If U Westborough Historical Society GIFT OF THE STORY OF THE STATES EDITED BY ELBRIDGE S BROOKS PANEUIL HALL. THE STORY OF THE STATES THE STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE ILLUSTRATED BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON OPPOSITE BROMFIELD STREET COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY JD. LOTHKOP COMPANY. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE BAY STATE II CHAPTER II. THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN ENGLAND AND HOLLAND . 2O CHAPTER III. THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH 44 CHAPTER IV. THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY 50 CHAPTER V. THE FIRST WINTER 60 CHAPTER VI. BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL 75 CHAPTER VII. A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON 90 CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE Il6 2034527 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS . . . . . 130 CHAPTER X. THE FIRST INDIAN WARS 145 CHAPTER XI. SIR EDMUND ANDROS 162 CHAPTER XII. AN INDEPENDENT STATE. THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT . 176 CHAPTER XIII. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS l86 CHAPTER XIV. LOUISBURG '. 206 CHAPTER XV. THE BOSTON MASSACRE ....... 238 CHAPTER XVI. LEXINGTON AND CONCORD . . ; . V " : . 250 CHAPTER XVII. BATTLE OF BUNKER'S HILL 266 CHAPTER XVIII. MASSACHUSETTS AT SEA . . . . . . . 283 CHAPTER XIX. SHAY'S REBELLION '.'.'. '301' CONTENTS. CHAPTER XX. THE WAR OF l8l2 310 CHAPTER XXI. THE CIVIL WAR 320 CHAPTER XXII. MANUFACTURES 334 LEADING EVENTS 349 STATE GOVERNORS . 352 INDEX o 354 ILLUSTRATIONS. Taneuil Hall The Cradle of Liberty .... Frontis. Burial Hill in Plymouth 46 Longing for the Old Home 64 The Cradock House at Medford 72 Training Day on Boston Common in Colonial Days ... 84 Old School Days 128 Old Garrison House at JJeerfleld 200 Samuel Adams 244 The British are Coming 252 The North Bridge at Concord 260 The Yankee Privateer . 312 ...-.- I . , - THE STORY OF MASSACHUSETTS. CHAPTER I. THE BAY STATE. THERE are two ways in which history can be written. And when I agreed to write the Story of Massachusetts, these two ways were open to me. You may make a book which shall condense the annals of the period you describe. You may give as much effort and space to one year as to another. I am sorry to say that nine out of ten of the his- torians of the old school did this, and it may be said, in passing, that this is the reason why their books are generally so dull. In this particular case of the Story of Massachusetts, we have two hundred and seventy years from the landing of the Pilgrims at Cape Cod to the day when I write these words. I have about the same number of pages in which to condense this "Story of Massachusetts." On the theory which I describe therefore, I should give one page to the narrative of each year. 1775 would come off as well and as ill as 1653 or 1819. This would be called accurate work, but it would be dull reading. And in practice, such books, when written, are never read. 11 12 THE BAY STATE. The other method is that which I shall adopt. I have selected twenty occasions of critical interest in the history of Massachusetts, and to each of these I will give a chapter. When it seems necessary, I will show the connection between a new chapter and that which came before. But I shall not pre- tend to give at length the annals of Massachusetts since her birth. A story is not a book of annals. For the convenience, however, of any who may wish to see the history of these two hundred and seventy years brought together in connected form,. I will now write it in about as many lines, which may serve as a convenient introduction for the chapters which follow. Massachusetts was probably discovered by the Northmen in the tenth century. In 1601, it wa& visited by Gosnold, who established a colony in Buzzard's Bay, which he abandoned the same year. In 1620, the first permanent settlement was made at Plymouth, by the colony of Independents, who have become historically famous, as the "Pilgrim Fathers." In ten years' time, this little colony, which began with one hundred settlers, numbered three hundred. In 1630, a much larger colony sailing from Eng- land, under the lead of John Winthrop, arrived in Salem. They brought with them the charter of the trading company, which had obtained the grant of Massachusetts Bay. This charter became the Con- stitution of the State which they founded and which was governed under it for sixty years. The nurn- THE BAY STATE. 13 bers of this colony increased by successive emigra- tions from England, for ten years ; but after 1640, more people returned to England than came from England, until the Revolutionary War. Among the settlers who arrived in the years 1633-34, were Anne Hutchinson and Sir Harry Vane. Their presence created a curious commotion in the colony, never fully explained, and the colony sustained its first great misfortune in the banishment of Mrs. Hutch- inson and most of her adherents. Vane returned to England. The colony of Connecticut had been settled from Massachusetts in the meantime, and in the year 1636, the two colonies overcame the Pe- quods in a sharp encounter which secured them peace from Indian ravage for nearly forty years. Those forty years were well spent. The colonists and their children with habits of untiring industry did something in subduing a soil which was most unpromising, under a climate that was most capri- cious and severe. In their fisheries, they drew far more wealth from the sea than they did from the land. Before the century was over, they became the best ship-builders in the world. From the limited text of the charter of a trading corporation, they evolved a working constitution of government. And thus the little State seemed in a manner established, when in the year 1675, its very existence was threatened by a conspiracy of the savage tribes under Philip. The numbers on each side were about equal, and both par- ties fought with firearms. The issue was critical, and 14 THE BAY STATE. there were moments when it was even probable that the colony might be annihilated. But with the death of Philip in 1676, such fears came to an end. Indian attacks, however, fomented by French and Jesuit enemies, brought horror and calamity on the fron- tiers of the State for seventy years more. The worst enemies of the colony, however, were not the savages. Hardly had Massachusetts drawn breath from this Indian attack, when another began from a more for- midable quarter. The ministry of Charles the Second began to inquire what that colony was which fought its enemies without asking for aid " at home," which had indeed gone so far as to coin money without the name or superscription of any king. Officers were sent over to make inquisition into the Colony's affairs, and to such officers more power and more was given, until, at the very end of Charles the Second's life, the original charter 'was revoked. In December, 1686, Sir Edward Andros landed as a Royal Gover- nor under the commission of James the Second. Until that time the State or colony had always chosen her own governor. The administration of Andros seemed tyrannical, indeed, to people used to the methods of a Republic. And on the eighteenth of April, 1689, in a popular rising, they imprisoned Andros and his associates and placed in authority the old magistrates who had last served them under the charter. Such promptness ingratiated them with William the Third, who had taken possession of the Eng- lish throne. But he was a man who believed that THE BAY STATE. 15 it was the duty of a king to reign and he was deaf to all solicitation which begged him to restore the old charter under which Massachusetts had been virtually an independent republic for two generations. He gave a new charter, which left with him and his successors the right of approval of all province laws, and the appointment of the Governor from time to time. Under this charter the government was ad- ministered, until Gage, the last Royal Governor, compelled the people to form a provincial congress, in 1774, which virtually took into its hands the government, of all the State outside of Boston. The colony, as it was called until 1690 the Prov- ince, as it was officially called afterwards was of necessity involved in the complications of European politics, when these brought about war between Eng- land and France. For Canada was under the French crown, and any war gave to the Jesuit missionaries in Canada opportunities to precipitate savage attacks upon the frontier. In retaliation for these attacks, all the four New England Colonies, led by Massa- chusetts, which was larger and stronger than all the rest put together made counter-attacks on Canada, which lasted until Wolfe took Quebec in 1758. These conflicts are spoken of by our local chroniclers as " King William's War," " Queen Anne's War," or in general as " the French and Indian wars." They involved one and another effort against Quebec, and different enterprises against the sea-coast prov- inces, of which the most important was that which resulted in the capture of Louisburg. To these 16 THE BAY STATE. struggles belong the horrible Indian massacres, which make so large a part of the history of every old town in Massachusetts, which was at any time near her frontier. In the year 1763, so soon as the Seven Years' War was well out of the way, the foolish ministry of, George the Third undertook to tax the American colonies, by way of reimbursing the government for its expenses in that war. Such was the excuse made at the time. The measure really belonged to that absurd policy by which the court party hoped gradu- ally to undo the work of the English Revolution. The young king himself who had come to the crown in 1760, had this fatal dream of enlarging the royal power. He went so far as to make himself what has been called " a Brummagem Louis the Four- teenth." The American colonies instantly resisted this attempt at taxation without representation. They were led by Massachusetts and Virginia, which were the two strongest and largest of the " old thir- teen." From this resistance began the Revolutionary War and the independence of the nation was born from it. The Continental army, which was in large part made up at that time from the militia of Massa- chusetts, drove the English governor and army from Boston in March, ]776. And, from that time to this, no part of Massachusetts has been permanently occupied by a foreign enemy excepting the port at Penobscot, which was then in the wilderness of Maine, for a short time at the end of the Revolution- THE BAY STATE. 17 ary War. Massachusetts gave her loyal support to the contest which she and Virginia may be said to have originated. She furnished more than half the men for the Continental Army, and probably nine tenths of the men for that naval war which, more than any military successes on land, brought the king to grant independence. While the natural industry of the State was broken up by the war, the new industry of privateering took its place. To a very large degree it was the success of privateering at sea which enabled the new-born State to do her duty so efficiently on the land. The hopes which belong to peace after eight years of war were not justified. Rivalries and misunderstandings between the States so recently united checked all commercial prosperity. The new- born nation was not a nation, because it had no government. At the instance of Washington and his friends, the national constitution was formed and it went into effect on the thirtieth of April, 1789. As one part of the nation of the United States, Massachusetts has enjoyed prosperity and her people have enjoyed happiness, such as seldom fall for so long a period to one community. This may be said indeed with few exceptions for the two hundred and sixty years since the time of Winthrop. And whoever reads or writes the Story of Massachusetts must remember, that such pros- perity is due to an inborn habit of her people, which springs from the religious conviction of the Puritan colony. There is a passion for work in Massachu- 18 THE BAY STATE. setts. From this her prosperity and her history are born. The real Massachusetts man likes to subdue the earth. He believes God bade him subdue it. If he cannot do it in one way he does it in another. Wholly beneath all changes of charter or dynasty, quite irrespective of government or of law is the passion to create something which did not exist before. The Massachusetts man does not do this simply because he is hungry or naked or cold. He does it because God sent him to do it. The motto of the State might be, " Do all to the glory of God." If he cannot raise wheat, he catches beaver. If he can- not catch beaver, he catches codfish and mackerel. If he cannot catch these, he builds ships and sells them ; or he uses them himself, or he pursues whales over the world. If he may not go for fish and for whales, he goes for the enemy who forbids him. If the folly of his own government breaks up his commerce by sea, instead of that he begins a great system of manufacture by land. If the changes of commerce put an end to the voyages by which he made himself at home in the Pacific, he builds one and another system of railways to unite the two great oceans, and is recognized as the master of a commerce a hundred times larger than that in which he engaged before. It is this passion to control nature, existing among all her children who are true to the maternal in- stinct, that has made Massachusetts what she is. I have selected twenty passages in the course of the development which has followed on this determina- THE BAY STATE. 19 tion, by way of giving to the reader an interest in her history. I have chosen some because they are critical, some because they are picturesque. I hope they will prove so interesting that the reader may go himself into the larger record and find other stories in that fascinating field. CHAPTER II. THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN ENGLAND AND HOLLAND, 1602-1620. SIMPLE people in England were seeking God with the first enthusiasm of the freedom of Protestantism. They could not bear the machinery of the service in the parish church. They could not bear the interference of the officers of the government. They did not like to read their prayers from a book. And it would happen, and did happen, that people would give up stated and regular church-going on Sunday, so that they might meet in what our time would call a " conference meeting," where prayer and song and exhortation were more simple than they found them in the Church service. Especially would this happen when a conscientious preacher in the parish church, who had a body of Iparishioners tenderly bound to him, found that he was too hardly pressed by the bishop or by other authorities, and that he must give up his charge of that people. Such a minister, when he left the parish church, did not leave alone. He left, and the people who loved him best liked to go with him at least on the Lord's Day. This was what happened when 20 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 21 Richard Clifton, a minister in the English Church, was forced to give up the ministry of the parish church at Bawtry, not far from Doncaster, in the West Riding of York. He was in his fiftieth year in 1602. He was intensely in earnest in his religion and his preaching. But he did not agree with the bishop, and the bishop ordered him to give up his charge. And he did so. With him was John Robinson, a learned and con- secrated man, who was the spiritual leader of these people, and one of their wisest counselors for twenty years and more. To join with Clifton and with Robinson in wor- ship, to study Scripture under their lead, a company of humble people met week by week in a house known as a " manor-house," which belonged to the Archbishop of York, at Scrooby in the northern cor- ner of Nottinghamshire, near Lincolnshire, in the east of England. In this manor-house lived William Brewster, who was one of their number, and he gave them the use of the rooms of the manor-house for their Sunday service. Many of them walked or rode for a considerable distance that they might meet here, and Brewster entertained them hospit- ably when they came. This manor-house may be said to have foreseen the birth of the Massachusetts of to-day. For this com- pany of people were to be the founders of New England. The house has long been a ruin, but a part of one of the outbuildings remains. It is a little odd that the first, and indeed the only account we 22 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. have of it, should come to us in a letter from the King of England of that day no other than the fool King James. When he received the great and fatal message which announced to him that he was King of England, he mounted his horse for the expedition to London, and, with a numerous suite, he made his first "progress" to his new capital. On the way he hanged a thief at Nottingham, by his own prerogative, a thing no English king had any right to do then or now, and the act shocked people as a bad omen. The day before this, they hunted as they rode, and, instead of stopping to eat a state dinner, at some nobleman's house, they lunched in the open air near the manor-house of Scrooby. The king remembered the pleasant day, and, so soon as he arrived in London, he wrote to this Archbishop of York, to ask him to sell to him the manor-house in Scrooby, that he might make a hunting lodge of it. How the matter ended nobody now knows. Perhaps the archbishop asked more money than the frugal king liked to pay. Perhaps the king forgot. If he had bought the lodge, maybe it would be standing now, one of the places which the Board of Woods and Forests have to see to. In that case, we would ask them to let us hang on its walls a picture to commemorate a Sunday service there, where should be present Clifton and Robinson as preachers, and William Bradford and William Brewster in the little parlor congregation. These simple people did 'not meet merely to wor- ship God. They believed in the