
Clarke, Samuel Gerrish, Benjamin Austin), 120; General John Winslow, 124;
Edw. Boscawen, 124; Robert Monckton, 125; Seth Pomeroy, 125; Samuel
Watts, 125; William Shirley, 126; J. Willard, 126; William Pitt, 128;
Genl James Abercromby, 128; Loudoun, 128; Gen 1 Jeffrey Amherst, 129.

CHAPTER IV.
WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. William F. Poole 131

ILLUSTRATIONS: Samuel Sewall, 148; Witchcraft Bill, 153; William Stoughton,
166 ; Calef's Letter to Bellomont, 168.

AUTOGRAPHS : Joshua Scottow, 141 ; Inscription by Cotton Mather, 147 ; John
Arnold, 149; Cotton Mather, 152; William Bond, 153; William Phips,
153; Witchcraft Court (Win. Stoughton, John Richards, Peter Sergeant,
Samuel Sewall, Nathaniel Saltonstall, John Hathorne, Wait Winthrop, Bar-
tholomew Gedney, Jonathan Corwin, Thomas Newton), 155; John Alden,
155 ; Stephen Sewall, 160; Robert Calef, 165, 168,

CONTENTS. IX

CHAPTER V.
LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD. Edward E. Hale 1 73

ILLUSTRATION : Lord Bellomont, 175.

AUTOGRAPHS: Edward Brattle, 173; Sarah Kidd, 179; Bellomont, 175, 183.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Alexander McKenzie . 187

ILLUSTRATIONS: Benjamin Colman and William Cooper, heliotypcs, 211; Tim-
othy Cutler and John Moorhead, heliotypes> 214; The Old Brick Church,
219; Thomas Prince and William Welsteed, heliotypes, 221 ; Charles Chauncy,
226; Mather Byles, 228; Benjamin Wadsworth, 230; George Whitefield,
238; Joseph Sewall, 241 ; Samuel Cooper, 242; Jonathan Mayhew, 245.

AUTOGRAPHS: Benjamin Wadsworth, 197; Ministers of the Province, 1697
(Cotton Mather, Grindal Rawson, William Williams, John Rogers, Nehemiah
Walter, Jonathan Pierpont, John Sparhawk, Joseph Belcher, Benjamin
Wadsworth, Jonathan Russell, Increase Mather, William Hubbard, James
Allen, Charles Morton, Samuel Torrey, William Brinsmead, John Cotton,
Samuel Willard, John Daily, Samuel Cheever, Moses Fiske, Joseph Esta-
brook, Jabez Fox, Jeremiah Shepard, Thomas Clarke, Peter Thacher,
Thomas Weld, James Sherman, John Danforth, Joseph Capen), 198 ;
Ministers, etc., of King's Chapel,- 1700 (Samuel Myles, Christopher Bridge,
William Hobby, East Apthorp, Thomas Newton, Francis Foxcroft, Ben-
jamin Mountfort, John Indecott, Giles Dyer, John Cooke, Samuel Simpson,
E. Lyde, Thaddeus Mccarty, John Nelson), 201 ; Corporators of Harvard
College (Increase Mather, James Allen, Samuel Torrey, Samuel Willard,
Peter Thacher, John Danforth, Cotton Mather, Benjamin Wadsworth),
203; Ebenezer Pemberton, 212; Timothy Cutler, 214; John Leverett, 217;
Thomas Foxcroft, 221 ; Thomas Prince, 221; Cotton Mather, 227; Mather
Byles, 228; Samuel Mather, 229; Jonathan Edwards, 231; George White-
field, 238; Minister, etc., of King's Chapel, 1747 (Henry Caner, James
Gordon, John Box, Henry Frankland, Chas. Apthorp, Edward Tyng, John
Gibbins), 240; Andrew Eliot, 243; Jonathan Mayhew, 245.

CHAPTER VII.
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON. Charles C. Smith 249

ILLUSTRATIONS: Andrew Lemercier, 255; Peter Faneuil, 260; Faneuil Arms,
262 ; Letter of Faneuil, heliotypt, 263 ; Second Faneuil Hall, 267.

AUTOGRAPHS: P. Daille, 253; Andrew Lemercier, 255, 257; Remonstrants
(Stephen Boutineau, Zach. Johonnot, Jean Arnault, James Packnett, John
Brown, Andrew Johonnot), 257; Andrew Faneuil, 259; Benjamin Faneuil,
259; James Allen, 263; John Scollay, 263; Peter Chardon, 263; Isaac
Gridley, 263; Harrison Gray, 263; Samuel Eliot, 263; John Lovell, 265;
Pierre Baudouin, 268; James Bowdoin, 268; Zach. Johonnot, 268; Stephen
Boutineau, 268; Andrew Sigourney, 268; Daniel Sigourney, 268; Daniel
Johonnot, 268; Philip Dumaresq, 268.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

CHAPTER VIII.

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. George M. Towle 269

ILLUSTRATIONS: Entry of Franklin's Birth on Town Records, 270; Entry of
Baptism on Church Records, 270; Bill of Franklin's father, 271 ; Franklin's
Birth-place, 272; the Blue Ball, 273; the Ramage Press, 275; Franklin at
Twenty, 277; the Franklin Monument, 280; Franklin Statue, 290.

AUTOGRAPHS: Josiah Franklin, 271; John Franklin, 271; George Brownell,
273 ; B. Franklin, 284.

CHAPTER IX.
THE MATHER FAMILY AND ITS INFLUENCE. Henry M. Dexter 297

CHAPTER X.

CHARLESTOWN IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Henry H. Edes 311

ILLUSTRATIONS : Charlestown before the Revolution, 329.

AUTOGRAPHS: Thomas Greaves, 311; John Cutler, Sr., 312; John Cutler, Jr.,
312; James Russell, 312; Charles Lidgett, 312 ; John Phillips, 313; Henry
Phillips, 313; Nathaniel Cary, 314; Jacob Greene, 315; Charles Morton, 315;
Simon Bradstreet, 316; Samuel Bradstreet, 317; Joseph Stevens, 317; Hull
Abbot, 318 ; John Alford, 318 ; John Harvard (1631 and 1635), 318 ; Thomas
Prentice, 319 : Committee (James Russell, Richard Cary, David Wood, David
Cheever, Peter Edes), 319; Jno. Emerson, 319; Richard Foster, Jr., 320 ;
Seth Sweetser, 321; Robert Galley, 321; Daniel Russell, 322; Thomas
Greaves, 322 ; Chambers Russell, 322 ; Nathaniel Dows, 323 ; Jonathan
Dows, 323 ; Benjamin Dows, 323 ; Thomas Jenner, 323 ; Samuel Phipps,
323; Joseph Phillips, 323; Richard Dana, 324; Charles Chambers, 325;
Joseph Lemmon, 325 ; Ezekiel Cheever, 325 ; Thaddeus Mason, 326 ; Eben
Austin, 326 ; John Codman, 327 ; Joseph Lynde, 327 ; Robert Ball, 327 ;
Isaac Foster, Jr., 328 ; Edw. Sheaffe, Jr., 328 ; Isaiah Edes, 328 ; Isaac
Foster, 329; Benjamin Hurd, 330.

CHAPTER XI.

ROXBURY IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Francis S. Drake 33 1

ILLUSTRATIONS : Dudley's Letter from Jail, 333 ; Joseph Dudley, 334 ; Auchmuty
House, 343 ; Hallowell House, 344 ; luring or Greenough House, 345.

AUTOGRAPHS: Joseph Dudley, 334; Selectmen, 1710 (W. Dudley, Samuel
Ruggles, John Mayo), 335; Joseph Heath, 336; John Gyles, 336; Nathaniel
Williams, 336; Estes Hatch, 336; Selectmen, 1756 (Samuel Heath, John
Davis, Increase Sumner, William Heath), 337; Selectmen, 1762 (Samuel
Heath, Ebenezer Newell, Thomas Dudley, Ebenezer Pierpont), 337 ; Select-
men, 1771 (Joseph Williams, Joseph Mayo, Eleazer Weld, John Williams,
Nathaniel Ruggles), 338 ; Francis Bernard, 342 ; Robert Auchmuty, Sr.
and Jr., 342 ; Benjamin Hallowell, 343 ; Joshua Loring, 344 ; Nathaniel
Walter, 346; John Eliot, 347 ; Nehemiah Walter, 347 ; Benjamin Pember-
ton, 349 ; Committee, 1771 (John Davis, Joseph Mayo, John Baker, Nathaniel
Richards, David Weld), 349; William Gordon, 350; Paul Dudley, 351;
William Shirley, 352 ; William Heath, 353; Joseph Warren, 354.

CONTENTS. xi

CHAPTER XII.

DORCHESTER IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Samuel J. Barrows 357

ILLUSTRATIONS : House on Willow Court, 361 ; Everett House, 367.

CHAPTER XIII.
BRIGHTON IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Francis S. Drake 369

CHAPTER XIV.

WlNNISIMMET, RUMNEY MARSH, PuLLEN POINT, AND CHELSEA IN THE PROVINCIAL

PERIOD. Mellen Chamberlain 375

ILLUSTRATIONS : The Old Meeting-House, 378 ; Cheever's Return of Scholars, 380.

AUTOGRAPHS: Selectmen, 1764 (Thomas Pratt, Benjamin Brintnall, Samuel
Sprague, Samuel Sargeant, Samuel Watts, Jr.), 385.

CHAFFER XV.

THE PRESS AND LITERATURE OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Delano A, Goddard . 387

ILLUSTRATIONS: The Boston News-Letter, 389; The Boston Gazette, 393; The
New England Courant, 395 ; The New England Weekly Journal, 397 ;
Master John Lovell, 401 ; Fleet's Sign, 403; The Boston Gazette or Country
Journal, 405; View of Boston (1743), 408; Isaiah Thomas, 410; View of
Boston (1774), 411 ; Cotton Mather's Notes, 416.

AUTOGRAPHS : John Draper, 391 ; Richard Draper, 392 ; John Boydell, 394 ;
Peter Papillon, 396 ; Bartholomew Green, 400 ; John Gill, Edes and Gill,
Benjamin Edes, 404 ; Benjamin Colman, 423 ; Thomas Prince, 423 ; William
Cooper, 423 ; Charles Chauncy, 423 ; John Read, 427 ; Paul Dudley, 428 ;
B. Prat, 430; Benjamin Church, 430; Francis Bernard, 431; Edward
Holyoke, 431.

CHAPTER XVI.

LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Horace E. Scudder .... 43 7

ILLUSTRATIONS: Samuel Adams, 438; Furniture, 452 ; Nicholas Boylston, 453;
Thomas Hubbard, 455.

AUTOGRAPHS: Petitioners, 1714 (Thomas Walker, John Clough, Caleb Eddy,
Bartholomew Green, Andrew Eliot), 439 ; Robert Ball, 440 ; Ferrymen, 1691
(Samuel Hudson, John Scolly), 441 ; Boston Merchants (Benjamin Greene,
James Perkins, Christopher Tilden, John Gooch, Josiah Quincy, Thomas
Flucker, Ralph Inman, John Dennie, John Rowe, Benjamin Austin, Thomas
Gunter, Samuel Hewes, Thomas Hancock, George Holmes, Job Lewis,
Thomas Hill, John Steel, Samuel Welles, Peter Chardon, Joseph Russel,
John Wendell, Jacob Wendell, John Avery, Thomas Greene, Thomas Ox-
nard, Joseph Lee, Edw. Winslow, John Jones, John Boylston, Benjamin
Faneuil, James Bowdoin, James Boutineau, William Bowdoin, John Spooner,
s Mackay, Jonathan Binney, Samuel Sturgis, Nicholas Boylston, Isaac

xii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

AUTOGRAPHS (continued) :

Freeman, Henry Quincy), 445, 446; Assessors, 1708 (Samuel Lynde, B.
Walker, Thomas Walker, James Barny, Richard Draper, Edw. Martyn),
450; Workhouse Committee, 1734 (Edward Hutchinson, Ezekiel Lewis,
Samuel Welles, Samuel Adams, Samuel Greenwood), 458; Petitioners, 1753
(Andrew Oliver, Thomas Greene, Thomas Hubbard, Middlecott Cooke,
Thomas Gunter, William Clarke, Silvester Gardiner, William Bowdoin),
461 ; William Bowdoin, 461 ; Nathaniel Holmes, 461 ; Tavern-keepers, 1684
(John Wing, Moses Payne, John Viall, George Monck, Thomas Wheeler),
463; Bakers, 1696 (Joseph Brisco, Alexander Bulman, Nathaniel Baker,
William Briggs, John Bucanan, Henry Emmes, Humphrey Richards), 464 ;
Tavern-keepers after 1700 (Gayer Coffin, William Bennett, John Marston,
Deborah Cricke, Robert Sanders, Thomas Bayley, James Day, William
Copp, Ann Pollard, Joseph Willson, Elizabeth Monck), 465 ; Masters of
Watch-houses (William Lowdry, John Chambers, Ebenezer Winborn, Jabez
Tuttle, Abia Holbrook), 482 ; Fire-wards in 1713 (John Ballentine, Timothy
Clarke, Edward Winslow, Stephen Minot, Edward Martyn, Samuel Green-
wood, John Greenough, Jonathan Pollard, William Lowder), 483. '

CHAPTER XVII.

TOPOGRAPHY AND LANDMARKS OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. Edwin L. Bynner. 49 1

ILLUSTRATIONS : The Present King's Chapel, 498 ; Triangular Warehouse, 501 ;
Old Corner Book-store, 505; Old State House, 507; Christ Church, 509;
Long Lane Meeting-house, 513; Old South, 515; Thomas Hancock, 519;
Bromfield Mansion, 521 ; Faneuil-Phillips House, 523; Borland-Julien House,
524 ; Frankland House, 527 ; Carwitham View of Boston, 531 ; Price's View
of Boston, heliotype, 532 ; R^vere's View of Boston, heliotype, 532 ; British
Admiralty Views of the Harbor, heliotypes, 532.

AUTOGRAPHS: South-end petitioners (Samuel Sewall, Benjamin Simpson, Samuel
Adams, Daniel Henchman), 503; Petitioners for a division by wards (Abie!
Walley, John Walley, Habijah Savage, Edmund Quincy, Daniel Henshaw,
William Rand, Ebenezer Storer, Joseph Webb, Jabez Hunt), 511; Com-
mittee for preserving Beacon Hill (Thomas Hancock, William Phillips,
Joseph Sherburne, Joshua Henshaw, James Otis), 520; H. Frankland, col-
lector, 525 ; Record of Agnes Surraige's baptism, 525.

CHAPTER XVIII.

BOSTON FAMILIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. William H. Whitmore . . 533

ILLUSTRATIONS: Sir Charles Hobby, 541; Thomas Boylston, 556; Chief-justice
Benjamin Lynde, the elder, heliotype, 558 ; Chief-justice Benjamin Lynde, the
younger, heliotype, 558.

AUTOGRAPHS: Selectmen, 1696 (Ephraim Savage, Bozoon Allen, Samuel Legg,
Samuel Checkley, Samson Stoddard), 534 ; Selectmen, 1703 (Timothy Clarke,
Daniel Oliver, Thomas Savage, Giles Dyer, Thomas Fitch), 534; Selectmen,
1709 (Ephraim Savage, Isaiah Tay, James Barnes, Timothy Clarke, Richard
Draper, Daniel Powning, Jonas Clark, Samuel Marshall, Joseph Wadsworth),
535; Selectmen, 1720 (Thomas Gushing, John Marion, Ebenezer Clough,
Oliver Noyes), 535; Selectmen, 1734 (John Jeffries, Edward Bromfield,
William Downe, John Armitage, David Collson, Alexander Forsyth), 535 ;
Selectmen, 1744 (Samuel Adams, Jonas Clarke, Middlecott Cooke, John .
Steel, William Salter), 536; Selectmen, 1750 (Thomas Hancock, John Steel,
William Salter, Samuel Grant, Thomas Hill, John Gardner), 536; Select-
men, 1761 (Thomas Gushing, John Scollay, Benjamin Austin, Samuel Sewall,

CONTENTS. xiii

AUTOGRAPHS (continued) :

Samuel Ph. Savage, Ezekiel Lewis), 536; Selectmen, 1762 (Samuel Hewes,
John Scollay, Benjamin Austin, Samuel Sewall, Ezekiel Lewis), 536; Select-
men, 1764 (Joshua Henshaw, Jos. Jackson, John Scollay, Benjamin Austin,
Samuel Sewall, John Ruddock), 537 ; Selectmen, 1770 (Joseph Jackson,
John Ruddock, John Hancock, Samuel Pemberton, Henderson Inches, Jona-
than Mason), 537 ; Town clerks (Joseph Prout, Samuel Checkley, William
Cooper, Samuel Gerrish, Ezekiel Goldthwait), 537 ; John Powell, 538 ; John
Foster, 539 ; Thomas Oliver, 540 ; Adam Winthrop, 542 ; Edmund Quincy,
547 ; John Clarke, chirurgeon, 548 ; John Clarke, speaker, 548 ; Richard
Middlecott, 549; Louis Boucher, 549; Jacob Eliot, 550; Benjamin Eliot,
550; John Eliot, 550; Byfield Lyde, 551; Thomas Gushing, speaker, 553;
James Bowdoin, 553 ; Andrew Cunningham, 555 ; Z. Boylston, 557 ; Silvester
Gardiner, 558 ; Thomas Waldo, 559.

INDEX 565

INTRODUCTION.

ESTATES AND SITES. The picturesque aspect of the town in the
colonial and provincial periods has been set forth in the preceding and
the present volumes. To supplement those chapters, and to place the
local traditions of the sites which the Bostonian of the provincial period
inherited, and to mark the transmission of some of the more interesting
land titles, the Editor offers the following study. The Town Records,
ante-dating the Book of Possessions, indicate allotments and transfers of
which it is not always possible to fix the locality. With the aid of the
Book of Possessions and the contemporary records of the town, and by
documents preserved in the Registry of Deeds, it is not difficult to make a
nearly perfect plot of the Peninsula, as its inhabitants knew it, in home
lots and neighborhoods. 1 The definition of bounds in these earlier
records are not sufficiently exact to make us sure of the shapes of the
lots, but their positions relative to one another, and to the modern land-
marks, can be made out with considerable precision ; and it is to this
extent only that the following descriptions go. In this study the Editor

1 There are none of the original deeds pre- about six thousand plans had been recorded,
served in the Suffolk Registry of an earlier date The original papers in the Probate Office are
of record than 1705, and those of the earliest admirably arranged and in good condition. The
years are in a very bad condition, in bundles earliest bear date about 1635-36. In the City
which had not apparently been opened for many Clerk's office the files of the original papers
years when the Editor examined them, the papers consisting of minutes, reports, petitions, war-
being matted together with ir^uld. Among them rants, leases, and all other papers used in the
were found some of dates in the preceding cen- meetings of the town or of the selectmen are
tury, the documents having not been presented very imperfect before 1734, and such as remain
earlier for record. Though the Registry is not are scrapped in two volumes. After 1734 they
an office of deposit, it is desirable that such early are tied up in bundles, generally by years, though
records as are left in its keeping should be better they are in some confusion. There is great
cared for. The engrossed records for 1766 and need of their being properly arranged and in-
1768 are missing from the Suffolk Registry, not dexed. When this is done, they will yield much
being returned from Canada, whither they were that the historian of Boston must appropriate,
removed during the Revolution. Up to 1862- The Editor has made such use of them as he could.
VOL. II. a.

ii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

has freely availed himself of work in this direction which others have
done. Mr. Uriel H. Crocker kindly placed in his hands the map already
mentioned in the first volume. Mr. George Lamb has made, on a
larger scale, a map to embody his interpretation of the Book of
Possessions; and this plan was bought a year or two since by the City,
and is now in the Public Library. It is not accompanied by descriptions,
as is the case with Mr. Crocker's, but it has references to pages of the
Book of Possessions. It is further developed than Mr. Crocker's in the
regions of the town appropriated to pasturage and tillage; but Mr.
Crocker's manuscripts give data for this part, and they have the further
advantage of assisting to a considerable degree in tracing the transmissions
of the estates. The Editor has also availed himself of some of the late
Mr. N. I. Bowditch's results as given in the " Gleaner " articles, published in
the Boston Transcript in 1855-56; and Mr. William H. Whitmore has
kindly favored him with advance sheets of the new issue of these papers,
printed for the city. Of the other printed sources of modern investigators
he must needs mention particularly S. A. Drake's Landmarks, ShurtlefTs
Description of Boston, and the topographical notes to the Sewall Papers,
understood to be due to Mr. Whitmore, one of the editors. 1

The plan of the streets has been taken from the survey published
by Bonner in 1722, with such changes and omissions as seemed to adapt
it to the condition of the town at the earlier period. For the reader's
convenience, present names have been given (in parentheses) to the
streets, which are represented disproportionately wide. A repetition of
the same figures on the plan signifies the general direction of the lot's
extension. Dotted lines indicate later continuations of streets or cause-
ways. Some sections from the original Bonner map of 1722 are also
introduced as showing the condition in the early part of the succeeding
century.

1 The Editor regrets that the printed volume don, as made known in 1602, and substantially

of Suffolk Deeds, liber i., was not published in the same with the marginal notes of Lechford to

time to be of use to him. Mr. John T. Hassam, his Plaine Dealing, as seen in his MS. copy pre-

who has written a valuable introduction to it, served in the Historical Society's Library. The

kindly placed the proofs of that part of it in the first letter is about Hansard Knolles, from (Mr.

Editor's hands. In this he says that nineteen rec- Upham conjectures) Governor John Underhill,

ord volumes had been filled up to 1700; 193 up of Dover, to Governor Winthrop ; and this is

to 1800; and to this day 1,510 volumes have been followed by a copy of a letter from Knolles,

filled. This first volume comes down to April retracting certain accusations he had made

7, 1654. It opens with two letters in cypher, of against the Massachusetts Colony. Their dates

which the printed volume is to have a reduced were probably 1639. The Editor takes this oc-

fac-simile and a translation by Mr. William P. casion to acknowledge Mr. Hassam's courtesy in

Upham, of Salem. This gentleman says the sys- making various suggestions about the text of

tem of short-hand is that of John Willis of Lon- this Introduction.

INTRODUCTION. Ill

Of the Book of Possessions, which is in some sort the foundation of all
titles of real estate within the old town limits, an abstract or abbreviated
copy was printed in the appendix to Drake's History of Boston, in 1856 ; and
it has since been printed entire in the Second Report of the Record Com-
missioners. The first leaf (as at present bound) is missing; and, if it was
not a part of the original cover, it probably contained the possessions of
Governor Winthrop and of some of his family, for the third page begins
with the possessions of Deane Win-
throp, his youngest son. The rec-
ord seems to give, as originally
entered, a half page to each person, I/

down to page ill. Subsequent

entries were intercalated in different ink and writing, sometimes with
dates attesting time of entry. New names were entered on pages sub-
sequent to page in. The exact date of the original compilation nowhere
appears. Snow, History of Boston, p. 128, says it " seems to embrace
the period 1640-50." Dr. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, places it
"about the year 1643." Mr. Whitmore, in his introduction to the Second
Report of the Record Commissioners, gave the evidence which seemed to
him then to indicate the "summer of 1652" as the date; but in his
chapter in the first volume of this history he determines upon 1645 as
about the date. Chief-Justice Gray, in Boston versus Richardson (13
Allen, 146, 151), fixes it between 1639 and 1646. Mr. Uriel H. Crocker,
in two communications in the Boston Daily Advertiser (Nov. 21, 1877,
and Dec. 15, 1877), gives his reasons for fixing the date in 1643 or 1644;
and relies largely upon the similarity of the accompanying signatures of

the Recorder to prove that it was
Aspinwall who made the original
entries, about which a doubt had
been expressed, and that he con-
tinued to make entries till 1651,
when he was succeeded by Edward
Rawson. Of these signatures the
first is of 1638, when he was Sec-
retary of the Rhode Island Colony.

The second is from Suffolk Deeds, i. p. 60. The third is from the Book
of Possessions, p. 33. Mr. Hassam has established still more clearly Aspin-
wall's connection with this record, from the handwriting of a letter known to
be his, preserved in the Massachusetts Archives, Ixxxviii. 384. Aspinwall

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

PLAN A. (NORTH END.)

INTRODUCTION. V

held the office from 1644 to 1651 ; and Mr. Hassam considers that though
the Book of Possessions may not have been begun so early as 1634, cer-
tainly not in the existing copy of it, it was most likely in pursuance of an
order of the General Court of April I of that year that it was compiled.
(Suffolk Deeds, lib. i., Introduction.)

NOTE. In the following notes a few abbreviations have been used : a., for acre ; g.,
for garden \ h., for house; /., for lot ; andj/., for yard.

PLAN A. 1. Robert Nash, one a. 2. Edward Gibbons, h. and 1. 3. John Smith,
h. and g. 4. John Davies, h. and g.; sold in 1645 to John Trotman, and his wife
Katherine conveyed it same day to Thomas Hawkins, who at a
later day kept here, on Hanover Street, the Star Inn. (See Shurt-
leff, Description of Boston, p. 606.) He mortgaged the property to
Governor Bradstreet in 1650. From Hawkins's house went "the old hie way over the
little bridge [near n] behind the watter mile to the ferry to Charlestown." One Walters
obstructing this old way with a fence in 1652, he was ordered to remove it; but in 1650
Hawkins was allowed to fence in a part of it temporarily. 5. Gabriel Fish, h. and y.
6. Valentine Hill,!.; perhaps later John Kinrick's.

7. James Johnson, glover, upland and marsh ; sold to Thomas Hawkins, baker and inn-

holder, in 1662. In 1671-72 this lot and No. 4, by
assignments and foreclosure of mortgages, came into the
possession of Sampson Sheaffe, and from him the estate
passed to William Stoughton, the Lieut-Governor,
who, though a Dorchester man, possessed a larg
property in real estate hereabout when he died,
in 1701, including the Blue-Ball estate (Plan B.,
No. 87). This last, as well as the present lot,
No. 7, fell to Stoughton's niece Mehitabel, wife of Captain Thomas Cooper; and when
the Captain died, in 1705, this lot was valued at ^650. His widow afterwards married
Peter Sergeant, and again, in 1714, Simeon Stoddard; and as Mrs. Stoddard she died in
1738, and her son by her first husband, Rev. William Cooper, of the Brattle-Square
Church, sold the lot in 1743 to Dr. William Douglass, a physician and author, who had
come from Scotland in 1716, and wrote a Summary of New England History ; and when
Douglass died in 1754, mention is made of his mansion-house in Green Dragon Lane,
which was a passage in the direction of the present Union Street, and upon which his
s~~\.. fl house abutted. Douglass was a good deal exercised over

/// /7 J[J O m-OA^-C^\A ^ e taxes ne was ca lled upon to pay; and Drake, Boston,
/''*'* "^ 3i si p. 623, sets forth his querulous communication to the asses-

sors. (See also N. E. Hist, and Ceneal. Keg., 1877, p. 118.)
Ten years later, Catharine Kerr, the sister of Douglass, con-
veyed it to the St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons, and it afterwards became celebrated as
the Green Dragon Tavern. Shurtleff considers that it was in the yard in the rear, which
bordered upon the mill-pond, that Franklin, as a boy, built the wharf which he describes
in his Autobiography. The house had probably been built in Stoughton's day, and it was
kept as an inn by Alexander Smith, who died in it in 1696. To him succeeded Hannah
Bishop, and in 1697 John Gary took it, and in a petition in /I -~v

1705 he speaks of having kept it several years. In 1734 y fl f } /

Joseph Kidder was the landlord. It acquired the widest @fo<~ (^M^y/

reputation after the Revolutionary troubles began, when /y f

the "Green Dragon" became the rallying-place of the C/ r

patriots. (Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 613.) Opposite the " Green Dragon " John

rnor, x}

arge /r

ied, Q __ ^ &* r 9fafd-yi_

6> /

vi THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Borland owned property, which in 1714 he conveyed to Daniel Johonnot, where the latter
seems to have had his Distil House. N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1852, p. 357.
8. Thomas Hawkins, y z a. 9. John Button, 1.

10. The bridge, the draw of which was changed from one to two leaves in 1653,
and the bridge was rebuilt in 1659. The repairs on it are a matter of constant entry in
the town records. In 1650 it was ordered that the spare land about the bridge should be
wharfed by the neighbors for the common landing of property.

11. The "old way" begun, which in 1649 was laid out, a rod broad, from the south
side of the water mill, along the shore to the Mill Hill. Mr. Hassam informs me that after
this way was discontinued the town, in 1666, granted a portion of it to Major William
Phillips. (Town Records, ii. 26.) In 1826 the Supreme Court, in the case of Rust v.
Boston Mill-Corporation (6 Pickering, 158), ordered a plan drawn, which shows this
"old way." Mr. Hassam has recently secured its deposit in the Registry of Deeds.

12. Zaccheus Bosworth, 1. hereabout. Also probably in this neighborhood, but not
easily placed, the houses and gardens of Bartholomew Cheever, John Arnold, John
Jackson, and a lot of Robert Hull, the blacksmith. 13. John Ruggles, 1637, had h , plot,

and g. "near the new mylne." If the same who was afterwards of Roxbnry, his will,
1657, is printed in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg , Oct. 1858, p. 343. Just north of this
point, with its rear upon the cove, the Baptists built their first meeting-house in 1679,
which was replaced by a larger one, also of wood, in 1771. Still further round the cove,
on the site of the present Baldwin Place, the Second Baptist Church built their house in
1746, a small structure which continued well into this century.

14. William Wilson, 2)^ a. 15. Richird Parker. 16. Thomas Meekins, hereabout.
Beer Lane was later cut through this region, and in 1735 Samuel Turrell and other
abutters petitioned to have it paved. It is the present Parmenter Street.

17. William Hudson, Sr., 5 a ; sold to
Thomas Buttolph, who again, in 1646, sold to
Christopher Lawson, and Lawson sold it in part
to William Phillips, who granted his purchase to
his wife Susan for life ; and the rest was broken
up into small lots, Richird Bennett and others holding it. 18. William Davis, the
apothecary.

19. Christopher Stanley's pasture, which extended west to Salem Street, and was
defined on the other sides pretty nearly by Charter, Hanover, and Prince streets. He

was a tailor, and left by will, 1646, the first be-
quest to the town for the support of schools. (See
N E Hist and Genga i Keg ^ j an . ,850, p. 52.)

Stanley's widow, Susannah, married William Phillips, who confirmed to her the house
Stanley left her, "with the great pasture." (Register, Oct. 1851, p. 447-) A northerly part
of this lot passed, in 1665, through Richard Dumer, to John Hull, the mint-master; and
in 1683 he died, and his daughter Hannah and her husband, Judge Sewall, conveyed Hull
Street in 1701-5 to the town.

20. Thomas Buttolph, */ 2 a. 21. William Copp, shoemaker. A small cove lay
south, with marsh stretching further east. The annexed autograph is from his will
in 1669, in which he calls himself sick

and weak ; a cordwainer by occupation ;
and he leaves the enjoyment of the house
to his wife " Gooddeth." In his inventorv his house, outhouses, orchard, garden, and land

INTRODUCTION.

Vll

about the house are valued at ,80. (See also Sewall Papers, ii. 408.) Early in the next

century Joshua Gee had a ship-yard, as Mr. Hassam places it, on the southwest side of

Prince Street; and the Gee mansion stood on the southwest corner of Salem and Prince

streets. Gee also owned adjacent lands, which fell in 1722-23 to his sons Joshua and

Ebenezer (d. 1730), and finally wholly to Rev.

Joshua Gee, who died in 1748, when the estate

was divided according to a document which /

" Gleaner " calls one of the most important in S^^f

the Probate Office. ^^

22. John Button, the miller. 23. John Shaw, who seems to have surrounded the
wind-mill lot. There was a bluff here above the beach where the way ran. 24. The
wind-mill.

A SECTION OF BONNER'S MAP, 1722.

25. Valentine Hill. Here, at Hudson's Point, was the ferry to Charlestown, and
Francis Hudson, the ferryman, was allowed to wharf out here in 1652 "before his
ground;" and Thomas Broughton had a like privilege hereabout the same year; and
when this privilege was continued a year later, the expression is ' to wharf or make a

viii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

barrocadd before his land at Center Haven." Southerly from this point, on the brow
of the hill, the town purchased of John Baker and Daniel Turrell in 1659 tne beginning of

the present Copp's Hill Bury ing-ground,
and in 1711 added a part of Judge Se-
wall's pasture, to the southwest. (Shurt-
leff, Desc. of Boston, p. 199 ; Gleaner
Articles, No. 14.) Hull Street adjacent was not paved till 1735, when Edward Pell and
other abutters petitioned for leave to pave it.

26. Nicholas Parker, 2 a. ; allowed to wharf out in 1651. He had built a house here
before 1646, when a footway was laid out from it through the gardens to the " mill lane or
street ; " and along the shore in 1650 " a way of a rod broad " was laid out from the
battery to the ferry. Well in from the shore in this lot, after Salem and Charter streets
were laid out, on the westerly corner of them, there was a brick house which Daniel
Turrell and Samuel Wakefield with their wives sold to Lady Phips in November, 1687.

Only a few days before Sewall records that news had come of her husband being dubbed
Sir William Phips at Windsor Castle. The Governor later added to this estate from
adjacent lots.

27. Thomas Buttolph, 4^ a. Christopher Stanley in 1644 was allowed to wharf near
Winnissimet ferry. Along this water front (Nos. 25 to 27) there were various ship-yards
established later in the colonial and in the

early provincial period. They appear in /^Arjj/X -^

Bonner's map in 1722. Captain William '

Greenough's yard was nearly opposite No.

27. Greenough's descendants are traced in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., April,

1863, p. 167.

28. Edward Goodwin, h. and small lot. 29. John Sweet, i% a., and h. ; sold to Wil-
liam Wicks in 1644; wharfed out the previous year. 30. Isaac Grosse, brewer, h. and g. ;

sold to Thomas Anker. Grosse's will is in N. E.

Hist - and Geneal. Reg., July, 1853, p. 228. 31.

Walter Merry, who gave his name to the point, h. ;
sold to John Seabury, seaman, in 1639 > anf l tnen passed successively to John Wilson and
to Alexander Adams in 1645, wno was allowed, in 1646, to wharf out, maintaining along
the shore a highway for a cart.

32. Walter Merry, ^ a., who built " a roof over the highway on the sea-bancke " to
the annoyance of the selectmen ; and when Hanover Street was extended in the rear in
1644, he was allowed the cost of fencing on that side. He was ordered to keep a highway
open on the shore sixteen feet broad, in 1646, and sold the property the same year to
William Douglass, who in turn sold it to Henry Brown, mariner, in 1648, with what is
called Anker's shop. 33. The North Battery was built out here in 1646, and repaired
in 1656.

34. John Sweet, seeming to connect in the rear with his lot at 29. Perhaps this was
the lot Governor Bellingham was

permitted to wharf before in 1648,

" if it did not prejudice the battery,"

when it was desciibed as between

Merry and William Winbourne ; and somewhere near was a house which Sampson Shore

sold to Christopher Lawson in 1646, when he wharfed out before it.

35. Isaac Grosse. In the provincial period not far from this spot stood the Salutation
Inn, which gave a name to an alley running by it, connecting Hanover with North Street.
John Brooking owned it, and his widow sold it in 1692 to Sir William Phips. (Sewall

^ C~*

*>* *O-v*>-X

INTRODUCTION. ix

Papers, i. 222.) John Scollay, hiring of Lady Phips in 1697, kept it. Samuel Green was

the host in 1731. It became famous later, when William Campbell kept it in 1773, and

it was a rallying-place for the patriots. 36. William

Phillips ; sold to William Beamsley, who wharfed out

in 1650, and whose will, 1658, is in N. E. Hist, and

Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1855, p. 37. 37. Anne Tuttle. It

was on the rear of this lot, on the lower corner of the

present Clark and Hanover streets, that the New North Church was built in 1714,

a small wooden building, enlarged in 1730, and giving place to the present edifice in
1802. The land was then bought of Colonel Thomas Hutchinson for ^455.

38. Nehemiah Bourne, shipwright, who built
here in 1641 the " Trial," the first large vessel
built in Boston. John Richards was using this
yard in 1688. Bourne had come over in 1638 ; previously living at Charlestown and Dor-
chester, had come to Boston in 1641. The " Trial " made her first voyage to the Azores
and West Indies under the command of Thomas Coitmore. On her next voyage, to

^^ 0<y*'

Bilboa and Malaga, she was commanded by Thomas Graves, and returned to Boston,
March 23, 1643-44. Bourne went again to England, and served as major of a regiment in
the Parliamentary army ; but was once more in Boston in 1645, returning to England the
next year, and became rear-admiral in the Parliament's navy. There is an account of
Bourne in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1873.

39. Edward Bendall, h. ; sold to Captain Thomas Hawkins in 1645, who is supposed
to have built the house, which became later the Ship Tavern, which stood till 1866.
John Vyal kept it in 1663, and it is associated with some stirring events. Hawkins's ship-
yard was on the opposite water front, and he built here as early as 1645 l he ship " Seafort,"
of four hundred tons. Hawkins's inventory is given in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,
Oct. 1855, p. 343.

40. Edward Bendall ; sold to Anchor Ainsworth, and subsequent owners were Joseph
Phippeni, 1647, George Mitchell, John Baker. Baker's

will is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1861, p. 124.

41. The way along the shore from the dock to Gallop's
Point had been laid out ; 'as it is begun " in 1643, an ^ ' n

1650 it appears that " the way formerly granted of a rod in breadth from Gallop's Point to
the Battery, being interrupted by Mrs. Hawkins her house [39], it shall turn up from the
water side through Mrs. Hawkins her garden, and soe by Mr. Winthrop's house, between
Major Borne's house and his garden [38], before Mr. Holiok's, to the Battery," marking
some changes in ownership.

42. Major Thomas Savage, h. and g. ; wharfed out in 1643. This or another house
on the spot became later the King's Head Tavern, which was burned in 1691, and
rebuilt. Drake says that James Davenport kept it in 1755, and his widow in 1758 ; but

in 1754 Davenport, who had kept the Globe Tavern, petitioned to keep the Bunch of
Grapes, formerly known as Castle Tavern, near Scarlet's Wharf, which had been a licensed
VOL. n. b.

X THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

house for forty or fifty years. There is an account of Davenport in A'. E. Hist, and Geneal.
Reg., 1879, p. 31. Diagonally opposite the upper corner of this lot, on the southerly corner
of the modern Bennet and Hanover streets, Christ Church, the oldest church in Boston,
was built in 1723 Its chime of bells was placed in it in 1744. A little way from Bennet
Street, on the northerly side (it is shown on Bonner's map), stood the North Grammar
School, erected in 1713. Recompence Wadsworth was the first master ; and there is on the
files of the city clerk an interesting testimonial to his fidelity, signed by Increase Mather
and other ministers of the town.

43. John Anderson, 1652, was allowed to wharf be-
f re tne end of tne ^ne, and to take wharfage of stran-
I gers but not of townspeople. 44. Edmund Grosse.

His will, 1655, is given in A r . E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg.
July, 1858, p. 273. He sold the lot to John Anderson, shipwright, in 1647. It seems to have
been on this lot that Judge Edward Hutchinson later built him a house, which late in the
eighteenth century became the North End

Coffee House. It was opposite this point O f\ flf* J

that the principal wharf of the North End was Ir&W . e/C*X>
later built, known first as Clark's Wharf, and
subsequently as Hancock's, Thomas Han-
cock being the principal proprietor.

45. Samuel Cole, h. and g. ; sold in 1645 to George Halsall, who in 1646 had liberty
" to set down a causey ten foot square, from his wharfe to low-watter marke, and that pas-
singers shall come and goe free to it ; " and shortly after he was permitted " to imploy a
passag boatt betweene his wharfe and the ships wher the ships rid, and is to take a penny
for each person." 46. Isaac Cullimer, i % a. ; allowed to wharf out in 1643.

47. Thomas Clarke, h. and warehouse ; and he is called of Dorchester, merchant, when
in 1644 he granted a part of it to Christopher Stanley, which part is perhaps the'iclentical
" p'cell of land lying neere to the water side," which Stanley named in his will, two years

later, as a bequest, "for the maintenance of the free
schoole," and which the town in 1649 sold to William
Phillips, in consideration of 13^. ^d. "per annum forever,
to the use of the schole." This Thomas Clarke was a
prominent merchant, and his inventory, in 1678, shows

various estates in Boston. His shop goods are appraised at ^756 ; the house where
Elizabeth Stevens lives, .300; the one Mr. Woodmansy lived in, ^150; orchard behind
it, ;ioo ; land at lower end of the Common,

the house occupied by his son-in-law, Thomas Baker, C~)C) Q
75 : the house Edward Shippin lives in, ^700. ~f> V ^

48. Thomas Joy, carpenter, ^ a. ; h. with another

h. adjoining. He is called of Hingham when, in 1648, he bonded this estate to Major
Savage, with its house, " near the new meeting-house in Boston." This second church, at
54, is usually considered as built two years later, in 1650 ; and in this last year a committee
was appointed "to lay out the high wayes by the new meetinge house." Mention is
made of his cellar " by the water side," in 1642 ; and in 1644, when it is said to be in the
highway. Perhaps this became the new house which, in 1647, he sold to Bozoone Allen, of

Hingham, with adjoining wharf. Allen calls him-
fj/ self of Boston in his will, 1652. N. E. Hist, and

JJ7LSI.C. A/e?j Geneal. Reg., July, 1851, p. 299. Joy built the
^ *^ cz5^ town-house, and in the final settlement in January,

1 66 1, he received .680.

49. Isaac Cullimer, 3^ a . ; h. and g. 50. Bartholomew Pasmer, or Passmore, X a -

INTRODUCTION. x i

h. and g. ; sold to John Sweet in 1650. It was here, on the corner of North and Richmond
streets, that Nicholas Upsall kept the Red Lion Inn, and near here the devastating
fire of Nov. 27, 1676, broke out in one Wakefield's house. Upsall's will is given in
N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., July, 1861, p. 251 ; and an account of him in Register,
January, 1880. 51. Francis Hudson, l / 2 a. He and James Hayden were farmers of the

Charlestown ferry in [648. 52. Richard Rawlins, plasterer, h. ; probably bought of
Peter Johnson the Dutchman, in 1638; and when Hanover Street was extended in
1644, it took a part of his corn-field behind his house, for which he was compensated.
These had lands hereabout later : Thomas Clark, Mark Hands, Henry Lampray, Edward
Breck, William Burnell, Henry Paine, George Dell, Thomas Ryder, some of them
doubtless sharing in the breaking up of Stanley's pasture.

53. Thomas Joy, i a. Upon this lot William Clark (see his account of his family in
N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1879, pp. 19, 226), a prominent merchant of the provincial
period, well known in public affairs and not always fortunate in his private ventures, built
and lived in a house which became famous. It stood fronting the square, very nearly
where Prince Street now comes into it, on the easterly corner. It was next the residence
of Sir Charles Henry Frankland, the royal collector of customs, and of whose history
there is something told elsewhere in this volume. Further to the east, and occupying the
space intervening between the converging streets, was the estate on which Thomas
Hutchinson, about 1710, erected, with its
front on Garden Court leading from the
Square, the sumptuous house in which
his son, Governor Thomas Hutchinson,
was born and lived. The autograph is of

the elder Hutchinson. 54. The second meeting-house, on Clark's Square, as it was then
called, built in 1650, burned in 1676. and rebuilt in 1677.

55. John Gallop, h. and g. ; fined in 1636 for obstructing the highway on the sea-bank
with his "payles; " allowed to wharf out in 1643; after his death, his widow Mehitabel,

in 1649, conveyed a part of it to John Synderland. He
, signed his will (printed in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July,

I8s3i p 227 ) by his mark About on the line of this estate
a passage from the water front to the present Hanover Street
was opened, and in Bonner's map, 1722, is marked as Wood Lane, the modern Richmond
Street. Near the present northerly corner on Hanover Street the New Brick Church was
built in 1721, and stood till it was rebuilt in 1845.

56. Matthew Chaffie, ship-carpenter, h. and g. ; sold in part to John Capen, of Dor-
chester, in 1649. Chaffie's lot extended back to what was the end of Hanover Street in
1643, when it was ordered that the way be continued further, two rods broad, " from the
west corner of Matthew Chafeth's garden unto the little

howse by the swamp," which Christopher Stanley had just

bought of the town, "and from thence to the windmill as f

directly as the land will beare."

57. Sampson Shore, h. and g. ; wharfed out in 1643 ; sold to Edward Goodwin in 1648 ;

later to Nathaniel Adams. 58. Edward
Wells, h. and g. ; sold to David Sellick
in 1647. 59. John Hill ; wharfed out in
1643. This estate afterwards came into
the possession of George Burrill, and passed to his heirs.

xii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

60. John Mylom, cooper, h., g., and shop ; sold to John Phillips, biscuit-maker, in 1648.
It was upon this lot that one of the oldest buildings in Boston existed, half way up Cross

Street, to our day. Phillips, who had come from
Dorchester, became a deacon of the Second Church
'^* *?? j n j6^ Oj added to his estate adjacent lands, and built
the stone house; which, when it was torn down in

1864, was considered the oldest building in Boston. It has been described by Mr. Bynner
in Vol. I. Phillips died in 1682. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 667, has traced its his-
tory to our day. Phillips, before he died, sold the part of his lot next the water-side to
Captain Christopher Clarke. 61. William Werdall, h. and g. This lot afterwards passed
to John Turrell and his heirs.

62. This lane was laid out in 1636, from the water-side "up the balke or meare that
goes up from the end of John Mylom's house, next William Aspinwall's ground, and to
goe along to the Mylne Cove, a rod and a halfe broacle." Mylom was allowed, in 1647, to
wharf before the eastern end of it. At the beginning of the next century it was called
Coney's Lane. Sewall Papers, ii. 211.

63. Valentine Hill. 64. Valentine Hill; sold to Barnabas Fawer, in 1646, who was to
maintain a cart-way by the wharf before his door, and whose will, 1654, is in A". E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., July, 1851, p. 305. 65. Valentine Hill ; sold to James Mattock in 1646, whose
will, 1666, is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1861, p. 325. David Phippeny had a house
and lot in this neighborhood. See his will in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1853, p. 233.

66. Valentine Hill ; sold to Arthur Perry. 67. Valentine Hill ; sold to Richard
Straine, in 1648 ; then passed to Paul Allistre, with a wharf in front ; then to Robert
Nanney, in 1650. His autograph is from his will,
1663, printed in N. E.Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, ^+ fi ' I
1858, p. 155. Near the bridge over the creek. Hill -f<> ^^ *
sold, in 1651, a lot to William Aubrey, " for the use
of the undertakers of the ironworks in New England." A lane which later passed through
this lot and 70 (the present North Centre Street) was called Paddy's Lane, from Captain
William Paddy, a citizen of prominence, who lived upon it, and died in 1658. His will is
in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1854, p. 355; also see 1877, p. 321. 68. John

Peirce. 69. John Oliver. If this was the son of Thomas Oliver, see his will, 1641, in
A'. E. Hist, and Geneal. Re%., July, 1849, p. 266. 70. John Knight.
71 - Tllomas Marshall. 72. Joshua Scottovv was allowed, in 1651,
to wharf at the northeast end of the mill bridge. He had bought

the marsh at that time of James Nash, of Weymouth, to whom John Mylom had sold it.
73. John Mylom; sold to Thomas Marshall, 1648. 74. John Mylom, h. ; sold in

part in 1650 to Robert Nash, the butcher. 75. John Mylom ; sold to Governor Leverett.

76. Lewis Kidby, fisherman. 1639; granted house lot on the marsh next to John Lowe.

77. John Lowe, upland, surrounded by marsh ; called a wheelwright, when it was granted
to him in 1636-37. 78. Marsh held in common-

age, part of which was granted in 1646 to John

Mylom, who sold it to James Hawkins in 1648.

79. Thomas Marshall, shoemaker, h. and g. He offered to the town in 1652 a highway

to shorten the way to the bridge (10), but withdrew his offer. The present Marshall Street,

however, would indicate that the short cut was eventually established.

INTRODUCTION.

Xlll

80. Richard Bellingham's marsh, including what came to him under an order, 1644,
granting him such of the town's marsh as was undisposed of, "for the continuance of peace
and love, in consideration of a quiet resignation of all claim unto the wast before his
house." The Governor sold this marsh in equal parts to Joshua Scottow and Christopher
Lawson. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, ch. Ivii., shows how in the southerly part of
this marsh, near the corner of Merchants Row and North Market Street, stood for many
years the well-known Triangular Warehouse.

81. Henry Symons, h. ; sold to Christopher Lawson ; and by him in 1645 to David
Sellick, with wharf and lane before it ; to Robert Nanney

in 1646. This wharf was bought by John Shawe, the A U

butcher. 82. John Hill, h. Somewhere in this vicinity ^/ ^^

in 1656 Thomas Savage built his new house, "between

the drawbridge and the conduit." On the opposite side of the present North Street from

this lot was an irregular piece of ground, partly reclaimed from the marsh, with a wooden

building on it which was consumed in the fire of 1679, to be followed next year by the

FROM BONNER'S MAP, 1722.

rough-cast structure, which, standing to our day, has been known as the " Old Feather-
Store." Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 645, thinks the lot was originally a part of
Symons's (No. 81), who dying in 1643, his widow Susannah married, about 1644, Isaac
Walker, who conveyed it to their daughter Susannah, born 1646, who in 1668 married Mr.
Thomas Stanbury, who built the old building, which was taken down in 1860. The sub-
sequent history of the building is told by Shurtleff.

83. John Button, the miller, i a., 3 h., g. and y. There was in later years some con-
troversy as to whether the land opposite this lot and the town dock was public property.

See depositions in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1864, p. 68. 84. Nicholas Willis,
the mercer, h. and g. ; sold in 1648 to Christopher Clarke, a mariner. 85. Thomas

XIV

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Painter, h. and g. 86. George Barrell the cooper, not Yz a., h. ; bought part of Painter
in 1688, and part of Everill. See his will in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1848,
p. 383. 87. James Everill, h. See Plan B. 87.

Mill Cove

PLAN B. THE DOCK, ETC.

PLAN B. 1. William Hudson, Sr., h. and g. He was allowed to keep an ordinary in
1640 ; and in 1643 a "harbor for boats" was ordered to be made in the marsh near by.
This lot is at the corner of Kilby Street. After Hudson's death it passed to Francis
Smith, and later to Governor Leverett. Here in the provincial days stood the Bunch-of-
Grapes Tavern, with a sign of three bunches of the fruit; and Drake says two of the
bunches now hang over the door of a store in North Market Street. The same writer
gives its landlords as Francis Holmes (1712), William Coffin (1731), Joshua Barker (1749),
Colonel Joseph Ingersoll (1764). Samuel Holbrook seems to have owned part of it, at
least, before 1724, when his widow sold a moiety to Thomas Waite. (N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., 1877, p. 423 ) Goelet's Journal (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1870, p. 53)
mentions Weatherhead as the keeper in 1750, and says it is " noled for the best punch
house in Boston, and resorted by most the gent" merch ts and masters vessels."

This passage by the shore was known as Mackerel Lane, and remained very narrow
until the great fire of 1760 swept everything away, when it was widened and named Kilby

INTRODUCTION. x\>

Street, in compliment to Christopher Kilby, a wealthy Boston merchant (see Heraldic
Journal, ii. 48), who lived long in London as agent for the town and colony, and was now
living in New York. He was very liberal to the sufferers by the fire. The committee for
laying out the widened street were Andrew Oliver, Thomas Hancock, Joshua Henshaw,
and John Scollay ; and their report is on file.

2. William Davis, Sr., h. 3. Governor Winthrop's ____ v

marsh, reaching up to the street, just east of Congress s^"^ /XY^ /^- (~?A
Street. 4. Elder Thomas Leverett, h. and g. When he ( ^^ ^fl

died, in 1650, this estate is described as " old houses ----

and lands lyeing neare the old meeting-house in Boston, ,50." This lot extended back

on the line of the present Congress Street ; and on a
portion of it, opposite the junction of Congress Street
and Exchange Place (lately Lindall Street), the Quakers
built a meeting-house in 1709, and had their burial-ground
in the rear. Interments took place, though rarely, in this ground till 1815, and in 1826
the bodies, such as could be found, were removed, chiefly to Lynn. See Shurtleff, Descrip-
tion of Boston, 231. Leverett's property also took in the present Exchange Building lot.
The upper part of Leverett's lot afterwards became the home of Andrew Belcher, a
wealthy merchant, who lived here in 1691, and was the father of Governor Belcher. For
a note on Andrew Belcher's family connections, see Scwall Papers, iii. 160 ; and N. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Keg., 1873, P- 2 39- Andrew Belcher died in 1717. East of him was the
land which Governor Leverett sold to Jeremiah Dummer, a goldsmith, in 1677, the father
of Lieut. -Governor William Dummer, and of Jeremiah, the last being born on this spot.
5. Robert Scott, small lot, h. It was somewhere between 5 and 7, fronting on the Court
where Isaac Addington, the Colonial Secretary later lived.
6. The old meeting-house, where Brazer's Building is. Taken /J /j
down or disused in 1640. James Everill seems to have owned "*frW/W/~
the property in 1651-56, when he was enjoined to make safe a

cellar on the spot. 7. Robert Scott and Henry Webb, gardens. 8. Henry Webb, h.,
with William Corser just south of him on the lane. The will of Henry Webb, 1660, is
given in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1856, p. 177. His daughter Margaret, widow

of Jacob Sheaffe (whose inventory is given in Register, Jan. 1856, p. 84), inherited
the "Mansion," and his grandchild, Elizabeth Sheaffe, his warehouse "now let out
to build."

9. Mrs. Hudson, h. She died in 1651, and left 10 to the school. At this date
she had two houses on this lot occupied by Nathaniel Duncan and John Tincker. (N. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1850, p. 54.) Near this spot, in the next century, John

*>*<:*.

Phillips kept a book-shop. Drake, Boston, p. 566, gives an engraving of his sign. He
died March 30, 1763. See Boston News-Letter, April 28, 1763.

10. Major Robert Keayne, h. and g. This public-spirited and somewhat eccen-

tric citizen was a prominent merchant. Annexed are the
signatures of the " overseers " of his remarkable will (an
abstract is given in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1852,
p. 89, etc.), appended to a petition to the colony government in 1667, on file at the
State House (Mass. Archives, " Estates," vol. i.). The most extended account of

XVI THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Keayne is found in Whitman's Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, of which
Keayne was the leading charter member. On this spot in the provincial times Daniel

Henchman kept his well-known
book-shop ; and in this shop, later,

Ox? t Henry Knox was brought up.

&MSLj&fe? Nicholas Boone also kept a book-

O shop on this lot in the early part of

the eighteenth century.

11. The open market-stead, where
later, in 1657-58, the "Town and
State House" was built, the col-
ony excusing the town from current
payment of rates in consideration.
(June 10, 1658, Mass. Archives,
"Towns," i. 108.) The money
largely been received under

/ / Robert Keayne's will. There is,

however, in the possession of the

Hon. Joseph M. Wightman a subscription paper, of which that gentleman has kindly
furnished a fac-simile ' to the Editor, and which reads as follows :

"Whearas thear is given a considerabl sum by Capt. Keyne towars the Bulding of a
towne house, wch sum will not ataine the Bulding wch he mentioneth in his will. Now
considering the usefullnes of such a structur, we whoes names are underwritten doe ingag
o r selves, o' heyres, executors for to give towards the abouse house and alsoe a condit in
the market place the severall sums under written."

Then follow about one hundred and twenty names, including

p d John Endecott 2 - 10 - oo

Ri. Bellingham in country pay 10 - oo - oo p 4

p* Edward Tynge in come 10 - oo - oo p d

p d John Evered in goods and corne 10 - oo - oo p d

p d 46' Peter Oliver in goods and provisions 10 - co - oo

p d James Oliver, provided ther be a condit withal, in goods and

provisions, equly i2-oo-oop d

Will Payne in goods or provisions 15-00-00

p d Sarah Parker in provisions 05 - oo - oo p d

paid Theodor Atkinson will give in hats 05 - oo - oo p d

paid John Hull in English goods five Ibs. 05 - oo - oo p d

paid Samuel Hutchinson in wethers 5 - oo - oo p d

paid Hezekiah Usher will pay in Englishe goods or equivalent

twentye poundes, proviso : y' y* market house bee

erected in y* markett place & a cunditt 20 - oo - oo

paid Thomas Littele, three days worke, oo - 10 - oo

Georg Browne a bushel wheate 00-04-00

paid William Paddy 12-00-00

paid Henry Shrimpton tenn pounds 10 - oo - oo

paid Thomas Baker in iron worke i - oo - oo

paid John Biggs in shingle or work 2-00-00

The colony and the county subsequently shared with Boston the expense of repairs,
the building being of wood. It was destroyed in the fire of 1711, and the next year a

1 This fac-simile, together with other papers address delivered by Mr. Wightman in 1862,
relating to the matter, preserved in the Historical on laying the corner-stone of the present City
Society's Cabinet, can be found appended to an Hall. See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1858.

INTRODUCTION. xvii

building of brick took its place. All but the walls of this building were burned in 1747

{Historical Magazine, Sept. 1868), and many of the original papers, which we might

expect to find now at the State House, were probably then consumed. (Sewall

Papers, \. 161.)

12. Richard Harding's lot, on which, in 1640, the new building for the First Church

was built. It was burned in 1711, and rebuilt. 13. Governor John Leverett, h. and g. ;

where Sears Building now is. 14. Richard Parker, h., y., and barn. 15. Prison and

yard, where the Court House now is. 16. Richard

Tapping, h. ; sold to Nathaniel Williams; again in

1649 to Richard Critchley or Croychley, who married

the widow of William Dinely, the barber-surgeon, whose

sad fate, in 1639, 1S described in Mr. Scudder's chapter,

in Vol. I., and who left to his widow and children the

next lot. A son of Dinely, named John, survived him ;

name of sad remembrance, who

came after the father's death, Fathergone Dinely,
administered on his elder brother's estate. Between 16

and 17, on the lot now covered by the Adams Express

Company's building, lived Colonel Daniel Henchman,

the bookseller and bookbinder, with whom Thomas Han-
cock served his time, and whose daughter Hancock mar-
ried. She, Lydia Hancock, gave the estate to the
Brattle-Street Church in 1765, for a parsonage. See
Gleaner Articles, No. 38 ; and comments, in 84, 88,

94 of the Report of the Record Commissioners containing them. James Otis at one time

lived *'n the house.

17. Croychley for Dinely heirs. On this lot, in the flourishing days of Governor

Shirley, lived one of the best known Boston merchants, John Wendell ; and under his roof,

in 1759, George Cradock had his office as Royal Collector of Customs. For the Cradock

connections see N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1854, p. 28 ; April, 1855, p. 123.

J/foMr^

18. Richard Truesdall, h. and g. Sargent, Dealings with the Dead, ii. 567, says that
Benjamin Faneuil, brother of Peter, had his town residence on this lot at a later day. 19
to 26 ; see Plan F., 5 to u. 27. Nathaniel Chapell, h. and g. 23. John Cole, h. and g.
29. John Mellows, mariner, h. and. g. For his family see Sewall Papers, ii. 210. The
annexed signature is from his will, 1674.

30. Edmund Jackson, h. and g. It was on this corner that the Orange Tree Inn stood
during the provincial period. While it was kept in 1712 by Jonathan Warclwell, he se.t up
here the earliest hackney coach stand. Drake says that Mrs. Wardwell kept it in 1724.
31. Jeremy Houtchin, h., g., orchard, and tan-pits; sold in 1646 to Roger Fletcher, late
of London.

32. William Wilson, joiner, with considerable back land. Soon after the middle of the
next century the building known to our own day as Concert Hall was built. The estate
VOL. n. c.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

then extended to Hanover Street. Gilbert and Louis Deblois, braziers, conveyed it in 1754
to Stephen Deblois, who in 1769 sold it to William Turner; and later it passed to the
Amory family. Drake's Boston, p. 641.

33. Benjamin Thwing, h. It was about at this point that Smibert the painter lived in
1743, and Brattle Street was subsequently cut off in part from the estate of the artist. 34.
Joshua Scottow, h. 35. Alexander Beck, h.

36. James Brown, h. His will, 1651, is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1853,
p. 335. Hereabout, on the lower corner of the present Frank-
lin Avenue, Samuel Kneeland, in 1718, began a printing-office,
and here printed some of the early Boston newspapers. Later

it became the stand of James Franklin ; and here his brother " ,. *-vix o

Benjamin assisted him on the New England Courant, and *->J/ T

in 1723 became under a pretence its
proprietor. In 1769 it was the office of
. Edes and Gill, prominent printers of
their day. 37. John Briggs, h. His will,
1666, is in N. E. Hist and Geneal. Reg., July, 1861, p 252. 38. Thomas Hawkins, h. ; sold
in 1645 to Theodore Atkinson, a felt-maker. 39. Henry Dunster, President of Harvard Col-
lege, h. 40. John Cogan, h. and shop.
Cogan's will (given in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Jan, 1855, p. 35; also
see 1877, p. 106) speaks of his man-
sion-house and the h. adjoining (occupied by Goodman Bomstead), and two shops
adjoining. One third of the property descended to his widow Martha, who had survived

Governor Winthrop as his fourth wife. She was a sister of Increase Nowell of Charles-
town, and widow, when Winthrop married her, of Thomas Coitmore, of the same town.
Joseph Rocke married Elizabeth, daughter of Cogan.

41, 42. Rev. John Wilson, h., 2 g., y., and barn, bounding south on Wilson's Lane,
now widened and called Devonshire Street. Wilson's will is given in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1862, p. 343. In 1641 he sold 41 to Sergeant _
John Davies the joiner, and provided that he should not be \otyv\.
" annoyed with any stincks : " and Davies in 1646 sold to Edmund ^Nj j
Jackson, from whom it passed to Hezekiah Usher, the merchant of a later day, who had

removed from Cambridge to Boston in 1646. Usher's inven-
torv ment ' ons a dwelling-house, garden, land, and "inward
warehouse," with leantos at the dock, ^700 ; the dwelling-
house that John Usher lives in, and " outward warehouse " by the town dock.
His descendants are traced in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1869. p. 410.

INTRODUCTION. x ix

43. Anthony Stoddard, linendraper, who in 1644 was suffered to open his "shop
window board " two feet into the street, and who bounded east on the " new street" (Ex-
change Street). In 1644 he sold the northerly part,
fronting on the new street, to James Mattock the
cooper, and in the same year this portion passed suc-
cessively to John Synderland and to John Parker the carpenter. In 1646, Stoddard, John
Leverett joining with him, sold the southerly part to Henry Shrimpton, brazier. His will,

1666, is in N. E. Hist, and Genual.
J'feg., Jan. 1861, p. 76. It was on
this corner that the Royal Exchange

^ ' -^ ' ~~ ' ^f/Y/^O Tavern stood at a later day. Luke

' /y Vardy kept it in 1727, and he was

C/ succeeded in 1747 by Robert Stone,

and in his time it was a resort of the British officers stationed in the town. It was in this
house, in 1728, that the altercation began which ended in the first duel fought in Boston,
when Benjamin Woodbridge was killed by Henry Phillips. See Shurtleff's Boston,
p. 222, and Mr. Scudder's chapter in this volume.

44. Valentine Hill ; sold to William Davies, and he in 1645 to Anthony Stoddard. This
was the site of the States Arms Tavern, and just before the Revolution the royal
Custom-house was here, Bartholomew Green living in the chambers over it. 45. William
Davies, Jr., h.

46. William Pierce, along the line of the present 'Change Avenue. (See N. E. Hist.
and Geneal. Reg., 1878, p. 319.) On the site forming the lower corner of this avenue, after
the middle of the next century, John Mein kept the London Bookstore, the most consider-
able in the town ; and here he started the earliest circulating library. Opposite the north-
erly end of this estate, where it abutted on the dock, on land reclaimed from the tide,
Peter Faneuil built, in 1742, the famous hall, whose history is told in a chapter of the
present volume.

47. William Aspinwall, h.; sold to Valentine Hill, who conveyed it to David Sellick in
1641, when it had a barber's shop adjacent to the house. Sellick died in 1654. 48. Valen-
tine Hill ; sold in 1641 to Mary Friend ; later owned by James Oliver.

49. Edward Tyng, h., brewhouse, warehouse, with wharf in front, which he sold in
1651 to James Everill, describing it as ' my wharf against the end of the great street," and
along which on the south went the "town's way down upon the flats," which corre-
sponds to the present State Street below Merchants Row ; and this street was then

designated as " Mr. Hill's highway twenty feet broad," which followed the shore of the
Cove to the present Dock Square. Somewhere on the water front of Tyng's estate there
were wharves occupied by Thomas Venner, 1 and another that Henry Webb was allowed

1 He is styled a wine-cooper, and was later Fifth-Monarchy preacher, and engaged in an
of Salem. Returning to England, he became a insurrection; was executed in 1661.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

'to enjoy" in 1647, having bought it of Tyng. In the next century the rich Huguenot
merchant, Andrew Faneuil, had his warehouse where Tyng's wharf stood, the present
lower corner of Merchants Row. This was in 1732; and later, in 1743, Richard
Smith kept here the Admiral Vernon Tavern. In 1750 there seems to have been a change,

for in the State Archives there is a peti-

t f |) vOl/^ / /7 tion from Smith to be licensed to keep the

r7^)si(/i-^fl Crown Coffee House "at the lower
end of King Street," which had been a
w ^' licensed house for nearly forty years. At

the same date James Gooch, Jr., took possession of the " Vernon's Head," as his petition
calls it. Smith's predecessor in the '' Crown " was widow Anna Swords, and the estate
was then owned by Governor Belcher. Robert Shelcock kept it in 1751. It stood at the
lower corner of Chatham Row, projecting into the street. It was the first house on Long
Wharf, which, after the flats had been filled in below Merchants Row, was projected by
Oliver Noyes and others in 1707. Noyes was a selectman and a citizen of prominence;

and the town, within a year or two, adopted his plan to build a pier to low-water mark.
There is among the papers in the City Clerk's office the original agreement, dated 1709,
of sundry merchants for carrying out this project, from which the annexed signatures are
taken. In June, 1734, a peti-
tion of the proprietors of
the wharf to be allowed to
extend it from ten to four-
teen feet is signed by James
Allen, Samuel Sewall, Thomas Fitch, Jacob
Wendell, Andrew Faneuil, William Blin,
John Gerrish, James Bowdoin, In? and
Thomas Hill, Andrew and Peter Oliver,
Habijah Savage and S. Boutineau. Within
the next few years a continuous range of
warehouses extended down the wharf, for they
are delineated in the original sketch of the
water front as made by Bonner in 1714, to
be mentioned later. Near the "Crown"
were the counting-house and warehouse of a
noted mercantile firm of the early part of the
last century, Samuel and Cornelius Waldo,
later on Merchants Row, near the Swing .. (/#yt-f
Bridge. See a note on the family in N. E. (^/

/ O rf\J->

^*^

. and Geneal. Keg., April, 1864, P- i?6.

50. Valentine Hill; sold in 1645 to Samuel Cole, who had before this kept a house of
entertainment somewhere along the water front in this vicinity. Cole's will, 1666, is given

in A 7 . E. ///j/. and Geneal. Reg., July, 1861, p. 249.
This ' s to ' tne nearest point on the original shore
to the spot where, in the provincial times, on land
reclaimed from the dock, and near the head of the present South Market Street, John
Hancock kept store, and by advertisement called upon debtors to the estate of his late
uncle, the Hon. Thomas Hancock, to make payment.

51. Isaac Grosse, husbandman, h. 52. Edward Bendall, stone h. with warehouse
adjoining. Bendall had been allowed in 1637 to establish from this point a ferry to

INTRODUCTION.

XXI

Noddle's Island, and to the ships riding before the town. His lot was just west of 'Change
Avenue. 53. George Foxcroft. 54. Robert Nash, butcher, h., g., and outhouses, in-
cluding his slaughter-house, which occasioned the town's men more or less trouble from
the careless disposition which Nash made of his garbage. He was warned not to kill beasts
in the street in 1647. 55. William Franklin, h.

56. Major Edward Gibbons, h., g., and "housings," including two shops, one occupied
by John Newgate, hatter, and the
other by Thomas Savage the tailor,
better known from his military

honors. 57. William Corser, h., which seems to be the lot
afterwards occupied by William Tilley, whose wife Alice,
under power from her husband, conveyed it in 1649 to Anthony Stoddard. 58. Valentine
Hill, h ; sold to Robert Turner, shoemaker, in 1644. Turner's will is dated 1651. (See
N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1850, p. 285.) 59. Thomas Buttolph, h. and g.
Buttolph's will is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1862, p. 159, leaving to his wife
Anna his h., yards, stable, barn, and other housing, and after her to his son Thomas.
This he calls his " new house." His old house he leaves to Thomas till his mother dies ;
then to his son John.

60. William Balston, h. ; sold August, 1638, when it consisted of h., y., g., and close
"back side of Mr. Coddington," to Thomas Cornell or Cornwell ; who sold to Edward
Tyng, 1643 ; and he to Christopher Stanley. This one of the three Balston settlers left
no male issue. Whitmore, Sewall Papers, ii 130, 186, corrects Savage in an account of
these Balston settlers.

61. Richard Bellingham, the resi-
dence of the Governor probably before

he built the house on Cotton Hill. In 1644 he compounded with the town by accepting
a piece of marsh on the ether side of the dock in lieu of the waste ground before this
house. Hereabout, fronting on Dock Square, stood a landmark known in the early part
of the next century as Colson's Stone House.

62. Captain William Tyng, h., g., close, great yard, and little yard before the hall window.
His inventory is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1 876, p. 432. A part of this lot. after Captain
Tyng's death, Jan. 18, 1652-53, fell to Elizabeth, his daughter, wife of Thomas Brattle, who

s? .:

died May 10, 1684, when it fell for the most part to his son Thomas Brattle/ (Sewall
Papers, i. 202 ) Subsequently, in 1694, a part of the estate passed to Mr. Mumford, who
afterwards conveyed it to the Quakers for a meeting-house. (Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston,
p. 229 ) On the rear of this lot, after passages had been opened across it, the first wooden

XX11

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

house of the " Manifesto Church " was erected in 1699, and stood through the provincial
period. A part of this lot was conveyed by Brattle to John Wing, and by him to Eliakim
Hutchinson. See N. E. Hist, and Gencal. Reg., 1880, p. 43.

63. Hugh Gunnison, vintner, h. He later removed to Kittery. In 1650 Gunnison's,
or Gullison's, house is called " The King's Arms," and the estate included a brew-house,

barns, stables, etc. ; and in 1651 he and his wife Sarah
conveyed it, according to an inventory printed in N. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Keg., 1880, p. 42, to Henry Shrimpton
and others ; and according to Mr. Hassam, when Shrimp-
ton made his will in 1666 he called it the "States Arms;"
and when Eliakim Hutchinson became Shrimpton's son in-law, two years later, it is
described as "facing to the head of the dock, and heretofore called the King's Armes."
The estate passed next, 1715-19, to William Hutchinson, the son, and in 1721 to Eliakim
Hutchinson, the grandson, a loyalist.

/ 42 HI be

a
r

DOCK SQUARE, ABOUT I732. 1

1 This sketch is based on a plan preserved
in the City Hall, and of which a copy made by
the late W. G. Brooks is in the Cabinet of the
Historical Society. The figures stand for the
following names and sites : i, Hutchinson ; 2,
Billings ; 3, Randall ; 4, Harvard ; 5, Hannas ;
6, Checkley ; 7, Jackson ; 8, Rand ; 9, Rawson ;
10, Right; II, W. Coffin; 12, Millar; 13, J.
Tyler; 14, Tyler; 15, Hancock; 16, Boyce ; 17,
Pemberton; 18, Brooks; 19, Pitts; 20, Watch-
house; 21, Jackson; 22, Abbott; 23, Bromfield;

24, Hubbard ; 25, Small shops ; 26, Billings ; 27,
Platform, Fish shop ; 28, Swing Bridge ; 29,
Borland ; 30, Bridgman Hall and Warehouse ;
31, Woodmancy's wharf; 32, Fayerweather ; 33,
Colman ; 34, Hutchinson ; 35, Gushing ; 36,
Bronsdon ; 37, Jeffery ; 38, Palmer's Ware-
house; 39, Gill and Sewall ; 40, Green; 41,
Allen; 42, Bromfield; 43, Noyes; 44, Boylston ;
45, Bailey ; 46, Sun Tavern ; 47, Borman and
Gibbs; 48, Maverick; 49, Edes; 50, Blake; 51,
Colson.

INTRODUCTION. XX111

64. George Burden, a shoemaker, h. There was a wharf opposite his house in 1641,
when he had permission to place a vessel at the head of it in which to water his leather.
Burden's will is in A'. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1854,

p. 278 ; and see 1880, p. 44, for a note of the descent of this /^ ^ fcm? O
lot. A way round the north side of the cove from this lot to /*~"-J *" <

John Lowe's (93) was laid out definitely in 1642. When

the town, in 1649, sold the reversion till 1726 of the dock to James Everill, on his paying
an annual 6 i6s. lod. " to the school's use," it was then ordered that all the land at the
head of the cove " round about by John Glover's (65), George Burden's (64), Hugh Gun-
nison's (63), Captain William Tinge's (62), William Franklin's (55), Robert Nashe's (54),
and eight foot to the eastward of it is highway ; as alsoe from the eastward sid of the eight
foot, and round about bye the corner of Edward Bendall's brick howse (52), and so by
Samuel Cole's howse (50), as alsoe to Edward Ting's wharfe (49), shall goe a high way of
twentye foote in breadth." This head of the dock was the "common landing place" as .
early as 1634, when there was a bridge or pier here.

65. John Glover, h. By will, 1653, he left half his house nearest Mr. Webb's to his
wife, and half to his son Habakkuk, with half his tan-yard adjacent ; also to this son half
his house next Goodman Hudson's. Another son, John, who had graduated at Harvard

in 1651, continued to live with the mother. Becoming a merchant, he moved to Swansea;
and returning to Boston in 1690, lived and died (1696) on Summer Street, and lies buried
in the Granary Burying-ground. Glover Memorials, p. 149; Sibley, Harvard Graduates,
p. 297.

66. William Hudson, Jr., h., g., and brewhouse. This was known as the " Castle
Tavern," and Hudson and his wife Anne conveyed it in 1674 to John Wing, who in 1687
' set a room in his house for a man to show tricks in ; " and Sewall records, amusingly,
how he went to labor with Wing and convince him of its sinfulness, ending his account:
"Sung the 9o' h Ps. from the 12 th v. to the end. Broke up." (Sewall Papers, i. 196.) In
1694 it is called the "George Tavern." Mr. John T. Hassam traces the subsequent
history of this estate in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., 1879, p. 400.

67. Samuel Greames, h. 68. Sarah Knight, h. 69. Jeremy Houtchin. 70. Francis
Dowse. 71. George Burden. West of Burden, Anne Hunne, widow of George Hunne,
had a lot. The will of Hunne, 1640, is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., Jan. 1853, p. 31.

pra^ta>y

72, 73. Thomas Makepeace. This was perhaps the house John Underhill surrendered in
1639 to Thomas Makepeace of Dorchester, whose will, 1666, is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal.

Keg., October, 1861, p. 323. It was the corner lot (No. 72), on which a well-known
Boston merchant, William Tailer, lived, the same who committed suicide July 12, 1682.
(N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg , vii. 56.) His wife was Rebecca, a daughter of Israel
Stoughton of Dorchester, and it was with her in this house that Andros is supposed to
have taken up his abode when he came to Boston in 1686. .-* ^

The son, William Tailer of Dorchester, became Lieut.- 0^7/2. ^M^/j^/r
Governor, and rented this house to Edward Lyde, who

in 1701-2 bought the property. Sewall Papers, i. 163, 202 ; N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,
July, 1863, p. 239; July, 1864, p. 289.

xxv

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

74. George Bates, in the rear of Anne Hunne. The will of John Endicott (N. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1862, p. 333), leaving his property to his wife Elizabeth,
daughter of Jeremy Houtchin (E. had no children), mentions his house as ''joyning to
George Bates on the west."

75. John Leverett and Henry Pease
had lots here. The highway adjoining, the
present Portland Street, seems to be the
twenty-five foot passage which Henry Pease agreed to " fence out through his lands against
the cove, near his dwelling, unto the cross high way by our brother James Everill's,"
1639-40. It was on this lot, where now stands the American House, that Joseph Warren
in 1764 took up his abode, and began the practice of medicine. He lived then in a house
in which Joseph Green, a prominent merchant of his day not to be confounded with
Joseph Green the wit died, July i, 1765. Green had bought of Governor Belcher, in
1734, the large house on this lot for ,3,600. (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., vi. 275.)
Dr. Samuel A. Green owns his portrait. 76-86 ; see Plan A, I, etc.

87. James Everill, a shoemaker, h. and large lot, embracing nearly the whole front on
Hanover Street, out of which he sold lots to various people.
William Tyng acquired a part on Elm Street; and along
Hanover Street, passing north, were the lots of Francis
Dowse, Evan Thomas, a vintner (sold to James Bill), William Corser (sold to John

Chamberlyn), Robert Porter, John Stevenson, and
William Hayward. The corner lot on Hanover and
Union streets passed to Henry Maudesley about 1653 ;
and Shurtleff, Desc. of Bos/on, p. 628, has traced the

title down, until it became the famous " Blue Ball," the home of Franklin's father. It is
now cut off by the extension of Washington Street. 88. Edmund Dennis, a small lot.
89-96 ; see Plan A, 77, 80-86.

PLAN C. 1-7 ; see Plan D, I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, [6. On the northerly portion of No. 7

the White Horse Tavern stood in the next century. It was kept by Joseph Mor-

^~> ton in 1760. 8. Jacob Leger, h. and g. ; bought of Richard

-V *5)ff\ w^ Brackett, 1638. Leger's signature here given is from his will,

} *'

9. William Hudson, Jr.. h. and g. ; sold to Richard Carter, a carpenter, in 1639.

lot nearly corresponds to the site of the Lamb Tavern, which stood here before the
middle of the last century. Drake says that Colonel Doty was the host in 1760. Adjoin-
ing it on the north was the Lion Tavern.

10, 11. Thomas Oliver, h. and g. ; sold in 1645 to Nicholas Shapley. Oliver's will is
in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1854, p. 351. This lot seems to have been
sold in 1647 by Francis Smith to William Chamberlin ; and was later sold to Richard
Wilson. Opposite the rear of this lot, on the Common, now the line of Mason Street, the
town built in 1717 (it is shown on Bonner's map) the South Writing School. It is de-
scribed then as " adjoining to Cornell's lot, over against Mr. Wainwright's."

12. Henry Webb. This lot, about I a., was granted by William Parsons to Richard
Carter in 1646. 13. George Burden, g. 14. James Johnson, g. These lots, on the
line of the present Mason Street, were granted in 1638 to James Johnson, John Davis,

INTRODUCTION.

XXV

PLAN c. (WASHINGTON STREET, ETC.)

George Burden, and Nathaniel Chappell, and were then called " gardens on the back side
of the lots in y e long street." They mark the site of the mansion and grounds of James
VOL. H. d.

XXVI THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Swan of a later day, and still later the famous Washington Gardens of the early part of
this century.

15. John Leverett, who sold the south part in 1664 to one Wyard, and he in 1666 to
John Wampus, an Indian. (Gleaner Article, No. 6.) 16. Robert Wing, h., " both old and
new built;" sold in 164810 Thomas Painter. He died in 1651. See his will in N. K.
Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, 1850, p. 54.

17. Ralph Mason, h. and g. ; mortgaged to Matthew Cradock, of London, in 1638, for
; sold to Thomas Painter. Painter had liberty to sell a house to Ephraim Hunt in
1650. Mason made his mark to his will in 1672. 18. Thomas Clark, h. and g. 19. Mr.
Flint, h. and g. 20. Anthony Harker, h. and
g.; sold to Isaac Vergoose in 1659, whose

wife was that " Mother Goose " who, as is
claimed, sung years afterwards the famous
rhymes to a grand-child, the son of Fleet
the printer, who collected the scraps and published them in 1719, the precursor of many
editions since. (See W. A. Wheeler, Noted Names of Fiction, 252 ; and his introduction to
an edition of Mother Goose published in New York, 1870: also, N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., 1873, pp. 144, 311 ; and Sewall Papers, i. 108.) The claim rests on no very
secure foundation.

21. Mr. Flint, h. and g. 22. Robert Blott, h. and g. His will is given in N. E.
Hist and Geneal. Reg., January, 1861, p. 73. 23. Granted to Richard Sherman's wife
in 1637, when Stephen Kinsley had a house plot near by ; and Sherman in
1647 sold a half acre to Francis Smith, who the same year deeded two acres,
including land bought of Edmund Jacklin. This corner was later owned by
Captain Edward Wyllys, and was bought of his heirs by Colonel Vetch in 1712,
who in 1713-14 sold it to Captain Thomas Steel. (Sewall Papers, iii. 10.) It was
later owned bv Thomas Oxnard, the progenitor of the family of that name ;

THE MARK OF f

FRANCIS SMITH, and at his death, in 1754, it was valued at ,1,200. (N. E. Hist, and Geneal.
Reg., 1872, p. 4.) 24. Daniel Maud the school-master; granted in 1637; sold
to Edmund Jacklin in 1643. Here at a later day was the shop of the well-known London
coach-maker. Major Adino Paddock, the same who planted, about 1762, before the
Granary Burial-ground, the elms which not long since were cut down. The name of
the Burial-ground was derived from the public granary, which, in 1737, was built on the
opposite side of the street where Park-Street Church now stands. The keeper of this
granary was for a long time Francis Willoughby. This part of Tremont Street was
called " Long Acre " in the provincial times.
On a part of this lot, too, was built the
manufacturing house which formed the east
corner of what is now Hamilton Place, and
was erected by the Province to encourage spinning and kindred occupations. It dis-
appeared in 1806. 25. Richard Cooke, g.; sold to Edmund Jacklin; who in 1647 sold
to Francis Smith ; he to Amos Richardson the same year; and later it was owned by
Anthony Stoddard, the rich linen-draper.

26. See 32. 27. Jane, widow of Richard Parker, h. and g.; and, intending to marry,
she deeded it, in 1646, to her children, Margaret, John, Thomas, and Noah. 28. William

Townsend, h. and g. 29. Edmund Jacklin,
a glazier, h. and g.; sold in 1646 to Nicholas
Busbie, a worsted weaver. Busbie's will, 1657

E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1854, p. 279), mentions his new dwelling-house^
with garden, which he gives to his wife, and after her to his son Abraham. He divided
his books, " phisicke bookes" to son John, and "bookes of divinity or history "to
Abraham ; and his "weaving tooles as the two loomes, the one to John Busby in case he
come over to New England, or else to William Nickerson the same."

INTRODUCTION.

XXV11

30. Edmund Dennis, h. and g.
31. Ephraim Pope, h. and g. 32.
Extending to 26, about on the line
of Bromfield Street, Richard Fair-
banks, g.; later owned by William
Davis the apothecary. Fairbanks,
however, retained a lot in the rear
of those on School Street. Wil-
liam Aspinwall owned at one time
from street to street, and he sold
h., g. , orchard, and close in 165210
his son-in-law, John Angier, then
making two acres. Another house
and outbuildings he sold, in 1652,
to Sampson Shoare ; and he to
Theodore Atkinson, who had for-
merly been a servant to John New-
gate the hatter. Atkinson sold to
Edward Rawson, the Colonial Sec-
retary. The street now known as
Bromfield Street was long called
Rawson's Lane, but became later
known as Bromfield's Lane, after
a distinguished merchant of the pro-
vincial period, Edward Bromfield,
who lived on the southerly side,
about half-way up, where later the
Bromfield House stood. (This site
was afterwards occupied by the
Indian Queen Tavern.) Mr. Brom-
field had settled in Boston in 1675,
and died in 1734. His family is
traced in N. E. Hist, and Geneal.
Reg., October, 1871, p. 330. 33.
Thomas Grubb, h. and g.

34. Thomas Millard, h. and g.
After Millard's death this estate
passed to Colonel Samuel Shrimp-
ton in 1672, who sold it in 1676 to
Peter Sergeant, who built upon the
lot the famous house, later to be
known as the " Province House,"
when it was bought in 1713 to be
made the royal governor's official
residence. The Indian which was
perched upon the top of the cupola
was the handiwork of Deacon Shem
Drowne, the same who made the
grasshopper vane of Faneuil Hall.
The further history of the estate
is traced in Shurtleff's Description
of Boston, 596. See also Dr. Ellis's
chapter in this volume.

PowderHouf e
Watch Houfe

FROM BONNER'S MAP, 1722.

XX VI 11

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

35. Walter Blackborne, h., g., and shop, which Elizabeth Blackborne (Walter having
gone to England) sold in 1641 to Francis Lyle the barber, who united the service of a

surgeon, after the fashion of his day, and in

this capacity served later in the Parliamentary

army in England. Henry Bridgham owned part of the lot, which he sold in 1648 to

Richard Tapping and John Spoore.

36. Atherton Hough, h. and g. It was well up School Street that the little French

f church was built, about 1714. They
^t^GTl^. had bou g |ltthe lot of James Meers.
J hatter, ten years earlier. Next door

to them, in 1747, Richard Cranch,
card-maker, had his shop, the father of Judge Cranch. 37. Arthur Perry, tailor and
drummer, h. and g. He died Oct. 9, 1652, but left a son, Seth, to keep up his trade.

38. John Lugge, h. and g. 39. Richard Cooke, h. and g. Here also lived his

son, Dr. Elisha Cooke, a citizen who figured largely in the Inter-Charter period. It was
in this house that Governor Burnet lived while the Province House was making ready.
40. John Synderland. 41. Zaccheus Bosworth, h. and g., with barns, cow-house,

orchard ; sold in 1652 to Thomas Woodward.
Jh /? C\ /? f) Bosworth's will, 1655, is in N. E. Hist, and

^1 / ^^J. M^ ^u

J. t^rusisCJZ&uh Geneal. Reg., October, 1851, p. 443. On this
<ZZ/ lot there was erected, early in the next century

the brick house which became the residence
of Jacob Wendell, a wealthy merchant and prominent citizen of his day.

42. Governor Winthrop. " His house stood nearly opposite the foot of School
Street. His "green" is now occupied by the Old South Church. Before his death he

deeded the property to his son Stephen, reserving right of occupancy of one half for his

own and his wife's life. The property came into the possession of

John Norton, the minister of the First*-Church, whose will is given 7 * n J^Ctffn>^-

in ^V*. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., October, 1857, p. 342 ; and his

widow gave it to the Third Church, and upon it their first edifice was built, in 1670,

a wooden structure, which gave place in 1729 to the present building.

43. Atherton Hough, h. This is the point at which James Boutineau, in the pro-

INTRODUCTION.

vincial period, had his mansion. He married a sister of Peter Faneuil. 44. Richard
Sherman, h. The annexed signature is from his will, in 1660, which is printed in N. E.
Hist. andGeneal. Reg., July, 1855, p. 227. See Ibid., April, 1864, p. 157, for the will of
the widow Robinson, formerly wife of Richard Shearman.

45. William Hibbins, gentleman, h., g., and stable. Somewhere between 45 and 46 on
the Water Street side, Major John Walley had his mansion-house in the early part of
the next century, with wharf belonging, and land stretching through to Milk Street. Upon
his death, in 1711, it descended to his son John; and on his death, in 1755, it was

advertised as containing "upwards of twenty rooms." The present Devonshire Street
runs through lot 45, and was early known as Joyliffe's Lane, from John Joyliffe, a prom-
inent citizen, who lived upon it, and died in 1701. Drake's Boston, 509.

46. John Spoore, h. and g. Spoore was called of Clapton, Somersetshire, when he
bought, in 1638, Mr. Wilke's house and ground, perhaps this lot. Somewhere here-
about on the Creek the leather-dressers, in 1643, were granted a place to water their
leather. Spoore mortgaged this property in 1648, and by some means we find Deacon
Henry Bridgham in possession in
1655, who built in 1670 a mansion
on the ground, and had his tan-pits f-
near by. He did not live, however,
to move into the new house, but died in the old one in March, 1670-71 ; and on the
death of his widow, in 1672, the property passed to the sons, and in 1680 was
divided, the new house falling to Dr. John Bridgham, of Ipswich. The Doctor died
in 1721, and this house fell to his nephew Joseph Bridgham, a recent graduate
of Harvard, but now an apothecary in Boston. Bridgham sold it in February,
1734-35, to Francis Borland for ,1,200. Joseph Calef was a tenant of the house, and
plied his trade with the tan-pits. It was while Calef was here that Congress Street was
laid out from Milk to Water Street. There was a petition in 1757 to continue Water Street
over the old tan heaps and to pave it. Calef died in September, 1763, and the house and
grounds fell to Francis Lindall Borland, but afterwards came in joint possession to
John Borland, a brother of Francis Lindall, and to the children of Wait Still Winthrop,
who had married a daughter of Francis Borland. The remaining history of the house
falls later than the provincial times. It became the famous Julien House, and its
descent is traced at length by Shurtleff, Boston, 659.

47. John Spoore, g. 48. William Pell, tallow chandler, h. and g. 49. Robert Rice,
h. and g. 50. William Dinsdale, h. and g. 51. John Kenrick, h. and g. 52. James
Penn, h. and g.; granted in 1637. 53. Nicholas Parser, h. and g. 54. Nathaniel Bishop,

h. and g. A lane was laid out (Oct. 15, 1645 March 23, 1646) west of this lot, running
through to Summer Street, nearly the present Hawley Street, and known early as
Bishop's Alley.

55. John Stevenson, h. and g. His widow married William Blackstone, and the lot
passed in 1646 to Abraham Page; and then, same year, to John Hansett of Roxbury ; but
the spot got its chief glory sixty years later, when Benjamin Franklin was born here.

56. Robert Reynolds, shoemaker, h. and g. His will, 1658, is in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., April, 1855, p. 137; gives his house and orchard, after his wife's decease, to
his son Nathaniel, who removed to Bristol, R. I. A family distinguished in the medical
profession represents the blood in Boston to-day.

XXX THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

57. Edward Fletcher, h.; sold the northern part in 1646 to William Hailstone, a
tailor, from Taunton ; he to Richard Lippincott, barber. It was seemingly on this lot
that Daniel Johonnot, the Huguenot distiller, dwelt in his latter years. A'. E. Hist, and

Geneal. Reg., October, 1852, p. 359. 58. Richard Waite,
tailor, h. and g. An account of him and his family is given in
N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1877, p. 422. 59. Charity White,
h. and small yard. 60. Francis East, carpenter, h. and g. 61. Nathaniel Eaton, h. and g.
62. Richard Hogg, h. and g. ; sold in 1645 to J onn Lake, and he to Thomas Wiborne

in 1648, whose will, 1656, is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1852, p. 289. 63. John
Marshall, h. and g. 64. Nathaniel Woodward, h. and g. 65. John Palmer, Jr., h. and y.

66. James Stokes, h. and g.; sold to George Bromer ; he, in 1642, to Amos Richard-
son, a tailor. Here in the next century, after

Bishop's Alley (the modern Hawley Street)

was run through, on the upper corner of it

stood the old Seven Star Inn, giving its

name for a while to the street; and upon the same spot, in 1734, the first edifice of

Trinity Church was erected, which stood till 1828. This land was bought for the church

of William Speakman.

67. William Hudson, Sr., g. Sewall, in 1704, records the burial of a Quaker in
what seems this lot, as the Quakers did not have till 1709 any cemetery of their own. At
the time of the burial it was called Brightman's pasture and orchard. Sewall Papers,
ii. I 13, and note.

68. John Palmer, Sr., h. and g. Not far from this spot stood, in the provincial days,
the elegant mansion of the younger Sir William Pepperrell, which was sold under the
confiscation act in 1779- Sabine, American Loyalists, ii. 170.

69. Robert Scott, g. 70. Gamaliel Waite, h. Gamaliel Waite was a brother of
Richard Waite, and died in 1685, aged eighty-seven. (A 7 . E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,
1877, p. 424.) 71. Thomas Oliver, g. 72. Benjamin Negoos, h. 73. Robert Scott, g.

74. Maudit Engles, h. Mr. Crocker says that his descendants wrote the name
" Engs." The name in the Book of Possessions is " Engles," though the autograph

here given is " Enges." Savage gives it "Ingles." It
is written "English" sometimes. 75. Captain Robert
Keayne, g. This lot fell to Keayne's granddaughter
Anne and her husband, Captain Nicholas Paige, and
from them passed to Daniel Johonnot in 1719, then bounding east, on Long Lane,
while on its easterly bounds stood Mr. Johonnot's distillery and store-houses. In 1793
it was sold to the trustees of the Boston Theatre ; and on one part of it, separated from
the theatre lot by Franklin Street, the Catholics, in 1803, erected their first church. N. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1852, p. 358.

76. Richard Tuttle, and afterward his widow, had a wind-mill here, near the present
Church-Green estate. In 1642 permission was given to remove the wind-mill into the
fort ; but the lot had a wind-mill on it wJien it subse-
quently passed to Edward Holyoke, Richard Woodward, Jz^+P
and then to William Aspinwall. It was often spoken of as ^

the " South Wind-mill." After that portion of Bedford

Street (called Blind Lane) which connects with Summer Street was cut though, the lot
formed by the junction seems to have come into the possession of the town, by which it was

INTRODUCTION. xxxi

granted, in 1715,10 a new society, which became the New South Church. The edifice
then built stood through the provincial period, and was replaced in 1814 by the structure
which the present generation remember as upon the spot before 1868. It is not explained
why the site was called " Church Green" before it was contemplated to use it for church
purposes. Sewall Papers, iii. 61.

77. George Griggs, h.; allowed to sell in 1638, ' for his redeeming out of their debts,"
to Mr. Tuttill of Ipswich, and Mr. Tuttill of Charlestown. The annexed signature is to
his will in 1655, when he spoke of him- ^

self as sick in body. It is printed in
N. E. Hist, and Geneal Reg., Oct., (/

1855. P- 343-

78. William Davies, lock and gunsmith ; granted 1638 ; sold to William Blantaine.
The portion of this lot next the pond lot belonged, early in the provincial time, to
Benjamin Church, the father of the Revolutionary traitor, who sold it in 1742 to Robert

Thompson ; and he, in 1764, to John Rowe, who built
upon it a mansion, afterwards the residence of Judge
Prescott, and which is portrayed in George Ticknors
Life of William H. Prescott. In 1845 it passed by
purchase to the Church of the Saviour, and the free-
stone structure was built upon it, which has been taken carefully down and reconstructed
on Newbury Street. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 409.

79. Thomas Bell, h. and g. He died 1655, and his son Thomas conveyed it to John
Maryon in 1668.

80. Richard Rollick, Hollidge, or Hollinghead, h. and 1. In 1680 Hollick and his
wife Ann, in their old age, sold the lot (reserving the use of the house for their lives) to
Henry Alline and Robert Sanderson, deacons of the First Church ; but not until 1808 did
that church erect, on an inner part of this lot, their late meeting-house on Chauncy Place.
Gleaner said, in 1855, that this was probably the only lot in Boston held under a direct
conveyance from the first possessor.

81. Gamaliel Waite, g. This lot was the site of the fine old mansion of the provin-
cial time which Leonard Vassall built, now marked by the building of C. F. Hovey & Co.
Mr. T. C. Amory (A r . E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1871, p. 38 ; see also Jan., 1863,
p. 59) has traced the descent of the property, and described the mansion. For the Vassall
family, see N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1863, and Heraldic Journal, ii. 17. Vassall
bought it in 1727 of Simeon Stoddard ; and

after his death, in 1737, it passed by sale to
Thomas Hubbard, who lived in the house till
his death, in 1773. He had been Treasurer
of Harvard College, and his portrait by Copley
now hangs in Memorial Hall.

82. Elizabeth Purton, a widow as early as 1633, whose h. in 1651 seems to have been
leased by Robert Morse to James Oliver. She made her mark to her will, dated 1650,
which is printed in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1853, p. 233. On this site, in
the next century, Thomas English lived in a sightly mansion-house. 83. Job Judkins,
h. and g.

84. Robert Hull, the blacksmith, h. and g. His will is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal.

Reg., Oct., 1861, p. 322 It was at this point
that the printing-office stood, in 1704, where the
first Boston newspaper, the News-Letter, was
printed.

85. John Hurd, tailor, h. andg.: mortgaged to Governor Dudley for ^23 in 1649. It
was granted to Hurd by John Leverett in consideration of a garden granted Leverett in
the New Field. For Hurd's descendants, see N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Re., April, 1865,
p. 123. 86. William Blantaine. h. and g. He made liis mark to his will, which is printed

XXxii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

in N.E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1857, p. 172. 87. Thomas Wheeler, tailor, h. and
g. His will, 1654, 5s in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Re%., July, 1851, p. 305.

88. Pond, '-the town's watering-place." This pond had become so much a nuisance
in the provincial days that in 1739 tne question of filling it up was mooted, and in 1753
the lot then containing about one ninth of an acre was sold by the town to David Wheeler.
He died in 1770, and his wife, who held it, died in 1773.

89. John Viall, vintner; conveyed by him and his wife Mary, about 1644, to William

Costin, carpenter ; he to Edward Cowell, " cordwinder ; " and
he and his wife Sarah, in 1671, to Rev. James Allen, of the First
Church, who was reputed to be "very rich," and, perhaps having
a speculative turn, he sold it the next year.

90. Common land. 91. Thomas Buttolph, g.
92. Miles Reading. 93. David Offley, h. and g.
94. Edward Rainsford, h. and g. 95. Garret Bourne,
h. and g. Here within the house-yard stood the

" Liberty Tree," which is said to have been planted in 1646, and became famous in the
Stamp- Act times, and was cut down in spite by the Tories in 1775. 96. Griffith Bowen,
h. and g.

97. - Cole, h. and g.; later owned by John Cuddington, John Bateman, and
John Odlin, in 1650. 98. John Odlin, h. and g.

99. Walter Sinet, fisherman, h. and g. ; granted in 1638. 100. Thomas Fowle, h.
and g. He removed to Braintree. In 1650, h. and orchard sold by John Cuddington to
William Holloway. 101. Jacob Leger, h. and g. His will is in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Oct., 1857, p. 340. 102. Robert Woodward, h. and g. ; granted in 1637.
Papers relating to his estate are in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1859, p. 10.
Bedford Street was laid out in 1644.

103. Owen Roe, h. and g. 104. John Pelton, h. and 1. 105. A piece of marsh.
106. James Davies, sailor, h. and^g. 107. William Parsons, h. and g. 108. William
Corser, h. and g. He is called in his will, 1673, Cosser, and, being " weak of body,"
makes his mark to it. His wife was Joanna.

109. Elder Thomas Oliver, h. and g. Here he practised the healing art, the
physician of the young town, as well as ruler in its church. See his relationship to the
other Olivers in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1865, p. 100. Between this lot and
No. 42, on the line of the present Spring Lane, was the ancient spring-gate of the first
comers. (See Mr. Bynner's account of it in Vol. I. p. 543 ) When, in the provincial
period, Water Street was extended through this lot into the present Washington Street,
on the northerly corner, at the sign of the " Heart and Crown," Thomas Fleet in 1731 had
his printing office, and here, in 1735, he began the publication of the Boston Evening
Post. See further on this point in Mr. Goddard's chapter on the " Literature and the
Press of the Provincial Period" in the present volume.

INTRODUCTION.

XXX111

110. Richard Fairbanks, h. and g. ; sold in 1652 to Robert Turner, who later built a
new house on the lot, which is mentioned in his will (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan.,
1859, p. 11). Here at a later day The Blue Anchor was kept by George Monck,

whom Dunton celebrates in his Letters, and who extended his career into the provincial
days. (See Whitmore's note to Record Commissioners' edition of Gleaner Articles, p.
18.) A petition from Joseph Willson fora license shows that this or another tavern of
the same name was called " Near Oliver's Dock " in 1755, and that it had been known
as such for forty years, a lesser period than is true, certainly, if it was not another
hostlery. It was the same tavern which Thomas Bayley petitioned for the privilege of
keeping in 1752. 111. Richard Woodhouse, h. and 1. 112. Thomas Foster, h.; sold
in 1647 to William Browne, later of Salem.

113. Jonathan Negoos, h. 114. Thomas Munt. He had permission in 1635 to fence
in a piece of marsh before his house for the making of brick. (See N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., April, 1862, p. 162.) 115. Henry Messenger, joiner, h. and g. . This is

the lot on which now stands the building of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and, in
part, the Boston Museum. His will is dated March 15, 1672, and he died in 1681,
his wife Sarah inheriting the estate ; and she at her death, 1697, gave the half next the
burial-place to her son Thomas, and the other half to her son Simeon. An account of
his descendants is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct., 1862, p. 309 ; and is given
more at length in the Genealogy of the Messenger Family, by George W. Messenger,
Albany, 1863. This Messenger lot, separating the town property on School from that on
Court Street, was in part later acquired by the town. (Gleaner Articles, No 3.) 116.
Burial-ground. See Gleaner Article, No. 4.

117. Thomas Scottow, h. and g. His will is in A. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct.,
1856, p. 362. He sold to the town in 1645, the
present City Hall lot. The town built a school-house
upon it, and Mr. Woodmansy, the teacher, lived in the
old house. Woodmansy bequeathed his " little estate"

in 1667 to his wife Margaret and his daughters Martha and Bathia. His will is in
A'. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1862, p. 55. In 1666 Daniel Henchman was

employed to assist Woodmansy. Benjamin Tompson succeeded Woodmansy in 1667,
acting with Henchman. Jan. 6, 1671, the celebrated Ezekiel Cheever took the school,

having accepted the appointment the previous December 29, and kept it until 1708.
An account of Cheever, by Mr. Hassam, in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1879,

VOL. n. e.

XXXIV THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

p. 175, gives various particulars about the school-house while it was in charge of this
master. Cheever was succeeded by Nathaniel Williams. Thomas Prince preached
Williams's funeral sermon, which was printed in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct.,
l8 54, P- 368. Williams died in 1738, and was followed by John Lovell. In 1750 the

school had about a hundred pupils, if we may judge from a petition of Lovell for a porch to
be built to the school-house, since "every rainy day the chill is very great from a hundred
wet great coats."

Between the teacher's house and the school-house, Richard Cooke was permitted in
1652 to build, paying a ground rent, which went for the school-master's salary. In 1704 a
new school-house was built on the spot. The ground now in front of the City Hall was
sold by the town later, and again repurchased. Just below this there stood, in the
provincial times, the dwelling of Jean Paul Mascarene, a Huguenot, who went to Nova

Scotia in 1711, and became Governor there ; but died in Boston in 1760. A little further
down the street was the Cromwell's Head Tavern, a somewhat famous resort in the
provincial period; here Washington lodged when he came to Boston in 1756. Just above
this inn lived the merchant and wit, Joseph Green.

118. Edward Hutchinson, h. and g. After his removal to Rhode Island, his son was
permitted to sell it to his uncle, Richard Hutchinson, of London, who never occupied it.
The " Old Corner Book-Store," erected in 1712, now occupies a portion of the lot; and
the descent of the property has been traced in Shurtleff's Description of Boston, p. 671.

119. Major-General Robert Sedgwick, h. and g. He had lived earlier in Charles-
town. It was in a court which, in the provincial period, extended through this lot

toward the present Court Square that the fire of
17 ir began, breaking out, as the News-Letter of the
^ av sa 'd> " ' n an 'd tenement, within a back-yard in
Cornhill [Washington Street], near the first meeting-
house ; " and Sewall says it " broke out in a little

house belonging to Captain Ephraim Savage, by reason of the drunkenness of

Moss," whom the News-Letter characterizes as a " poor Scottish woman ;" and Drake
gives the name of Mary Morse. (Sewall Papers, ii. 323.) There are two petitions on file
in the City Clerk's office giving the names of some of the principal sufferers by this fire.
The first, whose signatures are opposite, is for an abatement of rates because of their
losses, signed by Samuel Lynde and others. The other is for permission to move small
buildings into the burnt district, to give temporary relief to such as were burned out,
themselves among the number. This was headed by Nicholas Boone.

120. Valentine Hill, h. and g.; sold in 1645 to William Davies. Hill moved, after
1650, to Dover, New Hampshire It

was probably from a building on this lot
that the first number of the Boston News-
Letter was published, April 24, 1704.

121. William Teft, h. He was enjoined, in 1644, not to plant it with Indian corn,

INTRODUCTION.

XXXV

nor anything that may hinder the wind-mill on 76. The records show that William
Teffe, tailor, agreed to buy Jacob Wilson's h. and ground in 1638; and that in 1639-40

he bought a h. and ^ a. of Edward Gibbons, which the latter had bought of William
Mauer, and he of William Hudson, Sr., in 1639.
122. William Deming, h. 123. Benjamin

Gillom, h. 124. Robert Turner's pasture ;
sold 6 a. in 1652 to Richard Fairbanks. Long
Lane (Federal Street) was later cut through
the westerly part of this lot, and upon it the
meeting-house was built in 1744, in which
Channing subsequently ministered. There was
a petition for widening Long Lane in 1716, and
the annexed autographs (the Olivers. Sheafe,
and Adams) show some of the principal resi-
dents in this neighborhood at that time.

140. Richard Fairbanks. Marsh along the creek.

PLAN D. 1. William Coleborne, h. and g. His will is given in the N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., April, 1857, p. 174. In the next century, 1734, David Colson, one of the

selectmen, built a house here. 2. Edward Belcher, h. and g.
/ JviJ <&-ir&nsn-^- The autographs of Edward Belcher, father and son, are annexed,

the first to his will in 1671 ; the other in 1673. The father

married Christian, sister of William Talmage, and their daughter Ann married Samuel
Flack. He sold the westerly part to Bernard Trot in 1670.

3. William Talmage, h. and g. He sold the westerly part to Bernard Trot in 1669,
and in 1704 William Griggs owned the whole lot. 4. Thomas Snow. He had, Dec. 16,

XXXVI

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

1667, an old dwelling-house " to which the sign of the Dove is fastened," and a new house
" fronting to the highway leading to the street that leads to Roxbury." (Suffolk Deeds,
v - 353-1 quoted in Report of Committee on the Nomenclature of Streets, 1879, p. 12.) His
lot stretched east in the rear of Talmage and Belcher. His widow Milcha married

to.

PLAN D. (SOUTH END.)

William Wright before 1672. Suffolk Deeds, lib. xi. f. 84, has a plan of the division of
Snow's estate, showing that as early as 1672 a lane ran from Boylston Street northeast,
nearly on the line of the present Tremont Street. Mr. Whitmore says that between 4 and
5 was another lot, laid out by the town in 1665 to Richard Bellingham in compensation for
land taken of him for the " highway toward Roxsberry."

5. Robert Walker, h. and g. March 30, 1639-40, the Common was reserved north
of this, and excepting "three or four lots" (6, 7, 8, and 9) further down the way, when

beyond 9 the line of the Common crossed the street and
to k * n ^ ar k Square and some of the bordering lands.
Walker died May 29, 1687; and Sewall (Papers, i. 179)
says he was "a very good man and conversant among
God's New England people from the beginning." Walker's lot was known as Foster's
Pasture, when the town bought it in 1787. It is now nearly represented in the Deer Park.

INTRODUCTION. XXXvii

6. William Briscoe, tailor, h. and g. ; granted 1639-40. 7. Cotton Flacke; granted

1640 ; seems to have also been granted to Edward Goodwin, and later belonged to William

Blantaine. Flacke signed his will, 1654, with a mark. It is given in N. E. Hist, and

Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1854, p. 353. His widow Jane sold the lot in 1658 to Thomas Clarke,

who died in 1678, and his daughters, Leah married Thomas

Baker and Deborah married Nathaniel Byfield. One of

Baker's daughters married George Waldron, who in 1704

bought out the other heirs and in 1714 sold to Colonel Fitch,

as stated below. Whitmore thinks Clarke also owned to the Marsh, taking in lots 8 and 9.

8. John Search, granted 1641. 9. Arthur Clarke, granted 1645.

The lots from 5 to 9 came in the next century into the possession of Colonel Thomas

Fitch and his heirs. Fitch bought the lower part, in 1714, of George Waldron, when

Edward Bromfield owned the upper part. Fitch's heirs,
Martha Allen and Andrew Oliver, inherited and added to
the Fitch property to make them the owners of all the
north side of Boylston Street. In 1757 Andrew Oliver,
Jr , and his wife Mary sold the present burial-lot to the
town ; and having two years before bought the Allen
share east of it, he sold that to William Foster in 1780,

and Foster, in 1787, deeded the present deer-park and adjacent ground to the town.

Sewall Papers, ii. 411.

' T*

10. The Common. The question of the extension of the Common over the Round
Marsh, where later the rope- walks were, is set forth in Gleaner Articles, p. 36, note.
11. Ralph Roote, h. and g. ; sold in 1660 to James Balston ; owned in 1702 by the Widow
Rainsford. Beyond this, bounding on the Marsh (10), was William Salter, h. and g. He
was the jailer. In 1689 this fell to his son Jabez ; in 1702 it was sold to John Barry, who
in 1718 gave it to his nephew James Barry. This lot extended beyond Carver Street, and
followed nearly the line of Pleasant Street in bounding on the Marsh.

12. John Cranwell, h. and g., with a rear lot. His brother sold it in 1652 to Margery,
widow of Jacob Eliot, Sr. 13. Robert Walker, g. ; the west part was owned by Thomas
Baker and the east by Thomas Downes in 1674, when the Eliot heirs added it to No. 12 ;
and in 1724 the Holyoke heirs sold the corner (Hotel Pelham) to William Lambert. 14.
William Talmage, g. In 1706 his niece, Ann Flack, sold it to John Clough. It took in
what is now Hotel Boylston. 15. Whitmore places here the gardens of Edward Belcher
and Seth Perry, which in 1697 were owned by Francis Burroughs and Simeon Stoddard.

16. Elder Jacob Eliot, h. and g., with adjoining lands. After Eliot's death (see
his will in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., Jan. 1850, p. 53 ; also, 1876, p. 205) the

house-part of this estate passed to Deacon Theophilus Frary, who married Eliot's daughter
Hannah. The annexed signatures of the children and son-in-law of the Elder are from
a petition in approval of a memorial to the court, on file in the Probate Office. Frary
died in 1700, leaving his estate to his three daughters, one of whom, Abigail, the wife
of one Arnold, had an only child, Hannah, who married Samuel Welles, a merchant, whose
autograph is here copied from a bill for furnishing presents to the Indians. The estate
remained in the Welles family till it passed to Joseph C. Dyer, and from him to the
Boylston Market Association. Their market-house was moved back eleven feet in 1870.

XXXV111

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

(Sewall Papers, ii. 23.) The adjacent lands fell to the second Jacob and other of the

Eliot heirs, one of whom allied with the Holy-
okes, a daughter of the second Jacob marrying
Elizur Holyoke, who became one of this South
End neighborhood, and died in 1711. Eliot Street
was laid out by these heirs in 1740 (see Whit-
more's note in Gleaner Articles, p. 43), and also
that part of Tremont Street which is between
/J Boylston and Hollis streets, to be called Holyoke

(*/ Street. (Sewall Papers, ii. 320.) This last, how-

ever, must have been laid out before 1733, if the

n^h^f^H^L. &Kf- vr ~ copy of Bonner's map bearing that date, in Mr.

C David Pulsifer's possession, is to be depended on.

In this copy this part of Tremont Street appears with the name " Slough Street" written

in. The 1743 edition of the map gives it Clough Street, named, as Mr. Whitmore says,
from John Clough, who lived where Hotel Boylston now is. The other designation

Bauery.

FROM BONNER'S MAP, 1722.

(Slough) was not inappropriate, as it will be seen by the map in Vol. I. that low, swampy
lands existed between Eliot and Boylston Streets.

INTRODUCTION.

XXXIX

17. Garret Bourne, h. and g. 18. Owen Roe. 19. Richard Croychley, 2 a. ; for
Dinely heirs. 20. Richard Parker. 21. William Coleborne's field, from shore to shore,
and extending to Castle Street, south ; cut afterwards by the extension, in 1664, of the main
street (dotted lines), the way to Roxbury before that date following the shore. Here, upon
what was later known as
Hollis Street, upon land
given by Governor Belch-
er, who lived in the neigh-
borhood, a small wooden
meeting-house was built
in 1732, in which Mather
Byles was the first minis-
ter. This building stood
upon the present site of
the church till 1787. Byles
lived in a house whose
site is partly covered by
Tremont Street, opposite
where Shawmut Avenue
enters it. Belcher lived
on the easterly side of the
Main Street, on the lot
between the present Har-
vard and Bennett streets.
(Drake's Boston, p. 585.)
Belcher's mansion was
bought in 1 765 by Thomas . '. .' .'; " .'-.. :
Amory, the loyalist. For '.';: *.
the grants south of Castle Street
Gleaner Articles, No. 13.

22. William Davis, Sr. 23. Jacob
Eliot, to which his widow Margery added
in 1653. Mr. Whitmore says the Eliots
owned finally all the lots between 23 and
16. 24. William Salter, I a. " Brother"
Salter was allowed to set up a fish-house
on the sunken marsh by the creek side,
in 1650 ; and in 1678 his widow sold it to
John Leverett, who had already, in 1675,
a part of 22. According to Whitmore,
the Leverett property fell probably to his
son-in-law Elisha Cooke, who sold, in
1739-40, to George Tilley, who in 1744
says his land bounds east on Pleasant
Street, then laid out.

In the lower part of the plan, in the space between the "way to Roxbury" and the
dotted lines, Mary, widow of William Salter, lived in 1680. The Eliot heirs owned on
both sides of the line of Washington Street to the north and east of Salter, and a natural
water-course would seem to have divided their lands, for in 1698 it is ordered that such a
water-course be preserved between the wharves of Baruchiah Arnold (Frary's son-in-law)
and Peter Welcome (Salter's son-in-law). 1

1 The Editor has availed himself of memoranda kindly furnished him by Mr. Whitmore, in
elucidating Plan D.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

PLAN E. 1. Abel Porter. Windmill Point is about where East Street joins Federal
Street. 2. William Letherland, or Letherbee, h. and 1. 3. Thomas Grubb had a fish-

house hereabout in 1639, when Edward
Grosse was given a house-lot " bounding
towards the beach." 4. Matthew lyons,
brewer, h. He made his mark to his will,
which is printed in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1857, p. 36. 5. Edward
Browne, h. and g.

6. Nicholas Baxter, h. 7. Richard
Gridley, captain of militia, h. and 1. It

was on this ground, after Purchase Street,
then called Belcher's Lane, was laid out,
that Captain Samuel Adams, the father of

the patriot, lived ; and here, in 1722, the
latter was born, in a fine, commanding
house overlooking the harbor. Adjoining
was his malt-house and other buildings.

Adams, the father, had bought the lot in
1712, and a wharf on the water-front was
long known by his name. East of this,
on the line of the present Gridley Street, Captain John Bonner lived. 8. John Harri-
son, h. He established on this
lot the first rope-walk, about
1641. (Gleaner Articles, No. 16.)
9. William Davis, Sr., h. and
^ a. 10. Richard Gridley's pasture. It was in this pasture, which in Bonner's map is
intersected by Gibbs's Lane, with Gibbs's wharf on the shore just north of it, that Colonel

INTRODUCTION.

X H

Robert Gibbs built his famous house, which surprised the colonial town by its costliness.
His wife Elizabeth survived him.

11. The Fort. In 1644 land of Mr. William Hibbins was taken for the " breast-worke
upon the Fort Hill ; " and also, same year, land of James Penn. 12. John Compton, h.
and g. 13. Benjamin Gillom, h. and g. He was allowed to wharf out in 1647. Off this shore

the South Battery or the Sconce was built in the colonial times. 14. Benjamin Ward, h.,
i a. See probate papers in /V. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1864, p. 154.

15. Ensign Edward Hutchinson, h. and y. 16. Na-

thaniel Woodward, h. and g. 17. The present bend on j&t4/<*+0* ~l&*
Batterymarch Street, which was laid out in 1673. On
the marsh to the northwest, on the corner of what is now Batterymarch Street and
Liberty Square, stood a well-known ordinary. The marsh had been let by the town in
1656 to Captain James Johnson, and this site was conveyed by him to Thomas Hull ; and
in 1673 Nathaniel Bishop lived here, and the house was known as "The Blue Bell," and
was jointly tenanted the next year by Deacon Henry Alline and Hugh Drury. In 1692 it
is called " The Castle Tavern," and Mr. Hassam thinks (./V. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,
'877, p. 329) it ceased to be an inn after 1707.

-^ ^ Q
7/

18. Valentine Hill's bridge, about where the present Liberty Square is, on the line of
Kilby Street. There were other occupants round this shore (9 to 17) in 1649, when
Hutchinson, Gillom, Ward, and Compton, and also Jonathan Balston, Thomas Smyth,
Stephen Baker, and Richard Richardson, were allowed to make a highway over the marsh
" to Mr. Hill's bridge."

19. Cart-bridge, mentioned 1658, as over
the creek, by Peter Oliver's, and leading to
Benjamin Gillom's. 20. Richard Fairbanks's
pasture, 5 a. It was this pasture, east of the

present Pearl Street, which Theodore Atkinson, not long after 1700, sold to Edward Gray,
who built rope-walks on it in 1712. They are seen in Bonner's map in 1722. In 1732 a

lane running parallel to the building was
called Hutchinson Street, changed in 1800 to
Pearl. A son, John Gray, succeeded to the
business. Gleaner Articles, No. 16, traces
the history of these rope-walk lots.

21. Robert Turner's pasture. 22. Ben-
jamin Gillom, h. and lot; his inventory in 1670 speaks of his estate on the shore as com-
prising a dwelling-house, shed, and wash-house, valued at ^360. It includes also part of
a ship on the stocks, ^398, probably building at this point. See his family connections
in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1865, p. 254. The present High Street is called in
1642 the highway already begun from Widow Tuthill's windmill to the Fort, twenty feet
broad. 23. William Teft. 24. Thomas Munt.
VOL. n. f.

xlii

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

INTRODUCTION. xliii

PLAN F. 1. Rev. John Wilson's garden-plot, divided by the street, when laid out in
1640 ; and the portion north of the street, in 1658, belonged to Elder James Penn, of the
First Church, who devised the estate to his kinsman, Colonel Penn Townsend, whose ex-
ecutor in 1750 sold it to Samuel Sturgis, and thence the title passed through John Erving,
Gilbert de Blois, Nathaniel Coffin, and John Amory, to Samuel Eliot, and became his
mansion estate. Gleaner Articles, No. 33.

2. John Cogan, J^ a. Cogan's executrix sold to Joshua Scottow, 1659, and he to
Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, in 1670, and he in turn to John Oxenbridge, in 1671, who left
it to his daughter, wife of Richard Scott, and they conveyed it to her sister's husband, Peter
Thacher, in 1706. It then passed, in 1707, to Samuel Myles; in 1728, to George Cradock,
and in 1733 to John Jeffries (son of the emigrant David Jeffries), from whom it passed to
Samuel Eliot. Gleaner Articles, No. 33.

SjawL

3. Richard Bellingham, garden plot, but afterwards his house lot, when he removed
from Washington Street. In his will he speaks of this house and grounds, with a shop
before it. The will was set .aside, and is printed in N. E, Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July,

1850, p. 237. See the notes to Mr. Deane's and Mr. Whitmore's chapters in Vol. I.
Bellingham sold the south part of this lot, in 1663, to Humphrey Davie, whose heirs sold
it, in 1710, with a stone house thereon, for 800, to
Andrew Faneuil, from whom the estate descended
to his nephew, Peter Faneuil, and later it was
owned by John Vassall. The north part was sold
to the Rev. John Davenport, and after the death
of his son John was, in 1676, conveyed to the First Church, and became the parsonage lot.
The parish sold it, in 1787, to Sampson Reed. Both of these sections of the Bellingham
estate were united when William Phillips successively purchased them in 1791 and 1805.
There was about half an acre of Bellingham's lot, back of the other sections which Sewall
added to the original Cotton estate. Sewall Papers, i. 61 ; Gleaner Articles, No. 32.

4. Daniel Maud, schoolmaster, h. and g. He removed to Dover, N. H., in 1642, and
made his will in 1654. (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1851, p. 241.) Hezekiah
Usher next owned it, who sold it to Thomas Scottow, in 1645. "Gleaner" says it sub-
sequently passed through Leblond, Erving, Brimmer, Bowdoin, Waldo, Walcott, Winthrop,
till Gardiner Greene, in 1824, annexed it to his estate.

_ 5. John Cotton, h. and g., ]4. a. . and

-\0>o tefij&lv c\ fa ArA in rear ' a " extendin g back M ar as the

St [ \^ ' Mount Vernon Church. (See Cotton's will

( J d C0tt&n in N - E ' Hist ' and Geneal - Re z-> A ? ri1 '

^*-/ fj 1851, p. 240.) The estate passed to his

widow, Sarah (subsequently married to Rev.

Richard Mather of Dorchester), and to Cotton's son by this wife, the Rev. Seaborn Cotton.
Cotton (the father's) will shows that Governor Vane had built the south part of the house
when he sojourned with Cotton, and had deeded it to Seaborn, to whom the father confirmed
it. Later, it became by successive purchases the property of John Hull the mint-master,
whose daughter Hannah married Samuel Sewall the judge, who occupied the estate still

xliv

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

later. Whitmore (Sewall Papers, \. 62, where, p. 63, the descent is traced in detail) says it
was occupied in 1758 by William Vassall, who purchased it Sept. n of that year
(N. E. Hist, and Cental. Keg., April, 1863, p. 115). In 1787 he conveyed it to Leonard
V. Borland, who, in 1790, sold it to Patrick Jeffrey. Jeffrey had come to Boston and

had married a Madam Haley, a sister of the notorious John Wilkes ; he was an uncle of
Francis, Lord Jeffrey. (See Gleaner Articles, Nos. 30 and 31.) In 1801 Somerset Street
was cut through the estate, and Jeffrey sold the part west of the street to Asa Hammond
in 1804; and the part east to Jonathan Mason, in 1802. In 1803 Gardiner Greene bought
of Mason, and in 1824 he added the Maud lot (No. 4). Greene made the estate the most
famous in Boston. In 1835 this and neighboring estates were sold to Patrick T. Jackson,
and Pemberton Square was laid out.

6. Edward Bendall, h. and g., 2 a. This had Sudbury [Court] Street east, and took in
Tremont Row and the centre of Scollay Square. Governor Endicott seems to have dwelt
during the close of his life on a part of this lot, west of No. 8, leaving when he died, in

1665, a widow, Elizabeth, whom he had married in
1630. Endicott's will is in N. E. Hist, and Geneal.
Reg., April, 1861, p. 127. David Yale, a brother of
Thomas, the founder of Yale College, had, in 1645,
purchased of Bendall. who, holding theological

views at variance with those of the magistrates, found it convenient to remove, leaving
Thomas Lake and Thomas Clark power of attorney to sell the estate. Captain John Wall
became the purchaser, and his widow sold it, in 1678,
to Edward Shippen (Seivall Papers, i. 60) , who sold, in
1702, a part to Cyprian Southack, who laid out South-
ack's Lane in 1720 (Howard Street). The selectmen,
in 1733, directed him to secure his hill, by rails or other-
wise, that people may not be in danger. " Gleaner "
places " Valley Acre " in the lower portion of Southack's
pasture, referring to a deed of 1758, when it was the

property of John Tyng. The part which came out on Tremont Row, south of No. 7, South-
ack sold to John Jekyll, in 1724, whose heirs passed it, in 1768, to Dr. James Lloyd. It
was on a part of the original Bendall lot, opposite the head of the modern Cornhill, that, in

1683-84, the free writing-school was built, the second in the town ; John Cole being the
first master. Soon after 1700 Richard Henchman was the master. See Drake's
Boston, 512.

INTRODUCTION. xlv

7. Robert Meeres, h. and g. He was aged in 1666 when he executed his will (printed
in N. E. Hist, and GeneaL Reg., Oct. 7, 1863, p. 345), and made his mark. This lot, in
1709, came to John Staniford, who sold it to Rev. Henry Harris, whose executors sold to
James Pemberton, whose family name became in the end attached to Pemberton Square.
" Gleaner " traces another part of the original lot to Dr. Samuel Danforth in 1785.

8. Robert Howen, % a. John and Israel Howen (presumably his heirs) sold it, in
1662-63, to Simon Lynde, who died in 1687, and his daughter Sarah was the wife of
Nathaniel Newgate, who conveyed it, in 1694, under the name of "The Spring House."

9. Anne Hunne, widow of George Hunne, l /t a. This lot marks the site of the elegant
mansion and grounds of the late Theodore Lyman, who purchased it in 1785.

10. John Newgate the hatter, h. and g., % a. His will, 1664 (N. E. Hist, and GeneaL
Reg., Oct., 1859, p. 333), left his house to his widow, Ann. (Also see Register, 1879, p. 57,
for Newgate's family.) Westerly from this a tract belonging to Newgate fell, after his
death in 1665, to Simon Lynde, his son-in-law ; and then, in 1687, or earlier, to his son

Samuel Lynde. About the middle of the last century it became the property of Thomas
Bulfinch, and remained in his family for fifty years. The Revere House marks the south
end of Bulfinch's four-acre pasture, as the Mount Vernon Church marks the north end.
Gleaner Articles, No. 23

11. Henry Fanes, h. and g. ; between Howard Street and Court Street. 12. Valen-
tine Hill's ground. A portion .^7 (_j
of this area lying: on Cam- .^ ^ / i

Ss -f"^ /J s*u( f 4 m

bridge Street was, later, the ^7^T~~^ ^ ^ ^ ~^4 &^7?&?

Middlecott pasture (Gleaner ^^^ / / ^*

Articles, No. 21), through ^^ ' /

which, in 1727, a street was
laid out and called Middle-
cott; but when it was opened through to Beacon Street, in 1800, it was called Bowdoin
Street. 13. Valley Acre, so called. See Mr. Bynner's chapter, Vol. I. 14. James
Hawkins, h. and g.

15. William Kirkby, h. and g. ; sold to James Hawkins. This, or the upper part of
No. I, was the lot upon which, later, the Rev. James Allen, of the First Church, built his
famous stone house, which, when taken down after the war of 1812 to give place to the
dwellings erected by David Hinckley, and now constituting the Congregational House, was
thought to be the oldest stone house in the town. Allen had married the widow of the
younger John Endicott, Elizabeth, the daughter of the tanner Jeremy Houchin. Allen
devised, in 1710, his mansion-house to his son Jeremiah, who dying in 1741 it came to his
son Jeremiah, dying in 1755, when the title finally passed to his son James, who sold it to
his brother Jeremiah, the high sheriff, who died in 1809. Gleaner Articles, No. 33.

16. Richard Sandford, h. and i a. This lot in the provincial days, having first
fallen into the large estate of Robert Turner, belonged to Samuel Sewall, and later, in
1742, to Edward Bromfield ; and a fine old mansion, elevated much above the present level

(where Freeman Place Chapel stands) was approached by stone steps, and distinguished
by noble trees. This house was erected by the younger Edward Bromfield, who died here
in 1756. His widow resided in it till 1764, when it was sold to her son-in-law, the Hon.
William Phillips. (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., iS/r, p. 332; 1872, p. 38; Gleaner
Articles, No. 37.) The ground in the rear of this Sandford lot, extending near to Ashbur-

xlvi THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ton Place, is described by " Gleaner" (No. 34) as James Davis's two-acre pasture, whose
widow Joanna, in 1677, conveyed it to her son, John Wing; and after some vicissitudes
of title it became, in 1759, the property of Joseph Sherburne.

17. Robert Meeres. 18. Richard Parker. 19. Robert Turner. His lot enclosed
the reserved six rods square in which the Beacon stood (Temple Street, nearly opposite
the southeast corner of the Reservoir; see plan in Mr. Bynner's chapter, Vol. I.), with a
lane leading to it nearly on the line of the present short part of Mount Vernon Street.
The beacon in 1790 gave place to the pillar which Charles Bulfinch erected, and which
stood till 1808. "T. B." gave an account of it in the Boston Transcript, Sept. 24, 1855,
which is reprinted in Gleaner Articles, p. 121. Bowditch's account of the transmission of
this property, in his Gleaner Articles, Nos. 36, 37, 45, 47, 48, and 49, is quoted in part in
Sumner's East Boston, p. 194, and in Wheildon's Gentry Hill, p. 92. Robert's son
John inherited parts of the property, and sold a portion of the present State-House
lot to Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, in 1673 ; and John dying in 1681, his executors sold
two acres east of the lane to George Monk the innholder, and the top of the hill, about
the reservation, to Colonel Shrimpton, who at his death, Feb. 17, 1697-98, devised the
property to his wife Elizabeth, who subsequently married Simeon Stoddard ; and when

, , ,

^^-

/ Ifa /y

yy/V .*~t S^^SY"^^*

/JfJd'T?*' &J*/(0 t*SfL^</ Cs&

(*/ ^~-

she died, in 1713, this property was appraised at .150, and fell to her granddaughter,
Elizabeth Shrimpton, who married John Yeamans, and then in time passed to Shute
Shrimpton Yeamans, the son of John, and he conveyed it, in 1752, to Thomas Hancock,

who then owned the land west
of it, upon which he had built,
37' ^ e f amous mansion of
the family, which disappeared
in 1863. (For some account
of this house see Mr. Bynner's chapter in this volume, and the view of it given in Vol. III.
of this History, in connection with its Revolutionary associations.) A dispute about
the limits of what was thus conveyed led to suits in court ; but the Hancock heirs
retained possession of all by right of continued use for pasturage. (See Gleaner Articles,
No. 47, and Sumner's East Boston, pp. 196, 197.) That portion of the State-House lot
not included in the Turner property is shown by Bowditch (Gleaner Articles, No. 52) to
have come from Thomas Millard, who died in 1669, to Samuel Shrimpton, attorney for
Alice Swift. It afterward passed, in 1752, to Thomas Hancock for ^220. "So that the
State -House lot and all north of it nearly to Derne Street (excepting the town's lot) is
held under a deed of a century ago [in 1855] at the cost of eleven hundred dollars. It
would now be worth eleven hundred thousand dollars." The Hancock pasture, as it was
called after 1752, passing to Governor John Hancock in 1777, was, two years after the
latter's death in 1793, conveyed to the town of Boston, and by the town the same year it
passed for a nominal consideration to the State, to become the site of the Capitol. The
mansion lot west of this Thomas Hancock began to acquire in 1735, and in 1759 ne had
increased it to include all the land west of the State-House lot to Joy Street. (Gleaner

Articles, No. 53.) On that portion of the lot east of
the passage to the Beacon, and fronting on the pres-
ent Beacon Street, William Molineaux built, in the
next century, a splendid mansion, having acquired the
land in 1760, which had come down from Turner,

through his sons-in-law John Fayerweather, Benjamin Alford, and John Alford. After
Molineaux died, in 1774, the estate passed later to Charles Ward Apthorp, and was con-

INTRODUCTION. xlvii

fiscated when, in 1782, the Commonwealth sold it to Daniel Dennison Rogers, who
acquired other lands hereabout, as is shown in the Gleaner Articles, No. 42; while in
No. 37 the same investigator has traced the titles to lots on Beacon Street, from Mount
Vernon to Somerset Street, taking in the Governor Bowdoin estate (just east of the
Molineaux House), which after some vicissitudes of title was conveyed by John Erving
in 1756 to James Bowdoin ; and its subsequent history is given in No. 39 of the same
articles.

20. Richard Sanford. 21. Thomas Scottow. 22. Nathaniel Eaton. 23. Richard
Meeres. 24. Richard Cooke. (See Gleaner Articles, No. 50, for early titles hereabout.)
Richard Cooke died in 1671, and the property fell to his son Elisha, who died in 1715.
" He," says Bowditch, " first laid out Turner or George, now Hancock, Street through his
pasture." West of Hancock Street were three ropewalks, lying across the line of the
present Belknap Street. (See Gleaner Articles, No. 51, for further details.) Joshua
Scottow owned hereabout, later, a four-acre pasture, whose history is traced in Gleaner
Articles, No. 22. 25. Richard Parker. 26. Thomas Millard, ^ a. He would seem to
have had other land in this vicinity. Gleaner Articles, No. 52.

27. Richard Truesdale, } a. This and 26 was sold to Thomas Deane in 1667-68,
and was later known as Deane's Pasture. In 1672 they passed to Whitcomb, then to
Hawkins, then to Savage ; and then, in 1692, to Samuel Sewall, when it was known as
Sewall's Elm Pasture. It stretched west from Joy Street about 440 feet. Bowditch
(Gleaner Articles, Nos. 57 and 58), quoted in Sewall Papers, i. 73.

28. Zaccheus Bosworth, 2 a. 29. William Wilson. 30. William Hudson, Sr.,
5 a. ; sold to Thomas Buttolph. For details of descent see Gleaner Articles, Nos. 19,
20, where it is shown Buttolph bought adjacent lands and increased his pasture to eight
acres. 31. Thomas Clarke. 32. John Ruggles. 33. Edmund Dennis, ^ a. 34. Thomas
Millard, i a. 35. Francis East. 36, 37, 38. These seem to have been granted, 1637-38,
to William Hudson, Jr., Nathaniel Chappell, and Oliver Mellows. Later, Chappell
was bounded on either hand by David Sellick (36) and Jacob Leger, when Leger's lot is
called about an acre. Francis East acquired this, and perhaps the other lots later still.

39. Richard and Jane Parker, y 2 a. 40. William Beamsley. 41. Richard Sherman.
42. Zaccheus Bosworth, \y 2 a., devised to son Samuel 1655. Gleaner Articles, No. 18,
for further detail. 43. James Johnson. 44. Francis Lyle, > a. 45. James Brown, 2 a.,
sold to Cobham. 46. Thomas Brattle and James Everill hereabout.

47. Zachariah Phillips, 9 a. " Gleaner" (No. 12) traces the history of this pasture.
Phillips sold, in 1672, to John Leverett, and the pasture was finally divided into fifty-nine
lots. 48. Samuel Cole hereabout. See Gleaner Articles, No. 18. 49. Robert Wing.

50. William Blackstone. Reservation of six acres when he sold his rights to the
town, in 1634. The original release of Blackstone to the town was in 1734 in the Town
Clerk's office, but is not now to be found. (See Mr. Adams's , ^ ,

chapter in Vol. I.) The annexed signatures of Blackstone ry^^a**. ^^^
are from the records of the university at Cambridge, England,
and I owe the tracings to the kind attention of the Rev.
George Phear of Emmanuel College. They respectively s
represent his writing at the dates of his taking his bachelor's
and master's degrees. His orchard is indicated on Bonner's map as an enclosure with
trees, just east of the present Louisburg Square. The limits of the lot are defined in Bow-
ditch's Gleaner Articles, No. I, quoted in Sewall Papers, i. 74. It extended on Beacon
Street, from Spruce Street, "the northeast corner of Mr. William Blackstone's payles "
(Town Records, March, 1637-38) to the water, then flowing above Charles Street. (See
diagram in Mr. Adams's chapter.) Richard Pepys bought it, and built a house on it, which
William Pollard occupied for nearly fourteen years, during which time Blackstone " fre-
quently resorted to it" on his visits from Rhode Island, as Anne Pollard deposed in 1711.
(Sewall Papers, i. 73.) Pepys sold it, in 1655, to Nathaniel Williams, and Williams's widow
marrying Peter Bracket, the latter conveyed it to Williams's children. The original house

xlviii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

appears to have been standing, as Mr. Hassam points out to me, in 1662, when the inven-
tory of the estate of Nathaniel Williams, led that year, shows this item: "It. the House
and land y l was m r Blackston's. [/]i5O : oo : oo." In 1708-9 the orchard and pasture
were sold to Thomas Bannister, and it appears as " Bannister's Gardens " on Burgiss's
map of 1728. "Gleaner" traced this descent of the lot in 1828, and printed the story in
the Boston Courier, and repeated it in the Transcript in 1855. (See also Gleaner Articles,
No. 50.) The lot was later a part of the possession of John Singleton Copley the painter,
and from him passed to the Mount Vernon proprietors.

51. Almshouse, erected in 1662 from legacies left by Captain Keayne and Mr. Webb ;
burned 1682, and rebuilt. 52. Bridewell, erected not long after 1712 ; and contiguous a
workhouse was built in 1738. The Pound stood next.

53. Burying-ground, established 1660, known as the South Burying-ground, but took
the name of the Granary, when that store-house was erected, in 1737, on the lot where
Park-Street Church stands. The Common originally extended to, or nearly to, Beacon Street,
embracing an area bounded by that street, Tremont, and Park streets, which soon however
became devoted to other uses, the lots along Park Street (Nos. 51 and 52 and so to
the lower corner) being appropriated to public buildings as early as 1662. Shurtleff,
Description of Boston, ch. xiv. 54. James Johnson. Just west of this lot lived, later,

A A A Captain John Alden, a master mariner and prominent citizen,

ft A *"" ff/\ W ' 1Q ^' e< ^ ' n I 7 2> Alden street now preserves his name.

-4 \0 A7-v cJHotiyi) He was a son of John Alden of the "Mayflower." 55.

\S Thomas Hawkins. 56. William Kirkby, h. and g. 57. James

Hawkins, h. and g. 58. Richard Parker. 59. Richard Sanford. 60. Robert Meeres,

bought of James Penniman. The lots in this vicinity constituted the " Bowling Green."

61. Thomas Scottow. At this point, in the provincial days, lived Pelham, the engraver
and portrait-painter, in the upper part of a house on the ground floor of which his wife
kept a tobacco shop. She had been the widow of Copley the tobacconist on Long Wharf,
and the mother of the famous painter.

62. Richard Meeres. Here in the provincial days, on the corner of the street bearing
his name, lived Peter Chardon, a prominent merchant of the

Huguenot stock. The present Pitts Street, running in this neigh-
borhood, commemorates a later owner of the property. 63. Henry
Pease. His will is given in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p.

203, where he speaks of his ground at Blackstone's Point. 64. Alexander Beck. A small

creek bounded him on the west. At a later day
land in this vicinity belonged to the Goodies,
whose name was preserved for many years

in Gouch Street, now Norman Street. 65.

/ George Burden. The peninsula north of this

was given over in the following century to ropewalks and the copper-works, as shown
in Bonner's map, a section of which is given on the opposite page.

66. The present Cambridge Street was laid out in 1647, twelve feet wide, through Mr.
Stoughton's ground at this point, " along the rayle side," through Richard Cooke's (24)
and Thomas Buttolph's (30), "to the farder end of the lots to Tho. Munt's ground on the
farthest side."

67. David Sellick ; sold to John Leverett. The highway, which at this point extended
north and west, was early called Green Lane ; and there is a petition on file in the City
Clerk's office, March 10, 1734, asking that it may be paved, which gives the names of
many of the chief abutters at that time. 68. Edmund Jackson, 3 a. ; afterwards Thomas
Leverett. This lot, according to Mr. Crocker, originally included the triangular area
between Staniford Street and Bowdoin Square, embracing No. 67, with also a strip on the
west side of Staniford Street.

69. Robert Meeres, 2 a. Simon Lynde bought it in 1667-91 ; sold it, in 1718, to John
Staniford, then increased to six acres. Staniford seems to have disposed of a part of it

INTRODUCTION.

xlix

at least by lottery. (Sew all Papers, Hi. 227 ; Gleaner Articles, No. 9.) This included the

rising ground, where a windmill stood, near the present West Church (Dr. Bartol's). This

edifice was raised in 1736, and the original structure is

shown in the view of the Battle of Bunker Hill, given in

the next volume. 70. Robert Turner. Passed later to

Staniford. 71. Valentine Hill; sold, in 1648, to William

Davis, 4 a. ; then on his death, 1676, to his son Benjamin, who conveyed it to

his mother (she having married Edward Palmes), and they, in 1695, passed it to Charles

Chambers, who gave his name to the street now running through the lot. Gleaner

Articles, No. 10.

FROM BONNER'S MAP, 1722.

72. John Biggs, i l / 2 a. Marsh granted in 1641, west of North Russell Street. His

widow married, and as Mary Minot died in 1676, and the land coming to her father,

^ ^j John Dasset, it was conveyed by him and by John

//\_. y^/y. /iL !*<? &sf Dasset, Jr., to James Allen, in 1696. 73. Thomas

~"V />// Munt. 74. James Penn. In 1671 it fell by his will

(-/ to James Allen, his nephew, who later added lot No.

72, making a twenty-acre farm. He extended Chambers Street northerly. " Gleaner "
thinks it certain that Allen thus owned a larger lot in Boston than any one else, excepting
Blackstone. 75. Edward Gibbons.

76. Alexander Beck, i a., a little marsh, "next Mr. Hough's Point;" and described
a few years before, when Beck was allowed to mow it, as in the new field " near the place
where Mr Hough takes boat."

MAPS AND PLANS. The early maps of Boston given in the first
volume but vaguely represented the original peninsula, and are valuable
historically only as giving the current notions of the topography of the
vicinity. During the provincial times the earliest surveys with any approach
to accuracy were made, so far as we know ; and the Editor appends as full
a descriptive list as he is able to make of the plans of the town and maps
of the harbor of this period. 1

1 Dr. N. B. Shurtleff made a tentative list of Mr. T. C. Amory's report on streets, and Mr. G.

maps of Boston, which was printed in Mass. G. Smith's letter on maps of Boston ; and this

Hist. Soc. Proc., June, 1862, in connection with list was enlarged in his Description of Boston.
VOL. II. g.

1 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

1687-88(7). The Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, kindly furnishes the
following description of the earliest known chart of the harbor. It is a manuscript, and
belongs to the Brinley Collection :

"The chart, which is very neatly drawn and colored, occupies about one foot square,
on a sheet measuring 21 inches by 19 inches. The shoals, banks, and reefs are shaded in
colors, and single rocks and ledges are indicated by crosses. The soundings of the main
channels and passages between the harbor islands are marked in fathoms. The scale is
one inch to a mile.

"At the bottom of the sheet, to the left, is this legend :

" ' This Harbour of Boston, with soundings without and comings in are laid down as
taken by Captain John Fayrwether, Capt? Thomas Smith, Capt? Timothy Armitage,
Capt? Joseph Eldridge, Masters, and Phillip Wells Imployed for the same by his Excel-
lency S r . Edmund Andros, Knight, Captain and Governour-in-Chief of his Majestie's Terri-
tory and Dominion of New England, in America.

" 'South and by East Moon makes high water and flows ordinary spring tides 12 foot,
and 10 foot nep tides at Boston.'

" In the right-hand lower corner, under a scale of miles, is : ' By Phillip Wells; ' and
below, in smaller letters, 'M. Carroll,' probably the signature of the draughtsman.

"The inscription fixes the date of the chart nearly between the arrival of Andros in
December, 1686, and the revolution of April, 1689.

"The drawing is made with the north point to the right, bringing the coast-line, from
Charles River southerly to Braintree, at the top of the sheet ; the southern shore, from
Braintree to the beach below Point Alderton, on the left ; and the northern, from Charles
River to ' Pull-in- Poynt' [Point Shirley], on the right.

" The only buildings that are indicated are : the Fort in Boston, and the Castle on the
Island ; the meeting-houses of Roxbury and Braintree ; the meeting-house and seven
dwelling-houses in Hull ; and a house on Long Island (John Nelson's ?). The names of
the islands are as follows : Noddle's, Hog, Burd, Governour's, Castle, Hutchinson's
[now Apple], Bare (a small island very near the west shore of Pull-in-Poynt, now perhaps
part of the main land), Deare (with shoals stretching eastward, ending at ' Foanes,'
now Great and Little Faun), Lovel's, Pemerton's [George's], Gallop's, Nick's Mate, Long,
Ransford, Specticle, Manin's Moon, Tompson's ; more to the south, Peducks and Hang-
man's, and near the head of ' Hofe's Thum' [Hough's Neck, in Quincy] an island not
named [now Nut Island], and another between Hull and Hingham [Little Hog Island ? or
Bomkin ?].

" South of east from Point Alderton, about two miles by the scale, ' Conny Hasset Rock '
[Harding's Ledge?] is marked. North of the channel are White Rock [Egg, or Shag
Rocks], Great Bruster (with Middle and Outer Brewster, and Calf Island, not named),
and Eldrige's Rock [now Alderidge's Ledge], a small island [Green ? ] further out ; and
beyond, Graves. The N. E. Graves is marked with a cross.

"Dr. Shurtleff (Topographical Description of Boston, 577), observes that the Graves
' have been supposed to have derived their name from Admiral Graves, who touched them in
the days of the Revolution.' Evidently, the name had been given them nearly a century
before the Revolution ; perhaps from the earlier ' Admiral ' Thomas Graves, who was
mate of the ' Talbot ' in 1629, and master of the first Boston ship (the ' Tryal ' ) in 1643.

" Hough's Neck in Quincy was, according to Dr. Shurtleff (p. 560), 'frequently called,
in old times, Hoff's Tombs.' It bears that name on a French chart (Bellin's) of 1757, but
unless it can be traced further back 'Hofe's Thum' (Hough's Thumb) has the better
authority.

" Phillip Wells had been Governor Dongan's surveyor, in New York, and was one of the
commissioners appointed to run the line between that province and Connecticut, in 1684.
He made ' A Land Draught of New York Harbour,' which is also in Mr. Brinley's collec-
tion. It is drawn and lettered by the same hand, and probably in the same year as that of

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INTRODUCTION.

Boston harbor. The two were found together, in a parcel of the ' Penn Papers,' sold in
London, by Mr. E. G. Allen, in 1871, the Boston map bringing three guineas. It is
numbered No. 281 in Allen's catalogue.

"Captain John Fayerweather, who had served in the Indian war of 1675-76, and com-
manded one of the Boston train-bands, was a prominent man in Boston before and after
the Usurpation. At the Revolution of April, 1689, he was appointed commander of the
Castle. Capt. Thomas Smith commanded the 'Jersey' frigate in the Expedition against
the Eastern Indians, in 1704. Of Captains Armitage and Eldridge I know little more
than their names."

1692. Plan de Bostom, Tire par le Chevalier Daux envoyd aitx troquois par Af f de
Frontenac lequel y a estii retenu deux ans quatre mois prisonnier, 1692. This is the earliest
of some manuscript charts of Boston Harbor, preserved in the De"pot des Cartes de la
Marine at Paris, which were made from such information as could be got from published
maps or from the reports of emissaries, and were intended to aid in an attack upon the
town, by the French, in retaliation for Sir William Phips's demonstration against Quebec.
The shore outlines are very badly drawn. It shows the Castle and some of the inner
islands. There is a tracing of it in the Boston Public Library.

Harrisse, Sur la Nouvelle France, No. 219, cites another map preserved in the same
De*pot, which he says is most beautifully made, and is called " Carte de 1'Amerique Sep-
tentrionale," and which he thinks was made before 1682. It is curious, as " Boston " and
" Plemoe " [Plymouth] are transposed in place. There is a copy of it in Mr. S. L. M.
Barlow's collection.

1693. Carte de la ville, Baye, et environs de Baston. Par Jean Baptiste Louis
Franquelin, Hydrog. du Roy, 1693. Verifiee par le Sr. de la Motte. This map is also

cited by Harrisse, No. 251, in connection with a chart of
the New England coast, from Cape Ann to Neversink,
as being in the same De'pot at Paris. A tracing of it has
lately been made, at the Editor's suggestion, for the Public
Library. That portion showing the two peninsulas of
Boston and Charlestown has been heliotyped, full size, for the Report on the Nomenclature
of Streets, 1 and the peninsula of Boston only is given herewith. The whole map, some-
what reduced, has also been heliotyped from this tracing, and an albertype has been made
of it of the full size.

City Document, 119, of 1879.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

It is an improvement upon the map of the year before, but still very inaccurate, and
more curious than valuable. In the environs and in the town a number of landmarks are
indicated, like the " Maison de Guillaume Phibs," " Renegits Francois " for the Huguenot
church, etc. Cambridge is put down, " Bourgade, de 80 maisons ; c'est une universiteV'
Roxbury is " Rocheberry." Dorchester Neck is " Docheten Neche." The Blue Hills
are put where Squantum is, and called " Bluells." Nahant peninsula becomes " Neant
EylandL" The outermost headland of Hull becomes " Pointe Holld Deton," and these
are not all the strange perversions of names.

1697. Franquelin made this year a much better draft of the harbor and neighbor-
hood of Boston than either of the two previous one* ; and from a copy of this map, owned
by Mr. Francis Parkman, the lac-simile is made which is given herewith. It is to be re-
gretted that the key to the letters placed on the map is wanting. One of its errors is the
putting the road to the point on the western side of the Back Bay to the south of the
Charles instead of the north, Lechmere Point, whence was a ferry to the town. Cf. Park-
man's f-rontenac, p. 384.

1700. A plan of Boston Harbor is said to be in the Neptune Fran$ais, published at
Amsterdam, 1700. A " Carte nouvelle de L' Amerique," published by Mortier, Amster-
dam, without date, has a chart of Boston Harbor, 4^ by 4% inches.

1705 ? A new Survey of the Harbor of Boston, in New England, Done by order
of the principal Officers and Commissioners of his Ma lies Navy, was published in Dublin
about this time. It is without date, but it is stated on it that the observation of the

BONNER'S SKETCH, 1714.

magnetic variations were made in 1700. Between that date and 1710-14,
when Long Wharf, not shown in it, was built, the survey was probably made.
It gives the soundings in the channels, and trees are represented as growing
on the islands. Its size is 17 by 21 inches. The only copy of it known to
the Editor is an imperfect one, owned by Mr. Charles Deane, from which the fac-simile
here given was made. It would seem to be the earliest engraved map of the harbor,
showing surveys made with evident care.

1713? A map of North America, published in London, by Herman Moll, has a small
marginal chart of the harbor, 2*/ s by i# inches.

1714. A manuscript sketch made by John Bonner and signed by him, of the water-
front of the town, from Windmill Point to Long Wharf, giving soundings, and the names

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INTRODUCTION. 1m

of the riparian owners, measures 18 by n}4 inches, and is preserved in the Massa-
chusetts Historical Society's Library. A fac-simile, full size, is given in their Proceed-
ings, Sept. 1864, and a strange engraving of it
in Bryant and Gay's United States, iii. 218.
A reduced sketch of it is here given, which j1i \-o
does not show the view of the warehouses on
Long Wharf as seen from the South Battery, . . jt

which the fac-simile does. The record in the ^'

Boston News-Letter, Feb. 3, 1726, of the death of a Captain John Bonner, on January
3oth, probably refers to this earliest map-maker of Boston. He is called " very skillful
and ingenious, especially in navigation, drawing, etc., and one of the best acquainted with
the coasts of North America of any of his time." (See N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg.,
April, 1851, p. 174, and July, 1860, p. 240.) A sketch of the Bonner arms in the Granary
burying-ground is given in the Heraldic Journal, ii. 120.

1720. The map of New England in Neal's History of New England has a margi-
nal plan, 3 by 3^ inches, of Boston and vicinity, showing the harbor.

1722. The Town of Boston, in New England, by Captain John Bonner, 1722, cztatis
sua,(x>. Engraved and printed by Fra. Dewing, Boston, New England 1722. Sold by
Captain John Bonner and William Price against ye Town House.

This is the earliest engraved plan of the town, measuring 17 by 23^ inches. A marginal
note reads: "Streets, 42; Lanes, 36 ; Alleys, 22 ; Houses, near 3,000; 1,000 Brick, rest
Timber. Near 12,000 people." The scale is about 1 i# inches to the mile. A copy, some-
what disintegrated, mounted on board, is preserved in the Mass. Hist. Society's Library,
and from this copy, when in the possession of William Taylor, Esq., George G. Smith, in
1835, engraved a fac-simile, whose correctness was certified to by Stephen P. Fuller, sur-
veyor. The folio copies of Drake's Boston have impressions from Smith's plate. In
1825 it was re-engraved by Bowen, size 6^ by 4 inches, for Snow's History of Boston.
In 1848 'it was again re-engraved, size 5^ by 3^5, by Dearborn, and used in his Boston
Notions and in his Guiile to Boston. In 1852 George W. Boynton engraved it, size
9/4 by 5^, and this plate was used in the Boston Almanac, in Warren's Great Tree, 1855,
etc. The original plate continued to be used for nearly fifty years by Price, with succes-
sive changes, as will be noted under later years. There is in the Historical Society's
Library a copy of Smith's facsimile, on which these later changes are marked, those
1722-33, in red; 1733-43, in blue; and 1743-69, in green. Sections from Smith's fac-simile
are reproduced in this Introduction.

The engraver of this map is probably the same Francis Doing, who in 1718, as appears
by the Council Records, was suspected of being concerned in counterfeiting the Province
bills of credit. There is no evidence known to sustain the case. Sewall Papers, iii. 189.

1728. To his Excellency, William Burnet, Esq., This plan of Boston, in New
England, is humbly dedicated by /tit Excellency's most obedient and humble servant, Wil-
liam Burgiss. This inscription in an oval, with supporters, and surmounted by the Gov-
ernor's arms, is the only title this map has. It is without date, but is fixed for various
reasons at about the year here given. Its scale is five and a half inches to the mile, about
one half that of Bonner's, and it measures 14^ by u inches. In a lower corner is this :
"Engraved by Thos. lohnson, Boston, N. E."

Shurtleff calls it " evidently a corrected and improved copy " of Bonner. " The eight
companys [or wards, are] distinguished by a prickt line, thus. . . ." It shows a pond on
the Common, north of the Powder House, which Bonner does not give. There is a single
row of trees on the Tremont-Street Mall, which are likewise not on Bonner's. The
garden on the line of the present Beacon Street is placed a little differently, and is called
" Bannister's Gardens." There are various changes of names of streets, etc. A copy pre-
served in the family of the late Dr. Warren was fac-similed in 1869 for Dr. Shurtleff, and
it is given in his Description of Boston ; a reduced fac-simile of that portion of the plate
which contains the Boston peninsula only is given in heliotype in this volume.

Hv THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

1730? An actual Survey of the Sea Coast from Neiv York to the I. Cape
Briton. By Captain Cyprian Southack : London. This contains a chart of Narragan-

sett Bay, Long Island Sound, etc., which has in
the margin a chart of Boston Harbor, measuring
9 by 9 inches. Southack, who was a Bostonian,
gives, in legends on these charts, two dates of his
explorations on the American coast, 1690, and
1717. Other mention will be made of him in this volume. This survey may have been
issued at any earlier date than 1730, for in the Boston News- Letter, May 26, 1718. is an
invitation from Southack "to my fellow mariners" to inspect his chart and inform him of
any errors " before it is engraved." The card is reprinted in Sewall Papers, iii. 185.

1731. The English Pilot. Fourth Book. London: Mount and Page, 1742. This
has what is called "A correct map of New England," of this date; and on the same sheet
Boston Harbor, 10 by 8 inches, is given very incorrectly.

1733. A reduction of Bonner's 1722 map was made, according to Shurtleff, about this
year, size \\y z by 7 inches, by Capt. Cyprian Southack, and published in London by I.
Mount, T. Page, and W. Mount ; and this plate, or a copy of it, was used by the same pub-
lishers in a corner of a large map of the coast of New England, " as it was actually sur-
veyed by Captain Cyprian Southack," which was issued in The English Pilot, London,
Mount and Davidson, at various dates. The Boston Public Library has a copy dated
1737-38; and Harvard College Library one, with the same map, dated 1794.

1733. William Price reissued, according to Shurtleff, Bonner's map with amendments,
and with this title : A New Plan of ye great town of Boston in New England in America,
with the many Additional Buildings and New
Streets to the year 1733. Drake, History of
Boston, p. 820, describes a copy belonging to
Mr. David Pulsifer, who has kindly allowed the
present Editor to see it. It has a single row of
trees on the Tremont-Street Mall; the 1722

map showing none. It gives the number of houses as 4000; inhab'tants, 18,000; two
churches of England; eight Congregational meeting-houses; and French, Anabaptist,
Irish, and Quaker meeting-houses, one each. The description further says : "In the year
1723 were built in New England above 700 sail of ships and other vessels, most of which
are fitted at Boston. There are in one year cleared out of this port at the custom house
about 1 200 sail of vessels." The wards are numbered I to 8. What is now Tremont
Street between Boylston and Hollis streets is called Slough Street, -but is given as Clough
Street in the 1743 edition It has a vignette dedication to Governor Belcher, with the title
across the top, but the 33 of the date (1733) is put in with a pen. There would seem to
have been an edition before this, which first had the vignette, for there is an erasure in the
plate under Price's name of something which might have been in the earlier edition. Be-
low the vignette is : " Printed for and sold by Wm. Price at ye King's head and Looking-
glass, in Cornhill, near the Town House in Boston."

1733. Henry Popple's large Map of North America has a chart of Boston Harbor
in the margin, measuring 6 by 5^ inches. Popple's map, engraved on a small scale, ap-
peared in Arthur Dobbs's Hudson Bay, 1744, showing still the marginal plans; but that of
Boston is reduced to little more than an inch square.

1743. Price again reissued Bonner's map. The description is changed to read:
"... Its number of houses about 4000 and inhabitants, about 20,000. In it are 3
churches of England, 10 Congregational meeting-houses, i French, i Anabaptist, I Irish,
I Quaker's meeting-house, and a very handsome Town-house, where the courts are held ; "
and this is added : "In the year 1735 this town was divided into 12 wards, by a vote of
the inhabitants. In each ward is a military company of foot and a captain, etc. ; also one
overseer of the poor chosen yearly in March." New marginal references are added to
buildings built since the previous issue, and to make room for these some ships figured in

INTRODUCTION. lv

the harbor of the original map are erased, and others are added. The last item added is
this : " T. Faneuil Hall and market house, a hadsom [sic] large brick building, worthy of
the generous Founder, Peter Faneuil, Esqr., who, in the year 1742, Gave it to the Town
for the use of a market." In the list of " Gen" Small-pox," a " Seventh, 1730," is added.
The principal changes in the streets are these: In the neighborhood of Hollis Street;
Pleasant Street put in ; two rows of trees make a mall along the Tremont Street side of the
Common ; the Town Granary and work-house appear where Park Street now is ; Beacon
Street is put in, and the earlier Davis Street, which swept across the present State-house
lot in the direction of Louisburg Square, is discontinued ; new streets are marked at the
West End ; Faneuil Hall is shown on a part of the Town Dock, and additional wharves
are put in around the margin of the peninsula.

A copy of this state of the plate, owned by Mr. Charles Deane, was used by Dr.
Palfrey in making the fac-simile reduction of it which appears in his History of New
England, iv.

1755. A map of New England, by Thomas Jefferys, has a marginal chart of Boston
Harbor, size, 5^ by 6 inches.

1757. L 1 Atlas maritime, made by Bellin, Paris, has a map of New England, and in
one corner of it is a Plan du Havre de Boston, from Nahant to Hingham, size 6% by 8%
inches. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., September, 1864.

1758. A collection of voyages published at Leipsic, by Arkstee and Merkus, gives a
plan of the town, 9 by 6% inches, which includes, according to Shurtleff, a small portion
of the harbor.

1764. The German map of 1758 was published in Paris by Jacq. Nic. Bellin, engineer;
engraved by Arrivet. Shurtleff says of the two : " These are evidently copies of an early
English map."

A French map, of uncertain date, but perhaps not far from this time, is a folio copper-
plate engraving styled : Plan de la ville et du Port de Boston, Capitale de la Nouvelle
Anglelerre. A Paris, Chez Lattre, rue St. Jacques, vis-a-vis la rue de Parchemenerie,
C. P. R. In the upper corners are engraved descriptions. A copy of this map was in a
bound collection of American maps numbered 761 in a sale catalogue of Bangs and Co.,
New York, February, 1880, when it was bought by the American Geographical Society.
A small map, measuring 6> by 6% inches, Plan de la Ville dc Boston et ses environs, en-
graved by B. D. Bakker, seems to be a reduction of this Lattre' map. It has a marginal
list of references by which it appears that the North Battery mounted 25 cannon ; that at
the end of Long Wharf, 16; the Sconce, 25 ; and the Neck fortifications are given, " Porte
de Terre deffendue par un fosse" et 2 Batteries." The plan shows Charlestown, a battery
near Charlestown Neck, and is generally inaccurate. I am indebted for a sight of it to
Mr. Edward W. West, of New York.

1769. Price's last issue of Bonner's map bears this date. The changes in the plate
are not many. The name of Clark's Wharf at the north end of the <: Old Wharf " is changed
to Handcock's Wharf. "Esqr. Hancock's Seat" is pictured on Beacon Street, and a mar-
ginal reference made to it. Rowe's and Apthorp's wharves are put down near the South
Battery, and other new piers farther to the south. The comparison is made with a copy
owned by Mr. Charles Deane, which, by his favor, is here given in a reduced fac-simile.

1770? There is in Harvard College Library the southeast corner of a map, showing
on the fragment Boston, Narragansett Bay, and Cape Cod, and in the margin a chart of
Boston Harbor, called Iclinograpliia Portus Bostoniensis, size 5^ by 5^ inches, and a
plan of the town, Ichnographia Urbis Boston, 5 by 7 inches. The date must be later than
1760, and before King and Queen streets were renamed in 1784. With some exceptions,
the names on the maps are in English ; but the references, followed by letters A. B. C., etc..
and the statement of the fires which have occurred before 1760 are in Latin, as, "Curia"
for State House, " Oratorium Vetus" for the First Church, "Career" for the Jail, etc.

After this date, the published maps have particular reference to the Revolutionary War.
and the enumeration of them is deferred.

Ivi THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

GENEALOGICAL REFERENCES. In connection with Mr. Whitmore's
chapters in the first and in the present volume of this History, the Editor
has noted various special accounts of prominent Boston families. He
now offers as supplementary to those notes, the following statement of the
principal general sources of such genealogical information :

A main authority for tracing the early history of Boston and other New England
families is Savage's Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England. Some-
thing has been done to preserve the records of a few Boston families in the New England
Historical and Genealogical Register, of which there has been an annual volume since
1847, and in the Heraldic Journal, of which four volumes were issued. In the folio
edition of Drake's History of Boston, folding sheet pedigrees of several families are given,
directly or collaterally connected with Boston, including Saltonstall, Eliot, Leverett, Cotton,
Dudley, Chauncy, Curwen, Bradstreet, Sewall, Adams.

Two Indexes to American genealogies have been printed. Mr. Whitmore's American
Genealogist gives a chronological list of separate works up to 1875 1 Mr. D. S. Durrie's
Bibliographia Genealogica Americana, 1868,, and second edition, 1878, gives an "alphabet-
ical index to genealogies and pedigrees contained in State, county, and town histories,
printed genealogies and kindred works." A list of genealogies and apposite references
was printed in the Bulletins of the Boston Public Library for 1879.

The recent Charlestown Genealogies and Estates, compiled by Thomas B. Wyman, is
an exceptionally thorough work. Though the History of Dorchester contains genealogical
matter, none of the other annexed parts of Boston have a family record to compare with
that of Charlestown, which after the death of Mr. Wyman was carried through the press
under the supervision chiefly of Mr. H. H. Edes. Histories of many of the towns in
Eastern Massachusetts trace the lines of families, often in greater or less degree connected
with those of Boston. Bond's History of Watertoivn is a signal example of such geneal-
ogical value. The genealogical notes to the Sewall Papers abound in information of
this kind.

Mr. N. I. Bowditch's Suffolk Surnames is simply a curious grouping of the family
names which have existed in this vicinity, and which came to his knowledge in the pursuit
of his profession for many years as a conveyancer. Mr. Bowditch's articles, already re-
ferred to, which, with the signature "Gleaner," he printed in the Boston Evening
Transcript in 1855-56, and in which he traced the descent of various landed estates in
Boston, are valuable for a knowledge of the early families. In the Suffolk Registry
of Deeds the records, previous to 1700, make twenty volumes. Under authority from the
Board of Aldermen, as Commissioners of Suffolk County, the work of printing the first
volume of Deeds is now going forward under the immediate charge of Mr. William B.
Trask. Its use for genealogical study will be greatly helped by the thorough index which
is to be appended.

Mr. Samuel G. Drake began in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1848, an
abstract of the earliest Wills in the Suffolk Probate Office; and after he had completed
eighty-two Wills and Inventories the work was continued by Mr. William B. Trask,
who completed the first volume (542 pages) in the number for Oct. 1862. Mr. Trask also
added abstracts of the inventories contained in other volumes ; and in the Register, vol.
vii., he gave abstracts of Wills in the files, but not recorded. Mr. Trask has also published
in the Register abstracts of the early Middlesex Wills. In the number for Oct. 1862, he
resumed work on the Suffolk Wills, of which vol. vi. is a continuation of vol. i., the inter-
vening volumes containing inventories; and in the number for Jan. 1876 (after the files
were put in order), he began to give abstracts of Wills omitted in the previous enumerations.

1 The first edition, called A Handbook of American Genealogy, appeared in 1862, and had a list
of tabular pedigrees omitted in the second edition.

INTRODUCTION. lyii

Mr. Hassam (Ibid., Jan. 1880, p. 46) says that when the files of the Probate Office were
arranged in 1876, there were found 32,705 papers, including 280 Wills of a date before 1800,
which had never been recorded. He also states that the present indexes to the recorded
Deeds are very incomplete.

Mr. Samuel G. Drake noted his researches in England as to the names of early emi-
grants to Boston and other parts of America, in his Result of some researches relative to the
Founders of New England, printed in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1860,
and Jan. i85i, and separately with other lists annexed. The pioneer in this work, how-
ever, was Mr. James Savage, who printed several lists of persons permitted to depart from
England for New England in Mass. Hist. Collections, 3d series viii. 252 (1843), ar >d 4th
series ii. 92 (1852).

John Camden Hotten's Original Lists of Persons who went to the American Planta-
tions, 1600-1700, is of little value in new material, being but a reproduction of what hacL,
been printed before by Savage, Drake, and others. 1

Another source of the history of the early Boston families is found in the inscriptions
of the ancient burial-grounds. Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, gives some account of those
interred in them, and transcripts of the inscriptions were printed by Bridgman, as follows :
Copp's Hill Epitaphs, 1851 ; King's Chapel Btirying-ground, 1853; Pilgrims of Boston
[Granary] 1856. Mr. Whitmore published some notes on this last yard in the N. E. Hist,
and Geneal. Reg., July, 1856; and in a report on its history which he made to the City
Council in 1879 (City Document No. 47 of that year) he cites a large number of extracts
from the Town Records relating to the yard. Mr. Whitmore has also of late begun to print
a much more correct transcript of these old Boston inscriptions, under the title, Grave-
Yards of Boston, the first volume, containing those from Copp's Hill, appearing in 1878.
It gives the correct list of armorial bearings to be found in the yard as of the following
families: Goodrich, Clark, Watts, Gee, Hutchinson, Mountfort, Martyn, Greenwood. A
list less accurate had been previously printed in Bridgman's Copp^s Hill Epitaphs. The
latter writer's King's Chapel Burying-ground gives the arms of the following families :
Brinley, Loring, Clap, Hall, Davies, Bulfinch, Prentice, Wendell, Vincent, Salisbury,
Erving, Bromfield, Bell, Homer, Pitts, Lloyd, Tyler. The Heraldic Journal paid particu-
lar attention to the shields on these old Boston tombs.

Mr. Whitmore made a report to the N. E. Historic, Genealogical Society on the families
entitled to bear arms, giving the rules for making a decision ; and this report is printed in
the Register, April, 1865.

Under the direction of the Record Commissioners of the city (William H. Whitmore and
William S. Appleton), a beginning has been made in preserving in print scattered material
of importance in relation to the families of early residents. Their first report was
issued in 1876. Previous to this time but three lists of the early inhabitants of Boston
had been printed, two in Nathaniel Dearborn's Boston Notions, 1848, pp. 42 and 270,
as of inhabitants, 1630-56, and in 1695; the other in John Dunton 's Letters from New
England, p. 320, printed by the Prince Society and edited by Mr. Whitmore. This first
report contained various lists of tax-payers and inhabitants, 1674, 1676, 1681, 1685, 1686,
1687, 1688, 1689, 1691, 1695, etc.

The lists of 1674-76 are thought to be the earliest lists extant, and imperfect as they
are they give five sixths, probably, of the tax-payers of that time. A statement of the City
Registrar shows that for the years 1630-1700 the Town Records give but 1850 births, while
there were probably over 6000. Of the deaths and marriages the record is likewise im-
perfect. Efforts are now making by the Commissioners to supply these deficiencies from
the early church records.

Mr. David Pulsifer transcribed the earliest births, marriages, and deaths from the
Boston Records for publication in the early volumes of the N. E. Hist, and Geneal.
Reg., and there is an enumeration of the records in the office of the City Registrar in the
Introduction to the first volume of this History.

1 Cf N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1875, P- 335-
VOL. II. h.

Iviii THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT. The Massachusetts Civil List, by
William H. VVhitmore, gives all those holding office under the royal Gover-
nors. For the convenience of the reader the following list of Governors is
taken from that book :

SIR WILLIAM PHIPS, appointed Oct. 1691 ; commissioned Dec. 12, 1691 ; arrived in
Boston, May 14, 1692; records begin, May 16, 1692 ; left Boston, Nov. 17, 1694.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON, lieut.-governor, acting Governor, Nov. 1694 to May 26, 1699.

RICHARD, EARL OF BELLOMONT, reached Boston, May 26, 1699; went to New York,
May, 1700; died March 5, 1700-1701.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON, lieut.-governor, acting Governor, May, 1700, to July 7, 1701,
when he died. [The Council governed without an executive, July, 1701, to June, 1702.]

JOSEPH DUDLEY, reached Boston, June H, 1702; governed till Feb. 4, 1714-15.
[The Council acted Feb. 4, 1714-15, to March 21, 1714-15.]

JOSEPH DUDLEY, reassumed office March 21, 1714-15.

COL. ELISHA BURGESS, commission published in Boston Nov. 9, 1715 ; when

WILLIAM TAILER, lieut.-governor, began to act as Governor, and continued to act
(while Burgess was selling his commission to Shute's friends in England) till Oct. 4, 1716;
when

SAMUEL SHUTE arrived, having been commissioned June 15, 1716. He left Boston,
Jan. i, 1722-23; when

WILLIAM DUMMER, lieut -governor, acted till July 13, 1728; when

WILLIAM BURNET arrived, having been appointed March 7, 1727-28. He died at
Boston, Sept. 7, 1729 ; when

WILLIAM DUMMER again acted, till

JONATHAN BELCHER arrived, Aug. 10, 1730, who governed till

WILLIAM SHIRLEY, then living in Boston, was commissioned May 16, 1741, and he
governed till Aug. 2, 1757; when

THOMAS POWNALL arrived, having been appointed Feb. 25, 1757, and he sailed for
England, June 3, 1760; when

THOMAS HUTCHINSON, lieut.-governor, acted till Aug. 2, 1760; when

FRANCIS BERNARD arrived, having been commissioned, Jan. 14, 1760. He sailed for
England, Aug. 2, 1769; when

THOMAS HUTCHINSON again acted till his own commission as Governor arrived, early
in March, 1771, having been appointed Nov. 28, 1770. He sailed for England, June i,
1774, having been superseded by

THOMAS GAGE, who was appointed April 7, 1774, and had arrived in Boston, May 13,
1774. In the same month the Provincial Congress declared him disqualified, and while
Boston was besieged he sailed for England, Oct. 1775.

THE

MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON

provincial

CHAPTER I.

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

BY WILLIAM H. WHITMORE,

Chairman of the Boston Record Commissioners.

IN the tenth chapter of the first volume of this History the affairs of the
colony have been traced under the first charter, to the date of the final
cessation of its authority, May 20, 1686. On Oct. 7, 1691, the second
charter of Massachusetts was signed by King William, and Governor Phips
arrived at Boston with it, May 14, 1692. This interval of six years is styled
by the ingenious arranger of our Massachusetts Archives 1 the " Inter-
Charter " period, a convenient designation. Of these six years two and
one-third years were filled by the administration of Governor Andros ; but
so colorless and unimportant were the remaining years, that Andros is
really the central figure of the whole period.

This break in the continuity of our charter government was, indeed, in
effect nearly as influential as those two later civic convulsions, the Revo-
lution and the recent Rebellion. Each of these three events have profoundly
affected Massachusetts, and, of necessity, Boston. The coming of Andros
brought us into renewed relations with contemporary life in England ; the
second transformed us from loyalists to republicans ; the third has so far
given us a nationality as entirely to eradicate our provincialism.

Prior to the advent of Sir Edmund Andros there existed, from May
24 to Dec. 20, 1686, a provisional government over Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, Maine, and the King's Province, under the presidency of Joseph

1 [Such papers of this period as it suited Mr. Revolution, 1689, one volume ; and Inter- Charter,

Felt to group together, he has arranged under 1689-92, three volumes. See Vol. I. of this

three heads, Usurpation, 1686-89, one volume; History, Introduction, p. xix. ED.]
VOL. II. I.

2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Dudley. He was duly commissioned by King James, and he was assisted
by sixteen councillors. As might be expected, Randolph considered him-
self to be the true manager of this temporary government ; and it might also
be foreseen that harmony was impossible. 1 The facts relating to the history
of these months are so few, and they have been so judiciously presented
by Dr. Palfrey in his.admirable History, that it would be useless to repeat
them here. 2

Two special subjects may, however, be of interest to Bostonians, one
being the public proceedings relative to Dudley; the other, the successful
establishment of an Episcopal church in the town.

It may be well, therefore, to cite the evidence of an eye-witness, Samuel
Sewall, who thus enters in his Diary :

"Friday, May 21, 1686. The Magistrates and Deputies goe to the Governour's
[Bradstreet]. I was going to them about n a'clock, supposing them to be at the
Town House ; and seeing a head through the Governour's Room, and Brisco in the
Street, I asked if [the] Magistrates [were] there. So went in ; and they were dis-
coursing about delivering the Keys of a Fort which had been taken, [and] seemed to
advise him not to do it till the Gentlemen [were] sworn. Mr. Nowell prayed that
God would pardon each Magistrate and Deputie's Sin. [He] thanked God for our
hithertos of Mercy, 56 years, in which time sad Calamities [had happened] elsewhere,
as [the] Massacre [in] Piedmont. [He] thanked God for what we might expect from
sundry of those now set over us. I moved to sing ; [and] so [we] sang the i yth and
1 8th verses of Habbakkuk.

" The Adjournment which had been agreed before, [to the] second Wednesday in
October next, at 8 o'clock in the Morning, was declared by the weeping Marshall-
Generall. Many Tears [were] shed in Prayer and at parting."

On the same day President Dudley went on board the frigate, a little
below the Castle, and the flag was displayed at the main-top. Then about
five o'clock in the afternoon she sailed up to the town, the Castle firing
twenty-five guns, the Sconce and the ships in port, Noddle's Island and the
Charlestown battery joining in, the frigate replying, and flags everywhere
displayed. Yet Sewall notes that there were not many spectators on Fort
Hill. It seems that 21 was spent for wine at such festivities as there were,
which was duly charged to the colony.

On Saturday, September 25, the loyal captains of the men-of-war cele-
brated the Queen's birthday by firing guns and displaying bunting. The
ships in port were mildly coerced into a simulated enthusiasm, but the
authorities prevented the lighting of bonfires in the town. At Noddle's
Island, however, the officers held a jubilee, and made a great fire in the
evening with many huzzas ; while in Boston many, doubtless, joined the
Rev. Mr. Willard in lamenting such a profanation of the Sabbath, which
then began at sundown.

1 [Mr. C. W. Tuttle communicated some 2 [The speeches of Dudley to the Assembly,

particulars about Randolph to the Massacku- May 17 and May 25, 1686, with Mr. Deane's

setts Historical Society's Proceedings, 1874, p. remarks thereon, are in the Mass. Hist. Soc.

240. ED.] Proc., 1864, p. 487. ED.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

'* /"* * /"

f <S/-V

On Thursday, October 14, the King's birthday was commemorated in
like manner; and probably many remembered, with Sewall, that the pre-
vious day had been assigned for that reassembling of the old General Court,
which was not to be.

These seem to be the only occasions on which Boston was especially re-
minded of the presence of a new government; but a more important change
was in progress. This
was the establishment ^/

of Episcopal forms,
not only by the per-
mission, but with the
encouragement of the
Governor. Randolph
was above all things,
apparently, a zealot ;
and it is curious to
view his acts through
the eyes of an equally
devout Puritan :

"On Wednesday,
May 26, Mr. Ratliff, the
Minister, waits on the /

Council. Mr. Mason /I ,

and Randolph propose ^ '<

that he may have one ^^^ Y

of the three [meeting] <^ */

Houses to preach in.

That is denyed ; and he

is granted the east end of the Town House, where the Deputies used to meet, untill

those who desire his Ministry shall provide a fitter place."

It is not necessary to repeat so much of this story as has been already
told by Mr. Foote in Vol. I. 1

Although we may not believe the story which Randolph 2 tells, that in
October four hundred persons were daily frequenters of it, undoubtedly it
attracted many. John Dunton attended this first service, and writes that
Mr. Ratcliffe " read common-prayer in his Surplice, which was so great a
Novelty to the Bostonians, that he had a very large Audience."

" August 5th. William Harrison is buried, which is the first I know of buried
with the Common-Prayer Book in Boston. He was formerly Mr. Randolph's
Landlord."

1 [Vol. I. p. 200, et seq. ED.] baffled by the great affronts; some calling our

2 Randolph writes : " We are now come to minister Baal's priest, and some of their minis-
have praiers every Wednesday and Friday morn- ters, from the pulpit, calling our praiers leeks,
ings on their exchange, and resolve not to be garlick, and trash."

CAPTAINS OF THE MILITARY COMPANIES IN BOSTON.

4 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

So writes Sewall, who adds that the second similar interment was on
November 6, of " one Robinson, Esqre., that came from Antego; " and the
third was of John Griffin, about one week later. He also records that on
September 15 Mr. Ratcliffe married David Jeffries and Betty Usher.

Clearly the new ministry promptly began the exercise of its functions ;
and it must be conceded that there were not a few who rejoiced to see the
Church of England recognized in this place. So far at least the church was
maintained by voluntary contributions, not only the offerings at services,
but such sums as were obtained by solicitation.

These slight items are, perhaps, all that can be gleaned in regard to
Dudley's short and provisional presidency of these Colonies. The coming
of Andros, known to Randolph as early as July 28, was known generally by
August 23, when Dudley told Sewall that the new Governor would prob-
ably arrive in six weeks.

Accordingly, on Sunday, Dec. 19, 1686, the guns announced the arrival
of the frigate " King-fisher," bringing Sir Edmund to his new command.

Sir Edmund Andros was a gentleman of good family, high connections,
and prosperous antecedents. For several generations the family had been
seigneurs of Sausmarez in Guernsey; his father, Amice Andros, married
the sister of Sir Robert Stone, cup-bearer to the amiable but unfortunate
Queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth, only daughter of King James I. Through
her, however, Victoria derives her title to the British Crown. Born Dec. 6,
1637, Andros, like his brother and father, was a stanch loyalist, and served
three years in the army of Prince Henry of Nassau. At the Restoration he
was made gentleman in ordinary to the Queen of Bohemia. In 1666 he
was made major in a regiment of foot, which was sent to America, where
he distinguished himself in the war against the Dutch.

He returned to England in August, 1668; and in February, 1670-71, he
married Marie, daughter of Sir Thomas Craven. Her brother was the heir
in reversion to the barony of Hamsted-Marshall, then enjoyed by the Earl
of Craven, being the nearest heir-male. This marriage was doubtless owing
to the early connections of Andros with the court of the exiled titular
Queen of Bohemia; the Earl of Craven being her chief adviser and friend,
most probably also being her second husband. A year later, Andros was
made major of Prince Rupert's Dragoons.

In 1674 Andros, who had inherited the family estates, and had been
sworn as Bailly of Guernsey, was appointed by James, Duke of York, to be
Governor of the Province recently surrendered by the Dutch. Accompanied
by his wife, Andros landed in New York, Nov. I, 1674. Three years later
he returned to England, having been an efficient and successful agent in
establishing the affairs of that colony and of Pemaquid, also owned by the
Duke of York.

During his vacation in England he was knighted, and returned to his
colony in 1678, where he remained till January, 1681. For the next five
years he remained at home, being made gentleman of the privy chamber in

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

1683, and lieut.-colonel of Lord Scarsdale's regiment of horse in 1685.
Earlier in 1685 he commanded a troop of horse against Monmouth.

When his constant friend and patron the Duke of York succeeded to the
throne in February, I685, 1 Andros doubtless was in the line of promotion.

When James II., under the new state of affairs, was in search of a governor
for the disfranchised colonies in New England, he naturally turned to
Andros as a person well fitted for the employment.

1 [The London Gazette for Feb. 9, 1684, con-
taining an account of the death of Charles II.
and the proclamation of James II., was reprinted
in Boston by Samuel Green, and its contents are
given in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1873, p. 105. ED.]

2 [This cut follows a portrait in the Andros
Tracts, vol. i., which was engraved from a
photograph of an original likeness, the property
of Amias Charles Andros, Esq., of London.
ED.]

6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Palfrey, indeed, suggests that Andros had a " personal grudge against
Massachusetts on account of old affronts," and that " it was not to be
doubted that here was a man prepared to be as oppressive and offensive as
the king desired." This inference may be doubted. It is true that during
King Philip's war this colony had rejected the aid offered by Andros from
New York. Some unfounded insinuations were also current in Massachusetts
that the Indians obtained their arms at Albany. Andros indignantly denied
the charge, both at the time and later in England. The Massachusetts
agents, Stoughton and Bulkley, did not act very handsomely, but promised
to do all they could to remove any misunderstanding. Still there is no
proof that Andros continued for nine years to nourish his spleen ; nor is this
charge brought against him by his contemporaries.

It may be rather assumed that the opposition to Andros was not per-
sonal but general. The colonists had been for more than a generation
virtually independent. Their charter as construed by themselves was all
they needed. Their officials were natives, their legislature was of their own
selection. When the charter was revoked, they were at once at the mercy
of a sovereign little known but greatly feared. Under these circumstances,
any royal governor who tried to follow his orders was liable to be hated as
the agent of their oppressors.

Andros, who had before visited Boston in October, 1680, to wait upon
Lord Culpepper, was received now with some formality. He landed at
Governor Leverett's wharf about two o'clock, P. M., where Bradstreet and
Danforth received him, and marched through the guards of the eight com-
panies of Boston militia to the town house, a wooden building occupying
the site of our old State House. Here part of his commission was read, the
oath of allegiance was taken by him, and then as governor he swore in a
part of his council. Sewall records that the " Governor was in a Scarlet
Coat, laced ; several others were in Scarlet ; " and that the " Governor
stood with his Hat on when Oaths given to Councillours."

After speaking to the ministers in the library about the use of one of their
churches for Episcopal services, part of the time, and probably partaking of
the dinner, at which Rev. Increase Mather craved a blessing, the new Gov-
ernor withdrew to his lodgings. His residence, perhaps only a temporary
one, was with Madam Rebecca Taylor, daughter of Israel Stoughton, and
widow of William Taylor; it was at the southerly corner of Hanover and
Elm streets. 1

On Wednesday Mather and Willard announced to Andros the decision
of their churches, that they " could not with a good conscience consent
that our Meeting-Houses should be made use of for the Common-Prayer
Worship." On Friday about sixty " Red-Coats " were landed and marched
to Mr. Gibbs's house at Fort Hill. On Saturday, Christmas-day, Andros
went " to the Town House to Service, Forenoon and Afternoon, a Red-
Coat going on his right hand and Captain George [of the " Rose " frigate]

1 (See the Introduction to this volume. Madam's husband spelled his name Tailer. ED.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

on the left ; " but, as Sewall also records with secret glee, " shops open
to-day generally and persons about their occasions."

On Friday, Jan. 7, 1686-87, the cautious Sewall, being at Captain Win-
throp's on business, met Andros there, and being presented, " I thankfully
acknowledged the protection and peace we enjoyed under his Excellence's
Government."

On Sunday, Feb. 6, 1686-87, " many scores of great guns were fired
at the Castle and Town, in honor of the beginning of the third year of
the reign of King James ; much to the disquiet of the churches, it being
the sacrament Sunday. March 3d, new officers of the militia were com-
missioned, left out Richards, Checkly, Dummer." Sewall had returned
his commission before the change of government.

Sewall records little of public interest during the first half of the year
1687. During this period Andros was establishing his government, using
his very ample powers. His council was apparently composed of twelve
of those who had served under Dudley, with thirteen added. The two
Winthrops, Randolph, Usher, Gedney, and the two Tyngs were probably
resident in Boston ; Stoughton and Dudley were daily visitants. Dudley
and Stoughton were made judges ; Usher, treasurer; Randolph, secretary;
while one Sherlock was made high-sheriff of the Dominion.

Early in March, 1687, an act was passed for continuing and establishing
taxes. By it in every town the inhabitants were to choose a local tax com-
missioner, who should, with the selectmen, prepare a schedule of persons
and estates. Many of these schedules remain, a number being recently
recovered from the papers of Treasurer Usher. At the State House are
the Boston lists for 1686 and 1687, the first of which is published in extenso
in the First Report of the Record Commissioners, with the names contained
in the second. The first is not summed up ; the second shows one thou-
sand four hundred and ninety-nine male persons in town aged sixteen and
upward; the tax, at twenty-pence per head, makes .124 iSs. ^d. The tax
on estates was 83 4^. 8}^</., at one penny on the pound, showing a valua-
tion of nearly ^20,000.

The following list of those taxed for over 50 may be instructive. The
two parts represent real and personal estates :

DIVISION I.

House, Trade.

William Colman ^20 ^30

Humphrey Liscombe ... 30 80

Maj. John Richards .... 30 100

Timothy Thornton .... 20 40

John Parmeter 15 40

Widow Kellond 40 80

DIVISION 2.

Mr. Meddlecott 20 70

Mr. Adam Winthrop ... 15 40

House, Trade,

etc. etc.

Capt. Anthony Howard . . ^30 ^50

Mr. John Foster 20 50

Robert Howard 20 50

Dr. John Clark 30 20

Capt. Elisha Hutchinson . . 40 40

Widow Warren 50 20

DIVISION 3.

Isaac Walker 20 40

Samuel Checkley .... 15 40

Thomas Savage 20 30

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

House,

Trade,

House,

Trade,

etc.

John Nelson

.20

,40 Penn Townsend . . .

. .20

Edward Lillie ....

Thomas Palmer . . .

. . IO

Gyles Dyer

Simon Lynde, Esq.

. . 30

IOO

John Ballentine ....

George Pordeege

. . 18

Col. Nicholas Paige

. . 30

IOO

DIVISION 4.

Nicholas King . . .

Thomas Cooper

Simeon Stoddard . .

Francis Foxcroft . . .

. 25

Edward Shippin . . .

. . 40

IOO

Anthony Checkley . . .

Jeremiah Dummer . .

. . 2O

James Taylor . .

. 20

Charles Lidgett, Esq. .

. . 2O

DIVISION 5.

Jonathan Bridgham . .

. . 20

Thomas Clarke ....

. 40

DIVISION

Samuel Shrimpton . . - . .
John Baker

. SO
. 10

. 22
2O

150

5
20
60

Richard Harris . . .
Nathaniel Oliver . . .
Jonathan Balston, Sr. .
Henry Munford . . .

. . 40
. . 40

. . 20

. . 16

20
50
80
50

Madam Rebecca Taylor .
James Lloyd

Bozoun Allen

William White ....

. 16

Joseph Parsons

. 20

Benj. Bullivant, Esq. . .
Francis Burroughs ...

. 16

. 8

40
60

John Poole ....

30
60

Peter Sargeant

Thaddeus Maccarty . .

. 20

Eliakim Hutchinson, Esq.

. 40

DIVISION

Thomas Smith ....

. 12

Capt. Samuel Sewall

IOO

Thomas Walker, Jr. .

. . 61

IOO

DIVISION 6.

Sampson Sheefe .

-JO

Capt. Benj. Davis . . .

Capt. Nath. Byfield . .

. 12

DIVISION

John Eyre

. 20 .

Muddy River, Rumney

Marsh,

and the

Benjamin Alford ....

2 5

Islands, we omit. 1

It will be evident that the valuations above given of real and personal
property are very low. For comparison, we note that Dudley's salary as
judge was 150. Is it conceivable that he received three times the value
of the best houses in town? We must multiply the 20,000 by at least
five, to get a true valuation of the real estate then; and the .100,000
would represent much more than that value now does. 2

Leaving our Boston statistics, we find that on one other point Andros
soon offended the sensibilities of our citizens. The Governor was a devout
Episcopalian, and he had Randolph at his elbow to spur him on. He was
determined to have some accommodation for the services of his church ; and,
after inspecting the three meeting-houses, on March 23 he demanded the

1 We further find the number of horses and
cows to be as follows :

Division ^
8

8 Horses,

27 Cows.

Div sion

6 Horses,
'3 ,<

5 >
M
18
30

2 COWS.

118 194

There are tax-lists of the Andros time in JV. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Keg., xxxii., xxxv., etc.

2 [Perhaps two and a half times more would
express it with approximate accuracy. ED.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

keys of the South. A committee of six Eliot, Frary, Oliver, Savage, Davis,
and Sewall waited on the Governor, and showed that the land was theirs
by Mrs. Norton's gift, and that the house was built by the subscriptions of
individuals. But two days later, on Good-Friday, " the Governor has
service in the South meeting-house. Goodman Needham [the sexton],
though [he] had resolved to the contrary, was prevailed upon to Ring the
Bell and open the door, at the Governor's command, one Smith and Hill,
joiner and shoemaker, being very busy about it. Mr. John Usher was
there, whether at the very beginning or no, I can't tell." So writes Sewall,
who adds that on the Sunday following the " Governor and his retinue
met in our meeting-house at Eleven ; broke off at past two, because of the

OBVERSE. REVERSE.

GREAT SEAL OF NEW ENGLAND UNDER ANDROS. 1

Sacrament and Mr. Clark's long sermon. Now we were appointed to come
[at] half hour past one ; so 't was a sad sight to see how full the street was
with people gazing and moving to and fro, because [they] had not entrance
into the house." Thenceforward the Episcopalians used the building until
they got a church for themselves, though at such hours as did not prevent
the true owners from continuing their services. 2

By this act Andros defied the Puritan element, and arrayed the minis-
ters and churches against himself. With the views of that age in respect to
the power of the Crown, many temporal changes might have been accepted
with resignation ; but so long as the Church of England was weekly shown
triumphant over the Dissenters, the inhabitants of Boston needed no other
incentive to rebellion.

1 [See an account of the Great Seal in
Historical Magazine, April, 1862, by George
Adlard, and the account in his Sutton- Dudleys
of England ; also see Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc.,
July, 1862, and Palfrey, iii. 516. Andres's
VOL,- II. 2.

private seal is figured in the Heraldic Journal,
i. 141. ED]

Sewall notes, Oct. 16, 1686: " This day the
ground-sills of the church are laid ; the stone
foundation being finished."

IO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

On Oct. 3, 1687, the Government obtained a notable but expensive
victory. There was held at Boston on that day a Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner, consisting of Dudley, Stoughton, Usher, and Randolph, to try the
Ipswich leaders. That town had refused in open meeting to comply with
the law and to levy the new taxes, " until it was appointed by a General
Assembly concurring with the Governor and Council." Rev. John Wise,
John Appleton, John Andrews, Robert Kinsman, William Goodhue, and
Thomas French were the leaders ; and they were accordingly brought to
Boston, charged with high misdemeanors, and imprisoned to await trial.

Doubtless all Boston was stirred on that day ; but we have no contempo-
rary picture of the scene, as Sewall on that Monday concluded to take his
wife to Sherborn, where they passed the week. Other evidence shows that
the trial was memorable from the words used by Dudley, "that the people in
New England were all slaves, and that the only difference between them and
slaves was their not being bought and sold ; and that they must not think
the privileges of Englishmen would follow them to the end of the world."
The jury, " strangers and foreigners, gathered up, as we suppose, to serve
the present term," promptly convicted the six prisoners. They were fined,
and Mr. Wise was suspended from the ministerial function. Exorbitant
costs and fees swelled the sum of the expenses of the defence to some four
hundred pounds.

The victory was for the present complete, and all the other towns sub-
mitted. In this matter Andros does not seem to be personally implicated ;
the other financial novelty was certainly favored by him. This was the
theory that the Crown owned the fee to all the land, or at least that the ex-
isting owners under colonial grants had so weak a title as to need confirma-
tion by the Crown. After the overthrow of Andros, his enemies claimed
that he threatened the widest application of the Royal rights ; his friends
asserted that " not one example could be produced, that the least compul-
sion was ever used in this case to any man living within this Dominion."

Perhaps the truth lies between the two ; the claim was made and was ac-
quiesced in by members of the council and other friends, who were treated
with on very easy terms. When the principle was well-established the
great mass of free-holders were to be taken in hand ; but the opportunity
did not arrive.

On Oct. 26, 1687, Andros set out for Hartford, to assume command
there. He received the surrender of the old government, rapidly passed
through his new territories, and returned to Boston, November 16. During
the autumn he built a palisade fort of four bastions at Fort Hill, with a
house for the accommodation of the garrison.

Soon after this, Andros met with a great loss. On Jan. 22, 1687-88,
" the Lady Andros departed this life, to the great grief and sorrow of his
Excellency, and all that knew her," writes West. On the evening of Feb-
ruary 10, the cloudy air illuminated by torches, the stately funeral moved
through the streets of Boston. Sewall, in one of his more labored entries, has

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. II

described it; l and he adds : " No volley at placing the body in the tomb."
Tradition adds that this tomb was in the King's Chapel yard, and was after-
ward owned by Dr. Benjamin Church, of Revolutionary fame.

In spite of his affliction perhaps in consequence of it Andros was
speedily at work again, perfecting the plan of government. In February
an act was passed for additional imposts and excise ; in March, one prohib-
iting more than one town-meeting in a year: both must have aroused
a strong, if concealed, enmity in our town. The scheme for asserting the
king's title to all lands seems also to have been pushed, as it is to this year
that we find assigned Andros's famous criticism of an Indian deed, " that
their hand was no more worth than a scratch with a bear's paw."

In April, 1688, Rev. Increase Mather, the eloquent, learned, and patriotic
minister of the Second Church in Boston, sailed for England as the in-
formal envoy of the people. Andros knew of his intended journey, but did
not oppose it. Randolph, who had with reason charged Mather with libel-
ling him, brought a second suit against him. The prudent minister in a dis-
guise went to Charlestown, thence to Winnisimmet, where a ketch took him
to his desired shelter on board the ship " President." He sailed on April
17, 1688. Of his mission and its success we may speak later.

A few days before, on March 28, Sewall makes the following entry :

" Capt. Davis spake to me for Land to set a Church on. I told him [I] could
not, would not put Mr. Cotton's Land to such an use, and besides 't was Entail'd.
After[ wards], Mr. Randolph saw me, and had me to his House to see the Landscips
of Oxford Colledgse and Halls. [He] left me with Mr. Ratcliff, who spake to me
for Land at Cotton Hill for a Church which [they] were going to build. I told him I
could not, first because I would not set up that which the People of N[ew] E[ngland]
came over to avoid ; Secondly, the Land was Entail'd. In after discourse I men-
tioned chiefly the Cross in Baptism and Holy Dayes."

On April 15, Easter, the Governor celebrated the day at the South meet-
ing-house, promising that it should be for the last time. A few days later he
started for the eastward, where he unfortunately affronted Castine, a French
adventurer, resident on the Penobscot. A few parleys were had with the
Indians, and then he hastened home, arriving May 28. Here he found
awaiting him a new commission, making him governor of all the English
possessions on the mainland, except Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and
Virginia, with Boston as his capital. The next few months, to October,
were spent by Andros in a trip through his new dominions. He took
especial pains at Albany to confirm the friendly relations with the Five
Nations, which he had formerly established when governor of New York.

During his absence a panic in regard to the Indians arose in Boston.
Five persons were slain by them at Springfield, and fears were entertained
that the Indians near Casco would declare war. The Council pressed four
men from each Boston company, thirty-two in all, and sent them, with six

1 [Already quoted. See Vol. I. p. 212. ED.]

12 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

men from Charlestown, to the eastward, Sept. 10, 1688. On the 25th,
sixteen more men were pressed in Boston. 1

On October 25 Andros returned to Boston, and after trying the effect
of a proclamation in pacifying the Indians, he started on Nov. 17, 1688,
with nearly a thousand men, for the seat of war. Sewall was one of the
drafted men, but he was on the point of sailing for England ; and so, as
Jonathan Wales offered to be his substitute for .5, he got himself released.
Sewall sailed Nov. 22, 1688, and reached here on his return Dec. 2, 1689; so
that we lack his testimony as to the stirring scenes which were enacted
here between these dates.

The campaign to the eastward was mainly a defensive one, and was pro-
ductive only of discontent and suspicions on the part of the hastily-levied
forces. " At Pemaquid, information came to Andros of the apprehensions
entertained at court of a movement of the Prince of Orange ; whereupon he
issued, Jan. 10, 1688-89, a proclamation commanding His Majesty's sub-
jects in New England, and especially all officers, civil and military, to be on
the alert, should there be an approach of any foreign fleet, to resist such
landing or invasion as might be attempted." 2

We now know that the Prince of Orange had succeeded ; that on Dec.
23, 1688, James fled from London, and that on Feb. 13, 1688-89, William
and Mary were proclaimed. Let us, however, trace events as they occurred
at Boston.

Early in March, 1689, Andros reached Boston, and on April 4, John
Winslow arrived here in a vessel from Nevis, bringing copies of the pro-
clamation issued by William at his landing. 3 Andros endeavored vainly to
seize these papers, which were doubtless circulated at once among the in-
habitants. The secret history of the next fortnight will probably never be
revealed, but the following statements in the Life of Rev. Cotton Matlier,
by his son (p. 42), seem to have been overlooked by Palfrey. 4 There is
apparently no good reason for doubting their truth :

" It was in the Month of April when we had News by the Edges, concerning a
Descent made upon England by the Prince of Orange, for the Rescue of the Nations
from Slavery and Popery. Then a Strange Disposition entred in the Body of our
People to assert our Liberties against the Arbitrary Rulers that were fleecing them.
But it was much feared by the more sensible Gentlemen at Boston that an unruly
Company of Soldiers who had newly deserted the Service in which they had bin

1 [See chapter iii. of this volume. ED.] setts Archives ("Inter-charter papers,") xxxv.

2 Palfrey, New England, iii. 569. fit was in 218, and it is printed in the Andros Tracts, i. 78.
March that Andros, while in Maine, learned by Winslow was the son of John Winslow, of Bos-
a messenger despatched from New York of the ton, and he the son of John Winslow (and Mary
landing of William at Torbay. See J. R. Brod- Chilton) the brother of Governor Edward Wins-
head's paper on "The Government of Sir Edmund low, of Plymouth Colony. The proclamation
Andros over New England " in the Hist. Mag., brought by Winslow was at once reprinted as a
Jan. 1867, p. " The document conveying the broadside. " Boston, printed by R. P., for Benja-
intelligence is given in the New York Colonial min Harris, at the London Coffee House, 1689."
Documents, iii. 591, 660. ED.] 4 [See History of New England, vol. iii.,

8 [Winslow's deposition is in the Massachu- chaps, xiv. and xv. ED.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. 13

employed for the Eastern War, by the gathering of their Friends to them to protect
them from the Governor, who, they thought, intended nothing but Ruine to them
would make a great Stir and produce a bloody Revolution.

" And, therefore, the principal Gentlemen in Boston met with Mr. Mather to con-
sult what was best to be done ; and they all agreed, if possible, that they would extin-
guish all Essays in our People to an Insurrection ; but that if the Country People to
the Northward, by any violent Motions pushed on the Matter so far as to make a
Revolution unavoidable, then, to prevent the Shedding of Blood by an ungoverned
Multitude, some of the Gentlemen present would appear in the Head of what Action
should be done ; and a Declaration was prepared accordingly.

" On April 1 8 the People were so driving and furious, that, unheaded, they began
to seize our public Oppressors ; upon which the Gentlemen aforesaid found it neces-
sary to appear, that, by their Authority among the People, the unhappy Tumults
might be a little regulated."

These statements apparently agree with the events. The uprising against
Andros certainly bears the signs of a popular movement, not based upon
any knowledge of the success of the revolution in England, and for that
reason not probably the work of any of the citizens of position and wealth.
It was a desperate venture, since the continuance of the rule of King James
would have brought a speedy and terrible punishment upon the malcon-
tents. The inhabitants of Boston in 1689 were fully aware of the scenes
which followed Monmouth's failure. Some refugees indeed had found
shelter here, and the daughter of that most noted victim, Lady Lisle, had
recently been living here as the wife of President Leonard Hoar, and later
of Hezekiah Usher.

The blow was struck on April 18, not without some warning; as Andros
wrote two days earlier that there was " a general buzzing among the people,
great with expectation of their old Charter, or they know not what." About
eight o'clock in the morning of that day

" It was reported at the south end of the
town that at the north end they were all in
arms ; and the like report was at the north
end respecting the south end. Where-
upon Captain John George (of the " Rose"
frigate) was seized, and about nine of the
clock the drums beat through the town,
and an ensign was set up on the Beacon.
Then Mr. Bradstreet, Mr. Danforth, Major
Richards, Dr. Cooke, and Mr. Addington, etc., were brought to the Council-house
by a company of soldiers under Captain Hill."

In the meantime " the people in arms " captured Randolph, Foxcroft,
Bullivant, 1 Sherlock, Ravenscroft, White, and many more, and lodged them
in jail in charge of a new keeper.

1 [Bullivant was Andres's Attorney-General, in Boston after Andros left, Feb. 13, 1689-90,
He was an apothecary, and Dunton, p. 94, gives and continued it till May 19. It is preserved in
an account of him. He kept a journal of events the Public Record office, London, and has been

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" About noon, in the gallery at the Council-house, was read the Declaration. 1
Then a message 2 was sent to the Fort, by Mr. Oliver and Mr. Eyres, signed by Wait
Winthrop and the gentlemen then in the Council chamber, to inform him [Andros]
how unsafe he was like to be, if he did not deliver up himself and fort and government,
which he was loath to do.

" By this time, being about two of the clock (the Lecture being put by), the town
was generally in arms, and so many of the country came in that there was twenty
companies in Boston, besides a great many that appeared at Charlestown that could
not get over, some say fifteen hundred. Then there came information to the soldiers
that a boat was come from the frigate that made towards the fort, which made them

haste thither and come to the Sconce soon after the
boat got thither ; and 't is said that Governor Andross
and about half a score of gentlemen were coming down
out of the fort ; but the boat being seized (wherein were
small-arms, hand-grenadoes, and a quantity of match),
the Governor and the rest went in again. Whereupon,
Mr. John Nelson, who was at the head of the soldiers,

printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1878, p. 103. Bullivant
had come to Boston in 1685, and having gone to England with
Andres's friends after their downfall seems to have returned
at a later day. ED.]

1 [Good judges assign this to the pen of Cotton Mather.
Hutchinson speaks of it as being by Mather,
" who had a remarkable talent for very quick
and sudden composure." It was at once
printed on a pot folio sheet, "Boston,
printed by Samuel Green, and sold by Benja-
min Harris, at the London Coffee House,
1689." An answer to this declaration, dated
at the Castle, June 20, 1689, and vindicating
Andros, was made by John Palmer, which was
printed in London, 1690, as an Impartial
account of the State of A'ew England, and re-
printed in Boston under the title of The
Present State of New England. It is reprinted
in the Andros Tracts, \. 21. See Palfrey, iii.
582. Edward Rawson and Samuel Sewall
replied to Palmer in The Revolution in New
England justified. . . . Published by the in-
habitants of Boston and the country adjacent.
. . . Printed for Joseph Brunning, at Boston,
in New England, 1691. This is also reprinted
in the Andros Tracts, i. 63. It was accom-
panied by A Narrative of the Proceedings of
Sir Edmund A ndross.e and his Complices, dated
Boston, Feb. 4, 1690-91, and proceeding from
William Stoughton, Thomas Hinckley,
Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney,
and Samuel Shrimpton. Andros Tracts,
i. 137. ED.]

2 [This made subsequently a broadside, in
black letter, of which a copy is preserved in
the Hutchinson Papers at the State House
(surrendered by the Historical Society to the
State), as well as another in manuscript. Jifass.
Hist. Soc. Proc., 1874, p. 228. It is printed in
Hutchinson's Mass. Bay, i. ED.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. 15

did demand the fort and the governor, who was loath to submit to them ; but at length
did come down, and was, with the gentlemen that were with him, conveyed to the
Council-house, where Mr. Bradstreet and the rest of the gentlemen waited to receive
him, to whom Mr. Stoughton first spake, telling him he might thank himself for the

1 [This cut follows a photograph, kindly
loaned by the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, of a
portrait belonging to Mr. Henry Lloyd, of

Lloyd's Neck, Long Island. The painting has
an inscription which reads : " Aetatis Suae, 78,
1732." Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1879, P- 93- E

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

present disaster that had befallen him, etc. He was then confined for that night to
Mr. John Usher's house, under strong guards, and the next day conveyed to the fort."

The next day the Castle was surrendered under an order extorted from
Andros, and by agreement the " Rose" frigate struck her topmasts and sent
her sails on shore.

1 [This is copied from the original in the Massachusetts Archives, cvii. 2. En.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

Thus without the shedding of blood the overthrow of the government
of Andros was effected. It may be inferred that the conspirators here were
well assured that no other of the provinces lately ruled by Andros would
interfere to replace him. A provisional government for Massachusetts
Colony was therefore their only care. The fifteen gentlemen who met at
the council chamber on the i8th were Wait Winthrop, Bradstreet, Stough-

ton, Shrimpton, Gedney, Brown,
Danforth, Richards, Cooke, Add-
ington, Nelson, Adam Winthrop,
Sergeant, Foster, and Waterhouse.
On the 2Oth of April they joined
to them twenty-two others, as a
" Council for the safety of the
people and conservation of the
peace." They chose Bradstreet
president ; Foster and Adam Win-
throp, Treasurers ; Wait Winthrop,
commander- in- chief; Addington,
clerk.

This provisional Council called
a convention of two delegates from
each town; and on May 9, 1689,
sixty-six members met. This con-

PETITIONERS, JUNE IO, 1689.*

vention held that the old charter was in force, and invited the old officers
to assume office. This course being refused, they ordered a new conven-
tion which assembled on May 22, wherein fifty-four towns were represented.
The old Governor, Bradstreet, and the Council of 1686, according to the
renewed request of the towns, returned to office.

On May 26 the news of the accession of William and Mary reached here
and caused the greatest joy. On June 5 a General Court was held at Bos-
ton, including a newly elected Lower House. It called upon the Council as
before to assume the duties of magistrates, to which it agreed. The Lower

1 [These are signatures to a petition to the authorities, that the " Rose " frigate may be restored
to her Commander, Captain George. ED.]
VOL. II. 3.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

House brought charges against Andros, Dudley, Randolph, Palmer, West,
Graham, Farwell, and Sherlock, and refused them bail. The Court adjourned
July 13, 1689.

COMMISSIONERS OF THE UNITED COLONIES, 1689.

On December 3 Governor Bradstreet received orders from England
giving authority to the persons in office to continue to administer the gov-
ernment until otherwise instructed. This was construed to mean a tem-
porary restoration of the old charter, and elections were accordingly held
under it. Orders l had also come to send Andros and his friends to Eng-
land, whither they sailed in February, i689~9o. 2 The Colony at the same
time sent over Elisha Cooke and Thomas Oakes to aid Increase Mather and
Sir Henry Ashurst in maintaining the cause of the inhabitants.

1 [The order of the King requiring Andros
to be sent to England is in the Cabinet of the
Historical Society, and is printed in 4 Mass.

Hist. Coll.,\\\\. 711. The signature is herewith
copied. ED.]

2 Although a true view of the character of
Andros is not necessarily connected with our
local history, it does seem fair to suggest that
he has received scant justice from historians.

He has stood for generations as the type of the
oppressor, and the especial foe of this colony.
But it may be urged on the other part that he
was very far from being a Kirke, a Lauderdale,
or a Claverhouse. No blood was shed by him, no
unusually harsh punishment inflicted even accord-
ing to our modern standard. He was undoubtedly
desirous of protecting the colony from all foes,
and he seems to have used his vast authority
very moderately. The charges against him are
simply puerile, except the main accusation that
he meant to govern according to his commission
and not the old charter. The charges broke
down completely in England, and in 1692 Andros
was appointed by King William to be Governor
of Virginia. Here he ruled acceptably for six
years; he returned to England, and died Feb. 27,
1713-14, aged 75 years, honored and respected.

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD.

We have thus brought the history of this period to a close so far as it
relates to American affairs. It remains, therefore, to look at the events in
England which affected this part of the world. The guiding hand in
the negotiations at the

of Increase Mather ;
and Boston has every
reason to be proud of
the work performed
by him.

We do not intend
to trace the early life of
Increase Mather, but
we may say that he
had before this taken
an active part in poli-
tics, by publicly advis-
ing, after the writ of
quo warranto against
the Charter had been
issued, that the people
should stand by their
privileges. When there-
fore the inhabitants of
Massachusetts sought a
bold, honest, and able
representative to make
an effort for the resto-
ration of their beloved
Charter, Increase Ma-
ther was almost the
sole name to occur to
them for this high and
important office. He
consented to accept the
charge, after obtaining
the approval of his
church.

Early in April, 1688,
Mather, as has been stated, sailed for England, unprovided indeed with
formal credentials, but still the representative of the greater portion

1 [These signatures are from a letter of mem- They had addressed an earlier letter, Dec. 13, of

bers of the Andros government confined at the the same purport. Palmer was Judge ; Gra-

Castle, asking that they may be sent to England hame and Farwell were king's attorneys ; Sher-

in accordance with his Majesty's commands, lock was high sheriff. Captain Fayerweather

PETITION FROM CASTLE ISLAND. 1

2O THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

of the citizens of Massachusetts. He bore with him the Addresses of
the churches, expressing their thanks for the Declaration of Indulgence
recently granted by James II., and he was to lay before the King
the complaints of the colonists against the administration of Andros. On
May 25, 1688, he arrived at London, where the closing struggle between
King James and his people had already begun. A week before the arrival
of Mather, the seven bishops had signed the petition requesting the King
to dispense with the distribution and reading of that Declaration of Indul-
gence for which such loyal thanks had been forwarded from New England.
The position of the Agent was thus full of difficulties. On the one hand
the King was still the controller of the fortunes of the Colony, and had per-
haps earned its gratitude. On the other, it was patent to Mather that this
royal favor had been shown against the wishes of the English people, was
pronounced to be unconstitutional, and its acceptance might provoke a
sharp retribution. His natural advisers, the English Dissenters, were dis-
quieted and divided upon the subject. 1

For a time some of the leading Dissenters were in favor of accepting the
royal favor; and to this opinion Mather at first inclined, influenced perhaps
by his friends Penn and Alsop. On May 30, 1688, he waited on the King
with the Address of the congregations of New England, and a similar docu-
ment from the inhabitants of Plymouth Colony. James heard them gra-
ciously, and promised the petitioners " a Magna Charta for Liberty of Con-
science." Two days later Mather was again admitted into the King's closet,
and then, in reply to a question, ventured to speak of Andros as an oppo-
nent of the Declaration. 2 Being instructed by James to commit to writing
the matters wherein the Colony desired relief, he presented a petition on
the 2d of July, which the King received courteously, and still promised
his continued favor to New England.

Up to this time Mather had made no attempts to obtain a renewal of the
old charter. He desired to check the progress of Episcopacy in Massa-
chusetts, to obtain a favorable decision in regard to the titles of lands here
to which the Crown made great though vague pretensions, and he may have
hoped to procure the recall of Andros. These projects were not unreason-
was in command of the Castle, and the annexed 1712. Sewall, ii. 344, makes honorable mention
autographs are from a paper in which he and of him. ED.]

his lieutenant bear testimony to the treatment 1 Macaulay, in the seventh chapter of his

that Andros and his friends had received at the History, has fully described the situation of these

steadfast congregations, so recently the ob-
ject of scorn and cruel persecution, now
suddenly elevated to the rank of arbiter
between the contending factions, and as-
siduously courted by both.