magic of " Together." THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 23 They agreed to help each other. In the phrase of their time, they " joined themselves as the Lord's free people into a church estate in the fellowship of the Gospel, to walk in all His ways, made known or to be made known to them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them." Many New England readers will remember some of these words in the covenants of New England churches to this day. To the little congregation which met at Scrooby, the words meant no mere formal connection, registered on paper, but that those who were thus joined were to stand by each other and the associa- tion in whatever hardship. " That it cost them something," so William Bradford says when he records the words, " this history will declare." Bradford had himself withdrawn from the communion of the parish church, having come under the influence of Clifton, and been brought " into the company and fellowship of such as were then called professors." For doing this, he met the wrath of his uncles and the scorn of his neighbors. But none of these things turned him from his pious inclinations. But such inclinations were not to be pursued quietly in those days. " I will harry them out of the country," said the Fool-King, " or else worse." And his officers, up and down through the country, watched for indications of such heresy as Bradford's and Brewster's, and watched, of course, successfully. Some of the "professors " were put in prison. Most were obliged to leave their houses and places of 24 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. work, to hide away from their persecutors. If they were to maintain their habit of worship, if they were to be banded together as a religious society, it could not be in England. Like other persecuted men of the time, they saw that they must go to Holland. And to Holland they went, though it proved to be as hard to go as to stay. Sometime in 1607 they determined to emigrate, and tried to go. But even then the king and his crew were not satisfied to let them. A large number of them had met at Boston, in Lincolnshire, and had hired their own ship, the master of which agreed to take them on at night. But, after they and their goods were on board, he betrayed them. The officers of the Crown and Church seized them, searched them, carried them back to the town, and reported their attempt to the Lords of the Council. All of them were kept in prison for a month ; then all but seven were released ; but for most or all of them, the plan of Holland was post- poned to another year. In the spring of 1608, some of the same party with some others made another effort. This time it was a Dutchman who took this party on board. It must have been Bradford's party. But after the first boat-full was on board, the master spied a great company on shore, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons, for the country was raised to take them. The Dutchman swore an oath, " Sacrement ! " weighed his anchor and sailed, leav- ing more than half the party. It was harder to emigrate from England in those days than it is now. THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 25 These are but two stories of such experience, where Bradford, their historian, says he could tell many. But in the end they all got over to their new country, "and met together again according to their desires, with no small rejoicing." Robinson, Clifton, Brew- ster and other principal members, "were of the last, and stayed to help the weakest over before them." They had arrived in August, 1608. They would hardly have come to Holland but for the suspension for a time of the "Thirty Years' War." The long truce of twelve years had begun. And that truce covers the longest period which any of the Pilgrim Fathers spent in Holland, up to the time of their second emigration, which brought them to America. They went first to Amsterdam. But there they found that the English Church of Smith or Ains- worth one founded much as their own had been established was in a hot quarrel, in which these people did not care to join. After a stay of several months in Amsterdam, the Company determined to remove to the University city of Leyden, some miles away. John Robinson asked leave in their behalf, that they might settle in Leyden, and the burgomaster gave permission on the twelfth of February, 1609. Soon after, the new emigration was made. The company, all told, was about one hundred persons. It was to increase con- siderably during their stay in Holland. The reader of our time may get some idea of the aspect of Leyden from the frequent studies which 26 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. ( have been attempted to illustrate the life of Spinoza, who lived there a generation later. The exact con- temporary of Robinson, Brewster and Bradford was the eminent theologian Polyander. He says in a pleasant way, " Of the four quarters of the globe, Europe is the noblest and finest; the Low Countries are the best part of Europe ; of the seventeen prov- inces of the Low Countries, Holland is the richest, the most flourishing, and the finest ; the most beau- tiful and altogether charming city of Holland is Leyden ; while the handsomest canal and loveliest street in Leyden is the Rafenburg." As he lived in the Rafenburg, his conclusion was that he was lodged in the most beautiful spot in the world. The city is not much changed probably, to-day, and travelers still testify to its cheerful attractions. This little company of hard-working men and women could not make the same boast that Polyan- der made, that they had the best of Leyden. But they had what they came for. First of all, they had the "Together" which they had dreamed of; they had the United Life to which they had pledged themselves in their church covenant. The mere incident of language kept them in close relations with each other, while it kept them more or less distinct from their Dutch neighbors. Robinson had the association with the staff of truly learned men who were teachers and students in the Universit}*-, Europe could hardly have shown a more distin- guished company of scholars at that time. The English men and women were willing to work, and THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 27 they found work to do. Dr. Dexter has discovered, by diligent study in the Ley den documents of that time, that there were among them, hat-makers, wool-carders or combers, twine-spinners, journeymen masons and carpenters, and makers of tobacco-pipes. Brewster established himself as a printer. His type was bought from the Elzevir foundries, for it is of their patterns and from their dies. And a book with his imprint is now among the most precious treasures of the American book-lover. William Bradford, afterward to be governor, served an ap- prenticeship with a Frenchman at weaving silk. He is afterward spoken of as a dyer and fustian-maker. He was not twenty-one when the emigration from England took place. As soon as he was of age, he sold his property in England, and invested it in his new business. In January, 1611, Robinson, with three others of the company, bought a large house and garden near to the university and cathedral. The price they paid was eight thousand guilders, of which a quarter was paid down, and the rest secured by mortgage. They obtained possession the next year, and from that time this large house became the place of wor- ship of the church. One of the purchasers, Jepson by name, was a carpenter. He built on the vacant land twenty-one houses. These were occupied by the several families of the church, and they thus organized a visible settlement of their own within the city. Many companies of people who loved ach other have dreamed of such an establishment. 28 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. It does not often happen that so simple a way to carry out the dream appears. Twenty-two families must have comprised nearly all the original mem- bers of the first emigration. With hard and continual work they made a com- petence and a comfortable living. They worked at their trades, were never persecuted or annoyed, and enjoyed the privileges they sought. So happy and comfortable was their condition, and so public the circumstances of their removal, that their numbers enlarged considerably, from recruits from England, while they were in Holland. For here was a society of Christian men, with whom men and women of tender conscience could unite in worship and relig- ious conversation, and could bear one another's burdens. They were living a pleasant life, not oppressed by government and fearing no man, and though they lived in a foreign city, there were so many of them that one could speak the English language as if he were at home. So it was that Edward Winslow and his young bride joined them ; that John Carver and his bride joined them ; that Captain Miles Standish, who had fought in the Spanish wars, joined them. Others joined them whose names are now remembered in the company of the Pilgrim Fathers. Indeed, of all the little company who landed at the American Plymouth, Brewster and Bradford are the only two who can be certainly said to have belonged to the Scrooby congregation. It is almost certain that Edward Southworth was a third, and there are many names THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 29 of which the history is not known, who were prob- ably of that company. Holland was proud, as it had reason to be proud, of its reputation as a harbor of heretics. And, as it hap- pened, the emigrants from Lincolnshire were stiffly Calvinistic, so that they were in sympathy with the successful religious party of their day. Thomas Prince and George Sumner and more lately Dr. Dexter and Rev. John J. Lewis have done the best that could be done in long pilgrimages to Leyden, to find traces of their stay there. But there was not much to find. The Pilgrims did not court the society of the Dutch, nor did the Dutch court theirs. John Robinson was matriculated as a member of the University in 1615. The use of the library must have been a great gift to him. It gave him oppor- tunities which he did not have in England. While he was here he wrote treatises, which, though no one reads them for his light reading, hold their own in comparison with other theological literature of their day, and one, at least of these books, was printed in Leyden, probably by Brewster. Bradford describes one occasion when, in a public disputation in Latin, John Robinson put Bischoffs, known as Episcopius, the great defender of Arminianism, " to an evident nonplus." This must have been greatly to the delight of these worthy English weavers and dyers and printers, who took a half-holiday that they might enjoy the spectacle, and who could applaud the Latin of their pastor when Brewster gave the signal, even if they could not follow the argument. 30 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. But it is hard to triumph much now in such victories, in a day when most Christians would agree that Episcopius was probably in the right and Robinson in the wrong. Still he did not think he was in the wrong. And neither Robinson nor any of the rest of them loved dispute. Let us remember that. In the horrible and wretched controversy between Calvinist and Arminian, which in 1619 brought the brave and pure John of Barneveldt to the block, these English- men had no share, so far as appears, except in the windy dispute we have described. They left Am- sterdam that they might keep out of one quarrel. And when, in 1617. they began to think of leaving Holland, one of the reasons given is that they might not be engaged in the contentions there. Indeed, the truce between Spain and her provinces was near an end, and they did not wish to embark in the fortunes of war with Spain. In 1617, the society numbered between two and three hundred male members. In that year they be- gan seriously to discuss the question of removal to America, and a considerable majority determined to go. They were a societ} 7 , and they wanted to remain a society. Where to go was more doubtful. Raleigh's accounts of Guiana were new to English readers, and were very attractive. A few more votes in favor of Guiana, and this author would be writing the story of the Pilgrims under a palm-tree, and this reader would be reading as he sipped his lemonade in a canoe tethered to a Victoria Regia. THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 31 The party more attached to England and England's ways preferred to try Virginia, as the coast of all the United States was then called. And at last it was determined to seek a charter from the Virginia Company, to which King James had given the coast from Cape Fear, in North Carolina, to Long Island Sound.* But it was wisely agreed that they should make a separate settlement, and not ally themselves with the colony known to us as the Colony of Virginia. In the first negotiation, as early as 1617, John Carver and Robert Gush man were their agents. They submitted seven articles to the Council of Virginia. These articles show the religious and social views of the religious communion to which they belonged, in the way best calculated to win the confidence of people not bigots in the English Church. They express their willingness to hold communion with the members of that church, and their concurrence in its theological creed. The company to which they applied received them cordially, and on the fifteenth of December, the emigrants transmitted to them their formal request. They went further, however, and asked the king for liberty of religion in America, to be confirmed under the great seal. But this could not be given by such a fool as then reigned in England. The best that could be gained was an informal promise of probable neglect. * The precise limit of the charter to the London Adventurers is from thirty-four to thirty-eight degrees of North Latitude, with the right to settle as far north as the forty-first. 32 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. The Virginia Company itself was rent by internal dissensions. And difficulties in negotiation, both with the company and the crown, delayed with long delay the wishes of the eager emigrants in Holland. It was not until 1619 that a patent was granted for their use to one John Wincob, a " religious^ person," of whom nothing else is known, but that he was of the household of the Countess of Lincoln. As it proved, the patent was never of any value to them. It is now lost, and its precise terms are not known. And now the extreme poverty of the company appears. For they cannot go forward without a contract with men of money, to whom these poor people have to sell themselves, that they may obtain a passage even to their place of exile. To make a final agreement in England, they dispatched Robert Cushman and Thomas Weston, two of their number, to England. The difficulty of communication be- tween these two men and their principals made no little trouble. The relations between the ssttlers and the capitalists made more, and the contract determined on proved a very hard one for the set- tlers. But Cushman always held and with a cer- tain dry humor he showed that he and Weston did the best that could be done. To conciliate the English adventurers, he was forced to make large concessions to them on various points, where his employers blamed him severely. In particular, he employed one Christopher Martin, who, with his family, was to join them, to make the purchases of THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 33 stores. Martin was thought to have abused his trust. Perhaps he did so. But as the poor man and all his family died afterward in the horrors of the first winter in America, he must be counted as one of the martyrs, and we must remember that he left no one to tell his side of the story. About seventy merchants and other gentlemen in England, with one gentle-woman, as will be seen, living mostly near London, "aiming to do good and to plant religion,'' subscribed at least ten pounds each to the adventure. Many subscribed more. To these the emigrants joined themselves. Whoever went in person, over the age of sixteen years, was counted as if he had subscribed ten pounds. If he chose to subscribe ten pounds more in provisions or money, he was counted as having a double share of stock, and in that proportion for each ten pounds. All these adventurers, those who stayed at home and those who emigrated, became partners in trade, work, fishing, or any other enterprise. The emi- grants were to be fed from the common stock. At the end of seven years there was to be a division, and each partner was to receive a dividend. The particular point where the emigrants were most displeased, was the failure of the agreement to give them any time to work for themselves. They also wished and expected, each man to own his house and home lot at the end of the seven years. But when they arrived in England, their own agents had gone so far under the agreement, that 34 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. it was impossible to reconsider or re-adjust any details. Carver, Winslow, Bradford, Brewster, and Stand- ish not to name other leaders were determined to go. In face of all discouragements and dis- appointments, they held the others up to the plan. This has proved well for them, well for New Eng- land, and well, indeed, for the world. They bought the Speedwell, a ship of sixty tons, for the expedition, and she first went to Holland to bring the Leyden contingent to the southern ports of England ; there they were to meet her consort, the Mayflower, which had been chartered in Eng- land. Those who stayed in Leyden, who were the majority, feasted the emigrants at the pastor's house. They refreshed themselves with singing of psalms, and it is to be remembered that many of the congregation were very expert in music. The Speedwell lay at Delft Haven, which is about four- teen miles from Leyden. The Leyden party accom- panied the emigrants to that port and feasted them again. "The night was spent with little sleep by the most, but with friendly entertainment and Chris- tian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love." The next day the wind was fair. "The tide which stays for no man, calling them away that were thus loath to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayer to the Lord and his blessing."* *This is the moment selected by Weir, for his admirable picture in the Rotunda at Washington. THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 35 And thus the emigrants parted from friends, many of whom they never saw again. This was about the twenty-second of July, 1620. It is hard to estimate the pecuniary investment which these poor people made in providing for their voyage. It is clear enough from the hard bargain which they were forced to accept, that they had but little ready money to contribute. The English adventurers, as they were called, who stayed at home, were merchants and others, of the Puritan line of thinking, who already had their eyes on America as a possible place of refuge, if the liberty of the Gospel were too much hindered at home. They expected some pecuniary return. But they did not make themselves into a corporation ; they did not invest very large sums.* Most of them wanted to do good and to advance religion. Some of them were soon discouraged and withdrew. But it is quite clear that the largest part of the ready money was furnished by those who stayed at home. On paper there were sixty or seventy of them, who paid, at least, ten pounds each. Some of these, how- ever, early withdrew from their engagements. And when, in 1627, the contract was closed, there were forty-two left, after death and dissatisfaction had reduced their number. They received from the colonists eighteen hundred pounds in final payment of their investments. By the account which the instrument of agreement itself requires, the colonists * Sir George Farrar and his brother withdrew five hundred pounds after they had con- versed with Weston on the wishes of the Leyden men. 36 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. represented certain shares in the company, without any estimate of their pecuniary contributions. Chris- topher Martin, and some others of the English adven- turers, joined the emigrants from Holland on the Mayflower. The position, then, as I have said, was the same which our own time often sees, when a person or a company in an Eastern city of the United States sends out one or more emigrants to California, to Oregon, to Montana or Texas, providing the capital lor the adventure. In this case it was agreed that, in the division of profits at the end of the seven years, each emigrant should share as if he had con- tributed ten pounds in the beginning, and, in the meantime, should receive his clothing, his food, and his home. Such in substance was the agreement. The emigrants lived up to it fairly, and, as has been said, at the end of seven years paid the stayers at home eighteen hundred pounds, in discharge of their share in the joint enterprise. Carver, Winslow, Bradford, Brewster, Standish, Fuller, and Allerton were the persons of largest means in the Leyden group of the emigrants. It seems as if their quota of subscription to the common stock were paid in " provisions " for the voyage and the colony, and that by provisions is meant such articles of food as could be best bought in Holland. When the little vessel arrived in England, the colo- nists met, to their dismay, the old story that there was not money enough yet, and they were obliged to sell from their stores sixty pounds' worth of butter TEE PILGRIM FATHERS. 37 which had been provided for the voyage. C ashman had already cut the emigrants short of beer, by tak- ing that article from the list of necessary stores. And to after times, it is an interesting thing that the first settlers, in spite of themselves, were made teetotalers for a year by this enforced abstinence.* By such means the addition of one hundred pounds for things absolutely necessary was made as hastily as possible in England. The season was advancing, and, indeed, it was to the loss of time here and now, that the subsequent hardships of the first winter in America were due. Writing on the twentieth of June, Cushman, one of the London agents of the Leyden party, estimated fifteen hundred pounds or sixteen hundred pounds as the amount needed for the expedition. Of this he could only find that twelve hundred pounds had been paid in by all parties, besides some cloth, stockings, and shoes. There was so little money among the Holland adventurers that Cushman had to send them five hundred pounds, " though we may go scratch for it," which he did. With such help the Holland party had bought their provisions for the voyage and embarked. They had left for themselves " scarcely any butter, no oil, not a soul to mend a * As late as 1824 this was counted as a hardship. In his anniversary address of that year, Edward Everett, in recounting the hardships of the first winter, says, " Depending on the charity of the shipmaster for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore." In 1628, Bradford counts it as a terrible extravagance that Morton and his ribald crew of perhaps fifty people drank ten pounds' worth of wine and liquor at one night of debauch. And so it was, if ten pounds then represent eighty pounds or four hundred dollars now. 38 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. shoe, nor every man a sword to his side, and were wanting- many muskets, 'much armor, etc." They had not sacrificed so much to be unwilling now to make the final sacrifices which have been described. And, in a few days more, both vessels had taken on board the English contingents and started together. Some time had been lost, however, in repairs upon the Speedwell, the smaller vessel of the two, and the one which the colonists and ad- venturers owned. In the little voyage from Holland, she had proved to be in poor condition. But the repairs thus suggested did not prove suffi- cient. They had not sailed a hundred miles west- ward, when she proved so unseaworthy that her captain reported to the larger ship that he would not go on. Both vessels were obliged to return, this time to Plymouth in Devon. Here, on consultation, the Speedwell was left, and, in fact, she never made the voyage. The Mayflower took on board some of the passengers, left, perhaps, some of those who had embarked in her, - and, with one hundred and one emigrants, sailed again, on the sixth of September, 1620. Nothing is said in the memoirs of the passengers as to the ignorance, one might well say the folly, of starting upon such an adventure so late in the season. They had been in communication with the Dutch, with reference to planting near Manhattan, which we call New York. They knew, and had dealt with, fishermen who knew the coast of New England and its climate perfectly well. How they THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 39 dared to sail as late as September, for a settlement with women and little children, nowhere appears. True, they did not intend to settle as far north as they did. But they did not expect to go as far south as the Chesapeake. Even if they had, the experience of all the settlements, and indeed of the simplest common sense, would have taught them that they should arrive at their new home in the spring. They were not men, however, who had many of the privileges of choosers. As it proved, alas for them ! the voyage was a long one. The May- flower does not seem to have followed the southern passage, much in vogue till times then recent. But, in a direct course, she had rough weather, and was sixty-four days on the sea before she made Cape Cod. This landfall was somewhat north of what the captain intended and his passengers wished for. Indeed, Captain Thomas Jones, the master of the Mayflower, was afterward accused of treachery in this matter. But it is clear that at the time no such suspicion was entertained. They came into Cape Cod harbor, where the town of Provincetown now stands, on the eleventh of November, Old Style. It was in this harbor that every man of the party subscribed the celebrated compact by which they agreed to maintain them- selves in civil order, as a State or Commonwealth, under such laws as the majority might enact. To the place of Governor the} 7 confirmed John Carver, one of the Leyden party, who had been named to 40 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. some such authority before, probably in some meeting of the Church. The enthusiasts who suppose that government rests on what Rousseau calls the " Social Compact," find in this act a fine instance in practice, in which such a compact is made. A very noble instance it is.* It is to be remembered that the great majority of those who joined in it were already united to each other in a church covenant, in which they were bound to each other to care for the common welfare. The compact of the cabin of the Mayflower added to them, for the purpose of civil government, such ser- vants and others who had joined their colony in England, as were not already members of the church formed in Leyden. Some of the more vigorous of the company started to explore the coast, in a shallop which had been brought on deck for such purposes. Sometimes sail- ing, sometimes landing a part of the party to march along the shore, they examined in two voyages the southern shore of Massachusetts Bay, and came as far as Plymouth Harbor. On the eleventh of * " In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furthering of the ends aforesaid ; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, constitutions, and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony ; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have here- urider subscribed our names, at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini, 1620." THE PIL GRIM FA THEES. 41 December, Old Style, they landed. Tradition never wavered in its statement that they landed on the rock now marked by a little temple as a monument. In the change of style made in the next century, this day is now represented by the twenty-first of December.* They returned at once to Cape Cod Harbor and made their report. It was accepted by the govern- ing authorities, and the Mayflower was at once taken across to the flow-found harbor. Then began the work of laying out the new town, and building the necessary houses. With a certain pride in defying what they thought the superstitions of England, they began on Christinas day. "The twenty-fifth day, they began to erect the first house for common use." " We went on shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to drive, and some to carry. So no man rested on that day." These are the char- acteristic statements of Bradford and Winslow. And to mark the cheer of the day, Winslow adds, " We began to drink water aboard. But at night the master [of the Mayflower] caused us to have some beer." Thus was it that the foundation of a free empire was laid as it should have been on Christmas day. The common house thus begun was twenty feet square. Five separate houses for residences were begun at the same time. It would seem as if they could hardly have been smaller. As these houses * An error of calculation fixed the twenty-second as the anniversary for nearly a cen- tury. The Pilgrim Society at Plymouth has determined, however, that the twenty-first is the proper day, and this is undoubtedly right. 42 THE PILGRIM FATHERS. were finished, more and more of the company left the vessel at night, and resided on shore. But the hardships of their life, the lack of proper food, scurvy and other diseases caused by this hardship, began, even in January, to diminish their number. One hundred and one emigrants had sailed from England. Mrs. Bradford was drowned by an accident in Cape Cod harbor while her husband was absent on the first survey of the coast ; one man died on the passage ; and a child, Peregrine White, was born while they lay in the harbor. Of this number, Bradford tells us that the greater part died in " the general mortality " of the beginning, and most of them in two or three months' time. His diary gives six deaths in Decem- ber, eight in January, seventeen in February, and thirteen in March. Before the end of a year the number of deaths had come to fifty.* "The fifty who died, died not because the country was un- healthful, but because their bodies were corrupted with sea diet which was naught their beef and pork being tainted, their butter and cheese corrupted, the fish rotten, and the voyage long by reason of cross winds : so that winter approaching before they could .get warm houses, and the searching sharpness of the climate creeping in at the crannies of their bodies, caused death and sickness." t And so, in sickness and in tears, in distress and death, but with constancy, firmness, devotion and un- wavering faith were laid the foundations of the State. * Of the fifty who survived, Bradford knew one hundred and sixty descendants in 1650. t Wood's New England Prospert, Chap. II. THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 43 THE THREE ANNIVERSARIES. Short is the clay, and night is long, But he who waits for day, In darkness sits not quite so long, And earlier hails the twilight gray, A little earlier greets the day That drives the mists of night away. So was our land forlorn and drear, When to the rock-bound shore A pilgrim band Christ-led, drew near, They promise it a new born year, Twilight which shows that even here The Sun of Mercy shall appear : the land be dark no more. So was the world dark, cold and wild When on a Christmas morn A baby on his mother smiled The' dawning comes the blessed child The Sun of Life is born. The lengthening days shall longer grow, Till summer rules the land. From Pilgrim rills, full rivers flow Roll bolder and more grand. So, Father, grant that every year, The Sun of Righteousness more clear, To our awaiting hearts appear ; And from his glorious East arise The noon-day monarch of the skies, Till darkness from the nations flies, Till all know Him as they are known; And all the earth be all His own. CHAPTER III. THE PILGKIMS AT PLYMOUTH. 1620 - 1630. E terrors of the first winter have been told, in J- poetry and in oratory, so that the world knows them. Of one hundred who were living the day the compact was signed in the Mayflower, only fifty were living on the first of April. The survivors did not dare mark the graves, for fear the savages, of whom they still had fears, should know how their number was weakened. But after this the colonists enjoyed good health. One and another voyage brought them almost all of the Leyden party who had stayed behind, but Robinson, their pastor and leader, " died without the sight." Of the first winter, the history is mostly of sickness and death, but in part of the building of the village. It consisted of but seven houses, with the common house. It has been observed that, with a stern determination that they would observe no popish holidays, they seem to have waited a day before they went to work. u The twenty-fifth day of December we went on shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry. So no man rested all that day." It was by such determination to violate the fond tradition of the old church, that these men, who 44 THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH. 45 " builded wiser than they knew," established an em- pire on the birthday of Christendom. We have, fortunately, Bradford's history, which is in these days a diary, of the winter. That the houses were not elaborate is shown when we say that, between the twenty-fifth of December and the ninth of Jan- uary, the common house, which was the first, was nearly finished. In four days and a half more it was thatched. " Frost and foul weather hindered us much this time of the year. Seldom could we work half the week. But, alas, on the fourteenth it took fire ; the house was as full of beds as they could lie one by another, but, blessed be God, there was no harm done." The thatch of the roof was burned up, " but the roof stood, and little hurt." On the twenty-first of January they " kept their first meeting on land." On the ninth of February, the little house for sick people, which was another com- mon house, was again set on fire. Indications of Indians appeared from time to time through these months, and on the seventeenth of February two sav- ages made signs to the settlers to come to them, which signs they returned. These evidences that they were known by the natives caused them to " plant their great ordnances." It was not till the sixteenth of March that Samoset, well remembered in our tra- ditions, came straight to the rendezvous and bade them welcome. He had learned some broken Eng- lish from the Englishmen who came to fish, and knew by name the most of their captains. He told them that all the inhabitants of Petuxet, which was the 46 THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH. native name of Plymouth, had died of an extraordi- nary plague. They welcomed him cordially, dismissed him with kindness, and gave him a knife, a bracelet, and a ring. The next day he returned with five other " tall proper men." Both parties treated one another well, and " with many thanks given us they departed, with promises they would come again." On the twenty-first of March they had a meeting to conclude laws and orders for themselves. This had been attempted before, but twice broken up by the "savages coming. So it happened a third time, and Captain Standish, with another, with their muskets, went over, afraid of an attack, but all these fears were groundless. On the twenty-third they attempted their public business again, but Samoset with Squanto appeared once more, and brought with them Massa- soit with sixty men. Quite a formal treaty was made, that neither party should injure the other, and that no visits should be made with arms. If this treaty was observed, King James " would esteem him as his friend and ally." On the fifth of April they sent back the May- flower with Captain Jones, and she arrived in Eng- land after a passage of a month. Not one of the settlers abandoned the enterprise to return with her. But the winter had been severe