2 [Mather's notes for this audience are
preserved in the Mather Papers, vii. 1 2, in the
Prince Library (see Prince Catalogue, p. 149),
as well as his rough draught of " Matters
Castle. It is in the Massachusetts Archives, of complaynt objected agt Sr Edmund Andros,"
xxxv, 90, dated Jan. 24, 1689, and is printed in presented later, Ibid, p. 150. The Mather Papers
the Andros Tracts, i. 174. Fayerweather died in contain various other papers of this time. En.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. 21

able. The King indeed was apparently disposed to treat the colonists as his
own especial tenants, and as proprietor of New York he had become, before
his accession to the throne, familiar with American affairs.

For three months Mather forbore to seek another interview, though he
neglected no opportunity to make friends among those who enjoyed the
royal favor. His chief counsellor and associate was Sir Henry Ashurst, a
wealthy baronet and member of Parliament, whose family had always been
friendly to New England. In a short time William Penn, Lord Sunderland,
the Earl of Melfort, and the terrible Jeffries were numbered among his
patrons. Even Father Petre was said to be willing to speak a good word
for New England. With such supporters the Agent seems to have become
more ambitious in his views. He hoped now to regain the old charter; and
to his pen may be fairly attributed the pamphlet entitled New England
Vindicated from the Aspersions of those who said that the Charter was taken
away because the Colonists destroyed the manufactures and commerce of Eng-
land, which now appeared. On the 26th of September, and again on the
1 6th of October, the Agent had another interview with the King, and was
regaled with more promises. For a time it seemed as if these promises would
be kept, but on a false report of the downfall of the Prince's expedition the
affair was stopped, and Mather then felt the falseness of his hopes, and
preferred a final request to the Committee to have the Council in New
England remodelled and made more efficient. Thus low had the hopes and
expectations of the New England party fallen.

The reaction, however, was fated to be a speedy one. On Nov. 5, 1688,
William landed at Torbay, and on Feb. 13, 1688-89, William and Mary were
proclaimed.

Although Mather was rfjot actively concerned in the conspiracy against
James, he could not have been ignorant of what was intended. He was not
a stranger in England, and he had cultivated intimate relations with the
English Dissenters. 1

He was now prepared to say that the congregations of New England
prayed for the success of the Protestant religion, and would joyfully ac-
knowledge William as their rightful king. On Jan. 2, 1688-89, the Dis-
senting ministers, following the Established clergy, and to the number of
ninety or more, presented an Address as the others had done ; and the fact
that Mather reprinted these two addresses in his pamphlet entitled The
Miseries of New England, warrants us in supposing that he accompanied
his brethren.

On Jan. 9, 1688-89, Mather was favored with an interview with William,
being introduced by Philip, Lord Wharton, " renowned as a distributor of
Calvinistic tracts and a patron of Calvinistic divines." Wharton spoke
earnestly, saying that the New Englanders asked not for money or men,
but for their ancient privileges. The Prince replied that he intended to

1 [A portrait of Mather was probably painted engravings were made, both reproduced in An-
in England at this time, of which two different dros Tracts, iii. p. xiii. ED.]

22 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

take the best care he could about it, and would so instruct his Secretary,
Mr. Jephson. Lord Wharton then took Mather to the Secretary, and said
to him: " Cousin, observe this gentleman; and whenever he comes to you,
receive him as if I came myself." On Feb. I, 1688-89, Abraham Kick wrote
from the Hague to the Princess Mary in behalf of the New England colo-
nists, begging her "to take the first opportunity to help them to the restora-
tion of their ancient patent, privileges, and liberties."

At this time Mather must have made public his account of the Miseries
of New England by reason of an Arbitrary Government erected there under
Sir Edmund Andros, since a copy reached Boston in season to be printed
before the end of the current year, which closed then on March 24, 1689.
Nor did his exertions cease here ; being informed by Mr. Jephson that a
Circular Letter was to be sent to all the Plantations confirming the existing
governments until further orders, Mather prevailed on the Secretary to
present a remonstrance to the King, and succeeded in stopping the letters
for New England. The date of the letters thus intercepted was Jan. 12,
1688-89. This prompt action separated New England from the other
colonies, and from that time the question of its charters was an affair to be
considered apart. But for Mather's dexterous intervention Andros would
have been confirmed ; and, as he proved afterward acceptable to the Eng-
lish Court, he would probably have remained to complete the consolidation
of the Dominion of New England. It was indeed a turning-point in our
national history.

Though now successful, the most delicate duties devolved upon Mather.
William " had been bred a Presbyterian, and was from rational conviction
a Latitudinarian ; " and there was therefore no reason to fear that during
his reign Popery or Prelacy would be forced jjjpon New England. But
religious liberty was not her only desire, the restoration of that Charter
was her dearest wish ; and that Charter was an offence in the eyes of all
parties in England. William was not ready to make concessions which had
been condemned and cancelled by his predecessors. Mather, at an inter-
view, March 14, 1688-89, endeavored to secure the royal favor; but the
King significantly replied : " I believe they are a good people, but I doubt
there have been irregularities in their government."

The King promised to recall Andros; and on Feb. 26, 1688-89, he
proposed to send two commissioners to act until a new charter should be
prepared. In the mean time, before the tidings of His Majesty's intentions
could reach them, the colonists, as we have seen, had taken the decision
into their own hands, and the news reached London toward the end of
June. On July 4, 1689, Mather had another interview with the King, who
then approved the action of the colonists; and on the I2th of August a
royal letter was addressed to Massachusetts, ratifying the assumption of
government there for the time being.

Mather was not meanwhile regardless of the great power of Parliament
to assist in restoring the Charter. The Convention Parliament was still in

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. 23

session, and, by advice of his friends, Mather procured a vote of the House
of Commons " that the taking away of the New England charters was a
grievance, and that they should be restored." A section to this effect was
inserted in the Corporation Bill. This step was gained before Parliament
took a recess on Aug. 20, 1689.

Besides these appeals Mather sought to enlist the sympathies of the
public, and printed a third essay, The Present State of New England, etc.
licensed July 30, 1689, in which he gave an account of a prosperous
colony as developing under the old charter. Soon after this, probably
after the reassembling of Parliament on the I9th of October, a Reply to tlie
Vindication was published, which set forth the impropriety of including
the New England charters in the Corporation Bill. This controversy and
the hopes of the Agent were terminated by the fate of the main bill, from
which the most important clauses were stricken out; and Parliament was
prorogued on Jan. 27, 1689-90, to be formally dissolved a few days later.

Toward the end of 1689 the opponents of the Charter had begun to
make themselves heard. Byfield : and another writer had published in
England the colonists'
version of the over-
throw of Andros, which
had been accomplished
not without some dis-
content. The Episcopalians of Boston sent to England a strong remon-
strance, and so did citizens in Charlestown and settlers in Maine. Gershom
Bulkeley published a pamphlet to show that the new government was ille-
gal. Palmer, one of the ablest of Andres's adherents, prepared in prison a
defence of the late government, which found a printer in the distant colony
of Pennsylvania, and was doubtless freely circulated even in Boston.

We may imagine that by the beginning of the year 1690 all these re-
monstrances had reached London ; and early in the year Andros, Dudley,
and several others of their party were sent thither by command of the King.
Mather and Ashurst, now recognized as Agents by the restored government
of New England, received as colleagues Elisha Cooke and Thomas Oakes.
Very little progress, however, was made during the year toward fulfilling
the wishes of the colonists. Mather says that he made " some essays to
see if, by a writ of error in judgment, the case of the Massachusetts Colony
might be brought out of Chancery into the King's Bench ; " but this was
"defeated by a surprising Providence," as Mather called what was most
likely a division in the councils of the Agents. Elisha Cooke was for the
old charter or none at all, and Oakes joined with him. Mather and Ashurst
were in favor of making the best terms possible. The disputes between
these four had gone so far that Cooke and Oakes would not sign the articles
preferred against Andros before the Privy Council, April 17, 1690, and the

1 [Byfield's account of the Late Revolution in New England is in the Andros Tracts, and also in
the Historical Magazine, January, 1862. Er]

24 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

prosecution fell through on that ground. Hard words were exchanged,
Mather saying that the Earl of Monmouth told him " that they had cut the
throat of their country in not signing," and Cooke alleging the advice of
Sir John Somers in defence of his conduct. A false rumor was circulated
that Cooke and Oakes said " that they could have saved the old charter if
it had not been for Mather, and that he had betrayed his country."

Cooke continued an opponent to the end, and refused to take any steps
toward obtaining a new charter; but the others decided to trust to the
kindness of the King. The Earl of Monmouth presented their request,
and it was referred to the two Lord-Chief-Justices, Holt and Pollexfen, the
Attorney-General Treby, and the Solicitor-General Somers, with whom
Mather was on friendly terms. He was present at the consultations at
which the new charter was prepared ; and the report, having been sub-
mitted to the King, was forwarded to the Committee for Trade and
Plantations on Jan. I, 1690-91.

In 1690 the able attack upon Mather, entitled New England's Faction
Discovered, was published. After the unconditional release of Andros in
April, his friends seem to have been active and eloquent in opposing a
re-grant of a charter to Massachusetts. Palmer issued a reprint of his
Defence, wisely expunging the Scriptural arguments which were specially
adapted to a New England audience. These two writers not only praised
the conduct of Andros, but skilfully displayed the feebleness of his suc-
cessors in the government. In reply to them, Mather undoubtedly pub-
lished his Vindication of New England?- containing the first petition of
the Episcopalians of Boston. Soon after, the Government of Massachu-
setts put forth their statement entitled The Revolution in New England
Justified, and the People there Vindicated, and the accompanying Narrative
of the Proceedings of Andros, by several of his Council. Indeed, the latter
pamphlet, dated at Boston, Feb. 4, 1690-91, refers especially to "such untrue
Accounts as that which goes under the name of Capt. John Palmer's, and
that scandalous Pamphlet entitled New England's Faction Discovered, sup-
posed to be written by an Implacable Enemy [Randolph] of all good men,
and a person that for Impudence and Lying has few Equals in the World."
Lastly, to the pen of some friend of the Agents we may attribute the
pamphlet called The Humble Address of the Publicans of New England,
with its insinuations that the second petition of the Episcopalians was
intended for whichever King might succeed, and that their protestations
of loyalty were worthless. As we have seen, the matter of the new charter
was in the hands of the Committee for Trade and Plantations, and Mather
was busy in securing the interest of all who might aid him. He published
a paper of Reasons for the Confirmation of Charter Privileges; he gained
the support of such Nonconformist ministers as had influence with noble-
men ; he specially obtained the good offices of Archbishop Tillotson and

1 [This is included in the Andros Tracts, ii. 21, following a copy without title. The copy in
Harvard College Library has a title. ED.]

THE INTER-CHARTER PERIOD. 25

Bishop Burnet. Finally, on April 9, 1691, he was granted an interview
with the Queen, in which Her Majesty displayed her usual kindness of
heart, and promised to use her influence with the King in behalf of the
colony.

In April, William, having been absent in Holland, returned to England
for a fortnight, and Mather was favored with two interviews, in which he
presented addresses from the General Court, and from a number of London
merchants, and urged the difference between New England and the other
colonies.

In preparing the new charter, the first question was whether the colo-
nists should make their own laws and appoint their own officers, or there
should be a governor appointed by the Crown, who should have the power
of vetoing laws. The King decided for a royal governor, but avoided a
direct decision of the question as to the veto power. Mather soon became
involved in disputes with the Lords of the Council, who evidently in-
tended that the governor should have the veto power; while Mather
strenuously endeavored to persuade them to adopt a plan which the
Attorney-General, Treby, had drawn up at his 'solicitation, and by which
the governor had not this power in any case. Mather protested to the
ministers that he would sooner part with his life than consent to their plan,
or to " anything that might infringe any liberty or privilege that justly
belonged to his country." Their significant reply was, " that nobody ex-
pected or desired his consent ; that they did not look on the Agents from
New England as plenipotentiaries from another sovereign state ; but that if
they declared that they would not submit unto the King's pleasure, His
Majesty would settle the country as he pleased, and they were to take what
would follow." The irrepressible Agent, however, continued to protest,
and persuaded his friends at court, and even the 'Queen, to write to the
King, now in Flanders, asking either that his plan might be adopted, or
that the charter might be delayed until the King's return to England.
Believing that he had thus secured a respite, Mather went to recruit
his health " to the Waters," probably to the fashionable resort at Bath ;
but he was quickly recalled by the news that the King had, on the loth of
August, signified his approval of the Council's plan of a charter. Mather
now tried to obtain all possible concessions in the details. He succeeded
in having the territories of Nova Scotia, Maine, and Plymouth annexed to
Massachusetts, but failed in having New Hampshire also included. He
had the form of oaths amended to suit his views, and obtained the addi-
tion of a most important clause confirming all grants made by the General
Court, notwithstanding any defect which there might be in form of con-
veyance. The new charter, thus framed and amended, was signed on
Oct. 7, 1691.

Here ended the labors of Mather as Agent for Massachusetts. On the
4th of November he waited on His Majesty to thank him for the charter, and
to notify him that the Agents united in recommending that Sir William

VOL. II. 4.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Phips should be appointed governor. On March 7, 1691-92, Mather and
the newly commissioned governor left London; and on the twenty-ninth
sailed from Plymouth, under convoy of the " Nonesuch '.' frigate, for
Boston, where they arrived May 14, 1692.

CHAPTER II.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS. MASSACHUSETTS
DIPLOMACY IN LONDON. BOSTON A VICE-ROYALTY : ITS
COURT AND CHURCH.

BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS,

Vice-Prcsident of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

OF all the colonies planted by subjects of the Crown of Great Britain on
the four continents and many islands of the globe, not one has ever
revolted from the authority of the parent country except those thirteen in
North America, Massachusetts being the leader, which in due time as-
serted and achieved their independence. The causes, methods, and agencies
which brought about that result, and the instigating motives which prompted
and guided it, are to be traced in their spring and workings through the
period in our history between 1692 and 1774, during which the government
of Massachusetts was administered by officials commissioned by the Crown.
Had that r^gimebeen instituted from the first planting of the colony, instead
of having been substituted for a previous one quite unlike it, it is conceiv-
able that the result might have been different in time or circumstance.
The fact that previous to the exercise of a direct royal sway over Massachu-
setts it had, under a different form of government, substantially anticipated
the independence which it afterward achieved, prejudiced and perilled at
the start the interposition of its authority by the Crown. The people who
for two generations had been practised in self-government, constituted an
unpromising constituency for the experiment of a foreign rule over them.
It is also conceivable that the revolt of Massachusetts might never have
occurred, or would, if ever effected, have been brought about quite other-
wise as to time and circumstances, if she had been left to retain and exercise
the form of self-government enjoyed under her colonial charter. There
were party divisions and struggles, sometimes very passionate ones, devel-
oped between her two bodies of legislature and executive. There were
many persons, some of them quite influential in place and means, who found
causes of disaffection and antagonism in the state of affairs, in the usages and
traditionary principles of the administration of the colony, and who were
restive under the stern, hard sway of what still survived of the old Theoc-
racy. The mother country might really have exercised more authority and

28 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

have retained more deference from her subjects here, had she been regarded
simply as a resource for appeal, arbitration, or mediating and reconciling
interference between parties who could not always manage their affairs
successfully when left wholly to themselves, than she could have hoped to
do by an assertion of absolute power over them. Then, too, the risks to
which the colony was for a century and a half so calamitously exposed in war-
fare with the French and their Indian allies, might naturally have induced
her wiser magistrates to keep themselves under a due allegiance to the
King, that they might have a claim on his aid. It is idle, however, to
speculate at any length upon what might have happened under certain cir-
cumstances had not the continuity of their course been broken by the
interposition of a radical change in them. There is an episode in our
history dividing two periods, the earliest and the present one of our gov-
ernment by ourselves, in which we were brought under a direct subjec-
tion of legislative, executive, and judicial authority to the mother country.
This is the theme of the following pages.

From the date, when, in 1692, the monarchs of Great Britain assumed
the responsibility of selecting governors and other officials for Massachu-
setts, till the period in 1774-75, when the revolting Province concluded to
dispense with them, eleven such chief magistrates had received the royal
commission. Their names, in order, are Sir William Phips, Richard Earl
of Bellomont, Joseph Dudley, Samuel Shute, William Burnet, Jonathan
Belcher, William Shirley, Thomas Pownall, Sir Francis Bernard, Thomas
Hutchinson, and General Thomas Gage. Between Dudley and Shute's ad-
ministrations a commission as governor had been issued to Colonel Elisha
Burgess. This he sold for a thousand pounds paid him by the friends of
Shute. In temporary vacancies of the chair, William Stoughton, William
Tailer, William Dummer, and Thomas Hutchinson were successively quali-
fied to occupy it, having been commissioned as Lieutenant-Governors. Of
the eleven Governors just named, only ten really exercised here their full
functions, or left tokens of their authority in our legislation. General
Gage, for three good reasons, is hardly to be recognized as one of our gov-
ernors. He had been sent here as a temporary substitute for Hutchinson,
who it was intended should return from England to resume his office after
making report at Court. Gage was avowedly appointed rather with refer-
ence to military than civil functions ; and he never really governed, as his
authority from the first was thwarted and set at nought. Even as a military
officer Gage was so soon superseded by General Howe, that, except as bear-
ing the first shock of the bloody conflict, there is but little mark of him in
our history.

Ten royal Governors, then, were recognized as having authority in Massa-
chusetts, and put their names to acts of legislation with the other branches
of our Provincial government, the style being changed with the new
charter, from " the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay " to " the
Governor, Council, and Representatives convened in General Assembly."

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 29

If these Crown officials had been of the very best and wisest among men,
considerate of the local and traditional prepossessions, prejudices, and
usages of those whom they were to govern, tentative, gentle, and deferential
in the exercise of authority ; and if they had even subordinated their ob-
ligations to advance the supposed interests of the Crown for the sake of a
temporizing policy of humoring a self-willed people, there would hardly

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS. 1

have been a sensible relief of the shock caused by their presence and
administration here. Among the parallelisms which the Puritan colonists
had fondly traced between their own providential mission and guidance and
those of the " chosen people " of old, they had loved to dwell in their prayers
and occasional sermons upon their enjoyment of the privilege emphasized
by the Hebrew prophet, of choosing " their governor from the midst of them "
( Jer. xxx. 2 1 ). Four of their ten royal Governors were, indeed, natives, and
of their own stock ; and their own foremost divine and politician, Increase

J iThe seals of the Governors are given in Heraldic Journal, i. and ii. ED.]

30 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Mather, had been considerately allowed the favor of proposing the first of
them. But, none the less, it was by kingly prerogative and not by popular
election that these chief magistrates, with others, came into power. The
change was a radical one, and it covered possibilities of much more.

Through these Crown officials a foreign government, with its own distinct
and often rival interests, had a representation and a sway here such as it
had never had before. The reader must find elsewhere general and de-
tailed statements of the changes wrought in the constitution and adminis-
tration of the government by the substitution of the Provincial for the
Colonial charter. They need only to be summarily repeated here. Massa-
chusetts, no longer retaining its individuality, was a part of a province which
included the old Plymouth Colony, Maine and Nova Scotia and the lands
between them, except New Hampshire. The governor and lieut.-governor
were to be appointed and commissioned by the king. In a legislature of
two Houses, a popular branch was to be composed of delegates or repre-
sentatives from the towns (of which there were seventy-five, seventeen of
these being in the old Colony of Plymouth), and a council of twenty-eight
(the first members of it having been designated by the king) were to be
nominated by the representatives, subject, however, to rejection by the Gov-
ernor, who also might veto bills passed by the Court. Laws approved by
him after their enactment were suspended in their full force for three years,
dependent for that period upon the allowance of the king. Judicial officers
were to be chosen by the Governor and Council. The General Court held
the power of the purse. There was a right of appeal to the English courts,
limited to cases considerable in amount. 1

It should be recognized here that by no means all the people of the
colony, especially those whose homes and interests were identified with
Boston, were of one mind as regarded the change in the government.
Even of those born of the native stock, and most concerned in its local
relations, there was no inconsiderable portion, in position and influence, who
avowedly or secretly welcomed that change. The rule of the old regime
had been to some, stern, oppressive, and arbitrary; the clerical and eccle-
siastical, the domestic and social espionage had become offensive and
irritating. What the lovers of the old ways mourned over as a decay of
piety and morality indicated a preference and welcome by others of a re-
laxed rigidness. And while we distinctly trace the influence of such restive-
ness among descendants of the Puritan stock, we have to allow for the
presence and activity here of a vigorous and unsympathizing class, who, as
concerned in trade, or brought here as military and naval officers, soldiers,
and sailors during the chronic warfare against the French and their Indian
allies, identified their sympathies and interests with the old home, and so
were in accord with the assertion here of the royal authority.

1 [A heliotype of the charter of William and the kind permissin of the Secretary of the Corn-
Mary, which united Plymouth with Massachu- monwealth, from the original which hangs on its
setts, and instituted the line of royal Governors, several rollers beside the Colonial charter in the
is herewith given. The negative was made, by office of the Secretary at the State House.-'-En.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 31

But after yielding the fullest reasonable admission as to the number and
weight of those in the community to whom the newly instituted government
might be indifferent or preferable, we can hardly overstate the repugnance,
the melancholy regret, the dismay and apprehension of possible contingent
losses and evils which the prostration of self-government brought with it to
the larger and the more homogeneous elements of the people of Boston.
Of the sadness of feeling, of the fond recalling of the past, and the painful
retrospects and visions of the future connected with it, the Journal of Chief-
Justice Samuel Sewall presents many plaintive reminders. Though he filled
honored places under the new government, and shared the most intimate
social intercourse and privileges with the representatives of the Crown, he
was never in heart reconciled to the change ; and before he went, in full
years, to the tomb, which he had previously filled with his large farrfily, he
felt that the glory had departed from his Israel. The dismay and anxiety
which had attended the unsettled interval of the eight years previous to the
setting up of the second charter, the exhaustion, poverty, and depression
which had disheartened the whole community in a continuous warfare with
the French and Indians on sea and land were, indeed, somewhat relieved
by the re-establishment of security and order. Yet it would hardly be worth
the while to offset the general sorrow for the loss of the old charter by any
encouragement or hope which those of the native stock could find in the
new organic disposal of them and their interests. Any one who attempts to
trace the springs, the occasions, and the directing forces of the revolt which,
in less than three quarters of a century afterward, prepared the way for
our independence, cannot find his clew a year short of the date when the
former self-governed Colony of Massachusetts Bay became a Royal Prov-
ince. To those who in lineage, sentiment, and habit represented, in the full
maturity of active life, the first planters on the soil, the experience might
be compared to that of a man in the vigor of two or three score years,
who had not even in his nonage been subject to another, and who had felt
no crisis of increased freedom when the law made him his own master, and
who should find himself then suddenly put under guardianship, as unsound
or imbecile. Birthright privileges, with their wonted exercise, the elastic
spirit of full manhood, with all the fond associations and usages which had
strengthened through two full generations, were rudely arrested. Fester-
ings of discontented feeling from the first experience of the change indicated
a constant contrasting of the new dispensation of things with the cherished
remembrances of the past. There was a manifestation of something more
and worse than awkwardness in the effort at adaptation and conformity with
changed habits and rules. These frettings and retrospects would not allow
the memory of a previous independence to fade into a mere tradition, but
kept it latent as in full vigor of spirit. Under a forced repression it mani-
fested itself in a seldom intermitted, and often in a resisting and pugnacious
opposition to the advice and commands of the representatives of the Crown,
even when they spoke by positive instructions from the monarch. Even

32 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

the most considerate and judicious of the royal Governors as Shirley and
Pownall found it a most ungracious task to reinspire loyalty and a regard
for foreign, disused, and discredited precedents into the breasts of those
who for two generations had enjoyed a wild growth of independency. The
people had learned that the most agreeable and the least objectionable way
of being governed was that of governing themselves. Very naturally this
feeling was cherished most strongly among the free husbandmen who lived
most remote from Boston, and who were wholly removed from the wiles of
royal officials and mere traders. There are marked tokens of this survival
and exercise of the full spirit of the old independence in the country mem-
bers of the House of Representatives. Indeed, the assertion of it broke the
previous allowed usage by which towns might be represented by non-resi-
dents, and required that their representatives should be chosen from among
their own townsmen.

We are led to ask, What were the qualifications of a royal Governor of
Massachusetts? what sort of a man was required ; and what kind of service
was he expected to render, directly to the Crown or indirectly to the people
over whom he was set? We may dispose summarily of the matter last sug-
gested, for it can hardly be conceived that the real welfare and prosperity
of the colony, or the benefit or gratification of its inhabitants, was to any
considerable extent had in view in the new form of government. Four of the
ten Governors, Phips, Dudley, Belcher, and Hutchinson, as has been
said, were natives of New England, and may be supposed to have been
commissioned to office by the king because of that fact, and the inference
that they would best understand the interests of the Province, and would be
most acceptable in humoring the feelings of its people. But of these Phips,
Dudley, and Hutchinson proved to be the least successful and the most
odious in their administration, and the least happy in their personal ex-
perience in office. Neither one of the whole ten found the office in its
conditions or in its discharge to be an agreeable one ; no one of them had a
wholly placid administration, or escaped being made a subject of complaints
sent over to the king. It is to be borne in mind, as a key to all our history
as a dependency of the realm of England, that the relation itself was in fact
unsubstantial, undefined, unintelligible, and therefore practically unmanage-
able and unreal. There was no foundation for it in the necessities of the
case or in the reason of things. We did not need to have a governor and
other officials sent to us from across the water, as we had passed the most
critical period of exposure, and had firmly rooted our prosperity by our
own resources, by native talents, and statesmanship. Amid their earliest
risks and straits and perils the colonists had scrupulously and proudly exer-
cised their utmost caution as to allowing any foreign intervention in their
affairs, or being beholden for any royal favor beyond that of the old charter.
Generally with a formal courtesy, but sometimes with a stiff and complacent
assurance, they had signified, when challenged or threatened as to their
doings, that they understood and felt perfectly capable of managing their

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 33

own affairs, while their friends in the Old World must necessarily be quite
uninformed about them. There was no good reason to be given why the
local legislation of a competent representative body of the people, well prac-
tised in the business, should be transmitted to England, act by act, to await,
while in temporary force for three years, the royal approval or disallowance.
Neither our security nor our prosperity required anything of the sort. If,
beginning with the day of hard, small things, the exiles to this wilderness
and their children, by their own toil and wisdom, at their own cost and risk,
without ever asking guidance or assistance from England, and always re-
pudiating its interference, had succeeded in establishing here a flourishing
Commonwealth, tested by sixty years of trial, what possible emergency or
use could, at the end of that period, call for the interposition and supremacy
here of Crown officials? The appliance was supererogatory; it was med-
dlesome, and necessarily mischievous. Of course, this is from the point of
view of those most concerned in the matter.

This fundamental fact that we did not need and had no use for royal
Governors makes it very difficult for us to conceive, from our point of view,
what sort of men were suited to fill an office for which there was no call and
no functions. The office, then, and those who were to fill it were to be
judged and estimated in intent and qualifications solely with regard to the
purposes and interests of the foreign administration. From the king's
point of view it was plain that the office was needed as a sort of guardian-
ship over the colonists, to bring them into an allegiance such as they had
really never recognized, and to turn them to some better account of interest
or profit to the realm than they had heretofore served. Such being the
exactions of the office, men were needed to fill it who would uphold the
prerogatives of the Crown ; who would put themselves into a firm attitude
against what might be regarded as disloyal or having a tendency to inde-
pendence. The more satisfactorily and effectually high officials would serve
those ends was the first consideration in their commission. Then, in the
second place, no doubt the more amiably and discreetly this could be done
with regard to the people to be governed, the better would the official be
suited to his place. The temptation, of course, would be the beguilement of
weak and complaisant men into officious and calculating subservience to the
appointing power. An eye to personal emolument might doubtless be kept
open by some who sought the office. Royal officials in the West Indies
were in several cases enriched by the use alike of fair and unfair opportuni-
ties. But the wool here was too short for plucking.

We may next ask, What were the attractions of the office of a Provincial
Governor of Massachusetts, offering inducements for seeking and exercising
it? No one who had it proffered to him seems to have declined it, though it
does not appear that there was ever much zeal or pressure manifested in any
rivalry to obtain it. Probably Colonel Burgess, who sold out his commission
for the consideration of a thousand pounds before he had assumed his gov-
ernment, realized more direct profit from it than did any one who administered
VOL. n. 5.

34 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

the office. There might have been attached to it hopes and prospects, which
however were never fulfilled, of rewards and fees and official dignities. Pos-
sibly Governor Hutchinson, but if he, only he, through the business op-
erations of his relatives, as Bancroft calls him " a smuggler," turned his royal
offices to profit. All the other Governors professed that they were impover'
ished by the trust. Probably no one of them found satisfaction in the dis-
charge of it, or, in yielding it up, failed to regret having ever held it. The
superfluousness and unreality of the Crown prerogative here affected all who
were concerned in it. Cotton Mather, a good judge in the case, in a letter
to Richards, wrote truly, " Massachusetts had proved a burdensome stone,
and a break-neck unto them that have sought the ruin of it." And this
" seeking the ruin of it " was simply synonymous with the doing anything
to cross the will of the people in advising and acting for themselves.

Nearly all of the ten royal Governors, together with all the other burdens
of office, had on their hands the conduct, in whole or in part, of one of the
five great conflicts and struggles under which the almost continuous warfare
with the French and their Indian allies is parted out and distributed, for the
sake of distinguishing its stages, or its more signal encounters and disasters.
Those of the Governors who had not a prominent part in these campaigns,
as well as those most heavily tasked by them, had each a full equivalent
in some special vexation or controversy springing from his representation
of royal authority over a people who fretted under it, and in heart felt that
they ought to be wholly free of it. These specific vexations and controver-
sies were somewhat fairly distributed among the successive chief magistrates
set over an unwilling and restive people ; but they finally crowded all to-
gether upon the last two of them, Bernard and Hutchinson. The chief
of the larger of these matters of contention and bickering had reference to
the King's command that his subjects in Massachusetts should settle a
liberal and regular salary on his Governor. This, his said subjects decided
from the first that they would not do ; and notwithstanding all the pleading
and cajoling, the advising and the commanding and the threatening, they
never did do it. The implication was that the officer in question, being the
King's servant, ought to look to his master for his wages. As the people
did not want him, had no use for him, and would at any time have gladly
been rid of him, it seemed to them a piece of clear effrontery in him to
read to them the royal instructions that those wages should be paid from
their treasury. Yet so strangely do the development of circumstances and
the change in the relations of things alter the matters and the phases of con-
troversy, that it came about that one of the last of the quarrels between the
Governor and the aforesaid subjects concerned the fact that the King did
undertake to pay wages to his Governor. The subjects then protested
against it. What right, they asked, had the King to keep in his pay an
officer here to intermeddle with our affairs, while we were perfectly willing
to compensate him according to our own judgment for any appreciable
service performed by him? Between that first and that last phase of the

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 35

controversy about a salary came in such matters of contention as these,
the assumed right of the royal Governor to negative the choice of a Speaker
by the House of Representatives ; his right or theirs as to adjournment and
the selection of a place other than Boston for holding the legislature ; as to
the appointment of days for Fasting and Thanksgiving; as to matters
regulating the currency ; as to the calling of military officers to account, and
auditing their disbursements ; as to the right of the Governor to quarter
troops on the town, or in the Castle, etc.

These are some of the specific points of contention and alienation, by
which successively, in changing issues but in ever increasing aggravations
of temper, the King's governors were compelled to stand for his prerogative
while the people stood for theirs. The story is an exciting one, and the
moral which runs through it is that it concerns a forced and unsuccessful
arrest of the independency in government with which Massachusetts began,
and with the renewed assertion of which she triumphed in her long pre-
liminary struggle with the Crown and Ministry of Great Britain, first, as
it was phrased, for the rights of Englishmen, and then for the fuller im-
munities and independence of men.

Only with brevity can we now rehearse the successive administrations of
the ten acting royal Governors of this Pr.ovince.

The most picturesque and remarkable in character and personal fortune
of all these royal functionaries was the first of them, Sir William Phips, a
characteristic product of the New England soil, times, and ways. Hutch-
inson thus briefly and fitly designates him : " He was an honest man ;
but by a series of fortunate incidents, rather than by any uncommon talents,
he rose from the lowest condition in life to be the first man in the country."
Let us trace him between those extremes. William Phips it is note-
worthy under the circumstances that he had a Christian or a given name,
instead of being designated by a number was one of twenty-one sons and
of twenty-six children of the same mother, born to James Phips, a black-
smith, or gunsmith, who was an early settler in the woods of Maine, near
the mouth of the Kennebec. The tale about this excess of children is told
by Cotton Mather, who had means of correct information where his love of
the marvellous did not mislead him. But records and history are dumb as
to any fact about the most of these scions of a fruitful parentage other than
that of their having been born. William having come to the light, Feb. 2,
1651, was left in early childhood without" a father. What the mother's task
was, in poverty, with hard wilderness surroundings of bears, wolves, and sav-
ages, we may well imagine. Her famous son, untaught and ignorant, tended
sheep till he was eighteen years of age. Then he helped to build coasters,
and sailed in them. This was at the time and afterward a most thriving
business, the foundation of fortunes to rugged and enterprising men born in
indigence. A good story of the period illustrates the activity and profit of
ship-building on the Maine coast. A skipper had appeared from there

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

at an English port with cargoes, in three successive years respectively, in a
schooner, a brig, and finally a large ship. On being rallied about the rapid
increase of his vessel, as if it had grown while crossing the seas, he replied
that they built ship-stuff down east in lengths, and sawed sections of it off at
pleasure, according to the voyage ! Young Phips had early visions of suc-

SIR WILLIAM PHIPS. 1

1 [This portrait is, by his kind permission,
taken from a painting belonging to the Honora-
ble Francis B. Hayes, which this gentleman ac-
quired from the collection of the late Thomas
Thompson, by whom it was held to be a portrait
of Phips. The manuscript in his hand is marked
on the painting " W. P." Its further history is
not given. An alleged likeness of Phips on a
dilapidated canvas was for some years in this
city in the possession of Miss E. B. Blackstone,
but is now believed to be in Bangor. (See Mass.

Hist. Soc. Proc., November, 1870, and February,
1876.) The authenticity of this last is doubted
in Sewall Papers, i. 204. The Heraldic Journal,
i. 47, 1 52, says that the arms now to be seen on
a tomb in the old burying ground at Charles-
town, marked "David Wood, 1762," are those
of Phips, to whom the tomb originally belonged.
Phips's Life is one of those given by Cotton
Mather in the Magnalia ; and Professor Francis
Bowen has in later years contributed one to
Sparks's American Biography* ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 37

cess and greatness. He came to Boston in 1673, at the age of twenty-two,
worked at his trade, and learned for the first time to read, and also to
do something that passed for writing. He married a widow, older than
himself, who had had property, but had lost much of it. They suffered
straits together ; but he used to comfort her with the assurance that they
would yet have " a fair brick house in the Green Lane of North Boston."
And so they did. That " Green Lane " became Charter Street, when, in
1692, he came back as Sir William Phips from the Court of London,
bringing the Province Charter as the first Governor under it. Many citizens
still living will remember his " fair brick house," as it long served as an
Asylum for boys at the corner of Salem and Charter streets. 1

But a strange, wild, daring, and romantic interval of adventure preceded
his honors and his wealth. He wrought at intervals in Maine, and here, as
a ship-carpenter, sailed as a lumberer and coaster, and engaged in expedi-
tions against the Indians. In 1684, a dark time for Massachusetts, his
visions took in a search in the waters of the Spanish main for a trea-
sure-ship known to be sunken there. Going to London, he had the address
so to commend himself to the Admiralty and James II. as to obtain the
use and command of an eighteen-gun ship of ninety-five men. Possibly
the king entrusted to him, besides the search for the sunken treasure, some
other business on the high seas of a sort not to be entered on papers. A
two years' cruise in the West Indies, in which he showed a most signal in-
trepidity, heroism, and ingenuity of resource in suppressing a mutinous
crew, was unsuccessful, except in acquainting him, through an old Spaniard,
near Port de la Plata, of the precise spot where a treasure-laden galleon had
foundered nearly fifty years before. He returned to England for a new out-
fit. The king favored him, but not with another war-ship. The Duke of
Albemarle and others, as associates, provided him with a vessel on shares.
The hero had heroic success. Espying the rock-imbedded prize, deep in
the clear waters, he fished up its bullion ballast to the value of more than
a million and a half of dollars in gold and silver, and also diamonds, pre-
cious stones and other treasures. His own share in the proceeds was about
a hundred thousand dollars. To this was added the honor of knighthood,
and a gold cup for Lady Phips of the value of five thousand dollars.

He returned home in the capacity of high-sheriff under Andros, who
did not want him, for Phips was utterly ignorant of law, and could not write
legibly. He soon made another voyage to England, and returning to Boston
built the " fair brick house " of his vision, engaged in a successful military
expedition against Acadia, and took and plundered Port Royal and other
French settlements, indulging in some very questionable proceedings. He
then instigated and conducted as commander a naval expedition against
Quebec, which proved a disastrous and humiliating failure. 2 Returning
once more to England, he was at hand to aid President Mather in his agency
to secure a new Charter, with which, as the first commissioned Governor

1 [See the Introduction to this volume. ED.] 2 [See Colonel Higginson's chapter. ED.]

38 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

under it, he came back to Boston, May 14, 1692, with the Agent, who was
his friend and pastor. 1 The appointment no doubt was regarded as, in in-
tention, conciliatory toward the anxieties and apprehensions of the people of
the Province, and it was supposed that it would be gratifying to them. There
was, however, something trifling and farcical in this attempt to initiate a new
order of things, involving risky experiments, under the lead of an illiterate
mechanic, utterly unskilled in legal and administrative affairs, a rough sea-
man and a man of uncontrollable temper. An additional and very strong
distaste was felt by many for his appointment because it was inferred that,
owing his advancement to the Mathers, they would be the managing power
behind him ; and there was an earnest wish and purpose to break down their
then too predominating influence. Yet after Phips had risen to these high
honors he showed no poor pride, and often alluded to his lowly origin.
He gave his fellow ship-carpenters a dinner in Boston ; and when borne down
by public distractions, would wish himself back to his broad-axe again. He
was pure in morals, upright in his dealings, and owed his success in life to
his own energy and prowess. He tried, without much avail, to improve
his handwriting and spelling, and as a help to control his hot temper he
became a communicant in the Church of the Mathers, giving the required
relation of his religious experience. All incompetent as he was for the
stern exigency, he had to meet the appalling outburst of the Witchcraft
delusion, with its spell of horrors. For this purpose he constituted
with a neglect of constitutional legal forms a Special Court of Oyer and
Terminer. During the greater part of the proceedings of this court he was
absent at the eastward in an expedition against the Indians, and engaged in
building a fort at Pemaquid. When he returned to Boston he found that
even his own wife had been " cried out upon " as a witch, and he at once put a
stay upon the fatuous proceedings. 2 He was not fitted for his office, though
in the main well-disposed. His weak and troubled course lasted during the
whole of his brief administration .-^ >. s/

of two and a half years. He had '

a street-broil with and knocked
down Captain Short, of the
" Nonesuch " frigate, and a similar
pugilistic encounter with Brenton,
the collector of the customs.
Judge Sewall wrote
in his Diary, un-
der date, "Nov. i,
1694. Captain Dob-
bins refusing to give
bail, the sheriff was taking him to prison, and Sir William Phips
rescued him, and told the sheriff he would send him, the sheriff, to
prison, if he touched him ; which occasioned very warm discourse between
1 [The Charter had passed the seals, Oct. 7, 1691. ED.] 2 [See Mr. Poole's chapter. ED.)

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 39

him and the lieut.-governor " [Stoughton]. Becoming very unpopular,
Phips was complained of and summoned to England ; whither he went, Nov.
17, 1694, carrying with him an appeal from just a majority of the House
that he might retain his office. Being prosecuted before the court he was
devising schemes for his relief, when he died suddenly, Feb. 18, 1695, aged
forty-five years. 1 Phips's widow married the rich merchant, Peter Sergeant,
who built and occupied the stately mansion afterward purchased by the
Province as a residence for the Governor, and known as the Province House.
Mr. Sergeant became a man of great weight and influence as a councillor.
A nephew of Phips, who was childless, adopted by him, took his surname,
and, as Spencer Phips, was Lieut-Governor between 1733 and 1757.

The following is the inscription on Governor Phips's monument in the
Church of St. Mary, Woolnoth, London :

" Near this place is interred the body of Sir William Phipps, Knight, who in the
year 1687, by his great industry, discovered among the rocks near the Banks of
Bahama, on the North side of Hispaniola, a Spanish Plate-Ship, which had been
under water 44 years, out of which he took in Gold and Silver to the value of ^300,-
ooo Sterling ; and with a Fidelity equal to his conduct, brought it all to London, where
it was divided between himself and the rest of the Adventurers : for which great ser-
vice he was knighted by his then Majesty, James II., and afterward, by the command
of his present Majesty, and at the request of the Principal Inhabitants of New Eng-
land, he accepted of the Government of the Massachusetts, in which he continued to
the time of his Death, and discharged his Trust with that zeal for the interest of his
Country, and with so little regard to his own private Advantage, that he justly gained
the good Esteem and Affection of the greatest and best part of the Inhabitants of that
Colony. His Lady, to perpetuate his Memory, hath caused this Monument to be
erected."

During Phips's administration the composition and character of the
Council had greatly changed from those which the king's nominations had
given to it, and had contained more popular elements. The old stern
Puritan magistrate and chief-justice, William Stoughton, whom the king
had commissioned, under the Charter, to his old office of lieut.-governor,
assumed the vacant chair of the Governor, which he occupied nearly four
years, till May 26, 1699, when it was again filled. It might seem as if the
transition between the old and the new regime in Massachusetts had been
made under such favorable circumstances, through the familiar personalities
of Phips and Stoughton, that the people would have hardly been conscious
of the change in their form of government. In fact, the change had been
so facilitated in this respect, that it was very much relieved of a revolution-
ary or startling character. There was a cheerful effort, in the renewal of the

1 [A fac-simile of the invitation, plentifully death reached Boston, May 5, " at which the

garnished with death's heads, to Phips's funeral people are generally sad," says Sewall ; and

in London, having been given in the Proceedings the next day, "the mourning guns are fired at

of the Historical Society, is reduced in Bryant the Castle and Town." See Sewall Papers, i.

and Gay's United Stat' s, iii. 109. The news of his 404. ED.]

40 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

old routine in the towns, to gather up the fragments, and to find the ever
excellent solace and security of an excited people in industry. But none
the less must the strong and stiff old Stoughton have felt the difference
between standing among the foremost, as he had done in the colonial
period, in sensitiveness to any reminder of accountability across the water,
and being the reluctant representative here of that foreign dictation and
surveillance.

Stoughton had on his hands a war with the allied French and Savages,
in which our settlements as close to the capital as Haverhill, Groton, and
the Huguenot colony in Worcester County were desolated. Nor did the
treaty of Ryswick, Sept. 20, 1697, stop this warfare, as the news of it was
not received here until the following May; and the result was only to sup-
press the open agency of the French in it, while it was believed that they
countenanced the continuance of hostilities against us by the Savages. In
this woful ten years of conflict, it was estimated that at least a thousand of
the English had been killed or carried captive into Canada.

The long interval during which Stoughton exercised, temporarily, the
office of Governor was one of continued suspense to him and to the people,
as through the whole of it they were looking anxiously for a new appoint-
ment by the Crown ; and when they learned that such had been made, were
waiting for the long-deferred arrival of the incumbent of office. Joseph
Dudley, then in England, as Deputy-Governor of the Isle of Wight, made
strenuous efforts to secure his appointment as the successor of Phips ; but
his time had not yet come. Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, an Irish
peer, was first named for the office in 1695, received his commission in 1697,
and after a long and dangerous voyage arrived in New York, April 2, 1698,
as Governor of that Province, of Massachusetts, and of New Hampshire
and New Jersey. He was the first person, not native-born, to represent
the royal authority here by kingly commission. It was more than a year
before he visited Boston, finding enough to occupy all his time and to test
his spirit and fidelity in the vexations and corruptions which engaged him
in New York. It is estimated that there was then a population of about
200,000 Europeans in the English colonies in America, of which 75,000
were in New England, and 25,000 in New York. Bellomont set himself
vigorously, yet with but poor success even as regarded support by members
of his own council, to repress and amend the illegal practices which made
the British laws of trade a dead-letter. They could not be enforced, as they
were regarded as being radically oppressive, unjust, and tyrannical, ruin-
ous also to the best interests of Englishmen here and at home. They
imposed duties of five per cent both on imports and exports, and restricted
all trade to English ships trading directly to English ports.

Bellomont had hesitated in which of the provinces to take up his resi-
dence. He was warmly and kindly received on his coming to Boston, May
26, 1699, to remain, as it proved, only fourteen months. On a return visit

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 41

to New York he died there after a brief illness, March 5, 1701. Personally
he was popular in Massachusetts, a vigorous man of sixty-three years of
age, fine looking, with elegant manners and courtly ways, affable, gracious,
and conciliatory. He tried to please all sorts of people, and especially to
ingratiate himself with the stiffer religionists of the old stock. He had
some trouble with the Court as to judicial appeals to England, but contrived
to pacify the matter. The Earl took care earnestly to impress upon the
Court the purpose of the King that there should be a becoming salary
settled upon his Governor. This, of course, it was never the intention of
the Court, under any circumstances, to comply with. But, pleased with his
easy sway, " presents " were made to him, amounting for his fourteen
months here to 1,875 sterling, which was more than the predecessor or
any royal successor of his received in any form. He had set his own
estimate at 1,200 a year. In meeting the Court, he introduced the custom
of formal addresses to the two branches. These utterances were shrewdly
conceived, complimentary, and evidently ad captandum. He had to try to
rectify some slips or oversights of Phips, in administering by the Charter.
He made an effort to gather, for sending home to King and Council, statis-
tics and other information concerning the country, which information, of
course, was superficial and erroneous, those who thought that such
scrutiny and espionage was simply a matter of impertinent curiosity on
the part of the home government, not interesting themselves in securing
either fulness or accuracy in details. Bellomont would not have been so
popular here, had he lived long enough for the people to have learned
the tenor of his despatches to the Board of Trade, the Council, and the
Bishop of London. Boston had at that time between seven and eight
thousand inhabitants, and even an Earl could find in it congenial society
and considerable festivity in life.

A main object which the King had had in view in his commission to
Bellomont was to engage his energy and activity in the suppression of
piracy on the high seas, which then had a scandalous license and an almost
unchecked riot. The notorious Kidd, who had been employed to circum-
vent these freebooters of the ocean, turned out to be the most wily and
greedy of them all. Bellomont accomplished something, but there are still
some unexplained facts and some dark intricacies about this subject, involv-
ing the character and repute of some public and noble as well as private
persons ; nor did the Governor himself stand clear of suspicion or reproach.
The subject finds a treatment in another chapter of this volume. 1

One of many ineffectual attempts was made under Bellomont to secure
a new charter for the incorporation of Harvard College. It failed then,
because in the draft which was proposed by those who wished to retain for
the college its early and special method of oversight and management no
provision was made for its visitation by the king, and because only Congre-
gational ministers were to be allowed on its boards : yet Increase Mather

1 By the Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D.
VOL. II. 6.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

afterward charged Joseph Dudley, then in England, with preventing this
proposed charter. Though Bellomont had personally found favor and en-
joyed peace here in this portion of his government, it cannot be judged that
he accomplished anything toward familiarizing the people with the habit
of dependency upon foreign dictation, or reconciling them to the with-
drawal of any of the. privileges which they had formerly exercised. The
people were uneasy and antagonistic in every phase of the public troubles
presenting themselves in the attempt to adjust the relations and the legisla-
tion of the Province to the measures of the King and Council. The English
Acts of Navigation, never held in respect, were but slightly regarded, and

the Lords of Trade kept prompt-
ing the Governor to administer
their discipline. The people
claimed rights as Englishmen
which they insisted were in-
fringed. And here we trace the
first manifestations of that blun-
der on the one side and that
resentment on the other which,
festering on to their full results,
underlaid the opening struggle
of the Revolution. The colonists
were reminded, in ways often of-
fensive and galling to them, that
they were held to all the depend-
ence and obligation of subjects,
while they insisted that their
privileges were abridged below
those enjoyed by Englishmen at
home. For reasons satisfacto-
ry to our own popular branch
in the Assembly, appeals to
England were denied or embar-
rassed. Alarms from the Indians
required constant alertness from
the Governor and his Council,
while the New England charters
were in peril from the threats
of the Lords of Trade. In the
meanwhile, the King himself
had troubles of his own, especially from the proposed impeachment of his
advisers. He was released by death, March 16, 1702.

1 [These are the signatures to the royal in- mont. Students of English poetry will see a
structions sent to Stoughton, May 15, 1701, on familiar name in the last signature. The original
his assuming the chair after the death of Bello- paper is in the Massachusetts Archives. ED.]

SIGNERS OF INSTRUCTIONS. 1

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 43

Lieut.-Governor Stoughton, on the decease of Bellomont, again took the
chair, which he filled till his own life closed, July 7, 1701, when, by provision
of the Charter, the Council became the Executive. In the death of Stough-
ton, son of the stout old Puritan soldier, the commander in our first Indian
wars, there passed away one of the sturdiest and most rigid of the native
stock. Educated for a preacher, exhibiting marked abilities and winning great
admiration as such, and holding the stern faith unqualified and unsoftened
to the end of his days, he resolutely declined the work of the ministry.
Though he had had no legal training, his long and full experience as a
magistrate and councillor qualified him as well as any in a community where
there were no educated lawyers for the offices which he filled, among them
the highest on the bench. It was as chief-justice in a special court that
he sentenced the reputed witches at Salem, and when in a few years the
community, distressingly conscious of probable wrong in the dread panic of
that stark delusion, made confession in penitential observances, he would offer
no sign of humiliation or regret, having, as he averred, faithfully followed the
light which God had given him. Childless and unwedded, he led a solitary
life at Dorchester. 1 But his grimness and austerity were offset by devoted
fidelity to his fellows, and by generous public favors to college and school. 2

Among the royal Governors of this province, he whose name, rightly or
wrongly, is burdened with the heaviest reproach not even excepting
that of Andros, who was neither of Massachusetts birth nor of Puritan
lineage is Joseph Dudley. If judicial impartiality in dealing with public
characters is desirable in these pages, it can be approached in this case only
by presenting fairly the estimates, dark or bright, which abundant contem-
porary authorities offer us. As Dudley's character and career, when in
course of manifestation before those who may be thought to have known
him for what he was, were severely censured and condemned, even to the
heaping upon him of the darkest reproaches and stinging obloquy, it may
be just, before tracing his course among living friends and foes, to relieve
censoriousness by reading what ought to have been considerately truthful,
even if indulgently kind, as said of him after his death and burial. Benja-
min Colman, minister of the Brattle-Street Church, the most able, judicious,
and highly esteemed among the divines of the town at that time, preached
a funeral sermon, at a crowded Thursday lecture, on Governor Dudley, im-
mediately after his decease. The Mathers, who had been the bitterest and
most distrustful opponents of Dudley, may have been in the pulpit with
Colman, while in the pews were seated all the chief in place and influence.
The discourse, without extravagance, adulation, or fulsomeness in its en-
comium or estimate, gives to Dudley an honorable tribute for integrity,
fidelity, and excellence. What is most to the point, the discourse contains

1 [He lived on the northeast corner of Savin- Sibley's Harvard Graduates, vol. i. His por-
Hill Avenue and Pleasant Street. ED.] trait is given in the chapter on Witchcraft in

2 [There is a good account of Stoughton in Boston. See the chapter on Dorchester. ED.]

44 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

this sentence : "The Publick has had already this week a short and just
Account ... of his personal worth and Character." The reference is to
an obituary in the Boston News-Letter, No. 834, Monday, April n, 1720.
After noting the decease of Dudley and his interment " in the sepulchre of
his Father, with all the Honour and respect his Country was capable of doing
him," and giving a brief sketch of his life, with the various offices he had
filled, we read :

" He was a Man of rare Endowments and shining Accomplishments, a singular
Honour to his Country, and in many Respects the Glory of it. He was early its
Darling, always its Ornament, and in his Age its Crown. The Divine, the Philoso-
pher, and the Statesman, all met in him. He was visibly formed for Government, and
under his Administration (by God Almighty's Blessing) we enjoyed great quietness,
and were safely steer'd thro' a long and difficult Indian and French War.

" His Country have once and again thankfully acknowledged his Abilities and
Fidelity in their Addresses to the Throne. He truly Honoured and Lov'd the Reli-
gion, Learning, and Vertue of New England, and was himself a worthy Patron and
Example of them all. Nor did so bright a soul dwell in a less amiable Body, being
a very Comely Person, of a Noble Aspect, and a graceful Mien, having the Gravity
of a Judge, and the Goodness of a Father. In a word, he was a finisht Gentle-
man, of a most polite Address, and had uncommon Elegancies and Charms in his
Conversation." 1

How far listeners and readers accorded with those tributes to Dudley
must be inferred from what else there is on record about him. There were
those who regarded him as a recreant and a parasite, a fawner to royalty, a
cunning courtier, self-seeking, unscrupulous, and not true, even to friends.
If we summarize the matter and the grounds of Joseph Dudley's ill-esteem,
we might refer it, first, to the regret that he had fallen from the grace of a
noble and revered lineage, and then to the belief that he had not been
faithful to a people who had generously advanced him. In another place
in this volume will be found his record before he becomes a subject of
notice here as one of our royal Governors. 2 His father, Thomas Dudley,
one of the most distinguished among the first exile colonists, associate and
alternate with the revered Winthrop in the highest places of magistracy,
dying July 31, 1653, at the age of seventy-five, had left as the child of his
old age, born July 23, 1647, tms son Joseph, a youth of six years. Mn
Allen, minister of Dedham, marrying the widowed mother of Joseph, had
the charge of him in his boyhood. Graduating at Harvard in 1665, he had

1 Dr. Palfrey suggests, "This is what would his regret that the excellent Dr. Colman should

be called in our day the testimony of ' the press ' have adroitly appeared to praise a man whom

to Dudley's merit. More precisely stated, it is he could not truly have honored,
the testimony of the Scottish adventurer, John 2 [See Mr. Whitmore's chapter, preceding

Campbell, postmaster " to one from whom he this in the present volume, for an account of his

had received official and personal favors. Our presidency. Mr. Drake epitomizes his career in

ablest and most faithful historian, whose own his chapter on Roxbury, where his portrait is

discriminating estimate of Dudley led him to given. The index to Vol. I. will lead to inci-

regard the Governor as on the whole a mean, dents in his life during the colonial period.

unscrupulous, and wily self-seeker, also expresses ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 45

as a classmate the only Indian youth, out of many that had been students,
who received a degree. In the embittered correspondence which passed in
1707-08 between the Mathers and Dudley, then governor, Increase Mather
reminds him that he, Dudley, had given him, as his " spiritual father," the
credit of his religious awakening; and adds, " There was a time when I en-
couraged the church with whom I have been laboring in the work of the
Lord these forty-six years and more, to call you to be my assistant in the
ministry," Dudley having for a while been a preacher.

The letters of the Mathers, father and son, to Governor Dudley, and
Dudley's single reply to both of them, always excepting some of the
documents relating to the troubles with the Quakers, are the most em-
bittered in their personalities and invectives of the whole mass of highly-
seasoned papers which have been preserved in our cabinets. The Mather
letters are dated on the same day, Jan. 20, 1707-8. The father contented
himself with what covers, in print, two pages of octavo ; the son wrote at
three times that length. Perfidy, hypocrisy, bribery, cruelty, and corrupt
dealing in divers forms are the burden of the charges against the Governor.
The reply is to a degree dignified and moderate, with something of caustic
sarcasm in its tone and tenor, especially in its galling reminder to the
Mathers that their conceit and assumption of clerical power were well ob-
served by their brethren, and by the people generally; and that their glory
was for the future to fade. The Governor allowed a fortnight to pass before
he sent this answer, and thus gave his wrath a space for cooling, while he
had the advantage of deliberation. During this interval the fact that the
Mathers had written to Dudley in a somewhat pointed way had become
noised abroad by one or another of the parties having divulged it, and those
most concerned, especially Cotton Mather, were waiting the result. Sewall
writes in his Diary, on January 23, that, on returning with him from a funer-
al, Cotton Mather gave him a copy of his and his father's letters, and added :
" I wait with concern to see what the issue of this plain dealing will be ! "
Again, January 30, Sewall writes : " To the Funeral of my Neighbour,
Sam. Engs. Walked with Mr. Pemberton [his minister at the South Church],
who talked to me very warmly about Mr. C. M.'s Letter to the Governour;
seemed to resent it, and expect the Gov r . should animadvert upon him. The
Lord appear for the help of his people ! Said if he were as the Governour he
would humble him [Cotton Mather], though it cost him his head ! speak-
ing with great vehemency, just as I parted with him at his Gate." ^ Again :
"February 5. Mr. Colman preached the [Thursday] Lecture; Gal. v. 25.
Spoke of other walking (than in the Spirit) ; it blotted our Sermons, blotted
our Prayers, blotted our Admonitions and Exhortations. 'Tis reckoned
he lashed Dr. Mather, and Mr. Cotton Mather, and Mr. Bridge [minister of
the First Church], for what they have written, preached, and prayed about
the present contest with the Governour." Again: " Election, May 26, 1708.
Mr. John Norton preaches a Flattering Sermon as to the Governour."
Meanwhile Sewall himself was often placed in an embarrassing position in

46 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

this sharp feud. He was very intimate with the Mathers, revered the father,
though he occasionally dealt tartly with the son. Sewall's convictions and
sympathies were with those who mistrusted Dudley. But Sewall's oldest
son was husband of the Governor's daughter, an unhappy connection.
The Diary is cautious and reserved on all these delicate matters, but the
writer puts down enough to enable us to give him his place and thought
about Dudley. 1

It was evident that those who at first looked to the young man as
one whom they might trust as a strong representative of the principles
identified with his lineage, and whom under that expectation they rap-
idly advanced in places and honors, were grievously disappointed in him.
To them he seemed to waver, trim, and calculate chances in patronage. He
cast in his lot with the prerogative. He was regarded by them as a tool of
Andros, and was among those seized and imprisoned with that " usurper,"
in the great uprising of the people. The reason given to him for his being
put under guard in his own house, and afterward committed to the jail,
was " lest the outraged people should set upon him in their rage." Dudley
was sent to England with his principal. Commissioned afterward to the
Province of New York as chief-justice, he had there roused new enmities by
condemning to death the patriot Leisler. On another return to England, his
efforts to succeed Phips as Governor of Massachusetts were thwarted by the
Agents of the Province, Constantine Phips, and Sir Henry Ashurst. He
had to content himself for the while with a seat in Parliament and the Lieut-
Governorship of the Isle of Wight. With the aid of Randolph and some
court influence, he finally succeeded in securing the coveted commission
from King William, whose death soon afterward made it necessary that the
commission should be renewed by Queen Anne. It must have been with
mingled and conflicting emotions that Dudley, on June u, 1702, arrived in
a frigate in Boston harbor, after ten or eleven years' absence. He had left
it after an imprisonment of five months. He came now as the chief magis-
trate, representing royalty. He met the Council on the same day, and
published his commission, with that of John Povey as Lieut-Governor,
an entire stranger here. Dudley was ceremoniously received, though the
Council, chosen a fortnight before according to the Charter, contained
many of his enemies, who had imprisoned him and sought to prevent his
new appointment. He avowedly committed himself to the side of the pre-
rogative., and spoke patronizingly to those who looked upon him with worse
than distrust. Hutchinson, whose experiences fifty years afterward were
to be similar to Dudley's, says, " The people were more jealous of him
than they would have been of any other person." He at once set himself
to accomplish the objects of shrewd English politicians, which, of course,
made the interests of New England secondary. Massachusetts was to be
held under a stiff hand. She was to be put to use against France, and

1 The correspondence of the Mathers and Dudley is printed in i Mass. Hist. Coll., iii.
126-137.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 47

made serviceable to English commerce and revenue. The French king
having recognized the pretender to the English crown, of course a declara-
tion of war by Queen Anne was the necessary consequence; and that
meant another savage inroad upon Massachusetts. The twelve years' reign
of the Queen, with such a Governor in her interest, was necessarily irritat-
ing and troubling to Massachusetts. Dudley announced three special

instructions imposed upon him by the monarch : ( I ) Positively requiring
of the Court to provide for rebuilding the fort at Pemaquid, which the
Court, for reasons satisfactory to itself, refused to do; (2) That a suit-
able official residence should be assigned to him, this also was refused;
and (3) That a proper salary should be settled upon himself, the lieut.-
governor, and the judges, " as was done in all the other colonies." Of
course this last demand was wholly inadmissible, involving, as it did, the
payment of another person's servant by those who really had no desire or
use for him. The alternative which the Court adopted and consistently fol-
lowed, so long as these unwelcome royal representatives were harbored here,
was to make, from time to time, generally half yearly, " presents," varying
in stinginess or generosity according as the Governor more or less pro-
voked opposition, or gave proof of an unfriendly or kindly spirit. It was
under Dudley's administration that the people first really felt the full mean-
ing of the substitution among them of subjection to foreign espionage and
dictation for self-government. Dudley refused the money grants, or " pres-
ents," till his Council advised him to be content with them as better than
nothing. He got hardly more than .600 in any year, not half of what
had been " given " to Bellomont. He was in constant bickering with the
House of Representatives. He used his negative against each and all of
those nominated by the House for the Council, if in any way obnoxious to
himself. One of these rejected councillors, Mr. Oakes, a determined oppo-
nent of Dudley, was chosen as Speaker of the House. Dudley assumed
that as a prerogative right, though not recognized by the Charter, he could
also veto the Speaker; but after much dissension he was compelled to
yield the point. Conferences were held between the House and Council

48 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

about the required building of the fort at Pemaquid. But these were
futile, as the proposition was considered at the time by those who under-
stood the matter as not judicious. Dudley visited Pemaquid in 1703, with
an escort of his own choosing; not asking, as had been usual, a committee
of House and Council.

A second letter of instructions to him from the Queen, which Dudley
communicated, insisted upon the matter of a fixed and proper salary for
her governor and his deputy. This too was wholly ineffectual. The
House evaded the demand, and the ill-feeling deepened.

And now, consequent upon the declaration of war with France, came a
renewal of the horrors of savage warfare, with desolations and costly ex-
peditions, killing the flower of our population, and burdening the Province
with debt and paper money. In February, 1703, three hundred French and
Indians, under De Rouville, perpetrated their massacres in Deerneld, and all
our frontiers were threatened. After several fruitless expeditions, an army
and fleet were raised to sweep the coast of Maine all the way to Nova
Scotia, Colonel Church being in command, aided by transports, whale-
boats, and armed vessels. He went up the Passamaquoddy and to Mount
Desert, plundering, depredating, and desolating all the way; and though he
reached Port Royal, which was in a defenceless state, much to the disgust
of our people he made no attack upon it. The Indians meanwhile, in
marauding upon our border towns, came within twenty miles of Boston. 1
To aggravate and inflame the sharp antagonisms and animosities of the
times, some merchants and traders were, on reasonable grounds, suspected,
accused, and then prosecuted by the General Court, instead of by the regular
judicial tribunals, as guilty of trafficking in arms and goods with the enemy
who was working so much mischief. The Governor himself was boldly and
bitterly charged with connivance in, and sharing the profits of, this vile
business. A pamphlet of stinging reproaches and invectives, evidently in
the main prepared in Boston, was published against him in London. To
this there was a reply, followed by a rejoinder. 2 The House, without sub-
mitting the measure to the Council, addressed the Queen, seeking the re-
moval of the Governor for reasons strongly stated and vouched, as proving
his unworthiness and unfitness as her representative, and his unreconcil-

able enmity to the best
interests of this com-
munity. Meanwhile his
lieutenant, Povey, to

whom a grant of .200 had been made in consideration
of his being Captain of the Castle in the harbor, in
disgust at the meanness of the sum, on which he could
not subsist, moved himself off in 1711, and William Tailer, appointed to
fill the place, took the oaths in October of that year.

1 [See Col. Higginson's ch. in this vol. ED.] the second volume of the Sewall Papers, have

2 The three pamphlets, recently reprinted in fire in them, even to this day.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 49

It is a curious fact that, in the efforts to rid the Province of Dudley, the
Agents of Massachusetts in England, with the help of some Dissenting
ministers and the accord of Cotton Mather, tried to procure a commission
as Governor for Sir Charles Hobby. He was, indeed, a Boston boy, son of
a merchant here. He had been a colonel of one of our regiments, and for
bravery at Jamaica possibly backed by a money douceur had been
knighted. But he was well known as a man of fashion and a rake. He

failed of the honor sought for him.

On Sept. 15, 1714, news came to town of the death of Anne and the
accession of George I. A sloop sent
express from England with govern-
ment orders was wrecked on Cohasset
rocks on the I2th of November, and
the dispatches, with all on board, were
lost. Six months having elapsed with-
out new commissions or official orders, the Council, according to pro-
vision of the Charter, assumed the executive. On March 21, 1715, Dudley
occupied the chair again for a short time, till the 9th of November, when
the recently-commissioned Lieut.-Governor Tailer took the place, waiting
for the arrival of his principal. Dudley retired from all public affairs to
his fine estate and mansion at West Roxbury, where he died, April 2, 1720,
aged seventy-two. His distinguished son, Paul Dudley, chief-justice of the
province, did many things for his own and after times which give him a
grateful memory. In the judgment of charity, stretched to its uttermost
strain, it is barely possible that Governor Dudley may have been harshly
disesteemed and reproached by his contemporaries, and so by historians.
It is certain, however, that he came back here twice from England to rep-
resent and enforce the very policy judged malign and offensive to his own
people, which he, in their trust and confidence, had been sent thither to
thwart. His townsmen and former friends could not find an explanation
for his course which was consistent with simplicity, integrity, and unselfish-
ness. The Providence which set him in power here was a dark one, re-
quiring, as some one said, like a Hebrew scroll, to be read backwards.

Under the reign of the German prince elevated by election to the throne
of Great Britain as George I., a stupid incompetent as he was, Massachu-
setts waited awhile, after proclaiming him, to see through what channel his
prerogative was to be administered here. The matter that wears most the
appearance of jobbery in connection with the office of Governor of Massa-
chusetts under the Crown was the commission to it, through court influence,
obtained March 17, 1715, by Colonel Elisha Burgess. By what light or
standard he estimated what might be its pecuniary value, we are ignorant.
We can draw our inference only from the fact that under the negotiations
of friends of the Province then in London, Ashurst, Belcher, afterward
Governor, and Dummer the Agent, he parted with his commission for a
VOL. ii. 7.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 51

of the paper issues incurred in the exhausting hostilities with the Indians.
Shute was a man of fair abilities, honest, and well-intentioned, but some-
what self-indulgent and passionate. After a year's experience of him,
Cotton Mather wrote to Shute's brother, Lord Barrington, a most fulsome
letter in his commendation. He realized to the full the inherent and prac-
tically insurmountable difficulties of an office which, under the circum-
stances, no man living could have filled to the satisfaction of the king and
people. Those difficulties were, on the part of the king, actual ignorance,
prejudiced opinions, and mistaken judgments as to the real condition and
the best interests of his colonies in points in which there might be mutually
common interests between them and the mother country, together with
an assuming and disdainful spirit in turning the colonists, as an inferior
party, simply to the advancement of their fellow-subjects across the
water. On the part of the colonists the difficulties were a painful and
irritating sense of these foreign prejudices and wrongs, and a profound
conviction that they had a right to manage their own affairs, as they had
been wont to do.

Shute's administration was one continuous quarrel with the House of
Representatives, changing its form and subject-matter only to be raised
more intensely upon a new point before a previous one had been disposed
of. Sometimes the Council took his side ; at others a majority sided with
the House, in either case embarrassing and crossing him. He joined
with the opposers of the banking scheme, but seemed utterly incompetent
with his own judgment to devise any financial policy for relieving the bur-
dens of the Province. Another emission of bills for ; 100,000, to run for
ten years, only increased the existing perplexities. The Governor earnestly
engaged in efforts for pacific treaties with the Eastern Indians in order
to thwart the influence and plottings of the Jesuit Father Rasle, who was
known to be instigating them to continued hostilities. This active and
zealous priest continued for the next eight years to be the object of intense
detestation by our people. His papers were seized, while he escaped, when
an expedition was sent, in 1721, against his savage disciples. As these
papers gave full proof of his plottings, he was at last Jdlled, in another ex-
pedition, Aug. 12, 1724, and his chapel and village at Norridgewock were
destroyed. It does not appear, however, that he had any less right to serve
the supposed interest of his own savage disciples, as allies of the French in
the long and bloody struggle for dominion on this continent, than had the
English to take their own chaplains with them in their war parties. 1

Besides this Indian war, Shute had four distinct controversies with the
delegates of the people, neither of which could he bring to a satisfactory
settlement. The first was a strife in which he took side with John Bridger,
the king's Surveyor of Forests, against the people of Maine and their sym-
pathizers here, led on by Cooke of the Council, in evading the law which
reserved certain trees for ship-timber for the king. The second was a
1 [See Colonel Higginson's chapter in this volume. ED.]

52 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

quarrel on the Impost Bill. The third was a renewal of the claim, raised
by Dudley, of a right to negative the Speaker, his resource being to
dissolve the Court when the House stood out against him. The fourth
arose from his persistency in demanding a fixed salary, to which the House,
so far from yielding, expressed its resentment by reducing the " present " to
him to 500. A candid reader of the records of these bitter altercations
can hardly fail to divide the blame of what was personal in feeling inde-
pendent of the merits of the issues contested between the two parties.
But when the Agent of Massachusetts in London, the excellent and ser-
viceable Jeremy Dummer, besides nobly defending the charter when it was
perilled, wrote over to the Court that their hectoring of the Governor was
unreasonable and mischievous, the House discharged him from his trust.
In this measure the Council refused to concur; but the House, holding the
purse, stopped his pay. The royal attorney-general wrote over to Shute
that he had a right of negative on the Speaker ; and the Lords Commis-
sioners of Trade and Plantations approved his course. He had been in-
structed to demand 1,000 salary; but the House voted him what, allowing
for depreciation in the currency, was worth 360. Beyond the feeling in
the case, the plea in reasoning was that the representatives of the people,
in all constitutional governments, had absolute control in money grants, and
that they were sole judges as to occasions and amounts, while changing
demands and exigent circumstances, and their varying ability, justified their
not making any fixed appropriations in the way of salaries.

The small-pox, after having been twenty years in abeyance, renewed its
dreaded visitation in 1721. Nearly six thousand persons took it in Boston,
of whom nearly one thousand died in the year. Inoculation was then first
introduced, against violent and enormous opposition. Cotton Mather did
noble service in its defence, in spite of calumny and threats of personal
violence. The General Court, on account of the infection, sat at Cam-
bridge, and there was an incidental controversy on the right of the Court
or the Governor to 'designate any other place than Boston for its session.
Cotton Mather, in a private letter, described the government of the time
as " a venomous crew " in " a spiteful town " and " a poisoned country."
Fresh disputes arose on the declaration of war in 1722 against the Eastern
Indians, on its conduct, and on the prerogative of the Court as to disburse-
ments, and the calling officers to account.

Shute, having some time previously received permission to visit England,
left on the opening of the year 1723, somewhat abruptly, to urge his com-
plaints against our General Court. Lieut-Governor William Dummer took
the chair, which, as the event proved, he was to occupy nearly six years.
Shute arrived in England fully charged with his burden of grievances
against his intractable field of administration. The court for hearing and
adjudication was transferred from Boston to the Chamber of the Privy
Council. Our House of Representatives prepared to hold its side in the
contest by reinforcing its Agents with their pleas and rejoinders, and voted

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 53

100 to one of them to employ legal counsel. But the Council noncon-
curred alike in the proposed complaint against Shute, the address to the
king, and the fee for counsel. None the less, the Speaker of the House
signed its own decrees, and the Council sent an address of its own, though
it afterward consented to the employ of the Agents. The Lords of Trade
and the Council seem to have given a patient and candid hearing to a state-
ment of the grievances urged by Shute, such as his being constantly thwarted,
principally by the influence of the country members in our House of Represen-
tatives, and in their claim to adjourn themselves, to appoint Thanksgiving and
Fast days, and to regulate military affairs, all without his sanction ; their
refusing him a fixed and honorable salary ; their neglect to protect the king's
timber, and so forth. The Agents of the Province tried all their skill to de-
fend and justify their constituents, pressing their assertions and arguments
not only adroitly, but with such art and casuistry as, in the opinion of some
Massachusetts men at home and in England, trespassed upon truth and right.
It must be frankly admitted that if the mother country had really in
right and reason any prerogative authority over us, we were not only
indocile, but stiffly self-willed, refractory, and in fact rebellious. The de-
cision, though rendered against those men and measures of which Shute
complained, was calm and moderate, even if decisive in its terms. A pur-
pose approved by the Court here on petition of the ministers as a revival
of their old sway to hold a religious synod was withstood, while the
proceedings before the Privy Council were in progress. The marvel is
that the charter, which really secured us more of liberty than was then
enjoyed by any of the other colonies, was not taken from us, as some of
the wisest and most moderate feared it would be. A temporary truce was
found in the sealing, in London, Aug. 12, 1725, of a so-called " Explanatory
Charter." J When -this was offered to the acceptance of the Province, it was
by no means, however, with unanimity approved Jan. 15, 1726. This
secured to the Governor a negative on the nomination of Speaker, and
limited the term for which the House might adjourn itself to two days ; but
it contained no injunction for securing " fixed and honorable salaries " to
His Majesty's servants here. Shute might now have returned to Boston as
substantially fortified and reinforced for his unattractive administration. He
had been heard to say, even with an oath, that he would see " who should
be Governor of Massachusetts he or Cooke," the Agent of the Province.
While he was waiting for a man-of-war to transport him, his commission fell
by the death of George I., his successor, George II., acceding to the throne,
June, I727/ 2 In the change in the Ministry Shute was pensioned off at 600
a year, in the enjoyment of which he reached his four-score of years.

1 [The examinations leading to this will be 2 [The new king was not proclaimed till

found in The Report of the lords of the Committee August. " I4th, King George the Second pro-

upon Governor S/iufe's Memorial, with his Maj- claimed at the Town House. The 3 regiments

city's Order in Council thereupon, 1725, which as in arms, viz., Col. Taylor's, Phips's, Fitch's."

reprinted m Boston was marked, " Examined by Jeremiah Bumstead's Diary, in N. E. Hist, and

]. Willard, Seer." ED.] Geneal. Reg., 1861, p. 314. ED.]

54 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Had there been any practicable reconciliation into a harmony of work-
ing in the relations between Massachusetts and the royal authority claimed
over her, it might have seemed that William Dummer, acting as Governor
for nearly six years, was peculiarly suited to serve as mediator, umpire, and
arbiter. A native of the province, with strong family ties and friendships
binding him here, he had lived much abroad, and had become enlarged
and generous in his views. He was not a strong partisan, nor did he lack
a generous patriotism. As Lieut.-Governor he generally supported Shute,
even at the cost of offending his nearest friends. He was on one occasion
"snubbed " by the House, which, instead of anything like the usual com-
pensation for like services, voted him so contemptible a " present " that he
declined it. His task was found in the conduct of the war with the Eastern
Indians, which he managed with vigor, in spite of his sharp conflict with
the House upon the commissioning and paying of military officers. A
temporary treaty was made by him with the Indians in December, 1725,
and trucking-houses were established among them.

William Burnet a son of the historian bishop, and governor of New
York and New Jersey was appointed to the chief magistracy of Massachu-
setts March 7, 1728, and arrived at Boston July 13 following. His term here
was a short one, of less than fourteen months, as he died at the Prov-
ince House, Sept. 7, 1729. Brief, however, as that term was, there extended
through it one bitter strife. He was welcomed with more of pomp and
parade than had ever been observed in Boston on any previous occasion, and
at an expense to the treasury of 1,100. There was a cavalcade, lavish fes-
tivity, addresses, and a poetical rhapsody anticipating " the soaring eagle "
style by the famous Mather Byles. Burnet was a true English gentleman,
cultivated, courteous, affable, and social in his manners and habits, accessi-
ble and acceptable to all classes. Had he been of any real use or necessity
here, or had he represented any function other than that of a foreign sway,
under any form of which the people would have been restive, he might
have found this an agreeable residence. He had every quality personally
for pleasing and conciliating. But " the twenty-third " of his instructions
from the king, which bade him insist upon the settlement of a fixed salary
of at least 1,000 upon his representative, furnished the root of bitterness.
One cannot but recognize the firm loyalty, the self-respect, the dignity and
persistency with which Burnet stood to his instruction, nobly rejecting, as
an attempt at bribery, all the evasive ingenuity of the recusant House in
offering him three times the sum as a present, while he was straitened by
actual pecuniary need. And with equal recognition we must estimate the
pluck and principle of the representatives of the people of Massachusetts in
planting themselves then where the war of the Revolution found them, on
the position that all impositions, taxes, and disbursements of money were
to be made by their own free-will, and not by dictation of king, council, or
parliament.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.

The contest opened at once. In the Governor's first address, July 24,
he imparted his " instruction " as to the matter of salary, and avowed
his purpose to insist that it should be complied with. As if to avert
any plea of poverty which the House might advance, he referred to the

GOVERNOR BURNET.

parade, display, and expense which had been lavished on his own recep-
tion, as evidence of the prosperity and ability of the Province. But the
Court was as firm as himself. Instead of " the settlement " of a fixed
salary, was that of the irrevocable purpose that no such salary should be

1 [There are portraits of Btirnet belonging to the Senate Chamber at Boston. An engraving
the Antiquarian Society at Worcester, and in in Drake's Boston is followed in this cut. ED.]

56 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

allowed. The House intended only to make money grants at its own free-
will, and so graduated as to signify from time to time its own feelings and
appreciation of services. A grant of ^1,700 was offered to him to defray
his first expenses, and towards his support. In that shape he, with dignity,
refused the proffer. Then the form was so far changed as to offer him ^300
for the cost of his journey ; but still no salary. He remonstrated, and then
threatened. To firmness Burnet soon added what was called " insolence."
He refused to allow the House to close its session, and to sign the pay-roll
for members and expenses till his demand was complied with. Thus he
subjected the Province to costs far exceeding the required amount for a
salary. He warned them that their conduct would be brought to the atten-
tion of Parliament, which would " look after the support of the Governor
and something more" a threat which looked to the abrogation of the
charter. The House became dignifiedly wrathful, and sent a paper to the
constituents in the towns vindicating its course of action. This was sus-
tained by town-meetings ; that in Boston deciding unanimously against the
king's demand. There were a few timid and cautious persons, some of
them in the Council, standing for the prerogative ; and, with warnings that
we might fare worse, they advised yielding. But the House to antedate
the modern use of a word stuck. Another proffer was made to Burnet,

a grant of .3,000. It was of course refused, for this generosity of a de-
fiant Court would be offset by the displeasure and rebuke of the king, as
a compounding with recusancy. To free the House from the rebellious
influence of Boston, he moved the Court to Salem, punning upon its peace-
ful name, and upon that of Concord. But the British, neither then nor half
a century later, had reason to regard those towns as aptly designated. The
House protested against its removal, and voted the act illegal, but still stuck ;
its constituency approving and agreeing to support it. The Governor found
a graceful reason for yielding, in a resolution passed by the House to refer
the issue in conflict directly to the king by an address, naming its agents
and appropriating money for their payment. The Council refusing its con-
currence, some Boston merchants provided the necessary sum; for which
the House thanked them, promising reimbursement.

On the presenting of the address by the Agents in London, the atmos-
phere there being different, the Board of Trade of course stood by the
Governor and censured the House. .The Agents wrote to Boston that if the
House persisted in thwarting the king's instruction, Parliament would take
up the quarrel. The reply from this side was, " Better let Parliament fix
the salary, than that the Province should yield its liberties by its own act,"

for we had friends even in Parliament then, as afterward. A change of
ministry often worked for our benefit. As Walpole's was then in peril, he
wished for no added trouble about the colonies : so the House risked the
venture. The excellent but courtly agent, Jeremy Dummer, wrote to the
House advising complaisance to the king, and that as it was agreed on
the amount of a grant it were wiser to vote it fixed for a term of years, or

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 57

at least through an administration ; else he feared a discomfiture. The
members of the House were meanwhile, in the lack of Burnet's signature,
kept without their pay. In straits for his own needs he exacted an additional
fee on the clearance of vessels. This, however, the Board of Trade dis-
allowed. He refused to approve the choice of an attorney-general, unless
he had the nomination, a matter which was laid over for his successor.
The Board of Trade next sent over an order that .1,000 should be fixed as
the Governor's salary during his whole term, and the Governor tried to
compel action by adjourning the House over and over, and from place to
place, to harass it. The House grew warmer and more resolute at " being
compelled to measures against its judgment, and driven from one part of
the province to another." 1

In the midst of this harsh dissension, Governor Burnet, while driving
towards Boston in his carriage from Cambridge, was overturned on the
causeway, cast into the water, and so chilled as to be thrown into a fever,
resulting in his death in a week after. Chagrin and excitement are supposed
to have hastened that event, on Sept. 7, 1729. He was buried, with great
pomp, at the public charge, at a cost of ;i,ioo. His wife had previously
died in New York. Five years after his death the General Court voted his
orphan children 3,000. Lieut-Governor Dummer again filled the chair
for nearly a year. He acceded to the long-standing- disputes, endeavored,
in a firm but tempered way, to represent the instructions of the Crown, and
would receive no grant as a substitute for a salary. As to the sturdy refusal
of the House in this matter of a salary, even the Tory Chalmers 2 censures
the course of the British ministry. He says that by persisting in the use of
the king's name to enforce the demand for the salary, when they knew it
was of no use, they nearly destroyed his the Governor's very inconsider-
able influence. The refusal of the House to yield to the dictation was on
the ground " that it would deprive the people of their rights as English-
men." The English journals in the Whig interest applauded " the noble
stand of this Province against the unconstitutional demands of Burnet, as
endearing them to all friends of liberty."

And now came a repetition in part of a previous strange experience of Mas-
sachusetts, in that, while the people had as a Governor "one of themselves,"
of royal instead of popular designation, he, even at the cost of proving " a
turn-coat," became the champion of measures he had been commissioned
to oppose. The odious Dudley had the lead in this ungrateful service in
return for trust and honors. Jonathan Belcher, who now succeeded to the
chair, was the grandson of Andrew, an early innkeeper in Cambridge, and a
son of Andrew, a prosperous merchant in Boston and a provincial coun-

1 [The House of Representatives by an order, Proceedings of the Great and General Court, con-

Aprll 17, 1729, directed the "members for Bos- taining instructions from the Crown for fixing

ton " to prepare a history of this contest over a salary, etc. Boston, T. Fleet, in Pudding Lane,

the Salary, from the coming of Sir William 1729, p. 112. En]
Phips; and it was printed as A Collection of the ' 2 Revolt, etc., ii. 131.
VOL. II. 8.

58 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

cillor. The mother of Jonathan was a daughter of Deputy-Governor Dan-
forth, under the Colony charter. After graduating at Harvard, and travelling
much abroad, he returned to Boston as a merchant, and became a repre-
sentative and councillor. Though a polished and sociable man, he was
crooked, intriguing, and excitable in temper. He made himself known at
first as a prerogative man, but on sudden occasion he had turned about and
withstood Burnet's persistency for a fixed salary. For this cause he was
employed by the House, without the concurrence of the Council, as an
agent in London to advance its interest in its appeal to the king against
Burnet. Being in London when the tidings of Burnet's death arrived, and
availing himself of party rivalries in the Court, he contrived, by sly and adroit
manoeuvring, to convince the Government that he was admirably suited for
the office of arbiter in the matters at issue. He was commissioned Governor
of Massachusetts Jan. 8, 1730. William Tailer was restored as Lieut-Gov-
ernor in place of Dummer, but, dying in 1732, was
succeeded by Spencer Phips. Belcher had a son of the
same name who, after graduating at Harvard in 1728,
was a student at law in the Temple, and served his
father in London.

The new Governor landed in Boston from a war-ship Aug. 10, 1730.
He also was received with parade and festivities, with warm expressions of
grateful loyalty, and with a sermon. He seems to have stood faithful to his
paternal religion. In his first speech to the Court the next month he
planted himself on the prerogative which he was to represent here. He
said he had positive instructions from the king to require a fixed salary of
i,OOO, and if it was refused he was to return immediately to England;
adding a downright threat from the monarch to lay the contumacy of
the Province before Parliament, insisting that its undutiful and rebellious
spirit should be checked. The House was cool and firm. It offered him
.1,000 for his services and expenses, and another like sum " to enable him
to manage the public affairs." The Council concurred, but proposed in
an amendment " that the latter grant be fixed as annual, and then con-
tinued for the present Governor." The House said " No ! " to both prop-
ositions. There was a conference between House and Council in presence
of Belcher. He was calm and adroit, his aim being to get the whole Coun-
cil on his side; and he alternated between threats and flatteries. Some
few of the representatives would have yielded, but the Boston men wore
inflexible. Five hundred pounds more were granted him " for services," and
a like sum was deposited in the Bank of England to be used in payment of
agents. The Governor afterward regretted that he had approved of this
deposit, when he found it turned to account in supporting complaints
against himself.

A bill was prepared and offered in the House providing in a very quali-
fied way a compensation of .1,000 for this Governor, as a native, knowing
the country well, and so as presumably impartial while representing the

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.

wishes of the monarch ; but it was not to be binding as to his successors.
This bill it was understood the Governor would approve; but as it did not
pass, he gave up the fight with an endeavor to secure a modification of his
instructions from England. The Duke of Newcastle sent him, in August,
1735, an order, first, to accept the sum granted for the year, and afterward
to take the most he could get. Thus effectually, on the side of the resolved
popular purpose, closed a controversy of such continued and pertinacious a
character. A point of honor was saved to the Crown by the condition that

GOVERNOR BELCHER.

1 [This cut follows a portrait, painted in
1729, hanging in the gallery of the Massachusetts
Historical Society. It is by Liopoldt. See Per-

kins's Copley, p. 25. His likeness was also taken
by R. Phillips, and a mezzotint engraving of it
was made in 1734 by I. Fabor, measuring 9^ by

60 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

whatever grant was made to the Governor should be assigned at the open-
ing of the session of the Court, so as to avoid any possible reference in it to
approbation or displeasure as regarded his official course.

By Belcher's order Massachusetts sacrificed five hundred men in the war
with Spain, in 1739, to help Admiral Vernon in his expedition against Cuba.
For the rest, his administration was agitated by a continuous financial con-
troversy. The pecuniary affairs of the Province were in a most distracted
condition, and the treasury was long wholly empty, public creditors in vain
demanding their pay. The point in contention concerned the issue of bills
to be current longer than the date limited by the king, for 1641. But Bos-
ton merchants got round the king's order by a scheme of their own. A
Land Bank Company was organized, though opposed by the Governor,
amid threats of popular disturbance. 1 An Act of Parliament, which it was
declared " does and shall extend to the Colonies and Plantations," dissolved
this company. Another controversy, long pending, related to the boun-
daries between Plymouth and Rhode Island, and Massachusetts and New
Hampshire. This was settled under Belcher, to the loss to Massachusetts,
both in the north and in the south, of much territory that had been claimed
by her.

Belcher was removed on May 6, 1741, and, after four years, was made
Governor of New Jersey. Retaining his affection for his native place, he
enjoined that his remains should be brought to Cambridge for burial. He
died, Aug. 31, 1757.

William Shirley, born in London in 1694, having resided in Boston eight
years as an eminent lawyer, was commissioned May 16, 1741, as successor to
Belcher, and held the chair till he embarked on his recall to England, Sept.
12, 1756. An interval of four years of his term from Sept. 11, 1749, to
Aug. 7, 1753 he had passed in England and France, as commissioner on
the boundaries of their possessions in America, Spencer Phips, the Lieut.-
Governor, acting in his absence. Shirley's agency and activity here were
divided in much the larger measure to his military services in the critical
conduct of the later struggles of our French and Indian wars, and for the
rest to a troubled civil administration. His ability and spirit were of a high

12% inches. It represents him holding his com- E. H. Robbins, by whom it was presented to J.
mission, shows a glimpse of Boston in the dis- McKean, and by him given to the Historical So-
tance, and beneath are his arms with the motto : ciety to make their series more complete ; " vol.
" Loyal au mort." There is a Belcher genealogy vi., 1747-1748 (written principally from Burling-
in the N. E. Hist, and Cental. Reg., July, 1873; ton m New Jersey : the volume is marked, "Jo-
see also, 1865. p. 207, for items. In the cabinet of seph Eckley, given to him by a relation in the
the Hist. Society are eight volumes of the letter- family. Given to J. Stickney by David Eckley,
books of Belcher, as follows : vol. i., September, Esq., the second son of the late Dr. Eckley, and

1731, to November, 1732; vol. ii,, November, by Stickney given to Nathaniel G Snelling, Esq.,

1732, to January, 1734; vol. Hi., January, 1734, n Mar: 1815"); vol. vii., October, 1750, to
to April, 1735; vol. iv., August, 1739, to Sep- August, 1752 (from Burlington and EHzabeth-
tember, 1740; vol. v., September, 1740, to July, town); viii., July to December, 1755 (imperfect,
1743, "this volume was found at Milton, in from Elizabethtown). ED.]

the house of John Swift, the property of Hon. 1 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in this vol. ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 6l

order in military matters, and were perhaps exaggerated in his own ambi-
tious estimate of his capacities. But he was brave and earnest in the work,
and with a genius for planning campaigns. The disastrous expedition led
by Braddock, in the death of that General, put Shirley in command of all
the British forces in America, till General Abercrombie, and then the Earl
of Loudoun, was sent over as General. The chief interest, therefore, of
Shirley's administration centres in the campaigns which he helped to plan
and to bring to triumphant results in extinguishing French dominion on
this continent as the consequence of the last declaration of war with France,
in 1744. Most conspicuous among these was that splendid achievement of
the Provincial arms, the reduction of the fortress of Louisburg. 1 The
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, proved to be but a truce.

Shirley had his full share .of sharp collisions and controversies with the
intractable legislators of Massachusetts, as they were driven even beyond
their wits' end by their financial perplexities. He tried to maintain the au-
thority of his royal instructions against all the banking schemes, and all
issues of bills not redeemable in coin at the end of the term of their con-
tract. But Boston merchants again circumvented the king. Relief and
partial deliverance were found in the rich remittance of English coin sent
here to remunerate the services of the Province against Louisburg. The
historian of this period would have need as is uncalled for here to
trace the workings and ferments of the intense religious excitement caused
by the visit and preaching of Whitefield, which stirred the people with a
new sensation, and led to a deluge of polemical pamphlets. 2

During the absence of Governor Shirley, on his boundary commission, a
little fishing settlement had been made at Pulling Point. Those interested
in it asked of the Governor permission to call it by his name. Thus we
have for a tongue of land in our harbor the name Point Shirley. 3 He re-
embarked on his recall to England, on Sept 25, parting with the General
Court in kindly terms.

On Aug. ii, 1749, Governor Shirley had with much ceremony laid the
corner-stone of the present King's Chapel, succeeding to the former edifice
of wood. 4 This stone is at the northeast corner, and the services of the
occasion took place in the church then standing. The beautiful marble
monument and bust which commemorate the Governor's wife, Lady Frances
Shirley, who died in Dorchester in 1746, mark a severe affliction sustained
by him in the loss of one greatly beloved and esteemed, and whose decease
called forth deep and wide sympathy. It was said that Shirley was much
indebted to the high connections of this lady for his first advancement.
While on his mission in France he secretly married a young Roman Catho-

1 [See Colonel Higginson's chapter in this the time, in Boston News-Letter, Sept. 13, 1753,
volume. ED.] copied in N. E, Hist, and Cental. Reg., 1859,

2 [See Dr. McKenzie's chapter in this vol- p. in. ED.]

ume. ED.] * [See Mr. Bynner's chapter in this volume.

3 [See the account of a visit of Shirley to ED.]
the Point, and of a dinner given him there at

62 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

lie, the daughter of his landlord, a connection which proved to him the
source of much mortification and regret. He was, after he left here, com-
missioned Governor of one of the Bahama Islands, in which office being suc-
ceeded by a son he came back to his seat between Dorchester and Roxbury,
where he died, March 24, 1771, and was entombed under King's Chapel. 1

Lieut-Governor Phips, who had taken the chair when Shirley embarked
for England, felt incompetent to act in the military capacity required of him
in the meeting of the Council for the conduct of the war, held in Boston in
January, 1757, and the Province was therefore represented by a commission.
Phips died on April 4 following, and, under the Presidency of Sir William
Pepperrell, the Council, according to the charter, became the Executive.
News was soon received that Thomas PownalL had been appointed Gover-
nor on March 12, 1757, and might be expected soon to arrive, as he did on
August 3. He had been twice before in Boston, in the employment of and
in confidential relations with Shirley. He had conceived a mistrust of that
Governor, doubting his military capacity, and suspecting him of purposes
and schemes which looked rather to his own advancement than to the
service of the king. Passing twice, as in the interest of the exigencies of the
military measures, between England and America in the darkest and most
critical period of the war with France, just preceding its triumphant close,
he is supposed to have made such representations as secured his own com-
mission. He was generally regarded as able, honest, and wise. He seems to
have more shrewdly and intelligently than any of his predecessors under-
stood the real temper of the people whom he had come to govern, and to
have divined the tendencies that were here working towards the coming
struggle which resulted in the independence of the colonies. He stood
calmly and firmly for the prerogative of the king, but as far as possible
endeavored to study and adapt himself to the humors and sensitiveness of
the people. So he received many evidences of popular favor, as well as
especial esteem and respect from his associates in office. When he was re-
called after a short term, at his own request, unusual compliments were
paid to him. Still, he did not find his position and situation pleasant to
him ; and, though he might have remained, he sought relief, and was in 1760

1 [A daughter of Shirley married John Erv- also in one of the views of Boston taken in the

ing, of Boston ; and the late Samuel G. Drake Revolutionary period, and reproduced in Vol.

had engraved for his Five Years' French and III. See also Drake's Town of Roxbitry, p. 120.

Indian War a portrait of Shirley, painted in The Shirley arms, which still may be seen within

1750 by Hudson, and belonging to a descendant King's Chapel, are figured also in the Heraldic

of Erving, Shirley Erving, Esq. The like- Journal, ii. 1 2. Shirley was buried in the Chapel,

ness in the frontispiece of this volume follows March 24, 1771. The panel with the royal arms

this engraving. Pelham, in 1747, issued "a represents the one, now in the Historical Society's

curious print of his Excellency, done in mezzo- Rooms, which was originally displayed above the

tinto, to be sold by him, at his school in Queen door of the Province House. The Cross, now

Street." {Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1866, p. 201.) standing above the entrance of Harvard College

For an account of the Shirley House, later known Library, was brought from Louisburg by the Mas-

as the Eustis house, given also in the cut, see Mr. sachusetts troops, and is also shown in the cut.

Drake's chapter in this volume. It is shown ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.

transferred successively to New Jersey as Lieut-Governor, and to South
Carolina as Governor. He was a member of Parliament from 1768 to
1780, and, using his experience gained in America as to the tendency of the
British measures in the colonies, he uttered in our behalf advice and warn-

GOVERNOR POWNALL.

1 [This cut follows a likeness owned by the
Historical Society. It is stated in Mass. Hist.
Soc. Proc., Nov. 1875, that the original portrait
of Pownall is at Earl Orford's, in Norfolk, and
that the Historical Society's picture, presented
by the late Lucius Manlius Sargent, is said to
have been painted from an engraving, perhaps

the one which bears this inscription : " Cotes,
pinxit : Earlom fecit. Thomas Pownall, Esq.,
member of Parliament, late Governor, Captain-
General, and Commander-in-Chief and Vice-
Admiral of His Majesty's Provinces, Massachu-
setts Bay and South Carolina, and Lieut.-Gov-
ernor of New Jersey, June 5, 1777." ED.]

64 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ings and protests which were not regarded. He was a man of fine culture,
and a voluminous author. Living to the age of eighty-three, and dying in
1805, he saw this country, in fulfilment of his own prophecies, take its
place among the nations.

It was generally the case that the personal and official variances and alter-
cations between the royal Governors and the legislature and people of Massa-
chusetts were held in abeyance at intervals when disturbing or threatening
perils of a comprehensive character, and arising chiefly from the long ex-
tended struggle of the English colonies in French and Indian warfare, en-
grossed the popular interests and made the colonists feel their dependence
upon British arms and subsidies. Pownall came into office at the very
darkest period of the war, when the colonists, burdened with debt, deci-
mated by slaughter, disheartened by many military disasters, by dissensions
in the counsels of officers of proved incompetence, and by despair for the
future, had well-nigh given over hope. But before Pownall left the country
the prospect had brightened, and great successes had been achieved. Pitt's
return to office had invigorated British resolve and the whole administra-
tion of affairs. He lifted our own Provincial officers, up to the colonelcies,
to an equality with those of the regulars. Sept. 9, 1760, witnessed the
extinguishment of French dominion on this continent; and peace was
formally ratified in 1763. England had spent in the war seventy-three
millions sterling. Was it in her own aggrandizement, or for our protec-
tion? To compel us to share in the burden beyond our own enormous
sacrifices of money and life was the motive of those schemes for taxing
us which led to our revolt. It was under Pownall's administration here
that the General the Earl of Loudoun, just before he was superseded in
his command, was worsted in his fierce struggle with our Legislature, in
his requisition for quartering British troops in Boston. He had to content
himself with the Castle.

Pownall embarked for his return to England, June 3, 1760. Thomas Hutch-
inson, who had been commissioned Jan. 31, 1758, as Lieut.-Governor, and
who took his place as such June I, 1758, had an opportunity to try his hand
at the helm for two months after the departure of Pownall. Hutchinson
might early in this part of his career have taken warning of the risks to
which he was subjecting himself by holding at one time more high offices
than had any one before him. and such as have never since been allowed to
the same person. He was Lieut.-Governor, Councillor, Chief-Justice of the
Superior Court, and Suffolk Judge of Probate. This plurality of office-
holding led to the contest in the Legislature of 1762 against the Justices of
the Superior Court having a place in either branch of it, and against the
Lieut.-Governor being at the same time a Councillor.

Sir Francis Bernard, born in England in 1714, and who had been Governor
of New Jersey, was commissioned Governor of Massachusetts Jan. 14, 1760,

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 65

and arrived in Boston on the 2d of August following. He came to find
affairs on an apparently peaceful and prosperous footing. He stayed till all
was in a turmoil, and left only just before the storm broke. It seemed to be
the aim of this prerogative Governor, who came in with the young King
George III., to make it appear that the grand design of this monarch was
to be to secure the liberties and privileges of his colonists, while the people
would take great satisfaction in recognizing all the demands of their sov-
ereign and his parliament. The " Molasses Duty," imposed as a source of
revenue to the Crown, and bearing so onerously as to provoke a general
evasion of it, first engaged the Governor's zeal against the traders. The
officers of Customs were rigorous in collecting exorbitant claims and
forfeitures of the merchants engaged in foreign trade, and enriched them-
selves at the expense of the treasury ; and there was a contest between the
Governor and the Legislature as to the rights of the attorney-general in
bringing suits against the pilfering officials. Then came the sturdy struggle,
with the pleadings of the ablest men for the people and for the Crown as
advocates or opponents, James Otis earning his laurels on the writs of
assistance, empowering the officers of the Customs to enlist the help of
anybody at hand to enter and search any place at pleasure for dutiable
goods. These, however, were grievances of a local character, chiefly felt
in Boston. The Representatives for a while preserved an amicable relation
with Bernard ; and in a fit of good humor the Court made him a present
of Mount Desert. The measures which stirred the popular spirit, and rapidly
trained the Province to determined resistance to ministerial encroachments
on its liberties, were those connected with the imposition of the Stamp Act
and other duties, with the purpose of raising a revenue from the Province
for the British exchequer. From first to last, resolutely, defiantly, and
successfully, these impositions were rejected. As, from time to time in
the development of the conflict, the people, by their stern opposition
sometimes marked by a dignified, logical, and argumentative pleading;
sometimes by a turbulent outburst of lawless violence and mob-rule
compelled a removal of the tax in one or another form, the British legisla-
ture coupled with the special relief the unqualified assertion of the absolute
right to obtain from us a revenue in some shape. This general claim car-
ried the controversy down to fundamental principles. As to the demand
that we should help in some way to bear the burden of the debt incurred
by Great Britain in the continuous warfare with the French and Indians on
this continent, the reply was that Britain had come in to our aid only after
we had exhausted our own resources single-handed in the contest; that we
had already suffered in the loss of valuable lives, in debts incurred, and in
our wretched condition from a paper currency more than our full share of
the burden ; and that Britain had an eye rather to her own stretch of em-
pire than to our protection. But, as to the fundamental principle reached
in the contest, the sole power of the purse was claimed as resting in our
legislative body in all matters concerning ourselves, as fully and as rigidly
VOL. n. 9.

66 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

as it was asserted by the House of Commons for Britain. Bernard kept all
the elements of discontent and passion in a constant ferment by hectoring
and proroguing the Legislature, and the people were forced to try the virtue
of conventions, town-meetings, and committees of correspondence with
the towns and with the other colonies. The Stamp Act closed the courts
and instigated outrages and riots. Its enforced repeal quickened out-
bursts of popular joy, which made a special triumph significant of the
conviction that the whole stake would be sure, if resolve and pluck
stood by the fundamental principle. Then came the acrimonies and the
turbulences connected with the attempts to quarter foreign troops on the
citizens of Boston, in response to the repeated suggestions of more than
one of the royal Governors that a present military force could alone subdue
the rebellious spirit of the town, inflamed by a few demagogues. To claim
the whole of right and reason on our side in these embittered controversies,
or to justify or even palliate the acts of personal violence and mob out-
rage then perpetrated, such as insults to sworn officials, tarring, feathering,
and burning in effigy; the sacking and destruction of private houses, with
pillage, and the turning of Boston harbor into a tea-pot, is what the his-
torian of our calm and judicial times may assume or decline according to
his own temper. There will henceforward be two ways of telling parts of
this story. It will always be incumbent on the historian to relate that our
rights and cause had supporters in the British Parliament, to whom our early
successes were as much to be attributed as to the abilities and arguments of
our own patriots.

Bernard was recalled in the summer of 1769, and sailed homeward on
the 3 ist of July to make report of the state of affairs here, and of his
own administration, as the basis for future efforts either to conciliate or to
subdue. He left us, mistrusted and detested, with the state of public affairs
as unsettled and ominous as it well could be. 1

It has often been asserted that if at this juncture Britain had furnished
us with a chief magistrate who was gifted and guided by certain ideal
qualities and virtues for his office, adapted to the sort of people whom he
was to govern and the work he was to do peacefully, the Revolution would
have been long deferred, and would have come about, if ever, in quite dif-
ferent ways. This is more than doubtful. It may be questioned whether,
even if we had been allowed at this juncture to have chosen our own
governor, and had put Sam Adams himself into the office, swearing fealty
to the King and fidelity to the Parliament, on any conceivable terms of
recognition of the assumed royal prerogative, there would have been a
peaceful settlement of the contentions, and a harmony of future relations.
Just before Doctor Franklin left his agency in London to return home, con-

1 [The papers of Governor Bernard, thir- books, 1758-72; ix.-xii., correspondence, 1758-
teen volumes, are in the Sparks MSS. in Har- 79 ; xiii., orders and instructions, 1758-61. Sparks
vard College Library. Vols. i.-viii. are letter- bought them in London in 1846. ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 67

fidential interviews with him were sought and held by the Earl of Chatham,
to see if they could moderate the strife and secure an adjustment of all the
difficulties in the case. Here was the wisest American, patriotic, calm
in his moderation, keen in his sagacity, far-sighted and conciliatory in tem-
per ; and he gave positive assurance that the colonists were not aiming for
independence. Here, too, was the Earl of Chatham, more honored by us
as Mr. Pitt, who had proved himself in Parliament to be the most earnest
and eloquent champion of the colonists in his rebukes of the measures of
the Ministry, and his prophetic warnings of the result. The patriot peer
wished the advice of the patriot philosopher and statesman as to the terms of
the propositions which he might offer to Parliament for conciliation. Neither
could accord with the other's views. There was an irreconcilable variance, an
insurmountable difficulty in the case. No scheme consistent with the asserted
prerogative, claims, and functions of the parent State could harmoniously
adjust itself to what Massachusetts held to be her reserved rights.