for them. Carver, the governor, had died; his wife had died, Winslow's and Bradford's wives had died. Bradford's entry is, "Of a hundred persons, scarce fifty remain. The living scarce able to bury the dead, the well not sufficient to tend the sick, there being, in their time THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH. 47 of greatest distress, but six or seven, who spared no pains to help them. Two of the seven were Mr. Brewster, their elder, and Mr. Standish, their cap- tain. The like disease fell also among the sailors, so as almost half their company died before they sailed." There is no question but that the rock still known as Plymouth Rock, and now marked by a little shrine which the piety of subsequent times has built over it, is the rock on which the explorers first landed. Probably it was the landing-place of the larger party when the Mayflower crossed to Prov- incetown, and there is no reason to challenge the tradition that Mary Chilton was first to step upon it. In the excitement which preceded the American Revolution, one hundred and forty-four years after, the Sons of Liberty undertook to remove the rock from the beach, where the sea flowed up to it, and to carry it into the middle of the town. The rock, which was the visible sign of the landing of the English in America, broke in two, and only the upper part was carried to the village. The patri- otism and piety of the time saw in the parting an omen of the future. After these months of suffering, there followed years, not of wealth, but more and more of personal comfort. They were able in the autumn to celebrate the first American Thanksgiving with good heart. The fortunate discovery, within this generation, of Bradford's history makes it certain that wild turkeys crowned their Thanksgiving feast. The colonists 48 THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH. immediately opened relations with the fishermen on the coast of Maine. In one way or another they worked, and worked well, to discharge the debt which they felt that they owed to the gentlemen adventurers, and to Eliza Knight, the brave woman who was "anxious to do good." In 1627, by differ- ent loads of fish, of beaver, of sassafras, and the rest, seventeen hundred pounds of this indebtedness was wiped out, and this sum seems to have been enough to liquidate the amount in full, with even a handsome profit to the subscribers. After a few years they opened communications with Buzzard's Bay and Narragansett Bay, and had some diplomatic passages with the Dutch in the harbor of New York. They found they were outside the lines of the patent which they had, but their communi- cations with England were not unfriendly, and in point of fact their right to exist in the desert was never disturbed by any government. Under the government which they made for themselves, the Old Colony existed in prosperity until, in the reign of William the Third, they were united to the Bay State. Bat the name of the Old Colony is still fondly cherished as the name of the three south- western counties of Massachusetts. In no part of the world has there been more opportunity for " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In no part of the world has thought been more free. In no part of the world has ma.n's opportunity for promo- tion been more open. In no part of the world has there been less of crime and less of poverty. The THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH, 49 prophecy of John Robinson has been more than ful- filled, and in a higher sense than the mere verbal expression with which he would have been satisfied. It has been true that " more light and more truth have come out of God's holy word." THE FINDING OF THE FIRST MAYFLOWER. BY ARTHUR HALE. Plymouth, 1621. i. THE gray mists on the hillside fall, The gray gulls o'er the harbour call. With silent tread they wander down Through last year's leaves and grasses brown. Said he, " The months go by, this year, And all is still and dead. Is it, then, always winter here? " "The spring will come," she said. n. An east wind cuts the mist in twain, There is the straight sea line again. She draws her mantle close, and he, Turning his back upon the sea, Speaks : " Lord, thy servant here behold! My sins upon my head ; But why, Lord, slay us by thy cold ?" " The spring will come," she said. in. She droops her head, and at her feet There is a flower, white and sweet. They brush the leaves aside, and there Its pink and white are everywhere. A ray of sun and all the slope Laughs with its white and red. " It is the Mayflower of our hope; The spring is come," she said. CHAPTER IV. 1 THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. 1630-1631. ALL this while the condition of things in England was becoming more and more critical. The stu- pidity and bigotry of James the First had precipitated a breach in the English Church ; and, by the time he had died, the party which was eventually to drive his son from the throne and behead him, knew its own strength. Through the same generation, men had taken more and more interest in the English posses- sions in America. The government of England had determined that it had claims there, and the colony of Virginia had been the visible establishment of those claims. The settlement made by the Pilgrim Fathers in Plymouth, and the little fishing stations at different points up and down the New England coast, were bringing the name of America or Vir- ginia, as it was often called more and more dis- tinctly to the knowledge of Englishmen. It is not to be forgotten that although, when the century began, there was no family of English blood established on the whole coast of America, there were many separate adventurers who knew the coast ; in the island of Newfoundland there had been, for fifty years, a very considerable establishment of 50 THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. 51 fishermen. All the counties of England which had to do with fishing knew more or less of the immense resources which the Banks of Newfoundland offered for their industry^ It was in Dorchester, in the southwest of England, that this industry had its principal center. In Dorchester, the minister of the parish church was John White, the man now known as the founder of Massachusetts. He was a conscien- tious Puritan minister ; he was a man of broad views in Church and State ; he was well acquainted with the industries of the city of which he was the spirit- ual head ; and he early conceived the idea that on the coast of America could be founded a colony where could be made sure the rights of worship which were denied by Laud and the bigots of the English Church at home. Among the adventurers in Eng- land who subscribed funds for the Pilgrim colony, appears the name of John White. It is possible that this is the Rev. John White of Dorchester, but it is more probable that it is Counselor John White, who was the legal adviser of the Massachu- setts Company in England. In London, the Puritan party had great strength, as the history of the outbreak with Charles showed at once. The merchants of the city were much more disposed to maintain the freedom claimed by the Puritans than they were to succumb to the requisitions of bishops and more bigoted clergy. The list which we have of the men who wished to *' do good," and in that wish assisted the Pilgrim colony, is largely a list of such merchants. Among 52 THE EMIGRA TION TO THE BA Y. them is the name of Eliza Knight, and it is to be wished that some one would find out for us who was the Christian woman of wealth who had so much interest in freedom of worship, that she assisted the struggling colony. Now it is to be remembered that these men from year to year were learning that New England offered a promising field for adventure. They would lose a cargo now and then, when it was taken by a Sallee Rover, or by a French pirate; but in those days men were used to losing cargoes. And when a cargo of beaver skins arrived, or even, as it would seem, a cargo of clapboards, they sold at high prices, which more than justified the expense which had been put upon them. As we have seen, in 1627 a payment of seventeen hundred pounds was made to these adventurers. We have not the materials from which it is possible to strike the balance, and see how nearly this payment repaid their expenditures during the seven years. But on the whole, so far as we can disentangle the original stock from a dozen different adventures, made now by one, now by two or three of their company, it would seem that their principal was all returned to them, and that so much profit had been made as, in our times, we should consider a very adequate result of the adventure. The passage, then, of seven years, from the time when Cushman and Weston made their difficult negotiations with men of wealth in England, made such matters much easier in 1627 than they were in THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. 53 1619. It was in the year 1627 that, under the direct impulse of the Rev. John White, what we now know as the " Massachusetts Company " was formed, really to do the same thing, on a large scale and with a gen- erous capital, which the handful of Leyden adve"nt- urers had tried to do on a small scale, and under the frown of the government. A body of merchants of character and position in Dorchester united them- selves with a larger body of such men in London, to form the Massachusetts Company. It was formed precisely as in those days trading companies were often formed, for the development of the resources of Massachusetts Bay, and a subscription to its stock did not in the least imply that the subscribers in- tended to go to Massachusetts Bay themselves. They simply meant to send out settlers there, and to furnish the capital on which adventures of hunting, fishing, mining, and, if necessary, agriculture, could be carried on. These men undoubtedly expected to receive a fair interest on the capital which they invested. At the same time they meant to make an establishment in Massachusetts Bay, where men could worship God as they chose, without being under the direction of Archbishop Laud, or of his court of the Star Chamber. In all the discussion with regard to their motives which comes up from time to time, no one has ever attempted to show that a single person invested a penny in the stock of the new company, who was not committed, more or less directly, to the Puritan or popular view, in the contest with the established church or with the Crown. 54 THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. This body, it will be observed, was no company of unknown exiles, asking for a patent. It was a body of rich and respected merchants, accustomed to suc- cess, and holding that position which no government likes to offend. When, therefore, they asked for a State charter for a tract in Massachusetts Bay, no- body inquired of them how they meant to appoint their ministers, or what was to be the detail of their administration. They had not the difficulty there which checked so seriously the movements of the Pilgrims ten years before. A charter was issued to them, giving them the ordinary powers for trade and for local government, for the region known as Massachusetts Bay ; and, for the definition of this territory, they were authorized to enter upon any lands from a line three miles north of Merrimac River, to a line three miles south of the Charles River, in a strip which reached across to the South Sea. It must be remembered that, at that time, all geographers thought that the South Sea was not far distant, westward from the Atlantic. We have their Company records almost from the beginning. They make in themselves a very curious history, and are well worth the study of any Massa- chusetts man, or of any person, indeed, who is interested in the healthy growth of an infant State. As early as 1628, the company sent out what may be called its first colony, in sending John Endicott, who was to be the commander-in-chief, or, as we should say, general agent, for its affairs, to whom were joined Francis Higginson as preachex to the infant THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. 55 settlement, and others, who were to make the first establishment. His party arrived at Cape Ann on the thirteenth day of September, and soon proceeded to Salem, where they established themselves. They spent the winter of 1629 in Salem, built their meet- ing-house and established their church, and the other institutions of a new settlement. There is some question whether a colony had been maintained at Weymouth, where two unfortunate beginnings had been made. Weymouth and Salem must decide between them which has the honor of being the first settled town in what was to become the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. In the year 1629 the company sent out large supplies, with Francis Higginson the preacher and his family. They sent again ships to fish upon the coast, with the intention that they should dry their fish at the establishments which had been begun in the Bay, and bring back the cargoes in the fall. Such had been the course of trade which proved the most successful. Meanwhile, however, the pressure upon men's con- sciences, under the arbitrary effort of Charles and his party to govern without Parliament, especially under the oppression of the Star Chamber and Arch- bishop Laud, became more and more hard to bear. It was under this pressure that several gentlemen, who had probably joined the company almost wholly from political and religious views, offered to go themselves to America, if they might be permitted to take with them the charter of the company, and carry on its government on the ground. No bolder 56 THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. move was ever made and, as it proved, no wiser. They did not ask the Council of Virginia or the Crown of England if the course which they proposed to take would be agreeable. They took it, as they had undoubtedly the right to take it, and it does not seem to have occurred to any one of the royal party to question their right, or to attempt to hinder them. A few years later, the Crown attempted to check emigration, excepting by its own consent, but, in 1630, either these people were too important to be thwarted, or they had too many friends at court and in the administration. There is no evidence that there was any secrecy, or that the government lifted a finger to restrain them. The leader of these men was John Winthrop, a man who is always to be remembered in the list, too scanty, of the founders of States. Other men of mark who joined him were Isaac Johnson, Thomas Dudley, John Humphrey, Increase Nowell, Sir Rich- ard Saltonstall, Richard Bellingham, afterwards gov- ernor, William Rynshay, John Davenport, Emanuel Downing, Nathaniel Ward, Simon Bradstreet, William Coddington, who represented rich and influential families, and whose determination to stake them- selves on the enterprise must have arrested wide attention. Where the handful of Leyden emigrants were obliged to satisfy themselves with one vessel, this company of gentlefolk chartered a fleet of thir- teen. Every preparation was made, with the advan- tage of the experience of half a century in such affairs, and there was no lack of money. Above all, THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. 57 they had learned well the great lesson that they must sail in the early spring, and establish themselves in their new homes before the hardships of winter. The experience of the fishermen on the coast, and of the Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth, taught them by this time what the climate was. It is pathetic and curious to observe that the Pil- grim colonists landed at Plymouth on the shortest day in the year. Poetry and eloquence and the sympathy of a nation have of course seized on this critical coincidence, and the astronomical fact that from that moment the days began to grow longer and the sun to rise higher in the western world has been made the theme of a thousand poets and orators. It is equally curious, though for obvious reasons the fact has attracted less enthusiasm, that the ship of Winthrop, the leader of the prosperous and wealthy colony, arrived in Snlern harbor on the longest day in the year. The vessel came to anchor, and the enfranchised passengers landed, upon a world of ripe strawberries, of roses in bloom, and of all the fresh and fragrant delights of that rarest thing on earth, " a day in June." The marvelous pros- perity, the cheer and comfort, which, on the whole, the people of Massachusetts Bay have known from the beginning, were typified and prefigured, had Winthrop but known it, in the charming surround- ings of his landing and that of his associates. He was most cordially received by Endicott and Higginson and the others at Salem. The rest of the fleet came in, ship after ship, after voyages which, on 58 THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. the whole, had been prosperous. The Dorchester contingent had formed itself into a church in the city of its home before sailing. After a few days' delay at Nantasket, these people selected the spot still known as Dorchester, now a part of the corpo- ration of Boston, where they established themselves. Thus, by the good fortune of this early organization, Dorchester claims the honor of being the first-born of the churches of that emigration. Winthrop and his immediate friends determined at first on Charles- town, where they found a single settler, as the site of the settlement which they supposed, perhaps, would be the seat of the government. George Phil- lips, one of the most brilliant preachers, with a com- pany of his friends, went as far up the Charles River as its falls, and established themselves at Watertown. A part of the colonists remained at Salem, and strengthened the settlement there. The vessels were unladen, and most of them were sent home to England, with accounts sufficiently flattering of the beginning of the new adventure. But before the summer ended, these prosperous settlers also had their share of misfortune and calamity. Poor Win- throp was doomed to lose a son, who was drowned in a little stream between Salem and Boston. It was as Bradford, the first governor at Plymouth, had lost his son and his wife in the exigencies of the beginning. The establishment made at Charlestown was checked by the lack of drinking-water, and it was then that William Blaxton, a mysterious person who had been a clergyman of the English Church, THE EMIGRATION TO THE BAY. 59 and was living a hermit's life on the peninsula of Shawmut, which we now call Boston, invited Win- throp to come over and see the advantages of the place for a settlement. Now that Boston is a large and crowded city, it is interesting to know what it was in Blackstone's day. He had a garden, which perhaps would now be called a farm, on the west side of the peninsula, and a well-established tradition makes it probable that the present lines of the Com- mon correspond quite nearly to those of an inclosure which he had made for a pasture. His house was not far from the present line of Beacon Street, in the neighborhood of what is known as Spruce Street. Blackstone showed the visitors a stream of fresh water, rising on the exact spot now occupied by the United States post-office. In the excavations for the foundations of that building, a stream of water broke forth again, which was supposed to have flowed just where the stream flowed which was the temptation for a settlement. Winthrop, who had almost determined to establish himself at Cambridge, joined the company of those who removed to Boston, and, in the autumn, a settlement was begun there. It was wholly in what we now call the North End of the town, and probably extended up the lines of what is now known as Hanover Street. CHAPTER V. THE FIRST WINTEK. OF all lotteries, the risks are the most terrible in that where one chooses a new home ; worst of all, probably, when he changes from conti- nent to continent in the choosing. When Winthrop and his friends had fairly surveyed the scene of their new empire, there must, even to the most philo- sophical, have been a disappointment. The pastures around Salem are now much what they were then. An ungracious granite protrudes from the scanty soil, in knolls, without even much picturesqueness, and promises no crops beyond that of lichens. Winthrop notes in his journal that they were regaled with strawberries on landing ; and they were born into their new life with all the glories of June. But they were not satisfied with Naumkeag or Salem for the capital seat of their settlement, and pushed up the Bay to see the mouth of Charles River and of Mystic River. At Charlestown there was a settle- ment of nine persons, who had joined Walford the smith, who once held that peninsula alone ; and here they brought the ships as they arrived in suc- cessive weeks, and to this place they transferred the stores which had been discharged at Salem. THE FIRST WINTER. 61 The number of emigrants who arrived in seven- teen vessels this summer was not quite one thou- sand.* Of these nearly one hundred returned in the ships. They lost time in the first summer by a doubt as to the place of the capital. The first intention was to place it three leagues up Charles River, or, as Fuller pays, at the " head of the river." By any reasonable measurement this would bring it to the mouth of Stony Brook in Waltharn. And since Mr. Horsford found there what may be thought a ditch for a palisade, Mr. Winsor has suggested that possibly this spot was, at one moment, selected for the cap- ital. But it is hard to say why Northmen, Biscayans, or anybod}^ else with average common sense, should have placed the capital of a commercial State on a shallow river, where two falls of water obstruct the passage from sea to city. Whatever was intended in this three-league plan, nothing came of it but delay. The Dorchester party settled at the mouth of Neponset, and called their home Dorchester. They could pasture their cattle there. The penin- sula which we call South Boston, was called Dor- chester Neck. Another party under Sir Richard Saltonstall went to Watertown. With them came George Phillips, the most eloquent of their preachers, whose eloquence has been transmitted to descendants who bore his name. Here the first winter his baby was born, to whom he gave * Hntchinson says fifteen hundred ; but he was misled by a late statement in the Charlestown records. 62 THE FIRST WINTER. the name, "One who has left Babel behind," Zerubabel. With such humors was that winter- cheered. A " great house " was built at Charlestown, as a store-house for the goods belonging to the company, and this was used as a place of worship until 1636.1 But the settlers were not satisfied with the drinking- water they found at Charlestown, having, at that time, a prejudice, which perhaps exists in England still, against the use of water from running streams. William Blaxton, was living on the south side of Charles River, on what was called Blaxton's Neck, or Trimountain. The latter name came from three hillocks which broke the summit of the hill after- ward known as Beacon Hill. Blaxton told the leaders of the colony that there was no lack of spring water on his side, and at his suggestion many of the colonists removed there. All parties did their best to prepare for winter. It was, of course, too late to do much in the way of agriculture. And so late were the final determinations as to their homes, that winter found many of the poorer people in tents, or badly arranged cabins. Among the early records of the council is a mem- orandum, which must have been dictated by Win- throp's wisdom, providing for each settler a blank book, in which he should write the record of the beginning of an empire. Winthrop foresaw the eagerness with which we should look for every such memento. If these books were provided, every one of them is lost, excepting that which he filled so THE FIRST WINTER. 63 well, and the suggestion appears well founded, which was made by a distinguished lady of the last genera- tion, that it seemed as if all of them, on landing, assembled at their respective altars, and made a solemn vow that, so far as in them lay, they would leave no record behind, from which posterity should know what were the shadows, and what were the broken lights, in the picture of their daily life. It must be confessed that there never was a race which had less faculty for the preservation of what the French make so well, and what they have happily called memoirs of history, as this race of New Eng- landers. They had the historic English grit. They died and made no sign ; they bit their lips and bore their sufferings. They seem to have taken in the passive quietness of the Indians among whom they lived. Winthrop is the great exception. In all the cares of State he wrote his journal, which becomes the his- tory of New England until his death. For the rest, our authorities for the first year are the monthly record of the Government ; the letter which Dudley wrote to the Countess of Lincoln in March, after the winter was mostly over ; the random recollections of Captain Roger Clapp, written after a generation ; the recollections, much more at random and more rambling, of Edward Johnson ; the traditions which Cotton Mather put down in the Magnalia, and a few entries in the most ancient church records. After a generation, the records of Charlestown were writ- ten up with reminiscences, undoubtedly fresh, of 64 THE FIRST WINTER. the beginning. But of absolutely contemporaneous accounts, we have almost nothing. In the preceding chapters the reader has seen how the Pilgrims, landing one hundred and one in num- ber, were reduced to half that number at the end of a year. Of these gallant emigrants, it is recorded that not one went back in the Mayflower ; the loss to the colony was of those whose bodies were laid under the ground. Of those who arrived with Win- throp, nearly but not quite one thousand in number, one hundred returned at once, dissatisfied with the country, and annoyed, probably, at the over-state- ment which they considered had been made to them. Of the eight or nine hundred who remained, more than two hundred were dead when Dudley wrote in March ; so terrible then was the business of acclima- tion. Or perhnps it is better to say that voyages were then so long and vessels fitted out so badly, that the scurvy of the voyage undermined the con- stitutions of those who came, so that they were not able to bear the change of food. There is one and another allusion to the fact that these people, bred to the use of English wheat, rye and barley, disliked the bread made of Indian corn. They probably had not yet learned the art, which is not an easy art to this day, of properly subduing that grain by the processes of cookery. A little fragment from one of the early ballads throws some little light on the cookery of those times; but, as the lady before alluded to has said so well, the contemporary writers of dinries were most careful THE FIRST WINTER. 65 to decline to give details on such subjects of personal interest. * After the abandonment of the scheme for a city three leagues inland,! all the leaders repaired to Cambridge, and determined to lay out the capital of the colony there. It is impossible to this day to make trees grow to any advantage on the Cam- bridge Common, and the tradition of the University till a late time, has been that here was the only spot where the settlers did not have to cut down the trees at the beginning. This tradition may or may not have been made by the satire of later times. It is certain that Winthrop, Dudley, and the rest of the leaders, agreed to build their houses there, and that the whole colony was assessed for a canal, of which some parts perhaps still exist, by which the neces- sary stores were to be carried across the marsh from the river up to the present foundation of Cambridge. There now exists, on the Brighton road, so called, one of the houses built at that time. The terror of the Indians remained, and a palisade was begun, probably quite similar to the stockades which are now built around our forts in the Western region. The line of this stockade is well known, and some of the willow-trees which were wrought into it, still exist in the rear of the museum of natural history at Cambridge, while at the western end some traces * In 1849, 1 said to Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was visiting me at my home in Worcester, that the Irish emigrants did not like Indian meal. " You should have sent them hot cakes," he said, with all his native wisdom. E. E. II. t If, indeed, there were any such scheme, and if " three leagues" was not an acci- dental slip of the pen by Dudley instead of " three miles." 66 THE FIRST WINTER. of it may be found near the river. It took in more than a hundred acres, and here it was supposed that the capital would be built. But after these prepara- tions had been made, Winthrop was satisfied that the design could not be carried out, and he removed the frame already made for his own building to the other side of the river, and built his house on what is now Washington Street in Boston. The place is well known ; it is opposite the foot of School Street, just north of the Old South Meeting-House. The house which he built remained there until 1775, when, by one of those curious bits of symbolism of which history is full, the English soldiers pulled it down and burned it for fuel. So precise is the arrangement of the materials of history. With Winthrop's abandonment of Cambridge, Cambridge virtually ceased to be the capital. The capital followed the governor. Dudley was dissatis- fied, and the matter became one which required a somewhat formal reconciliation. But Winthrop showed that he had not acted lightly and had not used bad faith in the matter. It is worth noticing ( that, though the name Boston had been given to the peninsula, out of deference to Johnson and other settlers of importance who came from the Boston in England, the town was so slow in its growth and seemed to so much lack all elements of success that, for a year or two, it was called " Lost Town " in ridicule by the more prosperous settlements around it. With such delays in some points, but with vigo- rous work undoubtedly, the summer passed. All THE FIRST WINTER. 67 fear of Indians died away, as the wretched red-skins showed themselves more as paupers than as warriors ; the time and means which were spent at first on for- tifications were devoted to the building of houses, and some sort of shelter was arranged for the more prosperous part of the population before the winter came in. It was a mild winter until the day before Christmas, when New England showed what it could do. A heavy snowstorm and severe cold disturbed the fancies of those who thought they were going to spend such a winter as they had known in Eng- land, and from this time till the middle of March their experiences were hard. When the leaders arrived in June of 1630 and found the destitution of the previous winter, they knew that they had not stores enough from England to carry them through another such experience, with the increased number of settlers. They therefore dispatched the Lion with instructions to bring back provisions immediately; and the return of the Lion became a critical matter for the colony. Not that it was possible for a thousand people to starve in a country where fish were to be had for the catching. But for every sort of discomfort, short of starvation, the leaders had to prepare themselves and those who looked to them, until the Lion should return. The period of history when the State of Massachu- setts was most in peril comes, therefore, into the early winter of 1630-31. But on the fifth of Feb- ruary the Lion appeared at Nantasket with the stores which had been provided by the forethought 68 THE FIRST WINTER. of Winthrop when she was sent home. We have the detail of the provisions in her cargo, and from these can form some idea of the daily fare of the new settlers. She brought : wheat meal, two hun- dred and seventy-two bushels, about half as much of peas, one hundred and twenty-eight bushels of oatmeal, four hogsheads of beef and pork, and be- sides these cheese, butter, and suet. She brought three hundred trees, which were probably fruit trees. The cost of the provisions on board was a little more than two hundred pounds. It is to be noted that Winthrop paid in Bristol in England eight shillings and sixpence a bushel for the wheat meal, and that Dudley, writing at the very end of what was almost a famine in Boston, speaks of paying fourteen shil- lings a bushel for wheat, and eleven shillings for peas, and says that was the most costly bread which he had ever eaten. Meanwhile, in the months which passed after the government was fairly installed in Massachusetts, the revolution was effected by which the board of directors of a trading company became the govern- ment of an independent State. Of these directors there were eight who had been chosen in England under the charter. They were just the men who would have met at a " directors' meeting " at home. They met as the "Court of Assistants," some- times at Charlestown, sometimes at Boston, and once at Watertown, being called, apparently, as conven- ience required. They held nine regular meetings be- tween the twenty-third of August and the twenty- THE FIRST WINTER. 69 fifth of March. These meetings were in part directed to the management of the company, but they were directed as well to judicial examinations and to legis- lation for the infant State. By a very natural habit, they did not hesitate to name the price which sawyers should be paid for their work, nor to make regulations with regard to trade with the Indians. As readily did they make regulations with regard to trade with each other. They seem to have asked no questions whether they had or had not the right to do this ; the things must be done, somebody must do them, and they did them. The only difficult constitutional matter which they had to settle was settled as simply. What with the death of one and another member of their body and the return to Europe of others, although they had added some by election, they were likely to have great difficulty in making a quorum. A quorum under their charter was seven members of the board ; they coolly passed an ordinance that, when there were but nine members in the colony, a majority should make a quorum. There is, however, but one meeting recorded at which they did not have the quorum prescribed for them. We have an opportunity to see how much it cost to live, and what was considered a reasonable income, because this court assigned the stipends for the two ministers and the physician whom the colony en- gaged. The settlers at Mattapan and those at Salem were expected to provide for their own min- ister, but Wilson and Phillips were engaged by the 70 THE FIRST WINTER. colony as a whole, and the colony as a whole had to provide for them. Wilson had no family with him ; Phillips, as has been said, had a wife and child. For their support, he was allowed twenty-four bush- els of meal, eight of malt, four of Indian corn, and one of oatmeal. He was also to have half a hundred of salt codfish. For apparel and other provisions he was allowed twenty pounds. If he preferred, he might have forty pounds given him in money. Mr. Wilson was to have half this sum till his wife should come over. Mr. Gager, the physician, had a similar allowance, but he was to have a house built for him and a cow given him. He died, however, so soon that one of their chief sufferings was the lack of any medical attendance. Fuller came over from Ply- mouth when he could, but his home was in that colony and he had the Plymouth people to attend to. He also says that he was without medicines at Charlestown, but this may have been before the arrival of the ship in which they had been sent. Penn, who was appointed beadle by which was meant an officer whom we should call marshal, sheriff, and janitor together was allowed twenty nobles a year for his salary, and in the spring a day's work of a man from every able family to help build his house. He was to attend upon the governor, and be always ready to execute his commands in the public business. The new court, at its second meeting, sent for Morton of Mount Wollaston, whose revels have thrown a little air of gayety over the early history, and THE FIRST WINTER. 