But whatever might have been the development of the discords in this
Province, had the wisest and best man then living been at this crisis made
its royal Governor, it was the conviction of many of his contemporaries, as it
has been the well-nigh universal judgment of their posterity, that the honor
and the ordeal fell upon the worst possible person. Thomas Hutchinson
had enjoyed every privilege, distinction, favor, and office which the people
of his native Province, where his family had lived since its first settlement,
could bestow upon him. He had written laboriously, faithfully, and dis-
creetly its earlier history, and his claims to our gratitude and respect for
that service must always be ungrudgingly emphasized. He first came into
the Council in 1752; had held the plurality of offices before mentioned;
had acted as Governor between Pownall's and Bernard's administration, and
filled the chair after the latter's departure. In the vexations which at once
came upon him then, he had asked, whether sincerely or otherwise, to be
relieved of office ; but it is represented that his full ambition was crowned
when his commission as Governor, issued Nov. 28, 1770, reached here in
March, 1771. Having been in close confidence and sympathy with Ber-
nard, however he may have disguised or prevaricated about the fact, he
consistently adopted the measures and policy. of his predecessor. Of his
general course, and of the motives which guided what most certainly
appears- to have been a crooked and disingenuous line of conduct, one who
is interested in the study of his record must judge as discriminatingly as
possible with however strained interpretations of charity, allowing for the
heats of the time from the abundant materials which are readily at hand.
There are words of exculpation and palliation set down for him, but they
are few, and they do not seem impartial. The prevailing and often con-
temptuously and bitterly pronounced estimate of him was that he was
untruthful, mean-spirited, unworthily ambitious, sordid, calculating, and
cringing. He had given proof of marked ability; had done valuable
services to the province and the people; and in matters not conflicting

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

with his own lower interests might even claim grateful and respectful con-
sideration. Before the full reasons for mistrusting and condemning him
were known, the House had even voted to make him its agent at London
to secure a recognition of its grievances; but he decided that he could not
leave his place. John Adams, who had full means of knowing and esti-
mating him, pronounced upon him with stern severity. 1 Nor will the force

THOMAS HUTCHINSON. 2

Works, ii. 278.

and Cental Reg., October, 1847 ; In Dearborn's

3 [There is an original portrait belonging Boston Notions, and in some copies of Drake's
to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which Boston. The Historical Society also received
measures 18 X 14 inches, and is supposed to from Peter Wainwright, in 1835, another like-
have been painted by Copley. The Society ac- ness, marked "Edward Truman, pinx., 1741,"
quired it in 1796. (Proceedings, i. 401, 417; Per- which had formerly belonged to Jonathan May-
kins, Works of Copley, 76.) It was engraved on hew, and which is followed in the above cut.
steel in 1847, and appeared in the N. E. Hist. ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 69

of the patriot's utterance be weakened when one reads the counter estimate
of Adams made by Hutchinson in the volume which he wrote in England.
Two leading facts, however, stand significantly prominent in Hutchinson's
record : First, he wrote and exhibited letters addressed to men of influence
about the Court and Parliament, in which he strongly pleaded in behalf of the
Province in the stand taken by it against its grievances. These letters were
not sent abroad. He wrote quite other letters in tone and purport which
did reach their destination, and which contained very urgent requests that
they should be kept with the utmost secrecy, and that his hand in them
should not be divulged. These confidential and disguised communications
were of the most offensive tenor to the popular party here, defamatory
of prominent individuals, misrepresenting the truth about persons, opinions,
and measures ; of a misleading character in statements and advice, and
recommending and urging harsh agencies, decided hostilities, and repres-
sion through a strong military force to be quartered on the Province. These
insidious and treacherous letters, through an ingenious and mysterious
agency, in which Doctor Franklin had the principal hand, were obtained in
England, sent back here, and gradually made public, to the consternation
of an exasperated people. They are now to be read in our Archives, and
many of them are in print.

Hutchinson informed the General Court, in June, 1772, that the king
had settled upon him a salary of ,1,500. It soon appeared also that the
law officers of the Province were to receive a royal stipend. The House
resolved that these royal salaries were an infraction of the Charter, making
the king's officers independent, and masters of the people.

The rapid development of quarrels and resistance, the measures of
patriots, dignified and well advised, as offensive and defensive, or tumult-
uous, violent, and illegal, find a relation in other pages of this work, 1 which
follow the wise methods of committees of correspondence, or trace the
doings of the " Mohawks " who emptied the tea-chests into the harbor.
Thomas Gage, commissioned to supersede Hutchinson as Governor, but in
reality coming as general of an army, arrived here May 13, 1774, and was
soon followed by his regiments. Hutchinson, whose last act with Gage was
to close the port of Boston, sailed for England, a sad and broken man, on
June i, and died there in retirement, June 3, 1780, in his sixty-ninth year.
In that retirement he wrote a continuation of his valuable history down to
the time of his leaving the country. This remained in manuscript till its
publication was secured in London, in 1828, largely through the solicitation
of the Hon. James Savage and a few others, prompted by the efforts of the
Massachusetts Historical Society. It is a matter of grateful recognition
that we have in this volume what the candid and the just will always
highly appreciate the relation of Hutchinson's own story as told by him-
self. He has written it well, with self-restraint, dignity, and without passion,
bitterness, or obtrusive malice. 2 His pages close, alike on the side of Britain

1 [See Vol. III., Revolutionary Period, ch. i. ED.] 2 [See Vol. I., Introduction. ED.]

70 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

and of this Province, the state of guardianship infelicitously exercised and
fretfully endured by the Crown of England and the people of Massachu-
setts. After that, in the expressive phrase of the great dramatist,

" The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum." '

In reviewing this brief sketch of the administration of a succession of
royal officials sent here to govern this Province after it had for more than
fifty years substantially governed itself, the story has been one wholly of
restlessness, altercation, and failure. It can hardly fail but that some read-
ers may find rising in their minds a question something like this : How was
it that among these ten royal Governors there did not happen to be a single
one who, either by honest or sinister aim in his policy, was guided by a pre-
vailing purpose to conciliate and humor a refractory people ; relaxing his
own rule, and even the prerogative, in order to adjust an unwelcome au-
thority so that it should be as little offensive as possible ; and even subor-
dinating the direct instructions of the king to the practical exigencies of
time and occasion, so that whatever else might be said of him, whether a
native or a foreigner, he might win the applause of being a friend of the
people? In that number of ten there was a range for a considerable variety
in natural temper, disposition, and executive discretion. And even if a
popular policy had trespassed upon a literal fidelity to the sworn official
obligations of the representative of the Crown, the offender, if kindly and
ingenious, might readily have attempted to justify himself, and failing in
that might have retired. But not a single one of these Crown officials
least of all one native to the soil made any measurable advance towards
this policy. The people here had very slight opportunity or occasion to
reciprocate to a Crown official any complacent favors, as if they stood on a
perfectly easy footing with each other. The most that could be drawn from
any one of these royal Governors was a promise to plead with the king for
certain concessions or relaxations for the future, on the condition that the
people in the meanwhile manifested their docility by a patient, if not a
cheerful, compliance with his instructions. It would at least have been in-
teresting, for variety's sake, to one reviewing the portion of our history just
sketched, to have had to recognize at least a single chief magistrate who
might be spoken of as a popular favorite, bent upon serving the people rather
than the monarch. Even an inclination or a disposition to have espoused
the popular and local interests would have been gratefully recognized, and
would have availed something. But no trace of any such will or purpose
appears in the course of those who held the royal commission here, least
of all among those of whom it might most naturally have been looked for,
the natives of the Province. It is to be remembered, however, that with
the exception of Hutchinson, these home-bred officials had been to a
degree weaned from the habits and principles of the place of their nativity.
They had crossed the seas and had changed their minds. They had been

1 Measure for Measure, I. IV.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 71

conversant with courts and courtiers, with free-thinkers and free-livers.
They had had a larger outlook than their compatriots, and had recognized
in the straitness, simplicity, and limitations of their countrymen, their often
ungenial religious habits, and their provincial notions, qualities which it
would be hypocrisy in themselves to indulge. The power of the clergy
had made its last and unsuccessful assertion of itself in opposition to the
change of charters, with the consequent fundamental innovations which the
new one brought with it. The leading congregational ministers in the capi-
tal and its near neighborhood were already not wholly in accord as repre-
senting the traditional straitness of the former " elders," and a liberal and
relaxed spirit manifested itself in some of them towards the imported loyalty
which tolerated some unwonted forms and observances. But the country
ministers were, hardly with exception, stiffly true to the inheritance for which
they had been born and trained. It was by these last that the country rep-
resentatives were kept watchful for all that threatened the old ways. These
country ministers annually gathered in convention in Boston, at the season of
the election; and they were not likely to forget that their predecessors, "the
elders," had been wont to have a share in the councils of the magistrates.

The king's governors were, without an exception, loyal to him. No
evidence or instance has been disclosed, to our knowledge, of intrigue or
bargaining which required a weakening of that loyalty, even to allay popular
opposition, much less to advance popular measures. There seems to have
been something in the conscious dignity of holding a commission from the
parent country over one of its wilful and restive progeny, which made the
king's governor identify himself with the authority of the master. His honors
received from the king were higher than any which he could receive from
his subjects, even if they were likely to add any of their own. Nor were
the conditions and difficulties of office-holding of a sort to be relieved by
any conciliatory policy. In this representation of foreign dictation and con-
trol, there was a direct necessity of restricting the liberties of the people
and of opposing what they knew to be their own interests. The single and
avowed purpose and demand of the royal councillors that the colonists
should not engage in any manufacturing industries, nor even be free to
barter any goods or wares of their own households over their own borders,
one with another, had in it every quality of injustice and tyranny. A spe-
cial effort under this edict aimed at the suppression of the manufacture of
woollen goods. Flocks of sheep might nibble over the pastures and yield
their fleeces for the spinning and carding of the good wives in all our rural
settlements; nevertheless Britain insisted upon the right to weave cloths
for us, and forbade our making our own. The harsh demand suggests to us
the domestic discipline by which a mother takes away the clothing of a
refractory young urchin, and sends him to bed in the daytime. Industry,
ingenuity, and thrift worked like electricity in the very fibres and muscles
of the true yeomanry of Massachusetts. Knowing well under whose ser-
vice and wages they and their boys and girls would surely come if not fully

72 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

employed, they had naturally supplemented the labors of the farm with
those of the shop, the mill, and the factory. The coming in hither, about
1718, of a considerable company of Scotch Irish from the neighborhood of
Londonderry, had stimulated the business of raising and spinning flax, and
the manufacture of linen. Quite an enthusiasm was excited in Boston for
this enterprise. A town-meeting was held, at which good Chief-Justice
Sewall presided, for the purpose of establishing spinning-schools for the
instruction of children. A building was erected for the purpose opposite
the present Park Street meeting-house. Quite a jolly festivity was made on
one occasion when the Common was covered by the good women of the
town all busy with their spinning-wheels, and waited upon by a crowded
concourse of admiring friends of the other sex. 1 It was a curious mani-
festation of the unmaternal and jealous spirit of the mother country toward
her step-daughter, that as the Governors sent over information about the
introduction of one or another handicraft here which, while drawing upon
the natural resources of our people, would make them independent of the
products of the workshops of England, an interdict or repressive condition
would be placed upon it; and in proportion as our own manufactures were
suppressed the duties on imported articles would be raised. Britain began
then the policy which she has pursued up to our own time, of employing
exclusive trade and protecting tariffs while aiming to the end of constituting
herself the workshop of the world, and having attained the result through
machinery and pauperized labor, demanding that other Governments adopt
the principles of free-trade. During Bernard's and Hutchinson's adminis-
trations the people adopted as a resource for self-protection, and as an
offset to English selfishness, the policy of making non-importation agree-
ments. This measure was a galling one to English merchants and traders,
as their warehouses soon became glutted with the goods which had been
finding so lively a market in the colonies. It was an act of apparent self-
denial and disablement, the liberty to subject themselves to which could not
be denied by any Parliamentary bill ; and the destruction of the tea gave
occasion for a vengeful attempt to destroy the whole trade of Boston by
closing the port. This act in turn engaged sympathy for the suffering
people of the town, opened every access to it from the adjoining country
by land into a highway for pouring into it needful supplies, and was the
most effective measure for making even the most distant colonies to feel
that they had a common cause as the basis of a future union.

Emphasis has been fairly laid in previous remarks upon the fidelity,
never swerved by any attempts to win popular favor, with which all the
royal Governors studied to secure the prerogative and to obey the instruc-
tions of the king and his councillors. So far they deserve the credit of
faithful service under hard conditions. But if we proceed to ask whether
they served their monarch discreetly, if they interpreted with keen sagacity
the current in which they were moving and tried in vain to direct a safe

1 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in this volume. ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 73

course, and if they gave right information and good advice to the rulers
across the water, we find reason to withhold anything like commendation
from those Governors. The question has often been discussed as to the
precise date and occasion, if there were such, when an opinion, purpose,
or resolution was first reached in Massachusetts that looked to an asser-
tion of absolute independence of the royal authority, with a conscious
effort and preparation for achieving it. Extreme opinions have found for-
cible expression on this point, and the records of individuals and of bodies
of men from town-meetings up to the Continental Congress may be quoted
in support of either and both those opinions. Our leading patriots have
been denounced as hypocrites, or double-tongued, on the strength of the
assertion that their speeches and writings contain equally distinct disavowals
of aiming for an independence, connected with professions of hearty loyalty
to the Crown, and also demands, threats, and defiances which are consistent
only with an assurance that if they were not already independent they
meant to be so. All this is true. These utter inconsistencies of avowal and
purpose are to be found in the writings and were upon the lips of the pa-
triots of those days. But they are wholly divested of all real duplicity and
deception when viewed in connection with the ever-shifting phases of affairs
and the development of the quarrel. It is true, likewise, that if a measure
of like character, but on a large scale, with that referred to above in the
interview between Franklin and Chatham, had been attempted as between
our House of Representatives and a royal Governor instructed for the pur-
pose, it would have been futile. Suppose the king had instructed his vice-
roy to invite our General Court, after the fullest deliberation, and with the
encouragement that their results would be considered with equal wisdom
and candor, to propose some scheme or plan on which, to the satisfaction
of both parties, the colony should henceforward stand in its relations to the
mother country, it is very plain that no such scheme could have been
agreed upon. The policy and the assumed prerogative, which would have
been of axiomatic authority for the mother country, was in direct and irre-
concilable antagonism with the estimate and basis of their natural rights
held by the people of Massachusetts.

The royal Governors did not divine the real truth on this fundamental
point; or, if they did so, they failed to represent it to the monarch, and
offered advice as to repressive measures and intimidation by an overawing
military force quartered here, which was of the most misleading and mis- 1
chievous character. There may be found to-day in the official papers sent
home by all the royal Governors, with the single exception of those of
Sir William Phips, the most distinct assertions that the animating feeling
and intent of all the disaffection here were consistent only with an absolute
resolve to be independent of all royal and parliamentary control. This
popular revolt from authority was, however, alleged to be not a spontaneous
and permanent resolve of the people, but to be inspired, renewed, and kept
in passionate manifestation mainly by a few wily and able demagogues, who

VOL. II. 10.

74 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

plied all their arts and tricks to deceive and stimulate the people. The
consequent advice, therefore, was that a military force should be quartered
here, and that the aforesaid demagogues be sent to England for trial for
treason. On the whole, we may conclude that Britain gained nothing by that
change in our Charter which put us under governors commissioned by the
Crown, instead of allowing us, as before, to choose our own. Connecticut,
which was left through all this period to enjoy its old privilege in this re-
spect, was not found to be any more fretful under a foreign allegiance,
or any more ready to renounce it when the crisis came, than was Massachu-
setts to be released from guardianship.

In connection with this sketch of the administration of the Province by
Crown governors, some reference must be made to those who as members
of the Council shared their executive functions. As previously noted, the
royal authority was by the Charter to be represented here by a Council of
twenty-eight members, who should balance the power exercised by the
popular branch of the legislature in the House of Representatives. The
king initiated the membership of this council when the Charter took effect,
by naming those who it was his pleasure should compose it. He did the
same thing again, as we shall soon see, whon the Charter, royal prerogative,
and the relation of subjects to the mother country were about to be re-
nounced forever by the people in assertion of their absolute independence.
It might reward the research of any curious inquirer to explain by what
purpose and through whose advice and information the king selected the
particular men named in the Charter as the first members of it. Doubtless,
Mather and the other agents had the privilege of exercising some influence
or of offering some suggestions on this important matter, as they had in
indicating Phips as the first governor. But the very object of the council,
with the functions intrusted to it, signified that the king relied upon it as well
as upon his governor to represent his authority, and in fact to sustain and re-
inforce that of the governor against any excess of popular influence. The
king and his advisers were sufficiently astute to look to it that in the first
composition of the council reference should be had to his own supposed
interest and wishes. It happened that all those whom he nominated in the
instrument were residents in the province. Not one of them came over
here as a stranger to present himself first as a councillor. Still the king in-
tended to have, and thought he had secured on the executive board, some
who should represent his prerogative. And such there were, and such there
continued to be, in men who, as dividing issues opened wider, stood stoutly
with the governor against the spirit, tendency, and measures of the popular
branch in the legislature. The king's advisers then, in his selection, must
have known who there were here who were in more or less sympathy with
his own interests and views. The existence of such a class in the higher
ranks of the magistracy and society, who were known to be prerogative men,
will call for brief notice further on. No serious trouble occurred under the

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 75

short administration of Phips on account of the first composition of the
council. With few exceptions, of perhaps a half-dozen whom the House
would never have nominated for the honor, most of its members were ac-
ceptable to the people. And when on the following year, at the first elec-
tion, the House nominated councillors for the governor's approbation, there
was rather an increase on the board of those who were even in sympathy
with the old order of things. But from that date onward one of the chronic
altercations between the Governor and the House centred upon his irritation
over some of its nominations, his rejection of them, the resentment of the
Representatives, and their efforts to circumvent his opposition in that direc-
tion. Phips had negatived only a single nominee. Dudley vetoed five of
those offered to him by election of the House. The House on one occa-
sion showed its temper by choosing for its Speaker a rejected councillor.
This provoked the Governor to claim a right to veto the Speaker, opening
a new strife which, as has been seen, was settled in favor of the Crown's offi-
cial by a " Supplementary Charter." Thenceforward the governor's aim
was to secure a council on the majority, at least, of whose members he might
rely to embarrass or prevent the full enactment by the House of any mea-
sures offensive to himself. The consequences were a succession of feuds,
of conferences, of acts of cross policy, and a constant shifting of the bal-
ance of power, with attempts at mutual circumvention between the two
bodies. On occasions, each of them sent its special agent to the king and
pleaded its own rights and grievances. During the period of the administra-
tion by the Provincial Charter, the Council was in the main in real or forced
sympathy with the royal Governor, though there were some critical seasons
on which it temporized or stood out against him. As the final struggle
was matured in its more exasperating measures of Parliamentary dictation
and popular resistance, the Council became powerless as an arbitrator, and
its composition according to the Charter gave way to the arbitrary designa-
tion by the king of a body known as " Mandamus Councillors."

Reference has been frequently made in previous pages of this sketch to ac-
credited Agents of Massachusetts, paid and employed in her service near the
British Court. There is something very significant and suggestive in this ar-
rangement when it is traced to its purpose and followed out in its workings.
The arrangement may be regarded as a curious and ingenious offset, in a
spirit of complacency and self-assertion on the part of the Province, to what
it viewed as a sort of supererogatory officiousness on the part of the Crown.
The king sent over here a governor to represent himself. The Province
reciprocated by stationing its agent near him. The agents had ambassa-
dorial, though not plenipotentiary, powers. So far as either of those terms
was in any degree applicable in the case, it would require that its use should
be based upon some assumed or supposed view of a sort of independence
in the colony or province. That was in fact the underlying ground and
reason of this remarkable employment and accrediting of representative

76 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

agents by Massachusetts. In fact the only key by which we can interpret
and consistently explain the course of the popular administration of Massa-
chusetts in this matter, in their nominal subjection to the English dictation, is
the frank avowal that that subjection was never regarded as thoroughly real.
At the bottom of their hearts the men of Massachusetts felt that there was
no foundation in the nature, in the right, or in the reason of things for that
constructive relation which the English monarchs and council assumed Mas-
sachusetts to hold to them. The relation was artificial, forced, and undefin-
able. What looks like wilfulness, or obstinacy, or perversity, or arrogance in
her attitude toward England was simply the disguise or the form in which
was manifested the unrepressed feeling that still could not frankly assert
itself for what it really was. No other explanation makes intelligible the
facts which run through our whole history, which make our history. This
underlying feeling was that the passage of the ocean, the reclaiming of a
wilderness at their own charges, and the organization of a secure and pros-
perous Commonwealth, which was gradually adapting itself to a new nation-
ality, had secured for the colonists the absolute right to manage their own
affairs. This makes our history lucid. Ignorance, or a non-recognition of this
fact on the part of England, may redeem her course toward Massachusetts
from the charge of oppression and tyranny, at the same time that it accounts
for her failure. In no later colony of Great Britain, in the East or the West,
has there ever been any parallelism of her relations to Massachusetts.

Through a large portion alike of the Colonial and the Provincial epoch of
our State the authorities here, so far as they represented the feelings of our
own people, might rely on having friends and sympathizers at the British
Court without the expense, always burdensome, of sending and supporting
agents there. Cromwell's government would never have harmed the people
of this colony. While contending with commissioners, lords of trade, and
governors, Massachusetts might often rely also on the party in opposition
to the Ministry for the time being, and likewise on a strong sympathy from
a party of the liberty-loving English people as voluntary, spontaneous, and
unpaid advocates and defenders. But our authorities, from first to last,
always acted on the conviction which proved to be substantially correct
that the English monarch and his advisers were necessarily ignorant of
the true interests of this country, which were, of course, better understood
here than there. So it was the policy and wisdom of Massachusetts to en-
lighten that ignorance, and from her own point of view to represent her own
cause, and habitually to keep a friend at court, and on special emergencies
a carefully drilled and instructed agent of her own training. To this day
no ambassador goes from Washington to represent our nation abroad with
more carefully prepared instructions, limitations, and conditions of terms,
and with a more direct accountability to the appointing power than did the
men whom Massachusetts continuously sent as her agents to England.
And Massachusetts stood peculiarly in this respect among the colonies.
No other of them, except in a limited way, did like her; and so far as

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 77

other colonies on occasions sent their agents to England, or employed
special representatives there, it was done in imitation of Massachusetts,
sometimes even to thwart the agents of Massachusetts.

These diplomatic agencies signify a latent sense of rightful indepen-
dency. For the relations into which Massachusetts put herself with Eng-
land were truly diplomatic. How accurately, indeed, some of the officials
in England who had to deal with the Massachusetts agents divined this
pretentious character in which they presented themselves, is well signified
in the following incident: When a second draft of the Province Charter
had been prepared, the Lords of the Council presented a copy of it to
Agent Mather, with the request that any objections might be made known
to the Attorney-General. Mather was so dissatisfied that he declared he
would rather part with his life than submit to some of its provisions. He
was told that the consent of the agents was not essential, and " that they
were not plenipotentiaries, as for a sovereign State." J

These agents of Massachusetts were sent on special errands from Massa-
chusetts from the earliest years of her history. With the exception of an
interval previous to the final vacating of the Colony Charter, during which
she did not think it wise or safe to risk any of her leading men in that peril-
ous office, and in fact could not find any such willing to assume it,
agents, either transient or resident, sent or chosen in England, were con-
tinued in an unbroken series down to the Revolution. At that last crisis
these agents were not formally recognized as such, nor were their names
registered at the public offices ; but still they were heard in that capacity.

We shall best understand the office and functions of these agents as
simulated diplomatic officials in our Provincial epoch, by tracing them as
meeting emergencies in the earlier Colonial period. When the first govern-
ment established here began, with a high hand, to exercise its authority by
clearing its jurisdiction of all unwelcome and offending persons, it was, of
course, well understood that such victims would at once spread their griev-
ances with bitter complaining before the authorities at home. Our Court
felt it essential to withstand their influence by presenting its own side of
the story. So we find on the records that in 1641 Salem and Roxbury
churches were to be asked to allow their ministers, Peter and Weld, and
the Boston church to allow its member, Mr. Hibbins, a merchant, " to go
for England upon some weighty occasions for the good of the country, as is
conceived." These first agents well understood their errand. If they had
any other than verbal instructions, such did not transpire or get into print
or on record in England. Chalmers says 2 that it was considered as proved
on the trial of Peter, twenty years afterward, that the mission of these
three colleagues was " to promote the interest of reformation by stirring up
the war and driving it on." And he insinuates that the intrigues, " perhaps
the money," of these agents procured the passage by the Commons of an
ordinance, in March, 1643, " for the encouragement of New England," by

1 [See chap. i. of this volume. ED.] 2 Revolt, etc.

78 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

freeing " that colony from taxation, either inward or outward, or in this
kingdom or in America, till the House take further order to the contrary."
Here certainly was a good beginning in an arrangement which involves
some of the important ends of diplomacy. It would have been well for
Peter had he found his way back here to safe protection in the wilderness,
and so have escaped hanging and quartering.

Again, in 1646, Edward VVinslow was commissioned as agent " to nego-
tiate for this Colony with the Parliament from which we have lately suffered,
for that there was none to inform the same in our behalf." He was especially
to defend the colony from the complaints of those to whom it had denied
a right of appeal from our Court to England. He was furnished with most
careful, explicit, and well-guarded instructions, " fairly and orderly written."
He was to make as many friends as possible, while the magistrates separately
were to aid him by writing to their friends. Massachusetts thought herself
warranted in asking the commissioners of the United Colonies to share the
expenses of Winslow's mission. He had been accredited in due form to the
Committee on Plantations, and he was plied with new instructions up to 1649.

In December, 1660, very particular instructions were sent to Captain
(aftenvard Governor) Leverett, Richard Saltonstall, and Henry Ashurst, as
Commissioners for Massachusetts, to meet all charges against her, to plead
her interests, and to keep a general watch over all public affairs at the
critical epoch of the restoration of Charles II. ; and funds were deposited
for expenses. Henry Ashurst, Esq., and his two sons, Sir Henry and Wil-
liam, alderman and member of Parliament, were long and faithfully in
the employ of the Colony and Province. Sir Henry afterward complained
on being superseded by Phips, and on account of inadequate remuneration.
In the long and weary period from this date to the fall of the Colony Charter
the need of agents well-skilled in diplomacy was emergent, and the service
was unwelcome, arduous, and hazardous. In December, 1661, a committee
was chosen to prepare very careful instructions, to be signed by the Gover-
nor, for the Agents Bradstreet and Norton, and to provide for their pay. 1

1 The reader is at liberty to select any epi- representation of an exile's necessities. This
thet he may think appropriate to characterize script, gratulatory and lowly, is the reflection of
the following communication addressed by our the gracious rays of Christian majesty. There
General Court, in August, 1661, to Charles If., we besought your favor by presenting to a corn-
bearing in mind, however, the fact that the address passionate eye that bottle full of tears shed by
had to serve in the place of any deference paid, us in this Jeshimon.* Here we also acknowl-
or intended to be paid, to the King's orders : edge the efficacy of regal influence to qualify

"ILLUSTRIOUS SIR, That majesty and be- these salt waters. The mission of ours was ac-
nignity both sat upon the throne whereunto your companied with these churches sitting in sack-
outcasts made their former address, witness this cloth; the reception of yours was the holding
second eucharistical approach unto the best of forth the sceptre of life."

kings, who, to other titles of royalty common They express the hope that Charles will prove

to him with other gods amongst men, delighted a greater and a better king than David. His

therein more peculiarly to conform himself to Majesty came grievously short of this, having

the God of gods, in that he hath not despised only the faults of David, worse ones, too,

nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and none of his virtues. [It is doubtful if this

neither hath he hid his face from him, but when address was ever sent. See Vol. I. p. 353. ED.)

he cried he heard. Our petition was the Jtshimon, a desert (i Sam. xxiii. 24).

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 79

The king was irritated by the limitation of the powers of these agents for
agreements and concessions, as they were restricted in their authority
as carefully as are modern ambassadors between nations. Charles de-
manded that agents should be sent well accredited and charged with full
powers. The reluctant emissaries took care to stipulate for " public assur-
ance that if their persons were detained in England, their damages should
be made good." In 1664 the king had ordered that Governor Bellingham
and Magistrate Hathorne be sent over to him as agents, with full powers to
bind the Colony to his terms. But it was not prudent at that time for such
men to go on such an errand ; and this was the safer side of the water. 1
During the presidency of Dudley and the "usurpation" of Andros, on to
the reconstruction of the government, it was beyond measure important
that Massachusetts should have able, discreet, strong, and true-hearted men
close to King and Council, and skilful in winning friends either in the Gov-
ernment, in the Opposition, or in both. All the arts of diplomacy were
needed. Enemies, watchful, shrewd, and unscrupulous abounded. Money
had supreme power, and poverty was exposure to many risks. The councils
of Massachusetts were divided. A prerogative and a popular party were
manifesting themselves in well-pronounced elements. The business of an
agent was perilous and exacting; not even colleagues, still less a single
one, could be entrusted with full or even more than a trifle of discretionary
power. When the king, urged on by our enemies or by his Council, after
writing many letters, had come to understand the temper of the stoutly
recusant and intractable people called his " subjects," he was positive and
persistent that any one whom he would consent to accept as a qualified
agent should prove that he was such, by being authorized and empowered
to make full concession to his demands without any by-play, temporizing,
or pleading off". It must be owned that he had had enough of that. The
policy of his aforesaid " subjects " was delay, or, to use a more trivial term
for a sly artifice, " dilly-dallying," temporizing, evading, parrying threat-
ened blows by a change of posture, and pleading all sorts of ingenious
excuses, even to the extent of excusing excuses. The strong hope com-
mitted to this policy then, as afterward through the Provincial agencies,
and confirmed by long and hitherto successful trial, was that plots and
counter-plots, and riots and revolution in England might distract the atten-
tion of authorities and give us time to toughen our sinews. The state
papers of Massachusetts, while it was a colony and a province of Britain,
have been generally pronounced to be unmatched for acuteness, ingenuity,
and plausibility; and candor must add, for cunning evasiveness and roguish
subtlety. But as the demands of Charles II. and James II. grew in absolute
imperiousness for agents with full powers of concession, Massachusetts
became all the more stringent in limiting those powers. At one interval it
was thought wiser not to send an agent ; at another, no competent person

1 [For the work of the Massachusetts agents in the endeavor to save the Colonial Charter, see
Mr. Deane's chapter in Vol. I. ED.]

80 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

would venture himself on the errand. When it came to be understood that
the required concessions were not to be made to the royal demands, nor yet
to orders in Council, nor to the requisitions of the Lords of Trade, but that,
instead of conceding, agents must trust to their wits for a fast-and-loose
skill in evading and apologizing, the service was indeed a hard one ; and
fitness and willingness for it could hardly go together. Then, too, those
who had done their best in that service, and had stood the badgering and
cornering of the contestants at Court as keen-witted as themselves, rinding
the task futile, had, in their discomfiture, written to our authorities of the
hopelessness of opposition and the wisdom of yielding much or little.
And then the authorities and the people here, who could but ill appreciate
the straits of their agents, would feel aggrieved or angry at the thwarting
of their schemes, and would visit their disappointment upon their baffled
emissaries in the shape of coldness, neglect, or censure. Nearly every
agent on reaching home the wisest and the best of them in their fidel-
ity met with an unrewarding and ungracious reception. Some of them
were even said to have died of hearts broken by the loss of the esteem and
confidence of the people. In 1676, to thwart the machinations of Ran-
dolph, the strong-hearted and sagacious William Stoughton Puritan to
the core, though with a prudential willingness to bend to necessity was
sent with a clerical colleague, Peter Bulkeley, and with rigidly guarded in-
structions. Bulkeley did waver, and fell under the ban ; and even the stiff
Stoughton came under distrust. He was chosen with Dudley for another
mission in 1681, but he had had enough of coldness and reproach, and
refused to go. So John Richards was substituted for him, and fared no
better. These last appointments were the result of a sort of compromise
between the two parties in the House and in the Magistracy, as to whether
some concessions should be made to the authorities in England, or whether
a stand should be made for all the old Charter privileges. So it was thought
advisable to send two men who, to a certain extent, should be a check on
each other, as differing in shades of opinion and feeling about critical
matters at issue. Dudley was much mistrusted, and received fewer ballots
than his colleague. The Court was warily on its guard about these emis-
saries, Dudley and Richards. They were hampered by most elaborate
and cautious instructions ; and even the stingy powers left to them were to
be "jointly, and not severally, exercised." By the vessel in which these
agents sailed, Randolph wrote to the Bishop of London : " Necessity, and
not duty, hath obliged this Government to send over two Agents to Eng-
land. They are like the two Consuls of Rome, Caesar and Bibulus. Major
Dudley is a great opposer of the faction here. If he finds things resolutely
managed, he will cringe and bow to anything. He hath his fortune to make
in the worhd, etc."

The special and difficult agency of Increase Mather and his colleagues
in connection with the Charter, and his grievances over the ill-requital of
his services find due treatment in the first chapter of this volume.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC

This backward reference to the Colonial Agencies prepares us to recog-
nize the habit and experience of the popular magistracy of Massachusetts,
in maintaining what were substantially diplomatic relations with the Eng-
lish Court and Council. Under the Provincial Charter the need of these
agencies was even more stringently felt, while the embarrassments and
difficulties attending them were increased. The king had his ambassador
here in the shape of a governor, a sort of chorgt d'affaires, with a secre-

THE COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL AGENTS.

tary of legation, only he wished the Province to pay these officials. Mas-
sachusetts, in reciprocating the compliment, undertook to pay her own
emissaries. But as to this pay there arose on occasions a troublesome per-
plexity. If it was to be drawn from the Province treasury, not only the
representatives of the people but the Council and Governor must choose,
commission, and draw the warrant for the salary of the agent. We find,

VOL. II. II.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

therefore, that in the continuous and embittered strifes which arose between
the intractable " subjects " here and their royal Governors, when Massachu-
setts wished to be represented by agents, after her old Colonial pattern, the
House had often to make shift to send them by its separate commission, and
to provide for their remuneration by some indirect method other than the
public treasury. Sometimes the Council concurred in such agencies with-
out the furtherance of the Governor, and there were occasions which induced
the Council to empower an agent of its own. Sewall, in his Diary, gives
details of the lively controversy, in 1709, between Governor Dudley and the
House, on the appointment by the latter of William Ashurst as agent,
while his brother Henry was agent for Connecticut, at a time when there
was pending a contest about disputed territory between the two colonies.

J^.J

tC***mZ>*^

THE COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL AGENTS.

Considerable charges were also incurred by Massachusetts in paying for
legal counsel employed by her agents. These Provincial agencies were
trusts of heavy responsibility and required very able men. Benjamin
Franklin in his turn did good service for Massachusetts and other prov-
inces, as did Edmund Burke for New York.

Massachusetts was excellently and faithfully served by members of the
Ashurst family, who were in full sympathy with the religious and political
principles which had sway here. Still, one of the brothers was censured
for weakness in our cause, nor did either of them nor the father receive
due compensation. Associated with them for a time, and our agent from
1710 to 1721, was the able, accomplished, and courtly Jeremy Dummer,
grandson of our former immigrant at Newbury. A graduate of Harvard,
he had lived abroad several years as a cultivated scholar ; and on revisiting
his native land was sent back as agent. He was an associate of Boling-

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 83

broke, and of other men in power. He parted with all Puritan strictness,
adopting somewhat free principles, and had so addicted himself to pleasure
that he was exercised by a peculiar depth of penitence as he approached his
end. But he was constant and discreet in serving Massachusetts, as well as
Connecticut, and did many acts of friendliness, besides efficiently employing
his pen in defence of the charters. Yet as an exhibition of the techiness of
our popular leaders, he was dropped in 1721, to be re-employed in 1723,
because he had advised to certain concessions to the royal Governor.

In 1723 recourse was had by Massachusetts to the services in London
of Mr. Anthony Anderson, who had sent hither the heads of the complaints
which had been brought against the action of our General Court. The
House and Council not being able to agree upon an " Address " in reply,
each sent a separate one. Elisha Cooke was commissioned from here to
help, and Dummer was again called in to aid. But in 1725 these three
agents could not accord. In plain terms, they quarrelled. In 1729, during
the contentions with Governor Burnet, Francis Wilkes and Jonathan Belcher,
both New England merchants, were intrusted with agencies in behalf of the
House. As the Council had not concurred in the appointment, nor in the
appropriation of 300 for pay, other Boston merchants became responsible
for the funds. Christopher Kilby, of Boston, whose name is perpetuated
in a street, was our agent from 1739 to 1749. Jasper Mauduit in 1763, act-
ing as agent without much satisfaction to himself or to his constituents,
asked to be relieved. Other able men were called to this difficult service,
and as the controversy with the mother country approached to the final
upturn it became more and more necessary for Massachusetts to be served
by men of mark in intellect and spirit, and at the same time more difficult
for her to find such men, who would stand for her side with comfort and
safety to themselves. Dr. Franklin filled the ideal of such a representative.

A very interesting and delicate matter presents itself for passing notice
in connection with the diplomacy of the Agents of Massachusetts.

Corresponding to the shrewdness, acuteness, and subtle policy of what
may be called our state papers of the period already referred to were
certain proceedings on the part of some of our agents which have been
made the grounds of an imputation on their honor as gentlemen, bound to
respect certain confidential rights of others. Bearing in mind that a large
part of the business of these agents was to penetrate and thwart the secret
plottings of our enemies at the Court, and to acquaint themselves with the
confidential communications which disaffected persons sent from here
touching our popular leaders and their measures, we can scarcely be sur-
prised that these agents, so restricted in the exercise of their own discre-
tion, plied every means of serving their employers in any other way. The
agents were well aware that from the earliest days of the colony the King,
the Ministry, and the Committees of the Lords were constantly receiving
and being influenced by secret information, often unscrupulous and de-
famatory, and always tending to mischief, sent from residents or chance

84 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

visitors here. It was the aim of the agents, if not their duty, to ferret out
these foes and their secrets. They tried to do this. The Tory Chalmers 1
alleges instances of what he regards as dishonorable doings in this direction.
He doubtless laid his stress upon the signal case of Dr. Franklin, soon to be
again referred to. Going back to the first year of our colony, Chalmers
affirms that " the letters written to their friends by the Browns, whom Endi-
cott sent home from Salem, were feloniously intercepted and read in our
General Court, on the pretence, equally mean and unjust, that they might
possibly injure the plantation. Thus early was introduced into the politics
of Massachusetts the dishonorable practice of appropriating the communica-
tions of private friendship, wrongfully obtained, to the malevolent purposes
of party. It then rooted in her system, and in after times produced abund-
antly." Again, Chalmers quotes from a letter of Colonel Nichols, one of
Charles II. 's Commissioners here, to the Secretary of State, charges of the
surreptitious procurement in England of important papers to be sent to
Massachusetts, and affirms positively that one such paper was stolen out
of Lord Arlington's office. Chalmers adds : " No standing agents were
maintained in England during Charles II. 's reign; but the General Court
was faithfully served by various emissaries, by Collins, Thomson, and
others, who intrigued for it and transmitted intelligence. From the clerks
of the Privy Council, who were retained in treacherous pay, they pro-
cured the fullest information, and even the state papers."

Randolph also charged the agents with having got hold of his papers,
and of having accomplices in treacherous parties in the Court. Just pre-
vious to our revolt our patriots bent all their skill to ferreting out the machi-
nations of their enemies and getting at their secrets. As to the artifice and
trickery involved in the matter, it would not be easy to say on which side
was the more of these ingenuities.

The most signal instance of these alleged breaches of confidence and
damaging exposures was that of Franklin's sending here letters of a most
mischievous and aggravating tenor, written by Hutchinson and other Tories,
under the seal of secrecy, to public men in England. But Hutchinson had
previously sent to England confidential letters from Franklin to friends here.

William Bollan, who, in 1762, had been dropped as Agent of the General
Court for neglecting correspondence, was afterward employed as such by
the Council ; and he succeeded in getting back to favor here by sending to
Massachusetts thirty-three letters of Governor Bernard ; for which act he was,
of course, abused in England.

The most serious and important of all the instances in which charges of
dishonorable and base conduct in an Agent of Massachusetts in London are
founded upon the alleged use of fraud in obtaining private papers designed
for information of the home government, is that which attaches to the most
eminent of our agents, at the most critical period. Dr. Franklin had been
acting as Agent for Pennsylvania and Georgia, and rendering valuable service

1 Annals, 146 and 149.

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 85

to all the colonies, when, on the death of our Provincial Agent, Dennis de
Berdt, in May, 1770, he was appointed to that office by the Assembly of
Massachusetts, October 24 following. His commission was for one year,
and was renewed while he remained in England. He was " to appear for
the House at the Court of Great Britain, before His Majesty in Council, or
in either House of Parliament, or before any public Board." Of course,
Governor Hutchinson did not ratify this appointment, nor was he asked to
do so. When Franklin, with his credentials, waited upon Lord Hillsborough
the American Secretary, his Lordship refused to read them, or to recognize
him in his official capacity, insisting, and procuring from the Board of Trade
a resolution, that no agent should be received from any colony unless ac-
credited by its Assembly and Governor. Franklin said that the governors
had no need of an agent, while the people had ; and he contrived to dis-
charge his mission indirectly by writing. Two years afterward he per-
formed for Massachusetts a service, the method of which visited upon him
in England unmeasured obloquy and the foulest charges, while at the same
time it was the occasion of a well-nigh fatal duel. Franklin allowed the
storm of abuse and rage to break over without any public explanation or
vindication of himself at the time. But he left in writing, to be published
after his death, a full statement, save in one important particular, of the
whole transaction, one of those calm, majestic, and nobly dignified expo-
sitions of a clouded and misrepresented matter, which indicate at once the
honest man and the true philosopher. He says that up to a certain time
he had believed that all the measures of government so offensive and irri-
tating to Massachusetts, like the sending over of regiments to overawe the
people, and other like tyrannical and oppressive acts, originated in Eng-
land, and were the devices of our enemies there. In conversation with an
eminent man in office, he had incidentally expressed this assumption. His
friend told him he was in error, and that the most odious of all these
measures which had so inflamed the people of Massachusetts, so far from
originating in England, were advised, urged, helped, and directed by per-
sons resident and in office in Massachusetts. Franklin, amazed at the state-
ment, demanded full evidence, which was promised him. This friend then
brought to Franklin a large bundle of letters from Hutchinson, from his
brother-in-law Lieut.-Governor Oliver, and four other prerogative men here,
the contents of which proved that in writing to public officials in England
they had made such statements and offered such advice as were really " the
foundation of all the grievances of the Province." Franklin was astounded
at the development ; and, expressing a belief that an exposure would do
more than anything else to allay the indignation here, he begged that he
might be allowed to send the originals hither. Permission was granted on
four conditions, that the letters should not be printed; that no copies
should be taken ; that they should be privately shown to a few leading
men, and that they should be returned to England. Franklin adds that the
writers of these treacherous letters had taken exactly the same liberty with

86 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

confidential communications which he and other friends of America had
written, copies of them, surreptitiously obtained, having been sent to Eng-
land. As a matter of course, under the heat of indignation the above
conditions were violated, by the buzzing and whispering in the air at the
consternation over the astounding disclosure, and the letters got into print.
Franklin never disclosed the secret as to the person through whom he
received these papers. In this dramatic way ends our correspondence as
subjects with royal officials. 1

This review of the administration of Massachusetts by Crown Governors
would be incomplete without a reference to the social influences wrought in
Boston, the capital of the Province, by the presence of such officials. Bos-
ton became the scene and centre of a miniature Court, with the state, the
forms and ceremonies of a vice-royalty. Without any set purpose or
intent to insure that result it was in effect realized. A knight, a baronet,
and even an earl, though but an Irish one, were among the commissioned
chief magistrates of the Province. Wherever such titled personages dis-
charge the functions of royalty, with their subordinates and dependents,
they offer the essential elements and the component materials of a Court.
The consequent incidents of parade, etiquette, precedence, and observance
came in to complete, after a fashion, something which imitated the original
at the residence of the monarch himself. A stately edifice, assigned and
furnished with reference to the public uses of royal functionaries, and a con-
secrated edifice where the forms of the national religion may be observed
with dignity by an authorized priest, will contribute other helps to consti-
tute a real Court. The direct influence and agency of the Crown appeared
and forced themselves upon the notice of the native population, who loved
the old ways. Sewall, who as Judge and Councillor was high in office
under the Provincial government till near the end of his long life, was a
cautious but a sad participant in and observer of the changes around him.
His Diary is a record of regrets and sorrows over the decay of the old
piety, and the intrusion of hated reminders of what the fathers rejected and
left for their wilderness home.

The middle classes of society, and they were nearly the whole of it,
the thrifty mechanics and industrious toilers in their plain households and
their inherited habits of piety were often shocked and grieved at what they
saw. Scarlet had not been a favorite color with them. The royal insignia
had scarce been seen by the mass of the people. The train-bands of the
colony, with indigenous officers and a drill peculiar to them, marching only

1 [These letters were printed in Boston in is in his Massachusetts Bay, iii. 394. The best

1773, and in London the next year, and a synop- examination of the question as to the source

sis of them is given in Parton's Franklin, whence Franklin obtained them is in Mass. Hist.

Franklin's account of his connection with them Soc. Proc., 1878, p. 42. See further in Walpole,

was first given in W. T. Franklin's edition of Last Journals, i. 255, 289; Campbell, Chancel-

his Works, 1817, and is reprinted in Bigelow's lors,\'\. 105; Grahame, United States, iv. 345;

Franklin, ii. 206; see also Sparks's Franklin, Massey, England, ii. ; Adolphus, England, ii.

1.356; iv. 405; viii. 49. Hutchinson's account 34, etc. ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 87

to fife and drum, were a jeer to the regulars which Randolph and Andros
introduced here. With the royal Governor and the Collector of the Cus-
toms the pay and pickings of the latter far exceeding those of the former
came a retinue of subordinates who very soon made quite a distinct class
among the residents. None of these new-comers were induced by anything
attractive in the manners or ways of the native stock to conform to them,
while fashion, novelty, and freedom had a natural tendency to draw many
of the people of the town to the Court party. It was one of the fretting
experiences even of many of the higher and more intelligent classes of our
home population, to observe how what they regarded as corrupting and
demoralizing influences wrought through the new elements upon the old.
The Rose and Crown Inn, and the Royal Exchange Tavern were thought
much worse places than any of the old ordinaries, probably because the
king's health was so often drunk in them, and certain packs of painted
cards were in such free use. The chronic warfare with the French and
Indians brought into our harbor high naval officers with their squadrons and
riotous crews. Our little Court, so far from attempting conformity, seemed
to prefer to put itself in contrast with the country manners. Many of the
private letters which have come to light, as written here at the time by for-
eigners, turn the local usages and reverences to ridicule. There was often
rather an ungracious compliance on their part, where policy and good feel-
ing would have dictated a different way. Governor Burnet, though the son
of a bishop and himself a writer on sacred themes, did not much affect
places of worship even of his own church. As a good country lady said
of him, " he was not fond of going to meeting." He seems to have been
specially annoyed by the length of the " grace " before and after meals at
the tables where he was a guest. He complained of them to Colonel Tailer,
who was sent to the borders of Rhode Island to escort him to Boston, and
asked when these long graces would shorten. Tailer told him they would
increase in length till he reached Boston, and then would shorten all the way
till he reached his government in New Hampshire, where his Excellency
would find no grace at all. There Episcopacy was in vogue. One of our
grave old magistrates, who invited Burnet to dine, asked him aloud, as the
guests reached the table, " whether he would prefer that grace should be
said sitting, or standing." Burnet bluffly replied, "Standing or sitting;
any way, or no way, just as you please."

Even the costumes and equipages which came in with the new rulers had
their effect upon the staid and frugal people of the town. The gold lace,
the ruffled cuffs, the scarlet uniforms, the powdered wigs, the swords, the
small-clothes, the buckles, the elaborate state of the Governor, who was
escorted even to the Thursday lecture by halberds, the robes of the judges,
the chariot-and-four, with liveried black footmen, were tokens of a changed
and impaired heritage to the old folks, the more so because they saw that
their children were taken by them. There had been deferential manners,
official stateliness, and distinguishing apparel, with stiffness and elaborate

88 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

etiquette, in the Colonial times ; and social distinctions had been formally ob-
served. But these had been of a sort not indicative of assumption or arro-
gance by the privileged class, nor to induce obsequiousness on the part of
the common people ; for the honors and places which they had themselves
bestowed would be recognized with a self-respect not always felt in the
deference paid to titled emptiness or pride. True worth, real service, and
stations honorably filled had before received deserved regard.

The Province itself, and especially its capital, was then able to furnish
from itself a few who would grace a Court in costume and manners, in
fashion, civility, and display. There were persons of intelligence, wealth,
and culture here, who had travelled, seen the world, and caught dignity and
polish. The general tone of manners among them, called by us " the old
style," was in its youth then. The mode of dress for the gentry, the ma-
terial and shape of garments, were in keeping with parade and formality.
Some persons here had then begun to have " ancestors ; " indeed a few had
begun to be ancestors themselves, so that they could have their portraits
painted, when abroad or at home, by Smibert, Blackburn, and Copley, in
brocade and lace, in wig and queue, in frill and wristlets, in head-dress or
in powder. 1 A farmer or mechanic, a sailor, a merchant, then a magistrate
and gentleman, was the scale for rising. In England the accepted for-
mula is that it requires a century to set a perfect grass lawn, and three cen-
turies to breed a gentleman or a lady. The more rapid development here
accomplished the latter result in three generations ; and under favorable
circumstances two or even one generation has effected it. Between the
families of the Crown officers, who by no means were all gentry, and the
professional and rich mercantile classes here there was constant intercourse,
a round of gayeties, dinner and evening parties, assemblies and masquerades.
Kings and queens acceded and died ; princes and princesses were born, and
royal birthdays occurred with sufficient frequency to allow for salutes and
bonfires; while on sad occasions court-mourning and services in King's
Chapel reflected the observances at home. The first time the General
Assembly, as a Court, listened to the Episcopal service and to a sermon by
a Church-of-England clergyman was when they went to hear the rector of
the chapel read prayers and preach on the death of George II. Jan. I, 1761.
But this the Court did in the afternoon, having paid the higher compliment
to Dr. Cooper of attending at Brattle Street in the forenoon. Proclama-
tions for Fast and Thanksgiving days had then a royal flavor in them.

There were many noble mansions, manor houses, indeed, in the town
and suburbs, some of them still standing. At the North End, then the Court-
region of the town, were many square brick houses, detached, with spacious
grounds, stately trees, fine gardens and pastures. The royal Governors,
though the Province House, soon to be referred to, was provided for them,
had town or country residences of their own. Besides his grand mansion
at the North End, Governor Hutchinson had a summer dwelling on Milton

1 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in this volume. ED.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.

8 9

Hill, which, with its magnificent view of the harbor and its extensive grounds,
was an enviable residence. It still stands, though outwardly changed. The
dwellings of Governor Belcher in Milton, Governor Bernard in Jamaica
Plain, Judge Auchmuty in Roxbury, Governor Shirley on the edge of Dor-
chester, Ralph Inman in Cambridgeport, and Isaac Royal in Medford,

THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 1

and a whole series of grand houses in
Cambridge on the way to Mount Auburn,
mostly confiscated at the Revolution, the
Apthorp, the Vassal, the Fayerweather, the
Lee and Oliver mansions, still present suggestive memorials of the past.
These edifices likewise marked large land estates, with spacious barns, stables,
deer-parks, farms, and gardens, with barges for the bay and rivers.

1 [This house has been more than once rep- Gay's United States, iii. 328 ; Harper's Magazine,

resented in engravings : Drake's Landmarks, 1876, ii. 187. See Mr. Bynner's chapter in

235 ; Evacuation Memorial, p. I ; Bryant and Vol. I. ED.]
VOL. II. 12.

90 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

The Province House, so-called, was the central scene of the chief pag-
eantries, gayeties, and formalities of the king's vice-court in Boston. This
once stately and comfortable mansion, with its fitting accompaniments, was
not originally built for the occupancy of the royal Governors. It was at first
a private residence, relatively speaking, the most sumptuous at the time
in Boston. Hawthorne, in his Legends of the Province House, with his free
blending of fact and fiction, may well stand as the poetic chronicler of its
history. Excepting always his revolting night-mare story of " Lady Elean-
or's Mantle," in which his weird imagination, working together madness,
pestilence, and a sacramental cup, horrifies the reader, his Legends are
admirable in their substance, their narrations, and their personages. Still,
in his case, as in the cases of all who poetize and romanticize with events
and characters of our own or of any other history, all draughts upon the
imagination and all fictitious groupings, with their fanciful touches, their
exaggerations and anachronisms, are made at the expense of real instruc-
tion and information, as well as of truth. Men may yet come to realize that
in God's universe and under God's Providence there is nothing so wonderful,
nothing so awing, nothing so interesting as sober and veritable facts.

The builder, owner, and first occupant of the Province House was Mr.
Peter Sergeant, a rich London merchant, who came to reside here in 1667,
and died here Feb. 8, 1714. He was a very prominent man in town and
province, filling many offices. He was one of the Judges of the Special
Court of Oyer and Terminer for the Witchcraft trials. He had helped to
depose Andros, and was afterward one of the Council. He was the third
husband of Governor Sir William Phips's widow, and she was his third wife.

Nearly opposite the now abandoned Old South Church, on Washington
Street, one may notice a narrow alley, called Province-House Court. We
must obliterate the paltry buildings now standing on either side of this
alley, and restore an expanse of lawn and noble trees, as we recall the past
on that spot. We shall then have what was the " High Street," the sin-
uous highway leading from Cornhill to Roxbury. On this, a space of
nearly a hundred feet, running back nearly three hundred feet, and widen-
ing as it deepened, was Mr. Sergeant's homestead, which he built just a
hundred years before the last royal functionary who resided there had no
further use for it. Here the owner reared a square structure of brick, spa-
cious, elegant, convenient, and in tasteful style, with all proper adornments,
and standing far back from the highway. It was of three stories, with a
gambrel roof and a lofty cupola. This was surmounted by a gilt-bronzed
figure of an Indian with a drawn bow and arrow, the handiwork of Deacon
Shem Drown, who made the grasshopper on Faneuil Hall, in imitation of
that on the London Exchange. 1 An elaborate iron balustrade over the por-
tico of the main entrance contained the initials of the owner and the date,
" 16 P. S. 79." From the street a paved driveway led up to the house, and

1 [This image of the Indian is now in the Ellis's communication in the Proceeding's, De-
keeping of the Historical Society. See Dr. cember, 1876, p. 178. En.]

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC. 91

a palatial doorway, reached by massive stone steps, gave access to the in-
terior. Large trees shaded the dwelling, and flowering shrubs ornamented
the grounds. The court-yard was surrounded by an elegant fence with
ornamented posts, and bordering on the street were two small out-buildings,
which in the after official days served as porters' lodges. The interior was
in keeping. A spacious hall, with easy stairway, richly carved balustrades,
panelled and corniced parlors, with deep-throated chimnies, furnishings,
hangings, and all the paraphernalia of luxury, were there.

In expectation of the coming of Colonel Burgess as Governor, the au-
thorities of the Province up to that time without an official dwelling, and
then in quest of one were advised by a committee to purchase Mr. Ser-
geant's, then on sale, after his death. The deeds were passed to the Prov-
ince in April, 1716, for ^"2,300, additional sums being then and afterward
appropriated for repairs and adornments. The Royal Arms, elaborately
carved in deal and gilt, were set up over the doorway. This emblem, res-
cfUed when, on the reading of the Declaration of Independence, there was
a general sack and burning of all royal insignia in the town, is now pre-
served in the Cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 1

Probably the first official occupant of the Province House was Governor
Samuel Shute, in 1716. The wide court-yard offered a fine space for mili-
tary evolutions, at the reception of a dignitary standing upon the steps of
the mansion. It would seem as if the edifice was occupied rather as an
occasional lodging-place of the Governors, and as an office for the trans-
action of public business, than as a home for their families: as it has been
seen, most of the Governors, if not all of them, had houses of their own.
They would keep furnished apartments and trained servants in the official
mansion, where, on occasions, they might pass the night, and also entertain
transient guests. Officers of the Royal Navy, when coming into the harbor,
and Collectors of the Customs would go there to transact their business, to
pay their respects to the Chief Magistrate, and to share in festivities and
banquets, for which there were abundant resources in larder and cellar.
The Governor was escorted in state to the council-chamber near by.

After the evacuation of Boston by the British, in 1776, the house was
used for our own public business, till the building of the present State
House in 1796. In February, 1811, the estate was deeded as a gift by the
Commonwealth to the Massachusetts General Hospital, to which it will
revert on the expiration of a lease, made in 1817 for ninety-nine years.
After the estate had been crowded and built upon on all sides, what was
left of the original came to strange uses, for " Orphic Minstrels," drinking
saloons, and what not. A fire, Oct. 25, 1864, left only a portion of the
walls, now hardly recognizable.

King's Chapel finds its historic recognition on other pages of this work.
Reference is made to it here only as the edifice, its records, and the wor-
shippers in it are illustrative of the Court-epoch of life in Boston under the

1 [It is shown in the frontispiece of this volume. ED.]

g 2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

royal Governors. A state pew, with canopy and drapery, was fitted up in
the chapel for the Earl of Bellomont, and the royal Governor and his Deputy
were always to be of the vestry. When Joseph Dudley came home as Gover-
nor, he seems at least in part to have turned his back upon his own place
for worship and communion. His own armorial bearings and escutcheon
were hung on one of the pillars of the Chapel, as were those of other gentry.
Governor Hutchinson after him did the same. The edifice, in fact, and all
that was done within its walls, and its objects and purposes, was a type and
obtrusion of the royal interference with the usages, the traditions, and the
dearest attachments of the people. Men of note sat and worshipped in
that first royal chapel. Among its worshippers were true Episcopalians by
birth and conviction, and others who, without any special convictions, might
reasonably seek there a substitute for that espionage and unwelcome form
of religious dispensation found in the meeting-houses. Suspended from
the pillars were the escutcheons of Sir Edmund Andros, Francis Nichol-
son, Captain Hamilton, and Governors Dudley, Shute, Burnet, Belcher, arid
Shirley. The altar-piece, with the gilded Gloria, the Creed, the Command-
ments, the Lord's Prayer, the organ, the surpliced priest, and above all the
green boughs of Christmas, composed altogether a sight which some young
Puritan eyes longed, and some older ones were shocked, to see.

The scenes and doings, the actors and the parties in the ceremonials of
that little royal Court with its Church are to be viewed by us in the retro-
spect of our imaginations, as they stand in vivid contrast with the manners,
the habits, and surroundings of the native population here. Of course,
those of lighter principles and less grave spirits would be pleased with the
novelty, and caught by the glitter of such unwonted and often exciting dis-
plays. But those of sterner views would see and know much that would
grieve them. There were freedoms and scandals which came in with these
Court personages that caused serious forebodings over a declining simplicity
and morality. And on the other hand there was an enlargement of view, a
relaxing of an unwholesome rigidness, and an expansion of interests which
on the whole were of an improving and liberalizing influence, as they brought
an isolated community on the edge of a wilderness into larger relations with
the world.

CHAPTER III.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

BY COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

readers of Sewall's Diary find it interesting to observe the changed
place already occupied by the Indians of Massachusetts at the close
of the seventeenth century. The red man, once so formidable, appears as
a harmless farm-servant or the coachman of some prosperous citizen,
although the laws soon after discouraged such employment, and called
attention to the " malicious, surly, and revengeful spirit " of the Indian, even
in this capacity. It furthermore appears in Sewall that even where the
natives had become Christianized and half-civilized, the race-prejudice so
far survived that it was hard to find a comfortable lodging for an Indian
preacher who visited Boston. 1 The well-known difference in this respect
between the English and French pioneers the latter showing perfect
willingness to share Indian habits, food and lodging, intermarrying with
them, and adopting readily their dress and speech did much to explain
the origin of the French and Indian wars. It was not possible that the
aborigines should not be easily won to the side of a race so cordial and
friendly. When we add to this the peculiar adaptability of the Roman
Catholic worship to savage tribes ; and when we remember that the French
were, from the Indian point of view, the more martial and heroic race,
delighting to explore new countries and build new forts, while the English
colonists were absorbed in the humbler pursuit of agriculture and com-
merce, we can easily explain the Indian preference. We can under-
stand, too, how the French in Canada, with far smaller numbers, were not
merely able to hold their own, but seemed likely at one time to drive the
English even from the strip of Atlantic coast they occupied.

It is not the object of this chapter to narrate the history of the French
and Indian wars, except as they affected the New England colonies, and
especially Massachusetts, of which Maine then formed a part. The state
of affairs described in Sewall's Diary belonged especially to the town of
Boston and its immediate suburbs. After the death of King Philip, in 1676,

1 Sewall Papers, ii. 212, 354, 380, 438.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

the tribes nearest to Boston were quelled forever; but further east the
contest still went on, until the treaty of Casco, in 1678. The tribe most
formidable was that known as the Abenakis, which held almost undisturbed
possession of Eastern Maine, Northern New Hampshire, and the neighbor-
ing regions of Canada. These Indians had been to some extent Christian-
ized by Catholic missionaries ; and many of them, during an interval of eight
or ten years of peace, had removed to the vicinity of Quebec and Montreal.
" About the year 1685," wrote Edward Randolph, a year or two after that
date, " the French of Canada encroached upon the lands of the subjects of
the Crown of England, building forts upon the heads of their great rivers,
and, extending their bounds, disturbed the inhabitants." This was one of the
first notes of warning of that formidable combination which was destined to
double the terrors of the Indian foe, and to prepare the way for nearly a
century of interrupted and recurring strife. In August, 1688, Sir Edmund
Andros, making
the tour of his
newly consolidated
province, visited
the Five Nations
at Albany, in order to secure
their continued friendliness
against the French. He had
lately heard of the murder,
by Indians, of five English-
men near Springfield, and
of as many more at North-
field. On his way home he
consulted with some of the
native chiefs at Hartford,
and with some of the chief
men of the colony. Thence
he went to Northfield, and
there learned that the pro-
visional government at Bos-
ton had heard alarms from
Casco Bay, and had sent an
armed force there. This he
did not at all approve, and,
as a letter of that day said,
would not " allow it to be

called a war, but murtherous COMMITTEE ON THE EXPEDITION.

acts, and he will inquire the grounds ; is not pleased that any soldiers were
levied in his absence to send eastward, and hath released from prison In-

1 [These signatures are appended to a docu- tended expedition to Nova Scotia, on file at the
ment from the committee to consider the in- State House. Mass. Archives, xxxv. 173. ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

dians that were sent thence." Nevertheless, to meet the occasion, Governor
Andros issued a proclamation calling upon the Indians to surrender all
captives and to give up murderers. It effected nothing, and with impetuous
wrath the Governor enlisted from seven hundred to a thousand men, 1 and
marched into the Indian country. He built forts and left garrisons, but, as
usual in such enterprises, hardly encountered an Indian.

It was inevitable that all this should lead to suspicion and discontent.
It was said that Sir Edmund was secretly in league with the French to
surrender the New England settlements to them, in case of revolution in
England. It was believed that he had gone to Albany in the French inter-
est, and that he had planned to sacrifice the Massachusetts troops. Indian
prisoners were reported as saying that the Mohawks had been hired by the
Governor to attack the English, and that they had been told that the French
were to seize Boston in the spring. When an Indian actually declared, in
presence of some Sudbury men, " that the Governor was a rogue, and had
hired the Indians to kill the English," they arrested him at once and
brought him to the Governor for punishment ; but the final result was that
the complainants were imprisoned and threatened, while the Indian went
free. However groundless may have been these suspicions, they all con-
tributed something, no doubt, to the popular indignation which at length
overthrew the government of Andros. 2

Behind these Indian outbreaks there lay in reality a foe more dangerous
than Andros. Denonville, the French Governor of Canada, afterward wrote
to the home government that the attacks and successes of the natives about
this time were due to his own good understanding with them through the
Jesuit priests. 3 Champigny, the Intendant, wrote that most of the Indians
concerned were from the mission villages near Quebec ; and that he him-
self had supplied them with gunpowder for the war. Though this early
portion of the long contest was popularly called " King William's War," it
really began in the summer of 1688, while France and England were still
at peace. 4 In April, 1689, came the news of the landing of William of

1 [Colonel Church tells how Andros sent for time in Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 82. The general
him to accompany the force, but Church de- reader will best pursue the events to follow in
clined. Captain Nicholas Paige served Andros, Palfrey's New England, iv., and Parkman's

Frontenac ; but for the French side there is
the contemporary account of Charlevoix's La
Nouvelle France, which has been translated
and annotated by John G. Shea. The local
historians of Maine have gone over the
conflict within its borders. Williamson is
however, by riding down the south shore on more elaborate than Sullivan; and there is
horseback, and inciting the enlistments. ED.] much in more confined monographs like Fol-

2 [See chap. i. of this volume. ED.] som's Saco and Biddeford, Willis's Portland,

3 " La bonne intelligence que j'ai cue avec etc. Cotton Mather tells the story of this
ces sauvages par les soins des Je'suites." Park- war after his fashion in his Decennium Luctn-
man, Frontenac, p. 222. osum, which was published in Boston, "at the

4 [Another popular name, more common at Brick Shop," by Samuel Phillips, in 1699; it
the eastward, was "St. Castin's War." There included the story "repeated and improved in a
is an account of the French in Maine at this sermon at Boston Lecture." ED.]

96 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Orange ; then followed the revolt of the people of Boston, the displace-
ment of Andros, and the replacement of Bradstreet their former governor.
When the Maine garrisons heard the news, they could not be kept in the
Indian country; some mutinied and returned, others were recalled by the
Council. Then the Indian attacks burst forth afresh, and the colonists found
that the absence of Andros was even more dangerous than his presence.

At Cocheco, now Dover, New Hampshire, four of the five stockaded
houses were entered by Indian squaws, who asked permission to remain over
night. So great was the confidence of the people that the squaws were freely
admitted, and were even instructed how to fasten and unfasten the doors.
They used the knowledge to let their companions in. In one of these
houses Major VValdron, the chief man of the settlement, then eighty years
old, was roused by the attack, and sprang up for self-defence. Driving back
his assailants with his sword through two rooms, he turned to reach his pis-
tols, and was stunned by the blow of a hatchet. He was then bound, placed
in an arm-chair, with cries of "Who shall judge Indians now?" and while
the Indians ate the food which they compelled the rest of the family to pre-
pare, each savage struck the old man a blow with his knife, saying, " Thus
I cross out my account." He was killed with his own sword at last ; the
family were all murdered, the house burned, the little settlement devastated.

Pemaquid, in Maine, was a stockade work, defended by seven or eight
cannon ; it had been garrisoned by a hundred and fifty-six men, but less
than thirty, perhaps not more than twenty, were left. It was assailed by
one hundred Indians ; they were Christians, a part of the flock of Pere Thury,
a priest of the seminary of Quebec, who was present at the attack. In his
narrative of the affair the priest says that he exhorted the Indians to refrain
from drunkenness and cruelty; but he seems to have conducted the enter-
prise in the very spirit of the mediaeval crusades. The Indians got posses-
sion of houses behind the fort, and kept up a fire so constant as to force
the small garrison to surrender. The few survivors yielded, under a promise
that their lives should be spared. The Indians obeyed the counsel of
their spiritual superior so far as to break the rum-barrels in the fort, in
order to prevent disorder; they abstained from torturing their prisoners,
and even from scalping them ; and Pre Thury in his account seems to
think it something to boast of that they killed on the spot those whom they
wished to kill, it was a curious instance of that double influence often
exerted by the French priests during these wars, stimulating and practi-
cally leading the Indians, but also doing what they could to mitigate their
savage ways of fighting. The capture of Pemaquid is remarkable as one
of the few instances where the American Indians have taken a fortified
place by direct and continuous attack; and Pere Thury afterward became
celebrated as an energetic military leader of his converts. 1

1 [For the attack on Pemaquid see Hutchin- torical Collections, v. ; Thornton, Ancient Pema-

son, Massachusetts Bay,\.; Mather, Magnalia,\\.- } quid; Johnston, Bristol, Bremen, and Pema-

Andros Tracts, iii. ; and 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., i. ; quid ; besides Parkman and the general works.

Hough's " Pemaquid Papers " in Maine His- ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

These were the first in a long series of alarms which filled the New Eng-
land colonies with terror. Behind all the Indian forays was a trained soldier
of fifty years' experience, Frontenac ; and the colonists, now that the first
generation of fighters had
passed away, had no military
leader to be compared with
him. Courage seems not to
have been wanting to the
English, but the skill and
leadership were on the other
side. The French had from
the beginning the power of absolutely identifying themselves with their In-
dian allies ; when on the war-path they were sometimes dressed and painted
like them. Fort Loyal, a work defended by eight cannon, and situated near
what is now the foot of India Street, in Portland, Maine, found itself besieged
in due form, with trenches, by skilled soldiers. Davis, the commandant,
amazed at last with the foe opposed to him, asked for a parley, and de-
manded " if there were any Frenchmen among them." They answered
that they were Frenchmen, and promised quarter to the English, who
surrendered. At once the captives were turned over to the Indian allies,
who slew and carried off whom they would. When the commandant pro-
tested against this, he was told that he and his countrymen had rebelled
against their lawful king, James II., and deserved no mercy. He was carried
away to Quebec, where Frontenac treated him kindly, and disavowed the
treachery of Pontneuf, the French commander. 1

In estimating the courage shown by the English colonists, we must re-
member how peculiarly terrific, both to the imagination and in real contest,
was this combination which they had to encounter. The military skill and
resources of European veterans were brought against them, combined with
the stealthiness, the swiftness, and the cruelty of a race of savages. In the
early wars, however dangerous, the Englishmen had possessed the advan-
tage ; they had the weapons, the gunpowder, the coats of mail, the discipline.
Now, all this advantage was in a manner turned against them. In fighting the
French troops, they were like brave peasants against a regular army, ex-
cept that no regular army has such savage allies. It shows the English
nature that, despite all this, the only effect of every call for help from the
frontier settlements was to bring out more stubborn determination. Not yet
fully appreciating the advantage enjoyed by the enemy, the colonists even
believed it possible to undertake offensive measures. They sent delegates
to a congress held at New York in May, 1690; and this body agreed upon
the bold project of attacking Montreal by land, in which enterprise New

1 (Parkman, Frontenac, p. 231, savs: "Com- Leclercq, tablissement de la Foi; Bradstreet's

pare Monseignat and La Potherie with Mather's letter in Doc. Hist, of New York, ii. 259. Willis,

Magnolia, and the declaration of Davis in 3 History of Portland, gives a map of the fort. Shea

Mass. Hist. Coll.,\.;" and adds references to gives references in his Charlevoix, iv. 133. ED.)

VOL. II. 13.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

York was to take the lead, 1 while to the New England colonies was assigned
the formidable exploit of capturing Quebec by sea.

This attempt would hardly have been made, but that an earlier expedi-
tion against Port Royal had succeeded. 2 A fort garrisoned by seventy men
had been captured by a force of four or five hundred militia-men, sent in
seven transports, and commanded by a rough sailor, Sir William Phips. 3
It was rashly assumed that he who had taken Port Royal could take Que-
bec, and the same commander was assigned to the new expedition. He
was a man of blunt energy and a good deal of patriotism ; and he had won
a fortune and the honor of knighthood by fishing up the treasure sunk in a
Spanish galleon. Such was the commander proposed ; and, being such, he
held the public confidence. But the treasury was empty ; the home gov-
ernment refused all help ; and the colony had not recovered from the
exhaustion of Philip's War, or from the excitements which had deposed
Andros. Private subscription did something ; the credit of the colony, such
as it was, did more : thirty-two ships were impressed for the enterprise, and

1 [The command of this abortive expedition
fell to General Fitz-John Winthrop (son of the
second John Winthrop), who died in Boston,
Nov. 27, 1707. Parkman, Frontenac, p. 257, and
Shea, Charlevoix, iv. 145, give the authorities.
-Eu.]

2 [It will be remembered that England claimed
the present territory of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick ; and when, some months later, the
Provincial Charter of Massachusetts was drafted,
it was made to cover these regions. ED.]

8 [Parkman, Frontenac, pp. 237-39, gives a list
of contemporary authorities ; and references are
given in Shea's Charle-
voix, iv. 155. See also
Bowen, Life of Sir Wil-
liam Phips ; Murdoch,
Nova Scotia, ch. xxii., and
the general authorities
already named. The life
of Phips in Mather's
Magnalia is highly eulo-
gistic, but hardly trust-
worthy. Another Bos-
ton man, Colonel Penn
Townsend, had been ap-
pointed in March commander-in-chief of this
expedition ; but Phips " offering to go in person,"
Townsend "relinquishes with thanks." (Sewall

a merchant and not to be trusted ; so it is offered
to Sir William Phips, and the ministers are said
with great difficulty to obtain his lady's consent
to it. ... 3 d April, Gen. Phips's men mustered
at the Town-house. Greenough, Hall, Bernard,
Coleman, Willey, Skates, made commanders by
the general. Coleman next day hooted at by his
company, induced thereto by young Winslow,
whom they chose their Captain. The General
and Council dissolve it and turn out Winslow.
. . . Apr. 20, Sir William Phips's ship weighed
from Boston and came to an anchor at Long Isl-
and head." Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1878, p. 107.

Captain Cyprian Southack, the Boston pilot,
commanded one of the fleet. The " Boneta," a
private armed ship, was at this time commanded
by Captain Samuel Adams. Sewall also re-
cords how Captain Fayerweather was at this

Papers, \. 316.) Dr. Bullivant says in his Journal
that Nelson, who had played an important part in
the overturning of Andros, had been applied to
"for generalissimo, asthe fittest person for such an
enterprise ; but the country deputies said he was

time "making batteries at the Castle, and put-
ting the place into a yet more defensible pos-
ture." ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

were filled with men, partly volunteers, partly drafted. 1 In August, the
fleet sailed from Nantasket. " Including sailors, it carried twenty-two hun-
dred men, with provisions for four months, but insufficient ammunition, and
no pilot for the St. Lawrence."

The late Civil War saw many foolhardy enterprises undertaken by brave
men, with inadequate preparations and under inexperienced commanders ;
but it would be hard to name one which showed less recognition of the diffi-
culties of real warfare than this expedition against Quebec. The city was
a natural fortress ; it was protected by a series of defensive works, built by
Prevost, a trained engineer, under the eye of Frontenac himself. Phips had
been told that Quebec was imperfectly fortified, and had not two hundred
men to defend it ; but he found it seemingly impregnable, defended by a force
superior to his own, and consisting of about twenty-seven hundred men.

It is needless to dwell on the delays and disasters of this futile enterprise.
When at last before the fortifications of Quebec, Phips ordered a furious
bombardment from the ships ; but his guns were poor, his powder scanty,
his gunners inexperienced. Many of his balls struck the face of the cliff,
many failed to pierce the stone buildings ; and the French boasted afterwards
that twenty crowns would have repaired all the damage. Experienced gun-
ners were opposed to him, almost sinking his few large vessels, and shooting
away his very flag, which was captured by the Canadians. He retreated in
disorder, followed by the men who were engaged in the land attack. No
one charged them with want of courage, and the Baron La Hontan, who
was in Quebec at the time, said of them : " They fought vigorously, though
as ill-disciplined as men gathered together at random could be ; for they
did not lack courage ; and if they failed, it was by reason of their entire
ignorance of discipline, and because they were exhausted by the fatigues
of the voyage." 2

be a prominent citizen, dying February, 1730-31.
His Account of the late Action of the New Eng-

OPrMroxvvn. v^KxJlAxxye--

landers was published the next year in London.
A brief contemporary account was published in
Boston in that solitary specimen of a bulletin
called Pi&lick Occurrences, which is described in
Mr. Goddard's chapter of the present volume,
and is reprinted in the Historical Magazine,
August, 1857. It is dated Boston, Sept. 25, 1690.
The chief English writers are mentioned in ear-
lier notes. The French contemporary narratives
are fuller, and references to them are given in
Parkman, Frontenac, ch. xii. and xiii. ; Shea,
Charlevoix, iv. 169 ; Harrisse, Stir la Nouvelle
France, Nos. 166-168, who (No. 244) cites a MS.
map of the siege. In the English edition of La
Hontan there is a plan of the attack. The Cata-
logue of the Library of Parliament (Canada), 1858,
p. 1617, shows various plans of Quebec from
1690 to 1710. Further French accounts will be

1 [There are in the Hinckley Papers, iii., in
the Prince Library, various letters from Brad-
street, Walley, and others, giving notes of the
preparation for this expedition. ED].

2 Parkman, Frontenac, p. 277, and his article
in the Atlantic Monthly, December, 1876. [John
Walley, the second in command, had been a

Barnstable man, but died Jan. II, 1712, in Bos-
ton, where he had held various military offices,
and had commanded the Boston Regiment, and
the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.
His account of the expedition is printed in
Hutchinson's Massachusetts Bay, i. 554. Ephraim
Savage, who was second in command of the
militia on the expedition, was a son of Thomas
Savage (who fought in Philip's War). He had
graduated at Harvard in 1662, and continued to

IOO

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

The failure of this expedition seemed for a time utterly disastrous to the
Massachusetts Colony. The land expedition to Montreal under Winthrop,
of Connecticut, had fared little better; but the share of Massachusetts in

that enterprise had been trifling,
her troops having been early
recalled for home defence ; nor
did it involve pecuniary losses
so vast. An additional debt of
fifty thousand pounds had been
incurred by the impoverished
province; and, to pay the sol-
diers and sailors, a paper cur-
rency was for the first time issued.
It soon fell to the value of from
fourteen to sixteen shillings in
the pound ; but, such as it was, it
carried the people through this
trying period. Worse than the
financial loss was the feeling of
dismay at what was called " this
awful frown of God." Added
to it was the increased fear
of Indian hostilities; a danger
which lulled for a time, 1 but
broke out afresh with the attack
on Pentucket, or Haverhill, in
1697, the attack famous for
the oft-told adventures of Han-
nah Dustin. During this year
the peace of Ryswick (Sept. 20,
1697) brought at least a truce
to the contests, providing as it
did that the territorial bound-
aries of France and England
in America should remain un-
changed.

BOSTON CAPITALISTS,

found in N. Y. Col. Documents, ix. ; La Potherie's
ffistoire de t Amtrique ; Leclercq, iLtablissement
de la Foi ; Juchereau, U Hotel Dieii, etc. Syl-
vanus Davis was meanwhile a prisoner in
Quebec, and his diary is printed in 3 Mass. Hist.
Coll., i. 101. Colonel Church was during this

time attempting a diversion in Phips's favor,
among the French and Indians in Maine. See

his Entertaining Passages, etc., particularly Dr.

Dexter's edition ; Drake's edition of Baylies' Old

Colony ; Church's letter in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., v.

271, and the general historians. ED.]

1 [A Boston man Captain John Alden

had made a truce, Nov. 19, 1690, at Sagadahoc,
with the Indians. Hutchinson, Massachusetts
Bay, \. 404. ED.]

2 [These signatures are from a petition of
the Boston merchants, 1692, who had ad-
vanced money to carry on the war, asking to

be reimbursed. The original is in Massachusetts

Archives, " Pecuniary," i. 416. ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

101

But in 1702 hostilities broke out anew, when England declared (May 4)
against France and Spain a war which involved the colonies. It was known
in Europe as the " War of the Spanish Succession," but in America as
" Queen Anne's War." 1

1 [Precautions had already been taken in
Boston by building a new fortress on Castle
Island. The old works were destroyed in 1701,
and Colonel William Wolfgang Romer, an en-

/&/- /?,&

e<r

gineer of ability, was put in charge of the re-
construction. He had been on the American
station for some years. One of Southack's maps,
showing George's River, west of Penob-
scot Bay, has this legend at that point:
" Col. Romer, engineer, took possession
of this river for the king in the year 1690."
There are indications that there was some
jealousy regarding Romer in Boston.
Sewall, under date of Dec. 27, 1698, says:
" Col. Romer is treated at the Castle.
Capt. Fairwether asked me not to go ;
so I went to Roxbury lecture." P'ayer-
weather was the captain of the Castle,
and Sewall again throws light: "1701,
Aug. n. Go down to the Castle to try
to compose differences between the Cap-
tain and Col. Romer. I told the young
men that if any intemperate language

Z>^/

proceeded from Col. Romer, 't was not intended
to countenance that, or encourage their imitation ;
but observe his direction in things wherein he
was skilful and ordered to govern the work."
This new fort was built of brick, and
a slab was placed over the entrance
with a Latin inscription, stating that
the work was finished in 1703. It
also called Romer "chief military
engineer to their Royal Majesties in
North America." (See Shurtleff, De-
scription of Boston, p. 493 ; and further,
in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., January,
1879, p. 22.) Shurtleff says: "A small part of
the old wall has been retained in constructing
the rear portion of the present fortification,

COMMITTEE OF 1704.

Fort Independence ; but as it has been covered
w 'th large granite ashlers, the ancient relic is en-
tirely hidden from sight." The committee acting
in conjunction with Romer were Thomas Brattle
and Timothy Clarke, who were appointed, in 1701,
"to repair and make new fortifications at the
Castle," and their signatures annexed are from
their report. Clarke was, in 1704, commander of
the " Sconce " or South Battery, under Fort Hill.
In 1704, still another committee was appointed
on the part of the Province to view the Castle
after the works were finished ; and this committee

$*|V2

COMMITTEE OF 1706.

consisted of John Higginson, Samuel Appleton,
Ephraim Savage, Samuel Brown, and Samuel
Clap, whose signatures here given are copied
from their report. Still later, ir 1706, another

IO2

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

In New England the war presented more alarming features than had the

previous contest, since
the Five Nations had
now pledged neutrality,
and by this act pro-
tected New York, so
that the full force of
the war came upon the
New England colonies.
Governor Dudley tried
to secure a similar neu-
trality from the Abena-
kis, who seemed quite
ready to promise it.
" The sun," one of their
chiefs said, " is not more
distant from the earth
than our thoughts from
war." "Our Eastern In-
dians," wrote the author
of The Deplorable State
of New England, "had
no sooner, with all pos-
sible assurance, renewed
their League of Peace
with us, but being
moved by the instiga-
tion of the French,
they Perfidiously and
Barbarously Surprised
Seven more of our
naked and secure Plan-
tations." 1

SIGNATURES OF THE GOVERNOR AND COMMITTEE ON
FORTIFICATIONS. 2

committee, with Elisha Hutchinson at the head
of it, acted in this work of inspecting the de-

fences. (Massachusetts Archives, " Military," v.
216.) The town at the same time voted ji,ooo
to improve the defences. This same year Ben-

jamin Browne and Andrew Belcher were ap-
pointed to treat with Captain John Bonner to go
in command of a brigantine to Quebec to
effect an exchange of prisoners ; Belcher
was commissary-general. Massachusetts
Archives, " Military," v. 247. ED.]

1 " A Memorial of the present Deplor-
able State of New England," in Sewall
Papers, ii. 63.

2 [The French, during these years, as
has been noted in the Introduction to the
present volume, prepared various plans of
Boston, in anticipation of making an at-
tack ; and at one time information of the French
plans reached the Bostonians in a letter from Cap-
tain John Nelson, dated Aug. 26, 1692. Nelson,

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

103

Deerfield 1 and Haverhill were attacked and ravaged ; many men, women,
and children were killed or carried into captivity. The priests of Canada
were now reviled as instigating these atrocities, now thanked for restraining
the savages from cruelty. Worst of all, Governor Dudley had utterly lost
the confidence of the people over whom he had been placed. In the
Sewall Papers will be found a reprint of two anonymous pamphlets, the one
published in Boston in 1707, and the other in London in 1708, both entitled,
with some variations, The Deplorable State of New England. In both of these
the Governor is accused of " dark designs," of " hellish malice," of " seeking
to enslave " the colonies. 2 A third pamphlet is reprinted in the same volume,
and gives the arguments in the Governor's defence. It is now needless to
enter into this controversy, but it is obvious that such a state of feeling must
have greatly enhanced the alarm and suffering of that whole dark period.

who it will be remembered was instrumental in
the overthrow of Andros, had been taken by the
French while he was on a trading voyage to
Nova Scotia, and imprisoned in Quebec. In
consequence of this letter he was sent to France,
whence, after an absence of some years, he re-
turned to Boston. In the Massachusetts Archives
is a petition of his, dated Nov. 30, 1698, asking

SIGNATURES OF THE COMMANDERS OF THE SHIPS

compensation because of his seven years' deten-
tion as a prisoner with the French, through re-
prisal. The apprehension felt in Boston a little
later found expression in the appointment by
Governor Stoughton of a committee to repair
the fortifications. Their signatures with the Gov-

ernor's (opposite) are from their report in the
Massachusetts Archives. Their appointment was
dated July 28, 1696, and their report was that the
"new" battery should be enlarged, a platform
built before the Castle, and the northeast bas-
tion be laid anew. They recommended that on
Governor's Island a battery of eight guns should
be erected on the southeast part, and one of ten
on the southwest. They found that for this
purpose six guns could be spared from Scar-
lett's Wharf, five from Greenwood's Wharf,
two from the North Battery, two from the
South Battery ; and they said that the Bos-
ton merchants would supply the rest. As
an additional precaution, a number of ships
were moored in the harbor, "in line of
battle, to annoy the king's enemies in case
of an attack." There is on file at the
State House a paper, dated 1697, detailing
the stores wanted for these ships, signed
as annexed in fac-simile ; and of the signers
Foye, White, a*nd Gwinn were commanders
of the ships. ED.]

1 [The Rev. John Williams of this
place, whose story is so well known, was
taken captive during this incursion, Feb.
29, 1704-5, and carried to Montreal, whence
he returned to Boston, Oct. 25, 1706.
Sewall records his preaching here, and
the next year he carried through the press
of Bartholomew Green, in Boston, his
Redeemed Captive, containing the sermon
Sewall mentions, a book which in various
early editions is among the treasures of
ETC. Americana. (Sewall Papers, ii. 173, 182 ;
Brinley Catalogue, No. 494, etc.) A con-
temporary account of his death, 1729, from the
New England Weekly ^Journal, is given in the
N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., April, 1854, p.
174. ED.]

2 Sewall Papers, ii. 125*. The same volume
has a note on the authorship of these tracts.

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

To meet the covert designs of a powerful nation like the French, alien in
race and bitterly hostile in religion ; to dread the stealthy approaches and
often merciless cruelty of a savage foe, these anxieties were surely enough
for the colonists without being compelled to distrust their own officials.

Part of this distrust, no doubt, came from that suspicious spirit which
always furnishes a ready explanation of military failure ; there is rarely a
defeat which is not embittered by accusations against somebody. An expe-
dition was sent against Port Royal in 1707. This small fort was supposed to
be a headquarters for privateers and for the illegal trade with Indians, and
Governor Dudley himself was supposed to have had a share in its unlawful
profits. It was reported through a prisoner that at Port Royal they had not
yet heard of the war ; so that the Governor could not resist the popular

demand to " go and destroy that nest of hornets," as it was termed. The
veteran Colonel Church, 1 the hero of Philip's War, was accordingly sent
against it, in 1704, but returned without touching the fort itself, having
only devastated the country. Another expedition was sent, and returned
still more ingloriously ; so that the women of Boston met the soldiers in
the streets, according to the pamphleteers already quoted, and derided them.
" Says one of them : Why, our Cowards imagined that the Fort at Port
Royal would fall before them like the Walls of JericJio ! Another answers :
Why did not tJie Blockheads then stay out Seven Days to see? What ail 'd
the Traitors to come away in Five Days time after tJiey got tliere ? " 2

Three years later, in October, 1710, the " hornet's nest" was taken. A
fleet sailed from Boston consisting of six English and thirty colonial vessels,
carrying five hundred Royal Marines, two regiments from Massachusetts,
and one each from New Hampshire and Connecticut. Hobby and Colonel

1 [Colonel Church gained much of his repu- and reprinted in New Hamp. Hist. Coll., i , and

tation at the eastward. There are numerous again in Cincinnati, in 1859, with notes by W.

letters of his on file in the Massachusetts Ar- Dodge) the great contemporary authority ; while

chives, and some are printed in Baylies' Old the narrative of Samuel Niles, ". French and In-

Colony, and elsewhere. His son Thomas was dian Wars," in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi., is chiefly

with him on some of his expeditions, and filched from Morton, Church, Hubbard, Mather,

dressed up from the old soldier's recollections and Penhallow. Cotton Mather's Duodecennium

the book, Entertaining Passages, etc., which was Luctuosum, Boston, 1714, is interesting no further

printed in Boston in 1716, and which gives an than that it is one of his summaries of events,

account of this Port Royal expedition, the detailed in a sermon before the Governor. On

same book as already mentioned, edited by Dr. the French side we still have Charlcvoix, Shea's

Dexter, treating likewise of the expeditions of ed., vol. v., with his references. ED.]
1689,1690,1692,1696. For this and other events 2 Sewall Papers, ii. 129. [This expedition

of Queen Anne's war (1703-1713), Dr. Palfrey sailed from Boston, May 13, 1707, and Captain

(iv. 257) considers Samuel Penhallow's Indian Cyprian Southack accompanied it as commander

Wars (originally published in Boston, in 1726, of the Province Galley. ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

105

Taller commanded those of Massachusetts. In six days they anchored

before Port Royal ; the fortress was besieged and its supplies cut off,

and the garrison of one

hundred and fifty -six

marched out with the

honors of war. The in-

habitants within a three

miles' circuit, upon tak-

ing an oath of allegiance,

were to be protected for two years ; but the inhabitants of the neighboring

districts were harassed and plundered, and were threatened with being

driven from their homes " unless they would turn Protestants." The name

of Port Royal was changed to Annapolis Royal, 1 afterwards to Annapolis,

in honor of the reigning queen of England. 2

1 Sewall Papers, ii. 293. [See the references pedition. Some papers pertaining to this service

in Shea's Charlevoix, vol. v. The ship " De- are in N, E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p. 196.

spatch " of Boston, owned by David Jeffries & ED.]
Co., was used as a hospital transport on this ex- 2 [Annexed are the signatures of the Royal

Commissioners, who were in Boston at this Royal. The document is on file in the Massa-

time, calling upon the Governor to furnish chusetts Archives, " Military," v. 693 ; and in the

provisions for the fleet about to sail for Port same collection will be found the proclamation
VOL. II. 14.

io6

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Early in 1711 the agent of Massachusetts and Connecticut, Jeremiah
Dummer, 1 presented a memorial to the Queen asking her, " in compassion
to her plantations, to send an armament against Canada," and representing
that other provinces, even so far south as Virginia, were prepared to join in
the enterprise. A Tory ministry was in power, under St. John, afterward
Viscount Bolingbroke, the most brilliant man of his time ; and he entered
eagerly into the project. Fifteen ships of war, with forty transports, bring-
ing five regiments of Marlborough's veterans, arrived at Boston in June. 2

which they issued in 1709 at Boston, upon their
arrival as bearers of instructions to the govern-
ors of the colonies. The signatures attached to
this document, with
the Governor's in-
dorsement,are here-
with given. Massa-
chusetts and Rhode
Island were called
on to raise fifteen
hundred men. The
levy was made, and
the troops were in camp May 20, and remained so
till September. In October word came to Bos-
ton that the English force, intended to be joined
to the expedition, had been sent to Portugal.
The troops were accordingly disbanded. This
was the year before the successful expedition of
1710. ED.]

1 [Dummer was the agent of Massachusetts
from 171010 1721. ED.]

2 [The captain of the Castle at this time was
Zechariah Tuthill. He was a militia officer,

tained at Mr. Borland's, one of the prominent
merchants of the town and the Queen's agent.
Later, July 7, the admiral had an interview with

and had been lieutenant of the Ancient and
Honorable Artillery Company in 1702. Sewall
records how, during some court proceedings,
June 8, "the drums put us to silence," and there
was " an alarm at the Castle," which greeted the
arrival of the van of the fleet. On the i2th
Sewall says, " The proclamation for the war is
passed. I carried it to the printer
at noon." When the "Devonshire"
frigate arrived, with General Hill on
board, who was to command the land
forces, Sewall was sent down the harbor
to meet him. They came in pinnaces to
the Castle, where Tuthill saluted with twenty-one
guns, and then coming up to town landed at
Scarlet's Wharf, and " went up King Street in
front of the regiment to the Council Chamber."
This was June 25. The general was enter-

Captain John Bonner, who brought him a chart
of the St. Lawrence. Walker says of Bonner
that he had " the general character of the best
pilot, as indeed he appeared to me to be ; I told
him he should be aboard that ship when I hoisted
my flag; notwithstanding he was very instant
with me to be dispensed with, and for an excuse
alleged his age." In the News-Letter, No. 379,
there was printed an account of the forces, and
Walker reprints it in his Journal. The land
forces were encamped on Noddle's Island, and
the sick were put in hospital " on one of the is-
lands near Nantasket Road." Walker says,
" The generation then inhabiting Boston had
never before seen so grand a military display as

these veteran troops [they had served under
Marlborough] made as they performed their
evolutions on the fields of Noddle's Island."
The troops re-embarked July 20, and on the 3Oth
sailed. Sumner, East Boston, 341 ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

107

The fleet remained more than a month, offering in the harbor " a goodly,
charming prospect," according to Sevvall, 1 and doubtless often disturbing
the streets with revelry. So little notice had been given of their approach
that delay was inevitable in collecting the land forces. Massachusetts
furnished bills of credit for .40,000 towards provisioning the fleet ; 2 New
York issued ,10,000; Pennsylvania, ,2,000. Fifteen hundred men from
Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey were sent to Albany for a land
attack on Montreal, and they were joined by eight hundred Iroquois war-
riors. Meanwhile the fleet sailed from Boston in July, carrying seven thou-
sand men, half regulars and half provincials, under command of Admiral
Sir Hovenden Walker. 3

Nothing but disaster attended the brief career of the expedition. When
St. John heard of the safe arrival of the fleet in Boston, he wrote to the
Duke of Orrery, " I believe you may depend on our being masters, at this
time, of all North America." But the expedition did not add an inch to
British territory, while it did untold injury to the prestige of England with
the French, the Indians, and even with the colonists themselves. On August
22, while the fleet was ascending the St. Lawrence, a thick fog came on at
nightfall ; the admiral disregarded all the pilots in his orders in respect to the
ships, and for a time refused even to come on deck when the situation became
perilous. Ascending from his cabin at last, he gave counter-orders too late ;
eight of his ships were wrecked, and eight hundred and eighty-four men
were drowned. A council of war decided to abandon the enterprise, and
the fleet returned to England, not even stopping on the way, as had been
ordered, to attack the French posts in Newfoundland. The land forces,
destined to attack Montreal, were also withdrawn. There could scarcely have
been a more ignominious failure. 4 A year or two later (April, 1713), the
war closed with the peace of Utrecht, which gave to England the possession
of Hudson's Bay, of Newfoundland, and of Acadia, this last province
being, however, so imperfectly defined as to give a ready excuse for the
renewal of war at a later period. 5

1 Sewall Papers, ii. 317. buried in the Granary, with armorial bearings

2 [The admiral at first treated with Captain on his stone, which are given in the Heraldic
Andrew Belcher, a rich merchant, with a view to Journal, ii. 138. ED.]

* [Shea, Charlevoix, v. 252, cites the authori-
ties. Walker printed in London, in 1720, A
Journal or full account of the late Expedition to
Canada. The London Gazette of Oct. 6, 1711,
gives the news of the failure of this expedition
against Quebec, as it reached the home govern-
putting the charge of the provisioning in his ment. There is a copy in the Cotton and Prince
hands; but he declined. He then entrusted the Papers, No. 16. ED.]

work to Andrew Faneuil. ED.] 6 [During the comparative security of the

8 [The admiral had been lodging with Cap- few following years, attention was occasionally
tain Cyprian Southack, on Tremont Row, near directed to the Castle, and its defences were
Howard Street ; and Southack in the Province strengthened or repaired. In 1720 a committee
galley was to lead the van in ascending the St. reported on a plan for strengthening the east
Lawrence. The Captain, who was somewhat and west heads of the island. Shurtleff, De-
famous in his day, as a maker of charts, lies scription of Boston, 494. ED.]

108 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

As usual, the Indian disturbances went on, even while there was peace
among the European nations. The colonists took advantage of supposed
tranquillity to establish new settlements in Maine, and to build forts. 1
The Indians were told by the French that they and the soil they held were
not mentioned in the new treaty. " I have my land," exclaimed indignantly
the Abenaki chief, " where the Great Spirit has placed me ; and while there
remains one child of my tribe I shall fight to preserve it." Vaudreuil, the
Governor of Canada, was secretly intriguing to renew the contest ; and thus

encouraged by French counsel,
but even when not aided openly
by French arms, the Christian
' ' Indians of Maine kept up their

attacks. Their spiritual adviser and head was the venerable Pere Rasle, of
Norridgewock, for a quarter of a century the self-devoted missionary among
the Eastern Indians. He had built a chapel in the forest, himself adorning
its walls with paintings ; he had trained a band of forty young Indians to
assist, wearing cassock and surplice, in the rites and processions of the
Church ; and he had collected a village of " praying Indians " about him.
A Protestant mission, set on foot by the government of Massachusetts, had
no chance of rivalry with the more winning methods of Pere Rasle ; and
the attempt was abandoned. But when the Indians, under his supposed
counsel, met at Norridgewock for war, and, issuing forth, destroyed Bruns-
wick by fire, the Puritans naturally denounced Rasle as an incendiary of
mischief, and pledged themselves to the destruction of the Indian head-
quarters. They proclaimed the Abenakis to be traitors and robbers, and
offered for each Indian scalp a bounty of 15, afterward increased to
;ioo. 2 There was by this time a class of Indian fighters among the colo-
nists, as hardy, as skilful, and as relentless as the natives themselves ; and
Pere Rasle, knowing this, predicted that the Indians could not sustain them-
selves without direct aid from the French. He sent many of his converts to
Canada, but resolved to be himself the last to withdraw. Three times an

1 [In August, 1717, Governor Shute, with a and the Colonel, "strengthened," kept his seat,
number of gentlemen, left Boston by water to The regiment, however, paraded next day, and
proceed to Arrowsic and make a treaty with the Sewall tells how the Governor "stood in Mr.
Indians. He was accompanied by the Rev. Jo- Phillips's balcony, hanged with a carpet, and the
seph Baxter as a missionary, whose journal on officers saluted him as they passed by." The
this service for several years is given in the N. field officers entertained him at dinner at the
E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1867, p. 45. The Green Dragon. Governor Phillips stayed till
treaty was made Aug. 9-12, and shortly after an April, when he left Boston under salute from
account of it was printed in Boston, by B. Green, the Castle. Sewall Papers, iii. 229, 248. ED.]
The treaty is given in Maine Hist. Coll., iii. 364; 2 [A declaration of war against the Eastern
vi. 231. General Phillips, the Governor of Nova Indians was published in Boston, July 26, 1722.
Scotia, was in Boston for a conference in 1719. The preceding September Governor Shute had
He arrived on Sunday, Sept. 27, and Colonel given as a reason for a public thanksgiving
Fitch, the commander of the Boston regiment, that Providence had been kind, " particularly in
who had orders to turn out his command to greet succeeding the methods taken to prevent the
the visitor, was in church when word was brought insults of the Eastern Indians." See a fac-
him. He turned inquiringly to Judge Sewall simile of the page of the Boston Gazette, Oct. 2,
between prayer and singing. "I said 'No!'" 1721, containing this proclamation, in Mr. God-
records the diarist, exclamation point included; dard's chapter in this volume. ED.}

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

109

attempt was made to capture him; l and at last, on Aug. 23, 1724, a party
of New England men reached Norridgewock unperceived, actually firing
into the Indian cabins before any alarm had been given. The Indians fled,
the settlement was destroyed, and the body of the priest was left upon the
ground near the cross, bruised, scalped, and insulted. 2 Never was there a
more cruel issue of religious fanaticism against fanaticism. Pere Rasle
belonged to the race of devout martyrs, and with their merits had their
frequent defects and their disastrous limitations ; while on the other hand so
false was the Puritan conception of his character, that when a half-breed
Indian was once killed, having with him a devotional book and a list of
Indian names, he was currently reported to be " a natural son of the Jesuit
Ralle, by an Indian woman who had served him as a laundress." 3

The most cruel war sometimes tends toward peace; and this was
unquestionably the result of the destruction of Jesuit missions in New
England. For several years longer there was a running fire of hostilities,
in the course of which the celebrated but ill-named Captain Lovewell
went out again and again to follow the ^ - -->

Indian trail, and always returned with (/ srri/*, ^//rjJPSiteM?

. ^/^fl/sl~&LY^*-*-^*~*'L--^

scalps. On one occasion his men dis- .f l

covered ten Indians asleep round a fire, V

beside a frozen pond ; surrounding them stealthily, they killed them all
in a few minutes, scalped them, and re-entered Dover bearing the ten
scalps stretched on hoops and elevated on poles. After receiving an
ovation in Dover, they went on to Boston, where they received ;ioo for
each of their brutal tokens. 4 This party was always accompanied by a
surgeon, and also by a chaplain; and had prayers morning and evening.
When it was finally routed and broken up, at the famous " Lovewell's

1 [One of these expeditions was despatched
by Governor Shute, under the command of
Colonel Westbrook; but two of Rasle's Indians

discovered their approach. The Jesuit's flight,
however, was so hasty that he left behind letters
from Vaudreuil (which showed the Canadian
governor's sympathy and assistance), and the
MS. glossary of the Abenaki language, in
Rasle's own writing, which is now in the Col-
lege Library at Cambridge. ED.]

2 [Jere. Bumstead, in Boston, makes this en-
try in his Almanac : " Aug. 22. 28 Indian scalps
brought to Boston ; one of w c was Bombazens
[an Indian chief], and one fryer Railes." ED.]

3 [Belknap, New Hampshire, ed. 1862, p. 204.
Shea, Charlei'oix, v. 280, gives full references.
Rev. Convers Francis wrote the Life of Rasle in
Sparks's American Biography. For an account
of his monument, see Historical Magazine, June,

1871, p. 399. Palfrey (New England, iv. 438)
says : "His death was a great relief to the bor-
der settlements. Men of this century, not in
danger from the tomahawk which his zeal lifted
against the wives and children of a hundred
years ago, can afford to be just to his good qual-
ities, such as they were, and to be sentimental
over his grave." ED.]

4 [Belknap, New Hampshire, p. 209. The
Journal of Lovewell, signed by himself, detail-
ing the events of this expedition, Jan. 27 to
Feb. 27, 1724, is preserved in the Massachusetts
Archives, vol. Ixxxvi. Mr. Frederic Kidder
printed an account of Lovewell's adventures in
the N. E. Hist, and Cental. Reg., January, 1853,
p. 61, and gave this Journal entire. Lovewell's
company for this expedition was organized at
Dunstable, and the men were raised in that and
the neighboring towns. The Journal says of
the close of the expedition: "26th [Feb.] we
marched down to Captain Knights, at Newing-
ton, and (27th) went on board a sloop to come
to Boston, where we arrived the gth current,
Mar. loth, 1724." ED.]

I 10

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Fight," in 1725, the descriptive ballad of the period says, in plaintive
verse :

" They wounded good young Frye,
Who was our English Chaplain ;
He many Indians slew,
And some of them he scalped,
While bullets round him flew." '

But even after this disaster to the colonists the power of the Eastern
Indians steadily declined; and Dec. 15, 1725, the Abenaki chiefs signed
at Boston, in the Council Chamber, a treaty of peace, 2 which was long
maintained. 3

1 [Thomas Symmes printed, in 1725, at Bos-
ton (" B. Green, Jr., for S Gerrish "), the original
edition of a sermon entitled Lovewell Lamented,
which had an account of the " Battle at Pigg-
wacket " annexed, and which has become one of
the books most sought for by collectors of Ameri-
cana. Brinley Catalogue, No. 422. 423. A second
edition, corrected, appeared in Boston the same
year ; and it was reprinted in Farmer & Moore's

Historical Collection, i., and with annotations by
N. Bouton, at Concord, N.H., 1861. ED.]

* [This parchment is preserved in the Massa-
chusetts Archives. ED.]

8 [In the years immediately succeeding the
town was seldom free from fear of sudden
irruptions by hostile fleets. They had learned
the insecurity of treaties, and they had experi-
enced that wars, in remote corners of the English

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

II I

In 1744 came another war between England and France, known in
Europe as " the War of the Austrian Succession," but in the simpler
American nomenclature called only " King George's War," or perhaps

dependencies, broke out without due proclama-
tion. There is on file in the office of the City
Clerk a petition to the Selectmen of the town,
signed by some of the prominent merchants and
other citizens of Boston, dated Feb. 19, 1733,
and asking that a town-meeting be warned to
consider if steps should not be taken to fortify
the town and its approaches. The signatures
are of interest, as showing the names of leading
citizens. See pages 110-112. The command-
ers of the Boston regiment at this time were :

Edward Winslow, Colonel; Jacob Wendell,
Lieutenant-Colonel ; and Samuel Sewall, Major.
In 1735 a movement was made to strengthen the
works, and a committee on the matter, consisting
of Spencer Phips, John Quincy, and Benjamin
Bird, reported that the masonry of the main
work was in poor condition, owing to bad
mortar. A new battery was at this time built at
the end of the island, to be connected with the
older work by a platform and palisades. (Shurt-
leff, Description of Boston, 495.) A few years

I 12

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

oftener " Governor Shirley's War." l As before, the first outbreak' of the
war involved the colonies, but, as before, the central colonies had the shield
of the Iroquois Confederacy, once the " Five Nations," but now the
"Six Nations," the Tuscaroras having been added, so that the main
shock came, once again, on the New England settlements. They first

later (1739-40) the ruinous condition of the n, 1723, a position which gave him the im-
north and south batteries instigated Edward mediate command, the captaincy falling, by
Winslow, Daniel Henchman, and other citizens virtue of his commission, to the Lieutenant-

<u&

to take steps to secure the remounting of the Governor for the time being. In '1732 he is
guns. The subject of the defences nearly every styled Lieutenant and Victualler. The Evening
year engaged the attention of the town. Late Post of Feb. 15, 1762, says: "Last night died

here, in an advanced age, John Larrabee, Esq.,
for many years past Captain at Castle William,
where he mostly resided." (N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., January, 1862, p. 60; also, April,
1865, p. 124, where the account of him from

in December, 1744, a vessel arrived at Boston,
bringing from the home government twenty forty-
two pounders and two mortars for Castle Wil-
liam. During these years a well-known officer at

the Castle was John Larrabee. He succeeded
John Gray, as Lieutenant of the Castle, Sept.

the News-Letter is copied.) The Castle Gunner

during this period was John Brock. ED.]
1 [" June 3, 1744- There was a great shock of

an earthquake about ten o'clock A.M., while we
were singing ; many people went out, but
soon returned again. War was proclaimed
but the day before against the French by an
alarm, P.M. . . . June 28, 1744, was a publick
Fast Day on account of the war; Dr. Colman
prayed and Mr. John Walley preached. Mr.

Walley prayed in the afternoon." Colonel John

Phillips, MS.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

learned of the existence of the war through the capture of the small Eng-
lish garrison at Canso by the French ; but the contest is chiefly memorable
through the capture of Louisburg in 1745.*

In one of Hawthorne's early historical papers there is a sketch of this
expedition and its leader, a sketch marked by that fresh picturesque-
ness which belonged to all that came from his then obscure pen. In
this he reminds us that " the
idea of reducing this strong
fortress was conceived by Wil-
liam Vaughan, a bold, energetic,
and imaginative adventurer, and

adopted by Governor Shirley, the most bustling, though not the wisest,
ruler that ever presided over Massachusetts." 2 The enterprise was carried
by only one vote in the Legislature ; but the other New England colonies
gave their aid, and left to Massachusetts the selection of a commander.
The choice seems to have been made in very much the same manner as was
the selection of officers for our volunteer service during the Civil War. In
the absence of men of experience, there was an effort to secure those of
local prominence, who would command respect and bring recruits. Colonel

Pepperrell, 3 of the York County Militia, was a
prosperous merchant, in middle life, was Chief-
Justice of the Common Pleas Court, and a landed
proprietor in three provinces ; he was also a man
of high character, and was so far under the influ-
ence of the celebrated preacher Whitefield as to
go to him for advice in regard to accepting the offered position. Whitefield,
with a good deal of worldly wisdom, cautioned Pepperrell that if he failed,
the blood of the slain would be laid to his charge ; and that if he succeeded,
he would be pursued by the envy of the living. He accepted the appoint-

1 [The prisoners taken at Canso were, in the
autumn, exchanged and brought to Boston, when
the authorities learned the first definite intelli-
gence of the strength of the fortress. They
had got the first news of the capture of Canso
from a fisherman, who saw the burning fort, and
sailed for Boston. The French, upon the sur-
render of Canso, had pushed for Annapolis, and
were besieging the English garrison, when Cap-
tain Edward Tyng, in the Province snow,
arrived with succor, and the besiegers dis-
persed. Tyng, with some seventy or eighty
newly-raised volunteers, including Indian sav-
ages, had sailed from Boston July 2, and on
the 1 3th he was back in Boston with the news
of the fort's relief. ED.]

2 Fansha-we and Other Pieces, by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Boston, 1876, p. 197. [It is also
claimed that the incentive came in large measure
from the sanguine spirit of a Boston merchant,
Colonel James Gibson, who contributed .500

VOL. II. 15.

to the undertaking ; and from the zeal of Robert
Auchmuty, of Roxbury. Hutchinson seems to
give the credit to Vaughan. See S. G. Drake's
Five Years' French and Indian War, Albany,
1870, a collection of various narratives and
documents concerning this war. ED.]

8 [The annexed cut follows a full-length por-
trait in the hall of the Essex Institute, at Salem.
It was obtained from Kittery by George A. Ward,
who was connected by marriage with the daughter
of Sir William. It has been in the rooms of the
Institute fifty or sixty years. The artist is not
known, so Dr. Wheatland informs me. An
engraving after Smibert's picture, 1751, is given
in Parson's Life of Pepperrell, in Drake's Boston,
and in the N. E. Hist, and Genial. Reg., January,
1866. Dr. Parsons contributed a Pepperrell
genealogy to the Register, January, 1866. In the
same volumes various Pepperrell papers, then
in the possession of J. Wingate Thornton, Esq.,
are printed. ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS. 115

ment, nevertheless. 1 It was considered essential that the French should be
taken unawares, and an oath of secrecy was therefore imposed on the mem-
bers of the Legislature. But Hawthorne tells us that " this precaution was
nullified by the pious praying of a country member of the lower House,
who, in the performance of domestic worship at his lodgings, broke into a
fervent and involuntary prayer for the success of the expedition against
Louisburg."

The material for this expedition undoubtedly presented the curious com-
bination of religious fanaticism and strong common-sense which marked
all the actions of the Puritan colonists. Those who entered upon it were
doubtless sustained by the intense Protestant feeling which had made the
destruction of Father Rasle's. mission appear a good service to God. They
were also actuated by a double pride as Englishmen and as colonists to
take their pant in resisting that great French domination which was known
to have already stretched a line of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf
of Mexico, and might yet, if unresisted, sweep the whole English popula-
tion into the Atlantic Ocean. Mingled with all this was a profound dread
of the Indian foe, an enemy whom Christianity had only better organ-
ized, and civilization had only better armed. Peace, safety, English pres-
tige, colonial self-respect, religious enthusiasm, these were the aims and
motives of the attack. There was no strict discipline, no uniformity of
drill, no fixed military tradition ; the troops were only to meet courage
with courage, and Roman Catholic zeal with Protestant ardor. One en-
thusiastic chaplain is said to have carried a hatchet, as he marched, with
which he proposed to hew down the idolatrous images in the French
churches. Whitefield himself, on being asked for a motto for the expe-
dition, answered, " Nil desperandum, Christo Duce." 2 Thus the fleet sailed
from Boston, bearing three thousand men, to attack a stronghold which
had been called the Gibraltar of America, and whose very fortifications
were said to have cost five million dollars. It seemed an enterprise as
daring as that of Sir William Phips, and as hopeless. 3

1 [Pepperrell was not without kin as well as a familiar figure in the streets. Whitefield's

friends in Boston. His sister Mary, now a somewhat curious letter describing his interview

widow, was soon to become the wife of Rev. with Pepperrell is given in Tyerman's Life of

Benjamin Colman, of the Manifesto Church. IVkitefield, ii. 150. ED.|

Another sister, Miriam, had married Andrew - ["Feb. 28, 1744-45. There was a publick

Tyler, a Boston merchant, whose brother Wil- Fast through the Province about the Expedition

Ham was the husband of Pepperrell's youngest to Cape Breton." Colonel John Phillips, MS.

sister, Jane. In 1723 Pepperrell himself had Diary. Eo.J

married, in Boston, Mary, daughter of Grove 3 The siege train was mostly taken from the

Hirst, a Boston merchant, and granddaughter Castle. One of the vessels accompanying the fleet

of Judge Sewall. This made him brother-in- was the "Massachusetts "frigate, Captain Edward

law of the Rev. Charles Chauncy of the First Tyng. Shirley had directed Tyng, says Preble, in
Church, of Addington Davenport rector of
Trinity, and further linked him collaterally with
other Boston families. Such relations, his busi-
ness pursuits, and his duties as a member of the

General Court and of the Governor's Council his "Notes on Early Ship-Building" (N. E. Hist.

had often brought him to Boston, and made him and Geneal. Reg., October, 187 1, p. 363) to find the

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

When the fleet sailed, it was quite uncertain whether any aid would come
from the mother country, but an English fleet, under the command of Sir

Peter Warren, 1 joined the ex-
pedition at Canso ; and ves-
sels bearing the New Hamp-
shire and Connecticut forces
also arrived, the Rhode Island
force being too late. On April
30, 1745, the fleet came in sight of Louisburg, and found its strength not
exaggerated. The walls were twenty or thirty feet high, and forty feet thick ;
they were surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, and were defended by one
hundred and eighty-three pieces of artillery, besides sixty more in the two
outlying batteries. Against this the New England forces had but eighteen
cannon and three mortars and their hands, which, like Wamba's in Ivan/we,
were not used to making mammocks of brick and mortar. Even when the
French, in a panic, had abandoned the "royal battery" on the shore, a
work so perfect that it was afterward said that two hundred men could have
held it against five thousand, the main fort seemed equally beyond the reach
of attack. Seth Pomeroy, of Northampton, who superintended the work of
drilling out the guns spiked by the retreating enemy, wrote thus to his family
at home : " Louisburg is an exceedingly strong place, and looks impregna-
ble. It looks as if our campaign would last long; but I am willing to stay
till God's time comes to deliver the city into our hands." And it marks the
feeling of the time that his wife should have written in reply : " Suffer no
anxious thought to rest in your mind about me. The whole town is much
engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the
affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained. I leave you
in the hands of God." 2

For six weeks Louisburg was besieged ; and much work was done by
the besiegers, in an irregular and disorderly way. Under Colonel Richard
Gridley, 3 of Boston, a battery was erected near the north cape of the harbor ;

largest ship he could to accompany the Massa-
chusetts contingent. One was found on the
stocks, nearly ready for launching, and under
Tyng's supervision she was strengthened and
pierced for twenty-four or twenty-six guns.
Tyng was a grandson of the early settler in
Boston of the same name ; had earlier com-
manded the snow " Prince of Orange," and in

her had captured, in June, 1744, a French priva-
teer on our coast, which caused some Boston
merchants to give him a piece of plate. He
died in 1755. (See Alden, Epitaphs, ii. 328;
Drake, Five Years' French and Indian War, 246.)

The "Massachusetts" was later commanded by
Captain Moses Bennet. Captain John Rouse,
who was next in command to Tyng, had the pre-
vious year, in a Boston privateer, played havoc
among the French fishing fleet on the Grand
Banks. Drake, Five Years' French and Indian
War, 240.

1 [Warren was not unknown in Boston. He
had been in port in 1735, ' n command of the
" Squirrel " frigate. The autograph here given
is from his reply to the congratulations of the
council and representatives, preserved in the Mas-
sachusetts Archives, "letters," iii. 295. ED.]

2 Bancroft, United States, revised ed. ii. 591.

3 [Gridley was a currier by trade ; and he had
been a member of the Ancient and Honorable
Artillery Company, in 1695, anc ^ a captain as
early as 1707. In the Belknap list of commis-

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

117

and under Colonel Meserve of New Hampshire, a ship-carpenter, sledges

were built to drag cannon over boggy morasses. The presence of ingenuity

and the absence of discipline again remind ^^.^^

the reader of early scenes in the War of sr\ ( . 7\, /y \

the Rebellion. Meanwhile the English L/^}^/^ '. Cf?*jC)c/2tyj

fleet, now reinforced from home, kept up ^______ ^^ ^~^_ /7~

a strict blockade and captured a French C ^^^V^^^----^

store-ship. Five or six attempts to take

the " Island Battery " had failed ; when one day, to the general surprise,
a flag of truce was sent from the fort, and this was followed on June I J by
a surrender. 1 The troops marched in, and the French chapel was occu-

sioned officers he is called " lieut.-colonel captain
of ye train [of artillery] and company." Par-
sons, in his Life of Pepperrell, p. 334, says a few
cart-loads of hewn tufa-stone almost alone mark
the site of Louisburg, and these are near the
grand battery where Gridley was stationed. On
one of these stones he found the words " GRIDLEY,
1745," deeply chiselled. In the following year,
1746, Gridley was employed by Shirley to fortify
Governor's Island, and to strengthen the Castle ;
and there is a paper in the Massachusetts Archives,
" Military," viii. 14, showing that he was allowed,
in I75i,^45for hisservices and expenses. ED.]

1 [Colonel John Phillips's diary has the fol-
lowing entry under May 2, 1745 : " The Thursday
Lecture was turned into a Fast by the ministers
on account of Cape Briton Expedition. Mr.
Prince began with prayer at ten o'clock. Mr.
Webb preached, p. M., Mr. Checkley prayed
and Dr. Sewall preached. Mr. Welsteed prayed
last,' [added later] and this day the Grand Bat-
tery at Cape Briton was delivered up to us."

There are in the Cabinet of the Historical
Society various original papers relating to this
expedition, the Belknap Papers, vols. ii. and
iii. ; the Pepperrell Papers, 2 vols. 1699-1779, but
chiefly concerning this expedition ; the Proceed-
ings of the Council of War during the expedition.
There are others in the Massachusetts Archives.
The printed authorities are numerous. The
notes to Barry's Massachusetts, ii., cite them.
Belknap, History of New Hampshire, gave the
earliest careful account. Bancroft cites a MS.
journal of Seth Pomeroy. Governor Shirley
wrote a letter to the Duke of Newcastle about
the expedition, which was accompanied by a
Journal. This was printed in London, and re-
printed in Boston. Pepperrell's account is in
the appendix of Curzven's Journal, and in Hunt's
Merchant Magazine, July, 1858. See also Cur-
wen's Letters in Essex Institute, Hist. Coll., iii. ;
and in vol. iv., p. 181, is Graffs Journal. An
elaborate Life of Pepperrell, by Usher Parsons,
was published in 1855 (third edition, 1856), and
some of Sir William's letters are given in Hist.

Mag., January, 1868. Wolcott's Journal of the
siege is in the Connecticut Hist. Coll., i. An
account by Colonel James Gibson, published in
London in 1745, was reprinted in Boston in 1847,
with the misleading title A Boston Merchant of
1745. Plans of the works will be found in Ban-
croft's United States; Usher Parsons's Life of
Pepperrell; Shea's Charlevoix, v., and in Brown's
Cape Breton, etc. To supplement the general
historians see also Magazine of American His-
tory, November, 1878, and Mr. John Russell
Bartlett's " Naval History of Rhode Island," in
Hist. Mag., 1870.

Mr. Charles Hudson has printed in the N.
E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1870, from
the Belknap Papers, a list of all the commissioned
officers in the expedition. The colonels of the
Massachusetts regiments were William Pepper-
rell, Samuel Waldo (who though living at the
eastward was the son of Jonathan Waldo, a
wealthy Boston merchant), Jeremiah Moulton,
Samuel Willard, Robert Hale, Sylvester Rich-
mond, Jr., Shubael Gorham, John Choate, and
Joseph Dwight, the latter gentleman also com-
manding the train of artillery, with Richard
Gridley, a Boston man, his lieutenant. Barthol-
omew Green, the Boston printer, was a second
lieutenant in this artillery service. Ebenezer

Prout is put down on the roll as assistant store-
keeper of his Majesty's Ordnance, but signs a
document at the State House as commissary. We
recognize one Boston physician, William Rand,

--7

among the surgeons. The interpreters were the
Rev. Nathaniel Walter, minister of the second
Roxbury parish, and Andrew Lemercier, a son of

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

pied for religious services, 1 perhaps not by the iconoclast who carried his
hatchet, but by one of the same faith and nation.

Voltaire, in his Sttcle de Louis XV., ranks among the great events of the
period this capture of a strong fortress by the husbandmen of New England.
Parkman, on the other hand, thinks it the
result of " mere audacity and hardihood,
backed by the rarest good luck." 2 At any
rate, the fort surrendered, 3 with six hundred

SIGNATURES AT A COUNCIL OF WAR, JUNE 3, 1745, ON BOARD THE " SUPERBE,"

OFF LOUISBURG.

the Huguenot pastor in Boston. Moses Bennet
commanded the sloop " Bonetta," in the pay of
Massachusetts. Benjamin Greene was secre-

tary of the expedition, and register of the
Court of Admiralty.

In the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., for July,
1871, Mr. Hudson gives various lists of persons
who were in the expedition. In April, 1873,
there is the Journal of the Rev. Adonijah Bid-
well, chaplain of the fleet. The poor parson
succumbed to sickness on the return voyage,
"bereaved of my senses thro' the violence of
my distemper," and knew nothing of his arrival
at Boston, October 6; but two days after he
" was carried to Doctor Rand's, where he was
eleven weeks and four days." He gives also an
enumeration of the vessels in the expedition.
Rev. Thomas Prince of the Old South preached
a Thanksgiving Sermon, July 18, which affords
some historical details. In the Pepperrell Pa-
pers, i. 257, there is a letter of Daniel Hench-
man the printer, which accompanies a copy of
this sermon, Aug. 6, 1745, to the hero of the hour.

Drake, in his Five Years' French and Indian
War, p. 187, mainly reprints it. The news had
arrived in the night of July 2, by a packet bring-
ing despatches from Pepperrell. His brother-
in-law, Chauncy, in writing to him under date of
July 4, 1745, speaks of the news having arrived
"Yesterday, about break of day." He adds:
" The people of Boston before sunrise were as
thick about the streets as on an election day ; and
a pleasing joy visibly sat on the countenance of
every one you met with. We had last night the
finest illumination I ever beheld. I believe
there was not a house in the town, in no by-lane
or alley, but joy might be seen through its win-
dows. The night also was made joyful by bon-
fires, fireworks, and all other external tokens of
rejoicing." This letter is in the Pepperrell
Papers, and another of similar tenor dated July
27. -En.]

1 [A cross from this chapel, brought home
by the Massachusetts troops, is now placed over
the main entrance of the College Library at
Cambridge. ED.]

2 The Old Regime in Canada, p. 400.

8 [When Shirley, who had gone hence in
August, returned in November, a splendid recep-
tion awaited him. He came in the " Massachu-
setts" frigate, and landed at the Castle. The

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

119

and fifty soldiers and thirteen hundred inhabitants of the town. To the
colonists this gave a feeling of devout exultation, with important lessons as
to the value of mutual union.
All the New England colonies
had been represented at Louis-
burg; and New York, New Jer-
sey, and Pennsylvania had con-
tributed money for the purpose.
Flushed with success, the
provinces, as far south as Vir-
ginia, began to plan nothing
less than the conquest of Can-
ada, they to furnish the land
forces, and England the fleet. 1
The plan failed through the
non-concurrence of England,
the Duke of Bedford, then
at the head of the British
Marine, objecting to it because
of " the independence it might

create in those provinces when they shall see within themselves so great an
army, possessed of so great a country by right of conquest."

COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL COURT. 2

next day he came to town in the Castle barge,
and landing at Long Wharf, under salutes from
the shipping, Colonel Wendell's Boston regiment,
Colonel Pollard's Cadets, and some other troops
took him under escort with the town and pro-
vincial dignitaries, and the day was given to
jollification.

Not till the following summer did Pepperrell
return, accompanied by Warren. They arrived
in the harbor about the first of June, were saluted
at the Castle, and reached town about 5 P. M.,
landing under salvos from all the batteries and
ships. The Cadets and dignitaries escorted them
up Long Wharf and King Street, between lines
of the Boston Regiment, which kept back a crowd
of people. At the Town House, Pepperrell took
his seat as President of the Council, and the rep-
resentatives delivered addresses. He stayed in
Boston till July 4, when he set out for his seat at
Kittery. The news of Culloden had likewise
come, and Thomas Prince had preached a ser-
mon of jubilation at the Old South, August 14.
But all this gave way before long to a dread of
Admiral D'Anville's Brest Fleet. Toward the
end of September, 1746, says Douglass, who
was an eye-witness, " 6,400 men from the country,
well armed, appeared on Boston Common ; some
of them from Brookfield travelled seventy miles
in two days, each with a pack (in which was pro-
vision for fourteen days) of about a bushel corn
weight." Everything was astir. Work on the

harbor defences was pushed forward. The
French armament, however, was scattered by
a tempest, and the danger passed. The reader
will remember Longfellow's ballad on the sub-
ject. ED.]

1 [It was perhaps because of these projects
that, in 1746, special efforts were made to dis-
cover all subjects of the French King in Boston,
and to commit them to jail. The City Clerk's
files disclose various papers on the subject.
Early in September they had the news in Boston
of the sack of Fort Massachusetts. ED.]

2 [These signatures are taken from the report
of the Committee appointed in 1746 to settle
some of the accounts of the expenses to the
province attending the expedition to Louisburg,
taken from the document in the Massaclmsetts
Archives. The chairman, Wendell, was a prom-
inent Boston merchant, colonel of the Boston
Regiment in 1745. He was the great-grandfather
of Oliver \Vendell Holmes, and lived on the
corner of Tremont and School Streets, opposite
the King's Chapel. He was a director in the
first banking institution in the province. In 1749
Parliament voted to reimburse the colonies for
their expenses. William Bollan, a son-in-law of
Shirley, had been over to urge the adjustment,
and he had been greatly assisted by Christopher
Kilby, a Boston merchant, who had been in Lon-
don as the agent of the province since 1741.
Mr. Charles W. Tuttle contributed an account

I2O

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

even further than the Duke of Bedford.

The Swedish traveller, Peter Kalm, writing from New York in 1748, went

" There is reason enough for
doubting whether the king,
if he had the power, would
wish to drive the French from
their possessions in Canada.
. . . The English Govern-
ment has therefore reason to
regard the French in North
America as the chief power
that urges their colonies to
submission." Whatever may
have been the truth of these
prognostications, it is certain
that, after three years more
of occasional Indian outrages,
the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
was made in I748, 1 providing
for the mutual restoration of
all conquests ; and Louis-
burg accordingly reverted to
the French.

Yet no sooner had the
treaty been signed, than
trouble was revived between
the French and English
about the boundaries of
Acadia. Other collisions
took place in the West,
along the Ohio river ; and the
last and severest of all these
wars, commonly called the
"Old French War," or the
" French and Indian War,"
began. Much of this contest
took place beyond the terri-

OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE OF THE BOSTON CADETS. 2

tory of New England ; but nowhere were its terrors greater, inasmuch as it
seemed, at one time, to involve the very existence of the English colonies.

of Kilby to the N. E. Hist, and Cental. Reg.,
1872, p. 43; also see 1874, p. 451. The sum of
183,649 was sent to Boston in coin, and 653,
ooo ounces of silver, and ten tons of copper were
landed on Long Wharf. It took seventeen carts
to carry the silver, and ten to carry the copper
to the treasurer's office. ED.]

1 [The proclamation of the peace was made

in Boston, May 10, in the presence of the town
regiment in King Street. The treaty with the
Eastern Indians was not perfected till Oct. 16,
1649, at Falmouth, and proclamation of it was
made at Boston, Oct. 27. ED.]

2 [This group of signatures gives us some of
the principal citizens interested in military mat-
ters at this time. Cf. Whitman, Ancient and

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

121

A convention of delegates from the New England colonies, and from
New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, was held at Albany, July 4,
1754. It was called by advice of the British ministry, for common meas-

COLONEL JOSIAH QUINCY. 1

Honorable Artillery Company, 273. Various let-
ters of Pollard relating to the Louisburg expedi-
tion are in the Pepperrell Papers. He died ten
years later. " 1756, Dec. 30. Colonel Pollard
was buried," is the entry in Sir Charles Henry
Frankland's diary. ED.]

1 [This cut follows a portrait by Copley,
painted in 1769, which Miss Eliza Susan Quincy
VOL. II. 16.

kindly allowed to be photographed for the en-
graver's guidance. Stuart is recorded as saying
of this picture in 1825 : " Copley put the whole
man upon the canvas. Mr. Quincy had a white
hair in his eye-brow and there it is. The indus-
try of Copley was marvellous." This gentleman
was the son of Judge Edmund Quincy, Colonel
of the Suffolk regiment, grandson of the immi-

122 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ures of defence, and to treat with the friendly Indian tribes. Franklin
was one of the members, and his famous representation of the snake
dismembered, with the motto " Unite or Die," was prepared for this
occasion. The Massachusetts General Court had suggested " that the
control of Indian affairs be put under such general direction as his
Majesty shall judge proper; and that the several Governments shall be
obliged to bear their proportions of defending his Majesty's territories
against the encroachments of the French and the incursions of the In-
dians." The delegates from Massachusetts had been authorized to form
articles of union ; and a committee of one from each colony was appointed
to frame a plan. Franklin's plan was reported, and had the support of all
but the Connecticut delegates. He proposed a council of forty-eight mem-
bers, distributed among the different colonies, and having for its head a presi-
dent-general, appointed by the Crown, and having the veto power. It was
ultimately rejected by the King's Council as giving too much power to
the people, and by the provincial assemblies as giving too much power to
the Crown. Meanwhile the French and Indian war went on, and the colo-
nists were compelled to ponder more and more the sarcastic counsel of the
Mohawk chief Hendrick, at Albany: "You desired us to open our minds
and hearts to you. Look at the French : they are men ; they are fortifying
everywhere. But, we are ashamed to say it, you are like women, without
any fortifications. It is but one step from Canada hither ; and the French
may easily come and turn you out of doors." l

The treaty of Utrecht in awarding Acadie, or Acadia, to the English had
assigned to that province its " ancient limits ; " but to agree upon those lim-
its passed the skill of commissioners. The English claimed both sides of
the Bay of Fundy ; but the French conceded only the peninsula now called
Nova Scotia, claiming the north shore of the bay for themselves. Forts
Beau-Sejour and Gaspereau were built expressly to defend this French
claim. The English had already built forts at Windsor and Minas ; and

grant Edmund ; and he was the first of a bril- escorted by armed sailors from the wharf to

liant line of Josiahs. A graduate of Harvard Colonel Quincy's house, on the corner of what

(1728), he was engaged in commerce and ship- is now Washington Street and Central Court,

building in Boston during these wars with the where they found rest in the wine cellar, with a

French and Spaniards. In 1748 his mercantile guard mounted over them while they remained

house fitted out the ship " Bethell " for the Medi- there, day and night. Later, Mr. Quincy re-

terranean, arming her with twenty guns, some of moved to Braintree, and became Colonel, as his

which, however, were dummies. They made a father had been, of the Suffolk regiment. In

good enough appearance however, together with 1755 tne province sent him to Pennsylvania to

a display of spare coats and hats stuck upon ask help from that colony, in the attack on

handspikes, to deceive the commander of a Crown Point, which Massachusetts was then

Spanish ship of heavier force, who, mistaking the planning. Franklin, in his Autobiography, tells

" Bethell " for an English sloop-of-war, struck the story of this negotiation. Edmund Quincy,

his colors. It was no easy matter for Captain Life of Josiah Quincy, ch. i. ; Miss Quincy in

Isaac Freeman to prevent the prize turning mas- Perm. Mag. of Hist., iii. There is a genealogi-

ter, when the trick was discovered. Good luck cal sketch of the Quincys in N. E. Hist, and

attended him, and the " Bethell " and her prize Geneal. Reg., January, 1857, p. 71, and April, 1857,

came into Bostor harbor with one hundred and p. 154. ED.]

sixty-one chests of silver and two of gold, to be 1 Bancroft, United States, revised edition,

distributed. The doubloons and dollars were iii. 79".

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

123

had established a fort and colony at Halifax to take the place of Louisburg,
just surrendered. In 1755 hostilities had advanced far enough though
there had as yet been no declaration of war for the English to attack the
two forts on the Bay of Fundy. Three thousand men had been placed under

JOHN WINSLOW. 1

1 [This cut follows the likeness of General
Winslow now hanging in the gallery of the His-
torical Society, in whose cabinet is a collection
of papers which is lettered " Winslow's Jour-
nal." The first volume opens with a letter of
proposals which Winslow addressed to Gover-
nor Shirley, followed by a copy of his commis-
sion as Lieut.-Colonel, Feb. 10, 1755- Tran-

scripts then follow of instructions, letters,
accounts, orders, rosters, log-books, and reports,
bearing date down to Jan. 1756. The second
volume of a similar character begins February
and ends August, 1756, closing with a certificate
that the 354 pages of the book " is to the best of
my skill and judgment a true record of original
papers committed to my care for that purpose,"

124

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

the command of John Winslow, a militia general who had himself seen
some actual service, and whose grandfather l was well remembered as having

commanded the New England force in
the celebrated " swamp fight " during
Philip's War. He sailed from Boston
on May 2O, 2 and on arriving at the
Bay of Fundy Winslow's troops were
reinforced by three hundred
British regulars under Col.
Monckton, who took com-
mand of the expedition. The
forts were easily taken, and
the small French forces driven

away. But a more difficult problem was the question of governing the

signed, " Henry Leddel, Secretary to General
Winslow." The third volume covers August-
December, 1756, and is similarly certified under
date, Boston, April 23, 1757; a single letter of
Loudoun's, dated Boston, Jan. 29, 1757, closes
this final volume. A journal of the Expedition
to Acadia, kept by Dr. John Thomas as surgeon,
the same who acquired fame later as General
Thomas, at the Roxbury fort, was printed in
the N. E. Hist, and Cental. Reg., Oct. 1879. Fur-
ther study of the subject can be pursued in the
Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax, 1869, and in the
Transactions, Part vii., of the Literary and His-
torical Society of Quebec. Beside the general
historians there are local writers, like Moreau,

L'Acadie Francaiss, ch. xxiii. ; Campbell, Nova
Scotia, ch. vii., etc.

Admiral Boscawen was at this time in com-
mand of the squadron on the coast hereabout.
ED.]

1 [Various members of the Winslow family
were prominent in Boston affairs during the pro-
vincial period, and it may be well to make clear
their relationship (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg.,
April, 1863; Oct. 1871):

EDWARD, of Droitwich, England

Gov.E
of Plymou

Gov J
of Plymouth C

iward,
th Colony.

'osiah,
Dlony ; d. 1680.

Bost

/:</:.

b. 1634,

John,
on. 1655; d.

>ard,
d. 1682.

Ke>
1674. d. at Sal

John, A. 1683.
Joseph, d. 1679.
Samuel, d 1680.
Isaac, d. 1670.
Benjamin, d. 1673-76.

telm, Gilbert,
em, 1672. d. in England.
Josiah,
d. at Marshfield, 1674.

Nathaniel,
d. at Marshfield, 1719.

Jvdg,
b. 1670 ;

Isaac,
d. 1738.

Col EC
b. I

Iward,
369.

Kenelm,
b. 1675; d. 1759

Gen. John, Josiah.
b. 1702. b. 1701 ; kid. 1724
Edward,
b. 1714;
Royalist.

Joshua, Isaac, Joseph,
Boston Merchant. Boston Merchant. b. 1724;
Boston Merchant.

Pelham, Dr. Isaac.
b. 1737 ; b. 1739.
Royalist. Eo.]

2 [Dr. Thomas thus records the setting sail : Sherley ; ' Siren,' Captain Proba ; thirty-three

" 1755, May 22. Wind S.W. We weighed transports and store ships (two brigs, five

anchor at Deer Island road, in Boston Bay, in schooners, rest sloops) ; and about five thou-

company with the three men of war, 'Success,' sand and one hundred soldiers, all bound for

Captain John Rouse ; ' Mermaid,' Captain Annapolis Royal." ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

'25

province of Acadia, a region occupied largely by some twelve or fifteen
thousand French colonists, who, during forty years of nominal British
sovereignty, had still remained absolutely French in all their ways and
sympathies. By treaty they had been excused from taking up arms against
their own nationality ; and were therefore called " French neutrals." But the

capture of Fort Beau-Sejour had revealed three hundred of their young
men in arms. Should a population thus disposed be expelled, and go to
strengthen the French force in Canada, or be left where it was and kept
down by strong garrisons? The easiest military remedy, and the cruellest,
was that finally adopted by the authorities of the province : the whole
French population was to
be seized by stratagem,
carried away and distrib-
uted among the British
North American colonies.
More than a thousand of
the exiles were

brought to Massa- (/ //. Q

chusetts, and were ty^f&sraOM

// f /f

here supported at & // rf

the public expense ; but were """*

denied the exercises of their
religion. " We did," said Ed-
mund Burke, " in my opinion
most inhumanly, and upon
pretences that in the eye of an honest man are not worth a farthing, root out
this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern or
to reconcile gave us no sort of right to extirpate." The story of this sad
event has been written in undying song by Longfellow. 1

During Braddock's ill-fated campaign in America the Massachusetts

1 [Besides Evangeline, there is a novel on the chusetts into which they were sent, but give little
subject by C. R. Williams, The Neutral French, information beyond accounts of expenditures in

their behalf by the towns. About two hun-
dred families had been sent hither, and
thirty families had arrived before the nth
of November. Their dispersion was in
charge of a committee, of which Samuel

The two volumes in the Massachusetts Archives, Watts was chairman. Hutchinson, Massachu-
" Neutral French," reveal the corners of Massa- setts Bay, iii. 40. ED.]

OT^tc^cjr

126

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

troops some seven thousand nine hundred in all, being one-fifth of the
able-bodied men in the colony were partly employed under Sir William

Johnson in his expedition against Crown
Point. One regiment was commanded
by Colonel Ephraim Williams, who was
killed in action ; and who, while passing
through Albany on the way, had made
his will, leaving property to found what
is now Williams College. Another was
commanded by Colonel Pomeroy, whose
| letter from Louisburg has been already
quoted, and who lived to fight at Bunker
Hill. He wj-ote home thus enthusiasti-
o cally after the battle of Lake George:
" Come to the help of the Lord against
the mighty ! You that value our holy
religion and our liberties will spare
2 nothing, even to the one half of your
| estate." 1

In drawing pictures of the outbreak
of the Revolutionary war we often forget
the previous military training of the colo-
nists, not only by fighting with Indians,
but through what were at least glimpses
of more regular warfare.

Governor Shirley of Massachusetts,

during an abortive expedition against Niagara in 1755, built
and garrisoned a new fort at Oswego. In the year after, the
Marquis de Montcalm besieged and took it with five thou-
sand French. During the following year (1757) he also
took Fort William Henry, where a large part of the ill-fated
garrison, including many Massachusetts soldiers, were cruelly
murdered by the Indians after surrender under promise of
safety. 2 This crowning disaster left a general feeling of
despair. " For God's sake," wrote the officer in command
at Albany to the Governor of Massachusetts, " exert your-
selves to save a province ! New York itself may fall ; save
a country ! prevent the downfall of the British Govern-
Montcalm seemed invincible; the French held the valleys of

ment!" 3

1 [His letter, descriptive of the fight of Sept. 8,
1755, and the death of Williams, written to head-
quarters in Boston, when he supposed himself
the only field officer of the jegiment left alive, is
preserved in Massachusetts Archives, " Letters,"
iv. 109. ED.]

2 [Beside the general historians, see Essex
Institute Hist. Coll., iii. 79. There is a plan of

the fort in Martin's Montcalm et les dernieres
annies de la Colonie Franfaise au Canada, and in
Dr. Hough's translation of Pouchet's History of
the War, p. 48. ED.]

8 Bancroft, United States, iii. 176.

4 [This is from a proclamation issued June
18, 1755, by Shirley, offering .110 bounty for
captives and ^100 for scalps. Shirley and Pep-

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

I2 7

the St. Lawrence, the Ohio, the Mississippi ; Great Britain held but a
strip along the shore, and even there her hold seemed uncertain. The
Indians made fearless forays into the heart of Massachusetts, and kept
the middle colonies in terror.

Dr. Jeremy Belknap, pronounced by Bryant to be " the first to make

POWNALL'S VIEW OF BOSTON, I757- 1

perrell had been made next in command when
Braddock was put in charge of all the British
forces in America. Shirley's expedition to
Niagara was a part of the campaign planned with
Braddock, after whose death the supreme com-
mand of the royal forces devolved upon Shirley.
A son of Shirley had accompanied Braddock as
his secretary on his ill-starred expedition, and
had fallen. Washington came to Boston in
February or March, 1756, to lay before Shirley,
as the supreme commander, a question of military
precedence which was agitating the governors of
Virginia and Maryland. It gave him the oppor-
tunity to narrate to the father the particulars of
the son's death. Washington was well received
in Boston, and it is claimed sat to Copley for a
miniature which is engraved in the first volume
of Irving's Life of Washington. ED.]

1 [The appearance of Boston and the Castle
defences are shown at this time (1757) in a
drawing made by Governor Pownall, the basis
of an engraving, which is considerably reduced
in the present cut. The plan of the Castle, with
the battery which had been erected by Shirley,
is shown in the annexed plan, copied from Pel-
ham's map of the harbor made somewhat later;
but little change had been made, however, in the

distribution of the defences. After the death of
Spencer Phips, in March, 1757, the Council gave
the command of the Castle to Sir William Pep-

perrell, who was then acting as governor. In
August, on PownalPs arrival, Sir William trans-
ferred the keys. ED.]

128

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

American history attractive," wrote an almost contemporary narrative of
this period, and thus summed up the discouragements of the situation at
the beginning of the year 1757: "The great expense, the frequent disap-
pointments, the loss of men, of forts, of stores, were very discouraging. The
enemy's country was filled with prisoners and scalps, private plunder, and
public stores and provisions, which our people, as beasts of burden, had
conveyed to them. These reflections were the dismal accompaniment of
the winter." 1

But in this year the hopes of America, as of England, were turned to
William Pitt. With his wonted energy, he began his career as prime

minister by determined efforts in behalf of
the colonies. In his circular letter to the
American governors he informed them that
a formidable force would at once be sent
to operate by sea and land against the
French, and he called on them to raise " as
large bodies of men within their respective governments as the number of
inhabitants might allow," and suggested twenty thousand as a minimum
number. The Crown would furnish arms, equipments, and supplies; the
colonies were to recruit, organize, uniform, and pay the men, with the pros-
pect of ultimate compensation from Parliament. The promise " acted like
magic," we are told. Massachusetts voted seven thousand men, besides five
hundred for frontier defence ; and advanced during the year a million dollars,
keeping all disbursements under control of its own commissioners. 2 But the
services of a single colony formed henceforth only a subordinate element in
the great contest which was destined to annihilate the power of France
on this continent, and to make Canada an English possession. Massa-
chusetts troops did their share, however, in this work ; they were with Aber-
cromby in his
unavailing attack
on Ticonderoga,

with Bradstreet when he took Fort Frontenac, and with Prideaux when he
took Niagara. One at least of the English commanders of Massachusetts
troops, Lord Howe, so won the affection of his command that his death

1 History of New Hampshire, 2d ed., p. 318.

2 [We find some token of the activity in
Boston in the bills, still on file in the City Clerk's
office, under date of 1757, from Edward Jackson
and William Sutton for casting bullets. When
Lord Loudon visited Boston in 1757, the bells

were all rung ;

and in the same
office there is a

petition of the
sextons, asking

pay for the service. They were allowed 2s. 8J.

each. A private diary records: " 1757, Jan. 23.

The Earl of Loudon was at meeting. l)r. Sewall

preached." A r . E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan.
1865, p. 60. Loudon had come out in July of
the previous year to take the supreme command
of the British forces in America, accompanied
by Christopher Kilby, an old Boston merchant
long resident in London, who was commissioned
as "agent-victualler" of the army. The Earl's
visit to Boston was to consult upon the coming
campaign. Kilby accompanied him, and at the
hands of his old townsmen received flattering
compliments. He was publicly thanked for all
that he had done as agent of the province, and
a dinner was given him in Concert Hall. Reg-
ister, 1872, p. 43. ED.]

FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

129

upon the field, at Trout Brook, was commemorated by a monument in
Westminster Abbey, erected by the province. 1 To hold the Eastern Indians
in check, Fort Pownall was built on the Penobscot, within what were then
the limits of Massachusetts. 2 Louisburg, Ticonderoga, and Crown Point
fell ; the power of French Canada
was exhausted, and only the ad-
mirable generalship of Montcalm
prolonged the contest. Quebec
was taken in I759, 3 Montreal in
1760,* and the conquest was com-
plete. The New England colonists
were at last relieved from the
terrible warfare which had known
but few intervals for eighty-five
years ; the Eastern Indians were almost annihilated, and the brief final
conspiracy of Pontiac did not touch New England. In 1763, the Peace of
Paris ended the last of the French and Indian wars. 6

1 [John Adams makes record of the golden
opinions this youthful nobleman won in his
passage through the country from Boston to New
York. John Adams, Works, ii. 33. ED.]

* [The four hundred men for this expedition
were put under the command of a colonel, and
embarked at Boston, May 4, 1759, though per-
haps one company of them sailed from Newbury.
Governor Pownall accompanied the force, kept
a journal, and after deciding upon a site for the
fort, re-embarked May 26, and reached the Castle
in Boston harbor May 28. There is a paper in
the N~. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1860, by
Rev. Richard Pike, on " The Building and Oc-
cupancy of Fort Pownall." See also Register,
April, 1859, p. 167. ED.]

3 [When the news of the fall of Quebec
arrived in Boston, a large bonfire was made on
Copp's Hill. Forty-five tar barrels, two cords
of wood, fifty pounds of powder, and other com-
bustibles were consumed. Another fire was
lighted at Fort Hill. The province paid for
them, together with thirty-two gallons of rum
and much beer for the people. (Drake's Land-
marks, p. 209.) A Thanksgiving was ordered,
and Samuel Cooper preached the sermon before
the Governor, Oct. 16; and on the 25th Andrew
Eliot preached another discourse of thanks-
giving. The victory of Sir Edward Hawke over
the French fleet of the next month caused a
VOL. II. 17.

renewed rejoicing when it became known in
Boston, which was not till Feb. 21, 1760. The
Castle and the batteries fired salutes. ED.]

4 [The news of its fall reached Boston Sept.
23. A Thanksgiving was proclaimed for Oct. 9,
when Mr. Foxcroft of the First Church preached
a sermon on Grateful Reflections, which is of
some historical value. ED.]

5 [The command of the expedition to Louis-
burg was given to General Amherst. Landing
June 8, 1758, he effected a lodgement July 26,
when the place surrendered. Returning to Bos-
ton in September, with an imposing array of
war-ships and transports, he encamped his army
of 4,500 men on the Common, and on the i6th
took up his march for Albany. There are plans
of the defences which Amherst encountered in
Jeffery's History of the French Dominion, and in
Brown's Cape Breton, p. 297. ED.]

6 [The two main defences of the town, look-
ing seaward, and on the soil of the peninsula
itself, during these years of anxiety, were the
batteries known respectively as the North Bat-
tery whose site is nearly marked by Battery
Wharf and the South Battery, or Boston Sconce
at the foot of Fort Hill. They appear in all
the contemporary views of Boston ; but we for-
tunately have more distinct pictures of them in
two contemporary engravings. The early his-
tory of the North Battery has already been

3 o

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

traced in the first volume of this History, and
the view here given is drawn from a copper-
plate engraving by Paul Revere, which is on a
certificate of " an inlisted Montross at His Ma-
jesty's North Battery in Boston." The original
view measures 7^ by 3^ inches, and the plate
belongs to the Historical Society, and an im-
pression from it will be found in its Proceedings,

1877, p. 364 ; and a fac-simile is given in Wat-
son's Paul Revere's Signals, 1880. It was prob-
ably engraved about 1760, and shows a part of
the North End of Boston, with Charlestown
beyond the river. This sketch affords one of
the best views of that town before the Revo-
lution. The battery in the form shown in the
cut owes its origin to an order of the town in

THE NORTH BATTERY.

1706, whereby a ; 1,000 was voted to extend the
battery one hundred and twenty feet, with a
breadth of forty feet. In the Essex Institute is
preserved the view of the South Battery, here
reduced from a size of 7 by 2% inches. The
original engraving, likewise on a Montross's cer-
tificate, is much better drawn and cut than that
of the North Battery. A heliotype of it, full
size, is given in the Historical Society's Proceed-

ings, as before. Mr. Whitmore places the date
of the engraving about 1740. (Sewall Papers, i.
195.) Andros in his time had erected on the hill a
palisade fort with a house within to lodge the gar-
rison, and this is shown in Bonner'smap of 1722,
and Burgiss's of 1728. There is no marked
change in the delineation of the palisade and
battery below in any of the editions of Bonner's
map from 1722 to 1769. ED.]

THE SCONCE AND FORT HILL.

CHAPTER IV.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

BY WILLIAM F. POOLE,

Librarian of the Chicago Public Library.

THE storm of terror and death, called the Witchcraft Delusion, which
swept over Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, left its
traces on the early life of the New-England colonies. While it raged in
Europe, thirty thousand victims perished in the British Islands, seventy-five
thousand in France, one hundred thousand in Germany, and corresponding
numbers in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Sweden. Witchcraft in New
England was of a sporadic and spasmodic type compared with its epidemic
and protracted virulence in the Old World ; and yet the thirty-two execu-
tions in the New r England colonies, for supposed confederation with devils,
have filled a larger space in history and in public attention than the thirty
thousand similar executions which occurred in the mother country. Eng-
lish writers at this day, when they need striking proofs of the superstitions
of former times, take their illustrations from the records of New-England
witchcraft. A full and impartial account of English and Scottish diabolism
has never commended itself, as a subject of historical investigation, to a
modern English writer. Such a record as New England has of its later
witchcraft is a desideratum in the historical literature of old England. The
theme is one of strange and perpetual interest, and as a subject for psy-
chological study it will never lose its hold on the minds of men. The recent
development of what is called "Spiritualism" is only another phase of
phenomena which, under the names of magic, sorcery, necromancy, en-
chantment, mesmerism, fetichism, and witchcraft, are as old as history, and
universal as the human race.

The New-England colonists had no views concerning witchcraft and
diabolical agency which they did not bring with them from the Old World.
The prosecutions in England were never carried on with a blinder zeal and
more fatal results than during the first twenty years after Governor Win-
throp and his company landed at Boston. James Howell, who was later
" Historiographer Royal" to Charles II., says in his Familiar Letters, Feb.
3, 1646:

132 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" We have multitudes of witches among us ; for in Essex and Suffolk there were
above two hundred indicted within these two years, and above the half of them executed.
... I speak it with horror ! God guard us from the Devil ! for I think he was never
so busy upon any part of the earth that was lightened by the beams of Christianity." J

Again he writes, Feb. 22, 1647 :

" Within the compass of two years, near upon three hundred witches were ar-
raigned, and the major part of them executed, in Essex and Suffolk only. Scotland
swarms with them more and more, and persons of good quality are executed daily." 3

At that time the professional "Witch-Finder-General," Matthew Hopkins,
was passing through the English counties practising his trade, and under
the sanction of the courts subjecting his victims to every species of torture
and indignity. His method of "searching" and "watching" suspected
persons was recommended in the law books, and was, we shall see, by order
of the General Court of Massachusetts, applied to the first witch executed
in the Massachusetts Colony. His water-test was tried in Connecticut, and
the report was that the victims " swam like a cork." These outrageous pro-
ceedings were not condemned by the English clergy, either of the Estab-
lished Church or of the Dissenters. The excellent Richard Baxter, author
of The Saints' Everlasting Rest, says in his Certainty of the World of
Spirits, 1691, p. 52: "The hanging of a great number of witches in Suf-
folk and Essex, by the discovery of one Hopkins, in 1645 and 1646, is
famously known. Mr. [Dr. Edmund] Calamy went along with the judges
in the circuit to hear the confessions, and see there were no fraud or
wrong done them." There was no doubt in the legal or clerical profession
as to the reality of witchcraft, 3 or as to the duty of the courts to extirpate
it. The English law books gave the most minute directions as to the means
of detecting, and the form of trying, witches. Some of these atrocious and
nauseating details we must give, in order that the spirit of the age and the
subject we are considering may be understood.

Concerning the later witch-trials of New England an enormous mass of
original information is accessible, in the form of court records, depositions,

1 P. 386, edition of 1673. subject with impartiality, without coming to the

'- P. 427. conclusion that the historical evidence establish-

8 Sir William Blackstone, more than seventy ing the reality of witchcraft is so vast and so

years after the last witch was executed in New varied, that it is impossible to disbelieve it with-

England, wrote in his Commentaries (4, 61): out what, on other subjects, we should deem the

"To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of most extraordinary rashness. The defenders of

witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to con- the belief, who were often men of great and

tradict the revealed Word of God in various distinguished talent, maintained that there was

passages in both the Old and New Testament ; no fact in history more fully attested ; and that

and the thing itself is a truth to which every to reject it would be to strike at the root of all

nation in the world hath in its turn borne testi- historical evidence of the miraculous. ... In

mony, either by examples seemingly well attested, ourday.it may be said with confidence that it

or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose would be altogether impossible for such an

the possibility of commerce with evil spirits." amount of evidence to accumulate round a

W. E. H. Lecky, in History of Rationalism, p. conception which had no substantial basis in

38, says: "It is, I think, difficult to examine the fact."

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

133

and contemporary accounts ; but concerning two of the earlier cases which
occurred in Boston there is not a report of a trial, a deposition, or a court
record to be found. Contemporary allusions to the earlier cases, sometimes
without even the surname of the person executed, are all the information
concerning them which has come down to us. Governor Winthrop, in his
Journal, under the date of March, 1646-47, made his entry: "One [blank] of
Windsor arraigned and executed at Hartford for a witch." 1 The Connecticut
records make no mention of it, and nothing more is known of the case.
Mr. John Hale, in his Modest Inquiry, 1704, says: " Another that suffered
on that account [of witchcraft] was a Dorchester woman." Only recently
has the name of this woman come to light. 2 Of the four persons executed
for witchcraft in Boston, only one, who suffered in 1688, is mentioned by
Increase or Cotton Mather, who did more than all other early New-England
writers to preserve the record of such events. Of the twelve executions
which took place in New England before i692, 3 the Christian names of
only four of the sufferers are known.

i. In Boston, the earliest execution for witchcraft was that of Margaret
Jones, of Charlestown, on June 15, 1648. There seems to be no evidence
that any earlier case of witchcraft was under investigation in the colony.
Her husband, Thomas Jones, was arrested at the same time on the same
charge, but he was not convicted. The little we know of Margaret Jones
we find in Governor Winthrop's Journal. She was evidently a strong-
minded woman, and a skilful practitioner of medicine. She used simple
remedies and small doses, yet they produced extraordinary effects. Perhaps
she adopted the principle of similia similibus curantur, and was a precursor
of Hahnemann. Her predictions as to cases treated by the heroic method
proved to be true. Her touch seemed to be attended with mesmeric influ-
ence. There was no charge that she had bewitched any one, and the usual
phenomena of spectres, fits, spasms, etc. were wanting. The main evidence
on which she was convicted was her imps, which were detected by " watch-
ing " her, after the Hopkins method. She was tried by the General Court,
which was almost wholly composed of the original founders of the colon)'.
John Winthrop was Governor; Thomas Dudley, Deputy-Governor; John

1 Vol. II. 374, edition of 1853. plete ; but I have included all of which I have

2 She was the wife of Henry Lake. This any knowledge, and with such details as to
appears in a letter of Nathaniel Mather, of names and dates as could be ascertained :
Dublin, to his brother Increase, dated Dec. 31, 1646, " Woman of Windsor," Connecticut
1684, acknowledging the receipt of Remarkable (name unknown), at Hartford. 1648, Mar-
Providences, 1684. He says: "Why did you not garet Jones, of Charlestown, at Boston. 1648,
put in the story of Mrs. Hibbins's witchcrafts, Mary Johnson, at Hartford. 1650? Henry
and the discovery thereof, and also of H. Lake's Lake's wife, of Dorchester. 1650? Mrs. Ken-
wife, of Dorchester?" Mather Papers, 4 Mass, dall, of Cambridge. 1651, Mary Parsons, of
Hist. Coll., viii. 58. Springfield, at Boston. 1651, Goodwife Bas-

3 The following is the list of the twelve per- sett, at Fairfield, Conn. 1653, Goodwife Knap,
sons who were executed for witchcraft in New at Hartford. 1656, Ann Hibbins, at Boston.
England before 1692, when twenty other persons 1662, Goodman Greensmith, at Hartford. 1662,
were executed at Salem, whose names are well Goodwife Greensmith, at Hartford. 1688,
known. It is possible that the list is not com- Goody Glover, at Boston.

134 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Endicott, Richard Bellingham, Richard Salstonstall, Increase Nowell, Simon
Bradstreet, William Hibbins (whose widow was executed for witchcraft in
1656), John Winthrop, Jr., and William Pynchon (who conducted the witch
examinations at Springfield a few years later), were Assistants. The records
of the Court, which on topics of less interest are very full, give no details or
even mention of the trial. The Court Records and the Deputies' Records,
however, for May 18, give an order concerning Margaret Jones and her hus-
band, without the mention of their names, as follows :

" This court, desirous that the same course which hath been taken in England for
the discovery of witches, by watching [them a certain time], may also be taken here with
the witch now in question : [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 i8th of the 3d month]
that a strict watch be set about her every night, and that her husband be confined to
a private room and watched also " (Deputies' Records, with the words in brackets in-
serted from the Court Records) . 1

The theory of the English law books was that every witch had familiars
or imps, which were sent out by the witch to work deeds of darkness, and
that they returned to the witch once a day, at least, for sustenance, and
usually in the night. By watching the witch these imps might be detected,
and thus furnish certain proof of guilt in the accused.

Michael Dalton's Country Justice, containing the Practice, Duty, and
Power of Justices of the Peace, was a common book in the colonies, and
was quoted in the witch trials at Salem. In the chapter on "Witchcraft" it
has the following directions :

" Now against these witches, being the most cruel, revengeful, and bloody of all
the rest, the Justices of the Peace may not always expect direct evidence, seeing all
their works are the works of darkness, and no witnesses present with them to accuse
them ; and, therefore, for the better discovery, I thought good here to insert certain
observations, partly out of the ' Book of Discovery of the Witches that were arraigned
at Lancaster, Anno 1612, before Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley, Judges of
Assize there,' and partly out of Mr. [Richard] Bernard's ' Guide to Grand Jurymen.'

" These witches have ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, which appeareth to them, some-
times in one shape and sometimes in another ; as in the shape of a man, woman, boy,
dog, cat, foal, hare, rat, toad, etc. And to these their spirits they give names, and
they meet together to christen them (as they speak). Their said familiar hath some
big or little teat upon their body, and in some secret place, where he sucketh them.
And besides their sucking the Devil leaveth other marks upon their body, sometimes
like a blue or red spot, like a flea-biting, sometimes the flesh sunk in and hollow (all
which for a time may be covered, yea, taken ' away, but will come out again in their
old form). And these Devil's marks be insensible, and being pricked will not bleed,
and be often in their secretest parts, and therefore require diligent and careful
search. These first two are main points to discover and convict those witches ;
for they fully prove that those witches have a familiar, and made a league with

1 The Mass. Records, iii. 126; and ii. 242.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 135

the Devil. So, likewise, if the suspected be proved to have been heard to call upon
their spirits, or to talk to them, or of them, or have offered them to others. So if they
have been seen with their spirit, or to feed something secretly ; these are proofs that
they have a familiar. They have often pictures [images] of clay or wax, like a man,
etc., made of such as they would bewitch, found in their house, or which they may
roast or bury in the earth, that as the picture consumes, so may the parties bewitched
consume." (Edition of 1727, p. 514.)*

Mr. John Gaule, in his Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and
Witchcraft, 1646, p. 77, condemning the barbarous methods of discovering
witches, thus describes the mode of " watching a witch " in use at the time :

" Having taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room upon a
stool or table, cross-legged, or in some uneasy posture, to which if she submits not,
she is bound with cords. She is there watched, and kept without meat or sleep for the
space of four-and-twenty hours, for they say within that time they shall see her imp
come and suck. A little hole is likewise made in the door for the imps to come
in at."

Mr. Baxter, writing in 1691, says that, three weeks before, a woman in
Brightling, in Suffolk, was examined before the magistrates, " searched [for
witch-marks] and watched for four-and-twenty hours."

Margaret Jones was " searched " and " watched ; " the fatal witch- marks
were discovered, and her imp was seen in " the clear day-light," as appears
in the record of the case which Governor Winthrop made in his Journal at
the time :

" [June 15, i648].' 2 At this court, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was indicted
and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was

" i. That she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, men,
women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure,
or etc. \sic~\, were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.

" 2. She practising physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own
confession, were harmless, as anise-seed, liquors, etc., yet had extraordinary vio-
lent effects.

"3. She would use to tell such as would not make use of her physic, that they
would never be healed ; and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with
relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and
surgeons.

1 Here are specimens of the English "Blue shall be burned in the cheek with a hot iron

Laws " of that period in the same volume : having the letter F." (p. 70). The first edition

" A person not coming to some church or chapel of Dalton's Country Justice appeared in 1619,

forfeits i2s. to the poor, to be levied by dis- and the last, the twelfth edition, in 1746. The

tress" (p. 71). "He who keeps any servant in work was revised and re-edited from time to

his house or other person not coming to church time, and was a popular and standard authority

for a month together forfeits 10 per month " in England for more than a hundred years,
(p. 71). " If any shall strike another in a church 2 No date appears against this paragraph in

or church-yard, or draw a weapon in a church or Winthrop. The date next preceding is June 4,

church-yard, with intent to strike, and being 1648. The true date of the execution was

thereof convicted, shall be adjudged to have one doubtless June 15, as appears in Danforth's

of his ears cut off ; and having no ears, then Almanac for that year.

136 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" 4. Some things which she foretold came to pass accordingly ; other things she
would tell of, as secret speeches, etc., which she had no ordinary means to come to
the knowledge of.

" 5. She had, upon search, an apparent teat ... as fresh as if it had been newly
sucked ; and after it had been scanned, upon a forced search, that was withered,
and another began on the opposite side.

" 6. In the prison, in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms, she sitting on
the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from her into another
room, and the officer following it, it was vanished. The like child was seen in two
other places to which she had relation ; and one maid that saw it, fell sick upon it, and
was cured by the said Margaret, who used means to be employed to that end. Her
behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury
and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she
was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many
trees, etc." (ii. 397, ed. of 1853).

Mr. John Hale, in his Modest Inquiry, p. 17, mentions the case, but none
of the incidents recorded by Winthrop. He was born in Charlestown, was
twelve years old at the time, and with some neighbors visited the con-
demned woman in prison the day she was executed. He says :

"The first [witch executed] was a woman of Charlestown, Anno 1647 or 1648.
She was suspected, partly because that, after some angry words passing between her
and her neighbors, some mischief befell such neighbors in their creatures [cattle] or
the like ; partly because some things supposed to be bewitched, or have a charm upon
them, being burned, she came to the fire and seemed concerned.

" The day of her execution I went, in company of some neighbors, who took great
pains to bring her to confession and repentance ; but she constantly professed herself
innocent of that crime. Then one prayed her to consider if God did not bring this
punishment upon her for some other crime ; and asked if she had not been guilty of
stealing many years ago. She answered, she had stolen something ; but it was long
since, and she had repented of it, and there was grace enough in Christ to pardon
that long ago ; but as for witchcraft she was wholly free from it, and so she said
unto her death."

There is no other contemporary mention of the case. It is a horrible
record ; and in downright, stolid superstition and inhumanity was not sur-
passed, if, indeed, it was equalled, at Salem forty-four years later. That it
was an incident characteristic of the time, and that similar atrocities were
being committed in every nation in Europe without shocking the sensibili-
ties of the most refined and cultivated men of that day, are the only miti-
gating circumstances which can be suggested.

Thomas Jones, the husband of the woman executed, found, on his re-
lease from prison, that his troubles had only begun. He resolved to leave
the country, and took passage in the Boston ship " Welcome," riding at
anchor before Charlestown. She had on board eighty horses and one
hundred and twenty tons of ballast. The weather was calm, yet the ship
fell to rolling, and so deep it was feared she would founder. Great weight

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 137

was placed on one side to trim her, and she would heel over on the other
side. The County Court of Boston was then in session, and hearing that
the husband of the executed witch was on board, between whom and the
captain a dispute had arisen as to his passage-money, sent officers to
arrest him, one of them saying " the ship would stand still as soon as he
was in prison." No sooner was the warrant shown, than the rolling of the
ship began to stop, and after the man was in prison it moved no more.
Governor VVinthrop narrates this story in his Journal. 1

2. Mary Parsons, wife of Hugh Parsons, of Springfield, was the victim in
the second execution for witchcraft in Boston, May 29, 1651. The earliest
mention of the matter in the Court Records is as follows :

"May 8, 1651. The Court understanding that Mary Parsons, now in prison, ac-
cused for a witch, is likely through weakness to die before trial, if it be deferred, do
order that on the morrow, by eight of the clock in the morning, she be brought before
and tried by the General Court." a

Two indictments were filed against her : (a) For " using diverse devilish
practices by witchcraft to the hurt of the persons of Martha and Rebecca
Moxon," daughters of Mr. George Moxon, minister of Springfield ; and (b)
" for murdering her own child." She pleaded not guilty to the first indict-
ment, and to the second " she acknowledged herself guilty." As the
penalty was death for each offence, she was convicted on the second charge,
and sentenced to be hanged. In the margin is a note that she was " re-
prieved till May 29." 3 The depositions in the case taken at Springfield,
which have been preserved, all relate to the charge of witchcraft. Her con-
fession that she murdered her own child is evidence of the insanity of the
woman. As neither the Records, nor any contemporary account that he
could find, mention her execution, Governor Hutchinson said, " It does
not appear that she was executed." Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, a few
years ago, found in a London newspaper, Mercurius Publicus, of Sept. 25,
1651, a letter dated " From . Natick, in New England, July 4, 1651," not
signed, but doubtless written by Mr. John Eliot, the Indian apostle, which
says :

" The state of things here amongst us seems more troublesome, and we have had
sad frowns of the Lord upon us, chiefly in regard of fascinations and witchcraft ; for
now God calls his people into near communion with himself in visible and explicit
covenant with him, only he doth not love it should be visible. Four in Springfield
were detected, whereof one was executed for murder of her own child, and was
doubtless a witch ; another is condemned, a third under trial, a fourth under sus-
picion."

Mary Parsons, therefore, was without doubt executed on or near the date
named, May 29, 1651 ; but whether at Springfield or Boston does not yet
appear. A passage in Cotton Mather's Wonders of tlie Invisible World,

1 Vol. II. 399. 3 In the Deputies' Records, iii. 229, the date

z Mass. Records, iv. pt. i. 47. of the trial is May 22.

VOL. II. l8.

138 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

which has puzzled writers on the subject, refers, I have no doubt, to this
case, and fixes Boston as the place of the execution : " We have been
advised by some credible Christians yet alive, that a malefactor, accused of
witchcraft as well as murder, and executed in this place more than forty
years ago, did then give notice of a horrible plot against this country by
witchcraft," etc. 1

The numerous and very curious depositions in the Springfield witch
cases are printed in the appendix to Mr. S. G. Drake's Annals of Witchcraft,
1869. Parsons and his wife had for several years mutually accused each
other of practising witchcraft. She testified that he had bewitched their
own child to death, and also two children of Henry Smith, who died in June,
1648. " She is the worst enemy I have," he said. He was arrested, tried,
and condemned in 1650 for " diverse devilish practices and witchcrafts, to the
hurt of diverse persons ; " and, among others, Mr. Moxon's children. 2 He
was a brickmaker, and also a sawyer. He had a dispute with Mr. Moxon
about some brick which he had agreed to furnish for building. The price
of brick had advanced, and when Mr. Moxorr held him to his contract he
retorted by saying " he would be even with him [Moxon]." To this state-
ment Parsons replied in court: "I said not 'I would be even with him; '
but this I said: 'I would puzzle him in the bargain.'" Mr. Moxon's
children were favorite subjects for bedevilment. In 1649 Parsons was
prosecuted for libel by Widow Marshfield, because the wife of Parsons had
said that the widow had bewitched Mr. Moxon's children. He was fined
twenty-four bushels of corn and twenty shillings. Perhaps these diabolical
molestations were the cause of Mr. Moxon's return to England with his
family in i652. 8

3. The third execution for witchcraft in Boston was on June 19, 1656,
and Mrs. Ann Hibbins was the victim. She was the widow of William
Hibbins, a leading merchant of Boston and one of the most honored
citizens of the colony, who died in 1654. He was deputy to the General
Court in 1641-42, and Assistant from 1643 to the day of his death.
He served the colony as its agent in England; and being a man of
wealth and high social position, his wife had mingled in the best society
of Boston. It is said by Mr. Drake and others that she was the sister of
Richard Bellingham, who was Governor in 1641 and Deputy-Governor at
the time of her execution. That a woman occupying such a social position
should have come to such an ignominious death, is a strange incident in the

1 P. 14, London edition, 1862. manuscript, an early draft of Governor Hutch-

2 The magistrates set aside the verdict of the inson's account of New-England witchcraft,
jury, and the case came before the General Court with notes accompanying the text giving fuller
at Boston, May 27-31, 1652, when he was acquit- details of all the cases mentioned by him. A
ted. Mass. Kec., iii. 273. separate issue of the same paper appeared, en-

* Governor Hutchinson and several other titled The Witchcraft Delusion of 1692. By

writers on the subject have erroneously given Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, . . . -with Notes, by W.

the date of the Springfield cases "about the year F. Poole ; 1870, 43 pp. 4to. On page 6 of this

1645." I" tne W- His*- and Geneal. Reg. for issue further information may be found as to the

October, 1870, is printed, from an unpublished Parsons cases.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

139

case. Another is, that not a particle of the contemporary evidence on which
she was convicted has been preserved. Governor Winthrop had died, and
the two Mathers had not yet come upon the stage, or we should have had
copious details. Governor Hutchinson, who wrote more than a century
later, gave, partly from Hubbard and partly from tradition or conjecture,
some incidents which help to fill out the picture.

She was first tried and condemned in 1655 ; but the magistrates set aside
the verdict, and she was brought for trial before the General Court. The
Records, under the date of May 14, 1656, give the following:

" The magistrates not receiving the verdict of the jury in Mrs. Hibbins her case,
having been on trial for witchcraft, it came and fell of course to the General Court.
Mrs. Ann Hibbins was called forth, appeared at the bar ; the indictment against her
was read, to which she answered not guilty, and was willing to be tried by God and
this Court. The evidences against her were read, the parties witnessing being present,
her answers considered on ; and the whole Court being met together, by their vote
determined that Mrs. Ann Hibbins is guilty of witchcraft, according to the bill of
indictment found against her by the jury of life and death. The Governor in open
Court pronounced sentence accordingly, declaring she was to go from the bar to the
place from whence she came, and from thence to the place of execution, and there to
hang till she was dead.

" It is ordered, that warrant shall issue out from the Secretary to the Marshal-
General, for the execution of Mrs. Hibbins on the 5th day next come fortnight,
presently after the lecture at Boston, being the igth of June next, the Marshal- General
taking with him a sufficient guard." 1

Governor Hutchinson, in 1765, wrote of the case as follows:

"The most remarkable occurrence in the colony in the year 1655 was the trial and
condemnation of Mrs. Ann Hibbins for witchcraft. . . . Losses in the latter part of
her husband's life had reduced his estate and increased the natural crabbedness of his
wife's temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome, brought her under church
censure, 2 and at length rendered her so odious to her neighbors as to cause some of
them to accuse her of witchcraft. The jury brought her in guilty, but the magistrates
refused to accept the verdict ; so the cause came to the General Court, where the
popular clamor prevailed against her, and the miserable woman was condemned and
executed. Search was made upon her body for teats, and in her chests and boxes for
puppets, images, etc. ; but there is no record of anything of that sort being found. . . .
It fared with her as it did with Joan of Arc in France, some counted her a saint
and some a witch, and some observed solemn marks of Providence set upon those who
were very forward to condemn her." 3

1 Mass. Kec., iv. pt. i. 269. Trerice the shipmaster, it so discomposed his

2 [A MS. volume by Captain Keayne in the wife's spirit that she scarce ever was well settled
Massachusetts Historical Society's cabinet con- in her mind afterwards, but grew very turbulent
tains reports of Cotton's sermons and some of in her passion and discontented, on which occa-
the proceedings of the church in cases of dis- sion she was cast out of the church, and then
cipline, particularly that of Mrs. Hibbins. ED.] charged to be a witch, giving too much occa-

3 History of Massachusetts, \. 173, edition of sion, by her strange carriage, to common people
1795. "Others have said that Mr. Hibbins, so to judge." Hubbard, General History of
losing jCs at once by the carelessness of Mr. New England, p. 574.

140 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

There was doubtless in the case of Ann Hibbins, as there was in that of
Margaret Jones, the cruel " searching " and " watching," the rinding of witch-
marks and imps. The majority of her judges were not Boston men, and
would not be carried away by the local prejudice against her as a turbulent
and quarrelsome woman. They would have required the proofs prescribed
in the law books. Hugh Parsons, though convicted by a local jury, was
acquitted by the General Court; and apparently because in the great mass
of depositions as to his bad disposition, his ominous shaking of the head,
uttering threats, cutting puddings when boiling in the bag, whetting saws at
night, and drying up milch cows, there was no testimony as to witch-marks
and imps. 1

Mrs. Hibbins was a widow, named Moore, when she married her late
husband, and had three sons residing in England. The youngest son,
hearing of his mother's troubles, embarked for America, and probably
arrived before her execution. Her will, dated May 27, 1656, is in the
Suffolk Probate records, 2 and is a calm, well-worded, and sensible document.
She named as the overseers and administrators of her estate (appraised at
.344 14*.), Thomas Clarke, Edward Hutchinson, William Hudson, Joshua
Scottow, and Peter Oliver. Thomas Clarke was one of the two deputies of
Boston in the General Court ; Joshua Scottow and Peter Oliver were select-
men, and the others were leading citizens of the town. In a codicil to her
will she says : " I do earnestly desire my loving friends Captain [Edward]
Johnson and Mr. Edward Rawson to be added to the rest of the gentlemen
mentioned as overseers of my will, to whom I commit, namely, to Capt.
Johnson ['s] care and trust my two chests and desk with all things therein,
to be kept entirely whole and in kind, till my [eldest] son John, or his
order, authenticated by a public notary, shall come and demand the same."
Captain Johnson was the deputy from Woburn, and author of Wonder-
working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England, London, 1654 ; and
Mr. Rawson was Secretary of the General Court. To Mr. Rawson she
delivered the keys of her chests and desk, and also her papers. " My
desire is that all my overseers would be pleased to show so much respect
for my dead corpse as to cause it to be decently interred, and, if it may be,
near my late husband." Three days before her execution, hearing that her
son was coming, she added this provision to her will : " I give my son Jona-
than twenty pounds over and above what I have already given him, towards
his pains and charge in coming to see me, which shall be first paid out of
my estate." On the morning of her execution she made this further addi-

1 Thomas Cooper, appointed to watch Mary such apparent thing upon his body, which she

Parsons, testified that she spoke very bitterly of did not deny." Drake, Annals, p. 245.
her husband, and said she could prove he was a ' 2 [The will is in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal.

witch; to which Cooper replied: "Methinks, if Reg-, July, 1852, p. 283. The inventory is dated

he were a witch, there would be some apparent April 30, 1657, and shows "a gold weding ring,

sign or mark of it upon his body, for they say a diamond ring, a taffety cloake, silk gown and

witches have teats upon some part or other of kirtle,pinck colored petticoat," etc., with "money

their body; but so far as I hear there is not any in the desk." ED.]

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

141

tion: "My further mind and will is (sic), out of my sense of the more
than ordinary affection and pains of my son Jonathan in the times of my
distress, I give him, as a further legacy, ten pounds."

It is evident from the quality of the persons whom she chose as the
overseers of her estate, the reasons she assigns for her choice, and other
expressions in her will, that she had friends in her distress who sought to
save her from her dreadful doom. Some of this sympathy seems to have
found public expression in very positive terms; for Mr. Joshua Scottow,
nine months later, found
it necessary to apologize
to the General Court for **
what he had said or done with reference
to the matter. His apology is preserved
in the Massachusetts Archives, cxxxv. I. 1
He stated that he did not intend to
oppose the proceedings of the General
Court in the case of Mrs. Ann Hibbins:
" I am cordially sorry that anything from me, either in word or writing,
should give offence to the honored Court, my dear brethren in the church,
or any others."

How the two noted ministers of Boston, John Wilson and John Norton,
regarded the condemnation and execution of Mrs. Hibbins is shown by a
story which Governor Hutchinson relates:

" Mr. Beach, a minister in Jamaica, in a letter to Dr. Increase Mather in the year
1684, says: 'You may remember what I have sometimes told you your famous Mr.
[John] Norton once said at his own table before Mr. [John] Wilson, Elder [James]
Penn, and myself and wife, etc., who had the honor to be his guests, that the wife
of one of your magistrates, as I remember, was hanged for a witch only for having
more wit than her neighbors. It was his very expression ; she having, as he explained
it, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street,
were talking of her, which cost her her life, notwithstanding all he could do to the
contrary, as he himself told us' " (i. 173).

Increase Mather, seventeen years of age, was graduated from Harvard
College the same month that Ann Hibbins was executed, and Cotton
Mather was born seven years later. These names are to appear frequently
in the subsequent records. It is evident there was some superstition in the
colony before the time of these notable men. That neither of them, in their
numerous papers on witchcraft, ever mentioned the case of Mrs. Hibbins
may possibly be explained by the feeling they had in common with Mr.
Norton and Mr. Wilson, that she had been unjustly condemned.

1 [This paper, the signature to which is here-
with given, is the first in a volume labelled

It seems Capt. Scottow died the last night. Thus
the New England men drop away. Jan. 22. Capt.

" Witchcraft Papers," in the Afassac/msetts Ar- Joshua Scottow is buried in the old burying-

chives, at the State House. Scottow survived
the greater witchcraft folly of 1692, and died
Jan. 20, 1697-98. Sewall records: "Jan. 21.

place. Extream cold. No minister at funeral ;
nor wife nor daughter." Sewall was one of the
bearers (ii. 467). Eo.J

142 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

4. The fourth and last execution for witchcraft in Boston was on Nov.
1 6, I688, 1 when Goody Glover was hung for the charge of bewitching the
children of John Goodwin. The story is told at length in, and furnishes
the main theme of, Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, i689. 2 As
Governor Hutchinson has made an excellent abstract of the facts in the
case, and as he knew some of the persons who were concerned in it, we
will allow him to relate the main incidents :

"In 1687 or i688 8 began a more alarming instance than any that had preceded
it. Four of the children of John Goodwin, a grave man and good liver at the north 4
part of Boston, were generally believed to be bewitched. I have often heard persons
who were in the neighborhood speak of the great consternation it occasioned. The
children were all remarkable for ingenuity of temper, had been religiously educated,
and were thought to be without guile. The eldest was a girl of thirteen or fourteen
years. She had charged a laundress with taking away some of the family linen. The
mother of the laundress was one of the wild Irish, of bad character, and gave the girl
harsh language ; soon after which she fell into fits which were said to have something
diabolical in them. One of her sisters and two brothers 5 followed her example, and,
it is said, were tormented in the same part of their bodies at the same time, although
kept in separate apartments and ignorant of one another's complaints. . . . Sometimes
they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind ; and sometimes all these disorders together
would come upon them.- Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, then
pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints
would appear to be dislocated, and they would make the most piteous outcries of
burnings, of being cut with knives, beat, etc., and the marks of wounds were after-
wards to be seen. The ministers of Boston and Charlestown kept a day of fasting
and prayer at the troubled house ; after which the youngest child made no more
complaints. The others persevered, and the magistrates then interposed, and the
old woman was apprehended ; but upon examination would neither confess nor
deny, and appeared to be disordered in her senses. Upon the report of physicians
that she was compos mentis, she was executed, declaring at her death the children
should not be relieved" (ii. 24-26).

A narrative of the case, wholly independent of Cotton Mather's account,
which Hutchinson followed, is found in a letter of Joshua Moody, minister

1 The date of the execution is mentioned in ments contained therein, and they concur in its
none of the contemporary narratives ; it appears, principles. "It is needless," they say, "for us
however, in Judge Sewall's Diary, \. 236: to insist upon the commendation either of the
"Nov. 16, 1688. About ir o'clock the Widow author or the work; the former is known in the
Glover is drawn by to be hanged. Mr. Larkin churches ; the latter will speak sufficiently for
seems to be marshal. The constables attend, itself." An abstract of the narrative appears in
and Justice Bullivant there." Mather's Magnalia, ii. 456-465, edition of 1853.

2 The book was reprinted in London in 1691, 8 Mr. Mather says, " About midsummer in
with a commendatory preface by Richard Baxter, the year 1688." In Hutchinson's first draft he
in which he says: "This great instance cometh was not in doubt as to the date, and gave it cor-
with such full, convincing evidence, that he must rectly : " In 1688 began," etc.

be a very obdurate Sadducee that will not believe 4 Mr. Mather says "the south part of Bos-
it." The four ministers of Boston and Charles- ton," and describes Mr. Goodwin as " a sober
town Samuel Willard, Joshua Moody, James and pious man, whose trade is that of a mason."
Allen, and Charles Morton prefix a note "To 8 The names and ages of the children were,
the Reader," in which they, as eye-witnesses, Martha, thirteen ; John, eleven ; Mercy, seven ;
vouch for the truth of the extraordinary state- and Benjamin, five.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 143

of the First Church, addressed to Increase Mather in London, who was
then residing there as agent of the colony. The letter is dated Oct. 4,
1688, when the affair was in progress, and before the Glover woman was
convicted :

" We have a very strange thing among us, which we know not what to make of,
except it 'be witchcraft, as we think it must needs be. Three or four children of one
Goodwin, a mason, that have been for some weeks grievously tormented, crying out of
head, eyes, tongue, teeth ; breaking their neck, back, thighs, knees, legs, feet, toes,
etc. ; and then they roar out, ' Oh my head '/' ' Oh my neck /' and from one part to
another the pain runs almost as fast as I write it. The pain is doubtless very exquisite,
and the cries most dolorous and affecting ; and this is notable, that two or more of
them cry out of the same pain in the same part at the same time ; and as the pain
shifts to another place in one, so in the other, and thus it holds them for an hour
together and more ; and when the pain is over they eat, drink, walk, play, laugh, as at
other times. They are generally well a nights. A great many good Christians spent
a day of prayer there. Mr. Morton came over, and we each spent an hour in prayer ;
since which, the parents suspecting an old woman and her daughter living hard by,
complaint was made to the justices, and compassion had so far, that the women were
committed to prison, and are there now. Yesterday I called in at the house, and was
informed by the parent that since the women were confined the children have been
well while out of the house ; but as soon as any of them come into the house, then
taken as formerly ; so that now all their children keep at their neighbors' houses. If
they step home they are immediately afflicted, and while they keep out are well.
I have been a little larger in this narrative, because I know you have studied these
things. We cannot but think the Devil has a hand in it by some instrument. It is
an example, in all the parts of it, not to be paralleled. You may inquire further of Mr.
Oakes [Edward, Jr., the bearer of the letter], whose uncle [Dr. Thomas Oakes], 1
administered physic to them at first, and he may probably inform you more fully." 2

While the woman was on trial her house was searched, and several small
images or puppets, made of rags and stuffed with goat's hair, were found ;
and being produced in Court, the woman acknowledged that her way of
tormenting the objects of her malice was by wetting her finger and stroking
these images. She did this in the presence of the Court, and one of the
children present fell into fits before the whole assembly. " This the judges
had their just apprehensions at; and causing the repetition of the experi-
ment, found again the same event of it." She was asked whether she had
any one to stand by her. She replied, she had ; and looking into the air,
she added, " No, he is gone." She then confessed that she had one, who
was her prince, with whom she maintained some sort of a communion.
That night she was heard expostulating with a devil for deserting her, and
serving her so basely and falsely ; and hence she had confessed all. At the

1 " Skillful physicians were consulted for witchcraft could be the original of these mala-
their help, and particularly our worthy and dies." Mem. Prov., p. 3, ed 1691. A "skill-
prudent friend, Dr. Thomas Oakes, who found ful physician " seems to be in the ground-plan
himself so affronted by the distempers of the of nearly every witch case in New England,
children that he concluded nothing but hellish 2 4 Mass. Hist. Coil., viii. 367, 368.

144 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

trial one Hughes testified that the woman accused had bewitched to death
a woman named Howen six years before, and that the Howen woman on
her death-bed had stated this to her. Hughes had sometimes seen Glover
come down her chimney. While Hughes was preparing to give her testi-
mony, her boy was afflicted in the same woful manner as the Goodwin
children had been. She accused Glover of doing this, to which Glover
replied that she did it because of the wrong done to herself and daughter.
Hughes denied that she had done her any wrong. " Well then," said
Glover, " let me see your child, and he shall be well again." On her seeing
the boy he recovered.

While the condemned woman was in prison Cotton Mather visited her
twice, that he might pray with her and give her spiritual advice. He states
that she never denied the guilt of witchcraft, but confessed very little about
the circumstances of her confederacies with the Devil. She said that she
used to be at meetings where her prince and four more were present. She
told him who these four were; but as to her/f*&f, her account plainly was
that he was the Devil. He asked her many questions, to which, after long
silence, she replied that she would fain give full answers, but they would not
give her leave. " They, who are they ? " She answered that they were her
spirits, or her saints. At another time she spoke of her two mistresses, and
on being asked who they were she fell into a rage. Mr. Mather advised
her to break her covenant with hell. She replied that he spoke a very
reasonable thing, but she could not do it. He asked if she had a desire,
or would consent, to be prayed for, to which she replied: " If prayer would
do her any good, she could pray for herself." The question being repeated,
she said she could not consent unless her spirits would give her leave.
" However," says Mr. Mather, "against her will I prayed with her, which, if
it were a fault, was in excess of pity." When he had finished she thanked
him " with many good words ; " but he was no sooner out of her sight than
she took a long, slender stone, and "with her finger and spittle fell to
tormenting it."

While on the way to her execution, she said that the children should not
be relieved by her death, for others had a hand in it as well as she, and she
named her own daughter as one of them. " It came to pass, accordingly,"
says Mr. Mather, " the three children continued in their furnace, which
grew seven times hotter than before ; " and they " gave more sensible
demonstrations of an enchantment, growing very far towards a possession
of evil spirits."

These Goodwin children performed some very strange pranks, which
resemble those reported at the stances of modern Spiritualists. " They
would fly like geese, and be carried with an incredible swiftness through the
air, having just their toes now and then upon the ground, and their arms
waved like the wings of a bird. One of them, at the house of a kind
neighbor and gentleman (Mr. Willis), flew the length of the room, about
twenty feet, none seeing her feet all the way touch the floor." They com-

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

plained that they were in red-hot ovens, sweating and panting as if they
were really in that situation. They cried out from blows by cudgels, and
though no blows or cudgels were seen by the bystanders, the marks in red
streaks were seen upon their bodies. They jumped into the fire and into
water, and their deliverances were so many that it led the tender-hearted
narrator to consider " whether the little ones had not their [good] angels
in the plain sense of our Saviour's intimation." Nothing so discomposed
them as a religious exercise. At family prayers they would " roar, and
shriek, and holla," to drown the voice of devotion. " In short," says Mr.
Mather, " no good thing must then be endured near those children, who,
while they are themselves, do love every good thing in a measure that
proclaims in them the fear of God."

On November 14 Mr. Mather took the eldest of the bewitched children,
a girl thirteen years of age, whose symptoms were more marked and obdu-
rate than those of the others, to his own house ; in order, as he says, that he
might do the afflicted family a favor ; that he might have the best opportu-
nity to investigate the phenomena, and furnish himself with evidence and
argument with which to confute the Sadducism of the age. He kept the
girl in his family till the following spring, enduring from her every species
of trouble and annoyance, and putting in practice his doctrine of dealing
with witchcraft and possession wholly by prayer and faith.

For several days " she applied herself to such actions, not only of indus-
try, but of piety, as she had been no stranger to." November 20 she cried :
" They have found me out ! " and went into her abnormal fits, which con-
tinued at intervals for four or five months. The strange incidents which
occurred are recorded in Memorable Providences. One of them was that an
invisible horse would be brought to her by her spirits, mounting which, she
would ride strangely about the room ; and on one occasion, " to our admira-
tion, she rode (that is, was tossed, as one that rode) up the stairs."

Mr. Mather never revealed the names of the four persons whom the
Glover woman named as her confederates, or the three persons whom the
Goodwin girl accused as her tormentors ; " for," he said, " we should be
very tender in such relation [narration] lest we wrong the reputation of the
innocent by stories not enough inquired into." No other prosecutions
followed : Mr. Mather's plan was to keep the accusations within the narrow-
est limits, and to combat witchcraft and possession with spiritual agencies.
He had implicit faith in the efficacy of prayer. He applied his theory to
the Goodwin children. They all recovered ; and he wrote his Memorable
Providences to prove to the world three propositions : ( I ) That there are
witches; (2) To show the operations of witchcraft; and (3) To teach how
witchcraft should be treated. 1 The four ministers of Boston who recom-

1 Four years later, when the witch troubles did myself offer to provide meat, drink, and lodg-

broke out in SalemVillage, Mr. Mather attempted ing for no less than six of the afflicted, that so

to put his method into operation, by advising an experiment might be made, whether Prayer

that the "afflicted children" be separated and and Fasting, upon the removal of the distressed,

taken out of the excitement of the Village. " I might not put a period to the trouble then rising,
VOL. II. 19.

146 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

mended the book say in their prefatory note, "Prayer is a powerful and
effectual remedy against the malicious practices of devils and those who
covenant with them." Says Mr. Mather:

" I do now publish the history while the thing is fresh and new ; and I challenge
all men to detect so much as one designed falsehood, yea, so much as one important
mistake, from the egg to the apple of it. I am resolved after this never to use but just
one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a denial of devils
or of witches. I shall count that man ignorant who shall suspect ; but I shall count
him downright impudent, if he assert the non-existence of things which we have had
such palpable convictions of" (p. 40, 41).

He concludes his narrative in these words :

" All that I have now to publish is, that Prayer and Faith was the thing which
drove the devils from the children ; and I am to bear this testimony unto the world :
That the Lord is nigh to all them who call upon Him in truth, and that blessed are
all they that wait for Him " (p. 44).

Hutchinson says : " The children returned to their ordinary behavior,
lived to adult age, made profession of religion, and the affliction they had
been under they publicly declared to be one motive of it. One of them I
knew many years after. She had the character of a very sober, virtuous
woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in the transaction." 1
John Goodwin and his wife Martha, who had been members of Mr. Morton's
church in Charlestown, were received, May 25, 1690, into Mr. Mather's
church. Their four children were subsequently received as members. The
eldest son Nathaniel, July 22, 1728, took out letters of administration on
Cotton Mather's estate.

Two other cases, which were then supposed to be witchcraft, and were
similar in character to that of the Goodwin children, occurred in Boston, in
1692 and 1693. As they were both under the immediate care of Cotton
Mather, and were treated by his peculiar method of prayer and fasting,
with suppressing the names of suspected confederates of the Devil, and man-
aging the affairs as quietly as possible, they passed off without injury to the
life or reputation of any one, and without attracting much public attention.
The first was the case of Mercy Short, and the second that of Margaret
Rule. Mr. Mather wrote out a detailed account of each of these cases and
withheld them from publication ; but he sometimes loaned them to his

without giving the civil authority the trouble of provide accommodations for any six of them,

prosecuting those things." (Afore Wonders, p. that so the success of more than ordinary prayer

1 1.) Again he says : " In fine, the country was in a with fasting might with patience be experienced,

dreadful ferment, and wise men foresaw a long before any other courses were taken." (Magnalia,

train of dismal and bloody consequences. There- i. 210, Hartford edition, 1853.) This advice was

upon they first advised that the afflicted might not accepted by the local magistrates at Salem,
be kept asunder in the closest privacy; and one J Hist, of Mass., ii. 26. In his first draft,

particular person (whom I have cause to know), Hutchinson says she was "one of my tenants,

in pursuance of this advice, offered himself to a grave, religious woman."

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

147

friends for perusal. 1 Robert Calef, who had a bitter, personal quarrel with
Mr. Mather, obtained possession of the account of the case of Margaret
Rule, and printed it in his More Wonders, 1700, without the consent of
the author. 2 It is entitled, Another Brand Pluckt out of the Burning,
and in it the writer says :

"This young woman [Rule] had never seen the affliction of Mercy Short, whereof
a narrative has already been given ; and yet about half a year after the glorious and
signal deliverance of that poor damsel, this Margaret fell into an affliction, marvellous,
resembling hers in almost all the circumstances of it ; indeed, the afflictions were so
much alike, that the relation I have given of the one would almost serve as a full
history of the other."

The Mercy Short case has never been printed, and till recently was sup-
posed to be lost. About ten years ago Dr. Samuel F. Haven, the accom-
plished librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, in looking through
the Mather manuscripts in that library, found one entitled, A Brand Pluckt
out of the Burning, and on examination it proved to be the long-lost Mercy
Short narrative. Dr. Haven, in announcing the discovery, promised to print
it with notes ; but he has not yet found leisure to fulfil his promise. He
has, however, for the purpose of this sketch, kindly furnished a copy of the
narrative, with permission to make such use of it as the brief limits of this
paper will permit. The publication of the entire narrative, which is the full-
est description of any single case of diabolical molestations that has occurred

1 " I do not write this," said Mr. Mather, in a
prefatory note to his Margaret Rule case, " with
a design of throwing it presently into the press ;
but only to preserve the memory of such memor-
able things, the forgetting whereof would neither
be pleasing to God nor useful to men ; as also
to give you and some others of peculiar and
obliging friends a sight of some curiosities."

2 Calef, in his preface, says : " I received it of
a gentleman who had it of the author, and com-

print a composure of mine utterly without and
against my consent ; but the good Providence of
God has herein overruled his malice ; for if that
may have impartial readers, he will have his con-
futation, and I my perpetual vindication." Mr.
Mather's own copy of More Wonders is in the
Massachusetts Historical Society's Library. In-
scribed on the inside of the cover, in his own
handwriting, is the following : " Job xxxi, 35, 36.
My desire is that mine Adversary had written

' My

municated it to me with his express consent."
Mr. Mather, in Some Few Remarks, p. 36,
says : " He [Calef] has been so uncivil as to

a Book. Surely I would take it upon my
Shoulder, and bind it as a Crown to me. Co:
Mather."

148

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

in New England, will, with Dr. Haven's valuable notes, be an important
contribution to the literature of this subject. As the Mercy Short case an-
tedates by several months that of Margaret Rule, it properly comes first
under consideration.

The case of Mercy Short is important, as it was contemporaneous with

SAMUEL SEWALL. 1

1 [A steel-plate engraving after an original
portrait owned by his descendants, the Misses
Ridgway, of Boston, is given in the Sewall Papers,

i., and is followed in the present cut Another
likeness is owned by Samuel Sewall, of Burling-
ton, Mass., and has also been engraved. ED.]

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

149

the Salem trials and executions ; and it illustrates the principles and methods
of the Boston ministers, so unlike those of Salem. The supposed agent
of her afflictions was then under arrest for witchcraft, and on other evi-
dence was soon after condemned and executed at Salem. In the testimony
against the alleged criminal, which has been preserved, 1 there is no allusion
to Mercy Short, or to any incident recorded in the narrative, which con-
firms the statement of its author, that he had strictly forbidden the names
of any person suspected to be mentioned, and had treated the case wholly
by spiritual agencies. Judge Sewall once noticed the case in his Diary
(i. 370). 2

The narrative begins with the statement that Mercy Short had been
taken captive by the Indians at Newichawanock [Berwick, Maine], with her
three brothers and two sisters; and that they were redeemed at Quebec,
and brought by the fleet to Boston. Her father, mother, brother, sister,
and others of her kindred had been killed by the Indians. 3

In the summer of 1692, when seven persons from Salem, under accusa-
tion of witchcraft, were committed to the jail in Boston,* Mercy Short was
sent by her mistress on an errand to the prison, and was asked by Sarah
Good, one of the suspected witches, and later executed at Salem, for a little
tobacco. The girl threw a handful of shavings at her, saying, " That 's
tobacco good enough for you ; " whereupon the woman bestowed some ill

1 Examination of Sarah Good, in Wood-
ward's Records of Salem Witchcraft, i. 1-50.

2 " Nov. 22, 1692. Now about, Mercy Short
grows ill again as formerly. Nov. 25. Mr.
Mather sent for to her."

3 On March 18, 1690, a party of French and
Indians under Sieur Hertel, and an Indian named
Hopegood, " once a servant of a Christian mas-
ter in Boston," made an attack on Salmon Falls,
New Hampshire, a settlement on the Cocheco
River, which separates New Hampshire from
Maine. Berwick was a village on the opposite
bank of the river. The villages were burned,
thirty persons were killed, and fifty-four taken
into captivity. Mr. Mather (in Magnalia, ii.
595-600) gives an account of the massacre, and
the shocking details of the suffering of the pris-
oners on their march to Quebec. " I know not,
reader," he says (in Latin), "whether you can
read this record with dry eyes; I only know I
cannot write it without tears." The fleet, under
Sir William Phips, arrived in Boston with the
redeemed captives Nov. 19, 1690. Mr. Drake
says he can learn nothing of Mercy Short, ex-
cept the allusion to her in the Margaret Rule
narrative. Mr. Savage throws no light upon the
name. Mr. Mather, however, in his account of
the Salmon Falls massacre, mentions the. name
of her father and gives a few particulars concern-
ing him and his family. He says, with a dread-
ful pun on the name : " It would be a long story

to tell what a particular share in this calamity
fell to the family of Clement Short. This hon-
est man, with his pious wife and three children,
were killed, and six or seven of their children
were made prisoners. The most of them arrived
safe in Canada, through a thousand hardships ;
and the most of them were afterwards redeemed
from Canada unto their English friends again."
The story of the massacre he may have heard
from Mercy Short herself. Her social position
in Boston seems to have been that of a servant.
See also Belknap, History of New Hampshire, i.
207, edition of 1813.

4 [An account rendered by the Boston jailer,
John Arnold, for his supplies to those confined

under his supervison in the prison, is given in
the Witchcraft Papers, in the Mass. Archives,
and it is from this document that the annexed
signature is copied. ED.]

150

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

words upon her. Soon after, the girl was taken with "just such, or perhaps
much worse, fits than those which held the bewitched people in the County
of Essex." At this period they (her spirits) made her fast for twelve days
together, and she underwent such torments as the Goodwin children suffered.
The ministers and Christian people of the town were constantly praying at
her bedside, and she was after a few weeks happily delivered. She contin-
ued well for several months, and then suddenly fell into a swoon, wherein
she lay as dead for many hours; and it was not long before distinct and
formal fits of witchcraft returned upon her. One of the ministers of the
town took a little company of praying neighbors, and kept a day of fasting
and prayer with her and for her ; and all the while she was entertained with
cursed spectres, whom she saw, heard, and felt. As the minister was preach-
ing to her, on Mark ix. 28, 29, " And when he was come into the house,
his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? And
he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and
fasting," she flew at him and tore a leaf of his Bible. She passed through
another fast of nine days, and then had a remission of three days, during
which she ate a little, and went to church about half a mile from her abode.
While there she again fell into fits, and several strong men could carry her
no further than the house of a kind neighbor, where she lay for several
weeks under the care of pious people who did all they could for her deliv-
erance. A detailed account is given of her spectral torments. Concerning
the means used for her recovery, Mr. Mather writes:

"The methods that were taken for the deliverance of Mr. Goodwin's afflicted
family four years ago were the very same we now followed for Mercy Short. Had we
not strenuously suppressed all clamors and rumors that might have touched the repu-
tation of people exhibited in this witchcraft, there might have ensued most uncomfort-
able uproar. 1 But prayer and fasting we knew to be a course against which none but
men most brutishly atheistical (and yet such we have among us) could make excep-
tions. Whereupon a number of pious people did ordinarily every day go in and pray
with her ; and whereas, many of our people had singularly grounded persuasions that
no exercise of religion did give so much vexation unto the spectres in the haunted
house as the singing of Psalms, they commonly sang between almost every prayer.
But they judged it necessary to fast as well as to pray. Thus the Christians here were
put upon spending three days in fasting and prayer, one quickly after the other."

Soon after a third fast, on the evening before the New Year, 1693, her
deliverance drew near. She was tormented as never before ; she thought
she was dying and being carried away by fiends ; but " we then quickly saw
the death and burial of the trouble now upon her." She roared and shrieked
out, " This is more than all the rest." She sent for a minister of the neigh-
borhood, " upon whose coming she called for her clothes, dressed herself,

1 "As for the spectres that visited and It would be a great iniquity for me to judge

afflicted Mercy Short, there were among them them otherwise ; and the world, I hope, neither

such as were in the shape of several who were by my means, nor by her, will ever know who

doubtless innocent of the crime of witchcraft, they were." Narrative.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 151

and came to him with a countenance marvellously altered into a look of
discretion and gravity, and said, ' Now go and give to God the greatest
thanks you can devise, for I am gloriously delivered ; my troubles are gone.'
The neighbors gave solemn thanks to that faithful God who gave them to
tread upon the lion, and to trample the dragon underfoot."

For seven weeks she was free from her invisible tormentors, yet, from
weakness, not without frequent fainting and swooning. At the end of this
time, while in the North Meeting-house on Sunday, " she was again seized
by her tormentors, just as at the former visitations, and such as, we judged,
could not but put an end to her life." Bystanders had pins thrust into their
flesh by these fiends while they were molesting Mercy Short. "Yea, several
wretches were palpable while yet they were not visible, and several of our
persons did sometimes actually lay their hands upon these fiends. The
people, though they saw nothing, yet felt a substance that felt like a cat or
dog ; and though they were not fanciful, they died away at the sight. This
thing was too sensible and repeated to be pure imagination." In this assault
her spectres made her fast about a week.

Soon after this a good spirit occasionally attended her, that suggested
appropriate answers to her diabolical tormentors, and comforted her with
assurances that she would be victorious over them. Under the guidance of
this spirit she would take a Bible in her hands, and, turning over the leaves
without looking at them, " would at last turn down a leaf at the most per-
tinent place that could be thought of." This instance is mentioned : Her
wicked spectres were urging her to sign their book. She took her Bible,
and, without looking at the pages, turned down a leaf at Revelation xiii. 8 :
" All that dwell upon earth shall worship him [the Beast], whose names are
not written in the book of life of the Lamb." Holding the text up to the
spectres, she added that her " name was written in the book of the Lamb."
At another time, in that same manner, she folded a leaf at Luke vii. 21, and
showed it to the spectres : " In the same hour he cured many of their
infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits." Again, her spectres were trying
to persuade her that there would be no day of judgment; she showed them
Acts i. ii. 1 At the beginning of the fourth week " this notable spirit " bade
her be of good cheer and hold her integrity, for the next Thursday, about
nine or ten o'clock in the evening, she would be gloriously delivered.
" There was," says Mr. Mather, " scarce a night, I think, for near a month

1 "When she came to herself," says Mr. think it was ? It was that of Revelation xii. 12 :
Mather, " she told me her manner was to turn ' The Devil is come down unto you having great
the leaves till 'twas darted into her mind that she wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a
had the place, and then she folded." Tn another short time.' Again, she calling for a Psalm-book,
place he says: "But that which carries most of has, in the dark, turned over many leaves, and,
marvel in it, is the impulse which directed her without reading a syllable, has turned down a
into the Scriptures that might have quickened leaf to a psalm, advising us to sing it in her be-
our devotion, if we had seen cause to make use of half. I do affirm that no man living could have
them. In her trances, a Bible happening to lie on singled out psalms more expressive of, or suit-
the bed, she took it up, and, without even casting able to, her circumstances than those she pitched
her eyes upon it, folded down a leaf to a text ; upon. One of them, I remember, was the be-
but of all the texts in the Bible, which do you ginning of the cii."

'52

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

which was not all spent in the exercise of devotion by those that watched.
The pious people of the north part of Boston did very much pray with the
young woman and for her. The weekly meetings of the young people (the
sexes apart) were adjourned to the haunted chamber." Mr. Mather says
he did all he could that not so much as the name of any one person might
suffer the least ill report on the occasion ; but " unwearied prayer we
thought was our only way now to resist the Devil."

On the Thursday evening mentioned by her, March 16, 1693, she lay
very free from her usual torments. The spectres were about ; but they
found her so hedged in by some unseen defence that they could not touch
her. She rallied them on their defeat, and asked them what advice they
would give her before they went. They replied, but the writer could not
hear the " pestiferous things " they spoke ; whereupon they flew away
immediately as the hour named arrived, "striking another young woman
down for dead upon the floor as they went along; and so, with a raised
soul, she bore her part with us in giving thanks to God for her deliver-
ance." Mercy Short was not troubled with any further diabolical moles-
tations. After several days her eyes, which had been blinded as if she
had been struck with lightning, regained their sight. " She was left also
with an ill habit of body which could not be cured without some time
and care."

Dr. Haven has appended to his copy the following note:

"The first leaf of this account (blank) has on the outside the words, 'To be Re-
turn'd unto Cotton Mather.' It seems, therefore, that it was loaned by him for perusal,
and it bears the marks of use in that way. 1 At the close of the narrative is the begin-
ning of a statement, by Cotton Mather, of the reason why he forbears to give his
opinion ' about the true nature and meaning of these preternatural occurrences ; ' but
all, except a few lines, was on another leaf, which is missing."

From Mr. Mather's other writings we can safely infer the import of the
passage which is missing. He never wavered from a full belief in the reality
of witchcraft and diabolical possession ; but his mind was greatly perplexed
as to the nature and meaning of the phenomena. His reading, and the
strange proceedings that had passed under his own observation, left his
opinions in a very unsettled state. The subject presented dark and hidden
mysteries which he could not explain. Writing, in i/oi, he says:

1 [There is in the Library of the Historical this same provision for a return to the author.

Society a volume of manuscripts, which contains No. 5 in this volume is called " Cotton

s*\ Mather's belief and practice in those thorny

/O -&$ */?* Azyf/4 a L<JUA*) difficulties which have distracted us in the

/ ^*^ ^"^ ^^ / ^. ^*f ^* * f ** ^^^~^*^*f^r

day of temptation," and has marginal reflec-
tions in another hand. No. 6 is marked
" More Wonders of the Invisible World,"
by C. Mather, in his own hand ; and a
fac-simile of the same provision in this
manuscript is herewith appended. These

several in the handwriting of Cotton Mather, manuscripts refer to the Margaret Rule case.

and two of them relating to witchcraft bear En.]

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

153

" About the troubles we have had from the invisible world, I have at present
nothing to ofler to you, but that I believe they were too dark and
deep for ordinary comprehension ; and it may be errors on both
hands have attended them, which will never be understood until
the day when Satan shall be bound after another manner than he
is at this day." 1

1 Some Few Remarks, p. 42. In another stood until the day when there shall not be one

place he says: " This is one of the things that witch in the world." Wonders, p. 162.
make me think witchcraft will not be fully under- 2 [This fac-simile shows the heading and con-
VOL. II. 20.

154

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Cotton Mather had no views on the theory of witchcraft which he did not
hold in common with all the other ministers of Boston, his father, Increase
Mather, Samuel Willard, Joshua Moody, and James Allen. We find them
together at the meetings for prayer and fasting at the house of John Good-
win, in 1688. They endorsed the narrative and the principles set forth in his
Memorable Providences, 1689. He wrote and they signed "The Return of
several [twelve] ministers consulted by his Excellency and the Honorable
Council upon the present witchcrafts in Salem Village," June 15, 1692.
They are among the fourteen ministers whose names are appended to the
preface of Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience concerning \Vitchcrafts,
Oct. 3, 1692 ; and they with him signed " Certain Proposals made [March 5,

elusion of the original document preserved in
the "witchcraft volume" of the Mass. Archives.
The reading of it " several times " is worth not-
ing, though it may be an accidental shortening
of a common formula, "three several times."

ED.] Its date xbr that is, Dec. 14, 1692
was just after the organization of the Supreme
Court under the Province charter, which took
place December 7. The law is, with a few omis-
sions, almost a literal copy of the English stat-
ute on witchcraft enacted in the reign of James I.,
and was probably passed through the personal
influence of the judges of the new court, who
were all, with the exception of Danforth, judges
in the special court which had tried the witches
at Salem. The judges and the magistrates were
the last to see the dreadful errors that had been
committed at Salem. The special court sat dur-
ing the interregnum between the repeal of the
Colony charter and tlie setting up of the Province
charter. The witches had been tried without
any Colony or Province law on the subject, and
presumably under the English statute of James I.
It was natural that the judges of the new court

Stoughton, Sewall, Richards, and Winthrop

should seek an early occasion to embody in
the Province laws the rules and practice which
they had followed at Salem, and which they then
had no intention to abandon. It is a strange
fact, that after what had occurred at Salem those
same judges should have been reappointed, and
that Stoughton, whose conduct was most atro-
cious of all, should have received the vote of
every member present in the Council. Judge
Sewall preserves in his Diary, i. 370, an account
of the election, which began December 6 and
was finished on the succeeding day, as follows :
"Tuesday, Dec. 6. A very dark cold day ; is the
day appointed for choosing the judges. Wm.
Stoughton, Esq., is chosen Chief-Justice, 15 votes
(all then present); Thomas Danforth, Esq., 12;
Major Richards, 7; Maj.-General Winthrop, 7 ;
S. S. [Samuel Sewall], 7 ; I last voted for Mr.
Hathorn [who, as a local magistrate of Salem,
was more responsible for the Salem prosecutions

than any other man], who had 3. When Maj.-
Gen. Winthrop [was] chosen, so I counted it
probable that he [Hathorn] might now carry it ;
but now Major Gedney [another Salem magis-
trate] had more than he. I esteemed Major
Gedney not so suited for the place, because he is
judge of the probate of wills. This was in Col.
Page's rooms, by papers, on Wednesday, Dec. 7,
1692. Tuesday was spent about Little-Compton
business and other interruptions. Were at last
18 assistants present." Judge Sewall did not
write much in his Diary about witchcraft, but
he records some incidents which show the oppo-
sition of the ministers and the people to the po-
sition of the Judges: "Oct. 15, 1692. Went to
Cambridge and visited Mr. Danforth, and dis-
coursed with him about the witchcrafts. [Dan-
forth] thinks there cannot be a procedure in the
Court except there be some better consent of
ministers and people" (i. 367). "Oct. 26, 1692.
A bill is sent in [to the council] about calling a
fast and convocation of ministers, that [the court
or the country] may be led in the right way as
to the witchcrafts. The season and manner of
doing it is such that the Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner count themselves thereby dismissed, 29
noes and 33 yeas to the bill" ((.367). "Oct.
29. Mr. Russell asked whether the Court of
Oyer and Terminer should sit, expressing some
fear of inconvenience by its fall. Governor
[Phips] said it must fall. Lieut.-Governor
[Stoughton] not in town to-day " (i. 368). " Nov.
22, 1692. I prayed that God would choose and
assist our Judges, etc., and save New England as
to enemies and witchcrafts, and vindicate the late
Judges, consisting with His justice and holiness,
etc., with fasting" (i. 370).

[The witchcraft law of December 14 was pub-
lished on December 16, and nearly three years
later (Aug. 22, 1695) was disallowed by the Privy
Council, for a reason quite foreign to the purport
of the law : " Being not formed to agree with the
statute of King James the First, whereby the
Dower is saved to the widow and the Inheritance
to the heir of the party convicted, the same hath

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.

155

1694] by the President and Fellows of Harvard College to the Reverend
Ministers of the Gospel in New England," asking for accounts of illustrious
and remarkable providences, such as " apparitions, possessions, enchant-

been repealed." The body of the law is in for the trial of the Salem witches had been
Ames and Goodell's edition of Provincial Laws appointed, consisting of those whose signatures
(i. 90). In the previous May the Special Court follow :

Several of these were Boston men, and so
was Newton, the prosecuting officer. He had
come over about 1688, then twenty-eight years
old, and had very soon taken a prominent
place in the practice of his profession. (Wash-
burn, Judicial Hist, of Mass.) Their jurisdiction
was within the counties of Suffolk, Essex and
Middlesex. They opened their court early in
June, at Salem, and met by adjournment June
30, and August 5. They caused the execution
of twenty persons, and adjourned, never to
meet again, September 22. Sewall (i. 361) tells
how in one of the intermissions of the Court,
he was present at a "fast at the house of
Captain Alden
upon his account.
Mr. Willard
pray'd. I read a
sermon out of
Dr. Preston, first

and second uses of God's alsufficiency. Cap-
tain Scottow pray'd ; Mr. Allen came in and
pray'd ; Mr. Cotton Mather, then Captain Hill,
sung the first part Psalm ciii. ; concluded about
5 o'clock. Brave shower of rain, while Captain
Scottow was praying, after much Drought."
Alden, who was the eldest son of the Pilgrim

of Plymouth and Duxbury, had been accused of
tormenting some of the afflicted. He was now
seventy, and had been long a respected citizen ;
still not so circumspect, when they brought him
before the Court at Salem, in May, but he could
use the strong language of an old sea-dog, as he
was, when he was confronted by a lot of wenches
whom he had never before seen, and accused of
bewitching them. Perhaps his indignation ren-
dered it easier for the magistrates to send him to
Boston jail, where he remained fifteen weeks,
when he escaped and was concealed by his rela-
tives in Duxbury, till the delusion was passed.
Sewall, it is well known, made a public con-
fession of his mistake on the Fast-day, Jan. 14,
1697, appointed on account of the late tragedy,
standing before the congregation of the Old
South, while Parson Willard read the "bill"
which he "put up," and which is given in Sewall
Papers, i. 445. In 1720, on the publication of
Neal's New England, Sewall records : " It
grieves me to see New England's nakedness
laid open in the business of the Quakers, Ana-
baptists, witchcraft. The judges' names are men-
tioned, p. 502. My confession, p. 536, vol. 2.
The good and gracious God be pleased to save
New England, and me, and my family." ED.]