71 put him in the bilboes. They afterwards sent him to England, where he revenged himself by his satires upon them. The court ordered that he should give satisfaction to the Indians for a canoe he had taken away from them unjustly, and that his house, after his goods were taken out, should be burned down in sight of the Indians, for their satisfaction for many wrongs he had done them from time to time. They had to deal with difficulties regarding the sale of " strong water," as their successors have had to do from that time to this. There must have been a short period when there were hardly any members of the company in the country, besides these directors, as I have called them, or assistants. But they had no intention of governing the country by such an oligarchy, and at the General Court held on the nineteenth of October, the people were present, and " voted by the erection of hands." At the same time more than a hundred persons offered themselves to be admitted as free- men, or to become members of the company, and were at once received. From time to time after- ward, the number enlarged itself in this way. They very soon made the rule, which gave great offense to the Crown afterward, that no person should be received as a freeman who was not a member of one of their established churches. As at that time, however, none of these churches had what we call creeds, as they consisted of all persons who were willing to covenant to " walk together," the restric- tion was not as severe as it would have been in 72 THE FIRST WINTER. after days, when men were obliged to express their opinions in detail on delicate and controverted sub- jects of theology. The houses which they built were of very much the fashion to which they were accustomed. Several houses are still standing, as old as 1634. There is a brick house in Medford, which was built in hope that Cradock, who had been what we should call the president of the company in England, would himself come over. It has an old-fashioned look now, but does not materially differ in aspect from any house which might have been built within the next century. Sometimes a wooden house was built with the second story projecting a little over the first, and the tradition in New England says that this projection was so made that the inmates might fire down upon the heads of Indians who were attempting to break in the doors. But this tradition is wholly mythical. Houses of exactly the same construction, belonging to the same time, may be seen in England to-day. There could have been but little agricultural work, as has been suggested, after they were fairly estab- lished, till the end of the year ; and we are willing to suppose that the four or five hundred able-bodied men in the colony were engaged mostly in this busi- ness of house-building. They had the weekly enter- tainment of religious service on Sunday. After the suffering by death became severe and when famine was pressing upon them, Wilson undertook to show that this was in the providence of God, who was THE FIE 1ST WIN TEH. 73 angry with them for something they had done wrong. But even Dudley, who was a stanch old Puritan, seems to have resented this, and he says rather curtly, in writing home to the Countess of Lincoln, that he leaves such matters to the physi- cians and the divines. They elected their clergy in every instance, and the clergy were eager to show that they took this office because they were elected. They did not say that they left the Church of Eng- land, and they never admitted that they did. They did say that, having come to New England, they could and would establish the government of their own churches as they chose. It was this they had come for, and from the very first moment they asserted and maintained the privilege. There are three or four separate statements as to the extremity of the famine which was working in upon them before the arrival of the Lion. Mather says, writing after two generations, that Mrs. Win- throp was putting in the oven the last loaves of bread when it was announced that the Lion was below. The Charlestown records say that a fast day had been proclaimed. It is this fast which was changed into a thanksgiving on the twenty-second of February, in gratitude for the ship's arrival. Richard Clapp, with the advantage of forty years for the decoration of the story, says it was not accounted a strange thing in those days to drink water and to eat samp or hominy without butter and milk. " Indeed, it would have been a strange thing to see a piece of roast beef or mutton or veal, though it 74 THE FIRST WINTER. was not long before there was roast goat." Edward Johnson was an eye-witness, but did not write till afterwards. He says " the women, once a day, as the tide gave way, resorted to 'the mussel and clam banks (which are fish as big as small mussels) where they daily gathered their families' food. Quoth one, ' My husband hath travelled as far as Plymouth, (which is near forty miles) and hath with great toil brought a little corn home with him, and before that is spent the Lord will assuredly provide.' Quoth another, ' Our last peck of meal is now in the oven at home, baking, and many of our godly neigh- bors have already spent all ; and we owe one loaf of that little we have.' Then spake another, ' My husband hath ventured himself among the Indians for corn, and can get none. Also our honored gov- ernor hath distributed his plentifully. A day or two more will put an end to his store, and all the rest. And yet methinks our children are as cheerful, fat and lusty with feeding upon these mussels, clams, and other fish, as they were in England with their fill of bread ; which makes me cheerful in the Lord's pro- viding for us, being further confirmed by the exhor- tation of our pastor to trust the Lord with providing for us, whose is the earth and the fullness thereof.' And as they were encouraging one another they lifted up their eyes and saw two ships coming in, and presently this news came to their ears, that they were come from Ireland full of victuals." This is a good illustration of the growth of a tradition. For there was but one ship. CHAPTER VI. BOSTOX COMMON 7 " AND FOKT HILL. I DO not think that most children in Boston know their Common as well, or care for it as much, as I did when I was a boy. Nobody then made any objection to our playing upon the grass or sitting upon it ; and for one, I was there so much, between the time when I was five years old and the time when I was twenty-five, that I doubt if there is a square yard of its surface on which I have not at some time stepped or sat or lain down. The Common of to-day is a collection of walks, shaded by trees, with grass-plots between. Everybody is requested to keep off these grass-plots ; and most people do. The Common of my boyhood was a large pasture, with rows of elms on the malls around it, with the " great elm " standing where its successor stands, and one fine, large willow-tree near the " Frog Pond." Other trees there were none. It was, there- fore, a good place for cows, a good place for military training, and a particularly good place for boys. There were no restrictions on them in the Common ; and as there was but one policeman in the town of Boston, the restrictions would not have been enforced, had there been any. As soon as the frost was enough 76 BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. out of the ground in the spring, we played marbles in the malls ; soon after we ranged with bows and arrows over the whole space ; we played base-ball and foot-ball where we chose and when we chose. Under the pretense of carrying imaginary mails, we drove our hoops from station to station, where we had fixed! post-offices, from each of which, from day to day, the tiny newspapers went forward, till, at the end of a fortnight perhaps, they had made the circuit of the four malls and had returned, like a metaphysical proposition, to the place they started from. Above all, the Common was fitted for the flying of kites ; and I observe with regret that, since the Common was planted with trees, the science of kite-flying, which is a science, is lost to the boys of Boston, and largely to those of New England. Two hundred and sixty-one years ago, the Common was a rougher pasture and less attractive to the cows, had there been any, than the open field which I have described. Ann Pollard, a jolly, active girl of ten years old, ranged over it in a frolic in the summer of 1630, picked and ate blueberries from the bushes which were growing there, and, very likely, sat and rested herself under the shade of the great tree, which was already called the " old elm " ; or, perhaps, on the Wishing Stone, which then had not received its name. The Wishing Stone was a great rock, a little below the Walnut Street gate, which was, alas ! blasted and carried away, as if it had been a vulgar stone, to make the curbstone which is now around BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 77 the Frog Pond. That rock and many others were scattered over the Common, where you would now find it hard to pick up a pebble to throw into the pond. There were frogs in the pond, and most likely musk-rats as well. And I dare say the young- sters of that day were rewarded if they lay in wait on the hill sometimes for a tired duck or wild goose or wandering plover. It is on this ragged, jagged, open hillside that this little story begins, a little after noon on a February day. Two or three large boys are watching a fire just above the Frog Pond ; and another, on the hill above, is making signals to some people on the ice in the Back Bay below. " Take my hatchet, Cephas, and run yonder quickly, and bring us two or three more of those cedars. They shall not say we left them to cut the wood, when they have gone so far for the clams." Cephas went off willingly enough, but came back, in a moment, bringing with him Adoniram, who, to the evident joy of the others, carried a little leather satchel. "And what hast thou brought?" cried Tom Cradock, the leader of the gang. " What hast thou brought ? We have three flounders ready to bake when the stones are hot enough, and Roger and Hiram are coming up yonder, with two redskins, who know a good place for clams. Micah, here, hns filled both pipkins from a'hole in the ice. My father has given me salt " [and he showed it in two large clam shells]. " Fitz John brought up two lobsters, 78 BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. and we have them in the pot. But I tell thee I tire of sea-food ; and I said to Cephas that I hoped thy mother had one biscuit left." The boy laughed good-naturedly enough, but said, in an affected tone of lamentation : " Not a biscuit to-day between the Ferry and the Frog Pond here. My mother has not seen one for a week. Why, I know that Mrs. Winthrop put her last bread in the oven yesterday. Nathan Miller told me that, and he made the oven fire. Nay," he said, more seriously, " Goodman Griffith said to my father last night, that, next week of Thursday, there was to be a day of Fasting and Prayer in all the settlements, to turn away wrath. That day thee will eat not even lobsters nor clams." " If only another wild goose would pass over ! " said the bigger boy, looking for the fiftieth time upward and around, so as to scan the whole of the pitiless clear blue arch which was over them. He was wholly ignorant that the stray bird he had shot there three months before, was a late, exceptional straggler, and that he might as well expect a visible angel from the seventh heaven as such another strag- gler now. " But what has thee got, if thee has no biscuits ? " " See here," said the smaller boy eagerly, " the red- skin, Charles King, told me how to find them ; and he will be here in a few minutes with more. I gave him my old leather cap, last night, and we started before day-break, and went oh ! ever so far, an hour's tramp the other side of the ruin or more, to BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 79 the place where he had hidden them oh ! long ago. It was in under a rock, and there were a great lot of them, more than we could bring. And he had crowded in leaves and sticks, for fear that they should freeze." And the eager boy produced a handful of dirty little roots, of the shape of long nuts, which were the treasures which had been so carefully husbanded. " Charles King said that he found the place one day when they were fishing, and he knew they would want them sometime, and so he hid them there." Tom Cradock looked incredulously at the little roots, and tried one between hi* teeth, which failed to close upon it. He made a wry face as he took it away. " But they are to be baked ! They are to be baked ! " said the other, " and we shall have enough. I think we will put in some with the lobsters." And his eye rested with satisfaction on the iron pot which John Freeman was hanging over the fire. Charles King, the Indian boy, now slowly ap- proached, with a heavy basket slung on his back. He readily assented to trying the new experiment of boiling ; and, while the boys were engaged in a rough way in washing the roots, the other party from the bay joined them, loaded down, as they had expected, with baskets of clams. They needed very little time to rake the embers off from a stone floor which had been used for this purpose by generation upon generation of the Indian boys, and their fathers long before them, and little more time to pile up the 80 BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. clams, the ground nuts, and the fish, and to cover them with sea-weed. Silas Moody was then left to watch the smaller fire, over which three sticks sup- ported the iron kettle, and the other boys, as by agreement, went down from the hill upon the lower ground, for play. Redskins and white skins, with one or two allies who had come up from the village, there were fourteen in all. The white boys had begged a half-holiday, or had taken it without begging. The Indian boys knew nothing of work days or of holidays ; it was all one to them. As their great countryman said, a century after, " They had fill the time there was." If they said they would go to work, they meant only they would go, if they chose, when the time came ; if they said they would go to play, it was with the same implied condition. On this occasion the day was fine, the temptation to beat the English boys in playing ball was an inducement, and in the strag- gling manner which has been described, they had arrived at the place of rendezvous. A part of the vague promise was that they were to teach the English boys their national game, which we call La Crosse ; and they had come with nice bats, newly made of deer's sinews, for the occasion. The level surface of the frozen Frog Pond was the best place they could find for the beginning of the encounter. They divided themselves into two parties, each party took four or five English allies, and so the game began. Indian boys and English boys spoke to each other only with the greatest difficulty. Such in- BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 81 structions as were given, were given much more by gestures than by words. But both parties were good-natured. It was many weeks since the English boys had enjoyed a holiday so definitely appointed; and the biggest of them, quick of eye and of foot, began to catch the trick of the game, while all of them entered into its spirit. I need not say that no boy took much note of time. There was then no Park Street clock to tell any one that dinner was waiting, if his appetite failed to serve him as a reminder. But there was reason enough why all parties should be hungry; and, before many goals had been lost and won, a cry from the two boys who were taking their turns of duty at the fire, called the whole party in. Dinner was to be served under the lee of a great bowlder, which was blasted away long ago to make the foundation of some house or barn. A great pile of brushwood, running out at right angles from the stone, extended the cover from the wind, a deep bed of hemlock and cedar branches made a comfortable enough floor to lie upon, and the low February sun lay warmly on the company. One or two dirty bear-skins had been brought by the Indian boys, and three or four blankets of English weaving, not much cleaner, added to the luxury of the occasion. The plates were slate stones and clam-shells. Two or three Sheffield whittles were made common property for knives, and fingers served for forks. None of the company was fastid- ious; all were hungry and all were good-natured; 82 BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. the provision was ample ; and in their deep carous- ings from flagons more than once refilled with the Frog Pond water, which they drew through the ice and in their simple jest called " Adam's Ale," there was never a headache nor a quarrel. The meal, which had no name, was soon dispatched ; the rem- nants were left for birds or for woodchucks, and the whole company rose, like Greek heroes, refreshed, with a readiness which would have frightened a doctor of our day, to resume their violent exercise, as if Nature needed neither strength nor time for digestion. As the little boys were picking the La Crosse bats from the pile where they had been stacked, Tom Cradock, who was the evident leader of the party, said gayly : " No ! let them lie ! I have another sport for the evening. See what I have hidden here." To the joy of the others he produced, from a secret place in the brush-heap, a limp bladder and the well-known cover of a foot-ball made from the best Cordovan leather. In an instant more he had blown the bladder to a full sphere, and Cephas, with a bit of string from the never-failing pocket of his jerkin, tied fast the opening. " You've shown us one of your games, we will show you one of ours," he said to one of the Indian boys, who looked on with quiet admiration. " Micah, you shall be captain on that side. I will be captain of