'56

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ments, and all extraordinary things whereby the existence and agency of
the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated." l

The afflictions of Margaret Rule 2 came upon her on Sept. 10, 1693,
she having the evening before been bitterly treated and threatened by a mis-
erable woman living near, who had formerly been imprisoned on the suspicion
of witchcraft, and who had frequently cured very painful hurts by mutter-
ing over them certain charms. " But the hazard of hurting a poor woman,"
says Mr. Mather, " that might be innocent, caused the pious people in the
vicinity to try whether incessant supplication to God alone might not pro-
duce a quicker and safer ease to the afflicted than hasty prosecution of any
supposed criminal; and accordingly that unexceptionable course was all
that was ever followed." She was assaulted by eight spectres, three or four
of which she thought she knew. She was repeatedly charged not to men-
tion publicly the names of any she knew, lest the reputation of some good
person might be blasted " through the cunning malice of the great
accuser." She privately mentioned to Mr. Mather the names of several,
who he says " were a sort of wretches that for many years have gone under
as violent presumptions of witchcraft as perhaps any creatures yet living
upon earth, although I am far from thinking that the visions of this young

1 " But for my own part," says Cotton Mather,
" I know not that I ever advanced any opinion
in the matter of witchcraft, but that all the min-
isters of the Lord that I know of in the world,
whether English, or Scotch, or French, or Dutch,
and I know many, are of the same opinion
with me." Some Few Remarks, p. 42. Again
he says : " The name of no one good person in
the world ever came under any blemish by means
of any afflicted person that fell under my par-
ticular cognizance ; yea, no one man, woman, or
child ever came into any trouble for the sake of
any that were afflicted, after I had once begun
to look after them." More Wonders, p. ir.
Hence his services as the comforter and ad-
viser of persons accused of witchcraft were much
sought for. Mr. Brattle says : " With great
affection they [the accused] intreated Mr. C. M.
to pray with them ; " and mentions no other
person as performing that duty. He made many
visits to Salem for this purpose, while the dread-
ful tragedy was in progress; but he never at-
tended an examination or a trial. See Wonders,
p. 109, and More Wonders, p. 113. "It may be,"
he says, " no man living ever had more people
under preternatural and astonishing circum-
stances cast by the Providence of God into his
more particular care than I have had." Some
Few Remarks, p. 39. Isolated passages can be
selected from his sermons on Witchcraft which,
separated from their connection and the circum-
stances under which they were uttered, appear
harsh and vindictive. He fought devils, or what
he supposed were devils, with fire ; but for poor

afflicted mortals his words and conduct were full
of charity and tenderness. [A class of writers,
numbering among them Upham, Quincy, and
Bancroft, have presented a view of the Salem
witchcraft proceedings which makes Cotton
Mather, in greater or less degree, a participator
in the Salem method. The passages sometimes
quoted by those holding that side in the contro-
versy, now of long standing, are considered by
their opponents as susceptible of a modified
meaning if taken in connection with the context,
or with what they hold to be the tenor of Math-
er's life. Thus, Aug. 4, 1692, after six of the
twenty victims had been executed at Salem,
Mather says in a Discourse on the Wonders of
the Invisible World, afterward embodied in his
book of that title : " They [the judges] have used,
as judges have heretofore done, the spectral evi-
dences, to introduce their farther inquiries into
the lives of the persons accused ; and they have
thereupon, by the wonderful Providence of God,
been so strengthened with other evidences that
some of the witch-gang have been fairly exe-
cuted." It is answered that the word fairly
means in this connection simply completely.
Again in his Wonders, introducing the trials at
Salem, Mather says (London, 1693, p. 55) : " If
in the midst of the many dissatisfactions among
us, the publication of these Trials may promote
such a pious thankfulness unto God for justice
being so far executed among us, I shall rejoice
that God is glorified." ED.]

2 Calef says she was about seventeen years
of age.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 157

woman were evidence enough to prove them so." These names he never
revealed. The story runs that her tormentors kept her fro_m taking food
for nine days ; pinched her so that black and blue marks were visible ;
thrust pins into her neck, back, and arms ; poured scalding brimstone upon
her, raising blisters upon her skin, and filling the house with such a scent
of brimstone that scores of witnesses could scarcely endure it. Six per-
sons testified, over their own names, in three affidavits, that they had seen
Margaret Rule lifted from her bed by an invisible force so as to touch the
garret floor. Two of the witnesses state that

" It was as much as several of us could do, with all our strength, to pull her down ;
all which happened when there was not only we two in the room, but we suppose ten
or a dozen more, whose names we have forgotten."

Another witness says :

" I have seen her thus lifted when not only a strong person hath thrown his whole
weight across her to pull her down, but several other persons have endeavored, with
all their might, to hinder her from being raised." More Wonders, pp. 22, 23.

Besides her black or wicked spectres, she had toward the end of her
troubles a white or good spirit, from whom she received marvellous assist-
ance in her miseries. "What lately befell Mercy Short," says Mr. Mather,
" from the communications of such a spirit, hath been the just wonder of us
all ; but by such a spirit was Margaret Rule now also visited." This white
spirit, whose face she could not see, but only its bright, shining, and glorious
garments, stood by her bed-side comforting her, and counselling her to
maintain her faith and hope in God, and assuring her of a speedy deliver-
ance. After she had been more than five weeks in her miseries, this good
spirit said to her that a certain man, who was named, had kept a three days'
fast for her deliverance (> and bade her be of good cheer, for her release was
near. Her tormentors returned to their work, but their power was gone.
" She insulted over them with a very proper derision, daring them to do
their worst; whereupon they flew out of the room, and she returning per-
fectly to herself, gave thanks to God for her deliverance."

So Margaret Rule's afflictions were ended. 1 Nobody was brought under
judicial accusation, and the name of no person suffered thereby. The nar-
rative gives a faithful picture of the popular belief and of the best type of
religious activity and experience of that period. The writer of the narra-
tive, judged by the standards of modern belief, was very superstitious ; but
his acts were confessedly unselfish, charitable, and humane.

1 This is the case of which Mr. Bancroft parish. Miracles, he avers, were wrought in
wrote thus: "To cover his confusion, Cotton Boston. He wished his vanity protected."
Mather got up a case of witchcraft in his own History of the United States, Cent. ed. ii. 266.

158 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

THE LITERATURE OF WITCHCRAFT.

The Boston literature of witchcraft deserves a notice in this historical
sketch. It comprises nearly all that was written on the subject in this
country during the last two decades of the seventeenth century ; and it so
modified and humanized the theory of witchcraft and diabolical possession,
that no person could afterwards be convicted of the crime. The following
is the list of books and tracts in the order they were written ; the dates
show when they were published :

1. Increase Mather's Remarkable Providences ; 1684.

2. Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, 1689.

3. Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693.

4. Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcraft, 1693.

5. Samuel Willard's Some Miscellany Observations concerning Witchcraft, 1692.

6. Thomas Brattle's Account of the Witchcraft in the County of Essex, written in
1692, and printed in 1798.

7. Robert Calef's More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700.

8. Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book by one Robert Calef. By the
Parishioners of the Second Church of Boston, 1701.

I. Increase Mather's Remarkable Providences has been generally classed as
a witch-book, though little less than a third of the volume treats of witch-
craft. It is what it purports to be, " An Essay for the recording of
Illustrious Providences, wherein an Account is given of many remarkable
and very memorable Events which have happened this last age, especially
in New England." The other topics treated are, " Remarkable Sea-Deliver-
ances ; " " Other remarkable Preservations ; " " Remarkables about Thunder
and Lightning;" " Some Philosophical Meditations;" " Deaf and Dumb
Persons; " " Remarkable Tempests; " " Remarkable Judgments; " etc. A
passage in the life of the author by his son 1 sheds some light on the
origin and intent of this book: " A little after this [the Synod of 1679], he
formed a Philosophical Society of agreeable gentlemen, who met once a fort-
night for a conference upon improvements in philosophy and additions to
the stores of natural history." Contributions from this society were sent to a
professor 2 at Leyden, and were printed in his Philosophia Naturalis. Other
contributions were sent to the Royal Society of London. " But the calamity
of the times," the biographer adds, " anon gave a fatal and a total interrup-
tion to this generous undertaking." The project, however, of observing
and recording remarkable providences was carried out in another form.
The preface of Remarkable Providences states that at a general meeting of
the ministers of the Colony, held May 12, 1681, it was resolved that it is
" for God's glory and the good of posterity that the utmost care be taken to

1 Parentator. Memoirs of Remarkables in 2 Wolferdus Senguerdius. His " Philosophia

the Life and Death of the ever-memorable Dr. Naturalis, quatuor partibus, 4. Lugd. Bat. 1680,"
Increase Mather. Boston, 1724, p. 86. is in the Bodleian Library Catalogue.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 159

record and .publish all illustrious providences," among which were men-
tioned " divine judgments, tempests, floods, earthquakes, thunders as are
unusual, or whatever else shall happen that is prodigious, witchcrafts,
diabolical possessions, remarkable judgments upon noted sinners, eminent
deliverances, and answers of prayer." Invitation was given to the elders in
the neighboring colonies to contribute. It was thought that one or two
years would be necessary in which to complete the design, and that a large
volume should be printed, that " posterity may be encouraged to go on
therewith." If the reader will examine the volumes of the Royal Society of
London printed at this period, he will find papers as rudimentary and in-
consequential as some contained in this early attempt to establish a similar
publication in New England. In one chapter, entitled " Several Cases of
Conscience considered," Mr. Mather condemned the vulgar superstitions of
the day concerning diabolical agency. He showed that it was unlawful to use
herbs and to nail up horse-shoes, to drive away evil spirits, and to practise
charms and incantations for curing diseases. These, he said, are heathenish
superstitions, and practising witchcraft to detect witches ; they that obtain
health in that way have it from the Devil. A man in Boston gave to one a
sealed paper having these words written upon it, "/ nomine Patris, Filii, et
Spiritus Sancti" as an effectual remedy for the tooth-ache. " It is a marvel-
lous and an amazing thing," he says, " that in such a place as New Eng-
land, where the Gospel hath shined with great power and glory, any should
be so blind as to make attempts of this kind ; yet some such I know there
have been" (p. 185, ed. of 1856).

He recommends that " white witches," which profess to cure diseases,
be treated like " black witches." " A good witch is a more horrible and
detestable monster than a bad one. Balaam was a black witch, and Simon
Magus was a white one. The latter did more hurt by his cures than the
former by his curses."

In the chapter " Concerning Things Preternatural which have happened
in New England," he gave, as an annalist, abridged accounts of several cases
of bedevilment, fuller details of which had been sent to him by his corre-
spondents : ( i ) The case of Ann Cole, of Hartford, Conn., which resulted in
the execution of Goodman Greensmith and his wife, in 1662. The account
was sent to him by Mr. John Whiting, minister of Hartford. (2) The case
of Elizabeth Knap, "the ventriloqua," of Groton, Mass., in 1671, from an
account furnished by Mr. Samuel Willard, then minister of Groton. (3) The
troubles preternatural in the house of William Morse, at Newbury, Mass.,
in 1679, for which Mrs. Morse, in 1680, was sentenced to be hung. She
was finally released from prison, though never acquitted nor pardoned.
(4) A similar disturbance in the house of Mr. Mompesson, in Tedworth,
County of Wilts, England. (5) The molestations of Nicholas Desbo/ough,
of Hartford, in 1683, described by Mr. John Russell, minister of Hadley,
Mass. (6) The diabolical curiosities in the house of George Walton, of
Portsmouth, N. H., in 1682, furnished by Mr. Joshua Moody, then minister

l6o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

of that town. (7) Uncanny proceedings in the house of Antonio Hortando,
near Salmon Falls, N. H., furnished by Mr. Thomas Broughton, of Boston.
Then follow two chapters, one on " Demons and Possessed Persons," and
another on " Apparitions," which embody the views common at that day
on these subjects. These three chapters fill eighty of the two hundred and
sixty-two pages of the London reprint of I856. 1

The theory of the English courts at the time was, that, if a spectre prac-
tising diabolical molestations appeared to any one, it was conclusive and
legal evidence that the person so represented was a witch. This theory,
accepted by Sir Matthew Hale, was adopted at the Salem trials, and the
executions went on till it was supplanted by the more humane doctrine of
the Boston ministers, that the Devil himself, and not the person accused,
caused the representation. Mr. Mather, in this paper, condemns the barbar-
ous theory of the English courts. He says : " The Devil does not only him-
self afflict diseases upon men, but represents the visages of innocent persons
to the phansies of the diseased, making them believe that they are tormented
by them [the persons represented], when only himself does it." This doc-
trine he elaborated in his Cases of Conscience, 1692.

2. Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, 1689, has already been
described (p. 142).

3. Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, i693. 2 This most
notable book on New-England witchcraft is a miscellaneous collection made
up of brief reports of the trials of five of the witches executed at Salem ;
two discourses on diabolism, by Mr. Mather, and " several remarkable curi-
osities " connected with the subject. The book was written in the autumn
of 1692, while the colony was in an uproar in consequence of the dreadful
scenes which were occurring at Salem, and " by special command of his
Excellency the Governor of the Province." As Mr. Mather attended none
of the examinations or trials at Salem, the reports are, he says, " an abridg-
ment collected out of
the court papers, on
this occasion put into
my hands. I report /^

these matters not as an

1 Several of the original narratives, from 2 [Of Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Ittvisi-

which Mr. Mather made his abridgments, are ble World, it is thought that the first Boston

printed in the Mather Papers (4 Mass. Hist. Coll. edition, though dated 1693, was really printed in

viii.), and, as they give fuller details, are worthy 1692, as the imprimatur of the London edition

of examination by persons interested in compar- of 1693 is dated Dec. 23, 1692. Samuel Mather

ing the earlier phenomena with modern spiritual puts it 1692, and the attestation of Stoughton

manifestations. Mr. Whiting's account of the and Sewall is dated Oct. n, 1692. There were

Ann Cole case is on pp. 466-469; Mr. Willard's, differences in the titles of these editions. Mr.

of the Knap case, pp. 555-571; Mr. Russell's, Charles Deane has what is called a "second"

of the Desborough case, pp. 86-88; and Mr. edition, London, 1693; a "d Harvard College

Moody's, of the Walton case, p. 361. Further Library has a "third" edition, London, 1693,

information concerning all these cases will be both showing some changes in the title,

found in my notes to Governor Hutchinson's and both abridged from the earlier edition.

Witchcraft Delusion of 1692, 1870. ED.]

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. l6l

advocate, but as an historian." Stephen Sewall, the clerk of the court at
Salem, and brother of Judge Sewall, furnished these reports. 1 As Stephen
Sewall was a stanch believer in the Salem methods, he is doubtless respon-
sible for anecdotes and statements contained therein which have been
charged to Mr. Mather's credulity and superstition. 2

The book is an intense and highly-wrought expression of the author's
implicit belief in the reality of the witchcraft and diabolical agency then
abroad in the land ; and yet, extravagant as it appears to modern readers,
it is a faithful representation of the popular alarm and spiritual terror of
that period. As to the fact of witchcraft, and that a witch, if legally proved
to be such, should not be suffered to live, there was no difference of opinion
in the community ; but as to the method of detecting and trying witches,
there was an animated and bitter controversy concerning what was then
called the Salem and the Boston methods. Mr. Mather says:

" The Devil hath made us like a troubled sea ; 't is by our quarrels that we spoil
our prayers. To wrangle the Devil out of the country will be truly a new experiment.
It is wonderfully necessary that some healing attempts be made at this time. I am so
desirous of a share in them, that, if being thrown overboard were needful to allay the
storm, I should think dying a trifle to be undergone for so great a blessedness."

Mr. Mather, then less than thirty years of age, undertook to act the
difficult role of a middle-man and pacificator. He adds :

" I would most importunately, in the first place, entreat every man to maintain a
holy jealousy over his own soul at this time. Let us more generally agree to maintain
a kind opinion of one another ; but if we disregard this rule of charity we shall give
our body politic to be burned" (pp. n, 12).

He spoke in charitable terms of the judges, as men eminent for wisdom
and virtue :

" They went about the work for which they were commissioned with very great
aversion ; so they still have been under heart-breaking solicitudes how they might
therein best serve both God and man. Have there been any disputed methods used
for the discovery of the works of darkness ? It may be none but what have had great
precedents in other parts of the world. Surely they have, at the worst, been the faults
of a well-meaning ignorance (pp. n, 12). . . . There are very worthy men who
are not a little dissatisfied at the proceedings in the prosecution of this witchcraft,

1 Mr. Mather, Sept. 20, 1692, wrote to Stephen was "speaking about publishing some trials of

Sewall, addressing him " My dear and very oblig- the witches." (Judge Sewall's Diary, i., p. 366.)
ing Stephen," asking him for " a narrative of the 2 An anecdote of this class is in Bancroft

evidences given in at the trials of half-a-dozen, (ii. 259, ed. of 1876), and is used by a dozen

or if you please a dozen, of the principal witches other writers, as a choice illustration of Mr.

that have been condemned." This letter has Mather's credulity: "As this woman [Bridget

been strangely misrepresented. (See North Bishop] was under a guard, passing by the great

American Review, cviii. 391.) Two days later and spacious meeting-house in Salem, she gave

they had an interview at the house of Judge a look towards the house, and immediately a

Sewall, in Boston, when Judge Stoughton and demon, invisibly entering the house, tore down

John Hathorn, of Salem, were present, and there a part of it " (p. 138, ed. of 1862).
VOL. II. 21.

162 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

. . . those reverend persons [of Boston] who gave this advice [of June 15] to the
honorable council : ' That presumptions, whereupon persons may be committed, and
much more convictions, whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witch-
crafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused persons being
represented by a spectre unto the afflicted. Nor are alterations made in the sufferers
by a look or touch of the accused to be esteemed an infallible evidence of guilt, but
frequently liable to be abused by the Devil's ledgerdemains ' " (p. 12).

From the principles of this advice, which was drawn up by himself, 1 he
never swerved.

4. Increase Mather's Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft, i6g^. 2
While the trials and executions were going on in Salem, in the summer
of 1692, Increase Mather was requested by the ministers of Boston and the
vicinity to prepare a more elaborate statement of their views than was con-
tained in their advice of June 15, which the judges did not accept. He
finished the work October 3, and it was printed soon after in Boston and
London. The main purpose of the treatise was to show the injustice and
illegality of spectral testimony which was freely admitted in the trials at
Salem. Its preface to the " Christian Reader," written by Samuel Willard, 3
is signed by fourteen ministers, who say : " That there are devils and
witches the Scriptures assert and experience confirms ; they are the com-
mon enemies of mankind and set upon mischief. But certainly the more
execrable the crime is, the more critical care is to be used in the exposing
of the names, liberties, and lives of men (especially of a godly conversa-
tion) to the imputation of it." They express their hearty consent to, and
concurrence with, what is contained in the treatise. The author meets the
whole question at issue in his opening sentence : -

" The first case that I am desired to express my judgment in, is this : ' Whether it
is not possible for the Devil to impose on the imaginations of persons bewitched, and
to cause them to believe that an innocent, yea, that a pious person does torment them,
when the Devil himself does it ; or whether Satan may not appear in the shape of an
innocent and pious as well as a nocent and wicked person, to afflict such as suffer by
diabolical molestations?' The answer to the question must be affirmative." (App.
to C. M's Wonders, p. 225, ed. of 1862.)

1 See Cotton Mather's Life of Increase Mather, was published by Dunton, but it had a preface
1723, p. 165, and Samuel Mather's Life. of Cotton of ten pages of matter, "A True Narrative of
Mather, 1729, p. 45. May 31, 1693, tnre e days some Remarkable Passages. . . . Collected by
before the trials began at Salem, Mr. Mather Deodat Lawson ; " and a general title prefixed to
wrote a letter to John Richards, one of the the book is A further account of the Tryals of
judges, in which he cautioned the judges against New England Witches, etc. The matter of Law-
admitting spectral testimony. This letter is son's had been printed the year before at Boston
printed in Mather Papers, 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., in ten pages quarto, as a Brefe and True Narra-
viii. 391. If the judges at Salem had accepted five of Passages, etc. ED.]

the caution and acted upon it, no accused person 8 "Oct. n, 1692. Read Mr. Willard's epis-

could have been convicted. tie to Mr. Mather's book as to Cases of Con-

2 [The Boston edition of Cases of Conscience science touching Witchcraft." Judge Sewall's
has this imprint : " Boston, printed and sold by Diary, i. 36?. It is strange that in the year
Benjamin Harris, at the London Coffee-House, 1692 so little about witchcraft appears in Sew-
1693." The London edition of the same year all's Diary.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 163

He then proceeds to prove, by citing many examples, that the Devil can
assume any shape he chooses, even that of an angel of light. " This then
I declare and testify, that to take away the life of any one, merely because
a spectre or devil in a bewitched or possessed person does accuse them,
will bring the guilt of innocent blood on the land." The strange exhibi-
tions in the afflicted persons from the sight or touch of the accused, which
had also been accepted as testimony, he shows are no evidence of guilt, as
he believes they are produced by demons ; and he affirms that the oath and
testimony of confessed witches, and of persons possessed, should never be
received. A trial for witchcraft ought to be conducted by the same law and
rules of evidence as a trial for murder, burglary, or any other felony. He
says :

"The Word of God instructs jurors and judges to proceed upon clear human
testimony. But the Word no where giveth us the least intimation that every one is a
witch, at whose look the bewitched person shall fall into fits ; nor yet, that any other
means should be used for the discovery of witches than what may be used for the
finding out of murderers, adulterers, and other criminals. . . . The ways of trying
witches long used in many nations (as the judicious Mr. Perkins expresseth it) were
invented by the Devil, that so innocent persons might be condemned, and some noto-
rious witches escape " (pp. 268, 270).

It will readily be seen that a trial for witchcraft, conducted by the " Bos-
ton method," would be a very harmless proceeding. There were no more
executions after Mr. Mather's treatise appeared. 1 Says Cotton Mather, in
the Life of his father (p. 166) :

" But what gave the most illumination to the country, and a turn to the tide, was
the special service which he did in composing and publishing his very learned Cases of
Conscience concerning Witchcraft ; in which treatise he did with incomparable reason
and reading demonstrate that the Devil may appear in the shape of an innocent and
a virtuous person, to afflict those that suffer by diabolical molestations ; and that the
ordeal of the sight and touch is not a conviction of a covenant with the Devil, but
liable to great exceptions against the lawfulness, as well as the evidence, of it. Upon
this the Governor pardoned such as had been condemned, and the spirit of the country
ran violently upon acquitting all the accused."

In the postscript of Cases of Conscience Increase Mather says : " Some,
I hear, have taken up a notion that the book newly published by my son
[ Wonders of the Invisible World~\ is contradictory to this of mine. ' Tis

1 [Some of the writers already referred to as roughs ; had I been one of his judges, I could

implicating the Mathers in the Salem method, not have acquitted him." The writers of the

find ground for this view in what Increase other side claim that this extract should be taken

Mather says in this treatise : " I hope the think- with the explanation that Burroughs was hanged

ing part of mankind will be satisfied that there after conviction by human not spectral testi-

was more than that which is called spectre evi- mony. This is fully presented by Mr. Poole in

dence for the conviction of the persons con- his article in the North American Review, vol.

demned. I was not myself present at any of the cviii., and need not be gone into in detail here,

trials, excepting one. viz., that of George Bur- ED.]

164 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

strange that such imaginations should enter the minds of men. I perused
and approved of that book before it was printed ; and nothing but my rela-
tion to him hindered me from recommending it to the world." 1

5. Samuel Willard's Some Miscellany Observations on our present Debates
respecting Witchcrafts, in a Dialogue between S and B, 1692?

The subject of this anonymous pamphlet, of 16 pages, is substantially
the same as that of Cases of Conscience, How shall witch-trials be con-
ducted? but it is treated in the form of a dialogue between " S and B,"
which initials were probably intended to represent " Salem " and " Boston."
" S " defends the spectral theory of the judges at Salem, and " B " the
views of the Boston ministers. That Mr. Willard was the author of the
tract appears from the statement of Cotton Mather in Some Few Remarks,
p. 35 ; and Calef, in More Wonders, p. 38, quotes from it and mentions Mr.
Willard as the author. Mr. Willard, in his views of witchcraft and its
proper treatment, was perfectly in accord with the Mathers. The tract
is written with great ability, and simply as a specimen of dialectic treat-
ment it is not easy to name one that is its superior. " S " states and defends
the popular theory of spectral evidence, and " B " subjects it to the most
searching and scathing condemnation. There is no paper of the same limits
extant which will give the reader so clear an insight into the essence of the
exciting controversy, in 1692, concerning the methods of trying witches,
which culminated in making it impossible for another person to be exe-
cuted for witchcraft in New England.

6. Thomas Brattle's Account of Witchcraft in the County of Essex, 1692.
Mr. Brattle was a prominent merchant of Boston, a large benefactor of
Harvard College, and its treasurer from 1693 to his death in 1713. Presi-
dent Quincy says of him that " he was distinguished for opulence, activity,
and talent, and for the zeal and readiness with which he devoted his time,
wealth, and intellectual power to objects of private benevolence and public
usefulness." 3 He was one of the founders of the Brattle-Street Church, and
was a Fellow of the Royal Society. 4 Mr Brattle's Account is dated Oct.
8, 1692, and is addressed to a clergyman who had asked for the information,
and whose name is unknown. The paper was first printed in 1798, in the fifth

1 Cases of Conscience is reprinted in J. R. and then suffered to escape from the Province.
Smith's London edition of Wonders of the In- Mr. Brattle (p. 69) complains of the partiality
visible World, 1862, pp. 219-288; and the Advice shown him, when other persons whose cases were
of the Boston Ministers of June 15, 1692, is on the same were actually imprisoned, and refused
pp. 289, 290. The latter is copied into Hutchin- bail on any terms. The tract has been reprinted
son's History of Massachusetts (ii. 52), with several in the Congregational Quarterly, Boston, July,
verbal errors and omissions. It is omitted from 1869, ii. 401, and issued in a separate form. No
Salem Witchcraft, 1867 ; and Cases of Conscience mention is made of it in Salem Witchcraft, 1867.
is not even mentioned in that work. 8 History of Harvard College, i. 410.

2 The only original copy of this tract which I * The statement, often repeated, that a person
have seen is in the Library of the Mass. Hist. Soci- of Mr. Brattle's character, standing, and dignity
ety. It was printed at Philadelphia, by William assisted Robert Calef in the preparation of his
Bradford, for Hezekiah Usher. Mr. Usher was book (see Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1858, p. 288 ;
one of the persons arrested for witchcraft. He and Salem Witchcraft, ii. 461) is too improbable
was kept for two weeks in a private house, to be seriously considered.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 165

volume of the Massachusetts Historical Collections, pp. 60-79. It contains
much important information which is mentioned by no other writer. " I
am very open," says Mr. Brattle, " to communicate my thoughts unto you,
and in plain terms to tell you what my opinion is of the Salem methods."
He describes and pronounces them " rude and barbarous methods." "This
Salem philosophy," he says, " some men may call the new philosophy; but
I think it deserves the name of Salem superstition and sorcery, and it is not
fit to be" named in a land of such light as New England is." Concerning
the witnesses who confessed that they had made a league with the Devil,
he says :

" They are deluded, imposed upon, and under the influence of some evil spirit ;
and, therefore, unfit to be evidences either against themselves or any one else. . . .
But although the Chief Judge [Stoughtorr] and some of the other judges be very
zealous in these proceedings, yet this you may take for a truth, that there are several
about the Bay, men of understanding, judgment, and piety, inferior to few, if any, in
New England, that do utterly condemn the said proceedings, and do freely deliver
their judgment in the case to be this, viz : that these methods will utterly ruin and
undo poor New England. "

Several of them he mentions, Simon Bradstreet, Thomas Danforth, 1
Increase Mather, Samuel Willard, and Nathaniel Saltonstall.

" Excepting Mr. Hale [of Beverly], Mr. Noyes and Mr. Parris [both of Salem],
the reverend elders, almo.st throughout the whole country, are very much dissatisfied.
The principal men of Boston, and thereabout, are generally agreed that irregular and
dangerous methods have been taken as to these matters."

Cotton Mather's name does not appear in the narrative, except as the
friend and comforter of the accused. Mr. Brattle (p. 76) says: " I cannot
but think very honorably of the endeavors of a reverend person in Boston,"
whom he does not name, but the description fitly applies to Mr. Mather. 2

7. Robert Calefs More Wonders of the In-visible World, I7OO. 3 "It
is remarkable," says the writer of Salem Witchcraft, 1867 (ii. 461), "that
Brattle does not mention Calef." No other writer of the date of 1692
mentions Calef. There is doubt at this day who Calef was, though the
writer named says he was " a son of Robert Calef,
of Roxbury." The name nowhere appears until
the Salem tragedy had been acted, the curtain had
dropped, the lights had gone out, and the com-
munity had recovered its senses. If he be the person mentioned, Calef must
have been, from the best genealogical inferences which can now be drawn, a

1 For interview with Danforth, see SewalPs ceived his tribute of praise openly, and by name,
Diary, i. 367. on the preceding page.

2 See North American Review, 108, p. 387, 8 [It seems to have been issued in two
where I have given the grounds on which this London impressions in 1700, or at least Mr.
opinion was based. The compliment has been Deane's copy has two titles which are dif-
claimed for Mr. Willard ; but Mr. Willard re- ferent. ED ]

1 66

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age, flying his kite or trundling his hoop
in the streets of Boston, when Mr. Brattle wrote his account. The reputa-
tion which has been associated with the name of Calef for the past century,
as a stalwart agent in putting an end to Salem witchcraft, is an anachronism,

WILLIAM STOUGHTON.

a myth, and a delusion. His personal history is a blank which the most
assiduous investigation has not been able to fill, or even to supply with the
most common details. It is not known where or when he was born, when

1 [This likeness of the presiding Justice in Sewall, he never was brought to acknowledge
the Salem witchcraft trials follows a portrait now his error in the matter. His character is drawn
hanging in Memorial Hall, at Cambridge. Unlike in Dr. Ellis's chapter. En.|

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 167

he died, or where he was buried ; and yet he lived in Boston, " the Metropo-
lis of the English America," and his will is on file in the Suffolk Records. 1
In his book he styles himself " Merchant, of Boston ; " in a deed executed
shortly before he died, "Clothier;" and by Cotton Mather he is styled
" Weaver ; " "a man who makes little conscience of lying ; " "a very wicked
sort of a Sadducee," etc.

The earliest mention of the name of Robert Calef on record in connec-
tion with witchcraft is in an account of a visit he made, Sept. 13, 1693, at
the house of Margaret Rule, she then being in the midst of her diabolical
afflictions. Thirty or forty other persons were in the room. Increase and
Cotton Mather called at the same time to administer spiritual consolation.
Calef made a second visit six days later, when the Mathers were not present,
and he wrote out an account of both visits, in which he freely used the
names of the Mathers. These accounts he circulated in the community.
Cotton Mather, hearing of the use he was making of their names, sent for
the paper, and, on examining it, pronounced its statements base and
malicious falsehoods, and threatened to prosecute him if he circulated the
paper any further. A bitter and life-long quarrel was the result. Calef per-
sisting in his course, Mr. Mather caused him to be arrested for libek Calef
thereupon wrote to Mr. Mather a letter, half-apologetical, professing to be
" one that reverences your person and office." expressing his belief in
witchcraft, and desiring an interview at the book-seller's, that they might
exchange views on the subject of diabolism. 2 In consequence of this letter
Mr. Mather did not appear against him; and on Jan. 15, 1693-94, wrote to
him a very severe and fatherly letter, 3 stating that he found " scarcely any
one thing in the whole paper, whether respecting my father or myself, fairly

1 Mr. S. G. Drake, in Witchcraft Delusion in been about 15 or 16 years of age in 1693 when

New England, 1876, v. ii., gives the " Pedigree of his name first appears, and about 23 when his

Calef," and makes Robert Calef the collector book was published.

of More Wonders (for the book professes to Within the past five years a doubt has been
have no author) the fourth son of Robert Calef suggested as to the identity of the person whose
(or Calfe, or Calf; the name was variously writ- name is attached to the book. The doubt has
ten), who died at Roxbury, April 13, 1719, aged arisen from the apparent improbability that one
71 years. Mr. Savage and many other writers so young as the son could have written or corn-
make substantially the same statements, and they piled such a noted book. (See N. E. Hist, and
are probably correct. There is no uncertainty Geneal, Res;., xxx. 461 ; and F. S. Drake's His-
about the date of death or the age of the senior tory of the Town of Roxbury, 1878, p. 149).
Robert Calef; for they are taken from his grave- These writers claim that Robert Calef, Sr., and
stone at Roxbury. He must, therefore, have not the son, was the compiler, and the person
been 44 years of age in 1692; and his fourth son whose memory we are expected to honor. I
Robert could not have been, in the natural order have not seen the evidence to justify either the
of events, more than 14 or 15 years old in 1692. statement or the expectation. There is nothing
Mr. Drake states that the son "died near the in the book which a person of the age of tfye son,
close of 1722 or early in 1723, aged about 45." with the help he had, could not have done ; and
Mr. Savage says: "Of his death we have no there is much in it which can best be explained
exact date ; but it was between April [11] 1722 by assuming it to be the work of an immature
[when he released a mortgage deed, signing his youth. My conservative tendencies lead me to
name " Robert Calfe " ] and Feb. 18 following, side with the older genealogists,
when his will was proved. Ever honored be his 2 More Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 16.
name !" etc. Assuming that he died late in 1722 Original edition,
or early in 1723, aged about 45, he would have 8 Ibid., p. 19.

i68

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

or truly represented." He points out at great length where Calef has
done them both great injustice and injury. He proposed, in case Calef
desired a true and full narrative of the visit, " whereof such an indecent

-^uTVi^^

LETTER TO BELLOMONT. 1

travesty hath been made," to furnish one. He offered Calef the use of his
library, and invited him to his study, if he cared to investigate the
subject of witchcraft. Calef's conduct in this matter was that of an un-
scrupulous, conceited, and mischievous boy. He writes like a boy, begin-
ning the narrative of his visit to Margaret Rule in this fashion : " In the
evening, when the sun was withdrawn, giving place to darkness to succeed,
I, with some others, were (sic) drawn by curiosity to see Margaret Rule." 2
Calef afterward wrote a succession of crude, rambling letters to Mr.
Mather, Mr. Willard, Mr. Wadsworth, " To the Ministers, whether English,
French, or Dutch," and " To the Ministers in and near Boston ; " each one
growing more presuming, until they became positively insulting and libel-

1 [This fac-simile comes to the Editor through ernor Bellomont. It was obtained by Mr. Lenox

Mr. Deane, and is of an original letter in a copy from Obadiah Rich, and bears the bookplate of

of Calef s book in the Lenox Library, which Sir William Grace, Bart. ED.]
seems to have been a presentation copy to Gov- ' 2 More Wonders, p. 13.

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 169

lous. To none of these epistles did he receive a reply, and he felt cha-
grined at the indifference and contempt in which he was held by the clergy.
Said Mr. Mather, in Some Few Remarks (pp. 34, 35) :

" I have had the honor to be aspersed and abused by Robert Calef. I remember
that when this miserable man [he was then, 1701, twenty-three or twenty-four years of
age] sent unto an eminent minister in the town [Mr. Willard] a libellous letter, which
he has now published, and when he demanded an answer, that reverend person only
said : ' Go, tell him that the answer to him and his letter is in the 26th of Proverbs and
the 4th ' [ ' Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him ' ] .
The reason that made me unwilling to trust any of my writings in the hands of this
man was, because I saw the weaver (though he presumes to call himself a merchant)
was a stranger to all the rules of civility ; and I foresaw I should be served as now
I find."

A large share of the credit which in modern times has been awarded to
Robert Calef grows out of the impression that, in an age when everybody
else believed in witches and witchcraft, he was a disbeliever in the whole
theory of diabolism. If we assume that his book was an honest expression
of his opinions, but the Boston ministers, whom he libelled, held that
there was nothing honest in the book, he was not a disbeliever in witch-
craft. "Not but that there are witches," he says in his preface (p. 3),
" such as the law of God describes." Again (pp. 17, 18) :

" That there are witches is not the doubt ; the Scriptures else were in vain, which
assign their punishment to be by death ; but what this witchcraft is, or wherein it does
consist, seems to be the whole difficulty. . . . And [I] do further add, that as the
Scriptures are full that there is witchcraft, so 'tis as plain that there are possessions ;
and that the bodies of the possessed have hence been not only afflicted, but strangely
agitated, if not their tongues improved to foretell futurities, etc., and why not to accuse
the innocent as bewitching them, having pretence to divination to gain credence.
This being reasonable to be expected from him who is the father of lies, to the end
that he may thereby involve a country in blood, malice, and evil, surmising which he
greedily seeks after, and so finally lead them from their fear and dependence upon
God to fear him, and a supposed witch, thereby attaining his end upon mankind."

With this full avowal of his belief in the then popular idea of witchcraft,
he had a whimsey on the brain that witches could not "commissionate "
(this was a favorite word of his) devils to afflict and molest mortals. This
proposition, years after the trials were at an end, and when the community
was slowly recovering from the sad memories of 1692, Calef was constantly
bringing to the attention of the ministers, and challenging them to discuss
it with him. What he had to say against the injustice of the methods of
trying witches by spectral testimony at Salem had all been said, and better
said, by the two Mathers, Mr. Willard, and the other Boston ministers. The
obvious intent of Calef and the several unknown contributors who aided
him was to malign the Boston ministers and to make a sensation.

VOL. II. 22.

170 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

It is difficult to determine how much of the book was written by Calef
himself, or what responsibility he had in its compilation. The early letters
were probably his own ; though he prints them, he says, " with some small
variation or addition." The later controversial letters over his initials, if
he wrote them at all, he doubtless had assistance in. A Scotchman named
Stuart contributed two letters to prove the reality of witchcraft. The his-
torical portions, which are full of errors or something worse, and the review
of Mather's Life of Sir Win. Phips, must have been furnished by a person
more mature than Calef. The reports of the Salem trials were copied bodily
from Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World.

The book was printed in London in 1700, eight years after witch prose-
cutions in New England were forever at an end, and when the country was
fully conscious of, and was mourning over, the dreadful scenes which had
occurred at Salem. To religious minds it seemed like indecent sacrilege
to tear open these healing wounds. For two years or more previous to the
publication, Calef had been showing portions of his manuscript, and saying
he should send it to England to be printed. The ministers were greatly
annoyed thereby, for they knew they were misrepresented and slandered
therein. 1 When the book was printed and came back to Boston, there was
naturally great excitement and indignation concerning it. This feeling had
little relation to any opinions Calef had expressed, or any statements he
may have made, on the matter of witchcraft. That was an old and worn-out
theme. The book was denounced and hated because it was an untruthful
and atrocious libel on the public sentiment of Boston, and on the conduct
of its ministers. Dr. Eliot says Increase Mather publicly burned the book
at Harvard College. Mr. Mather had resided in England for four years as
a preacher, and four years as an agent of the Massachusetts Colony. He
had many personal friends and correspondents in England, and he was
especially sensitive as to his reputation there. Cotton Mather was enraged
beyond expression at the abuse which his father and himself received in
the book. 2 Nothing so kindled the wrath of the son as abusive treatment
of his father.

Besides the malicious innuendoes with which the book abounds, Calef
directly charges both the Mathers with inciting, and being in full sympathy
with, the Salem tragedies. " It is rather a wonder," he says, p.. 153, " that
no more blood was shed ; for if that advice of his [the Governor's] pastors

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1858, p. 289. the whole matter unto the Lord, praying that my

2 The measure of Mr. Mather's indignation opportunities to glorify my Lord Jesus Christ
may be inferred from the means he took to re- might not be prejudiced. Other supplications
press it. Nov. 5, 1700 (a copy of Calef's book proper on this occasion I carried before the
had just arrived in Boston), he wrote in his Lord ; and a sweet calm was produced in my
Diary: " I set myself to beseech the Lord that mind." Mr. Mather regarded himself as "the
he would assist me with his grace to carry it chief butt of his [Calef's] malice, though many
prudently and patiently, and not give way to any other better servants of the Lord are most mali-
distemper under the buffets which are now likely ciously abused by him." Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc.,
to be given unto me, but imitate and represent 1858, p. 290.

the gentleness of my Saviour. And I resigned

WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON. 171

[the two Mathers] could have still prevailed with the Governor, witchcraft
had not been so shammed off as it was." The book charges the Boston
ministers, in their advice of June 15, 1692, with endorsing the Salem
methods. It accuses Cotton Mather with immodest conduct in handling
Margaret Rule, and praying with her alone. It arraigns Mr. Mather for his
management in the case of the Goodwin children, and for " kindling those
flames that, in Sir William [PhipsJ's time, threatened the devouring this
country," meaning Salem witchcraft. It misrepresents Mr. Willard's
Some Miscellany Observations as " liable to a male (sic} construction, even to
the endangering to revive what it most opposes, and to bring those practices
again on foot which in the day thereof were so terrible to this whole coun-
try" (p. 38). Calef, or some one using his initials, wrote to Mr. Wadsworth,
pastor of the First Church, and later President of Harvard College, criti-
cising a sermon preached Jan. 14, 1697, on the occasion of a public fast,
observed on account of the errors committed in the time of the late witch-
crafts, and said: " For a minister of the gospel (pastor of the old meeting)
to abet such notions, and to stir up the magistrates to such prosecutions,
and this without any cautions given, is what is truly amazing, and of most
dangerous consequence" (p. 53).

It is obvious that a book of this character, printed while all the men
maligned in it were living, would make a sensation ; and the only mystery
about it is, that in modern times the animus of the book has been so
misunderstood, and that its historical value and the character of its author
have been so over-rated.

8. Some Few Remarks ttfion a Scandalous Book against the Gospel and
Ministry of New England, written by one Robert Calef, 1701. This publi-
cation is an indignant reply, by seven members of the Second Church, to
the charges which Calef s book had heaped upon their two ministers and
the other clergymen of Boston. One of the writers was John Goodwin, the
father of the children who had been strangely afflicted in I688. 1

On Dec. 4, 1700, Cotton Mather writes thus in his Diary:

" My pious neighbors are so provoked at the diabolical wickedness of the man
who has published a volume of libels against my father and myself, that they set apart
whole days of prayer to complain unto God against him, and this day particularly."

Again, in February, he writes:

"Neither my father nor myself thought it proper for us to publish unto the
churches our own vindication from the vile reproaches and calumnies that Satan, by
his instrument Calf, had cast upon us ; but the Lord put it into the hearts of a con-

1 John Goodwin here tells again the story of them. " Never before," he says, " had I the
his domestic afflictions. He replies to Calef's least acquaintance with him ; he never advised
slanders by stating that Cotton Mather had me to anything concerning the law or trial of
nothing to do with the case until his children the accused persons," and " matters were man-
had been under their strange molestations for aged by me in prosecution of the supposed
three months ; and then he invited Mr. Mather criminal wholly without the advice of any min-
to his house, with other ministers, to pray for i s ter or lawyer, or any other person " (p. 46).

172 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

siderable number of our flock, who are in their temporal condition more equal unto
our adversary, to appear in our vindication. . . . The book being hereupon printed,
the Lord blesses it for the illumination of his people in many points of our endeavor
to serve them, whereof they had been ignorant."

Calef made no reply in print, though Mr. Mather intimates in his Diary,
April 5, that Calef was going on with his scribblings; and witchcraft soon
ceased to be a subject of public comment in New England. Except for
Calef's book the discussion would have ended six or eight years earlier.

The theory of witchcraft, after the methods of its treatment had been
reformed, was as harmless as the doctrine of Foreordination in the West-
minster Catechism. The belief, however, in the reality of witchcraft retained
its hold on the popular mind for many years later. What has been called
" the explosion of the witchcraft delusion," immediately following and in
consequence of the Salem executions, is itself a delusion. Twenty years
afterward, when the General Court reversed the attainders of the persons
executed in 1692, and voted compensation to their families, the public act
of the Court began thus: " Forasmuch as, in the year of our Lord 1692,
two several towns within this Province were infested with a horrible witch-
craft or possession of devils," etc. ; and it assigns as the cause of those
errors " the influence and energy of the evil spirits, so great at that time,
acting in and upon those who were the principal accusers and witnesses,
proceeding so far as to cause a prosecution to be had of persons of known
and good reputation." 1

As the men of that generation passed away, the opinion became preva-
lent that the strange manifestations which had amazed the beholders were
acts of fraud and deception on the part of the " afflicted children ; " and
when Governor Hutchinson wrote, seventy years later, this was his opinion,
and largely that of the educated men of his day. A belief, however, in
spiritual and diabolical agency has never wholly faded out from the minds
of the masses. 2 In our day it has been revived by a school or sect which
claims to have six million adherents in the United States. Those who hold
the doctrines of modern "Spiritualism" will see in the elevation of Margaret
Rule from her bed, which they call " levitation," and in the conduct of
the " afflicted children," incidents which have occurred under their own
eyes, or are recorded as verities in the books in which they have implicit
confidence.

1 Woodward's Records of Salem Witchcraft, land, who was supposed to be a wizard, was
1864, ii. 216. subjected to the Hopkins water-test by a mob of

2 Aug. 3, 1863, an a g fi d deaf-and-dumb per- small tradesmen, and died from his injuries,
son, at Castle Hedingham, Essex County, Eng- Annual Register, 1863, p. 147.

CHAPTER V.

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD.

BY THE REV. EDWARD E. HALE, D.D.,

Minister of the South Congregational Church.

the 25th of August, 1695, the flag was out at the Castle almost all day
for Pincarton. Pincarton was master of a merchantman in the Eng-
lish trade ; and in the evening his vessel and he came up the bay. Pincarton
announced that the Earl of Bellomont was made Governor of New England,
as successor to Sir William Phips.

He was the first live lord who had ever governed the independent little
province, and the last. And the independent little province was by no
means indifferent to the honor of having a lord to be its governor. This
was a very amiable lord. He was a lord who was willing to go to the
Thursday lecture, and to make himself generally agreeable. He would
drink a glass of good Madeira with the sturdiest Puritan there was left among
them, and do the honors of the Province House affably to all comers. King
William had not hit the popular sentiment when he appointed that blas-
pheming old sailor, Sir William Phips, to govern these sensitive and jealous
Independents. Their leaders were gentlemen, and they were well pleased
to have a gentleman at their head. They were not pleased to lose the old
right of choosing their governor. But, next to that, it was a good thing to
have a king who was not a Stuart, and to have a governor attached to the
Liberal party, who had come from the House of Commons, in the place of
an adventurer from their own frontier, promoted from the forecastle.

Pincarton's news was confirmed the next month, when Mr. Edward
Brattle arrived, after a six weeks' run
from Falmouth in England ; but he
reported that Lord Bellomont would ^
hardly come over before spring. The ^
other news he brought, as Judge Sewall reports it, was that the Confederates
had had success against Namur, Cassel, etc. ; and that the " Venetians have
gained a great victory over the Turks in the Morea," a scrap of intelli-
gence which connects the politics of those days with those of to-day.

174 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

The news that Bellomont was to be appointed governor had thus leaked
out early. In fact, it was more than a year after these notes of Sewall that
the king directed the Board of Trade to prepare Bellomont's commission.
He was to unite the governments of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and
New York ; and to hold the military command of their forces, and those of
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the Jerseys. Matters moved slowly. Bel-
lomont's instructions were not finished till Sept. 9, 1697 ; his vessel, when he
sailed, was blown off the coast of New York, and obliged to take refuge in
Barbadoes, and he did not arrive in New York until April 2, 1698. It was
in the period after he had been named as governor, before he sailed, that
he concluded, in London, his celebrated agreement with William Kidd for
the suppression of piracy, which led to the most interesting events in his
American administration. It was not, as Macaulay supposed, a plan
which suggested itself to Bellomont in New York after his arrival in his
government.

When, at last, Lord Bellomont arrived at New York, the General Court
of Massachusetts sent a delegation to present to him their resolutions of
respect. Of this respect he was not unworthy. He was, according to
Macaulay, " a man of eminently fair character, upright, courageous, and
independent." In the few years of his American administration he did
nothing to forfeit this character. " I send you, my Lord, to New York," said
William, " because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses
down, and because I believe you are such a man." The abuses were those
connected with privateering, which readily passed into piracy. Teach, or
Blackbeard, Tew, Bradish, and Bellamy are names which still linger in bal-
lads, or in the Pirates Own Book ; l while other names of rascals less famous
may be traced in the colonial records, or are preserved in the local annals
of the sea-board towns.

As soon as Bellomont arrived in New York, he addressed himself heartily
to this business of suppressing piracy ; and his letters home show energy
and spirit. He distinctly charges Fletcher, his predecessor, with issuing
commissions to pirates in the Red Sea and the East Indies, and reports that
Fletcher was on the most intimate terms with them when they returned with
their plunder. These pirates, he says, were fitted out from Rhode Island
and New York. Bellomont did not hesitate to call New York a " nest of
pirates ; " and, what was worse, he proved it.

1 It is possible that no less a person than In naming his apprentice ballads, Franklin

Benjamin Franklin is the author of the spirited says: "The other was a sailor's song, on the tak-

lines, ing of Teach, or Blackbeard, the pirate. They

were wretched stuff." Franklin's ballad has

" Then each man to his gun, never been found, unless the verse above, which

For the work must be done, T owe to the accurate memory of Dr. George

With cutlass, sword, or pistol ; TT , , r . TV t u. i . n. i

. j . _., .. Havward, be a part of it. The other ballad
And when we no longer can strike a blow,

Then fire the magazine, boys, and up we go. which Franklin names was the "Light House

It is better to swim in the sea below Tragedy," and was based on the loss of Captain

Than to hang in the air, and to feed the crow, Worthiiake and his daughters. The history of

Said jolly Ned Teach of Bristol." the ,< Tr a g edy " belongs in another chapter.

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD.

175

To suppress these very piracies, Bellomont, as already stated, had in
London associated himself with William Kidd of New York in fitting out the

1 [This cut follows a photograph given in ministration of Bellomont, 1879, as from a painting
President de Peyster's Address on the Life and Ad- of the Governor. It does not, however, closely

176 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

"Adventure galley." Robert Livingston of New York introduced Kidd l to
Bellomont, and recommended him as a suitable person for this business. 2
Kidd had taken a manly part in the Leisler disturbances a few years before.
We have the full contract between Kidd, Bellomont, and Livingston. At
Bellomont's instance, a number of people of quality subscribed for the outfit
of the galley. They formed what we should now call a "joint-stock com-
pany." The king was to receive one tenth of whatever the vessel brought
home, and Halifax, Somers, and Bellomont were among the subscribers. In
this vessel Kidd sailed for New York, where he selected his crew. Fletcher,
who was acting as Governor of New York, and himself commissioning the
very pirates whom Kidd was to suppress, reported unfavorably of the expe-
dition. He said as soon as they sailed, on June 22, 1697: " It is generally
believed here they will have money, per fas aut nefas ; that if he miss the
design intended it will not be in Kidd's power to govern such a horde of men
under no pay." But Fletcher was in opposition, and there were other and
good reasons for distrusting his opinion. Kidd's first destination was to be
the Indian Ocean. Thither he sailed, and for a year nothing definite was
heard of him.

In August, 1698, however, the new East India Company reported to the
Government that, instead of suppressing the pirates, he had on several occa-
sions turned pirate himself. Especially they complained that he had captured
a ship belonging to the Great Mogul, with whom England was on friendly
relations. This ship was called the " Quedah Merchant." The Government,
therefore, sent to all the provinces of America a set of circulars to procure
Kidd's arrest. This proved easy; for in 1699 he appeared in Delaware Bay,
in a sloop with fifty men. He had previously been heard from at Nevis.
And at last he "sailed into the Sound of New York, and set goods on
shore at several places there, and afterwards went to Rhode Island."

He established himself for a time at Gardner's Island, at the head of Long
Island Sound, and sent word to Bellomont at Boston, by a man named
Emmott, that he had with him ten thousand pounds worth of goods; that
he had left the " Quedah Merchant" at Hispaniola, in a creek there, with a
valuable cargo, and that he would prove his innocence of what he had been
charged with.

Bellomont laid Kidd's letters before the Council on the I9th, and also
informed them " that said Emmott had delivered unto his Excellency two

resemble a contemporary copper-plate engraving suppress an enemy privateer now on this coast.''
(4> by 6% inches), showing the Earl in full 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., i. 122. ED.]
armor, with a flowing wig, and inscribed, "His 2 The articles of agreement signed by Kidd
Excellencie Richard Coote, Earle of Bellomont with Bellomont and Livingston are in O'Calla-
& Lord Coote Colooney, in the Kingdom of Ire- ghan's New York, iv. 762. It is, perhaps, worth
land ; Governor of New England, New York, notice that the partnership between another
New Hampshire, and Vice-Admirall of those Robert Livingston with another New York ad-
seas," of which there is a copy in Harvard Col- venturer, a hundred and ten years afterward,
lege Library. ED.] started another " Adventure galley," on a voyage
1 [Kidd had already appeared in Massachu- from which has grown the steam navigation of the
setts history, when, in 1691, he had been com- world. She was afterward called the" Clermont,"
missioned by Bradstreet and the Council " to and made her first voyage in August, 1807.

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD. 177

French passes found in two ships taken by the said Kidd's company by
violence against his will." In a letter home at the same time, Bellomont
describes Kidd's messenger as " a cunning Jacobite, a fast friend of Fletch-
er's, and my avowed enemy."

The council records of Massachusetts, recently copied in England for the
State, give a full account of the transactions when this letter was presented.
They also give in full Bellomont's letter in reply. Kidd relied upon it as a
safe-conduct, or passport; and it must be confessed that its language is
almost as strong as can be used. Bellomont was evidently conscious that
his former relations with Kidd made it necessary for him to proceed with
the utmost caution. He therefore drew this letter in the council chamber,
while the Council was in session, submitted it to them, and received their
approval.

The letter was in the following words :

" I have advised with his Majesty's Council, and showed them this letter, and they
are of opinion if your case be so clear as you (or Mr. Emmott for you) have said,
you may safely come hither and be equipped or fitted out to go to fetch the other
ship ; and I make no doubt but to obtain the King's pardon for you and those few
men you have left, which I understand have been faithful to you, and refused, as well
as you, to dishonor the Commission you had from England. I assure you on my
word and honor I will nicely perform what I have promised, and not to meddle with
the least bitt of whatever goods or treasure you bring here, but that the same shall be
left with such trusty persons as the Council shall advise until I receive orders from
England how it shall be disposed of. Which letter being read was approved of by
the Board."

This safe-conduct accounts for any audacity Kidd showed in coming to
Boston. Livingston came here also. He told Bellomont that unless he
gave up his bond for ten thousand pounds, Kidd would never give up the
" Quedah Merchant" and her rich cargo. The council records give us the
full account of what passed between the Governor and Kidd :

" /// Council, July 3, at his Excellency's House. Captain William Kidd, by com-
mand of his Excellency, having been summoned to appear before his Excellency and
Council this day at five o'clock, post meridiem, to give an account of his proceedings
in his late voyage to Madagascar, the said Kidd accordingly appeared, and prayed his
Lordship to allow him some time and he would prepare an account in writing of his
proceedings, and present to his Lordship and the Board. Time was granted him to
prepare and bring in his narrative until to-morrow at five o'clock, post meridiem, as
also an invoice of the bill of lading on board the sloop and the ship, attested to by
himself and some of his principal officers, with a list of the names of the men on
board the sloop and ship, and of those who belonged to the ' Adventure Galley,' who,
he alleges, refused to obey his commands, and evil entreated him and deserted the
said ship. And the Council adjourned unto the said day and hour, after Captain
Kidd had given a summary account of the lading on board his sloop now in port,
and also on board the ship left at Hispaniola. His Excellency appointed Captain
Hawes, Deputy-Collector, to put some waiters on board."
VOL. n. 23.

178 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

The next day Kidd appeared, but said he had not had time to prepare
his account. The Council accordingly gave him till the next day, when he
did not appear, and was sent for. When he arrived he said he had mistaken
the hour, which he thought was to be in the evening at five o'clock. After
he retired, " His Excellency communicated to the Lieut.-Governor and
some others of the Council several letters which he had received from the
Government in England, expressly commanding him to seize and secure the
said Captain Kidd and his accomplices with their vessels and goods." It is
to be observed that seventeen days had now elapsed since Bellomont sent the
safe-conduct. It is possible that he had received these instructions since that
time. But, as the alarm about Kidd's piracy had reached England eleven
months before, it is more probable that these were the circular orders before
alluded to, and that Bellomont had had them from the beginning. The record
proceeds : " His Excellency having caused Captain Kidd to be seized and
apprehended, said Kidd having neglected to give in a narrative in writing of
his proceedings, etc., by the time set him, and some of the company being
had upon examination before the Board, the same \i.e. the Board] was
thereby hindered from going upon any business of the Court ; and after some
time spent in taking said examinations, adjourned to nine to-morrow." The
next day, which was the 7th of July, Kidd was brought before them ; and it
was ordered that he be committed to prison by mittimus by some members
of the Board who were justices of the peace. On July 1 1

" Captain William Kidd and his accomplices, lately apprehended within this prov-
ince for committing divers acts of piracy, on examination severally, acknowledging and
agreeing thereon that they left a prize ship, of the burden of four hundred tons or
upwards, which they took in the seas in India, at Hispaniola in the West Indies, safely
moored in a river there, and in the care of Henry Bolton and eighteen or twenty men
more, and a considerable quantity of bale goods of India, saltpetre, iron, sugar, etc.,
on board of the same,

"Advised, that his Lordship do forthwith cause to be taken up, equipped, and
manned for his Majesty's service a suitable ship, with good force, to be managed and
applied on the aforesaid affair." Which is, " the securing and bringing away said ship
and lading left there by said Kidd and his company, the charge thereof to be answered
and secured by the goods and treasure imported here by said Kidd and company,
now under seizure and in custody."

Additional stringency was given to all these proceedings from the fact
that just before Kidd's arrest the pirate Bradish, who was in Boston jail,
succeeded in escaping with one Tee Witherly, another pirate, with
the complicity of the maid of the prison-keeper, and, as the Council
believed, by the fault of Ray, the jailer. Ten days after Kidd was com-
mitted to jail, the Council, being informed that he was kept in the
prison-keeper's house, directed that he should be put in the stone prison
and ironed.

Kidd had not come to Boston with any sign of anxiety. He.had brought

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD.

179

his wife with him, 1 and she had brought her maid. They had left the sloop
the " Antonia " at the wharf, and had taken their lodgings at Duncan
Campbell's. Campbell's house must have been the most luxurious house
of entertainment in Boston, for it was here that Bellomont himself had been
received only a few weeks before. At that time Campbell received seven
pounds six shillings and four pence for providing for the Earl's enter-
tainment. Bellomont had made Campbell his messenger in communicating
with Kidd, Kidd being his countryman, that is, a Scotchman, and his
acquaintance. Campbell is described by Dunton as " a bookseller, who
dresses a la mode; who is a very virtuous person, extremely charming;
whose company is coveted by the best gentlemen in Boston, nor is he less
accessible to the fair sex."

When Kidd was arrested, Mrs. Kidd's trunk was broken open, and there
was taken from it " a silver tankard, a silver mug, silver porringer, spoons,
forks, and other pieces of plate, and two hundred and sixty pieces of eight."
These Madam Sarah Kidd claimed as her own, and also asked that twenty-
five English crowns, the property of her maid, might be refunded to her.
The Council granted this petition. The next week Sarah Kidd asked per-
mission to attend upon her husband in prison, " he being under strait
durance and in want of necessary assistance, as well as from your petitioner's
affection to her husband."

While Kidd was in jail he proposed to Bellomont that he should be taken
as a prisoner to Hispaniola to bring back the " Quedah Merchant." He
stated the value of her cargo to be fifty or sixty thousand pounds of treas-
ure, which could not otherwise be recovered. But Bellomont was afraid to
send him ; although if the " Quedah " were a lawful prize, four-fifths of this
very treasure belonged to Bellomont and his companions. To this " great
refusal " of Bellomont do we owe it that no man knows where that treasure
is to-day. It is the treasure in search of which the hill-sides of southern
Rhode Island have been honey-combed, and for which adventurous divers are
at this moment looking under the waters of the Hudson River. 2

It is to be observed that when the pirate Bellamy was shipwrecked,
eighteen years afterwards, on Cape Cod, 3 his ship was the " Whidah." It is
not a violent supposition that when Kidd's men found their captain was gone

1 Kidd had married her in New York. She 2 [About forty years ago occurred one of the

was Mrs. Sarah Oort, " the widow of a former periodical revivals of the loose traditionary
friend and fellow-officer," President de Peyster stories regarding Kidd and his concealed treas-
says. She is said " to have been a lovely and ure, and some pretended revelations were made

to connect a sunken hulk in the Hudson high-
lands with his name. At this time Mr. Henry
C. Murphy made a careful examination of Kidd's
career, and published a paper upon the subject
in Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 1846, i. 39. There
accomplished woman." Lovely she may have is a note as to treasures left by Kidd at Card-
been, but she could not write her own name, ner's Island, in N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1877,
Her petitions are signed by her attorney with p. 332. ED.]

" S. K.," rudely printed by her as her " mark." 3 See the chapter in this volume by H. E.
Alassachusetts Archives, Ixii. Scudder.

l8o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

they took the " Quedah " for themselves. Twenty years is not a long period
of life for a ship built in the East Indies. It may well be that Kidd's lost
treasure-ship is the same vessel which was wrecked, twenty years after, on
the back of Cape Cod.

On Sept. 12 the Admiralty, who had heard of the arrest of Kidd, sent
off a vessel to take him and his crew to England ; but she met contrary
winds, and returned. Another frigate, the " Advice," was sent, and did not
bring back her prisoner until the April of the following year. He was kept
in prison in England a long time. When Somers, the Whig chancellor,
was prosecuted by the Tories in the House of Commons, in April, 1701,
one charge against him was that of having been implicated in Kidd's affairs.
Although Somers was not tried upon this charge, Kidd was tried under the
same Government both for murder and for piracy ; in the latter accusation
several of his crew were joined with him.

The murder which Kidd was supposed to have committed was that of
Moore, his gunner, whose death resulted from a blow given by a water
bucket in a fight, without premeditation. No sentence but that of man-
slaughter was justified by the evidence brought against him. He was,
however, found guilty of murder. In the trial for piracy, which followed,
he was treated with the same injustice and severity. He claimed that his
commission justified his seizing the " Quedah Merchant," for, he said, she
was sailing under a French pass when he took her. If any such pass
existed, it was in Bellomont's possession. Kidd could not produce it. But,
as our readers know, Bellomont acknowledges in his report to the Council
that he received at Emmott's hands two such French passes. Kidd's death
had been determined upon, and he was hanged. 1

A well-known ballad has preserved his name, although incorrectly ; even
in the early editions he is called Robert instead of William, which was his
real name. The man he killed has been more fortunate, and we still sing
with sufficient correctness, as regards the name,

"I murdered William Moore, as I sailed, as I sailed."

Our law holds a man innocent till he is proved guilty. In this view we
may say that Kidd was an innocent man. But he certainly departed from
his orders in taking the " Quedah Merchant ; " he remained in the East
longer than the time in which he had promised to return ; and innocent
men do not need such concealment in their goings and comings.

Bellomont's letters are now entirely made public, and they show that he
supposed Kidd to have departed from his orders, and that he did not him-
self dare to join him in enjoying a treasure gained by such doubtful means.
The letters are entirely consistent. The seizure of the " Quedah " was

1 [Kidd's trial in London is reported in State authorized report of it was also published in

Trials, xiv. 123; and Palfrey, Neio England, iv. London in 1701, called The Arraignment, Tryal,

ch. vi., who gives a judicious account of the and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd,

matter, expresses surprise at Macaulay's inac- etc.. of which there was an abridgment issued

curacy when this report was accessible. An in 1703. ED.]

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD.

lawful if the French pass existed, and Bellomont and his friends would then
have come into possession of four-fifths of sixty thousand pounds. It can
hardly be supposed that his political enemies should have terrified him into
losing a considerable fortune, and destroying an innocent man.

At the time of the trial no one pretended that Kidd was not guilty. The
severest criticism made upon the affair was that Bellomont, Somers, and
Halifax were guilty too. 1

To avoid breaking in on the story of Kidd, we have followed it to its
close without interruption. We have also spoken of Lord Bellomont at
the council chamber in Peter Sergeant's house, as if we always had lords
presiding at the council chamber, and were quite used to such grandeur.
As the reader knows, this is not so. The Council had sent General Win-
throp and Elisha Cooke (of Cooke's Court) and Penn Townsend, Speaker
of the House, with John Rogers for a chaplain, as commissioners to New
York to pay the new governor their respects. 2 Before the commissioners
left, the Council received a letter from him announcing his arrival, and
thanking them for the piety which had ordered prayers for him in the Fast
proclamation. "He did not doubt he fared the better for them,"- an
expression which was probably genuine, for Bellomont seems to have been
a sincerely devout man. Bellomont's letter was sealed with a device bear-
ing three birds, and Judge Sewall was well pleased with himself that at the
council meeting he suggested that they were coots, Coote being Bello-
mont's family name. It was more than a year before he left New York for
Boston. In more than one of his letters home he explains to the Govern-
ment that he cannot live in New York, because of the parsimony of the
Assembly, while if he resides in Massachusetts the Assembly there treats
him more handsomely. His first arrival in Boston was on May 26, 1699.
A fit of the gout had seized him on the sea, but he addressed himself man-
fully to business ; and after a stay of two months in Boston, in which time
Kidd appeared and was arrested, he went further eastward to visit his other
provinces. He officiated at the Artillery election of that year, and delivered
the spontoons as in the ceremony still preserved to Walley the captain
and Byfield the lieutenant.

The Assembly had hired of Peter Sergeant the house which afterwards
became the Province House, that they might properly entertain Lord Bello-
mont. The rent was a hundred pounds. Sewall speaks once and again of
official meetings in the house. And, on the 2Oth of July, the General
Court was sent for to wait upon the Governor there, and there he pro-

1 [Mr. Joseph B. Felt, in 1845, acting under into the form of a lecture, but with much ab-

a commission from the Governor of Massa- sence of literary finish, which is printed in the

chusetts, made an abstract of papers relating to Essex Institute Hist. Coll., iv. 28. Kidd's story,

Kidd found in the State Paper Office in London, as ordinarily told, can be found in Mrs. H. P.

which seem to have been sent over by Bellomont Spofford's New England Legends, 1871. ED.]
to the Lords of Trade ; and in the N. E. Hist. 2 One hundred pounds was allowed the com-

and Cental. Reg., Jan , 1852, he printed this ab- missioners for their expenses, and the chaplain

stract ; and later, in 1862, he threw the material received ten pounds for his.

182 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

rogued them. A little glimpse of daily life peeps out in Sewall's Diary on
the 25th of July, when he " has my Lady up upon Cotton Hill " and shows
her the town. The view is still remembered by persons of sixty years old,
and has fortunately been preserved in a painting which has been engraved
for a later volume of this history. Sewall goes on :

" Madam Sergeant, Nanfan, 1 Newton there ; and Major-general and Mr. Sergeant.
Mrs. Tuthill's daughters invited my Lady as came down, and gave a glass of
good wine.

" As came down again through the gate, I asked my Lady's leave that now I might
call it Bellomont Gate. My Lady laughed, and said, ' What a compliment he puts on
me ! ' With pleasancy."

Bellomont was entirely successful in his efforts to ingratiate himself with
the leaders of the little Puritan town. Hutchinson, whose father remem-
bered him, preserves the two anecdotes which have been often repeated,
and makes us wish he had condescended to give us more. The General
Court in that day always adjourned to attend the Thursday lecture. Bello-
mont always went with them, and no single act could have done more to
conciliate such men as Sewall and most of the ministers. One day, as
Bellomont returned with a great crowd around him to his house from the
lecture, he passed Bullivant the apothecary, loitering at his shop door.
Bullivant was no lecture-goer. He had been imprisoned as one of Andres's
friends. As Lord Bellomont passed, he said, " Ah, doctor, you have lost a
precious sermon to-day." Bullivant observed in an under-tone, " If I could
have got as much by being there as his Lordship will, I would have been
there too." Hutchinson also records a speech of the Governor to his wife
when his table was filled with representatives from the country towns:
" Dame, we should treat these gentlemen well, they give us our bread."

The crisis compelled by Kidd's arrest brought to the surface the
latent determination of what may be called the Independent party not
to refer judicial cases to England if they could help it. The reader will
remember that the Superior Court dissolved itself and left the country with-
out its highest judiciary, because the Crown had refused its assent to the
provincial laws for its establishment. On Feb. 6, 1699-1700, Bellomont
called a council to take advice about sending the pirates to England.
Kidd had been imprisoned since the 6th of June. Bradish and Witherly
had once escaped, but had been re-captured. Bellomont had himself
written home, " These pirates I have in jail make me very uneasy for fear
they should escape. I would give 100 if they were all in Newgate."
There was no province law for punishing piracy with death, and the
" Advice " frigate had been sent from England to take them on board.
When the Council met at Bellomont's call, Judge Sewall said stiffly, that,
before the pirates could be collected from New York, Connecticut, and
Rhode Island, the Governor could call the Assembly together and they
1 The wife of the Lieut.-Governor of New York, who was Lady Bellomont's cousin.

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD. 183

would gladly rid themselves of such men. At this the Governor seemed
displeased, and well he might It implied that the Governor himself,
even with the advice of the Council, had no right to transport these men for
trial. 1 Sewall goes on :

" I had asked before what pirates, and the Governor said them and their asso-
ciates. Governor mentioned Kidd, Gillam, Bradish, VVitherly, to be sent aboard
presently for better security. Council voted to leave it to the Governor's discretion
whom to send aboard ; only the Governor had said to some that enquired, he in-
tended not [to let] them out upon bail. I think only I, Colonel Townsend, and
Captain Byfield were in the negative. I said I was not clear in it. The grounds I
went upon were because I knew of no power I had to send men out of the province.
Captain Byfield said he was for their going aboard, but reckoned it was not so safe to
send them presently as to keep them in jail."

Poor Sewall and his friends were in a minority of three against ten in
the Council. It was certainly as hard a case as could have been selected
on which to test the colony's independence of English interference.

Sewall's note of the treasure sent makes it out to be .an iron chest of
gold, pearls, etc. ; forty bales of East India goods, thirteen hogsheads, chest
and case, and one negro man, and Venture Resail, an East Indian, born at
Ceylon. The capture was thought to be worth fourteen thousand pounds.

Judge Sewall preserves the memory of another incident which shows his
sensitiveness perhaps, but, at the same time, the respect paid to the Gover-
nor. On Dec. 30, 1698, Stoughton, the Lieut.-Governor, made a great
dinner-party for the Council. Sewall was not invited, though he was a
member of the Council. On which occasion he says :

" The grievousness of this proetermission is, that by this means I shall be taken
up into the lips of talkers, and shall be obnoxious to the Governor at his coming, as a
person deserted and fit to be hunted down, if occasion be ; and in the meantime shall
go feebly up and down my business as one who is quite out of the Lieut.-Governor's
favor. The Lord pardon my share in the abounding of iniquity, by reason whereof
the love of many waxes cold."

Bellomont left Boston for New York by sea on the i /th of July, hav-
ing resided in his eastern dominions about fourteen months. He died
on Wednesday the 5th of
March of the next year.
The news arrived in Bos-
ton on Saturday the I5th.
The Assembly was imme-
diately prorogued. " The
town is sad," Sewall 2 writes ; and afterward, " the Artillery Company gave

1 " For transporting us beyond seas to be seventy-six years afterward in the war of In-
tried for pretended offences," this was one of dependence,
the reasons given for breaking with King George 2 Sewall Papers, ii. 33.

184 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

three volleys in the middle of the town when they came out of the field,
with regard to my Lord." 1

Considering the very full materials which exist for the study of the
history of Kidd, and his connection with the Crown and its officers, the
number and seriousness of the errors regarding him in the popular mind
and in more stately history are equally remarkable. Lord Campbell, in his
Life of Somers, condenses the story into these lines:

" Captain Kid was regularly commissioned ' to sink, burn, and destroy pirates ; '
but on arriving in the Indian Seas he turned pirate himself, and cruised against the
commerce of all nations indiscriminately till, after a sharp engagement with an English
frigate, in which several fell on both sides, he was captured and brought home
in irons."

As the reader knows, this action with the English frigate is entirely
imaginary. Lord Campbell probably had in his mind some ballad, with a
true or false description of the surrender of some other pirate. Even
Macaulay does not escape from the incoherency of others. But it is to
be remembered* that his notice of Kidd is in one of his posthumous
chapters, which he had no opportunity of correcting. His statement of
Kidd's adventures begins with a supposed interview in New York between
Bellomont and a veteran mariner named William Kidd, of whom a pictur-
esque account is then given. Bellomont recommends the king to commis-
sion him, and the king refuses. Bellomont then writes to his friends in
England, complaining of their want of public spirit, and proposing a private
adventure, in which they engage. All this, as the reader knows, passed in
London, not in New York, and the description of Kidd may be taken as
largely imaginary. At the end, " Kidd, having burned his ship and dis-
missed most of his men, who easily found berths in the sloops of other
pirates, returned to New York with the means, as he flattered himself, of
making his peace and of living in splendor." Properly interpreted, this
means that Kidd did not burn his ship, did not dismiss his men, and that
he sent to the Governor for a safe-guard, which he received. With it he came
to Boston (not New York), and, after consultation, was arrested. Macaulay
had the idea that Kidd had seen many " old buccaneers living in comfort
and credit at New York and Boston." Since he wrote, that notion has been
presented elsewhere to the public. The New York annalists can speak for
their own city. In this book it is only necessary to say, that neither in

1 [The story of Kidd's career is examined was published by the Deputy-Governor and

with a view to vindicate Bellomont in A full Council, upon the unanimous address of the

Account of the Proceedings in relation to Cap- Assembly, for appointing a general Fast to

tain Kidd in two Letters, written by a Person bewail the loss of such a Governor as a pub-

of Quality to a Kinsman of the Earl of Bella- lie calamity, so much was his virtue known

mont, in Ireland, London, 1701 ; the publisher and esteemed abroad, while he was so unrea-

of which closes his address to the reader thus : sonably persecuted in his native country." An

" As soon as the unhappy news [of Bello- account of the seat and family of Bellomont

mont's death] came to Boston, where the Gen- is given in Heraldic Journal, i. 166 : (corrected)

eral Assembly was then sitting, a proclamation iii. 24. ED.]

LORD BELLOMONT AND CAPTAIN KIDD. 185

tradition nor in the local annals is there any trace of such inhabitants.
There is no candlestick, or pistol, or tea-pot, said to be an inheritance from
so romantic a source. There is no old house said to have been built by
such ill-gotten gains. Nor is there, in the full registers of mercantile busi-
ness and of taxation, any single memorandum which has been pointed at as
the evidence of such residence. It has been suggested that Phips's repu-
tation was bad enough to permit calling him a buccaneer. But there is
nothing to justify such a charge but the supposition that Phips's commis-
sion from the king authorized him to cruise as a privateer. 1 Privateering
and buccaneering are entirely different things, and Macaulay should never
have confounded the one with the other.

On th other hand, we have the material from which we could make
almost a directory of the little town, of which the population did not foot
up more than fifteen hundred families. We have Judge Sewall's and Dun-
ton's very full accounts of their affairs, with frequent notes on the lives of
the men of wealth at whose funerals Sewall assisted, or of whose dinners
Dunton partook. In all such authorities there is no intimation that any
man had been a buccaneer. What is even more conclusive is the fact that
the life of Boston would have been detestable to any such man, unless he
had been thoroughly converted from the error of his ways. A town where
he could hardly play cards, where he would be expected to sing psalms
at an evening party, and be compelled to stay in the house on Sundays,
or to go to meeting twice, would be hateful to him. It would have been
the last place for him to seek as a harbor after the storms of life.

It is possible that Macaulay remembered the statement that John Hull's
mint proved valuable to buccaneers and pirates, in converting their plunder
into pine-tree shillings. The mint may have been sometimes useful for
them, but there is not a word of contemporary evidence to that effect. 2
There are severe reports condemning the mint from the officers of the Lon-
don mint, but they do not hint at any such use, which they would gladly
have done had they heard of it. And, indeed, the operations of the New
England mint were so small that it could hardly have served any pirate's
purpose. In 1661, when it was doing as much as it ever did, apparently, the
General Court tried to obtain from the mint-master some little royalty as its
part of the profit. Hull offered ten pounds as " a free gift to the country,"
and would pay no more. The committee of the Court asked for five per cent
on Hull's royalty, which was sixty- two pounds on every thousand coined.

1 Cromwell, whose story is told in Vol. I. p. of the province increasing, especially with the
509, was no buccaneer or freebooter. He was West Indies, where the buccaneers or pirates at
a privateer, sailing under Warwick's commis- this time were numerous, and part of the wealth
sion. Kidd never saw him, for he died in 1649. which they took from the Spaniards, as well as
He was in Boston but a few weeks, and lived what was produced by the trade, being brought
by choice in one of the poorest hovels in the to New England in bullion, it was thought nee-
town, essary for preventing fraud in money to create

2 Hutchinson's statement is very accurate, a mint." He does not say that the buccaneers
and must be taken for just what it says, and no brought their silver ; and his remark applies
more. At the date of 1652 he says: "The trade only to 1652, misprinted in his volume 1651.

VOL. II. 24.

1 86 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

But Hull and his partner refused absolutely to give this. When this report
was presented, the Court voted to accept the offer of ten pounds, " and what
else the committee could get." And, so far as appears, this is all they ever
did get from the past coinage. On the estimate of their committee, ten
pounds would represent a coinage of only three thousand pounds. Six
years after, Hull and Sanderson agreed to pay forty pounds for the years
intervening, and ten pounds annually in future; and in 1675 they agree to
pay twenty pounds. If we suppose that this agreement was as favorable as
that which the committee proposed, the coinage was then only six thousand
pounds a year. The mint-house and all the apparatus cost .395 12s. 2d.
This does not indicate a large outfit.

Such are the reasons for warning those who wish to make historical
romances from early Boston history, that they will be rash if they intro-
duce on the scene retired buccaneers "living in splendor" on their
ill-gotten booty.

/f7> //

c /&LC

CHAPTER VI.

THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

BY THE REV. ALEXANDER McKENZIE, D.D.,

Pastor of the First Church in Cambridge.

THERE were in Boston at the beginning of this period three Congrega-
tional churches. They were the churches of the founders of Boston
and the colony. In faith and order they were " to the manner born."
They expressed the purpose and the genius of the Puritan pilgrims to this
open land. But there was among the people less unanimity of feeling than
in earlier years. Public morality and simplicity were less conspicuous.
Half a century had been long enough to revive class distinctions and class
interests, which in more perilous days had been suffered to slumber. There
had come to be a local aristocracy which asserted itself and was acknowl-
edged. This party was most in sympathy with the king and his friends,
and most submissive to their new measures which had created the province.
With this party the clergymen, to a considerable extent, were allied. They
were largely dependent upon the good-will of the leading men, especially
in Boston, where they were sustained by voluntary offerings. But beyond
this consideration they were most connected in their social and domestic
relations with the families which held the highest position, while they nat-
urally favored a policy which promised to promote a quiet and settled
order of things. The spirit which had from the first characterized the
clergy of Massachusetts had not passed away. Far from it. But it had
less vigor and more distrust than in the days which were gone. New
trials were to come to Church and State. How would they be met and
borne? What fresh tidings would come in the tardy ship which brought
the old news to the new country? For her coming Religion waited as one
to be soon and deeply affected.

The churches were under a two-fold charter of Puritan and colonial
origin. In matters of ecclesiastical government they consented to the Cam-
bridge platform of church discipline, gathered out of the Word of God, and
agreed upon by the elders and messengers of the churches assembled in
Synod, 1648. In regard to doctrine, this Synod gave its assent to the Con-
fession recently framed by the divines at Westminster.

1 88 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

In process of time it became necessary for the New England churches to
present their own confession of doctrine. They believed that such con-
fessions were of great value. Moreover, it was charged upon them that
their principles were unknown ; " whereas it is well known that as to mat-
ters of doctrine we agree with other reformed churches ; nor was it that,
but what concerns worship and discipline, that caused our fathers to come
into this wilderness." The elders and messengers of the churches of Massa-
chusetts, " by the call and encouragement of the honored General Court,"
came together in 1679, and held a second session in 1680. They gave their
assent to the Savoy Confession, and renewed the assent of the Cambridge
Synod to the Westminster Confession, " for the substance thereof." They
confirmed the Cambridge platform for matters of discipline, and prepared
their own assertion of doctrine, mainly in the language of the previous
assemblies. The result was " a Confession of Faith, owned and consented
unto by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches assembled at Boston,
in New England, May 12, 1680, being the second session of that Synod."
In this platform and confession is the basis of the religious history of Boston
in the provincial period. They are, indeed, in substance the constitution of
the Congregational churches of the country to this day.

At the opening of the period we are reviewing the Rev. James Allen was
the minister of the First Church, having been installed in 1668. In 1684,
the Rev. Joshua Moody was installed as assistant minister. While preach-
ing at Portsmouth he had been illegally imprisoned upon a sentence of six
months for refusing to administer the Lord's Supper to Governor Cranfield
and to two of his friends, according to the rites of the Church of England.
After thirteen weeks he was released and commanded to preach no more in
that province. He came to Boston and entered the service of the First
Church. He continued in that office until 1692, when he returned to Ports-
mouth. 1 The meeting-house was of wood, and stood on what is now Wash-
ington Street, a little south of Court Street, on the spot now occupied by
Joy's Building. The church preserved its original covenant, under which it
abides to this day. 2

The second minister of the Second Church was the Rev. Increase Mather,
who attained the office of teacher in this church in 1664, as the associate
of the Rev. John Mayo, who retired from active service in a few years. At
the beginning of the provincial period the minister of the Second Church 3
was also the President of Harvard College. Sixth in the list of Presidents
stands his name: " CRESCENTIUS MATHER, accessus Junii 11, \6%$, ex off.
decessit, Sept. 6, 1701." The .Rev. Cotton Mather was now colleague with
his father in the pastoral care of this Second Church, having been ordained
to that office in 1685, although he had assisted his father before that
time.

1 [See Mr. Foote's chapter in Vol. I. ED.] list of the Communion Service of the Second

2 [It will be found in Vol. I., in the chapters Church, the vessels showing the armorial bear-
by Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Whitmore. ED.] ings of their givers, mostly of the provincial

8 [There is in the Heraldic Journal, i. 58, a period. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 189

The Third Congregational Church in Boston had, as was told in the first
volume, 1 a less peaceful origin than those which preceded it. The covenant
was much longer than that of the First Church, but resembled it closely in
character and spirit. The members bound themselves

" To walk together 35 a Church of Christ, according to all those holy rules of God's
word given to a church body rightly established, so far as we already know them, or
they shall be hereafter further made known unto us. ... And for the furtherance of
this blessed fellowship we do likewise promise to endeavor to establish among our-
selves, and convey down to our posterity, all the holy truths and ordinances of the
Gospel, committed to the churches, in faith and observance, opposing to the utmost of
our church power whatsoever is diverse therefrom or contrary thereunto."

These sentences are significant when read in connection with the events
which had led to the formation of the church, and the events with which it
was afterwards to be connected.

To a gift of land for the erection of a meeting-house, as already related,
Madam Norton subsequently made additions ; and her gifts, largely in-
creased during the lapse of years, still serve the church and ministry for
which she gave them, although in a place where her prophetic eye could
hardly see the land and the house which were to be. When this period
opened, Samuel Willard, the second pastor of the Third Church, had been
eight years in that office. The new church and the house in which it
worshipped early received the designation of the South Church, changed
afterward, when a church had been erected in Summer Street, to the Old
South Church.

In addition to these Congregational churches there was also the First
Baptist Church, which had been organized in 1665, as already explained in
the first volume. The minister at the opening of this period was Elder
John Emblen, who had come from England in 1684 that he might assume
this charge.

The change which was involved in passing from the colonial to the pro-
vincial estate was marked by one bold feature, which was hardly less signifi-
cant and important than the alteration in the form of government. During
the half-century in which the colonial charter was retained the churches of
Massachusetts had been of one faith and one order, with very slight excep-
tions. The principles of the first settlers had been preserved. There were
a very few Baptists when the charter was withdrawn, and the Quakers were
at no time numerous, but were made conspicuous on the one side by their
exceptional behavior, and on the other by the severe measures which were
resorted to for their removal. But this contest was over. The Puritans and
the Puritan church held the ground, and made the religious history. To
their ecclesiastical polity, and the methods of worship attached to it, they
were naturally the more firmly and persistently devoted for all which it had
cost to establish themselves and their institutions in this wilderness. What-

1 [In Mr. Foote's chapter. ED.]

190 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ever affection for the Church of England may have survived in any breast,
their presence here was a protest against that church, and a witness to the
exile and sacrifice which had been forced upon them by its authority. If it
is difficult for us in our liberal day to revive or justify their rigid opposition
to such as differed from them in matters of religion, so is it difficult to stand
in their place, to surround ourselves with the experiences which environed
them on both sides of the sea, and to reproduce the causes of the effects
which are now too rudely censured. For them religion comprehended all
things. Church and State, home and school, virtue and piety, liberty and
order, were involved in it. Religion to them meant the Puritan Church.

The narrative which is given by Mr. Foote in the previous volume, 1
regarding the introduction of Episcopacy, has brought the reader to a
marked and important change in the ecclesiastical affairs of Boston and
Massachusetts in this single innovation upon the established order here, in
this bringing in of the very institutions which had been renounced. Hence-
forth a new order of things must prevail. The old would still be the more
prominent and popular, but it would be modified by the new. In regard to
the general state of church affairs, we may cite the judgment of a modern
historian 2 devoted to the ancient church system of New England, that
" under the provincial charter ecclesiastical affairs were conducted in a
somewhat different, and on the whole in a decidedly better manner than
under the colonial charter. The temptation to join the church for worldly
advantage was greatly diminished by extending the right of voting to all
persons alike of a certain estate, whether members of a church or not. And
by cutting off appeals to the General Court in all matters strictly ecclesiastical
the churches were restored to their original independence, which had been
partially taken away."

There are various matters of less importance which throw light upon the
religious condition of Boston at this time. Besides the regular services in
the churches, there were lectures and private meetings and catechisings, by
which the Word was divided to the people according to their age and condi-
tion. The "Thursday Lecture" has come down to our own day. Religious
exercises were connected with the various events of the people's life, with
town-meetings, the framing of houses, the gathering of the militia, the
opening of the Court, and the like occasions. The Artillery election was
dignified by a sermon. The people were required to support the ministry,
and expected to attend upon the services of the church. The Sabbath was,
of course, observed with great strictness, but the law of the Lord was upon
all time. 3 Judge Sewall records a strong effort of his own to have the
days of the week numbered, as they had formerly been, in place of their
usual names, but he could get little support in the project. Synods and
councils were held for the orderly self-government of the churches. 4 The

1 Vol. I. p. 191, etc. 8 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in this vol. ED.}

2 Clark, A Historical Sketch of the Congrega- * [See Dr. Dexter's chapter on " Later New
tional Churches of Massachusetts from 1620 to England Congregationalism," in his Congrega-
1858, p. 108. tionalism as seen in its Literature, 1880. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 191

distinction between pastor and teacher had become very rare, and the office
of ruling elder nearly obsolete.

Days for public thanksgiving and fasting were appointed from time to
time as the affairs of the community made them appropriate and desirable.
The rite of marriage was now performed by clergymen, as well as by
magistrates, although still regarded as a civil ordinance. Funerals were
observed in a very simple way, that no superstitious or unscriptural notions
might be fostered by them. A variation from the English mode of taking
an oath by holding the Bible or by kissing it is found at this time, and
this became one of the questions which divided the colonists from the
Andros party. Sewall has an entry in June, 1686, when he took the oath
of allegiance and received his new commission as captain : " I read the
Oath myself, holding the book in my Left hand, and holding up my Right
Hand to Heaven." The strong disapproval of frivolous amusements is
to be noticed. In 1684 there had been published in Boston An Arrow
against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing, drawn out of the Quiver of the
Scriptures. By the Ministers of Christ at Boston, in New England. In
the following year " the Ministers of this Town Come to the Court and
complain against a Dancing Master who seeks to set up here and hath
mixt Dances, and his time of Meeting is Lecture-Day ; and 't is reported
he should say that by one Play he could teach more Divinity than Mr.
Willard or the Old Testament. Mr. Moodey said 'twas not a time for
N. E. to dance. Mr. Mather struck at the Root, speaking against mixt
Dances." The unseemly custom prevailed of taking a condemned criminal
to the meeting-house before his execution, that he might hear a discourse
suited to his condition. 1

With all these public and private interests and transactions, the daily life
of the people ran on, with its work and worship. There was abundant
preaching and teaching; discipline was maintained in church and home;
children were born, and were baptized if the parents conformed to the rules
of the churches ; old and young died, and were buried with open and with
secret grief. There were days of private, as well as of public, fasting and
prayer. Families often came together for religious services. The people
carried their joys and griefs to the sanctuary, and by putting up a " Bill "
engaged the sympathy of the congregation. Society was receiving acces-
sions, and not always of men like the old stock in character or behavior or
affiliation. It could not be long before the strangers whom civil office, or
military concerns, or the affairs of war brought over had an influence upon
the tone and manners of the community, removing it from the severity of
those who were here before them, and quite as notably from their virtues.
Men born upon the soil were naturally of a sterner type than those who had
received their early nurture in England, with its comfort and indulgence.
The wilderness offered a more austere birth and training. But it developed
a nobler manhood, which would not be improved but injured by contact with
1 [These traits are noticed more at length in Mr. Scudder's chapter. ED.]

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

men of easier lives and less commanding virtue. The liberalizing tendency
which is manifest during this period is not in all respects a gain. The end
of it is not yet.

In 1687 a number of Huguenots who had come from France after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes received permission to occupy the town's
school-house in School Street for their worship ; but the reader is referred
for their story to another chapter of the present volume. An interesting
tract is preserved, written by a nameless author, a French Protestant refugee,
who had come to America to gather information which would be of service
to his brethren in their proposed plan to settle here. He writes: "The
English who inhabit these countries are, as elsewhere, good and bad ; but
one sees more of the latter than the former, and, to state the case to you in
a few words, there are here of all kinds, and consequently of every kind of
life and manners." It is clear that these colonies were still in the world
and a part of it.

The Declaration of Indulgence issued by the king in 1687, which was
made the occasion of a public Thanksgiving by the Governor, was regarded
in various ways by the people. " In New England, as in the parent country,
the sanguine portion of dissenters from the church received the Declaration
with joy; the sagacious, with distrust and apprehension." The Second
Church in Boston, on the 3Oth of October, 1687, voted that its officers
might " draw up an address of thanks to the king for his declaration, wherein
he does promise us the free exercise of our religion, and that he will main-
tain us in the enjoyment of our rights and possessions." " I told the breth-
ren," writes the pastor, that " I would take their silence for consent. All
were silent, nemine contradicente" But others, with more shrewdness,
anticipated different results from those on which Mr. Mather congratulated
himself and his people.

With the troubles in which the province was involved under the admin-
istration of Andros this is not the place to deal. When it was deemed wise
to make a representation before the Court of England of the condition of
things here, and that some one should be sent over to present to the king
the loyal thanks of the people for his Declaration, and to beg for relief at
his hands, it was resolved that Mr. Increase Mather should be the messen-
ger. He was forty-eight years old, and " the most eminent among the
clergy of Massachusetts." The new Government made strenuous efforts
to prevent his going upon this errand. At length, by night, and in dis-
guise, he contrived to embark on the ship " President," and sailed on
April 7, 1688. On the sixth of the following month he landed at Wey-
mouth, in England. The character of this conspicuous man and his efforts
in England fall into another portion of this history. Yet, because he was
a minister, his work should be noted here. He was diligent in his business,
and he stood before kings. Did he not also stand before mean men? He
was abroad at an eventful time. England was disturbed. The bishops were
imprisoned and released. The king became a prisoner and a fugitive. The

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

193

Prince and Princess of Orange became the sovereigns of the realm. That
was in 1689. In the same year Andros was deposed and imprisoned, and
a provisional government was set up in Massachusetts. William and Mary
were solemnly proclaimed, and a day appointed for thanksgiving. " Again
Englishmen were free and self-governed in the settlements of New England."
That meant liberty and prosperity for the churches. The Puritan, with his
preferences and determinations, was again in the ascendant here. The new
Government received the royal sanction for the time. Finally, a new charter
was granted, and the Province of Massachusetts Bay was created. The
charter was far from pleasing to Mr. Mather and to those with whom he was
associated. But he consented to that which he was not able to supplant or
substantially improve. To him was granted the privilege of nominating many
of the persons whom the king was to place in office here, and those whom
he named were appointed. " He was probably understood by the courtiers
to be the most considerable man in Massachusetts, and the most important
to be gratified." But his highest offices were religious. It was the minister
who was made the ambassador of the people, and the counsellor of the
king. When his business in England was discharged, Mr. Mather returned
home in company with the new governor, Sir William Phips. Judge Sewall
makes a record of their arrival. " May I4th, 1692, Sir William arrives in
the Nonsuch Frigat : Candles are lighted before He gets into Town-house.
Eight Companies wait on Him to his house, and then on Mr. Mather to his.
Made no volleys because 'twas Satterday night." A day of thanksgiving
was appointed for the safe arrival of the governor and the minister, " who
have industriously endeavored the service of this people." One 1 who has
used no friendly pen in writing of Mr. Mather has frankly declared that " he
returned to New England with a well-earned consciousness that he had ful-
filled, during his residence abroad, his entire duty to the colony, and that
in the charter he had brought home he had conferred on it a blessing. . . .
His conduct in this great crisis of his country entitles him to unqualified
approbation." Such was not the popular verdict of a disappointed people.
" The event, though prosperous for his country, was to him an abundant
source of calumny and animosity, and ended in his loss of political influ-
ence, and his severance from all subsequent public employment." " One
thing was certain," remarks Dr. Palfrey ; " that, in a sense different from that
of earlier times, Massachusetts was now a dependency of the British crown."
The Second Church in Boston had received back its senior minister after
an absence of four years, during which his son was holding the pastoral
office. The ministers and churches of Boston and of the colony were called
to sad experiences in this year, 1692, which brought the new charter and
the new governor. The story is not to be told here in detail, yet it forms
a dismal chapter in the religious history of the period. It was not altogether
a new matter. Witches were believed to have made their appearance in
New England before this. Several years earlier President Mather had told

1 Quincy, History of Harvard University, pp. 78, 123.
VOL. II. 25.

194 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

numerous stories of persons possessed with evil spirits, in his Illustrious
Providences. Cotton Mather had written a treatise on the subject, with ac-
counts of the cases of possessed persons, and this had been circulated here
and in England, where it had the commendation of Richard Baxter. When
Governor Phips arrived in the province there were about a hundred persons
lying in jail charged with witchcraft. He organized a commission of seven
magistrates for the trial of the accused. The result is but too well known.
There is no need to paint the transactions in colors deeper than belong to
them. Viewed by themselves, there would be small danger of doing it
Let the time, the place, the surroundings be remembered. The belief in
witchcraft was not a product of New England, nor the offspring of Puritan
thought. " The estimation of witchcraft as a crime equally real as murder,
and more heinous, and the practice of punishing it accordingly, were much
older than the Puritan occupation of New England. They were much older
than the Protestant Reformation." Belief in it was profound in this prov-
ince and seemed to be well sustained. What part had the churches and the
ministers of Boston in the fearful events connected with it? According to
an old practice, the magistrates asked the advice of the clergy of Boston.
They made answer in a paper drawn up by Cotton Mather. They advised
" a very critical and exquisite caution ; " that the accused should be tenderly
treated, and that no tests of a doubtful character should be used. They
recommended " the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have ren-
dered themselves obnoxious, according to the directions given in the laws
of God, and the wholesome statutes of the English nation." Their counsel
was but partially followed ; and it was the harshest part which was followed.
We know but little of what was said and done in the churches. But we may
be certain that during the brief period in which this sad excitement pre-
vailed here the sufferers were regarded with the deepest sorrow. Fervent
were the prayers, prolonged the fasts, which sought their deliverance. In
church and home they were kept in remembrance day and night. Of this
we need no proof. The feeling must have been intense when there came to
be insinuations against Lady Phips, and against Mr. Willard, the minister
of the South Church. No one could tell who would be next accused, or
what friend would be haled away to prison and death. We have in the
mere suggestion a vivid glimpse of the religious history of the town in these
painful weeks, even though the most of the active trouble was at a distance.
The evil ran its course and ended. The danger was over. The prisons were
emptied of their victims. Some who had served on the juries acknowledged
the injustice of their verdicts and begged forgiveness, with strong promises.
A day of general fasting was proclaimed, that in deep humility the par-
don of God might be sought. It was in 1697, January 14, and Judge Sew-
all handed to the minister of the South Church his memorable confession
of his part in these mournful transactions, and stood to hear it read, bowing
when it was finished. There is a common tradition that on one day in
every year to the end. of his long life the good man and magistrate kept a

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 195

day of private prayer and humiliation in acknowledgment of his guilt and
in supplication for mercy. The testimony of the faithful historian of New
England 1 may well close this brief reference to these sad events, and be a
witness to the religious training of the people : " Nor is it possible to avoid
considering of what stuff some men and women of that stock were made,
when twenty of them went to the gallows rather than soil their consciences
by the lie of a confession."

The new charter of this province contained provisions which immediately
affected the religious condition of Boston. The religious element was
separated from the government, as a recognized feature. Membership in
a church was not to be required of the voter. A property qualification
took the place of the ecclesiastical. Some change in this direction was
inevitable. But the religious character and purposes of the founders of the
colony, and their not unwarranted judgment touching the sort of men
whom the colony needed for its rulers, should remove from their arrange-
ment of the suffrage any suspicion of narrowness. The new charter granted
to all Protestants liberty of conscience and liberty of worship. The gover-
nor had authority to reject bills passed by the Council and representatives,
and the king reserved to himself the right to revise and repeal the laws ;
and all laws approved by the governor were to be reported to him. The king
gave his sanction to an act providing for the strict observance of the Lord's
day. All labor and amusements on that day were forbidden, except works
of necessity and mercy. The domestic and public authorities were to see
that the law was observed in all its minute particulars. This would be in
accord with the principles of the founders of the province. So also would
be the act which provided for the settlement and support of ministers, and
secured to each town " an able, learned, and orthodox minister or ministers,"
who should be " suitably encouraged and sufficiently supported and main-
tained by the inhabitants of such town." It was also in keeping with the
principles of the first men who were here that education should be en-
couraged, and enlarged arrangements made to this end. The new governor
was a man from whom the ministers and churches might expect much.
He was born on the banks of the Kennebec, and had become a member of
the North Church in Boston. It was by the nomination of Increase Mather
that he was appointed to the chief magistracy of Massachusetts Bay.
Naturally, therefore, he would be somewhat under the influence of the
Mathers, which meant that Puritan traditions and judgment would be favor-
ably regarded, and in a good degree preserved. Sir William Phips is
described as an honest and pious man, enterprising and industrious,
benevolent and friendly; yet not sufficiently learned, or wise, or patient
for the head of a province in a difficult time. His official career was brief,
as he died in London in February, 1695, at the age of forty-four. 2

1 Palfrey, Compendious History of New Eng- 2 [Compare Dr. Ellis's account of Phips in
land, p. 124. [The story is told with more par- his chapter in this volume, and a brief notice of
ticulars in Mr. Poole's chapter in this vol. ED.] him in Dr. Male's chapter. ED.]

196 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

By the change of the charter the Quakers received an enlargement of
their liberty, and were placed more nearly on an equality with other
Christian denominations. The days of their persecution were over before
this, but they were not highly esteemed. Thomas Chalkley, a prominent
Quaker, who visited Boston in 1693, complains bitterly of the unkind
manner in which he was received, and the harsh wishes which were ex-
pressed regarding himself and his associates. For this there may have been
a personal or temporary reason. But while they held their meetings they
had no regular place of worship. Finding that they were to have a more
generous recognition, they prepared for themselves a permanent place in
which to meet.

In 1694 William Mumford, one of the Society, a stone-cutter by trade,
bought a large lot of land in " Brattle Close or Pasture," on which the
Quincy House now stands, at the corner of Brattle Street and Brattle
Square. Upon this land he built a brick meeting-house, twenty-four by
twenty feet, which was the first brick meeting-house in the town. 1 Mr.
Mumford conveyed a portion of his land to trustees who resided in different
places, to be held by them " for the service and worship of Almighty God
by the society or community of People called Quakers, at all and every time
and times forever hereafter, when and as often as need shall require, and to
and for none other use, intent, or purpose whatsoever." It was not many
years, however, before it was found desirable to have a different place for
their services, and Mr. Mumford purchased another lot for the Society. The
changes in their outward estate under the provincial government were in
keeping with those which marked their intercourse with their neighbors.

Various events of more or less consequence fell into the year 1695. On
April 29, after thunder and lightning, there was an extraordinary storm of
hail, so that the ground was made white, as if by fallen blossoms, and large
quantities of window-glass were broken. Mr. Cotton Mather dined that
day with Judge Sewall, whose new house suffered severely, and was with
him in the judge's new kitchen when this occurred. " He had just been
mentioning that more Ministers' Houses than others, proportionably, had
been smitten with Lightening; enquiring what the meaning of God should
be in it. ... I got Mr. Mather to pray with us after this awfull Providence.
He told God He had broken the brittle part of our house, and prayd
that we might be ready for the time when our Clay-Tabernacles should be
broken." In the same year there was great indignation against Thomas
Maule, a Quaker, who is best known for his place in the House of the Seven
Gables. In 1694 he published a large Pamphlet with the title Truth
Held Fortli and Maintained, etc. The House of Representatives took the
matter up in 1695, and voted that the book was " stuff 'd with many notori-
ous and pernicious Lies and Scandals, not only against particular and privat
persons, but also against the Government, Churches, and Ministry; and

1 [See Vol. I. 195, and the history of this and Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, ch. xv. Compare also
their later meeting-house and burial-ground in the Introduction to this volume. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 197

against those Worthies who first followed Christ into these uttermost ends
of the Earth. . . . As also many corrupt Expressions in point of Doctrine,
perverting the Scriptures, and subverting the True Christian Religion." The
Representatives prayed that the premises might be inquired into, " and some
suitable Testimony borne against the Author and his Evil Work." Maule
was indicted and tried before the Superior Court at Salem in 1696, and
was acquitted by the jury. Afterwards he produced another treatise, to
which he gave the significant name of Persecutors Mauled with their
own Weapons.

In this year, 1695, the ministers of Boston were considerably exercised
upon the question of marriage, more particularly of the intermarriage of
persons related to one another. In connection with several neighboring
ministers they published a short treatise upon the subject Possibly some
special case of recent occurrence moved them to this action. The conclu-
sion of their arguments and citations was that " it is unlawful, incestuous,
and an heinous sin in the sight of God " to enter upon marriages of this
character. Mr. Allen, the Mathers, and Mr. Willard, joined with others in
this declaration. At the May session of the General Court a law was passed
that no persons should be allowed to marry where there was " an affinity
between them as declared in the Scriptures." The preface was as follows :
" Although this Court doth not take in hand to determine what is the whole
breadth of the divine commandment respecting unlawful marriages, yet for
preventing that abominable dishonesty and confusion which might otherwise
happen, Be it enacted, &c."

In the First Church in Boston, Rev. John Bailey was associated with Rev.
Mr. Allen, from July 17, 1693, until his death, Dec. 12, 1697. He was one
of the ministers driven from England for nonconformity. He was a faithful
and popular preacher, conscientious and sensitive, diligent and exemplary.
He was accustomed to say : " Three things I desire to get : patience under
the calamities of life ; impatience under its moral infirmities ; and earnest
longings for the life to come." One of his frequent petitions has been pre-
served : " May we not be of the number of them who live without love,
speak without feeling, and act without life." There was a great assembly on
the very cold day of his funeral, when Mr. Cotton Mather preached a suit-
able discourse, from Psalm xxxi. 5. On the 8th of September, 1696, Mr.
Benjamin Wadsworth became an associate pastor of the First Church, and
" was inducted by the neighboring ministers
with a formality hitherto unpractised in the Jj
land." Mr. Allen gave the charge and Mr.
Increase Mather the right hand of fellowship: "Spake notably of some
young men who had apostatized from New England principles, contrary to
the Light of their education ; was glad that he was of another spirit." Mr.
Willard joined in the laying-on of hands. Mr. Wadsworth was born in
Milton, Massachusetts, in 1669, graduated at Harvard College in 1690, and
after studying theology preached for the First Church for nearly three

198 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

years before he was formally installed as pastor. During the last
year of Mr. Bailey's life the First Church had, therefore, three ministers.
The senior pastor, the Rev. James Allen, was of English birth, and was
sixty-four years old at the time of Mr. Wadsworth's settlement. He lived

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MINISTERS OF THE PROVINCE, AS SIGNING IN AN ECCLESIASTICAL COUNCIL, HELD AT

BOSTON, MAY 27, 1697.

in a manner befitting the minister of the First Church in Boston. He main-
tained the style of a gentleman, built himself a stone house, had a very
handsome estate, and used it with hospitality. He was the steady friend of
ecclesiastical order, but held the authority of Christ above any human

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 199

decrees, and asserted the freedom of his own judgment and conscience,
whose dictates he was ready to obey. He would shield the church both
against any injustice within it, and any encroachments upon it. The three
Boston churches were under the care of strong men at this time, Allen,
Wadsworth, the Mathers, and Willard. They were men to be felt, in
different ways, indeed, but for one end.