ours. Don't thee take all the best lads. Take J30STON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 83 thy fair half. Only remember," he said, laughing, " that I am a match for any three of you." " That will do very well," said the other, good- naturedly. " As I count three on our side, that will give us each an even ten. When we come on pur- pose, we will bring more lads. But we will not mind now, seeing we have the best of the town." And so saying, he drew off his half of the party, giving them the best instructions he could by gest- ures and loud words ; and then, with a final confer- ence with Tom Cradock, determined roughly what should be goals and bounds. The fortunes of the games, played with not un- natural blunders on both sides, might have taken as long for description as I have known the story of some Indian ball games namely, several hours of long and rapid narration. But so soon as the hill party warmed to their work, in one bold rush they drove the ball southward into a little clump of savin- trees, all crowded by a close growth of blackberry vines and other briers ; and, to the amazement of all parties, defenders and pursuers, a red fox, who was in cover there, broke away, and fled in the direction toward which the flying ball had pointed. The crew of boys forgot the ball on the instant, at the sight of nobler game. There was no hope that they could draw dog or man to help in the pursuit from the distant hamlet. It was quite sure that the fox would outrun the swiftest of them in three minutes ; but they all joined none the less gallantly in pursuit. It was easy enough to track 84 BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. him across the long, low treeless flat, where is now Tremont Street and the Boston and Globe Theaters. Indeed, it seemed to those foremost in the chase, that a block of ice, hurled by one of the Indian boys, must have disabled him in some degree ; for they fancied that he flagged in his running. He crossed the country trail far in advance of them. But they were quite sure that he only ran to cover by the little pond which they knew well near where the street cars now turn into Harrison Avenue and, in a straggling line, panting for breath, the leaders followed him thither. The smaller boys, to their regret for the rest of their lives, returned to their fire on the Common. But no stoning, nor shouting, nor poking with sticks, would drive the fox from the close covert he had chosen. If he were there, he meant to stay there. The boys were retiring, crest-fallen with their failure, when a happy thought struck their cheery leader. " It was the ball that started him. Try the ball again, Micah ! Let fly right in among the willows ! " And Micah camped the foot-ball, as he would have said, high in the air, so that it fell, as if from heaven itself, among the trees. The poor, lame, frightened beast, who knew enough to keep still when noisy men, or noisier boys, threat- ened him, was not proof, it seemed, to supernatural terror. He left cover again ; and, though he left on the side away from his pursuers, they soon saw BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 85 him upon the white snow, over which, with evident pain, he was running to the edge of the water. The boys knew no mercy. They had gained their breath, and started again in the well-nigh hopeless pursuit. Hopeless, because he was far ahead of them, they had only their eyes to track him with, and they were quite as tired as he was. But no boy flagged. Streets were none, nor even lanes or byways then. But, if they had left their track upon the snow, and men had afterward made streets to preserve it, you would say that they ran down Essex Street a little way, crossed to Bedford Street, could see the tired beast turning inland from the water, and making toward the rising ground of Fort Hill, and that there they lost him behind Goodman Rogers's woodpile. At the woodpile they all gathered, the tallest first, and the laggards later; but no fox was there. On some snow which had not been trodden could be seen his footprints, plain enough to show that they had tracked him rightly so far. But ho re he had disappeared. " Stay here and watch, Micah. Stay here, all of you ! " cried the impetuous Cradock. "And I will take this savage with me to the top of the hill ; and perhaps we can see him. Ye can all hear me shout from there." As if well-nigh the whole town could not hear Tom Cradock's shout if he chose. He called the Indian a savage, without the slight- est thought of offense which, indeed, as the other could not understand five words he spoke, it would be hard to give in language. Savage was simply 86 BQSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL, his name. On the instant, the breathless fellows dashed up the hill. The Indian knew very well why they went. But not a sign of their victim ! Snow, ice, brown grass, or tall reeds in the marshes places enough where a fox might hide but no sign of a poor lame fox crawling from one of these coverts to another. The Indian gave up the quest after one minute's careful, silent scrutiny, with one or two Uyhs in the bottom of his throat, and the one word, "bad-bad" the first word that he had learned in his intercourse with the strangers. The day was still cloudless. The sun was just going down. The savage turned from the scrutiny of the shore to look seaward. It seemed as if he would not and could not let anything escape him, now he was somewhere where so much could be seen. He turned slowly, scanning island after island in the bay. They stood brown against the white ice and snow ; but the tide had so broken the harbor ice that it had generally drifted to sea, and a long channel, deep blue, marked the way of the tide and river water from their feet to the far horizon. The Indian boy was wholly grave and impassive as he turned from point to point; but when he turned full east, he fairly leaped and screamed. " What is it, Charles ? " cried the other, who was now the graver of the two. The redskin, who had in derision been nicknamed with the name of King and Charles, only answered, by holding the other, and pointing, with a short BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 87 reed which he had in his hand, to the blue horizon. Cradock saw nothing. "Chusett; big Chusett," said the Indian, compel- ling the other to see the hill where is now the Blind Asylum. Tom Cradock knew that " Chusett " meant " hill," and made token that he saw it, as he could not help doing. " Chusett ; little Chusett," said the other, leading his eye northward from the near hills, on the horizon, where Point Alderton stretches up, ten miles away. And Tom Cradock saw the little hill. Then the reed, with which Charles King pointed, moved slowly northward, and stopped. " Boat ! big boat ! " he said, in triumph. Tom could not make it ; did not make it ; but the other simply said : " Boat ! big boat ! " Then he lay on the ground ; he adjusted his reed carefully on piles of stones. He bade Tom stoop also. At that moment, Micah Dugan came up, wondering. He was keener-sighted than Tom was ; he knelt, and ranged over the reed, arid cried : " A sail ! a sail ! He is right." And this time Tom Cradock saw the welcome sail. It was many months since such a sight had been seen in the bay. A whoop and cry brought up the other lads from the woodpile. All must share the wonder and the joy. Then came the eager wish to tell the news. Yet there was an anxious feeling that, if a watch were not kept upon the hill, the prize might vanish. 88 BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. Tom Cradock bade the others wait for a moment, till he could summon the Governor, whose home lay below them, not far away. In five minutes he was in the kind magistrate's presence, and with due decorum told his story. In five minutes more, the great man, not cumbered by his guard, as he would have been on an occasion of ceremony, was on the hill. He had no "perspective glass." Such things were not known. But ten minutes had brought the ship a mile nearer the town. Every sail was in sight 011 every mast, and the anxious Governor of an infant State knew that his fears might end ; that succor was at hand. " Let us pray ! " he said. And as the rough boys stood reverently and silently around him, with their eyes cast upon the ground, the Governor poured out his heart in grati- tude to God. Then, and not till then, did the boys rush to their homes, with the glad news that relief had come. Neither boy nor man knew what the ship was, nor who was her captain. But, clearly, she was heavily- freighted. She was no belated fisherman nor dis- patch boat from the Old Colony. The Governor hoped it might be his old friend, Pearce, in the Lyon, for whose return he had once and again plead earnestly with Almighty God. And good Captain Pearce, in the Lyon, it proved to be. Long after nightfall, eager watch- men on the shore heard the plash of oars, and Cap- tain Pearce himself hailed them as he drew near BOSTON COMMON AND FORT HILL. 89 their landing place. With him in the boat were Roger Williams, John Perkins and Robert Hale. In his cargo were thirty-four hogsheads of \vheat- flour, four hogsheads of oatmeal, four of beef and pork, fifteen of peas, with cheese, and butter, and suet. Just what the discouraged people needed to make a feast from the savage stores on which they had been feeding. And Winthrop, who with his own grim humor had taught people to thank God for the treasures hid in the sand, before they dined on clam chowder, now called his council together, and they issued the first " Proclamation for Thanksgiving." They had ordered a day of Fasting and Humilia- tion. They changed it to a day of Thanksgiving and Praise. And then and thus, for the Colony of the Bay, did Thanksgiving Day begin. CHAPTER VII. A STUDY OF AXNE HUTCHINSON. IT is clear enough that, in 1631, after the hard- ships of the first winter in Massachusetts, a cer- tain depression of feeling existed among the friends of the colony in England, as it certainly existed in the colony itself. The emigration of that year is very small. But in the next year the English Puri- tans began to look again with favor on New Eng- land, and year by year the arrivals were larger and larger. In 1634 some gentlemen of rank began to correspond with Winthrop. They were on the lib- eral line in religion, but they wanted to preserve the privileges of English noblemen, and the correspond- ence is curious, as they ask how largely such privi- leges would be respected, and as the assistants, who have already learned a little of the disposition of a democracy, courteously reply. Of this movement, the principal visible result which has been left in history was the settlement made in the Connecticut River, of which the younger Winthrop became the chief. Lord Say-and-Seal, Lord Brooke, and other gentlemen, finally made their establishment there. But most of the settlers who were to go there arrived first in Massachusetts Bay, and the large 90 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTC1IIN80N. 91 emigration of 1634 and 1635 must be considered as having been affected considerably by the interest of those who eventually established the colony of Con- necticut. Among others who came over on this new tide of enthusiasm was Henry Vane, the same who was afterwards executed, the same who has received his highest honor from Milton's pen : Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, Than whom a better senator ne'er held The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled, The fierce Epirot and the African bold ; Whether to settle peace, or to unfold The drift of hollow states hard to be spell'd, Then to advise how war may, best upheld, Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, In all her equipage ; besides to know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, What severs each, them hast learned, which few have done : The bounds of either sword to thee we owe ; Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son. Yane was only twenty-four years of age. His father's name was known and honored among the Puritans ; his arrival itself showed that the colony was not to be forgotten by distinguished people " at home," and his personal bearing soon won enthusi- astic support. This showed itself in his election as governor at the first annual meeting after his arrival ; an election which, naturally enough, did not meet with much favor from Winthrop, whom he displaced, and perhaps not from most of the other magistrates, who had pulled through the hard work of the beginning. 92 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. To this hour nothing is so disagreeable to an American as to receive advice from a person who has just arrived from England. Nothing is so cer- tain, on the other hand, as that the persons who have just arrived from England are most eager to offer advice to the persons whom they find speaking their own language in America. Mr. Lowell has de- scribed this passion of theirs with admirable humor in his paper "On a Certain Air of Condescension observable in all Foreigners." When this condescen- sion is exhibited by a Bohemian or other stranger from the continent of Europe, it is generally uttered in very broken English, and there is something in the humor of the matter which helps the American who hears to bear it tolerantly. But when it is addressed to him in his own language, he is more apt to be irritated. He does not take it kindly, and the resentment which he expresses in return is apt to be much more than the occasion demands ; cer- tainly more than is deserved by the kind feeling with which such advice is generally offered, and the blunt unconsciousness that any offense is given. The terrible quarrel which broke the little State asunder after the arrival of the emigration of 1634, is, perhaps, inexplicable. But it is probable that there was in it, as one element of importance, the indignation which those felt who were already " old settlers " when they found themselves criticised by the new arrivals. An unfortunate phrase of Anne Hutchinson's is cited, in which she expressed a cer- tain dismay as she saw the houses which surrounded A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. 93 her. We may be quite sure that Englishmen of good condition, landing together, could not help telling those who came before what they should have done. If they did not, they were quite unlike any English- men who have come since their time. There had been a reaction of feeling caused by the mortality of the first year, and the discovery that the salt marshes and rocky hills and diluvial gravels of New England did not make Paradise. But after this passed and the energy of "Winthrop, Dudley, and the rest of the " six hundred " had made a foothold in the Bay, this new wave of interest swept in moving, as has been seen, some people of distin- guished rank. Now the six hundred who had begun the work needed allies and needed capital, but even then the answer which Winthrop drafted to the gentlemen who wanted to come over, and asked whether their dignity would be respected, was cautious and not over-encouraging. To us, who know that the feudal system generally goes to pieces in about half an hour after any experi- menter lands with it as a part of his luggage, the correspondence is amusing. It is in the westward movement of this second wave, which brought Vane in 1635, that there came John Cqtton, who had long been solicited to come,. Anne Hutchinson and her husband, John Wheel- wright, her brother, Lothrop, Symmes, and several other preachers. The arrival of a new element of such social distinction moulded the history of the 1)4 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. little State for years. Vane did not arrive till two years after Cotton and a year after Mrs. Hutchinson, but his sympathies were with them, and his influence, for the time that he lived in Boston, was thrown on their side of the controversy which followed. The reader must bear in mind all along that this contro- versy, though it is veiled under theological names which we scarcely understand, and carried on with an unintelligible fanaticism on both sides, was at the same time a contest between Boston and the other towns, and that there should probably be traced in it a distinct element of the jealousy with which eight or ten country towns regarded the place which was already assuming the airs of a capital city. Cotton was regarded by every one as the most distin- guished of the preachers, and he had almost, of course, been called to be the teacher of the church in Boston. Until his arrival that church had satisfied itself with the ministrations of a pastor, John Wilson. The name " Boston " had been given to the peninsula with some reference to the hope that Cotton would arrive ; but, before his arrival, so doubtful were its prospects, that the wits of the colony already named it " Lost-town." With Cotton's arrival in 1633 all this was changed ; every one thronged from the neighborhood to his Thursday lecture ; his known eloquence and position gave him a decided lead in the councils of the infant State, and the necessity, which was almost a geographical necessity, that the meetings of the General Court should be held at Boston, began to mark that settle- A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. ,95 ment as the capital. The contest between Winthrop and Dudley about building at Cambridge may be partly referred, perhaps, to the rise of an early jealousy. As soon as Mrs. Hutchinson arrived in September, 1634, the whole church of Boston, with a few excep- tions, joined themselves to her with enthusiasm. It .seems curious now to speak of a body of people "join- ing themselves " to a woman who came in no public capacity. But what happened was that Mrs. Hutchin- son opened what we should call religious conferences first for women only, and then for women and men together. The small minority consisted of Winthrop and four other persons in the church, who allied themselves loyally to Wilson, the old teacher of the church. There was no formal quarrel between Cotton and Wilson, and to Wilson's credit it ought to be said that he has left on record no trace of jeal- ousy separating him from the man who was un- doubtedly his intellectual superior. None the less is it sure that Cotton was a very eloquent preacher, and that he had been called to the church to be its teacher while the more humble details of pastoral care were entrusted to Wilson as pastor. It need not be wondered at, then, if Wilson, to say the least, was in a position to see extravagances in Cotton's public statements, and to receive, perhaps with more sympathy than was wise, complaints which any per- son made, regarding such extravagances. As Mrs. Hutchinson's meetings continued, in the fervor of her religious experience and the enthusiasm of her 96 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCH1NSON. language, admiring Cotton as she did, to such an ex- tent that she had crossed the ocean in order that she might hear him and be near him, it is certain also that she permitted herself to criticise most or all of the preachers of the Bay, and to intimate that the gospel which they proclaimed was not so satisfying as that of Cotton, and as that which she herself could interpret. Here is an evident bit of that disposition to give advice which, as has been said, the new emigrant from England invariably shows. It is a part of the law of the instrument and must be accepted as such. It is equally certain that in the colony at large Anne Hutchinson lost favor by the sweeping criticisms which she made, adverse to the religious statement which she found well received in the community. From a period very soon after her arrival in 1634, till she w r as exiled by the General Court, which held a special meeting to hear her defense, is a period of about three years. Of the discussions of that period we have more than enough, if one regard their pres- ent interest. They are preserved by her friends arid by her enemies, and yet from them all it would be impossible to-day to say precisely what were the theological differences which were involved. As to the other differences, however, it is clear enough that there were the rough "old settlers," who had been here four years or more, with their sunburned faces, their well-worn corduroys, and their hard hands, contrasting with the new comers, who brought the last sweet word of Puritan England; A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. 