Sir William Phips was succeeded in the government of the province by
Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, of the Irish peerage. This was the first
time that Massachusetts had a governor who was not either one of the orig-
inal settlers, or a native of the country. The new governor arrived in this
country in April, 1698. From two Englishmen who visited Boston about
this time we get glimpses of the town and its people. John Dunton was
here in 1686, and in 1705 published in London a book which he named his
Life and Errors. He seems to have been partially insane, but his book is
amusing and interesting. He met many people, and saw many things in Bos-
ton and the surrounding towns. He was well received, and perhaps designed
to write truthfully of what he saw. He visited Increase Mather, who " is de-
servedly called ' The Metropolitan Clergy-man of the Kingdom.' And the
next to him in fame ... is his son, Mr. Cotton Mather, an Excellent Preacher,
a great Writer, and, which is more than all, he Lives the doctrine he Preaches.
. . . Mr. Mather's Library is the glory of New England, if not of all Amer-
ica. ... I am greatly wanting to myself, if I did not learn more in that
hour I enjoy'd his Company, than I cou'd in an Age spent in other men's."
Of Mr. Willard he writes : " He 's a man of Profound Notions ; Can say what
he will, and prove what he says. I darken his Merits if I call him less than
a Walking Library." Of Mr. Allen : " He 's a grave, Antient Divine, and
now Pastor of the New Church in Boston. All that I shall say of him more
is, that he 's very Humble and very Rich, and can be Generous if he pleases."
He was delighted with Mr. Moody's house and garden. " He that 's a
Lover of a good Prospect would call this house an Earthly Paradise, and
the very Elisium of Boston. But that which gives it the greatest Ornament
is that Learned Person that lives in it. ... No wonder then Piscateway was
so loth to lose him ; for if there be a good Man in the World, 'tis He."

We have in the journal of Jasper Bankers, who visited Boston in 1680,
this picture of a Fast-day service : " In the first place a minister read
a prayer in the pulpit of full two hours in length ; after which an old min-
ister delivered a sermon an hour long, and after that a prayer was made, and
some verses sung out of the psalm. In the afternoon, three or four hours
were consumed with nothing except prayers, three ministers relieving each
other alternately ; when one was tired, another went up into the pulpit."

In 1699 Boston was favored with a visit from Mr. Edward Ward. He
" was the first of a list of Londoners who have visited New England for
the purpose of traducing its inhabitants, and casting ridicule upon its cus-
toms and practices. From such persons have been transmitted the false
traditions of our ancestry which are met with so frequently by historical

200 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

inquirers." Some of his statements are interesting in this connection, and
can readily be distinguished from the inventions of his malicious wit :

" To the Glory of Religion, and the Credit of the Town, there are four Churches,
built with Clap-boards and Shingles, after the Fashion of our Meeting-houses ; which
are supply'd by four Ministers. . . . Their Churches are Independent, every Congre-
gation, or Assembly, in Ecclesiastical Affairs, being distinctly Govern'd by their own
Elders and Deacons, who in their Turns set the Psalms ; and the former are as busie
on Sundays, to excite the People to a Liberal Contribution, as our Church-Wardens at
Easter and Christmas are with their Dishes, to make a Collection for the Poor. . . .
The Inhabitants seem very Religious, showing many outward and visible Signs of an
inward and Spiritual Grace. But tho' they wear in their Faces the Innocence of
Doves, you will find them in their Dealings as Subtile as Serpents. . . . Election,
Commencement, and Training-days are their only Holy-days ; they keep no Saints-
Days, nor will they allow the Apostles to be Saints ; yet they assume that Sacred
Dignity to themselves, and say, in the Title Page of their Psalm- Book, ' Printed for the
Edification of the Saints in Old and New England.' " l

At the coming of Governor Bellomont Boston contained, it is believed,
" more than a thousand houses, and more than seven thousand inhabitants."
The strictness and exclusiveness of the colonial times had naturally been
relaxed as the years went on, and the people became established in their
affairs, and entered into closer relations with other communities. The advance
of business would of itself have a liberalizing influence. The widening of
the franchise, which separated citizenship from membership in the church,
would tend in the same direction. With these changes the established
church of New England remained necessarily far in the ascendancy. Only
one place for the worship of the English Church was to be found in the
province, and those who supported that had received few favors from the
people, and had contended against great obstacles. " Its supporters had
been dispersed, and its minister had gone home discouraged at the time of
the Revolution; and it recovered with difficulty from the disrepute con-
tracted by its connection with the usurpation of Andros." Lord Bellomont
gave the English Church the benefit of his favor. The Bishop of London
had sent by him a gift of books and an assistant clergyman. The assistant
died on the voyage, but another came in his place. Rev. Samuel Myles
was the rector, and Rev. Christopher Bridge the assistant for several years.
The Governor sought to satisfy all parties. He gave his presence on Sun-
days at the King's Chapel, and on the lecture days at the First Church.
He used his influence abroad for the English Church, and the Lords of
Trade sought to procure the ecclesiastical supervision of the province.

About the year 1699 Elder John Emblen, the minister of the Baptist
church, died. He had come from England and had served this church for
some fifteen years, and seems to have been held in good esteem by his
people. After his death the church wrote to England for assistance, and

1 Ward's Trip to New England, quoted in Shurtleff, iii. 169.

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

2OI

received a respectful letter in reply. It was to be several years before they
would again have a settled minister.

The relations between
the churches and Har-
vard College were still
very close at this period.
The college had come
into being for their sake,
or rather for the religious well-
being of the colony, which was
their especial charge. At this
particular point, while Increase
Mather was at its head, it was
passing through experiences
which were of great interest and
importance, and with which the
churches had a prominent con-
cern. It was a critical time in
its bearing on the destiny of the
institution. That is not to be
described in this place; yet it
cannot be entirely passed over.
The college had in its highest
chair the most eminent of the
clergy of Boston. The position
gave in return to the man who
held it great honor and influ-
ence among his brethren and in
the churches. The president
had always been a minister.
Other ministers had been very
prominent in the management
of the college as its overseers.
In times of religious excitement
or change the college would feel
the movement of the churches.
This is a part of the religious
history of this period.

The Second Church in Bos-
ton at this time shared its pastor
with the college. He had re-
tained his residence in Boston.
The General Court had voted
that the president should live
in Cambridge. More than once
VOL. ii. 26.

MINISTERS, WARDENS, AND VESTRY OF
KING'S CHAPEL, 1700.

202 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

was this action taken, but the president did not move. He had the hope
of removal to a greater distance, and desired to be sent to England to
procure a satisfactory charter for the college. Others desired him to under-
take the mission, and a petition was sent to the General Court asking public
countenance and assistance for the project. With pleasant recollections of
his former visit to England, he seems to have had a wish to spend his
remaining years there. There were movements in the community which
did not commend themselves to his judgment; nor could he have the influ-
ence to which he seemed entitled, and which he thought would be for the
welfare of the churches. The corporation of the college was not disposed to
insist upon the residence of the president in Cambridge, but acknowledged
with gratitude his manifold services, and gave him money to purchase a horse
that he might more conveniently make his visits to the college. His offer
to resign his office was answered by the unanimous vote of the corporation
desiring that he would continue to preside over the college, which would
be injured in many ways by his withdrawal. He gave his time to the
college with great liberality, passing the Sabbath with his church, and
spending a large part of the other days with the college, where he admin-
istered affairs with vigor and instructed the students in morals and religion.
He was the better able to divide his time in this way in that he had the
assistance of his active and vigilant son in his pastoral work. The proposal
to move the president to Cambridge was followed up, and had the support
of those who were hostile to Dr. Mather, and who thought that his influence
would be lessened if he were there, and the possibility of his mission to
England be made more remote. We are now concerned with these matters
only as they affected his church. He was not pleased with the standing of
the college with regard to its charter, and there was no president's house.
But if there were no such trouble, he knew that his church would not be
willing to release him, and he was not willing to cease from preaching. It
was urged on the other side by a committee of the legislature that he would
" preach twice a day to the students, expounding the Scriptures." He said
that " exposition was nothing like preaching," and that he could not go
until his church spared him. In 1698, December 16, he wrote to Lieut.-
Governor Stoughton,

" If I comply with what is desired I shall be taken off, in a great measure at least,
from my public Ministry. Should I leave off preaching to 1500 souls (for I supose
that so many use ordinarily to attend in our Congregation) only to expound to 40 or
50 Children, few of them capable of Edification by such Exercises, I doubt I should
not do well. I desire (as long as the Lord shall enable me) to preach publickly every
Lord's Day. And I think all the Gold in the East and West Indies would not tempt
me to leave preaching the Unsearchable Riches of Christ, which several of the
Presidents in the College were necessitated to desist from because of their other
work. ... I am satisfied that the Church to which I stand related will not set me at
liberty. Many of them say that God has made me their Spiritual Father ; and how
can they consent that I should go from them? "

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

203

This discussion takes us into the life of at least one church at this time.
Feb. 5, 1699, there was a meeting of the brethren of the Second Church,
and this question was proposed by the senior pastor :

" Whether do you consent, that the Pastor of this church be dismissed from his
relation unto, and his work in, this congregation, that he may wholly devote himself
to the service of the College, and that in order thereunto he remove his habitation
from Boston to Cambridge ? When the vote was put in the affirmative, not one man
would lift up his hand ; when in the negative, every one of the brethren lifted up
his hand."

But in July, 1700, a meeting of the church was held by direction of the
General Court, and consent was given that President Mather should remove
to Cambridge. . Accordingly he
made the change in the same
month, and in the succeeding I vj$

October removed back to Bos-
ton because he did not have his

health in Cambridge. He ex- /f sift}

pressed to the Lieut-Governor r****** ~ ^* t

his desire that another president

should be thought of. It is not ^/

necessary to pursue this matter C/v^*" n^^'O/i *->^

A 1 ^-^ WrYv rruOLCLsw

here. At this point another W/^ ^ ^

church became more immedi- r / * ~/y/*r- ln/IS*nfTF

/*C^l C/^ IL/T t/f Cfr r -f / * - f

ately interested. When it be-
came clear that President Mather
would not reside at Cambridge, ^^

Rev. Samuel Willard, pastor of \jffi
the Third or South Church, was
appointed vice-president of the
college ; and when President

,,, t . , , r LATE CORPORATORS OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 1

Mather had again informed the

Court that he could with no conveniency live near the college, Mr. Willard
was asked " to accept the care and charge of the said college, and to reside
in Cambridge in order thereunto." The Council appointed a committee
" to attend the meeting of Mr. Willard's church and desire their consent
that he might go and reside at Cambridge to take care of the college." As
the business did not prosper according to the design of the Council, a few
days later " further application was made to Mr. Willard's church for their
consent to his going to reside at Cambridge to take care of the college."
The result at last was that, upon the close of Dr. Mather's connection with
the presidency, Mr. Willard was placed in charge of the college, with the

1 [The document from which these signa- members of the late corporation, preserved at

tures, showing some of the principal Boston the State House. The paper is printed in

ministers, are taken, is a petition for a new char- Quincy's History of Harvard University, i. 99.

ter of the college, in which they style themselves ED.]

204 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

understanding that he was to reside in Cambridge " one or two days and
nights in a week, and to perform prayers and expositions in the Hall, and
to bring forward the exercise of analyzing." But Mr. Willard had the title
of vice-president. This title seems to have been retained to avoid the
inconsistency of allowing the president to reside in Boston after the order
that he should live in Cambridge, and after President Mather had retired
because he could not comply with it. The order could be evaded by
appointing a vice-president. The college could thus have a head, and the
church retain its minister. This name alone, in the long catalogue of
presidents, stands with the designation " Pro-Praeses." As the Second
Church is no longer called upon to share the service of its senior pastor
with the college, and the college is no longer under his charge, let the
testimony regarding him of the academic historian, who cannot be held
partial towards Dr. Mather, be put on record here : -

" That he was well qualified for the office, and had conducted himself in it faith-
fully and laboriously, is attested by the history of the College, the language of the
legislature, and the acknowledgment of his contemporaries. It seems obvious, that
it was honorable and useful to the institution to have for its head an individual who
had taken so large a share in the political, religious, and literary controversies of the
times, and had in consequence acquired both celebrity abroad and influence in his
own country." 1

Turning back a little, we are next to consider an event of considerable
significance in the religious history of Boston and the province. There
were in the town three Congregational churches. At this time a fourth was
founded, differing in some respects from those which had preceded it. It
did not come from an increase of the population, which demanded increased
accommodation for worship. Its origin was due in some measure to per-
sonal causes, to an unwillingness in some persons to be under the control
of those who were largely ordering the religious affairs of the community.
It was also a movement in favor of a more liberal policy in the worship
and administration of the church. 2 This church has now disappeared from
public view, and no longer enters the doors of its elegant temple that it
may worship God according to its judgment of that which is right and
true. But some of the things for which it contended at the start have
long -had their place in the policy and practice of the Congregational
churches. There were several questions involved in this movement. First,
was the fundamental subject of baptism. This rite was originally con-
nected with membership in the church. When received by an adult it
was regarded as the seal of a new Christian life, and was associated with
an open confession and a formal union with others of similar belief and
character. The rights and benefits of this ordinance were extended to the

1 Quincy, History of Harvard University. the charter of William and Mary introduced into

2 [ " This church," says President Quincy, Massachusetts." History of Harvard Univer-
" was the first fruit of that religious liberty which sity, i. 132. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

205

households of those who were baptized. The language of the Boston Con-
fession of 1680 is explicit: "Not only those that do actually profess faith
in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing
parents are to be baptized, and those only." The framers of this Con-
fession did not regard baptism as so essential that no person could be
regenerated or saved without it ; but they did have very high ideas of its
importance, and held it a sin to neglect it. With their deep sense of its
meaning, it was natural that they should limit its application, and should
carefully guard the approach to the font. The definition of the ordinance
and the limitation of its subjects were in keeping. But what if, for any
reason, persons who had been baptized in their infancy did not become
members of the church? Were their children to be denied the privilege of
baptism? This would leave them to be classed with Indians, as "aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of
promise." The feeling was deep and the demand was loud. A council
had met in Boston in 1657, and a synod was again convened in 1662, partly
for the purpose of deciding the matter involved in the demand for a more
open system of baptism. The result is known as the " Half-way Covenant."
The declaration of the later assembly was substantially the same as that of
the earlier,

" That church members, who were admitted in minority, understanding the doctrine
of faith, and publicly professing their assent thereunto, not scandalous in life, and
solemnly owning the covenant before the church, wherein they give up themselves
and children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the government of Christ in his
church, their children are to be baptized."

Of course a controversy followed this deliverance. Out of this arose the
Third Church in Boston. The concession was not likely to satisfy for any
length of time those whom it sought to relieve. The way to the font was
still narrow. The Half-way Covenant came into general use ; but the utter-
ance of the synod of 1680 upon the subject of baptism has been already
given. The fourth church was to be made a witness for more liberal things
than even the new legislation proposed.

Another matter which was related to this was the practice of requiring
from candidates for admission to full membership in the church a public
relation of their religious experience before the whole congregation. The
reasons for this are obvious, and are based upon the common principle that
any society shall be a judge upon the qualifications of those who would join
it. But how could there be an intelligent judgment unless the candidate
revealed his religious history so far that others could decide whether he was
a regenerate person? For full membership in one of these churches implied
more than an intellectual assent to the truth and a virtuous life. The
method of admission was quite in- keeping with the meaning of membership.
Still, men and women would shrink from laying their hearts bare before their
neighbors, even if they were able to describe the changes in their spiritual

206 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

condition. Nor can we wonder if they refused to subject themselves to the
comments of others, however friendly the spirit of such remarks might be.
Many would refuse to comply with the requisition who were fitted for full
communion, and the churches would suffer with them in this mutual depri-
vation. The new church would take a more liberal course.

Under the prevailing system, the parish government was vested in the
members of the church as distinct from the congregation. In choosing a
pastor, or regulating ecclesiastical affairs, the church ruled. It was so in the
State, while the franchise was confined to the members of the churches. But
this distinction had passed away in civil matters. Should it be retained in
spiritual affairs? As the numbers of those who were not in church member-
ship increased, there came to be more and more reason why the distinction
should be removed ; especially since the duty of supporting the church and
its ministry paid no respect to it. Those who were to bear a part of the
expense claimed a right to a voice in deciding for what and to whom their
money should be given. From the point of view of these outside support-
ers this was but fair. This right had in some cases been conceded before.
Some things could be said on the other side : that the church was first ;
that it was divine, and the appointed custodian of the truth, responsible
for its purity, for its maintenance, and for its diffusion. The church was
qualified by its character and bound by its vows to be " the pillar and
ground of the truth," and to give it to the community and the world. If
any would have the privileges of the church, let them assume its duties.
The door into the church was open ; and more imperative than the right
of voting for a minister was the duty of confessing Christ. The reply was
ready: We do not choose, or we are not able, to join you in full commu-
nion ; but we are sufficiently intelligent, and virtuous, and interested to have
a voice where you have our money, and to have a part in deciding who
shall be the teachers of our children. The new church had regard to this
natural demand.

One other point concerned the public worship. The founders of New
England had come out from the English Church. Disapproving of many
of its methods, and sufferers at its hands, they turned far from its forms
even of worship. In the English service there was much reading of the
Scriptures. The Puritans would have no Scripture without comment in their
public services. " Dumb reading " they would not have. The English
Church had many prayers and made very frequent use of the Lord's Prayer.
From this custom the Puritans dissented. The Lord's Prayer should not
be used in the churches, and for the rest one prayer was sufficient, so that
it be sufficiently long and broad. One praying, one singing, one preaching,
constituted the customary elements of their simple worship. There were
those who thought the time had come for more variety and freedom, and
for what they deemed a more excellent way. In the new church these
views would have a practical expression.

It will be seen, therefore, that the new church was not to differ from

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 2O/

those which preceded it in matters of doctrine or of general administration.
But it was to be governed by a more liberal policy and to do its part of the
common work upon a broader plan. Those who were associated in the
enterprise were men of high standing in the community. They had wealth,
position, influence, and all that was needed to secure for their endeavor a
dignified and promising beginning. The first steps in this movement appear
to have been taken in 1697. In January, 1698, a piece of land called
" Brattle Close " was conveyed by deed from Thomas Brattle to the per-
sons who were to form the new society. In 1699 a meeting-house of wood
was erected. It was a simple structure, not painted on the inside or outside,
and had its tower and bell on the west side, and the entrance on the south
side. The pews were square, and there were two galleries. The window-
frames were iron. It was a simple house, but its erection marked an
advance in freedom of opinion, and especially in the practical expression
of opinion.

The first minister of the proposed church was Benjamin Colman. He
was a Boston boy, born in 1673 ; a pupil of Ezekiel Cheever, a graduate
of Harvard College in 1692, under the Presidency of Mr. Mather, who
in the same year received the first degree of Doctor of Divinity which the
college conferred. He was a member of the Second Church in Boston.
He preached for a short time in Medford, and afterwards continued his
theological studies at Cambridge. In 1695 he went to England, where he
was kindly received and enjoyed the friendship of some of the most emi-
nent of the dissenting clergy. He preached in London, Cambridge, and
Ipswich for about two years, and then was appointed minister of the dis-
senting congregation in Bath. When the new project was formed in Boston,
its friends thought that he was the proper man to be placed at its head, and
he was invited to return and assume the care of the church. His friends
urged his acceptance of the call, and he complied. Inasmuch as the new
church differed in some respects from the three which preceded it, it was
thought there might be some embarrassment in procuring his ordination at
the hands of their ministers, and it was suggested to him that he should
obtain his ordination from " some nonconformist ministers in England, the
more eminent they are the better it may be," although no reason was given
to him for advising this course. He was ordained in London, by the
Presbytery, Aug. 4, 1699, and soon after sailed for Boston with good testi-
monials from his English friends. He arrived on the ist of November, and
began almost at once to preach in the " pleasant new-built church."

There was no church organization as yet. But those who were to con-
stitute it published a declaration of their principles, that it might be clearly
known what they proposed and what they did not propose. The title to
their paper 1 gave a name to the church. It was as follows:

1 It is not known who was the actual author manifesto can be found in S. K. Lothrop's
of the paper ; but it is supposed, with good rea- History of the Church in Brattle Street, p. 20.
son, that it was prepared by Mr. Colman. [The ED.]

208 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" A MANIFESTO or Declaration, set forth by the Undertakers of the New Church,
Now Erected in Boston in New England, Nov. 17, 1699." "We think it Conve-
nient," so it runs in the preamble, " for preventing all Misapprehensions and Jealousies,
to publish our Aims and Designs herein, together with those Principles and Rules we
intend by GOD'S grace to adhere unto." There was no change of doctrine from that
which had been held and taught from the beginning. " First of all, We approve and
subscribe the Confession of Faith put forth by the Assembly of Divines at Westmin-
ster." They wished to preserve close and friendly relations with the other churches.
" It is our sincere desire and intention to hold Communion with the Churches here as
true Churches ; and we openly protest against all Suspicion and Jealousie to the con-
trary, as most Injurious to us. And although in some Circumstances we may vary
from many of them, yet we joyntly profess to maintain such Order and Rules of Dis-
cipline as may preserve, as far as in us lies, Evangelical Purity and Holiness in our
Communion." They stated clearly their points of divergence from the accustomed
ways of the churches. They would " conform to the ordinary practice of the churches
of Christ in this Country " in the other parts of divine worship. But *' we judge it
therefore most suitable and convenient, that in our Publick Worship some part of the
Holy Scripture be read by the Minister at his discretion." Nothing is said of prayer ;
but it is the trustworthy tradition that the Lord's Prayer was to be once repeated by
the minister in the service of every Sabbath. In regard to baptism they affirmed : " We
allow of Baptism to those only who profess their Faith in Christ and Obedience to
him, and to the Children of such ; yet we dare not refuse it to any Child offered to
us. by any professed Christian, upon his engagement to see it educated, if God give
life and ability, in the Christian Religion." They thought that such " Professions and
Engagements " should be received by the pastor. They still further said : " We assume
not to ourselves to impose upon any a Publick Relation of their experience ; how-
ever, if any one thinks himself bound in Conscience to make such a Relation, let him
do it. For we conceive it sufficient if the Pastor publickly declare himself satisfied
in the person offered to our Communion, and seasonably propound him." There was
one other point of difference. " Finally, We cannot confine the right of chusing a
Minister to the Male Communicants alone, but we think that every Baptized Adult Per-
son who contributes to the Maintenance should have a Vote in Electing. Yet it
seems but just that persons of the greatest Piety, Gravity, Wisdom, Authority, or other
Endowments should be leading and Influential to the Society in that Affair. "

These were the conspicuous points in the constitution of the " Manifesto
Church." The association of " Undertakers," as the movers in this enter-
prise named themselves, had been working for nearly two years. On the
1 2th of December, 1699, a church was organized, and fourteen persons de-
clared "their consent and agreement to walk together in all the ordinances
of our Lord Jesus Christ." At the same meeting in which the church was
formed it was voted " that Mr. Colman present the desires of the Society to
the ministers of the town to keep a day with us." The reply of two of the
ministers is preserved. It is addressed simply to " Mr. Colman," and signed
by Increase Mather and James Allen, and is in the handwriting of the former
of the signers. It alludes to an insinuation given once and again that if the
Undertakers would lay aside their Manifesto and promise to abide by the
Heads of Agreement of the United Brethren in London, they could have

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 209

the fellowship and assistance of the ministers whom they had addressed.
That had not been done. If now they would give proper satisfaction for
their disorderly proceedings, their desire could be gratified. Otherwise they
could not receive such countenance as would make the ministers of the
other churches partakers of the guilt of the irregularities which had justly
given offence. This reply is dated Dec. 28, 1699. Following this letter
came one of greater length from John Higginson and Nicholas Noyes,
ministers of Salem, dated Dec. 30, 1699. It has been styled "a letter
of admonition and rebuke," and characterized as " severe, without being
unkind or disrespectful." Its general drift was in the same direction with
the previous letter. Early in January, 1700, Dr. Increase Mather published
a controversial tract suggested by the new movement, entitled The Order of
the Gospel. Its character can be easily conjectured from the name of the
author and the title of the publication. A few months later another tract
was put forth, claiming to come from " sundry Ministers of the Gospel in
New England." It is thought to have been chiefly Mr. Colman's work, and
that he was assisted by Rev. Mr. Bradstreet, of Charlestown, and Rev. Mr.
Woodbridge, of Hartford. Similar publications continued to appear for
two or three years. The new movement and the principles involved in it
were thus considered in the best light of the time. But without waiting for
this discussion the ministers of Boston had consented to recognize the new
church. By what means this result was effected we are not told. Very
likely mutual explanations had brought the two parties nearer together.
The mediation of gentlemen of influence, who were in a position to advise
both parties, probably had much to do with the peaceable settlement of the
affairs of the conflicting churches. Such good and kind endeavors are ac-
knowledged by Mr. Colman in the records of his church. The diary of
Judge Sewall preserves the account of such efforts at accommodation. The
result is best told in Judge Sewall's own words. It was in the year 1700.

"January 31. Fast at New Church. Mr. Colman reads the Writing agreed on.
Mr. Allin Prays, Mr. Colman preaches, prays, blesses, p. m. Mr. Willard prays, Mr.
I. Mather preaches, Mr. Cotton Mather prays ; sing the 67 Psalm without reading.
Mr. Brattle sets Oxford Tune. Mr. Mather gives the Blessing. His Text was, ' Fol-
low peace with all men and Holiness,' Doct., Must follow peace so far as it consists
with Holiness (Heb. xii. 14). Mr. Colman's Text was Rom. xv. 29. ... Mr. Wil-
lard pray'd God to pardon all the frailties and follies of Ministers and people, and
that they might give that Respect to the other churches that was due to them though
they were not just of their Constitution. Mr. Mather in 's Sermon and Mr. Cotton
Mather in 's prayer to the same purpose. Mr. Willard and C. Mather pray'd excel-
lently and pathetically for Mr. Colman and his Flock. 'Twas a close dark day."

It could not be expected that all feeling of variance should pass away at

once. It would take time for the Manifesto Church and its minister to

be fully established in intimate relations with their neighbors. But they

gained their place. Except in the matter of Baptism, the position which

VOL. n. 27.

210 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

they assumed is substantially that upon which the larger part of the
Congregational churches of the land has for a long time been standing.
It has been a natural development, a part of the change in the spirit and
practice of the times with the advance of the times. The first religious
service of the new society was held soon after Mr. Colman's arrival, when
a day of thanksgiving to God was kept for " the many smiles of His provi-
dence on our undertaking." Mr. Colman preached from I Chron. xxix.
13, 14. The Lord's Supper was administered to the new church for the
first time on Feb. 14, 1700. The church and society were soon in a
flourishing condition. They increased in numbers and in influence. At
the end of the first year a considerable addition was made to Mr. Colman's
salary. Before the close of the second year it was thought advisable that
the pastor should have a permanent assistant, and Mr. Eliphalet Adams, of
the class of 1694 at Harvard, was engaged. He was ordained as col-
league pastor, but was appointed from year to year. On Nov. 30, 1701,
Judge Sewall went to the Manifesto Church to hear Mr. Adams. He
prayed very well, and "gave us a very good sermon from Gal. iv. 18,
Doct., It is just and commendable, etc. Mr. Adams gave the Blessing."
In the afternoon he made a short prayer, and read the Scriptures; and
"Mr. Coleman made a very good sermon from Jer. xxxi. 33, 'and will
be their God, and they shall be my people.' " But this connection was not
to be of long duration. Dissension arose, although the cause of it is not
known. There were "divisions and angers," and in 1703 Mr. Adams
departed. He was afterward settled in New London, Conn., where he was
highly esteemed. He was a trustee of Yale College, and was at one time
chosen to be its Rector, but declined. He was very useful to other
churches, and in religious work for the Indians. He died in 1753, in his
seventy-seventh year.

Mr. Colman remained for the twelve years after the departure of his
assistant in the sole charge of his large parish. For several years there
were no church meetings, as the last which had been held were very un-
comfortable. In October, 1711, the meeting-house of the First Church
was burned. A public fast was held on account of this calamity, for
the fire was very extensive, and a collection was taken in each of the
churches for the benefit of the sufferers. Both the Brattle Street and the
South churches offered their houses for the use of the homeless congrega-
tion, and both offers were accepted. The ministers shared the services, and
the people divided their attendance. The South Church, at least, agreed
to make the same allowance to the ministers of the First Church as to their
own pastor. When the First Church had provided a new house for its own
use, the congregations separated with great good feeling.

In 1713 Mr. Thomas Brattle died, and left as a legacy to the Brattle-
Street Church " a pair of organs, which he dedicated and devoted to the
praise and glory of God with us, if we would accept thereof, and within
the year after his decease procure a sober person skilful to play thereon."

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 211

The Church, with all possible respect to the memory of "our devoted friend
and benefactor," " Voted, That they did not think it proper to use the same
in the public worship of God."

It was thought at length that it was advisable to have an associate
pastor, and a public meeting of the whole congregation was called to con-
sider the question. It was decided to keep a day of prayer for the Divine
guidance in the choice of a minister. A fortnight after the day of prayer
and fasting another public meeting was held. After prayer and a suitable
discourse, the brethren put their written votes into a box on the table before
the minister, and it was found that Mr. William Cooper had been chosen as
associate to the pastor. That was in 1715. Mr. Cooper was a Boston boy;
the son of " the woman that one would have wished to be born of." He
graduated at Cambridge in 1712, with a high reputation as a young man
of diligence, devotion, and consistent piety. When he was honored with
the invitation to the Brattle-Street Church, he was inclined to accept it, yet
he was fearful that he was not well prepared for so high an office. He
therefore asked that his ordination should be deferred, and that meantime
he should be required to preach but once in two weeks. His wishes were
respected. He was ordained May 23, 1716. At this service the usual
methods of ordination were departed from in two points. The spirit of the
church which had made changes at the beginning of its history was not
averse to further deviation toward what seemed a more excellent way. It
had been the custom for the candidate himself to preach upon the occasion
of his ordination. Many of the young ministers complained of this usage
as an impropriety. On this occasion Mr. Colman preached from 2 Timothy
ii. I. Between the sermon and the ordaining prayer Mr. Cooper read a
paper in answer to four questions propounded by Mr. Colman regarding
the candidate's views of Christian doctrine and of the duties of the minis-
terial office. This was, in Mr. Colman's view, the " more proper part and
service " for the young man. 1 The Manifesto Church was fortunate in
its variations from established usage. It has long been the recognized
custom in Congregational churches that the sermon at an ordination shall
be preached by some other person than the man to be ordained, while the
statement of his views of truth and duty is made by him in an open meet-
ing, when he is questioned by the elders and messengers of the churches.

Leaving the new church thus equipped for its work, we turn to bring
other matters to the same time. In the year 1700 the Legislature of Mas-
sachusetts passed an act requiring Jesuits and Popish priests to leave the

1 [Heliotypes of Benjamin Colman and Wil- versify, ii. 79) says it is "the best biography ex-

liam Cooper are given herewith, from engravings tant of .any native of Massachusetts, written

by Pelham. A portrait of Colman by Smybert during its provincial state." Tyler, American

hangs in Memorial Hall, Cambridge. There is Literature, ii. 171, gives a careful estimate of his

an engraved likeness of him, with a memoir, intellectual character. Mr. Colman's sermon at

going somewhat into the history of the Mani- the ordination of Cooper was printed, 1716, and

festo Church, in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Keg., it was accompanied by Mr. Cooper's confession

1849. The chief life of Colman is by E Turell, of faith, with his answers to the questions pro-

Colman's son-in-law. Quincy (Harvard Uni- posed to him by Mr. Colman. ED.]

fl)
J t tn

212 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

province by the loth of September. A similar decree was made in the
same year in New York. This was in accordance with the law of Eng-
land. The reason for these enactments here was that such Jesuits and
Popish priests " as have lately come, or for some time have had their
residence in the remote parts of this province, and other adjacent terri-
tories, have endeavored to seduce the Indians from their obedience to
the king of England, and to excite them to hostilities against his govern-
ment." There were no persons in Boston at that time who would be affected
by this legislation ; but it is an indication of the feeling of the people
toward the Romish Church upon political grounds. It is well known that
their feeling, so far as it was based on religious considerations, was much
deeper. Happily, loyalty to the king and fidelity to truth and liberty
were in accord in their minds with regard to these matters. In this
year Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton was settled as colleague pastor with Mr.

Willard over the South Church. He
was *^ e son f one f the founders of
this church; he was born in Boston
in 1671, and graduated at Harvard
College in 1691. He continued his residence at Cambridge, was appointed
Tutor and Librarian, and was a Fellow of the College from 1707 to 1717.
He was ordained on Aug. 28, 1700, when sermons were preached by both
Mr. Willard and himself. He was a young man of quick mind, a hard
student, and of ardent piety. He gave promise of great usefulness when
he was placed in his new and lofty station.

In 1701 Lord Bellomont died in New York. " Perhaps he died of sheer
disappointment and mortification." Upon Stoughton, the Lieut.-Governor,
the administration again devolved. He, too, died before the end of the year ;
a stern man, wilful, independent, determined to do his duty at all hazard, and
finding, it is reported, after the prosecution of the imagined witches, over
which Sewall fasted and prayed, " no reason to repent of what he had done
with the fear of God before his eyes." He cared nothing for popular favor ;
but " he was helped by the friendship of the clergy, which he took as much
pains to secure as he ever thought it worth while to bestow for any amiable
purpose." The Council, acting under the charter, was the chief executive
authority in the province in the interim which followed the death of
Stoughton. There was a man waiting for the place. Joseph Dudley was
appointed governor by King William. The king died before Dudley was
ready to leave England, where he had been devoting himself to his own
interests, and had succeeded in gaining the favor of the dissenting ministers,
whose judgment would have its influence with their brethren on this side of
the sea. The king was not willing to make what would be so unpopular a
nomination in the province. But Dudley was able to change the royal
mind by a petition which indicated a change in the mind of Massachusetts,
and by a letter from Cotton Mather, who with his father had been active
in removing him from power, by which he was authorized to say that

^UM<

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 213

" there was not one minister nor one of the Assembly but were impatient
for his coming." The king died, but on the second day of Queen Anne's
reign a new commission was issued, and in June, 1702, Joseph Dudley
reached Boston as the Governor of the Province. With him came the
Lieut-Governor, Thomas Povey, " a stranger sent, whom we knew nor
heard anything of before." The new Governor was well received. A
delegation from the Council went down the harbor to meet him. He was
congratulated on his safe arrival ; and his attention was called to the black
clothes which testified to the sorrow felt for the king's decease. The
peaceable accession of the queen was acknowledged with thanksgiving,
and the coming of his Excellency was recognized as " a very fair first-
fruit of" the new reign; "for which we bless God and Queen Anne."
There also came with the Governor an ancient minister. In answer to an
inquiry, the Governor said it was George Keith. He had been a minister
among the Friends, but was at this time connected with the English
Church. He " had converted many in England," and had been sent over
by the Bishop of London, with a salary of two hundred guineas a year.
" I look'd on him," writes one of the committee of reception, " as Helena
aboard. This man crav'd a Blessing and return'd Thanks, though there
was the chaplain of the Ship and another Minister on board."

At this time we find more strenuous efforts made to establish Episcopacy
here. We come upon Governor Dudley, on the third Sabbath after his
arrival, at King's Chapel, listening to Mr. Myles, who inveighs vehemently
against schism. What seemed to the other ministers the real schism was to
have more effective assistance.

In the days of the Commonwealth there had been formed in England
a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. After the
Restoration a new society was formed for the same object, whose field
extended beyond New England into " parts adjacent." Naturally the
immediate application of the funds of this organization was made by the
dissenting or Congregational churches, for there were no others here for a
long time ; and when an Episcopal church was established in Boston, it was
very much in need of funds for its own support, although it contained men
who were in authority and many connected with the army. An attempt
was made to divert the money given for the instruction of the Indians to the
support of the struggling English Church. The design failed, and a new
society was incorporated by the king, in 1701, and called "The Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." This was to be under
Episcopal control and in the interests of the Episcopal Church. The
instruction of the heathen was not named among its objects. It was " to
instruct our loving subjects in our plantations in the principles of true
religion ; " to provide for the support of an orthodox clergy, and for the
ordinances of the church. This meant the extension of the English
Church ; and the churches in whose sight the work was to be done so
regarded it It was with jealous eyes they looked upon it. It is to be

214

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

remembered under what circumstances these colonies had been created.
The new society went to the old towns of New England, and set up the
English clergy in their government and worship. The religious establish-
ments already there were to be assailed, and their adherents drawn to the
new ways. In 1712 we find Mr. Colman complaining to the Dean of
Peterborough that the funds of the society had been used to create divisions
and to hinder the progress of the gospel. As the plan was unfolded, it
was found that it contemplated appointing bishops for New England, and
establishing schools and colleges which should be under the influence of the
English prelates, that the youth might be drawn from the ways of their
fathers to the ways which their fathers had abandoned. The new church
received accessions, but the New England clergymen for the most part
resisted all efforts to draw them from their loyalty to their own churches. In
1722 Timothy Cutler, 1 Rector of Yale College, and six other Congregational
ministers, chiefly of Connecticut, gave in their adherence to the Episcopal
Church. They were in a region where " the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel" had made a liberal bestowment of its funds. It was a
grievous thing to the churches when the head of one of their colleges thus
turned against them. We can readily imagine the sensation produced in
Boston when the tidings reached the ministers here. We can safely con-
jecture the theme of many a sermon, and many a conference and prayer.

The matter was to come closer.

Mr. Cutler sailed at once for

England, where he received

t/TYL0ll/(/ iASl*~* Episcopal ordination, and was

J V^ made a Doctor in Divinity. A

society was established in Bos-
ton for him, and he returned as a missionary, with a yearly salary of sixty
pounds sterling. It was in 1724 that he arrived in Boston. At once he
made a claim, in connection with the rector of King's Chapel, to be re-
ceived to the Board of Overseers of Harvard College. The feeling which
Mr. Cutler's defection had caused was intensified by this proceeding. It
was regarded as an attempt to have the control of the Congregational
college shared with the Episcopal Church. It was a very tender point;
there was none more sensitive. The college was open to all who chose to
seek its training ; but the government of the college by right belonged with
the churches and the purposes in which it had its origin. The overseers
declared that Mr. Cutler and Mr. Myles had no right, under the constitu-
tion, to sit as Overseers of the College. They appealed to the General
Court, and the answer was the same. The plan in this part had failed,
and this project was abandoned. The churches had the comfort of
renewed security in the possession of the revered school.

1 [A heliotype after an engraving of Cutler the name of Cutler, 1867. Quincy, History of

by Pelham is given in the present chapter. An Harvard University, \. ch. xvii., traces the effects

account of his family is given in Abner Morse's of Cutler's advent to Boston. He was born in

Genealogical Record of several families having Charlestown in 1683. ED.]

/f} . //

/ I jLl f) /i^
l7l/(/ [iASl*~*^

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 215

The Diary of Judge Sewall, though the record of one man's life, gives us
many glimpses of the religious current in this period. A few references to
it may connect us more intimately with the times :

1 700. " Having been long and much dissatisfied with the Trade of fetching
Negros from Guinea, at last I had a strong Inclination to Write something about it ;
but it wore off." Reading Bayne's Commentary on the first chapter of Ephesians he
began to be uneasy. He was shown a petition to the General Court to free a negro
and his wife unjustly held in bondage. There was an attempt to discourage the bring-
ing of negroes by laying a duty of forty shillings upon each one. Cotton Mather
resolved to publish a sheet to exhort masters to labor for the conversion of their black
servants. At length the good Judge, far in advance of his times, published his memo-
rial against Slavery, entitling it, The Selling of Joseph. 1

1701. He was disturbed because Josiah Willard had cut off his full head of hair
and put on a wig. The Judge gave an earnest admonition and referred the offending
brother to Calvin's Institutes. When, later, Mr. Willard preached for Mr. Pemberton,
the Judge attended service at Mr. Colman's, partly out of dislike to the hair-cutting,
and partly " to give an Example of my holding Communion with that Church who
renounce the Cross in JBaptisme, Humane Holydays, etc., as other New-english
Churches doe." Mr. Colman's people were much gratified by his presence.

1702. Feb. 19. "Mr. I. Mather preached from Rev. xxii. 16, bright and
morning Star. Mention'd Sign in the Heaven, and in the Evening following I saw
a large Cometical Blaze, something fine and dim, pointing from the Westward, a little
below Orion." He learned that a line drawn to the comet would strike just upon
Mexico, and that he must look towards Mexico to view the comet, which suggested
changes there. " I have long pray'd for Mexico, and of late in those Words, that God
would open the Mexican Fountain."

June i. " Ministers were disgusted because the Representatives went first in the
Proclaiming the Queen, and that by order of our House."

Oct. i. "The Governor and Council agree that Thorsday, Oct. 22, be a Fast
Day. Governor moved that it might be Friday, saying, Let us be Englishmen. . . .
I suggested to Major-General that the Drought might be mention'd ; Mr. Winthrop
spake, but the Governor refused." *

Nov. 10. "Mr. Leverett comes from Cambridge; open the Court in the Meet-
ing-house, because the Town-house is very near a house that has the Small Pocks ; so
that people are afraid to goe there. . . . Sat in the Deacon's seat."

1703. Aug. 2. " It is said the Colors must be spread at the Castle every Lord's
Day in honor of it. Yesterday was first practiced. If a ship come in on the Lord's
Day, Colors must be taken down. I am afraid the Lord's Day will fare none the
better for this new pretended honor."

1704. March 5. "The dismal News of the Slaughter made at Deerfield is cer-
tainly and generally known ; Mr. Secretary came to me in the morning, and told me
of it. I told Mr. Willard, by which means our Congregation was made a Bochim.
'Tis to be observed that the great Slaughters have been on the Third day of the week,
our Court day."

1 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in this volume, terfere with the provincial religious days for
ED.] Thanksgiving and Fasting, and to have a hand

2 The royal Governors were inclined to in- in wording the proclamations.

2l6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

June 30. The Judge went to the execution of six pirates, who elsewhere are said
to have " dyed very obdurately and impenitently, hardened in their sin," though great
efforts had been made for their reformation. 1

1705. Sept. 10. He tried to prevail with ministers to have the Lord's Supper
celebrated once in four weeks, as it was in the time of Cotton and Wilson. He
thought it would be an honor to Christ, and a great privilege and honor to Boston to
have the Communion in one of the four churches on every Lord's Day. " We have
nothing to do with moneths now; Their Respect now ceases with the Mosaical
Pedagogy."

We turn now from the suggestive pages of this Diary. In the First
Church the pastor, Mr. Allen, had become so infirm through age that
he seldom took any part in the Sabbath services, and on May 10, 1705,
Rev. Thomas Bridge was installed as colleague with him and Mr. Wads-
worth. Two of the elders of the church joined with the ministers in
the laying-on of hands. Mr. Bridge was born in England and educated
there. He was a merchant before he was a minister. After travelling
abroad, he preached in the West Indies, and then came to Boston. He is
described as a sincere and humble man, full of love for the civil and religious
liberty of this country. " Prayer was his gift, and the Bible his library."

In the same year, 1705, the religious atmosphere was disturbed by an
effort made by the Boston Association of Ministers to change the platform
of the churches. Sixteen proposals were sent out for the consideration of
the associated ministers in different parts of the country. These proposals
were not without their good points ; but they were opposed to the spirit and
habit of Congregational churches. It was proposed that the ministers'
meetings should have an ecclesiastical character, and should assume some
of the matters usually committed to the churches ; that these associations,
with the addition of a lay element, should constitute standing councils,
whose decisions should usually be authoritative, and that no one should be
allowed to preach unless he had the written testimonial of an association.
These proposals took away from the churches much of the independence
and authority of which Congregational churches have always been very
jealous, and it was impossible to gain consent to them. The answer to them
was made by the Rev. John Wise, of Ipswich, a stout defender of civil
liberty against encroachment, and a military chaplain of martial spirit and
skill. He entitled his answer The Churches' Quarrel Espoused. It was a
very shrewd and sharp attack and defence. It overthrew the proposals and
strengthened the traditional principles of the churches, which settled down
more firmly on their old platform. Mr. Wise followed this victory, in 1717,
by another publication called A Vindication of the Government of New
England CJmrches, a very clear demonstration of the New England polity,
and one which had a large influence in its day. 2

1 [See further in Mr. Scudder's chapter. p. 494, and Tyler, History of American Litera-
ED.] ture, ii. 104; also, Mr. Goddard's chapter in this

2 [See Dr. Dexter's Congregationalism, etc., volume. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 217

In 1707 the Rev. Samuel Willard died, the minister of the South Church
and vice-president of the College. He was in his sixty-eighth year, and
had been an important man in public affairs. He was a man of large
ability and of extensive learning. " His death was a severe blow to his
church and to the college, and regarded as ' an awful rebuke to the whole
land.' . . . That he was diligent and laborious is shown by the number
of his publications. His common sermons were fit to be preached before
assembled clergymen." His principal work was a course of monthly lec-
tures on the Shorter Catechism, A Complete Body of Divinity. These
lectures were read at the college, and were listened to by crowds of people
from Boston. They constituted " the first folio on theology published
in this country, and the largest which had been published here on any
subject, being a very expensive undertaking for the then Western Churches
in America." *

On Oct. 28, 1707, John Leverett was chosen President of Harvard
College. It was a disappointment to the Mathers, who had hoped, and
not without reason, that one of them and it mattered little to them
whether it was the father or the son would be chosen to that most
distinguished office. It was not alone that this office had passed be-
yond their grasp which tried and provoked them ; but they had been
forced to see the college come under the influence of men who were
in sympathy with the /^
new religious move- *-r0^4n-
ment which had found

expression in the 9 p^ / M //

Manifesto Church. In *? *** ' f >n^/- 1^+vdrU

his religious opinions
Leverett was in agree-
ment with the Brattles. The Mathers were not men to be quiet under either
wrong or misfortune. They were disturbed before by the course of public
affairs, and the public and private life of the Governor. Dudley had been
imprisoned with Andros by the party with which the Mathers were promi-
nently associated. On the accession of Dudley to the chief place in the
province they greeted him with respect and admiration. The father
described the Governor to himself as " blessed with rare accomplishments,
natural and acquired," and " beyond all others advantaged to serve and
honor Christ, by promoting the welfare of his churches." The Governor
on his part acknowledged that " if he ever had a spiritual father, Mather
was the man." Cotton Mather used his office to give the new governor
warning and advice against Leverett and Byfield the speaker, though the
force of the admonition seems to have returned upon his own head.

In July, 1707, there was printed in London a tract of about forty pages,

1 [These two-and-fifty Lectures make nine engraving of Willard, which appeared in this fo-

hundred and fourteen double column pages, lio, is given in Vol. I. Quincy, Hist, of Harvard

the work of nineteen years. Tyler, American University, i. ch. viii., draws the character of

Literature, ii. 168. A heliotype after Pelham's Willard. ED.]
VOL. II. 28.

2l8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

entitled A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England.
Of this pamphlet "it is evident that Rev. Cotton Mather was the inciter
and perhaps the compiler." It was a severe arraignment of the Governor
for his maladministration of his office, by which New England had been
brought under many disadvantages. It was very plain that whatever friend-
ship, or semblance of friendship, there had been between these ministers and
the Governor was now at an end. No single cause for this change need be
sought. The part which Dudley had in placing Leverett at the head of the
college was sufficient to bring matters to a crisis, and to draw upon the
Governor the power of their anger.

Under the date of Jan. 20, 1708, Increase Mather wrote to Governor
Dudley a letter heavy with the gravest charges. He was charged with
" bribery and unrighteousness ; " with contrivances to ruin the country ;
with "hypocrisy and falseness in the affair of the college;" with the
shedding of innocent blood ; with the neglect of the worship of God. The
writer justified himself especially in his reproof, because the Governor had
called him his spiritual father, if he had any; and because it was thought
that he had been influential in procuring the appointment of the Governor.
On the same day Cotton Mather wrote to him in a similar strain, in a
letter less orderly and particular, but quite as severe and very much longer.
To these epistles Governor Dudley replied on Feb. 3, 1708. The reply is
more calm than the circumstances would lead one to expect. If it is not
marked with the confidence of a man who has the assurance of his con-
science that the charges against him are without reason, it is still the
utterance of a man who feels that his adversaries are vulnerable and not
without fault.

" Why, then, have you permitted me to go on in these evils, without admonition,
till you tell me I have ruined myself, family, and country ? And how can you clear
yourselves from having a hand in so extensive desolations? ... I desire you will
keep your station, and let fifty or sixty good ministers, your equals in the province,
have a share in the government of the college, and advise thereabouts as well as
yourselves, and I hope all will be well. I am an honest man, and have lived religiously
these forty years to the satisfaction of the ministers in New England ; and your wrath
against me is cruel, and will not be justified."

The conduct of the Mathers did not have the approval of their ministe-
rial brethren. Mr. Pemberton talked very warmly about Cotton Mather's
letter to the Governor. " Said if he were as the Governor, he would hum-
ble him, though it cost him his head." Mr. Colman preached on Febru-
ary 5, from Galatians v. 25. " Tis reckon'd he lash'd Dr. Mather and Mr.
Cotton Mather and Mr. Bridge for what they have written, preach'd, and
pray'd about the present contest with the Governor."

The Memorial published in England in 1707 was received and read
in this country. It was soon followed by a pamphlet on the other side: A
Modest Enquiry into t/ie Ground and Occasions of a late Pamphlet, intituled

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

219

A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England. By a Disin-
terested Hand. It was designed, of course, to be a justification of Dudley.
It was followed in its time, in 1708, by another publication on The Deplor-
able State of New England By Reason of a Covetous and Treacherous
Governour and Pusillanimous Counsellors. Whatever was written, and
with whatever justice, Dudley did not possess and could not regain the

THE " OLD BRICK " OR FIRST CHURCH. 1

confidence and esteem of the people over whom he was placed. He re-
mained in office for a few months after the death of the queen, when one
Colonel Burgess was appointed in his place, with William Tailer as lieut.-
governor. Burgess was induced to decline the position offered to him, and
Samuel Shute was appointed governor, 2 with William Dummer, Dudley's
son-in-law, for lieut. -governor. In 1720 Dudley died. The alienation

1 [There is another view of this building, niscences of it by Mr. William Hayden in the

which stood from 1713 to 1808, in Rufus Ellis's appendix. See also Drake, Landmarks, 84, etc.

Last Sermon Preached in the First Church, ED.]
Chauncy Street, May 10, 1868, with some remi- 2 [See Dr. Ellis's chapter in this vol. ED.]

22O THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

from him of the Mathers seems not to have been removed. What is
perhaps of more moment, after the election of Leverett the Mathers,
though still by virtue of their pastoral office overseers, " ceased all official
interference in the affairs of the college," although the younger did not
refrain from an open expression of his discontent with the management of
college affairs. We find him in 1718 writing to Governor Shutef "Though
the College be under a very unhappy government, yet for my own part
I earnestly desire that it may go on as easily and as quietly as possible. . . .
For some reasons I desire to keep at the greatest distance imaginable from
all the affairs of Harvard." But the association of his name with the col-
lege was not so soon to cease.

In the year 1708 the Baptist Church in Boston called to its pastorate
Mr. Ellis Callender, who had been a member of this church since 1699.

In 1709 a meeting-house for the Quakers was built in Boston on the front
part of their land in Leverett's Lane, now Congress Street, opposite the
present Exchange Place. The house was of brick, and measured about
thirty by thirty-five feet. It had in front a high wooden fence, with a large
gate, which was seldom opened except for the small monthly meetings of
the society. The rear part of their land seems to have been set apart for
a burying-ground. Most of the bodies placed there were in 1826 removed
to Lynn. 1

In 1710 the First Church in Boston built "a convenient, suitable house
for the use of the ministry." In 1711 the meeting-house of the First
Church was burned, as has already been narrated ; and in 1712 " was founded
the fabrick of a new church, which was occupied in May, 1713. It stood on
the site of the former house, and was built of brick. It was of three stories,
with a clock and belfry. It was afterwards known as the ' Old Brick.' "

In 1713 Mr. Joseph Sewall was settled at the South Church as colleague
with Mr. Pemberton. He was the son of Judge Samuel Sewall, and graduated
at Cambridge in 1707, and studied theology there. At his ordination he
preached the sermon from I Corinthians, iii. 7. There was a large assem-
bly. Nine churches were represented and twelve ministers sat at the table
by the pulpit.

" Church sat in the gallery ; Mr. Pemberton made an August Speech," writes
the proud father, " Shewing the Validity and Antiquity of New-English Ordinations."
The Mathers, Mr. Wadsworth, Mr. Pemberton, and Mr. Colman, joined in laying on
hands. " Then Mr. Pemberton Pray'd, Ordain'd, and gave the Charge Excellently.
Then Dr. Increase Mather made a notable Speech, gave the Right Hand of Fellow-
ship, and pray'd. . . . The chief Entertainment was at Mr. Pemberton's ; but was con-
siderable elsewhere.' "

In 1714 the New North Church in Boston was formed. " Seventeen
substantial mechanics 2 formed the nucleus " of this society. They set up a

1 [See the Introduction to this volume. ED.] Sears, Ebenezer Clough, John Goldthwait, Sam-

2 [Solomon Townsend, Erasmus Stevens, Moses uel Gardner, William Parkman, John Barrett,
Pierce, Caleb Lyman, John Pecker, Alexander Isaac Pierce, Joshua Cheever, Matthew Butler,

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

221

small building of wood, " unassisted by the more wealthy part of the com-
munity except by their prayers and good wishes." Rev. John Webb, of
Harvard, 1708, was ordained pastor of the new church Oct. 26, 1714.
The congregation increased so much that in 1730 the house was enlarged,
and in 1802 a more substantial structure took its place.

In 1715 Rev. Mr. Bridge, of the First Church, died, in the eleventh
year of his ministry in this church. " He made a sudden exit from the
scene of his labors, leaving behind him a name which is better than
precious ointment, and four publications evincing his concern for the cause
of righteousness and the welfare of mankind." 1 In 1717 Mr. Thomas
Foxcroft was chosen as the colleague pastor of the First Church, and was
ordained November 20. He

graduated at Harvard in 1714.

,
His father was a member of

the English Church, but the
son joined the Congregational-
ists, and became a very popular preacher. In 1718 Mr. Elisha Callender,
H. C. 1710, was ordained as pastor of the Baptist Church. The two
Mathers and Mr. Webb joined in the service of ordination. Cotton Mather
preached the sermon, which was entitled " Good men united." Mr. Callen-
der was the son of his predecessor in this church. The father is supposed
to have died about 1726.

Later in 1718 Mr. Thomas Prince was ordained as colleague with Mr.
Sewall at the South Church. Mr. Prince graduated at Harvard in 1707,
and after studying theology at Cambridge went abroad and spent several

years in travel. He preached for a few years in
?ri/n. ' 2 England, but declined to remain there. He was
well received in Boston, 3 and after supplying the
pulpit of the South Church for a portion of the time, he was called to the
pastoral office. He preached at his ordination from Hebrews xiii. 17.

Elias Townsend, John Goff, and James Barnard.
John Dixwell, son of Col. Dixwell (James Davids)
the regicide, was a deacon. Mr. Samuel Holden,
who was chosen deacon in 1752, was the oldest
man in Boston when he died, about 1793 ED.]

1 [Rev. William Cooper's diary (N. E. Hist,
and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p 435) says : "1715, Sept.
26. Dyed here the Rev d Mr. Thomas Bridge, in
the 59 th . year of his age, and ye 1 1 of his pastoral
office to ye i" Ch. of X in this place. His birth
and education were in England. He was a man
of much piety, devotion, love, humility, meek-
ness, etc., and of great fidelity in the discharge
of his office. He dyed of lethargical or apoplec-
tick disease." A sermon on his death by Cotton
Mather was printed in Boston, 1715. See N. E.
Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1865, p. 161. ED.]

2 [A heliotype reproduction of an engraving
of Prince is given in the present chapter. There
are portraits of him in the galleries of the Massa-

chusetts Historical Society, and of the American
Antiquarian Society; an engraving is in Drake's
Boston, p. 646. For memoirs of him by Samuel G.
Drake, see N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1851,
p. 375; and by William H. Whitmore, see the
edition of the Catalogue of the Prince Library,
which Messrs. Wiggin and Lunt were allowed
to print from the type used in printing the Bos-
ton Public Library edition of the Catalogue, which
has an introduction on Prince and his library by
Justin Winsor. See also Tyler's American Lit-
erature, ii. 144 ; and Nortk American Review, Oct.
1860, by Whitmore. A letter from Prince, giv-
ing an account of his family, published in the
N. E Weekly Journal, July 15, 1728, is reprinted
in the Register, 1851, p. 378, where will also be
found a tabular pedigree. ED.]

3 [He had arrived in the harbor on Sunday,
July 21 ; and he speaks in his diary of the cap-
tain in his pinnace taking him to Long Wharf

222 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

In 1719 the New South Church was formed. In 1715 the town had
made a grant to sundry petitioners, among whom was Samuel Adams, of
" a Piece of Land comonly called Church Green, nigh Summer Street in
Boston, of sixty-five feet in Length and forty-five feet in Breadth (with con-
venient High Wayes Round the same), for the Erecting thereon an Edifice
for a Meeting House for the Publick Worship of God." It is not known
why this piece of land was so early decorated with the ecclesiastical name
which it has borne till within a few years. 1 On this lot was erected " a con-
venient wooden building, with a handsome steeple, finished after the lonick
order, in which is a bell." On Nov. 22, 1719, Mr. Samuel Checkley, H. C.
1715, was ordained as the minister of the new church.

In 1720 Rev. Peter Thacher was installed pastor of the New North Church.
It was an event of great local interest and importance. Mr. Thacher was
the grandson of the first minister of the South Church. He graduated at
Cambridge in 1696. He was ordained pastor of the VVeymouth Church in
1707, and remained there until he was called to Boston. He was eminently
qualified for the position to which he was invited, but he was already the
pastor of a church. Standing among the customs of our time, we smile at the
controversy over the propriety of calling a minister from one church to
another. Mr. Thacher was called by a majority of only one vote, and that
one was the casting vote of the pastor. It was not right, said the objectors,
for a wealthier society to draw away the minister of one that was poorer :

" Weymouth, in God's sight, is as precious as Boston, and the souls there of as
great worth as the souls here. And to the common objection, that it is a pity that Mr.
Thacher, being so bright a light, should smoke out his days in so much obscurity, we
answer, first, bright lights shine brightest in the darkest places ; and, secondly, bright
lights are the obscurer for burning in a room where there are more, and as bright."

To the other excuses of the majority, that ministers had moved in this
way before ; that Mr. Thacher was not equal to the work in Weymouth,
especially the pastoral visitation ; that he had not done much good by his
preaching there ; and that he wished the delight and profit of the conversa-
tion he would find in Boston, they made forcible replies. The other
ministers sought to reconcile the conflicting parties. They advised the
majority not to insist on the settlement of Mr. Thacher, and the minority

about a quarter of an hour after service had Sewalfs Diary, iii. 135. The diary of the Rev.

begun, whereby he escaped "the crowds of Jacob Eliot records, under date of July 28, 1717,

people that came clown the wharf at noon-time " the first sermon that ever Mr. Prince " preached

to see him ; for " they tell me," he adds, " there in New England," at the Old North ; and later

were about 500 came down inquiring after me. (Sept. 5) he mentions his first Thursday lecture.

But now, the streets being clear, I silently went Sewall says : " Mr. Prince preached in my son's

up to the Old South meeting, and none there turn." He also chronicles a fast kept at the

knew me." Judge Sewall says : " He was at our Old South, Sept. 25, " to chuse a minister," when

meeting ; but not thinking of him, and he having Mr. Sewall preached in the morning, and Cotton

a wig on and russet coat, I saw him not at all." Mather in the afternoon. See also SewalFs

Prince says again: "After the exercises ended I Diary, iii. 140. ED.]

made haste into the porch on purpose to avoid ' [See Introduction to this volume for the

Mr. SewalPs taking notice of me in public." early history of this lot. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 223

not to build another meeting-house. A conflict of pamphlets followed with
titles which indicated the deep feeling on both sides. The majority wrote
with the more moderation, but the dissentients, though they showed the
most temper, seem to have been in the right. When Mr. Thacher came in
accordance with the invitation given to him, the Boston ministers refused to
sit on the council which was to install him. Only one church was fairly
represented on the council ; one other minister, a relative of the candidate,
came, though his church had refused to send him. There was danger of
disorder at the public service. The council went out of the back gate of
Mr. Webb's garden, and through an alley which opened in front of the
meeting-house, and thus gained possession of the pulpit. An uproar ensued.
In the midst of the tumult the minister of the church at Rumney Marsh,
the only one on the council, asked the necessary questions concerning the
call and its acceptance, and declared Mr. Thacher regularly inducted into
his office as minister of the church. The dissenting part of the society
withdrew, and prepared to build another meeting-house and to organize a
new church. The needs of the neighborhood did not require another place
of worship, but the convictions of these persons demanded it. Twenty-four
persons associated themselves for this purpose, and this number was soon
increased to forty. They built a brick house which was long regarded
as a structure of remarkable elegance. It fronted upon Hanover Street,
with entrances on three sides. It was dedicated on May 10, 1721. Mr.
Cotton Mather preached the morning sermon from Psalm xxiv. 10. Dr. In-
crease Mather, Dr. Cooper, and Dr. Colman, took part in the services, with
Mr. Wadsworth, who preached the afternoon sermon from Revelation ii. I.
In May, 1722, a church was gathered, 1 and on the same day Mr. William
Waldron was ordained as the first pastor. He was a graduate of Harvard
in 1717. His ministry was brief, as he died in 1727. But he greatly en-
deared himself to those who knew him. He was possessed of a deeply
religious spirit, and of warm affections. A zealous adherent to the New
England polity, he was devoted to the liberties of the people. His
preaching was sound in argument and direct and plain in method. He
was heartily commemorated in the discourses of his associates as a man
of unusual worth.

It was the custom at this time for the Congregational ministers of the
province to come to Boston at the session of the General Court for the
election of magistrates. They generally dined together at the house of one
of the ministers, and frequently had the company of the Governor and other
persons connected with the government. The connection between the
ministers and the government was an intimate one. The judgment and
advice of the ministers had, at an earlier time, been more sought by the
rulers ; but their influence continued to be evident and efficient. At length
it was thought advisable that this gathering of the clergy should have a

[ l A list of persons connected with the new man, is printed in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal.
brick church, 1722-75, compiled by T. B. Wy- Reg., July, 1864 ED.]

224 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

more formal character, and the " Convention of Congregational Ministers"
was organized. In 1720 they "Voted, that a sermon should be preached
annually to the ministers on the day following election." Dr. Increase
Mather was chosen the preacher for the next year, with the Rev. Solomon
Stoddard and the Rev. Cotton Mather as substitutes. Dr. Increase Mather
accordingly preached the sermon in 1721. In 1722 Mr. Cotton Mather
preached. During the first eight years the sermon was delivered in a
private dwelling-house. In 1731 there is the first notice of a collection of
money for missionary purposes, and this was repeated in subsequent years.
At a later date, 1786, the "Congregational Charitable Society of Massa-
chusetts" was incorporated by the Legislature, that the benevolent work
begun by the Convention might be more efficiently carried on. The result
of this movement has been the accumulation of a large fund, the income
of which is used for the benefit of the families of deceased ministers. A
collection for a similar object is taken after the sermon which is still
preached before the " Convention of Congregational Ministers."

In 1723 Dr. Increase Mather closed his long life. Its story is inseparable
from the history of the times in which he lived. From his graduation in
1656 he was actively engaged in the duties of the profession he had both
inherited and chosen, and in the affairs of the town, the college, and the
colony. After his death, Mr. Joshua Gee was chosen as colleague with
Mr. Cotton Mather in the pastoral work of the Second Church, and was
ordained in December, 1723. Mr. Gee was a Harvard graduate of 1717,
and gave promise of large usefulness. His early preaching attracted much
attention, and his talents gave him a wide influence. He was an instructive
and convincing preacher, full of zeal, and moved by strong convictions.
Though said to have been of an indolent habit, he bore an active part in the
controversies of his time. He bound his parishioners to him and devised
wise things for them and for his successors in founding a library for the use
of the church and its ministers.

In May, 1724, President Leverett suddenly died. 1 The great question
immediately arose, who should succeed to his high station ? It was an im-
portant and difficult question at any time, but was rendered more so by the
divisions in the religious views of the friends of the college, and by the
jealousies which this state of things would naturally engender. It is not
strange that Cotton Mather desired and expected the office. It is not strange
that he was passed over in the choice. Rev. Joseph Sewall was elected ;
chosen for his piety, Mr. Mather wrote. It was not a just reflection upon
him or the electors ; yet the gifts of Mr. Sewall seem to have been better
suited to the work of a pastor than to that of president. The Old South
Church was unwilling to give him up, and he declined the office. The Rev.
Benjamin Colman, of the Brattle Street Church, was chosen. In connection
with this election, the friends of the college sought to secure from the Gene-
ral Court a fitting salary for the president, and one which could be depended

1 [Quincy depicts his character. History of Harvard University ', i. ch. xv. and xvi ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 225

upon. The effort failed, and Mr. Colman declined the office. Several
months passed before another election was made, when the Rev. Benja-
min Wadsworth, of the First Church, was chosen. He declared his reluct-
ance to accept the office, and his preference to remain with his church.
His church finally consented that he should accept the call to the new posi-
tion, if he judged it to be his duty. He consented to be made the presi-
dent of the college, and the General Court granted him one hundred and
fifty pounds " to enable him to enter upon and manage the great affair of that
presidency, and a committee was appointed to look out a suitable house for
the reception of the President," and to inquire into the financial condition
of the college. He was inaugurated on Commencement Day, 1725. He
retired from the pastoral office, but continued for a time to preach in
his turn for the First Church, whose friendship he possessed to the end
of his life.

In 1723 the Second Episcopal Church in Boston was built for the
new Society, which bore the name of Christ Church, and was to be under
the care of the Rev. Timothy Cutler. That house of worship is still
standing on Salem Street. It was in its day much admired for its archi-
tectural beauty. 1 In 1744 a chime of bells procured in England by Dr.
Cutler, and consecrated there, was placed in the tall steeple, which has
been twice rebuilt, where it still remains.

After Mr. Wadsworth had assumed the presidency of the college, the
First Church took measures to procure another minister; and in 1727, on
October 25, Mr. Charles Chauncy was ordained as the colleague of Mr.
Foxcroft. Mr. Chauncy was the great-grandson of President Chauncy, and
graduated in 1721. He filled out a long life with industry and piety, and
died in 1787, after a ministry of nearly sixty years in this church. He was
called to defend the faith and practice of the churches, and to oppose those
who would subvert them ; and he proved a valiant champion. He left in
print a large number of \vorks, chiefly sermons, to witness to the earnestness
of his life.

In 1727 a colony of Irish Presbyterians formed a church and began wor-
ship in a plain wooden building, which had been used as a barn, in Long
Lane, now Federal Street. Rev. John Moorhead was their minister for a very
long period. 2 In 1744 they were strong enough to put up a neat church
edifice, which was afterwards enlarged to meet the wants of the flourishing
society. The bell and vane of the old Brattle Street Meeting-house were
presented to the new house, by Governor Hancock. At the New Brick
Church, in 1728, Mr. William Welsteed took the place of Mr. Waldron as
pastor. He was a Boston boy, a graduate of the college in 1716, and a

1 [A list of the original pew owners is given Another says, " Abel Rudhall, of Gloucester,

in Drake and Snow. Two hundred and fourteen cast us all. Anno, 1744." ED.]
persons contributed 737 i8s. towards the cost * [A heliotype after Pelham's engraving of

of erection. The bells weigh 7,272 pounds. Moorhead is given in the present chapter.

One is inscribed, " We are the first ring of bells It was both painted and engraved by this artist

cast for the British Empire in North America." in 1751. ED.]
VOL. II. 29.

226

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

tutor there from 1720 to 1728. He remained for twenty-five years the min-
ister of the church. 1 After the first ten years Mr. Ellis Gray was associated
with him. He also was a Boston boy, and graduated at Harvard in 1734.

REV. CHARLES CHAUNCY, D.D/

Both of these ministers died in 1753, on the communion Sabbath, at the
same time of the day, of the same disease, and after each had preached
his last sermon, to his own people, from the same text with the other,

1 [A heliotype after an engraving of Wei-
steed is given in the present chapter. ED.]

2 [There are portraits of Chauncy in the
collections of the Historical Society, and in
Memorial Hall at Cambridge. The present
engraving follows that in the Historical Society.

See W. C. Fowler's Memorial of the Chauncys,
1858, pp. 304, and a memoir in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1856, p. 325. There is a good
characterization of Chauncy in Tyler's American
Literature, ii. 200. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 227

" Redeeming the time, because the days are evil." They were not
especially distinguished men, but were accomplished and exemplary,
diligent and useful. In this year, 1728, died
the Rev. Cotton Mather, sixty-five years old,
busy and disturbed years, whose story and
spirit will be told in another place.

In the same year William Burnet arrived in Boston as governor of the
province. The position of the son of the renowned Bishop of Salisbury in
the ecclesiastical affairs of the province can be readily conjectured. He had
a generous reception, but his brief period of administration was chiefly
occupied in the effort to procure the settlement of a stated salary upon the
governor. In September, 1729, he died, from a fever contracted by the
overturning of his carriage as he was coming to Boston from Cambridge,
where the General Court was holding its session. Jonathan Belcher was
appointed to his place, a grandson of Andrew Belcher, the ancient inn-
holder of Cambridge, and a graduate of Harvard in 1699. After an admin-
istration which had been of advantage to the province, he was transferred
to New Jersey in 1741. He adhered to the religion of his fathers, and with
fond recollections of his early home desired that his burial should be at
Cambridge.

A law was passed in 1729 which relieved Baptists and Quakers from
parish taxes. In 1730 the Old South Church entered its new house of
worship, which was to become famous before the century closed.

In this year (1732) another church was established, in Hollis Street.
Governor Belcher was very prominent in the organization of this church,
and gave the land on which the meeting-house was built. This was a small
wooden building, and had a bell weighing eight hundred pounds, the gift of
a nephew of the Thomas Hollis from whom the church and the street tcrok
their name. The first minister was Rev. Mather Byles, who was born in
Boston in 1706, who graduated at Cambridge in 1725, and after careful
preparation began to preach. He was ordained over the Hollis-Street
Church, Dec. 20, 1733. Mr. Byles came to be well-known for his literary
and poetical accomplishments, and for his lively wit. He had a considerable
reputation as a preacher. When the conflict between the province and the
royal government was hastening towards the Revolution, he took sides with
the Tory party, and boldly expressed his opinions. In consequence of this
course he was compelled to retire from the office which he had so long filled,
which he did in 1776. He was denounced in town-meeting, in 1777, as an
enemy to his country, and was tried, and for a short time confined to his own
house under a guard.

Mr. Samuel Mather was the son of Mr. Cotton Mather, born in 1706,
graduated in 1723, and in 1732 called to be colleague with Mr. Gee at the
Second Church. After he had held this place for nine years, serious
difficulties arose between Mr. Gee and Mr. Mather, and between Mr. Mather
and a majority of the church. It was charged that the junior pastor was

228

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

not entirely sound in doctrine, and not entirely proper in his conduct. He
asked to be dismissed ; the church refused, and proceeded to an investiga-
tion. A council was called which tried to heal the breach. For a little
time it seemed that the endeavor might be successful. The council finally

1 [This cut follows a well-known mezzotint
likeness of Mather Byles, which has also been
reproduced in heliotype in Rev. George L. Cha-
ney's Historical Discourses on the history of the
Hollis-Street Church. A portrait of Dr. Byles
is owned by Miss Kate O. Stone. Dr. Byles lived

on Tremont Street, nearly where that street parts
from Shawmut Avenue, and in the process of
widening the thoroughfares the site of his house
is brought partly upon the pavement. Drake's
Landmarks, 412. Tyler, History of American
Literature, ii. 192, draws his character sharply.

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 22$

advised that Mr. Mather should be dismissed and his salary continued for
one year. He was accordingly dismissed, and ninety-three of the church
withdrew with him. Two hun-
dred and sixty-three remained.
The withdrawing parties made
overtures looking to a return,
but these could not be accepted
if Mr. Mather was to be rein-
stated. The separatists therefore went forward and erected a meeting-
house on Hanover Street, and became the Tenth Congregational Church in
Boston. Mr. Mather continued to minister to this church until his death,
in 1785, when, in accordance with his request, most of his people returned
to the Second Church. The meeting-house was afterward sold to the
Universalists. In spite of the opposition which Mr. Mather encountered,
there is no good reason to doubt his uprightness. He seems to have been
in good standing outside of the Second Church. His family position, both
on the side of his father, grandfather, and of his wife, who was a sister of
Governor Hutchinson, exposed him to jealousy and ill-will more than if he
had been differently connected. He is accounted a man of learning, though
not a powerful preacher.

To look back once more, in 1737 the West Church in Boston was formed,
and a meeting-house was erected on Lynde Street. It was the only church
in that part of the town. The first minister was Rev. William Hooper, who,
after a service of nine years, turned away from the New England churches,
and connected himself with the Church of England. He went to England
and was again ordained, after which he returned and was made the minister
of Trinity Church, the third Episcopal Church in the town. The house of
worship of this church was opened in 1735. It stood on Summer Street,
at the corner of Hawley, and was a plain wooden structure, ninety feet by
sixty, without steeple or tower. The interior was considered the finest in
the town. The first minister was the Rev. Addington Davenport, who was
for three years the Assistant Rector at the King's Chapel, and assumed the
charge of the new church in 1740.

President Wadsworth died in 1737. His health began to decline soon
after he was placed over the college, but with all the disadvantages of his
impaired strength he performed his duties to the general acceptance of the
friends of the college. " His conduct in their discharge was marked by

He is chiefly remembered for his Tory pro- Some contemporary stanzas are still remem-

clivities, which will be touched upon in the next bered :

volume. His wit and jests still pass current in

Boston, and Tyler has noted the instances of his " There >s P'ng Byles provokes our smiles,

repartee recorded in Tudor's Life of James Otis,

*". J J J * He visits folks to crack his jokes,

156; Belknap Papers in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., n. Which never mend tlleir hearts .

285, 471 ; iii. 51, 234; and Sprague, Annals of With strutting gait and wig so great,

the American Pulpit, \. 377, 378, 382. See also He walks along the streets ;

Sargent, Dealings with the Dead, ii. 364, etc. And throws ollt wit ' or what ' s like il -

T,. , . . ' J , . T .. . To every one he meets."

Duvckmck, Cyc. of Amir. Lit., i. 119. ED.

230 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

firmness, prudence, and judgment. Faithful to every trust, kind to all,
calm, cautious, moderate, self-possessed, and affectionate, he left a name
precious to his own, and appreciated highly by after-times." In seeking
another president the Corporation turned again to the ministers of Boston,
and made choice of the Rev. William Cooper, of the Brattle-Street Church.

BENJAMIN WADSWORTH. 1

This election appears to have been a compromise, and not to have secured
the favorite candidate of either of the religious parties between which the
community was divided. Mr. Cooper promptly declined the proffered honor
and responsibility, and a few days later the Rev. Edward Holyoke, of Mar-

1 [This cut follows a portrait now hanging in Memorial Hall, Cambridge. ED.)

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

231

blehead, was unanimously chosen. He had graduated in 1705, and had been
a tutor, librarian, and fellow in the college. He was considered eminently
fitted for the duties of the office. His religious principles coincided with
the mildness and Catholicism which characterized the government of the
seminary. To the inquiry of Governor Belcher, Mr. Holyoke's neighbor,
the Rev. John Barnard answered : " I think Mr. Holyoke as Orthodox a
Calvinist as any man ; though I look upon him as too much of a gentle-
man, and of too catholic a temper, to cram his principles down another
man's throat." " Then I believe he must be the man," replied the Gov-
ernor. He was inaugurated Sept. 28, 1737. The General Court agreed to
pay to the Society which had thus given up its pastor one hundred and forty
pounds, " to encourage and facilitate the settlement of a minister there."

In 1738 Rev. Elisha Callender, of the First Baptist Church, died. He
had served this church for twenty years, and was " beloved by people of all
persuasions for his charitable and catholic way of thinking. His life was
unspotted, and his conversation always affable, religious, and truly manly."
In 1739 the Rev. Jeremiah Condy was made the minister of this church.
He was a graduate of Harvard College in 1726.

In 1739 the Rev. Peter Thacher, of the New North Church, died. He
was a man of great powers and wide learning; of a manly and earnest
spirit; devout and amiable. "To call him the evangelical reasoner is com-
prehensive of his character as a preacher." l

We are brought now to the consideration of the religious movement often
called " The great Awakening." There had come to be in the churches a
lack of spiritual vigor, a languor, a deadness of faith, and an unsoundness
of belief, which were not in keeping with their position or their history, and
which foreboded evil things for the years that were to come. Out of this
sleep they were awakened in a marvellous manner. The new life began to
appear in 1734, under the powerful preaching of Jonathan Edwards, at
Northampton. It spread to the sur-
rounding towns. It aroused the inter-
est of the Boston churches. Dr.
Colman wrote to Dr. Edwards for an
account of the work, which was given
in a long letter afterward published in London. The Boston ministers
kept their people interested, and circulated among them Dr. Edwards's
letter and several sermons which had been influential in the movement.
The remarkable interest in the valley of the Connecticut was not of long con-
tinuance ; partly, it would seem, because so many had quickly felt the new
life, and had come under its control, or turned away from it. But Boston
was yet to feel its power. At the hands of a stranger it was to receive

1 [His relationship to other members of this ' 2 [This is the subscription to a letter on file

family of ministers' can be traced in N. E. Hist, at the State House, addressed to Josiah Willard,

and Cental. Keg., 1859, p. 246, and 1866, p. 316, relating to the labors of Whitefield. On his

and in the New England Magazine, July, 1834. mother's side Edwards was descended from the

See also Heraldic Journal, iv. 75. ED.] Boston Stoddards. ED.]

232 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

the strange gift. The fame of George Whitefield, a young minister of
the Church of England, then engaged in Christian work in Georgia, had
reached so far, and was connected with so amazing results, that Dr. Colman
sent him an invitation to visit New England. With his colleague, Mr.
Cooper, he prepared the way for him by publishing a sermon by a clergy-
man of South Carolina, highly extolling his gifts and powers, and they
accompanied this with a memoir of the coming man. For Whitefield came.
Reaching Newport by water, he preached there to great assemblies, and
then hastened on to Boston. Fortunately for him and for his reception,
Governor Belcher was in sympathy with him. The Governor's son and
" a train of the clergy and principal inhabitants " went out to meet him
and to escort him into town, where a warm welcome awaited him. This
was on Sept. 18, 1740. We have his own record of the beginning of
his work here :

"Friday, September 19, I was visited by several gentlemen and ministers, and
went to the Governor's with Mr. Willard, the secretary of the province, a man fearing
God, and with whom I have corresponded, though before unknown in person. The
Governor received me with the utmost respect, and desired to see me as often as I
could. At eleven I went to worship at the Church of England, and afterwards went
home with the commissary. He treated me very courteously ; and, it being the day
whereon the clergy of the Established Church met, I had an opportunity of convers-
ing with five of them. In the afternoon I preached to about four thousand in Dr.
Colman's meeting-house, and afterwards exhorted and prayed with many who came to
my lodgings."

On Saturday he preached in the morning at Mr. Sewall's, and afterward
on the Common, and again at his lodgings. On Sunday he heard Dr. Col-
man preach, and in the afternoon preached at Mr. Foxcroft's church, and
afterward on the Common and at his lodgings. He preached at Mr.
Webb's, and Mr. Gee's, and was to have preached at Mr. Checkley's, but
for an accident which drove the people to the Common. He went to
Cambridge, where he found the college with the president, four tutors,
and about a hundred students. He concluded that the college was

" Not far superior to our universities in piety. Discipline is at a low ebb. Bad
books are become fashionable among the tutors and students. Tillotson and Clark
are read, instead of Shepard, Stoddard, and such like evangelical writers ; and, there-
fore, I chose to preach from these words, ' We are not as many, who corrupt the
Word of God ; ' and God gave me great freedom and boldness of speech. A great
number of neighboring ministers attended, as indeed they do at all other times. The
president of the college and minister of the parish treated me very civilly. In the
afternoon I preached again, in the court. I believe there were about seven thousand
hearers. The Holy Spirit melted many hearts."

He preached the weekly lecture at Mr. Foxcroft's, and preached in
Charlestown and Roxbury ; and " from a scaffold erected without the Rev.
Mr. Byles's meeting-house," and in Mr. Welsteed's church, and on Satur-

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

233

day afternoon on the Common to about fifteen thousand people, and on
Sunday at Mr. Sewall's and Dr. Colman's, when, at both churches, offerings
were made for an orphan house in Georgia.

" I then went and preached to a great number of negroes, on the conversion of
the Ethiopian, and at my return gave a word of exhortation to a crowd of people
who were waiting at my lodgings. I went to bed greatly refreshed with divine con-
solations."

Whitefield then visited other places, where he preached with great effect,
and came again to Boston. He continued to preach to throngs, who were
wonderfully affected by his appeals. 1 On Sunday, October 12, he preached
in the South Church, which was so crowded with people that he was obliged
to get into the house by a window. The Governor took him in his coach
to the Common, where he preached his farewell sermon to an immense
crowd, " near twenty thousand people." On the next day the Governor
took him to the Charlestown Ferry, handed him into the boat, kissed him,
and bade him farewell with tears. Whitefield was evidently greatly pleased
with his visit. " Boston people are dear to my soul, and were very liberal to
my dear orphans." We have his reflections as he turned toward his South-
ern home. In his view Boston had kept up the form of religion well, but
had lost much of its power. There was too much vanity to be seen in the
assemblies.

" Jewels, patches, and gay apparel are commonly worn by the female sex. I ob-
served little boys and girls commonly dressed up in the pride of life ; and the infants
that were brought to baptism were wrapped in such finery, that one would think they
were brought thither to be initiated into, rather than to renounce, the pomps and
vanities of this wicked world. Boston, however, is remarkable for the external obser-
vance of the Sabbath. Men in civil offices have a regard for religion. The Governor
encourages them ; and the ministers and magistrates seem to be more united than
those in any other place where I have been. I never saw so little scoffing ; never
had so little opposition."

What did others say of him? We have the testimony of the Rev.
Thomas Prince of the Old South Church :

" Upon Mr. Whitefield's leaving us, great numbers in this town were so happily
concerned about their souls, as we had never seen anything like it before, except
at the time of the general earthquake. And their desires were excited to hear minis-
ters more than ever ; so that our assemblies, both on lectures and Sabbaths, were sur-
prisingly increased. And now the people wanted to hear us oftener, in consideration of

1 [Paul Dudley thus recorded his impressions : gained him such a multitude of hearers. The
" Mr. Whitefield is without doubt a very extraor- main subjects of his preaching while here were
dinary man, full of zeal. . . . His preaching the nature and necessity of regeneration, or con-
seems to be much like that of the old English version, and justification by the righteousness of
Puritans. It was not so much the matter of his Christ by faith alone." N. E. Hist, and Cental.
sermons, as the very serious, earnest, and affec- Reg., 1861, p. 58. Compare Mr. Drake's chap-
tionate delivery of them without notes, that ter on Roxbury in the present volume. ED.]
VOL. II. 30.

234 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

which a public lecture was proposed to be set up at Dr. Colman's Church, near the
midst of the town, on every Tuesday evening. . . . When the evening came, the
house seemed to be crowded as much as if Mr. Whitefield was there. It was the first
stated evening lecture in these parts of the world."

That great results followed the efforts of Whitefield is evident. That his
methods were not approved by some of the ministers and people is also
certain. His position was peculiar. He was an ordained minister of the
English Church. Yet his work in Boston was done in the New England
churches.

" His own received him not," remarks one of the writers of that time ; " but we
[ministers, rulers, and people] generally received him as an angel of God, or as Elias,
or John the Baptist risen from the dead. . . . Such a power and presence of God with
a preacher, and in religious assemblies, I never saw before, and am ready to fear I shall
never see again."

That there were features of his preaching which cannot be commended is
not more than should be expected. Let it be remembered that he was not
twenty-six years old ; that he had drawn public attention to himself wher-
ever he had gone, and had found throngs waiting patiently and with longing
upon his words. The unparalleled admiration which he received was enough
to turn the head of a weak man, and transform him into a body of self-
conceit. It did not have that effect upon this man. He never lost sight of
his office, or its design. If he judged harshly, if he rebuked sharply, if he
censured unjustly, we are not called upon either to be surprised at his haste,
or to conceal his mistakes. Better than the judgment we could form is the
opinion of the ministers of Boston, who in 1740 welcomed him to their
pulpits and rejoiced in his labors. " Our Governor can call him nothing less
than the Apostle Paul," says one writer. Old Mr. Walter, of Roxbury,
Eliot's successor, said of his preaching, that " it was Puritanism revived."
The feeling against him would be as strong at the college as anywhere. It
is intimated by President Quincy that he had been misinformed regarding
the college by some who were disaffected towards it. His preaching is
said to have been effective there. The visiting committee of the overseers
reported in June, 1741, that "they find, of late extraordinary and happy
impressions of a religious nature have been made on the minds of a great
number of students, by which means the college is in a better order than
usual, and the exercises of the professors and tutors better attended." The
overseers recommended that the Faculty should encourage and promote the
good work, and appointed a day of thanksgiving and prayer. Tutor Flynt
seems to have been an impartial though interested witness of these events.
He writes of Whitefield,

" He appears to be a good man, and sincerely desirous to do good to the souls of
sinners ; is very apt to judge harshly, and censure, in the severest terms, those that

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 235

differ from his scheme. ... I think he is a composition of a great deal of good and
some bad ; and I pray God to grant success to what is well designed and acted
by him."

Soon after Whitefield left Boston his work was taken up by the Rev.
Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey. He labored in
and near Boston for two or three months, and produced a deep impression.
We have Mr. Prince's account of him and his work. He was esteemed a
man of deep religious character. " His preaching was as searching and
rousing as ever I heard," while Whitefield's is described as " in the manner
moving, earnest, winning, melting." Tennent showed no desire to please
his hearers, but directed his reasoning and appeals to their hearts and
consciences.

" I do not remember any crying out, or falling down, or fainting, either under Mr.
Whitefield's or Mr. Tennent's ministry all the while they were here ; though many,
both women and men, both those who had been vicious and those who had been
moral, yea, some religious and learned, as well as unlearned, were in great con-
cern of soul."

It is a good commentary on the influence of these two men that after
they had gone persons continued to repair to their own ministers, and were
instructed by them. " And now was such a" time as we never knew. The
Rev. Mr. Cooper was wont to say, that more came to him in one week in
deep concern about their souls, than in the whole twenty-four years of his
preceding ministry. I can also say the same as to the numbers who repaired
to me." Mr. Webb said that he had in three months' time above a thousand
come to him. " The people seemed to love to hear us more than ever."
Numerous lectures were opened in the different churches and were largely
attended, while there were frequent services in private houses. There were
large additions to the churches from all classes. The very face of the town
seemed changed. Negroes and boys left their rudeness. There was an
altered " look and carriage of people." The taverns were deserted by those
who had resorted to them with idle or evil intent. For a year and a half
after Mr. Whitefield's departure the good work went on. But a change was
to come. There was in the town of Southold, on Long Island, a minister
named James Davenport. He was esteemed by Whitefield and Tennent as
a godly and heavenly man. He was of an excitable temperament, extrav-
agant, and unbalanced. The successes of Whitefield stirred him up to
engage in similar labors. He began his work by examining the minis-
ters, if he was allowed to do so, and pronouncing on their religious state,
and by warning the people of the danger of sitting under unconverted
pastors. At length he reached Charlestown, where he declared the minister
an unconverted man. He crossed over to Boston, where the ministers in-
vited him to a conference. They asked him why he left his flock so often
and for so long periods, and why he assumed to judge of the estate of other

236 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ministers and their people, and thus to make division. They decided, after
hearing him, that they ought not to invite Mr. Davenport into their places
of public worship, lest they might appear to countenance his errors. They
were not satisfied that he had a call to preach in the fields from day to day,
as he had been doing. While thus protesting against this man and his
measures, they repeated their testimony " to the great and glorious work of
God, which of his free grace he has begun and is carrying on in many parts
of this and the neighboring provinces." Thus shut out from the churches,
Davenport went to the Common, and there and on Copp's Hill preached to
large gatherings and uttered his mind concerning the ministers. For utter-
ing " many slanderous and reviling speeches against the godly and faithful
ministers of this province " he was indicted and tried. Several of the
ministers sent a note to the Court, asking that he might be treated with as
much gentleness as was consistent with justice and good order. The fact
was proved, but the verdict was " not guilty," on the ground that he was
non compos .mentis. That was in August, 1742. Little is known of the
effect of his work in Boston. A few persons withdrew from the churches.
In February, 1748, the eleventh Congregational Church in Boston was
formed, and the Rev. Andrew Croswell, of Groton, Connecticut, who had
defended Davenport, was installed as pastor. The meeting-house of the
French Protestant Church, which about this time was disbanded, was secured
by the new society. Mr. Croswell continued to be the pastor till his death,
in 1785, when the house passed into other hands.

The indirect results of the commotion made by Davenport were long felt.
The minds of the ministers and the people had been agitated on the vital
matter of conversion, and controversy was the natural, as it is the usual, re-
sult. The ministers of Boston published two treatises, one by Tennent,
and the other by Dickinson, a Presbyterian clergyman of New Jersey; and
at the annual meeting of the ministers of the province in May, 1743, they
published their testimony " against several errors in doctrine and disorders in
practice, which have of late obtained in various parts of the land." As this
was the action of only a small portion of the clergy of the province, another
meeting was held on the day after Commencement, when another declara-
tion of " testimony and advice " was read and signed by sixty-eight of the
ninety ministers present. They declared " their full persuasion that there
has been a happy and remarkable revival of religion in many parts of this
land through an uncommon divine influence." They were grieved that this
should have been represented abroad as " all enthusiasm, delusion, and dis-
order," while they lamented that in some places there had been irregularities
and extravagances. They declared that laymen should not invade the office
of the minister, or ministers the province of others ; that the people should
beware of prejudices against their own pastors, and of separations and un-
charitableness ; and, above all, that the people should not despise the out-
pourings of the Spirit. The wisdom of the Massachusetts clergy was
largely represented in this declaration ; yet there were some ministers, justly

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 237

held in respect, who did not look so favorably on the movement. In 1742
Dr. Edwards published his Thoughts on the Revival, recognizing " the proofs
of a mighty and infinite blessing." The next year Dr. Chauncy put forth
his Seasonable Thoughts on the Revival of* Religion in Ntw England, in
which he took strong ground on the other side, which seems to have been
in accord both with his natural temperament and with the position he had
before taken with regard to the work. After a time the special interest
passed away, leaving its permanent results. In 1744 we find Thomas
Prince mourning the withdrawal of the awakening influence of the sover-
eign Spirit. " But few are now added to our churches, and the heavenly
shower in Boston seems to be over."

Mr. Whitefield made another visit to Boston in 1744. The common
people received him, he writes, with joy which cannot be described. " But
many of the ministers, how shy! how different from what they once
were ! " He suffered from the dissension which was caused by Davenport
and the controversy which he created. Besides this, Governor Belcher was
gone. Mr. Whitefield is very frank in his statement:

" He honoured me with great honour, and the clergy paid the nod, and obeyed.
In many, I then perceived, it was quite forced ; and, I think, when at his table, I
whispered to some one and said, ' If ever I come again, many of those who now seem
extremely civil will turn out my open enemies.' The event has proved that in this
respect, I have been no false prophet. You know where it is written, 'There arose a
king who knew not Joseph.' But, many or all, my poor labours are yet attended with
the usual blessings."

He preached in several of the largest houses of worship, Dr. Col-
man's, Dr. Sewall's, Mr. Webb's, Mr. Gee's, and at the Brattle-Street
Church he administered the communion. " He comes," says the historian,
" with the same extraordinary spirit of meekness, sweetness, and universal
benevolence as before." But the newspapers assailed him. Two associa-
tions of ministers in Essex County rebuked their brethren in Boston for
receiving him to their pulpits. The College Faculty retaliated the charges
brought against the college in the hot discussions of the time, by publish-
ing their testimony against Whitefield, calling him very hard names. White-
field replied, and others continued the controversy. " Whitefield was sore
beset. In letters to various friends he expressed more diffidence than might
have been expected from a young man who had drunk so deeply into the
intoxication of popular applause ; " thus writes the calm historian in our
day. " I certainly did drop some unguarded expressions in the heat of less
experienced youth, and was too precipitate in hearkening to and publishing
private information." He assured the Faculty of the College of his "sorrow
that he had published his private informations ... to the world." Twenty
years later, when the Library had been burned, he gave to the college his
"Journal and 'a collection of books; and also by his influence he procured
a large number of valuable books from several parts of Great Britain."

238

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Whitefield spent about three months in Boston and its vicinity on his
second visit. He came again in 1754, when "thousands waited for, and
thousands attended on, the word preached." Ten years later he returned,
and was received " with the usual warmth of affection." He had collected

1 [This cut follows a portrait of Whitefield
now hanging in Memorial Hall at Cambridge.
Engraved portraits are numerous. Dr. Dexter
enumerates, in the bibliography appended to his
Congregationalism as seen in its Literature, the
various publications which the " Great Awaken-
ing " called forth ; and some of the chief of them
are noted as for and against Whitefield in the
Prince Catalogue, p. 65. The files of the news-

papers of the day, particularly Fleet's Evening
Post, show with what acrimony the friends and
opponents of Whitefield opposed each other.
When Foxcroft of the First Church published
his Apology, Fleet opened his columns to severe
rejoinders. That editor also waged a paper
war with the Rev. Joshua Gee on the same
point ; and under the pseudonym of Deborah
Shearman he or some one in his alliance wrote

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 239

money in Great Britain for the benefit of the sufferers by the great Boston
fire of 1760, and received the thanks of the people of the town. At the
time of this fourth visit his health was impaired, but he preached with the
usual results, and was held back when he would go Southward. In 1770 he
was here once more, and preached in Boston and in other towns. But his
work was drawing to a close. He died at Newburyport, Sept. 30, 1770.
For thirty years his influence had been felt in New England. It is impossi-
ble to state its results. The converts of the " Great Awakening," in which
he was so prominent, were numbered by tens of thousands. If our figures
were precise, they would but slightly express the influence of this wonderful
movement. The thoughts of all the people were stirred, for good or ill,
and an abiding impression was made upon the minds and hearts of the com-
munities which knew its presence and its power. It stands as a marked
feature in the history of the times. We take leave of the life of Mr. White-
field with the testimony of Dr. Pemberton : " The longer he lived, the more
he evidently increased in " purity of doctrine, in humility, meekness, pru-
dence, patience, and the other amiable virtues of the Christian life."

There remain no other striking events in the religious history of the
provincial period. The first established Episcopal church had outgrown
its house, and the corner-stone of the new King's Chapel was laid in 1749.
Governor Shirley, Sir Charles Henry Frankland, and Peter Faneuil were the
chief promoters of the project. It was not till 1753 that the construction of
the new building, without and about the walls of the old, required the So-
ciety to seek a temporary home elsewhere. The building as then left was
not complete ; its portico was not added till 1789, and the spire, planned
for its tower, has never been added to this day. In the Congregational
churches the work went on, with its orderly succession of sermons and
lectures, with the varied influences of the Great Awakening. In the First

provoking open letters to the preacher. Buck- your hearts and minds in the knowledge and
ingham, Personal Reminiscences, i. 135. love of God, and of his dear Son Christ Jesus
Whitefield's Journal shows considerable en- our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty
tries regarding his work in Boston, and Tyer- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost be
man, in his Life of Whitefield, London, 1876, amongst you, and remain with you ; and the
makes sufficient extracts, with other illustrative whole Israel of God, now, henceforth, and for-
matter. This latter work, however, is not always evermore, amen, Lord Jesus, amen, and amen."
accurate on New England affairs, quoting com- He says of Whitefield's preaching: "Jan. 9,
mendable and indifferent authorities with equal 1744-45. Mr. Whitefield preached at Mr. Webb's,
readiness. Thomas Prince's Christian History p.m. There were many cried out, Robinson's
(see Mr. Goddard's chapter in the present vol- daughter and others. Such a disturbance that
ume) is a principal contemporary record of made Mr. Whitefield leave off before he had
these times, being issued between March 5, 1743, done his sermon." Again, "a crying out, and
and Feb. 16, 1745. There is something concern- he desired the person to come to him that even-
ing the opposition of Cutler, Chauncy, Holyoke, ing." "June 19, 1745. Mr. Whitefield preached
and Wigglesworth, with extracts from their pub- his farewell sermon at Mr. Webb's at 5 o'cl.
lications and from others given in Tyerman, ii. p.m., from Ephesians 6 chap., from verse 10 to
12, 123, etc. There is not a little conflict of tes- the end of the igth verse ; a full assembly. He
timony, however, among the Boston ministers, hath been gone about a fortnight to Londonderry
Colonel John Phillips in his MS. diary records and the towns about there ; came back yester-
Whitefield's form of benediction: "The peace day." The reader owes these extracts to the
of God which passeth all understanding keep kindness of Mr. Wendell Phillips. ED.]

240

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Church Mr. Foxcroft died in 1769, after a long ministry. His colleague,
Dr. Chauncy, though differing from him in his views both of theology and
of policy, paid generous tribute to his memory. 1

In the Second Church Mr.
Gee died in 1748. Mr. Samuel
Checkley, Jr., was settled as
colleague pastor in 1747, and
remained as sole pastor for the
twenty years following Mr. Gee's
death. Mr. Checkley was the
son of the first pastor of the New
South Church ; he was born in

A *3SC~~jy'~ /? / C Boston, graduated at Cambridge

Q^^&sfo&f^^Z/Z?^*^^^ in '743. and died in 1768. " He

is said to have been distinguished
for a peculiar sort of eloquence,
and an uncommon felicity in the
devotional service of public wor-
ship." In 1768 Mr. John Lath-
rop was installed in the pastoral
office. His ministry was long
and useful, covering nearly fifty
years.

In the Old South Church Rev. Thomas Prince died in I758, 3 after
a pastorate of forty years. He was a good minister, an instructive
preacher, a noted scholar. He turned his attention to historical studies,
and rendered important service to all who would know the early history
of New England. The remains of his library are now in the care of the
city, and are greatly valued for their antiquarian wealth. Mr. Prince
revised the New England version of the Psalms, and his book was adopted
by the Church for use in public worship. In 1769 Rev. Joseph Sewall died,
after a service of fifty-six years, during which he had four colleagues. He
was distinguished for his fervor and devotion, and was known as " the good
Dr. Sewall " and " the weeping prophet." For some time before his death
he was carried into the pulpit in a chair, and sat while he taught the people.
Four very short pastorates were those of Alexander dimming, Samuel
Blair, John Bacon, and John Hunt. The ministry of Mr. Gumming was
closed by his death in 1763:* Mr. Blair was called to the presidency of the

KING'S CHAPEL. 2

1 [In a sermon printed in Boston in 1769.
See items from it in N. E. //AC/, and Geneal.
Reg., 1854, p. 364. ED.]

2 [The signatures are of the minister, the two
wardens, and a committee of the vestry of the
chapel, appended to a petition, Mar. 14, 1747, ask-
ing for more land to enlarge their edifice. ED.]

3 [Miss Mary Fleet records it in her diary :
" Sunday, between 5 and 6 o'clock in ye after-

noon, the Rev 1 Mr. Prince departed this life
after a month's languishment." A r . E. Hist,
and Geneal. Keg. 1865, p. 60. ED.]

4 [He had been ordained as colleague of Dr.
Sewall in 1761 ; and in the Massachusetts Gazette
of March 2 appeared a long account of the cere-
monies and of the "very grand entertainment"
given at Dr. Sewall's house, which, "though capa-
cious," was not sufficient for all the guests. ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

2 4 I

College of New Jersey, but declined the office. On account of his health
and of troubles in connection with the Half-way Covenant, he resigned in
1769. The congregation were dissatisfied with Mr. Bacon, and he retired
and entered upon civil life. Mr. Hunt, on returning from Brookline in 1775,
was shut out of Boston by the British troops, and retired to Northampton,
where he died in the same year.

JOSEPH SEWALL.

[NOTE. The above cut follows Pelham's bury was recently exhibited in the Old South

engraving of a portrait, by Smibert, belonging Loan Collection. Buckingham, New England

to the Essex Institute, Salem. There is an Magazine, 1832, speaks of a miniature likeness

engraving in the N. E. Hist, and Cental. Reg., engraved on copper by Nathaniel Kurd in 1764.

January, 1856. A portrait owned by Mr. Salis- ED.]
VOL. II. 31.

242

THE MEiMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

In the Brattle-Street Church Mr. William Cooper died in 1743. Dr.
Colman, in his funeral sermon, presents him as a man distinguished for
his piety and his learning; for the fervor of his preaching and of his
prayers ; for his boldness and independence ; and for the success of

DR. SAMUEL COOPER.

1 [Copley painted several portraits of Dr.
Cooper which, according to A. T. Perkins's list
of Copley pictures, are in the possession of the
Society, of Rev. Dr. Lothrop, and of Dr. O. W.
Holmes, which last is " very fine, half-length,

with wig and bands." A likeness also hangs in
the rooms of the Historical Society, from which
the present cut is engraved. An engraved like-
ness appeared in the Boston Magazine, 178.1.
ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 243

his long life. 1 In May, 1746, Samuel Cooper, his son, was called to be
the successor of his father, and the colleague of Dr. Colman. He gradu-
ated in 1743 at Harvard College, where he had taken high rank as a
scholar, and was marked out for a brilliant career. Dr. Colman preached
the ordination sermon from Isaiah vi. 8. This was among his last public
acts. In the following year he died, after a ministry of forty-seven years,
a man of pure heart and a liberal spirit; of large intellectual attainments;
a persuasive and impressive preacher.

In the New North Church Mr. Andrew Eliot was settled in 1742. He
graduated at Harvard College in 1737. He preached the sermon at his
ordination. He entered on his ministry /f C\

in a time of great excitement, and re- Q-^//Lv ?*&//} '/s's --
tained the position for thirty-six years, &**

and for most of the time was the sole pastor of the church. He was a
plain preacher, but the people liked to hear him. He was honored for his
wisdom and manliness, and was held in veneration after his death. 2 The
Rev. John Webb died in 1750. He graduated at Cambridge in 1708, and
was for thirty-six years the minister of this church. " When I consider the
whole of his character," said his surviving colleague, " I cannot but think
him one of the best of Christians, and one of the best ministers."

At the New South Church Mr. Penuel Bowen was settled in 1766, as
colleague with Mr. Checkley, and he was dismissed in 1772. He afterward
went to South Carolina and entered the Episcopal Church. He was a
Harvard graduate of 1762. Mr. Checkley died in 1769, after a pastorate
of fifty years. He graduated at Cambridge in 1715, and was the first pastor
of this church, to which the labors of his long life were given. In 1773
Mr. Joseph Howe began a pastorate which was ended by his death in 1775.

1 ["Dec. 4, 1743. Rev. Mr. William Cooper ton Davenport had rings; and 12 doz. of men's

preached at our meeting, and it was the last and women's gloves; and Messrs. Prince, Webb,

sermon he preached with us or anywhere else. Foxcroft, Checkley, Welsteed, and Gee, who

He was at lecture the Tuesday evening follow- were the pall-bearers, had black glazed gloves

ing, and that was the last time he was abroad, and weeds hanging down ; and the deacons and

He continued indisposed with a cold until Sab- moulings had black glazed gloves, and weeds in

bath day, and then was taken with an apoplectic their hats. The funeral was of a Thursday,

fit. Dr. Colman stayed the church, and they Dec. 15,1743; it was a very large funeral ; there

appointed a fast to be kept the next day. The were 160 men of the Church and Congregation

next day, Dec. 13, Rev. Mr. Cooper died about went before the corpse, and Dr. Colman rid in

six o'clock in the morning, and the Committee a shay before the corpse. On the Sabbath fol-

met at Colonel Wendell's, and we sent four men lowing Dr. Sewall preached at our meeting,

about to warn the Church and Congregation to A.M., a funeral sermon from i Thessa. iv. 14,

meet in the meeting-house at 3 o'clock, and we and Dr. Colman a funeral sermon from John xi.

voted to be at the whole charge of the funeral; 35." Colonel John Phillips, .MS. Diary.

and accordingly we subscribed between 600 and ED.]

700 pounds, and the next day we got .847 IO.T., 2 '"It was a pleasant day/saith Father Gan-
and others put in so as to make up .895 IGJ. nett on the fly-leaf of his almanac, 'Sept. 15,
Mr. Cooper's whole family, consisting of ten 1778, when near four hundred couples and thirty-
persons, and Dr. Colman, were put into mourn- two carriages followed his remains from his
ing, and 29 rings for the association; and Gov- house, before the south side of his meeting-house,
ernors Shirley and Belcher, and President and into Fore Street, up Cross Street, through Black
Mr. Appleton, and three layers out, and Mr. Foye Horse Lane, to Corpse [sic] Hill.' " Dealings
and spouse, and four doctors and Rev. Adding- with the Dead, i. 92.

244 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

He graduated at Yale College in 1765, the first scholar of his class. After
teaching with success for a few years, he visited Boston and was invited to
the pastoral office. He was a remarkable man, in the judgment of those
who knew him, and would have adorned his profession.

In the New Brick Church Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton was installed
in 1/54, and remained in charge of the church until his death in 1777.
He was the son of the minister of the Old South Church, whose name
he bore, and graduated at Harvard in 1721. He was distinguished as
a scholar. He was settled for twenty-six years in New York, where he
had a useful ministry. His piety was fervent, like his father's. His sermons
were " correct in diction and style," and at first he attracted crowds of
hearers, although in his old age he did not retain his popularity. " His
connection with the Society was never formally dissolved, but gradually
loosened, till at length it existed merely in name." After Mr. Pemberton's
death this church was incorporated with the Second Church, from which
it had originally come out.

The West Church received as minister in 1747 Mr. Jonathan Mayhew,
of the noted missionary family of Martha's Vineyard. He was the son
of the Rev. Experience Mayhew, and was born in 1720, and graduated
at Harvard College in 1744. He was a distinguished preacher and writer,
and entered vigorously into the controversies of his times. Although he
was a bold man, and ready to give free expression to his views, his position
with regard to the person and work of Christ, and doctrines related to
these, which were then earnestly discussed, cannot be precisely and satis-
factorily determined. He is counted with the more liberal men of his day.
He opposed the proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts in its attempts to introduce bishops into the
colonies, and to change their ecclesiastical condition. With the same ardor
he strove to promote in the people the love of liberty, and to secure for
them its full and just benefits. " Beloved for his pastoral fidelity and gen-
erous deeds, distinguished for his genius and intellectual strength, eminent
in both Englands as a scholar and divine, revered as a true lover of liberty
and ardent Christian patriot, this noble man died at Boston, July 19, 1766,
aged forty-five years, mourned by the great and the good."

The three churches connected with the Church of England had their
succession of rectors and assistants, and pursued their work and worship
according to their own preferences ; and they gained proselytes through the
dissensions in the Congregational churches, but they were, of course, less
identified with the people and their history than the churches which have
been already described.

In the First Baptist Church Mr. Condy died in 1768, after a ministry
there of nearly thirty years, during which he was "well esteemed among
his associates." In 1765 Rev. Samuel Stillman was installed as pastor. On
account of some discontent with the views of Mr. Condy, and because he
had " opposed the late work of God in the land," in 1743 a Second Baptist

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.

245

Church was formed, which worshipped for a time in a private house, and
then in a schoolhouse, until, in 1746, it had a meeting-house in Back Street,
afterward Salem Street. The Rev. Ephraim Bownd was the minister from
1743 to 1765. There were here a few followers of Robert Sandeman, who

1 [There are several engravings of Mayhew,
one in Bradford's Life of Afayhew ; another
in Thornton's Pulpit of the Revolution ; a very
rude one by Paul Revere prefixed to a volume
of Mayhew's sermons. Thomas Hollis caused
an engraving of him to be made in 1767 by

Cipriani, which has this inscription: "Jonathan
Mayhew, D.D., pastor of the West Church in
Boston, an assertor of the civil and religious
liberties of his country and mankind, who, over-
plied by public energies, died of a nervous fever,
July viii., MDCCLXVI., aged xxxxv." Richard

246 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

came from Glasgow in 1764. They held their first meetings in the Masons'
Hall, in private houses, and at the " Green Dragon," until they had a small
wooden building at the foot of a lane leading to the mill-pond. This was
burned in 1773, and after a time was replaced by a meeting-house in the
rear of Middle or Hanover Street.

There were a few Methodists where now there are so many. Among
the British soldiers who came in 1768 were some Methodists who, it is
said, made the beginning of a society. About 1772 a small society was
formed, which became extinct. While there was some preaching in the
interval, it was not till 1790 that Methodism was fairly introduced into
the town.

At the college the office of president became vacant by the death in
1769 of Edward Holyoke, who had filled it for thirty-two years. " He was
lamented, as a man and an officer, with unaffected expressions of sorrow; for
notwithstanding his advanced years, it was difficult to supply his loss. . . .
His administration was at once the longest and one of the most prosper-
ous in the annals of Harvard College." The Rev. Samuel Locke, pastor of
the Sherburne church, was chosen president, and was inaugurated in March,
1770. In December, 1773, he resigned and returned to Sherburne, after an
administration " disturbed by political turmoils," and leaving little which is
remembered. The Rev. Samuel Langdon, of Portsmouth, entered upon
the duties of the office in October, 1774, and remained in the position for
nearly six years.

At the close of this period there was among ministers and people more of
a spirit of inquiry, more questioning of doctrines, more breaking from accus-
tomed methods of belief and teaching than in the years before. In 1756 there
appeared in Boston an edition of Evelyn's Humble Inquiry, which denied
the deity of Christ. It was afterwards said by some that Mr. Mayhew was
concerned in introducing the book, but of this there is no proof. " An
answer was prepared by President Burr of Princeton, and a sermon by
Pemberton on the divinity of the Saviour appeared, with a preface bearing
the signatures of Sewall, Foxcroft, and Prince, and lamenting, without
naming, the recent republication, which had been ' to the great grief and
offence,' they said, ' of many amongst us.' " The discussion continued, with
assertion and protest, with question and answer. There were the signs of a
change. But it was not till 1785 that Unitarianism, as it was at length called,
became a " substantial reality " in Boston, by the action of the Society wor-
shipping in King's Chapel, which, in consequence of the doctrinal change

Jennys, Jr., painted and engraved a portrait, 1874 to the Congregational Library by Mr. Ralph

which was published by Nathaniel Hurd, before Dunning of Georgetown, D. C. An Eclogue

1768. (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1866, p. 210.) A sacred to the Memory of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan

crayon portrait by Copley was unfortunately Mayhew, printed by Fleet, 1766, is thought to

destroyed in the Boston fire, November, 1872. have been written by Joseph Green. A life of

(JV. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1873, p. Mayhew, by Alden Bradford, was published in

370. A. T. Perkins, List of Copley Pictures,^. 84.) Boston in 1838. Quincy takes his measure in his

A portrait said to be of Mayhew was given in Harvard University, ii. 66 ED.]

RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD. 247

of its own minister, adopted a modified form of the English liturgy in place
of the original, excluding all acknowledgment of the Trinity. In 1787 the
wardens and the congregation ordained the minister, Rev. James Freeman,
in " a solemn and appropriate form." He was declared " Rector, Minister,
Priest, Pastor, teaching Elder, and public Teacher " of the Society. This
remained for many years the only Society of any note in New England
which was confessedly Unitarian.

We are thus brought to the days and events in which Massachusetts was
to cease to be a province. It was not a sudden change. The training of
the people prepared them for the work to which they were called. They
were the sons of men and women who had bought at a heavy price the
right to be free, and they were prepared to complete the purchase, though
the cost was again heavy.

In the churches liberty had been nurtured. There the people had been
taught the authority of conscience, the sovereignty of duty, the demands
of justice and right They had been trained in choosing their rulers, even
their religious teachers, and liberty had grown within the parish lines by a
force which could not be resisted. They were loyal to rightful government,
but they claimed the right to say what government was rightful. Not court-
ing independence, they were determined upon liberty. By the very consti-
tution of their churches they were predestined to be free. During the
period we have been reviewing, as in the years before, the ministers had
borne an active part in shaping the thoughts and executing the will of the
people. In the very early days of the Colony the " Election Sermon " was
established by appointment of the Governor and Assistants. By the
charter of 1691 the last Wednesday of May was established as "Election-
day;" and a little later the artillery election-day was established. "On
these occasions," writes the contemporary historian of the Revolution,
" political subjects are deemed very proper; but it is expected that they be
treated in a decent, serious, and instructive manner." The sermons which
dignified these days had a wide circulation among those most likely to be
influenced by them. " Thus, by their labors in the pulpit, and by furnish-
ing the prints with occasional essays, the ministers have forwarded and
strengthened, and that not a little, the opposition to the exercise of that
parliamentary claim of right to bind the colonies in all cases whatever."
The first Provincial Congress, in 1774, acknowledged gratefully " the public
obligation to the ministry as friends of civil and religious liberty, and
invoked their aid " in the attempt to restore harmony between Great
Britain and these colonies. " We cannot but place great hopes in an order
of men who have ever distinguished themselves in their country's cause."
The ministers were ready to do more. In 1750 Jonathan Mayhew had
preached on the Lord's day after the 3Oth of January " concerning unlim-
ited submission and non-resistance to the higher powers. . . . Let us all
learn to be free and to be loyal ; let us not profess ourselves vassals to the
lawless pleasure of any man on earth ; but let us remember, at the same

248 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

time, government is sacred, and not to be trifled with." This was the spirit
of the Congregational ministers of Massachusetts. The Rev. Joseph Howe,
of the New South Church, wrote in August, 1/74: "The Bostonians ac-
quire courage every day. How can it be otherwise, when all the continent
are pitying and supporting them, and above all when we have that God to
go to who heard our fathers when they cried unto Him, and who, we trust,
will hear us also, their immediate descendants?" At the public Thanks-
giving, appointed by Congress in 1774, the Rev. William Gordon maddened
the king's friends and encouraged the patriots with his bold words: "But
should the country be wasted for a few years, and a number of its inhabi-
tants be destroyed, ere the wished-for salvation is granted, how soon, after
having secured its liberties, will it regain its former prosperity ; yea, become
far more glorious, wealthy, and populous than ever?" At the annual
convention of Congregational ministers, held by special invitation of the
Provincial Congress at Watertown, June I, 1775, they sent to the Congress
a letter, in which they said : " Deeply impressed with sympathy for the
distresses of our much-injured and oppressed country, we are not a little
relieved in beholding the representatives of the people, chosen by their free
and unbiassed suffrages, now met to concert measures for their relief and
defence, in whose wisdom and integrity, under the smiles of Divine Provi-
dence, we cannot but express our entire confidence." They also expressed
their readiness to serve by rotation as chaplains to the army. The preachers
preached loyalty and liberty. The people heard and heeded. When loy-
alty came to mean liberty, and allegiance was to be transferred to the gov-
ernment of the people, loyalty was still taught, and the people still gave
heed. There were no more patriotic assemblies than those which were
gathered under the roofs of the meeting-houses. There were no more
stanch friends of the people, no more steadfast assertors of their right to
life and liberty, than the men whom the people had called to be their lead-
ers into the kingdom of heaven. The spirit of the ministers and the
churches, forwarding the toils and sacrifices which made a nation out of
colonies, makes it fitting that with the uprising for freedom and independ-
ence we bring to a close the story of the religious temper and movements
of the Provincial Period.

NOTE. The writer has a small manuscript "Benjamin Colman, His Book." It contains
book which has on the inside of the front cover, reports of sermons preached at " Chambridge,"
"Joseph Baxter, His Book, Anno 1689," and chiefly by Rev. Nathaniel Gookin, 1690-92.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON. THE LIFE OF PETER
FANEUIL. THE GIFT OF FANEUIL HALL TO THE TOWN.

BY CHARLES C. SMITH.
Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

THE Edict of Nantes was designed to give security to Protestantism in
France, and to put an end to the religious wars which had long dis-
tracted the kingdom. It was signed by Henry IV. on the 1 5th of April, 1 598,
a day universally recognized as one of the great landmarks in French
history. By its provisions the French Protestants were to have liberty to go
or to reside wherever they chose within the kingdom, without being com-
pelled to do any act which should violate their consciences. All the col-
leges, schools, and hospitals were opened to them; and they could found
schools and colleges of their own, and publish religious books in the cities
where their worship was authorized. They could be admitted to all offices
and employments, without subjecting themselves before admission to any
ceremonies or oaths contrary to their consciences. In every city and town
they could have a place of burial. No child could be taken from his parents
to be brought up in another religion. Parents could provide by will for the
education of their children. Protestant ministers were exempted from ser-
vice in the watch or the guards, and from some other liabilities. Disin-
heritance on account of religion was made unlawful. 1 Such was in substance
the supreme law of the kingdom down to the revocation of the Edict by
Louis XIV., on the i/th of October, i685, 2 an act which, it has been
justly said, inflicted a deeper wound on France than all the combined dis-
asters of the closing years of his reign. 3 But even before that time means
had been found to evade its provisions and to restrict the benefits which it
was designed to secure to the Protestants. So early as 1662, some of the
inhabitants of Rochelle, disheartened by long-continued oppression, turned
their thoughts to Massachusetts, with the view of seeking more peaceful
homes on this side of the Atlantic ; and in the records of the General Court
at the session in October of that year is the following entry :

1 Martin, Histoire de France, x. 423, 424. 3 Poirson, Histoire de Henri IV,, ii. 522, 523.

2 Ibid., xiv. 47.

VOL. II. 32.

250

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" In answer to the petition of John Touton, of Rochelle, in France, doctor
chirurgeon, in behalf of himself and others, that himself and other Protestants, inhabi-
tants of Rochelle, who, for their religion sake, are outed and expelled from their habi-
tations and dwellings, etc., might have liberty to come hither, here to inhabit, etc., as
in said petition on file appears, the Court judgeth it meet to grant this petition." ]

Touton himself accordingly came over, and was at Rehoboth in 1675 I
but it is not known whether any one accompanied him. 2 His name is not
in the list of freemen, either in Massachusetts or in Plymouth.

On the revocation of the Edict there was a great flight of Protestants
from France, industrious and useful citizens, who could be ill-spared from
their own land, and who carried a new element of strength wherever they
went. Beside those who sought refuge in England, Ireland, and Holland,
considerable numbers came to America. Among them were not a few
whose descendants have filled a conspicuous place ~ in our history; and it
is a noteworthy circumstance that three of the nine Presidents of the Old
Congress were of Huguenot descent, Henry Laurens, of South Carolina,
John Jay, of New York, afterward Chief-Justice of the United States, and
Elias Boudinot, of New Jersey. 3 The first considerable company which
came to Massachusetts arrived in the summer of 1686, and immediately
applied to the inter-charter Government for permission to settle here.
Under date of July 12, the Council Record recites:

" Upon application of the French Protestants (lately arrived from St. Christopher's)
to the President for admission to reside and dwell in this his Majesty's Dominion, and
to bring in their effects and concerns here, Ordered, that upon the taking the Oath
of Allegiance before the President and under his hand and seal of his Majesty's
Territory and Dominion, they be allowed to reside and dwell in his Majesty's said
Dominion, and to proceed from hence and return hither as freely as any other of his
Majesty's subjects ; and this to be an order for all such French Protestants that shall or
may come into this his Majesty's Territory and Dominion." 4

These immigrants appear to have arrived in a very destitute condition ;
and a few weeks later August 5 the Council took measures for the
relief of the suffering French. A brief was ordered to be " drawn up and
printed, and read in all meeting-houses, to supply the necessities of the
French lately arrived here in great distress." This brief recites that

" There are lately arrived fifteen French families, with a religious Protestant minister,
who are in all men, women, and children more than fourscore souls, and are such
as fled from France for religion's sake ; and by their long passage at sea their doctor
and twelve men are dead, and by other inconveniences the living are reduced to great
sickness and poverty, and therefore objects of a true Christian charity. Also, fifty per-
sons men, women, and children which were by the cruelty of the Spaniards driven
off from Elutheria (an island of the Bohemiahs), naked and in distress, as also many

1 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv., part ii., p. 67. 4 MS. copy of the Council Records (in the

a Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 315. office of the Secretary of State), p. 52.

1 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. 36.

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON. 251

other poor French Protestants, are daily expected (as letters inform), who will bring
further distress and charge with them. The President and Council have intreated
Captain Elisha Hutchinson and Captain Samuel Sewall to receive and distribute the
same among them, according to the direction of the President and Council from time
to time for their respective necessities, and to whom such as are betrusted in the
several towns are desired to return what shall be collected ; and the ministers in the
several towns are desired to publish this order, and to put forward the people in their
charity." l

In the early part of September a vessel arrived at Salem with some of
these unfortunate persons; and on the 2/th of that month the Council

" Ordered, that the money lately gathered at Salem by way of contribution for the
relief of the poor, distressed French Protestants be returned thither for the necessary
support of the French lately arrived there, and to be distributed according to discre-
tion." 2

Who the minister was with the company from St. Christopher's is not
known ; and we are equally ignorant as to the date when a French church
was first .organized in Boston. From letters preserved among the Mather
Papers in the Prince Library, and from other sources, it appears that a
minister by the name of Laurent Vandenbosch was here in the early part of
1686, before the arrival of this company; but it is not known when he came
nor how long he remained. While here he made himself obnoxious by
joining persons in marriage contrary to law and custom, and by some other
irregular acts. Subsequently he went to New York, where he became
minister of a Huguenot church on Staten Island. In New York he managed
to get into trouble again, and was dismissed from his church ; and he finally
went to Maryland. 3 He was apparently followed as minister of the Boston
church by David de Bonrepos, who is mentioned as " our minister " in the
Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston sent to Geneva about the
end of 1687, or the beginning of i688. 4 At that time the number of French
here was very small. " Here in Boston," says the Refugee, writing in
November, 1687, "there are not more than twenty French families, and

1 MS. copy of the Council Records, p. 67. part of one of the leaves containing these notes

2 Ibid., pp. 79, 80. See also Bentley's Descrip- is torn off ; but there is not a word about the
tion of Salem, in i Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 264, 265, Huguenots in the part now remaining, and there
and Felt's Annals of Salem, ii. 242, 404, where it is scarcely a doubt that Snow was mistaken in
is stated that the amount of the contribution in his inference, and that " Mr. Laurie " was the
Salem was 26. Rev. Gilbert Laurie, of whom Savage says

3 Mather Papers, vi. 6, 20 ; 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., (Genealogical Dictionary, iii. 59) that he was in
v. 98; Andros Tracts, ii. 36, 37; Savage, Genea- "Boston, 1686; went to preach that year, in
logical Dictionary, iv. 364 ; Magazine of Amer- absence of Moody, at Portsmouth ; was probably
icon History, \. 94. a Scotchman, and may be presumed to have

4 Snow (History of Boston, p. 200) mentions gone home in 1689." He was probably the
the manuscript notes, by Cotton Mather, of two "Mr. Lowry" who is mentioned in a letter of
sermons preached in Boston Sept. 12 and Oct. Jacob Jesson, dated London, June 12, 1686, as a
7, 1686, by the Rev. Mr. Laurie, now in the young man of good reputation, who was about
Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, to sail for New England. (See Mather Papers,
and says it is apparent from their tenor that Mr. vi. 17.) Both sermons appear to have been
Laurie was one of the Huguenot refugees. A preached in the Second Church.

252

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

they are every day diminishing on account of departing for the country to
buy or hire land, and to strive to make some settlement. They are expected
this spring from all quarters. Two young men have lately arrived from
Carolina, who give some news of that colony." 1 De Bonrepos is believed
to have remained here about two years; and in 1689 he became minister of
the church at New Rochelle, near New York. 2

Nothing is now known about the history of the church for the next seven
or eight years, or whether it had any settled ministers ; but it is not prob-
able that the members were left wholly without pastoral care during this
period. 3 At length, in 1696, the Rev. Pierre Daille" was called to take
charge of the church. He was then about forty-eight years of age, and
had been in America since 1683, having been minister of a French church
in New York, and at the same time engaged in missionary work in that
neighborhood. 4 He was a man of ability, of exemplary character, and of
agreeable manners, and he soon won the confidence and respect of the
community. Previously to his coming to Boston he had been one of In-
crease Mather's correspondents; and such were his relations with his
brother ministers that when Cotton Mather's wife died in November, 1713,
he was selected as one of the pall-bearers. 5 His ministry here extended
over nearly twenty years, till his death May 20, I7I5- 6 He was married

1 Report of a French Protestant Refugee in
Boston, 1687. Translated from the French by
E. T. Fisher (Brooklyn, N. Y. 1868), pp. 34, 35.
A considerable number of the early immigrants
settled at Oxford, about fifty miles southwest
from Boston, where they remained until 1696,
when the settlement was broken up by an Indian
massacre. An account of this community by
the Rev. Dr. Holmes is in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll.,
vol. ii ; 'and their history has recently formed
the subject of a monograph by Mr. George F.
Daniels, entitled The Huguenots in the Nipmuck
Country. Anthony Sigourney and some others
who were afterward at Boston were among the
settlers at Oxford. [See also Historical Collec-
tions, by Holmes Ammidown, 1874. There is in
Suffolk Deeds, xiv, 212, a list of persons natu-
ralized Jan. 5, 1688, entered "at the desire of
Gabriel Bernon " July 20, 1688, and this Ber-
non's name is on the list, which is printed in
Agnew's Protestant Exiles, London, 1871, i. 46.
See Sewall Papers, ii. 262. En.]

2 Information furnished to the writer by the
Rev. Charles W. Baird, D. D., of Rye, N. Y.,
who has been engaged for several years in col-
lecting materials for a History of the Huguenot
Emigration to America.

8 In a petition of the inhabitants of Oxford
to the General Court, in 1699, it is stated that
their former minister, the Rev. Daniel Bondet,
left Oxford almost two years before the settle-
ment was broken up by the Indians ; and in a
letter from Mr. Bondet to Lord Cornbury, written

in 1702, he says that he remained in Massachu-
setts two years after leaving Oxford. See
Daniels, Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country,
pp. 88-90 120-122; Documentary History of
New York, iii. 929-931. As Oxford was aban-
doned in the summer of 1696, Bondet must have
left there in 1694; and it is not improbable that
he had charge of the Boston church during these
two years. This supposition derives some sup-
port from a letter from Bondet to Increase
Mather, written in January, 1697-98, in which he
desires that his person and labors should be re-
called to the memory of the Boston ministers.
Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country, pp. 118, 119.
[Drake, Town of Roxbury, 172, says that the
Rev. Nehemiah Walter, of Roxbury, who had
acquired the language at Annapolis, in Nova
Scotia, sometimes preached to them in their own
tongue. ED.]

4 Notice of Rev. Pierre Daille in the Ameri-
can Magazine of History, i. 92, 93, 96.

5 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 407.

6 This is the date given in the notice of his
death in the Boston News- Letter of May 23, 1715.
" On Friday morning last, the 2Oth current,
Dyed here the Reverend Mr. Peter Daille, Pastor
of the French Congregation, aged about 66 years.
He was a person of great Piety, Charity, affable
and courteous Behaviour, and of exemplary Life
and Conversation, much Lamented, especially by
his Flock; and was Decently Interred on the
Lord's Day Evening, the 22d Instant." But on
his grave-stone the date is given May 2ist. See

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.

253

three times, but no children are mentioned in his will which was executed
just one month before his death. 1 In it he directed, " that there be no
wine at my funeral, and that none of my wife's
relations have mourning clothes " furnished
them except gloves. Gloves and scarves were
to be given to all the ministers of the town,
and to the Rev. Mr. Walter of Roxbury. His French and Latin books
were left to the church as a foundation for a library; and the church was
also to have the income of one hundred pounds for the benefit of the
minister, and ten pounds toward the cost of building a meeting-house.
Five pounds were to be given to Old Mr. John Rawlings, the French
schoolmaster. 2 His widow was to receive three hundred and fifty pounds
and his negro Kufiy ; and a brother who lived in Holland was named as
residuary legatee. These testamentary provisions show how deep an
interest Daille took in the welfare of his church. He was buried, like
many of his congregation, in the Granary Burial-ground. 3

In January, 1704-5, during his pastorate, the congregation bought of
James Mears, hatter, an irregularly shaped lot of land on the School-House
Lane, now School Street, " to erect and build a church upon for the use of
the French Congregation in Boston, aforesaid, to meet therein for the wor-
ship and service of Almighty God, according to the way and manner of the
Reformed Churches of France." The sum paid for it was " one hundred
and ten pounds current silver money of New England," and the lot, which
was about midway between the present site of the Parker House and Wash-
ington Street, measured forty-three and one-half feet on the Lane, thirty-six
feet on the side toward what is now Washington Street, thirty-five and one-
half feet on the rear line, and eighty-eight and one-half feet on the side
toward Tremont Street. 4 A few weeks afterward on the 29th of January
the selectmen of the town passed the following order:

Shurtleffs Topographical and Historical Descrip- while Moody was a prisoner in Portsmouth:

tion of Boston, p. 224. [Rev. William Cooper's " If one Mr. John Rawlings brings this himself,

interleaved almanac (N. E. Hist, and Geneal. and you be at leisure to admit any discourse

Keg., 1876, p. 435) says: "May 20, Dyed Mr. with him, you will find him serious and pious.

Peter Daille, pastor of y e Congregation of French He hath been a Ruling Elder of the French

Refugees in this place ; aged ab 70." Sewall Church in South-Hampton. He is often with

records, "Apr. 14, I visit Mr. Peter Dallie, who us, and you may hear from him more fully how

seems to be in a languishing dying condition ; matters are here. He is sober and credible."

has kept house about eight weeks." Sewall (4 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 363.) If he was the

Papers, iii. 45. There are some Latin letters of person named by Savage as having a son born

Daille, addressed to Increase Mather, in the in Boston in 1686 (Geneal. Diet., iii. 509), he must

Prince Library. Prince Catalogue, p. 148. ED.] have been one of the earliest of the French

1 The will is recorded with Suffolk Wills, lib. settlers here, and he may have had the oversight
18, fol. 234. The inventory is not in the Probate of the church when it was without a minister.
Records; but according to Sargent (Dealings 8 [See Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, 223. ED.]
u'it/i the Dead, ii. 497) the whole valuation of * The deed to John Tartarien, Francis
the estate was two hundred and seventy-four Bredon, and Jean Dupuis, Elders of the
pounds and ten shillings sterling. French Church, for themselves and the other

2 This was probably the person mentioned in members of the congregation, is recorded in
a letter from Joshua Moody to Increase Mather, Suffolk Deeds, lib. 22, fol. 102. Mears wrote
written, as Prince supposed, in March, 1683-84, his name " Meeares."

254 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" Whereas the Congregation of French Protestants have for some years past had
their public meetings for the worship of God in the Free School-house in Boston, and
that they for some months past have met in another convenient room, while the said
school- house was taken down and a more commodious one built in the room thereof,
the which house being now finished, it is voted that the said French congregation have
the liberty to meet in said new school-house for the worship of God as formerly they
did in the old." 1

Apparently this was not in accordance with the wishes of the congrega-
tion ; and the next week the selectmen made the following record :

" The petition of John Portree, Francis Breedon, and John Dupee, Elders of the
French Congregation, their petition for license to erect with timber a building for a
meeting-house of thirty-five foot long and thirty foot wide, on a piece of land of
theirs, situate between the land of Mr. Samuel Haugh and the land of Mr. Joseph
Malam, butting on the School- House Lane, in Boston. And having consulted with the
major part of the justices of the said town, being present, who declare their opinion
that it is not convenient to grant the same, since they have the offer of the free liberty
to meet in the new school-house, that being sufficient for a far greater number of
persons than doth belong to their congregation, the premises being considered, the
said selectmen do disallow the said petition." 2

Probably the cause of this refusal was the unwillingness of the select-
men and the justices to consent to the erection of a wooden building in that
neighborhood. But whatever may have been the reasons for their action, it
prevented the erection of a meeting-house for ten or eleven years. Finally,
shortly after the death of Mr. Daille, a small brick meeting-house was built
on the land, which continued to be occupied by the congregation until its
dissolution about the year 1748. At that time the number of male com-
municants and subscribers had been reduced to about seven. 3 Accordingly,
by a deed, dated May 7, 1748, Stephen Boutineau, the surviving elder,
Andrew LeMercier, the minister, and others, proprietors, assigned all their
right and interest in it to the trustees of a new Congregational Church, for
" the sum of three thousand pounds in good bills of public credit on the
province aforesaid, of the old tenor," for the sole use of a Protestant
Church forever. 4 Subsequently, the building passed into the hands of the
Catholics ; and, according to the Rev. Dr. Holmes, " Mass was performed
in it for the first time Nov. 2, 1788, by a Romish priest." 6

1 MS. Minutes of the Selectmen of the Tmun 8 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. 64. [The folio French
of Boston (in the office of the City Clerk), p. 95. Bible given by Queen Anne to the Church is now

2 Ibid., pp. 95, 96. preserved in the Library of the Divinity School
1 Petition of Mr. LeMercier to the Governor at Cambridge ; or one which bears this inscrip-

and General Court, printed in N. E. Hist, and tion : " This volume was presented to the Library

Geneal. Reg., xiii. 319. In their answer to the peti- of Divinity Hall, A. D. 1831, by the widow of

tion the proprietors say, " He has driven all our the late Samuel Cobb of Boston. He bought it

young people to other churches." (Ibid., p. 321.) at the sale of the books of Mather Byles, and

These documents are in " A Brief Memoir of understood it to be the copy formerly used in

Rev. Andrew LeMercier," which fills a little the pulpit of the French Protestant Church in

more than nine pages of that magazine. School Street. JOHN G. PALFREY."

4 The deed is recorded with Suffolk Deeds, It is known that this Bible was at one time

lib. 76, fol. 128. in the possession of Dr. Byles. ED.]

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.

2 55

The last minister of the French congregation was Andrew LeMercier,
who came over to Massachusetts in 1715, in accordance with an arrange-
ment made in London with Andrew Faneuil in behalf of the church, under
which he was to have an annual salary of one hundred pounds, New Eng-
land currency. When he came to Boston he was twenty-three or twenty-

four years of age ; and he continued in the ministry for about thirty-two
years. He left at his death a considerable number of manuscript sermons,
one of which a third sermon on the Second Epistle of Peter, preached

1 [This cut follows a photograph from a
portrait preserved in the Essex Institute at
Salem. Dr. Wheatland, the librarian, knows
nothing of its history. It can be inferred from

N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1859,
p. 323, that this portrait belonged to a friend of
LeMercier, Hon. Thomas Gushing, who died in
1788; and passing to Colonel Thomas Gush-

an article by "Sigma" (L. M. Sargent) in the ing, of Salem, was finally transferred to the
Boston Transcript, Jan. 28, 1851, copied in the Essex Institute. ED.]

256 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

May 30, 1719 is preserved in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical
Society. 1 It is beautifully written, with careful erasures and interlineations,
but is singularly hard, dry, and uninteresting. If his ordinary preaching
did not improve in the next twenty-five years, no one need wonder that the
young people of his congregation went to hear other and more attractive
preachers. In 1732 he published, in English, T/tc Churcli History of
Genma, in five Books, with a Political and Geographical Account of that
Republic, in a volume of upward of three hundred pages ; and the next
year this was followed by a Treatise against Detraction, in ten Sections, in
a somewhat larger volume. The Church History is dedicated to " the
pastors of the churches of Christ in New England," in words which show
that he was on very friendly terms with his brother ministers, and the volume
was apparently written to gratify their curiosity. " I have hardly ever been
in any learned company here," he writes, " but that I have been asked
several questions concerning the Church and Academy of Geneva." Of
many of the things which he relates, he says, he was an eye-witness; but,
with the exception of a few references to persons whom he had known in
Geneva, the volume contains nothing of an autobiographical character. 2
The other volume is dedicated to the elders, deacons, and heads of families
of his own congregation ; and in the dedication he says :

" You have not despised my youth when I first came among you ; you have since
excused my Infirmities ; and as I did the same in respect to yours it has pleased our
Saviour the Head of his Church to favor us with an uninterrupted Peace and Union
for the almost eighteen Years that I have preached the Word of Salvation to you.
By that blessed Peace our Flock, tho' exceeding small, hath subsisted, and even is
enlarged by the addition of some who were once the Opposers of our Doctrine, I
mean Roman Catholics, several of whom have been converted by the preaching of
God's Word ; and also by the addition of some Protestants of other Nations."

In a prefatory note he excuses himself for some defects in the style, on
the ground that the treatise was written in French, and afterward translated
very closely into English ; but it does not appear from the internal evidence
that the treatise was a reproduction of his old sermons.

At the time of the sale of the meeting-house he claimed the ownership
of the house and land, on the ground that he had suffered greatly by the
depreciation of the currency, and that in consequence of the dissolution of
the society he would be obliged to go into business for his own maintenance.
He accordingly agreed to sell the estate to Edward Jackson, and then peti-
tioned the Governor and General Court for the passage of an act confirming
the title. The Court thereupon ordered a notice to be served on Stephen
Boutineau, Jean Arnault, John Brown. Zachariah and Andrew Johonnot, and

1 Miscellaneous Papers, ii. 130, in the Cabinet. Athenaeum. (There are in the Pepperrell Paper s,

2 Copies of this work are in the Library of i. 19, 50, etc., some letters of I,eMercier addressed
the Massachusetts Historical Society; and a to Pepperrell, relative to the appointment of a
copy of the Treatise against Detraction is in the son of LeMcrcier as an interpreter in the Louis-
Prince Library. Both works are in the Boston burg expeditioa in 1745. ED.]

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.

257

James Paquinet, to show cause, if any they had, why the petition should not
be granted. This order elicited from the gentlemen named a very energetic
remonstrance, in which they say :

" We think it a presump-
tion of his and an imposi-
tion on your Excellency and
Honors to bring such weak
reasons in order to drive us
off from our church. He
says he had but 100 per
annum when he first settled,
and we have promised him
no more, although we do
give him considerable more,
and may appear by his re-
ceipts sufficient to maintain
his family in a handsome
manner and purchase a con-
siderable estate, as he was
in exceeding low circum-
stances when he came to
settle with us. As for de-
preciating of the money,
which he mentions, some
have raised from forty shil-
lings to ten pounds, and
Andrew Faneuil, Esq., and
James Bowdoin, Esq., have

left him, one 170 per year, the other 20 per year. Johonnot and Sigourney have
left 100 by will. We have given him, from time to time, about ^100 of the poor's
money. But if he had so much reason to complain, as he has, according to his bar-
gain, and agreeable to our discipline and church platform, all his remedy is, if he
complains, and is not relieved, he shall have liberty to go back for England, we pay-
ing his passage, or provide himself somewhere else. When he came to us, there was
a list of 100 subscribed, each of them for himself severally. We are not answer-
able for the death of any of our people ; he has driven all our young people to other
churches ; notwithstanding we wish him well, and design, if we sell our church to
give him out of it about 1,650 old tenor. But for him to sell our church, that
we with our own money have built and purchased, and so to turn us out of our
church, will be a precedent never before heard of, and, if allowed of, will be of a
dangerous consequence." 1

So far as it is known, the General Court took no further action in the
matter; but as Mr. LeMercier joined in the deed of the elder and pro-
prietors, a few months afterward, he was probably satisfied with the sum

1 The petition and answer and the order of 522-527), and are printed in the N. E. Hist, and
notice are in the Massachusetts Archives (xii. Geneal. Reg., xiii. 319-322.
VOL. II. 33.

AUTOGRAPHS OF THE PETITIONER AND REMONSTRANTS.

258 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

which they proposed to give him. He outlived his church fifteen or six-
teen years, and during a part at least of this time he was a resident of
Dorchester, where he had purchased an estate so early as 1722, and where
he was living when he made his will in 1761. l His death occurred, after a
long sickness, March 31, 1764; and three days afterward he was buried from
the house of Deacon Wait, in Queen Street, Boston.

Mr. LeMercier was of an enterprising character, and engaged in some
business operations; but they were not probably very lucrative. In 1738
he appears to have obtained from the Governor of Nova Scotia a grant
of Sable Island, on which he had built a house for shipwrecked mariners,
besides sending to the island cattle and provisions for their relief. The
cattle and goods, however, were stolen at different times; and in January,
1743-44, he inserted an advertisement in the Boston Evening Post, offering
a reward of forty pounds, old tenor, for the discovery of the robbers.
Three years later a similar advertisement, signed by Andrew LeMercier,
Henry Atkins, and Thomas Hancock, " owners of the said island," was
published in the News-Letter, setting forth that the measures hitherto taken
to prevent the killing of the live stock and stealing from the island had had
little or no effect, and declaring that " we will for the future cause the Eng-
lish laws to be put in execution against such offenders ; and that they may
be prosecuted, we do hereby promise to give the sum of one hundred
pounds, old tenor, to any person or persons that will discover and make
known unto us any of the said mischievous persons, so that they may be
brought to public justice in Old or New England." Subsequently, in Eeb-
ruary, 1753, he offered the island for sale, declaring in his advertisement
that " The advantages which do accrue or may accrue from the improve-
ment of that place are so great that I would not easily part with it if I was
so skilful in navigation and shipping as it is necessary. That ignorance of
mine induces me (not any defect in the island itself) to part with it. If any
person desires to purchase it, and to know further about it, they may see at
my house a map and plan of it." When he parted with the island has not
been ascertained ; but it is not included in the inventory of his estate. 2

As a separate part of the community the French Protestants left very
slight traces on our annals. Many of them were so obscure that their
names even have not been preserved ; others were here for only a short
time before they sought a permanent home elsewhere ; and nearly all in
a few generations intermarried with Anglo-American families, and became
part of the English population. Among these the most conspicuous
were Baudoin or Bowdoin, Sigourney, Johonnot, Dupuis or Dupee, and
Faneuil. Gabriel Bernon, whose name is identified with the history of

1 A codicil was added at Boston a few Long Wharf in Boston and a share in the wharf,

weeks before his death. The will and codicil and land at Stoughton, Wrentham, and Attle-

are recorded with Suffolk Wills, lib. 64, fol. borough. The real estate was appraised at

274. .200 ; the personal property consisted of house-

3 The inventory is recorded immediately hold effects and wearing apparel ; and the whole

after his will. It includes a warehouse on the amount of the inventory was ,232 i8s. 6d.

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.

259

the unfortunate settlement at Oxford, removed to Rhode Island so
early as 1698. The families of Boutineau, Arnault, Breedon, Paquinet,
LeMercier, and others are extinct or are represented only in the female
line. One name, however,
will always be held in pe- .

culiar honor here, though /J

it has been long extinct. +S '
Andrew Faneuil, the first
of the name who is associ-
ated with the history of
Boston, escaped to Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
and there married. 1 Exactly when he came to Massachusetts is not
known; but his name" is in the Boston tax list for 1691. 2 He was an
enterprising merchant, an owner of real estate wisely located, a public-
spirited citizen ; and at his death he left a large property, nearly the whole

of which he bequeathed to his nephew, Peter Faneuil, the eldest son of a
brother who had settled in the Narragansett country. 3 ,

Peter Faneuil was born at New Rochelle, in New York, on the 2Oth of
June, 1700, and was the oldest of eleven children. Of his early years
nothing is known ; his father died when he was eighteen ; and subsequently

1 Sargent, Dealings with the Dead, ii. 506.

2 first Report of the Record Commissioners,
p. 154. [The names of Benjamin, John, and
Andrew Fufiell, are in a list headed, " Boston,
Feb. i, 1691. List of persons of the French
nation admitted into the Colony by the Gover-
nor and Council!," printed in Sewall Papers, i,
293. ED.]

3 The house built by Andrew Faneuil for his
own residence was afterward the residence of
Peter Faneuil and of Lieut.-Governor William
Phillips, whose father bought it in 1791. After
the Revolution the estate, which at that time
was owned by one of the Vassall family, was
confiscated; and in December, 1783, it was
sold by the Commonwealth to Isaiah Doane.
In 1805 Mr. Phillips purchased the adjoining
estate. Faneuil's house was on Tremont Street,
opposite the King's Chapel Burial-ground.
The lot formed the south part of Governor
Bellingham's estate on the slope of the hill.
"The deep court-yard," says Miss Quincy in
her memoir of her mother, " ornamented by
flowers and shrubs, was divided into an upper
and lower platform by a high glacis, sur-

mounted by a richly wrought iron railing,
decorated with gilt balls. The edifice was of
brick, painted white ; and over the entrance-door
was a semi-circular balcony. The hall and apart-
ments were spacious, and elegantly furnished.
The terraces, which rose from the paved court
behind the house, were supported by massy
walls of hewn granite, and were ascended by-
flights of steps of the same material." Memoir
of the Life of Eliza S. M. Quincy, p. 88. [There
is a paper in the Mass. Archives, volume marked
"Trade," i. 255, which speaks of the house
on this lot as a " Stone House." It is a state-
ment, sworn to by Andrew Faneuil Dec. 13,
1711, which seems to have been occasioned by
some difference between Faneuil and George
Cabot, the contractor; and by it it would appear
that the timber was furnished by Richard Draper
and John Wentworth, the lime by Edward
Richards, the cedar posts by Stephen Willis, and
the windosv glass by James " Baudovin," or
Bowdoin. Andrew Faneuil's warehouses were
on Butler Square, out of State Street, and Peter
Faneuil a little later had others on State Street,
just below Chatham Street. ED.]

260

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

he came to Boston, where he made himself so acceptable to his uncle, who
died in February, 1737-38, that the latter appointed him his executor and

PETER FANEUIL. 1

residuary legatee. Previously to that time he had been actively engaged

in business, and had acquired some property; but the bulk of his for-

1 [This cut follows a photograph taken from 289. The large picture in Faneuil Hall is copied

a portrait which came into the possession of the from this painting. ED.]
Historical Society in 1835. Proceedings, ii. 19,

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON. 261

tune came from his uncle. " Last Monday the Corpse of Andrew Faneuil,
Esquire, whose death we mentioned in our last, was honorably interred
here," says the Boston News-Letter of February 23, "above 1,100 per-
sons of all Ranks, besides the Mourners, following the Corpse ; also a vast
number of Spectators were gathered together on the Occasion, at which
time the half-minute guns from on board several vessels were discharged.
And 'tis supposed that as this Gentleman's Fortune was the greatest of any
among us, so his funeral was as generous and expensive as any that has
been known here." The nephew did not long enjoy this ample wealth.
He died in about five years, after a short illness, Feb. 3, 1742-43,
leaving no will ; so that his whole property went to his brother, who had
been disinherited by Andrew Faneuil, and to his four sisters. Peter Faneuil
was a shrewd, careful, and energetic business man, fond of display, and fond
of good living. 1 Two or three weeks after his uncle's death he wrote to one
of his correspondents in London : " Send me, by the very first opportunity
for this place, five pipes of your very best Madeira wine, of an amber color,
of the s.ame sort which you sent to our good friend DeLancey, of New
York." And he adds: " As this wine is for the use of my house, I hope
you will be careful that I have the best. I am not over fond of the strongest
sort." About the same time he wrote to his New York correspondent :
" Send me by the first conveyance the pipe of wine, having none good to
drink." A fortnight later he renewed the order, directing his correspondent
to send " by the first good opportunity the best pipe of wine that you can
purchase." And a month afterward, when he had received it, he wrote :
" The wine I hope will prove good ; comes in very good time, there being
none good in town." In another letter he wrote for " the latest, best book
of the several sorts of cookery, which pray let be of the largest character,
for the benefit of the maid's reading." A fortnight after his uncle's death
he wrote to London : " Be so good as to send me a handsome chariot
with two sets of harness, with the arms, as enclosed, on the same, in the
handsomest manner that you shall judge proper, but at the same time
nothing gaudy." Along with these requests are specific instructions
for the management of his business, and sharp demands for the pay-
ment of any debts due to him. One illustration of this characteris-
tic is all that need be given. In 173839, about a year after Andrew
Faneuil's death, he wrote to one of his correspondents, a merchant at

1 One of his letter-books is in the Library of of the topics for this volume, the chapter on the

the New England Historic-Genealogical Society, Huguenots in Boston was assigned to Mr. Dean ;

and copious extracts from it are printed by Sar- but he was compelled by an unfortunate trouble

gent in his Dealings with the Dead. The cita- with his eyes to relinquish the undertaking be-

tions from Faneuil's letters in this chapter are fore he had done anything except to note down

taken from that work; but they have been veri- the printed sources of information. His list of

fied by the originals. Beside the letter-book the authorities was readily placed at my disposal.

Library of the Genealogical Society contains also I desire also to acknowledge the receipt of

one of Faneuil's day-books and one of his several valuable communications from Mrs. Mary

ledgers. For the opportunity to consult them I de W. Freeland, of Oxford, a descendant from

am indebted to the courtesy of the librarian, Mr. Andrew Sigourney, who has given much atten-

John Ward Dean. In the original distribution *ion to the genealogy of the Huguenot families.

262

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

FANEUIL ARMS.

Barbadoes : " I have been very surprised, that, ever since the death
of Captain Allen, you have not advised me of the sale of a horse

belonging to my deceased uncle,
left in your hands by him, which I
am informed you sold for a very
good price ; and I am now to re-
quest the favor you would send
me the net proceeds, with a fair
and just account for the same, in
sweetmeats and citron water : your
compliance with which will stop
me from giving some of my friends
the trouble of calling you to an
account there. I shall be glad to
know if Captain Allen did not
leave a silver watch and some
fish, belonging to a servant of
mine, with some person of your
island, and with who. I expect
your speedy answer." This ener-
getic demand for an account of sales and a payment of the proceeds pro-
duced the desired effect, though the West India merchant very naturally
complained of the tone of Faneuil's letter. A little more than two months
afterward the latter acknowledged the receipt of the account of sales and a
box of sweetmeats ; and in answer to his correspondent's complaints of the
" unhandsome style " of the previous letter, he added : " I must own it was
not in so soft terms as I sometimes make use of; but at that juncture I
really thought the state of the case required it, not having heard anything to
be depended upon concerning the horse in dispute, either if he was dead, sold,
or run away; upon either of which, I presumed the common complaisance,
if not honor, among merchants might have entitled either my uncle in his
lifetime, or myself after his decease, to some advice at least. I had indeed
transiently heard here you had kept him, which in some measure prest my
writing you on that head." Only one other letter need be mentioned, as
characteristic of a social condition which ceased to have a legal existence
in Massachusetts one hundred years ago. In a letter written in February,
1738-39, now in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and
printed in the Proceedings of that Society for August, 1864, he directs his
correspondent to purchase from the proceeds of a sale of fish, " for me, for
the use of my house, as likely a straight negro lad as possibly you can,
about the age of from 12 to 15 years; and if to be done, one that has had
the small-pox, who being for my own service, I must request the favor you
would let him be one of as tractable a disposition as you can find, which I
leave to your prudent care and management; desiring, after you have pur-

1 [This sketch of the arms follows a cut in the Heraldic Journal, ii. 121. Eu.]

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.

263

chased him, you would send him to me by the first good opportunity,
recommending him to a particular care from the captain." :

But Faneuil was not merely a shrewd and enterprising merchant, busy
in adding to what was in those days a large fortune, and busy in spending
the income for his own personal gratification : he was also, as many of the
successful Boston merchants have been in every generation, a public-spirited
citizen ; and he recognized that the community of which he was a part had
claims on him to be acknowledged in some way. He acknowledged those
claims in a way which has forever identified his name with the history of
Boston, of Massachusetts, and of the whole country. This was by the gift
of Faneuil Hall to the town. At the time of its erection there were no
market-houses in the town, three which had been built a few years
before having been abandoned, and one of them torn down. From causes
which it is now difficult to understand, the inhabitants were divided into two
parties very nearly equal in numbers, one in favor of public markets and the
other opposed to their existence. In this state of the public mind Faneuil
came forward and offered to build a market at his own cost. Accordingly,
a petition was sent to the selectmen by James Allen, Thomas Palmer,
Edward Hutchinson, Samuel Eliot, Isaac Gridley, Harrison Gray, Peter

Chardon, John Scollay, John Osborn, and three hundred and thirty-four
others, setting forth that Peter Faneuil, Esq., " hath been generously pleased
to offer, at his own cost and charge, to erect and build a noble and complete
structure or edifice to be improved for a market for the sole use, benefit,
and advantage of the town, provided that the town of Boston would pass
a vote for that purpose, and lay the same under such proper regulations as
shall be thought necessary, and constantly support it for the said use," and
asking that a town-meeting should be called for the purpose of considering
1 [A heliotype of this letter is given herewith. ED.]

264 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

the offer. 1 The meeting was held on the I4th of July, 1740; and so large
was the attendance that it was found necessary to adjourn from the town
house to the Brattle Street Meeting-house. Very little progress was made in
the forenoon, beyond thanking Mr. Faneuil for his offer; and the meeting
was then adjourned to the afternoon. At that time much discussion took
place ; and a motion that each man should write his name on the back
of his vote was rejected. Special precautions, however, were adopted to
prevent any persons from voting who were not legally qualified. The vot-
ing was to be by papers, on which yea or nay was to be written. The
result was that 367 votes were cast in favor of accepting the gift, and 360
against its acceptance. 2

Subsequently Faneuil altered his plans and erected a much larger
and more costly structure than he intended at first to build ; and it was not
finished for upward of two years. It was of brick, two stories in height,
and measured one hundred feet in length by forty feet in width. Besides
the market there were several rooms for the town officers and a hall which
would contain one thousand persons. Early in September the building was
completed and delivered to the selectmen ; and at a town-meeting held in
the town house on the I3th of September a vote was unanimously passed,
accepting " this most generous and noble benefaction for the uses and inten-
tions they are designed for," and appointing a committee, consisting of the
moderator of the meeting, the selectmen, the representatives to the General
Court, and six other gentlemen, " to wait upon Peter Faneuil, Esq., and in
the name of the town to render him their most hearty thanks for so bountiful
a gift, with their prayers that this and other expressions of his bounty and
charity may be abundantly recompensed with the Divine blessing." It was
further voted on motion of Thomas Hutchinson, afterward the governor and
refugee, " That in testimony of the town's gratitude to the said Peter Faneuil,
Esq., and to perpetuate his memory, the hall over the market-place be named
Faneuil Hall, and at all time's hereafter be called and known by that name."
After the transaction of some other business the meeting was adjourned to
meet on the following Friday in Faneuil Hall. 3

Faneuil did not live many months after the completion of his hall ; and
it was remarked at the time that the first annual town-meeting held within
its walls March 14, 1742-43 was the occasion for the delivery of a eulogy
on him. This was given by John Lovell, master of the Latin School, who
was afterward, like Hutchinson and like more than one of Faneuil's nephews
and near relatives, a refugee. 4 It was the first of the long series of funeral

1 The warrant issued by the selectmen of 8 Ibid., iii. 499-501.

Boston directing the constables to notify this 4 In the appendix to the Journal and Letters

meeting is printed in the New England Hist, and of Samuel Curwen (Fourth Edition, pp. 544-546)

Geneal. Reg., xxx. 368. [The petition is pre- is a letter, dated London, March 9, 1777, from

served in the City Clerk's office, Original Papers, Benjamin Faneuil, Jr., to his aunt, Mrs. Ann

ii. 63, and is signed July 2, 1740. Some of the Jones, Peter Faneuil's sister, who was then at

signatures are given in the text. ED.] Halifax, having missed her passage to England.

2 MS. Records of the Town of Boston, iii. Another of Peter Faneuil's sisters married James
422-426. Boutineau, who was also a refugee. Boutineau's

A LETTER BY PETER FANEUIL,

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON. 265

orations delivered in Faneuil Hall, and gave so much satisfaction to the hearers
that it was spread at length on the town records. 1 One or two extracts may
be read even now with interest. After referring to Faneuil's acts of private
charity, which were said to be " so secret and unbounded, that none but they
who were the objects of it can compute the sums which he annually dis-
tributed among them," Mr. Lovell added:

" But these private charities were not the only effects of his public spirit, which,
not contented with distributing his benefactions to private families, extended them to
the whole community. Let this stately edifice which bears his name witness for him
what sums he expended in public munificence. This building, erected by him at an
immense charge, for the convenience and ornament of the town, is incomparably the
greatest benefaction ever yet known to our Western shore. Yet this effect of his
bounty, however great, is but the first fruits of his generosity, a pledge of what his
heart, always devising liberal things, would have done for us had his life been spared.
It is an unspeakable loss to the town that he was taken away in the midst of his days,
and in so sudden a manner as to prevent his making provision for what his generous
heart might design. For I am well assured, from those who were acquainted with his
purposes, that he had many more blessings in store for us, had Heaven prolonged his
days."

Near the end of his address, which was quite short, the orator exclaimed :

" What now remains, but my ardent wishes (in which I know you will all concur
with me) that this Hall may be ever sacred to the interests of Truth, of Justice, of
Loyalty, of Honor, of Liberty ! May no private views or party broils ever enter within
these walls ; but may the same public spirit that glowed in the breast of the gener-
ous Founder influence all your debates, that society may reap the benefits of them !
May Liberty always spread its joyful wings over this place ! Liberty, that opens men's
hearts to beneficence, and gives the relish to those who enjoy the effects of it ! And
may Loyalty to a king, under whom we enjoy this liberty, ever remain our character !
a character always justly due to this land, and of which our enemies have in vain
attempted to rob us."

The loyalty of the town had already been shown by hanging the portrait
of George II. within the new hall. The town's love of liberty was abun-
dantly exhibited before Mr. Lovell sailed away to Halifax with the British
fleet thirty-three years afterward. Long before that time the hall was almost
entirely destroyed by fire.

son-in-law, John Robinson, a commissioner of here given, is taken from a bill which he ren-
the customs in 1772, made the aggravated as- dered the province of Massachusetts Bay, Jan.
sault on James Otis, from the effects of which II, 1748, "To translating Governour of Canada's
Otis never recovered. (See Sabine's American letter to Gov. Shirley, 13 pages in French, i
Loyalists, i. 241-243.)

1 It is printed in Snow's History of Boston,
pp. 235-237. [It was also printed at the time,
A Funeral Oration Delivered At the opening of
t/ie Annual Meeting of the Town, March 14, 1742,
in Faneuil Hall, in Boston : Occasioned by the
Death of the Founder, Peter Faneuil, Esq. Green,

Bushell, and Allen, 1743, pp. 14. See Brinley los. od. : two other papers, 6s., total,
Catalogue, Nos. 1653-54. LovelPs autograph, od." preserved in the Mass. Archives. ED.]
VOL. II. 34.

266 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

This unfortunate event occurred on the I3th of January, 1761. About
half-past nine o'clock in the evening of that day a fire broke out in one of
the shops in Dock Square belonging to the town, says the News-Letter of
the 1 5th, and after destroying that and the adjoining buildings crossed the
street to " that stately edifice, Faneuil Hall Market, the whole of which was
soon consumed, excepting the brick walls which are left standing." " The
loss of Faneuil Hall Market must be great to this town," the paper adds,
" as it was a noble building, .esteemed one of the best pieces of workman-
ship here, and an ornament to the town." Fortunately, however, " the
records, papers, etc., with such other things as could be removed, were
mostly saved." A few weeks afterward, at a town-meeting held on the 9th
of March, it was voted not to repair or rebuild the hall. 1 But the next day
a committee was appointed to consider and report on the whole subject at
an adjourned meeting. 2 On the 23d of March this committee reported in
favor of rebuilding the hall, covering it with a slated roof, putting in stone
window-frames, and using as little wood-work as possible about the orna-
ments ; and on the recommendation of the committee it was voted : " That
the selectmen be and hereby are desired and empowered to prefer a petition
to the General Court, at their next session, praying that the Honorable
Court would by an Act empower some suitable person to raise by way of
lottery such a sum of money as may be sufficient for the aforesaid pur-
pose." 3 The petition was granted, and the net profits arising from the
lottery were applied to the rebuilding of the hall, 4 which was again occupied
for a town-meeting March 14, 1764. It was in this second hall that the
town-meetings of our Revolutionary period were held whenever the attend-
ance was not so large as to require an adjournment to the Old South. At
length it was found necessary to enlarge the hall to double its original size.
This was done in 1805 by putting on a third story, and rebuilding one of the
side walls about forty feet back from the original line. 5 It is this third hall
which has so often re-echoed to the eloquence of Webster and Everett, of
Choate and Sumner, and so many others.

Faneuil Hall is a permanent memorial of the Huguenots in Boston, and
with the exception of a few crumbling grave-stones it is the only visible
monument of their residence here. They were few in number, and were
speedily absorbed in the community around them ; but it is impossible
not to recognize the services which descendants of these Huguenot refu-
gees, or individuals connected with them by marriage, have rendered to

1 MS. Records of the Town of Boston, iv. 467. their dues, petitioned that some more expedi-

2 Ibid., pp. 476, 477. tious mode of payment be adopted. The report
8 Ibid., p. 478. of the committee, of which Royall Tyler was
4 [The town contracted with Onesiphorus chairman, is on file at the City Hall ; and it does

Tileston and others to rebuild the hall, and they not allow that the contractors have any legal

agreed to wait for their pay until the money claims for prompter payment, but in the final

could be raised by the lottery. The year follow- settlement the delay might be considered. ED.]

ing the completion of the hall the contractors, 6 [The view of the Hall in Snow's Boston,

setting forth that the lottery yielded the money 247, indicates the marks of enlargement of the

slowly, and that they had received but a part of structure at this time. ED.]

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.

267

this community. Not a few of the names most conspicuous for honorable
service in our Revolutionary period or in later years are borne by families
which count among their ancestors one or more of these fugitives for con-

THE SECOND FANEUIL HALL. 1

science' sake. Bowdoin, Sigourney, Brimmer, Johonnot, Revere, Char-
don, such are some of the names which at once suggest a Huguenot
ancestry. 2

1 [There are no views extant of the original
building, unless the minute delineations in
Price's View and in his map of Boston will pass
for such. Of this second structure our cut fol-
lows a picture in the Massachusetts Magazine,
March, 1789, which is reproduced in the Mass.
Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 38, and in the Evacuation

Baudouin, of whom there is an account in R. C.
Winthrop's Address on Governor James Bowdoin.
See also Andros Tracts, iii. 79. A genealogy of
the family is printed in the N. E. Hist, and Gen-
eal. Reg., Jan. 1856. Mr. William H. Whitmore,
the compiler of it, afterwards enlarged it in con-
nection with an Account of the Temple Family,

Memorial of the City of Boston, 1876. Drake's 1856; and this also appeared in an unauthorized

Boston, 611, gives a cut from it. There is also reprint in New York in 1871. The arms on the

a view in Harper's Monthly, 1877, p. 827. ED.] Bowdoin tomb in the Granary Burial-ground are

2 [The Bowdoins are descended from Pierre figured in the Heraldic Journal, ii. 135. Durrie,

268

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Index to American Genealogies, gives various ref- gives special references. Accompanying Se-
erences. The eldest son of Pierre, James Bow- journe came his nephew, Daniel Johonnot, the
doin, settled in Boston, and is the ancestor of a progenitor of a considerable stock (Zachariah

well-known family. The Vir-
ginia Bowdoins are sprung from
John, another son of Pierre.
Mass. Archives, Ixiii. 210, 224.
Seivall Papers, ii. 413. On the Mascarene
family, of which there were formerly mem-
bers in Boston, with connections in Nova
Scotia, there are notes in the Heraldic Jour-
nal, ii. 125, and in the A"". E. Hist, and

Geneal. Reg., ix. 239, and x. 153. Andre
Sejourne, a distiller, from Rochelle, who came
to Boston in 1686, was the ancestor of the
Sigourneys, of which family a Genealogy, by H.
H. W. Sigourney was printed in 1857. Durrie

was his son), of which an account will be
found in the N. E. Hist, and Cental.
Reg., Oct. 1852, and April, 1853. Se-

journe and Johonnot were of the Oxford settle-
ment originally. Stephen Boutineau was one of
those who came over with Bowdoin in 1687,
whose daughter he married in 1708. He died
in 1761. Register, July, 1854, p. 247. The
Huguenot circle in Boston received an
important accession when Philip Duma-
resq settled in Boston and married, 1716,
Susan, daughter of Captain Henri Ferry.
This Philip, who is styled a mariner,
died in 1744; his son Edward married a

daughter of Stephen Boutineau ; another
son, Philip, became a royalist. See an
account of the family in N. E. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1863, p. 318. John
Adams's diary ( Works, ii. 39, 43) records
his impressions of the last of the Char-
dons, young Peter Chardon, whom Adams
looked upon in 1758 as among the young men in
Boston " on the directest road to superiority,"
but who did not live long enough to fulfil his
promise, and died a few years later. ED.]

CHAPTER VIII.

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY.

BY GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN the pre-eminent statesman, diplomatist, and
philosopher of the Revolution was born in Boston on the 6th of
January, Old Style (the i/th of January, New Style), 1706. The exact place
of his birth has long been a matter of antiquarian controversy. Franklin
himself is said to have told Mrs. Hannah Crocker that he first saw the light
at the " Sign of the Blue Ball," on the corner of Hanover and Union streets.
It seems, nevertheless, to be fully proved that he was really born on Milk
Street, nearly opposite the Old South Church, in a house on the site now
occupied by the Boston Post newspaper. According to the records of the
city archives, Franklin's father occupied a modest wooden house on this
site from the time of his arrival from England in 1685, until 1712, when
Benjamin was six years of age. In the latter year the elder Franklin
bought and removed to the house on Hanover Street, called the " Blue
Ball ; " and Benjamin's earliest recollections were no doubt connected with
this residence. The house on Milk Street remained standing until Decem-
ber, 1810, when it was destroyed by fire. Its appearance at the period of
Franklin's birth is thus minutely described :

" Its front upon the street was rudely clapboarded, and the sides and rear were
protected from the inclemencies of a New England climate by large rough shingles.
In height the house was about three stories ; in front, the second story and attic pro-
jected somewhat into the street, over the principal story on the ground floor. On the
lower floor of the main house there was one room only. This, which probably served
the Franklins as a parlor and sitting-room, and also for the family eating-room, was
about twenty feet square, and had two windows on the street ; and it had also one on
the passage way, so as to give the inmates a good view of Washington Street. In the
centre of the southerly side of the room was one of those noted large fire-places,
situated in a most capacious chimney ; on the left of this was a spacious closet. On
the ground floor, connected with the sitting-room through the entry, was the kitchen.
The second story originally contained but one chamber, and in this the windows,

270 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

door, fire-place, and closet were similar in number and position to those in the parlor
beneath it. The attic was also, originally, one unplastered room, and had a window
V^ in front on the street, and two common attic windows, one on each side

^ of the roof, near the back part of it." ]

It was to this rather humble abode that Josiah Franklin, the
silk-dyer, brought his wife and his three children from their
home in Banbury, England, in or about the year 1685. Like
the Pilgrims of an earlier date, he had left his native land with
^O a company of friends, in order to enjoy, on the new soil, the

unrestricted exercise of his religion. He belonged to a family
O who had long been zealous Protestants, and who had, at times,

suffered persecution on that account. 2 Four children were born

OL ,

^J ^5 ] [Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 620. ED.]

s^ ^S . 2 [There is a paper on the English Franklins in Mass. Hist. Soc.

' >, . ^[ Proc., April, 1857 ; and in the Heraldic Journal, ii. 97, the arms borne

Q $ x by Benjamin and other members of the family. A Franklin pedi-

' j. gree is given in the N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1857. See

also Bache's Genealogy of Franklin ; Bridgman's Granary Burial

^L Ground, p. 323 ; Savage's Geneal. Diet. ; Sparks's Life of Franklin,

5: '' a PP' ^ ta ^ e ^ Benjamin Franklin's descendants is given in the

^ u Register, Oct. 1854. A letter of Josiah Franklin, the father, which

X" formerly belonged to the Brantz-Mayer Collection, and is now in

SG A the Boston Public Library, throws some light on the family history.

' j From a memorandum with it, it is said to have been addressed

; to Captain Benjamin Franklin, Blenheim, England. It is as

^ s& follows :

* h <

fc * "SIR, By what intelligence I have received from my son at

.5 'z Philadelphia, and what intelligence I have had by a gentleman
f that comes pretty often to dinner here, I am pretty much inclined

^ to think that you are my brother's grandson that I lived with

> _r? ii years.

j H "I know of no advantage, neither do I propose any, to myself

3 { or you, by scraping acquaintance with you ; but as father's children

B seemed to have a more than common affection one for another, and I
4 having the same affection as formerly, I shall rejoice to hear of the

^L welfare of my brother's family, and I hope it will not be ungrateful

to you, if we are related, to favor me with a few lines as opportunity
presents, which may be best performed by the way of Philadelphia, directing to Benja-
min Franklin, postmaster. You was so kind as to send me a letter, but it was mislaid
at my son's, so that I never had it. If you are the person, as I suppose, related to me,
your grandfather's name was John, and his eldest [child] was Thomas [named] after his
grandfather Thomas. Now my father's will was for his eldest [ ] ; the land was

to go to the male heirs. Now my eldest brother had no son, so that of course it went
to my brother John, that I lived with, and he had a son named Thomas, which I
> suppose was your father, which I could get no certain account of after he lost his

^ father. My brother John lived in Banbury, in Oxfordshire, and purchased a house
by the mill. My father lived at Ecton, four miles from Northampton. Now I under-
stand by the gentleman above mentioned that you sold land to the value of .500
sterling, which I suppose is about the value of what my father was possessed of,
which became yours by your great-grandfather's will. I understand you also practise

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY.

271

to Josiah Franklin by his first wife after his arrival in America. After her
death he married Abiah, daughter of Peter Folger, 1 one of the early settlers
of New England ; and by her Franklin had ten more children. His entire
family, then, comprised seventeen sons and daughters. Of these Benjamin

^f 2.3 <% S $<th

oO I/OO

A BILL OF FRANKLIN'S FATHER. Z

was the youngest son, and the fifteenth child. " I remember," he says,
" thirteen children sitting at one time at his table." Quite as noteworthy
is the fact that Benjamin was " the youngest son of the youngest son for
five generations back." On the very day of his birth Benjamin was carried,

surveying, which my eldest brother practised
also, so that his instruments for art might fall
to your portion also. Thus, sir, I have given
you my conjecture, and if you '11 send me an
answer I shall count myself obliged to you ;
and with my hearty respects to you is all at
present from your humble servant,

" P.S. If you are the gentleman I suppose
you to be, then it's like you can give an account
of your father's sister, as well as of your father,
for it 's so long since I came away that I have
lost the knowledge of all our relations, having
been in Boston 60 years last October. Who-
ever it be, I cannot expect to hold correspond-
ence with you but a short time, being this New
Year's day 86 years of age ; but I have 3 sons
which it 's possible may be glad of the same
friendship I desire, and I believe would be
glad if they can do you any service. They are
John Franklin, tallow chandler at Boston ; Peet
Franklin, at Newport, master of a vessel ; and

Benja. Franklin, at Philadelphia, which you
know.

" Rec d - Nov. y e 15, 1744."

John Franklin, the brother of Benjamin, was
postmaster of Boston at the time of his death,
Feb. 5, 1756. The Franklins had originally be-
longed to Ecton, in Northamptonshire. An old
record-book of the small tithes of the parish,
1640 to 1700, fell into the hands of Thomas Car-
lyle, who noticing the mention here and there
of Franklin's ancestors (who were blacksmiths),
sent it to Mr. Everett, who, in 1857, deposited
it in the Historical Society's Cabinet. Everett's
Speeches, iii. 482. ED.]

1 [For the Folgers see Savage's Geneal. Diet.,
ii. 177 ; Sparks's Life of Franklin, i. 452 ; and
N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., xvi. 269. ED.]

2 [This is facsimiled from the original paper
in the collection of Mellen Chamberlain. ED.]

272

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

in the bleak January weather, across the street to the Old South Church,
and there solemnly baptized. At the risk of the frail little body, his
parents were resolved that at least the infant soul should be safe. Of his
first seven years we have no further record than this of his baptism. Boston
was then a town of some nine thousand inhabitants, and we can only
imagine young Benjamin, in his early childhood, running loose in the
vacant spaces near his home (now compactly covered by stone and
brick blocks), going on errands, doing chores for his hard-worked father,
and sleeping in the unplastered attic with the other children. Josiah

FRANKLIN'S BIRTHPLACE. 1

Franklin, sturdy and industrious, yet had a hard struggle of it with the
world ; his trade, now changed to that of a tallow chandler, scarcely kept
pace with the needs of his growing family of fifteen sons and daughters.
One after another, as they grew up, Benjamin's elder brothers were appren-
ticed to different trades ; himself the pious Josiah designed, " as the tithe
of his sons," for the church. Benjamin's brief education began when he
was eight years old, at the grammar school. He had early shown a decided
taste and inclination for study; and his father at first thought of sending

1 [The story of this house is told at length in Shurtleff 's Desc. of Boston, ch. li. ED.]

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY.

273

him to college. The boy had not attended school a year, however, when
Josiah Franklin, despairing of being able to afford him a liberal education,
withdrew him from the grammar school and sent him to another school,
in order that he might learn writing and arithmetic, and so become fitted
for helping the father in his business. Benjamin's preceptor was Mr.
George Brownell, 1 who used "mild, encouraging methods," and soon
taught his scholar writing, but could not teach him arithmetic. He who
above all Americans of his time was afterwards noted for his mechanical
genius could not, as a boy, master the simplest rudiments of mathematics.
He was soon withdrawn from school to assist his father in his business ;
being employed to cut wick for the candles, and to fill the dipping mold.
These occupations were very repugnant to Benjamin, who, living near the
sea, 2 became eager to engage as a sailor ; but to this his father would not
consent. He continued in the paternal shop two years. Meanwhile, he
had grown to be a lusty and pleasure-loving lad, and in his recreations was
" generally a leader among the boys," heading boating expeditions, ex-
celling in swimming, and being foremost in the many escapades in which
he and his companions indulged. He was also fond of reading, and the
little money which came into his hands from time to time was saved up
and laid out in books. Among his earliest purchases was that of Bunyan's
works ; and he found in his father's scant library, and perused with delight,

1 [I judge him to be the same whose signa-
ture I find attached to a petition in 1734 for

ringing the "Orange Street bell"
at stated hours, a paper on file
in the City Clerk's office. Original
Papers, ii. ED.]

2 [Josiah Franklin, when Ben-
jamin was still young, had moved
his abode to what was then the
southeast corner of Hanover and
Union streets, a site which, in the
process of widening the thorough-
fare, is now covered by the pave-
ment of Union Street. Here he
hung out a Blue Ball as the sign
of his business, a relic which is
still preserved. Drake, Land-
marks, p. 146. Shurtleff has traced
the history of this estate in his
Desc. of Boston, ch. Hi. See also
Plan B, No. 87, in the Introduc-
tion to the present volume. The
house, which was destroyed in
widening Union Street in 1858,
represented but very little of the original struc-
ture occupied by Josiah Franklin. Edward
VOL. II. 35.

Everett, Mount Vernon Papers, ch. iii. Frank-
lin, the father, still seems to have retained his
connection with the Old South Church after he
had removed to the North End, and Sewall
records, in 1717, his opinion of him as a fit per-
son to "set the tune" there on Sundays, "the
return of the gallery, where Mr. Franklin sat,

THE BLUE HALL.

being a place very convenient for it." Sewall
Papers, iii. 171. ED.]

2/4 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

such authors as Plutarch, De Foe, and Cotton Mather. During the years
of his boyhood he heard, with deep interest, the preaching both of Increase
and of Cotton Mather; and recalled in old age, with much satisfaction,
having seen and listened to those famous divines.

After a very brief service with his cousin, Samuel Franklin, in the
cutler's trade, Benjamin, at twelve years of age, was apprenticed to his
brother James, a printer. This occupation was not only far more in con-
sonance with his tastes, but opened to him opportunities for acquaintance
and study which he seized with avidity. He had access to more books ;
and, his day's work done, he was wont to read such as he was able to
borrow until far into the small hours of the night. A friendly tradesman,
Matthew Adams, who had a good library for those days, perceiving Ben-
jamin's literary thirst, gave him free access to his shelves, a privilege
of which he availed himself to the fullest extent. And now the printer's
apprentice was seized with a longing to deliver himself of his own thoughts
and fancies. He began to imagine himself an embryo poet, and forthwith
took to writing ballads, " in the Grub-Street ballad style," which, having
been printed by his brother, he took under his arm and hawked about the
streets. His two earliest productions of this sort were "The Lighthouse
Tragedy," founded on the story of a recent accident, 1 and the " Capture of
Blackbeard the Pirate."

The true Yankee spirit of thrift, economy, and perseverance in making
one's own way now speedily developed itself in Franklin, and was a marked
trait of his character thenceforth through his long and busy life. Mean-
while, he pursued his self-imposed studies with a stern energy which en-
abled him to absorb various knowledge with great rapidity. He studied
the Spectator in order to form his style ; and the influence of Addison's
essays may be observed in all Franklin's own writings. He became inter-
ested in a large variety of questions ; discussed with his friend Collins the
propriety of educating women ; adopted the practice of a vegetable diet
after reading a book on that subject, thereby avoiding half the expense of
his board, saving time, and deriving, as he imagined, " greater clearness of
head and quicker apprehension." He taught himself arithmetic, which now
he found himself able to master, read Locke on the Understanding, the Art
of Right Thinking, and Xenophon's Memorabilia, and made himself familiar
with the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. 2

It was when Benjamin Franklin was fourteen years of age that his
brother James, in whose printing establishment he was employed, started
the New England Conrant, the fourth newspaper which was printed in

1 [George Worthylake was the first keeper 2 [Parton, Life and Times of Franklin, i. 60,

of Boston Light. Coming up to town, Monday, has a chapter on Benjamin's reading of Shafts-

Nov. 3, 1718, with his wife and daughter, the bury, Collins, and other writers, calculated to

three were drowned, and they were buried on unsettle his inherited religious views, which

Copp's Hill, where a gravestone still commem- is not unsuggestive of the too free-thinking

orates them. This event was the subject of which very much disturbed Increase Mather at

Franklin's ballad. ED.] this time. ED.]

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY.

275

America. 1 In this project the youthful ballad-writer and philosopher
became at once deeply interested. His own task was to carry the paper
through the Boston streets and to distribute it to the subscribers. But
his literary inspirations did not permit him to be content with this ;
and we soon find him slipping anonymous articles under the door of his
brother's shop, and awaiting with breathless anxiety to see if they would
be inserted in the Courant. A thrilling sense of triumph filled his heart
when he saw them actually in print, which was heightened when he heard
his effusions lavishly praised by his brother's "writing friends." At last
he divulged the secret of their authorship, and soon found that he was
" a little more considered." But James Franklin, a man of jealous and
tyrannical disposition, took Benjamin's proceeding in high dudgeon. He
had never treated him well, and he now lorded it over him more than ever,
and vented his anger by frequent beatings. The high-spirited boy refused
to be broken in by his brother's cruelty, and was meditating an escape

1 [See Mr. D. A. Goddard's chapter on "The
Press and Literature," and a full account of it
in Parton's Life and Times of Franklin, p. 72,
as the " first sensation newspaper." The print-
ing office was on Court Street, corner of Franklin
Avenue, where at present is the
building of the Boston Daily. Adver-
tiser. The press at which Franklin
worked in this office was taken to
Newport when James Franklin
moved to that town and establish-
ed, first, the Rhode Island Gazette,
and, twenty years later, the New-
port Mercury. This press is said
to have been built in London about
1650, and was known as a " Ram-
age Press." It was brought to
Boston in 1717, as Benjamin relates
in his Autobiography. Previous to
the British occupation of Newport
in the Revolution, the press was
buried in a garden ; but it did not
escape their search, and the royal-
ists printed a paper upon it during
their stay. In 1859 the proprietors
of the Mercury (which was revived
in 1780 after the British had evac-
uated the town) sold it to John B.
Murray, Esq., of New York, who
had already, in 1841, secured in
London the press which Franklin
worked at in that city in 1725, and which is now in
the Patent Office in Washington. Lossing, Field-
book of the Revolution, ii. 409. In 1864 Mr.
Murray presented the Boston press, through the
Hon. R. C. Winthrop, to the Massachusetts
Charitable Mechanics Association of this city.
Mention is made of another press, at which
Franklin is said to have worked, in the Franklin
Statue Memorial, p. 170; and in the procession

on the inauguration of that statue, Sept. 17,
1856, this press struck off facsimiles of the
Courant, Feb. 4, -Feb. n, 1723, its "eightieth
number, but the first in which Benjamin Franklin
is given as printer and publisher. On the car

THE RAMAGE PRESS.

carrying the press were the following lines, said
to have been written by Franklin and suspended
in his printing-office in Philadelphia :

" All ye who come this curious art to see,
To handle anything must careful be ;
Lest by a slight touch, ere you are aware,
You may do mischief which you can't repair.
Lo ! this advice we give to every stranger :
Look on, and welcome, but to touch there 's danger."

ED.]

276 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

when James Franklin was arrested and imprisoned for offending the Massa-
chusetts Assembly in the columns of his Courant. At the same time he
was prohibited from any longer publishing the paper. Benjamin now
undertook its management. His indenture of apprenticeship was grudg-
ingly returned to him by his brother, and for a short time he revelled
proudly in the luxury of full editorship. 1 On James's release the old
quarrels between the brothers were renewed ; and now Benjamin resolved
that he would at all hazards free himself from so arbitrary a master. But
his brother's enmity prevented him from getting work in the other printing
houses in Boston, for James did not scruple to go from one to the other and
give the boy a character so bad that no one would take him. Unfortunately,
too, their father took sides with James ; and Benjamin found himself alone,
and, as it seemed, with all the \vorld against him.

Benjamin Franklin was now seventeen years old. But in experience of
the world's rough ways, and in the maturity of character which such ex-
perience hastens, he was much older than most lads of that age. His
character, indeed, was formed ; he was a man alike in stature, in thought
and feeling, in resolute self-dependence, and in the philosophical courage to
face events with a bold and calm front. Although his schooling had been
of the scantiest, his head was well stored with facts and fancies, and his
reasoning powers were already strong and ripe. The germs of the qualities
which afterward enabled him to play so great a part in events had already
appeared, and were in a state of rapid development. The first seventeen
years of his life, spent in Boston, were those which made the man Franklin.
It was there that he imbibed the spirit of Yankee thrift and shrewdness, the
stern Puritanic sense of duty, the physical and intellectual activity and vigor,
which served himself and his country so well in after life. He carried with
him to other and wider fields of action those elements of Yankee character
which through all American history have been displayed with such con-
spicuous intellectual and moral effect. In no part of Franklin's career did
he fail to display the results of the early influences which surrounded and
moulded him in Boston.

Oppressed by his brother's tyranny and enmity, and by his father's
disapproval, Franklin made up his mind to leave home and seek his fortune
on another stage. Happily, he was master of the printer's trade ; and with
this as his capital, added to stout courage and an indomitable spirit of per-
severance, and with a small sum raised by the sale of his beloved books, he
deserted his home, embarked in a sloop for New York, and made his way
with some difficulty to Philadelphia. His first act on reaching the city of
Quakers was an act of charity ; just as the last act of his long life the pro-
test against African slavery was one of the largest benevolence. Almost

1 [Benjamin's name seems to have remained account of the proceedings which led to the im-

on the imprint for three years at least after he prisonment of James Franklin. Sparks thinks

left Boston, as the last number in the Historical the paper bore Benjamin's name till it ceased,

Society's set, June 4, 1726, bears it. Everett, in 1727. See Mr. Goddard's chapter in this

Speeches, ii. 30, where, p. 43, will be found an volume. ED.]

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY.

277

penniless, hungry, shabby, and weary, he bought three penny rolls as he
walked along the streets of Philadelphia, where, meeting a poor famished
woman and her child, he forthwith gave them two of the rolls, contenting
himself with the third. As he wandered through the strange city he saw

FRANKLIN AT TWENTY. 1

a young lady standing in a doorway, who observed him with a con-
temptuous face. It was Miss Read, who was destined, years after, to
become his wife.

Franklin soon obtained employment in one of the few printing houses

1 [The history of this picture is given in a later note. ED.]

278 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

then established in Philadelphia, and made rapid progress both in his trade
and in forming a wide acquaintance in his new home. He made Miss
Read's acquaintance, and began a courtship which was afterwards inter-
rupted, to be renewed in process of time and brought to a happy conclu-
sion. He found some congenial companions, who, like himself, were fond
of discussing grave subjects ; and soon had formed a little literary club, to
whose entertainment the members contributed poems, essays, and lively
debates. Franklin had not been long in Philadelphia when he attracted
the attention of Sir William Keith, the governor of the province, who pro-
fessed to take a great liking to him. This event was destined to have an
important influence on Franklin's life. Keith pretended to be anxious to
lend the young printer his influence and aid in establishing him in his trade
on his own account, and persuaded him to return to Boston and seek his
father's assistance with this view. Franklin's visit to his native town, for
the first time since his abrupt departure thence, did not result as he had
hoped. He was welcomed by all his family except his brother James, who
still bore a grudge against him ; but his father declared that he was too
young to engage in business for himself, and refused to lend him any funds
for that purpose.

On Franklin's return to Philadelphia Sir William Keith persuaded him
to undertake a voyage to England, to purchase type and other appurte-
nances of his trade ; at the same time offering him letters of introduction and
of credit. Franklin eagerly accepted this seemingly generous proposition,
and set sail for the old country in the late summer of 1724. Arriving in
England, he found to his dismay that Keith had failed to confide any such
letters as he had promised to the captain of the ship. Franklin, not yet
nineteen, was thus thrown entirely upon his own resources in a strange land.
Happily, he had his trade; and it was not long before he found employ-
ment in Palmer's printing house in London. It may well be believed that
so inquisitive and observant a mind found much in the British capital to
interest and amuse. He read everything that came in his way, wrote
pamphlets about " Liberty and Necessity," became acquainted with many
notable men (among others, Drs. Pemberton and Mandeville, and Sir Hans
Sloane), attended the theatre, frequently visited modest literary clubs in the
back-parlors of inns, performed swimming feats in the Thames, and made
rapid progress in study of books and experience of the world. It was not
until he had been eighteen months in London that an opportunity occurred
for him to return home. He reached Philadelphia in October, 1726, and
after a short career in mercantile business returned to his trade as a printer.
The next year he entered into partnership with a fellow apprentice, named
Meredith, procured new type from London, hired a shop on Market Street,
and set up the memorable sign above the door, " Benjamin Franklin,
Printer." About the same time he founded the " Junto," perhaps the first
literary club ever established in this country, which broadened by degrees
into the American Philosophical Society.

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. 279

From the time when Franklin thus became the independent head of his
own business, his progress towards wealth, influence, and eminence became
steady and almost uniform. He bought The Universal Instructor from
Keimer, his old employer, for a song, and forthwith made it a profitable
journal, mainly by his own wise and pithy contributions to it. He began to
discuss political matters, and to exercise an influence over the proceedings
of the Assembly, and received, on occasion, its patronage. He added a
stationery shop to his printing establishment, and devoted himself with rare
zeal and zest to his occupations. 1 In 1730, after having courted and deserted
another young lady, he returned to his first love, Miss Read (who had mean-
time been married and had become a widow), and married her. This union
lasted forty-four years. Shortly after, Franklin planned and established in
Philadelphia a " subscription library," which was the germ of the beneficent
system of public libraries in the United States. " Reading," he says,
" became fashionable ; our people became better acquainted with books,
and in a few years were better instructed and more intelligent than people
of the same rank generally are in other countries."

It was in 1732, when Franklin was twenty-six years old, that he conceived
the happy idea of publishing that Poor Richard 's Almanac, which not only
brought him a large income for many years, and made his name and say-
ings familiar far and wide through the colonies, but procured him a lasting
fame as a philosopher of worldly and thrifty wisdom. Of these he sold
nearly ten thousand copies each year, and in due time had the proud satis-
faction of seeing " Poor Richard's " shrewd maxims copied into European
papers, republished in England, and translated into French. How busy he
was in these early years of manhood may be seen from the fact that, be-
sides personally conducting his newspaper and the almanac, managing the
library, writing for the Junto, and actively interesting himself in public
affairs, he studied and mastered French, Spanish, and Italian, and perfected
himself in Latin.

His first long visit to Boston, 2 after his summary departure thence at
the age of seventeen, was just ten years after that event ; and it may be said

1 [One of the best collections of books printed Lodge. Henry Price was the first " Provincial

at Franklin's press is that shown in the Brinley Grand Master of New England," Andrew Belcher

Catalogue, No. 3271, et seq. See also Sabin's being the deputy. Price was succeeded in 1736

Dictionary of Books Relating to America. ED.] by Robert Tomlinson, and March 6, 1744, Thomas

- [It happened that in the year of this visit, Oxnard was installed as his successor. Goelet

1733, the first provincial Grand Lodge of Free- records his visiting the lodge in 1750, when

masons in America was established in Boston, Oxnard presided, and he speaks of its "being

July 30 ; and it was perhaps on this visit that kept at Stone's in a very grand manner." N. E.

Franklin applied to this lodge for a charter for Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 1870, p. 54 ; 1872, p. 4.

a lodge in Philadelphia, of which he became the In 1749, Dec. 27, on the Feast of St. John,

first Master. The next year, 1734, he printed in occurred what was perhaps the first Masonic

Philadelphia what is one of the rarest of his im- procession in Boston streets. It occasioned a

prints, The Constitution of the Free Masons ; and satire in verse, "Entertainment for a Winter's

the Brinley Catalogue, No. 3292, records a copy Evening," which draws the pictures of the prom-

which has bound with it twenty-five pages of inent Masons of the day. It was ascribed to the

manuscript in Franklin's hand, detailing the chief Boston wit at that time, Joseph Green,

history of the founding of this first Boston ED.]

280

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

that he continued to visit his old home every decade thereafter for many
years. On this first occasion he could return as a successful man of busi-
ness, with no mean reputation, and with competence assured ; and he was
received at home with a degree of respect to which he had not before been
considered entitled. He became reconciled to his brother James, and
revisited the scenes of his early escapades and privations with rare zest.
He observed that Boston had grown, and that gradually it was becoming a
town of the first commercial importance. 1

1 [At a later day (1754) Franklin caused a inscription: "Josiah Franklin and Abiah his
stone to be placed over the grave of his parents wife lie here interred. They lived lovingly to-
in the Granary Burial Ground, with the following gether in wedlock fifty-five years; and without

an estate or any gainful employment, by constant
labor and honest industry, maintained a large
family comfortably, and brought up thirteen
children and seven grandchildren respectably.
From this instance, Reader, be encouraged to
diligence in thy calling, and distrust not Provi-
dence. He was a pious and prudent man ; she
a discreet and virtrous woman. Their youngest

son, in filial regard to their memory, places this
stone. J. F., born 1655; died 1744, M. 89.
A. F., born 1667; died 1752, JE. 85."

This inscription had become nearly obliter-
ated when, in 1827, a number of gentlemen
caused the erection of the granite obelisk which
now marks the spot, upon which the inscription
is preserved, and beneath which the fragments

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. 281

Franklin's official career, which was destined to continue almost without
interruption to the end of his long life, began in 1736, when he was chosen
clerk of the provincial assembly of Pennsylvania. In the following year
he was appointed deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. His early experience
of official life was not without its troubles ; but by that rare tact and
moderation of conduct which afterwards told so effectively in his diplo-
matic labors, he was able to maintain himself successfully against the
opposition which he now and then encountered. Ever on the alert to
bring about material improvements, and with inventive faculties constantly
alive to devise such improvements, Franklin now conceived the idea of
" forming a company for the extinguishing of fires ; " and it was his
initiative that established the first fire association in America. This was
called the " Union Fire Company." Not long after this benevolent action,
Whitefield, the great English preacher, arrived in Philadelphia ; and Frank-
lin, though he did not subscribe to Whitefield's creed, was very much attracted
to him, and in many substantial ways rendered him great service.

Encouraged by the success of his efforts in other directions, Franklin
in 1/43 broached the subject of forming an academy, a scheme which, a
little later, was carried out. At the same time his thoughts, which seem to
have embraced the widest range of practical subjects, was directed to the
sore need of the colonies for adequate military defence. No sooner had
he perceived this need than he set his wits to work to fulfil it, and the result
was the formation of a volunteer militia regiment in Philadelphia, of which
Franklin himself was offered, but modestly declined, the command. He
organized a lottery for the purchase of a battery, and procured from the
reluctant governor of New York eighteen " fine cannon," with their car-
riages. The next in the long list of benefits which his inventive genius
bestowed upon the public was the famous " open stove, for the better
warming of rooms," known to this day as the " Franklin stove," which, it is
worth remarking, he gave to the world without exacting any royalty or
other emolument. The academy which he had projected in 1743 became a
realized fact in 1749, as the result of a voluntary subscription started by
Franklin among the citizens ; and in process of time this academy developed
into the present University of Pennsylvania. A charter was obtained from
the governor, and Franklin was one of its trustees from the beginning until
his death.

In the same year, 1749, he received David Hall as a partner in his
printing business ; and being thereby enabled to relieve himself of its

of the original slab are buried. Franklin seems constitution, none of the strongest, last with

to have made a mistake in the record of his comfort to the age of eighty-seven years; and by

father's birth. Josiah Franklin was born at an entire dependence on his Redeemer, and a

Ecton, Northamptonshire, Dec. 23, 1657, and constant course of the strictest piety and virtue,

died in Boston, Jan. 16, 1744-45. The Boston he was enabled to die, as he lived, with cheer-

News-Letter thus records his death : " Boston, fulness, leaving a numerous posterity the honor

Jan'y 17, 1744-45. Last night died Mr. Josiah of being descended from a person who, thro' a

Franklin, tallow chandler and soap maker. By long life, supported the character of an honest

the force of a steady temperance he had made a man." Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 217. ED.]
VOL. II. 36.

282 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

details, he became more than ever immersed in public affairs, and in the
general interests of the community of which he was now an eminent citizen.
He was appointed a justice of the peace, then an office of more considera-
tion than it now is, and about the same time was chosen to represent
Philadelphia in the Assembly of the province, in which he had before sat
as its clerk. Aside from these political occupations, he turned his insatiably
active mind to " philosophical studies and amusements." Appointed on
the commission to make a treaty with the Indians in the interior, he
promptly and successfully executed it. Nor was he even now too busy to
lend a hand in any charitable scheme which promised to benefit the people.
He took up with ardor a project to establish a hospital, and used his influ-
ence in the Assembly to procure pecuniary aid for it. The hospital was
soon built, and in effective operation. Then Franklin started a subscription
to build " a new meeting-house ; " and as everything he touched with his
hand seemed destined to succeed, the meeting-house was soon completed
and occupied. Observing that the unpaved streets were offensively muddy
in wet weather and dusty in dry, he began " to write and talk about the
subject ; " and before long several of the Philadelphia streets were neatly
paved. His attention was then called to the lighting of the thoroughfares
of the town ; and he not only procured the putting up of a larger num-
ber of lamps, but himself invented a form of lamp, with four flat planes
instead of globes, long funnels to draw off the smoke, and crevices below
to admit the air, which turned out to be a useful improvement.

All this time Franklin had been actively engaged in managing the
Philadelphia post-office, which, for the first time, he had made profitable to
the home government. The death of the postmaster-general of the colonies,
in 1753, left the way of promotion open, and Franklin was promptly com-
missioned as his successor. The new burden was acceptable to him, for he
seems never to have had any fear of taking too much upon his broad
shoulders. He at once started on a tour of inspection of the colonial post-
offices, and for the third time made his appearance in Boston. He was now
a celebrated personage, and was received by the most distinguished men of
his native town with marked honor and respect. Harvard College hastened
to confer upon the tallow chandler's son the then coveted distinction of
Master of Arts, a distinction already awarded to him by Yale. These
academic honors had been thoroughly earned by Franklin's achievements
in science. He had found time, amid all his public and charitable occupa-
tions, to pursue those investigations which had so great a charm for him,
and had made discoveries which had arrested the attention of the scientific
coteries of the Old World as well as of the New.

Already had he demonstrated the identity of lightning with electricity
by his famous experiment with the kite in 1752, by which the greatest
scientific discovery of the century was made. 1 He had effected improve-

1 [The result of Franklin's experiments seem 1755. Mr. Prince delivered a sermon on the
not to have become known in Boston till late in earthquake of Nov. 18 in that year, and he says :

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. 283

ments in printing; had invented the cognate art of stereotyping; had
suggested valuable alterations in the structure of ships, in water troughs,
in smoky chimneys, and in electrical machines ; and had devised a musical
instrument. The honors already conferred upon him by Yale and Harvard
were soon supplemented by the diplomas of European universities ; and
he thus obtained the title of " Doctor," which he retained to the end of
his life.

He was interrupted in his scientific researches to take part in one of the
most important assemblages which had ever met on this continent,
an assemblage which was really the germ of the Continental Congress
which declared our Independence. This was the Colonial Congress. It
gathered at Albany in 1754, to provide a better defence against the French
and Indians. Franklin was sent thither as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
His mind was already alive to the selfish and despotic rule of the Pennsyl-
vania proprietaries, and to the growing pretensions of the British Parliament.
An ardent patriot, he was as yet zealously loyal to the crown ; but from the
first he resisted the claim of Parliament to tax the colonies. He therefore
seized the opportunity afforded by the Albany Congress to propose a plan
of union among the colonies, for the general purpose of self-defence. It
was the first suggestion looking towards a common bond ; the first real step
towards American Independence. The time was not yet ripe, however, for
the actual adoption of his scheme.

Franklin's next public appearance was as a military organizer; and in
this capacity he displayed the same wonderful practical resources, the same
fertility in expedients, which characterized him in all his acts, public and
private. He organized supplies of wagons and provisions for Braddock's
army; advised Braddock himself as to his expedition; and warned him
against the very fate which he soon after encountered. He drew up and
carried through the Assembly a measure for establishing a volunteer militia,
and soon after raised a body of five hundred and sixty men, took command
of them himself, and marched off to the defence of the north-western frontier
of the colony. There he built forts, and was proceeding to deal vigorously
with the Indians, when a letter from the Governor recalled him to Phila-
delphia. On returning thither, he found that his militia scheme had been
put into prompt and successful operation. He was at once chosen colonel
of the first regiment. But his military career was brief; there was more
important work for his ready brain and his ever-present tact than that of
fighting savages. How good a soldier was spoiled when Franklin with-
drew from the military to enter upon the diplomatic service of his colony
we shall never know ; it is certain that a great diplomatist would have been
lost to us had he not given up his so briefly-worn epaulets.

" Since my composing of the foregoing discourse his discoveries of the electrical substance, as

the sagacious Mr. Franklin, born and brought one great and main instrument of lightning and

up in Boston, but now living in Philadelphia, thunder." ED.]
has greatly surprised and obliged the world with

284 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

The dissensions between the Colonial Assembly and the hereditary
proprietaries had risen to such a point of bitterness that the Assembly was
driven to seek the interference of King George II. in their favor. They
resolved to send an agent to London with this object in view, and their
choice promptly fell upon Franklin.

Not only was this
new task thoroughly
congenial to him, but
it: enabled him to re-
visit the Old World,
to commune with the
scientific spirits of
O ther lands, and to
enjoy the fame which
had long spread be-
yond his own conti-
nent. He had prob-
ably little idea when
he arrived in London,
in July, 1757, that his
residence in England would continue eighteen years ; but it was not until
1775, on the very eve of the outbreak of the Revolution, that he resumed his
residence in his own country, though he meanwhile made a visit to his home
in 1762. He entered at once into the negotiations for which he had been
sent abroad. Before long, he added the duties of agent for Georgia, New
Jersey, and Massachusetts to those of agent for Pennsylvania. His advent
attracted much attention in England, where both his scientific reputation
and the importance of his mission made him a man of mark. He was
soon brought into relations with Lords Granville, Shelburne, and Chatham,
and other English statesmen ; while men of learning and literary note wel-
comed him to a cordial hospitality and most congenial companionship.
Among these Lord Kames and David Hume became his cherished friends
and correspondents.

Against the tyranny of the proprietaries, however, Franklin effected
little. He found both the Ministers and Parliament averse to interference
between these hereditary rulers and the subjects of the King. But his
residence in London, his earnest and eloquent representations of the condi-
tion of the colonies, his protestations against the Stamp Act and similar
measures, and the weight given to his agency by his learned and distin-
guished personal character, had at least the effect of opening the eyes of
many Englishmen to the real state of affairs, and of strengthening the
enlightened party which, under Lord Chatham's courageous lead, sturdily
opposed the arbitrary course of the Grenville Cabinet. From the first,
Franklin took the impregnable ground that the colonies owed their allegi-
ance to the King, and not to Parliament ; that Parliament had no right to

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. 285

levy internal taxes ; that the right of representation was indissolubly bound
to the liability to taxation ; and that the colonies rightly resisted the im-
position of the Stamp Act and like laws by the British government, the
prohibition of the right to make paper money, the withdrawal of the safe-
guard of trial by jury, and the refusal to receive their petitions.

In 1766 occurred Franklin's memorable examination at the bar of the
House of Commons, " respecting the state of affairs in America." The
public mind in England had become thoroughly alarmed at the signs of
strenuous resistance in the colonies. A searching investigation had become
necessary, and the new prime minister, the Marquis of Rockingham, who
was disposed to be friendly with America, at once saw the utility of pro-
ducing the evidence of the shrewd and thoroughly informed agent of
Pennsylvania. Franklin appeared upon a full and deeply interested House,
armed only with a few notes, in which he had set down the various statis-
tical statements which he intended to make. One hundred and seventy-four
searching interrogations were put to him, some by ministers, some by
leaders of the opposition, some by private members of the Commons. His
responses were marvellous for their promptness, fulness, shrewdness, pres-
ence of mind, and wit. He presented in much detail a clear and exhaustive
view of the condition of the colonies, pointed out boldly the injustices of
which they complained, gave exact information respecting the American
population, trade, resources, and finances ; boldly told the Commoners of
England that the Americans would never pay the stamp duty, " unless
compelled by force of arms ; " that their temper towards Britain was " very
much altered ; " and that the enforcement of the Stamp Act would result in
" a total loss of the respect and affection the people of America bear to
England." " What used to be the pride of the Americans ? " asked a
friendly member. " To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great
Britain," was Franklin's reply. " What is now their pride ? " " To wear
their old clothes over again, until they can make new ones."

Franklin's testimony undoubtedly had a direct and powerful influence on
the repeal of the Stamp Act, 1 which was effected about a month after, and
on which event he " sent his wife a new dress." But the repeal by no
means swept away the difficulties and disputes between the mother country
and her colonies. A measure to quarter soldiers in the private towns of
the colonists, passed soon after by Parliament, revived the ebbing discontent
of Franklin's countrymen. But Franklin does not seem yet to have given
over all hope of an abiding reconciliation. There is no doubt that at this
time he shuddered at the prospect of revolt, and would have infinitely
preferred to retain the connection with Great Britain, if it could be estab-
lished on a just basis. He continued his indefatigable negotiations, now
with the hostile Lord Hillsborough, now with the more friendly Dartmouth,
Shelburne, Howe, and Chatham. At the same time he was busy strength-

1 [An interesting series of tracts on the tions, is noted in the Brinley Catalogue, No.
Stamp Act, with Franklin's manuscript annota- 3218. ED.]

286 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

ening the cause of the colonies by the production of evidence in favor of
their demands. Having procured a number of letters written by Governor
Hutchinson, Lieut.-Governor Oliver, and other Massachusetts men who were
hostile to the colonial cause, in which they outrageously misrepresented
alike the condition, the feelings, and the character of the New England
people, he promptly forwarded them to the Massachusetts Assembly,
through which body they were published to the world. A petition to the
King was at once adopted, begging him to remove the traducers of the
Commonwealth from their offices. Thereupon Franklin was summoned
before the Privy Council, sharply questioned as to his share in the publica-
tion of the letters, and subjected to a most violent and slanderous attack by
Sir Alexander VVedderburn, the solicitor-general, which Franklin bore with
erect body and unmoved countenance. The same night he was dismissed
from his office as postmaster-general of the colonies.

Not long before this event Franklin had made his first visit to Paris,
where he was destined aftenvards to reside in a diplomatic capacity. There
he was received with most cordial welcome by the men of science, and was
treated with marked attention by Louis XV. and his court. He was not
slow to perceive that the leading French statesmen were eagerly watching
the growing quarrel between Britain and her transatlantic colonies, and were
hoping for an opportunity to fan the flame.

Franklin left the shores of England early in 1775, in despair at last of
arranging just terms of settlement between the King and his American
subjects, and looking towards the future with gloomy forebodings; and
reached his native shores to hear that, a fortnight before, the battles of
Lexington and Concord had been fought. Almost immediately after his
arrival in Philadelphia he was chosen a delegate to the Second Continental
Congress, then sitting in that city. His great fame, his age (for he was
now nearly seventy), his patriotic and positive character, enabled him to
take at once a leading position in that body. His counsels were still for
moderation, and he advocated, even at that last moment, an " humble "
petition to the King to relieve the wrongs under which the colonies suffered.
But it is evident that he did not count upon its favorable reception. He
wrote to Dr. Priestley that he concluded that England had lost her colonies
forever, though " we have as yet resolved on only defensive measures."

Those defensive measures, however, were of the most vigorous ; and
Franklin's strong hand is clearly discernible in them. Besides his labors in
the Congress, he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety, ap-
pointed by the Pennsylvania Assembly to put the province in a state of
defence. He arrived promptly at the meetings of this committee every
morning at six, and went into the Congress at nine. This old man, afflicted
by the gout, with many private affairs pressing upon him, was indefatigable
in his public labors. In the spring of 1776 he went as a commissioner to
Canada, to prevail on that province to join the rest of the colonies in their
attitude of resistance; and on his return he opened personal negotiations

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. 287

with his old friend Lord Howe, who had come to America in command of
the British fleet, in the feeble hope of yet effecting a reconciliation.

Franklin's appointment as a member of the illustrious committee of five
to draught a Declaration of Independence put an end to these and all other
negotiations for peace on his part. Sternly putting aside the scruples which
had long made him reluctant to break with the mother country, he entered
heart and soul into the heroic scheme of separation and resistance to the
end. With Jefferson, John Adams, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sher-
man, he supplied the great principles and formulated the thrilling sentences
which were to summon the young " Hercules in his cradle," the nascent
nation, to utmost effort in behalf of liberty. There is no doubt that many
of Franklin's own suggestions were embodied in this imperishable instru-
ment. Traces of opinions long held and announced by him may be found
between its lines ; his sage advice was certainly listened to and treasured up
by Jefferson before he put his pen to paper to write the document. The
noblest and most conspicuous scene in which Franklin was ever an actor
was that in the Congress of Philadelphia, on the 4th of July, 1776, when he
and his four colleagues stood up and presented the Declaration to be
adopted and signed. It is worth noting that of this committee of five,
three Adams, Franklin, and Roger Sherman were natives of Massa-
chusetts, and self-made men.

But the necessities of the colonies, now becoming more urgent every
day, did not permit Franklin to remain at home as an actor in the drama
of revolution. Much as his counsel and co-operation were needed in the
Congress, his skill as a diplomatist, and the weight which his name had
abroad, made it of paramount importance that he should serve his country
beyond the ocean. He pleaded his age and infirmities, not so much as an
excuse for remaining at home, but as reasons why he could not hope to be
of use in other lands. But his reluctance was overruled, and in October,
1776, he set out for France as the American envoy to that country. The
avowed purpose of his mission was to engage the material aid of the French
king on behalf of the struggling colonies, and it was now well known that
such aid was likely to be forthcoming. Franklin's reception at Paris par-
took of the nature of an ovation. He was received as a most distinguished
personage, and the attentions which were lavished upon him might have
made the ambassadors of great empires jealous. With him, as fellow
envoys, were Silas Deane and Arthur Lee; but his were the brains and the
activities which were relied on to effect the object in view. He took up his
residence in a charming abode at Passy, one of the pleasantest of Parisian
suburbs, and ,lost no time in putting himself in confidential relations with
the Count de Vergennes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and with
Lafayette, one of America's most ardent friends. While negotiating with
the French court, he busied himself in trying to effect an exchange of
prisoners with the British ambassador; but Lord Stormont's insolence
effectually broke off these attempts for the time. Though so busy with

2 88 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

public tasks, Franklin found leisure to write to Priestley about the philos-
opher's stone, to Mrs. Hewson about godsons and lotteries, to a friend
about lightning conductors, and to Mr. Hutton about giving advice.

After a residence in France of about a year and a half, Franklin at last
succeeded in negotiating a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance, which
was signed and exchanged on the 6th of February, 1778. The immediate
result of this treaty was the substantial aid given to the patriots by French
troops, and the co-operation of such men as Lafayette and Rochambeau.
It was concluded by Franklin amid many obstacles. Not the least of these
was .the bitter jealousy of his colleague, Arthur Lee, who conceived himself
ignored by Franklin, and who more than once seriously embarrassed the
negotiations. The emissaries of England, too, were ceaselessly active to
prevent the consummation of the alliance; and there were timid spirits at
the French court who deprecated the open espousal of the American cause.
It was only by infinite patience and tact, by a cool head, unfaltering activity,
and the full use of his ample intellectual and social resources that Franklin
effected this great diplomatic achievement. The arrival in France of John
Adams, who was sent abroad by the Congress to negotiate peace with Great
Britain, added to Franklin's embarrassments ; for Adams soon became in-
volved in a quarrel with Vergennes, which threatened at one moment to
make a breach in the friendly relations of the allies.

The independence of the colonies having been acknowledged by France,
Franklin was duly commissioned as minister plenipotentiary to the Court of
Louis XVI. His appearance in the splendid circle of Versailles, in a plain
but rich velvet suit, with his long hair unpowdered and without a queue ;
his reception by the haughty Marie Antoinette and her attendant beauties ;
the genial welcome accorded to him by the easy-going king, who respected
him as much for his scientific attainments as in his official character, this
memorable scene has often been described. It was the first public official
recognition of a new nation. It was the first greeting of the powers of the
Old World to the young and rising power of the New.

It is interesting to read Franklin's description of himself at this period
of his life. Writing to Mrs. Thompson shortly before the conclusion of the
treaty, he says: "Figure me in your mind as jolly as formerly, and as
strong and hearty, only a few years older ; very plainly dressed, wearing
my thin gray straight hair, that peeps out under my only coiffure, a fine fur
cap, which comes down my forehead almost to my spectacles. Think how
this must appear among the powdered heads of Paris ! " Not long after
the treaty, the famous meeting between Franklin and Voltaire took place at
the Academy of Sciences; on which occasion the two venerable philos-
ophers embraced each other, and kissed each other on the cheek. " How
charming it was," said one who witnessed this scene, " to see Solon
embracing Sophocles ! "

Franklin's next great service to his country was his negotiation and
conclusion of the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United

FRANKLIN, THE BOSTON BOY. 289

States, in conjunction with John Adams, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and
Henry Laurens. The negotiation began, informally, with friendly letters
which passed between Franklin and his English friend, David Hartley, in 1778.
This correspondence continued without important results for several years.
In it, Franklin formulated in the clearest and fullest manner the just terms
upon which his country was resolved to insist. In 1781, being seventy-five
years of age, and tortured with the gout, he begged to be relieved of his
functions at the French court; but to this the Congress would not listen.
On the contrary, he was appointed one of the commissioners to make peace
with England. Events were hastened by the surrender of Cornwallis ; but
it was not until the mid-summer of 1782 that the basis of a treaty was
agreed upon. Franklin has left a minute and exhaustive journal of the
negotiations, resulting in definite articles, which were agreed' to in Novem-
ber, 1782. The treaty was not finally signed, however, until September,
1783, and was not duly ratified by the British king until April, 1784.

Once more Franklin asked to be relieved, and to be permitted to return
home; but it was not until the spring of 1785 that Thomas Jefferson was
commissioned as his successor. On the I2th of July in that year Franklin
took a final leave of Paris and France, and reached Philadelphia in the
following Septemb