97 here were nine or ten or eleven country towns all jealous of Boston ; there were as many ministers who found people would go off on Thursdays to hear Cotton. Such were the sets of people, ready for a collision, in life where there was so little to talk about as that of the little, newly founded towns. Of the ten or twelve towns the population was still hardly ten thousand. In larger circles of social life the colli- sion might have been as to the disposal of a ribbon by the governor, or the right of precedence over the lady whom Sir Henry Vane handed to table. But with these people it turned on the gravest points of speculation, and beneath smoke and fire there was a heated mass of profound conviction, so intense in its fervor that it is impossible to speak slightly of any word of the controversy which followed. That con- troversy rent the little State, and Boston particularly^ to their foundations. First, whether sanctification precedes justification. Second, whether the person of the Holy Ghost dwells with a justified person, and Third, how far a devout Christian receives from God immediate revelations of his will. These may be said to be the three questions be- tween Anne Hutchinson and her accusers, as they eventually chose to state them. They exiled her from their colony at last on the civil charge that she disturbed their peace. Of the three theological questions thus proposed, not by herself, but by her accusers, it would be fair 98 A STUDY OF ANNE HUT CHIN SON. to say that none of our readers understands either of the first two, unless he has been professionally trained in the language of that time. Indeed, it is quite clear that her accusers themselves could not quite agree what they held on subjects where human language is, from its very origin, unable to make precise expression. With regard to the question whether the person of the Holy Spirit resides in the person of a believer, both parties finally determined that they had so little Scripture statement for their discussion that it was best to withdraw it. The first question, whether " sanctification " is an evidence of "justification" proved insoluble. " Mrs. Hutchinson was understood to maintain the negative ; that is, she was regarded as affirming that a state in which man is justified before God precedes and is independent of his obedi- ence to the law of holiness." That is to say, she was charged with holding that any person who proved his "justification" by referring to any means of outward sanctification, was under a " covenant of works." Now a covenant of works was what both parties detested, as they detested any violation of the ten commandments. Our own time is, fortunately, profoundly indif- ferent to such niceties of expression. The questions involved in them enter, as they must always enter, into the inquiries of young life. And every person of conscience forms, as he should form, his own theory as to the relations which he holds to God, and A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. 99 which God holds to him. But the world has come ,so fur that it knows that human language is inade- quate to complete statement of that relation. And, on the whole, the world is so eager to see and find life in its men and women, that it does not analyze very critically the verbal statements which many of them make as to the origin of high determination in their hearts. But the people around Anne Hutchin- son had not wrought out the experiments which have brought the world of the nineteenth century to this level of indifferences or toleration. It seems necessary to say thus much of the lan- guage of the controversy itself, that the reader may understand the steps of the drama sometimes amusing, always pathetic, and in the end tragic which wove itself around the life of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson in Boston. She was the daughter of a Puritan .minister named Marbury. She married William Hutchinson early in the century. They were people of good blood and family, and lived with comfort at Alford, about twenty-five miles from Boston in Lincolnshire, in England. It is supposed that the family of Mr. Hutchinson was connected with that of John Hutch- inson, the regicide.* The history of Boston would never have shown the name of this interesting lady, nor that of her husband, but for their enthusiastic interest in the preacher, Cotton, and in the gospel as he proclaimed it. The Hutchinsons and it was * But Mr. Savage says that this is not provi-d. 100 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. a large family group were among a very consid- erable number of people who were willing to go to the new country if Cotton came, and would never have come if he had not. When he finally crossed the ocean, in 1633, in the ship Griffin, one of his fellow-passengers was Edward Hutchinson, the brother of Anne Hutchinson's husband. Other Hutchinsons had preceded them, one at least of that name being in the original emigration with Winthrop. In the ship with William and Anne Hutchinson came several other children. They arrived in the Griffin on the eighteenth of Septem- ber, 1634. William Hutchinson united with the First Church in Boston the next month. There was some hesitation about the admission of Anne Hutchin- son, with which the history of the controversy properly begins; but this was readily adjusted. Mrs. Hutchinson, when she saw the meanness of Boston on her 'arrival, said frankly, that she should never have come but for her admiration for Mr. Cotton and her wish to live under his ministry ; but it does not appear that any immediate ill-feeling resulted from this expression or from the doubts which delayed her admission into the church. She made herself of use in the little town; it would seem as if their property was sufficient for them to live with comfort and maintain a cordial hospital- ity. Mrs. Hutchinson soon became a favorite among the women, and finding that there was nothing of what we should now call " mothers' meetings " or a woman's conference, she instituted in her own house A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCH1NSON. 101 such a religious gathering for her own sex. There had been similar clubs of men before, and such clubs existed for more than a century. Mrs. Hutchinson's class or club was popular ; it was conducted with spirit, and clearly enough it became one of the in- teresting reunions of Boston. Her biographers have touched on the question whether personal beauty was one of the charms which rendered her so attractive. Dr. Ellis says, with very keen observation, that, as no reference is made to this among the writers on either side, it may be inferred that she was not a beautiful woman. But against this ingenious remark, it is to be ob- served that very remarkable personal beauty has for at least a century past been evident in the immedi- ate descendants of her blood. There were two of her meetings held every week, one for women alone, and after these had become popular, one for men and women both. A large number of persons resorted to these, to the number of fifty, sixty or eighty at once. But neither of the ministers of the town or of the neighborhood were invited, or were present. The custom which thus grew up made precisely what in modern phrase is called a " salon," when we speak of Madame Recamier or of other brilliant women in Paris. And the success of Mrs. Hutchin- son's meetings was such as to bring about a revolu- tion, which, as has been said, did more injury to the town of Boston than anything which happened to it up to the time of the Stamp Act. Perhaps this 102 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. might be said of the injury inflicted on the whole colony of Massachusetts. But such, alas ! are the limitations of history that we know almost nothing of what passed at these assemblies which were fated to be so critical. One clever letter of two pages, from any bright young woman who attended them, would tell us more of what the meetings really were than we know from all the accusations of Mrs. Hutchinson's enemies or from her own brief and contemptuous defenses. This is certain, that they must have been entertain- ing. They were called " lectures " ; but precisely what subjects were chosen, or how they were ar- ranged, whether Mrs. Hutchinson "conversed alone," or whether others conversed also, does not appear. Undoubtedly she commented on Scripture. But what was more unfavorable to the public peace, was her repeating from memory the sermons she had heard and making her own commentaries upon them. Mrs. Hutchinson was undoubtedly a woman of rare genius, and her religious experience had been so real- that she spoke easily and strongly on her intimate rela- tions with God. From the report of her own trial, with which the tragedy of her own life in Boston ends, it is clear that she was quick and bright, that she readily turned an attack upon him who made it with a quick repartee. This full report is the work of a friend of hers, and so far it may be trusted. Weld, who was her enemy, says that she had a "ready wit and bold spirit," he has to admit her "profitable and sober carriage," and that by her A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCIIINSON. 103 kindly and tender ministrations to the sick she had won the regard of many of the women of Boston. Winthrop, however, who disliked her thoroughly, says, " She was more bold than a man, though in un- derstanding and judgment inferior to many women."* Whatever she meant when she began her lectures, and whatever she said which gave them their popu- larity, it is now impossible to tell. But it would happen once and again, so often indeed that she sealed her fate in doing it, that in repeating ser- mons which she had heard from various preachers in the Bay, she did not hesitate to criticise them in an unfriendly spirit. She said in brief that these preachers preached a " covenant of works." Now this phrase was as a red rag when it was flaunted in the face of an old-fashioned Puritan. His fathers had despised the Roman church for its ceremonies, and now for near a hundred years had been pro- claiming because of that ceremonial that it relied on a " covenant of works. " Anybody who knows how stiffly the government of Massachusetts then required regular church attendance, an exasperating observ- ance of " the Sabbath," and even made church mem- bership a test of fitness of citizenship, can see what a handle it gave to bright Anne Hutchinson, when she said or implied that their preachers had intro- duced a new "covenant of works" in place of the old one, But the charge was none the more pala- * Winthrop did not suspect what Coleridfre was so ready to affirm, that "the un- derstanding is the lowest of the human faculties." 104 A STUD Y OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. table because, in substance, it was true. Yet as the basis of their written theology, so far as it was ex- pressed in words, these preachers held, as their most distinguished evangelical descendants have held, that the works or ritual are nothing but an external sign of a real union with God, and that their worth, for any purpose, is of no value in comparison with the inestimable conviction that the man is at one with him. Mrs. Hutchinson had come from England, had made her husband come, and had brought with them their children, all because John Cotton had come and was to preach to the church in Boston. So she says, at least, and this must be taken as the ruling motive. Now, by way of preparation for John Cot- ton's arrival, John Wilson was relegated to the office of " pastor," equal perhaps in nominal dignity, but really engaging him more to services of ministry proper than to those of " teaching or exhortation " or the public duties of a preacher or "prophet." The name " prophet " and the duty of prophesying were familiarly spoken of among these people. Cot- ton was to continue the famous Thursday Lecture, which he had established in Boston in England. Let the reader remember that no other single grievance so goaded the Puritans into exile as did the refusal of the English authorities to permit the popular preachers to address their people on week days. It was as if the Secretary of the Interior in our day should have forbidden Mr. Beecher, or Mr. Parker, or Dr. Storrs to deliver an address to a general audi- A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. 105 ence, and should have sent them to prison when they did so. Grateful as it was to Mrs. Hutchinson to listen again to the words of her old oracle, it may be well imagined that she found the hour long when Mr. Wilson's turn came to preach. For the first year she had but little of that grievance. For the pastor, Mr. Wilson, was for part or all of that time in England. But in the same ship with Sir Henry Vane he returned, on the sixth of October, 1635. When she came, in her lectures, to comment upon him, her criticisms on his sermons were not favor- able. After a little he and she were avowed ene- mies. For this she probably cared too little, for all the Boston church, excepting five, were on her side. In particular, she had the sympathy and support of the popular young governor, Sir Henry Vane, and she thought she had the sympathy and support of her friend and master, Cotton. In fact, alas, Cotton did not stand by her ; and the tragedy includes the dramatic accessory of a disloyal friend. But it must be remembered that Mrs. Hutchinson was, perhaps, a hard person to stand by. It is probable that she spoke from impressions rather than opinions, and that these impressions varied from time to time. On her voyage from England, in the close cabin of the Griffin which like a Griffin of romance, brought such woes to Boston Mrs. Hutchinson and the preacher Symmes had unfriendly passages which he never forgot. She had received an " impression " about the length of the voyage, and she said so. This was brought up in testimony against her after- 106 A STUDY OF ANNE HUT CHIN SON. ward by Symmes, with articles of theology which be- longed to the view she made so charming of the inti- mate personal communion between God and his chil- dren. So soon as they landed, indeed, Symmes made public his suspicions of her unsoundness of faith, with such result that while her husband was readily and at once received to the communion of the First Church, she was not received till a month afterwards, that there might be time for fit inquiry. The inquiry was sat- isfactory, and she became a member of the church. But any one who knows New England of the old type knows that any such delay and inquiry would expose the subject of it to a certain observation or scrutiny for many years. Mrs. Hutchinson's bril- liant conversation and her public life quickened such scrutiny. But, as has been said, she made herself useful to the women around her. She was a kind friend, an efficient nurse, when their children were born; and her lectures gave entertainment in the long win- ter and the longer springtime of Boston. Nothing transpired for two years which required the notice of Winthrop's pen in his diary ; and Winthrop was willing to notice some details which were insignifi- cant. The arrival of Vane, a year after, brought new elements of animosity into the little State ; and it may be guessed that with these animosities the real battle began. It is quite possible, and even probable, that ex- pressions as strong as Anne Hutchinson used regard- ing her intimacy with God, might, to-day, be heard A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. 107 in any pulpit of America on any Sunday. She sought for God's help eagerly and she had found it, and she had told those who heard her that she had found it and that they must find it. It is difficult, not to say impossible, to make the reader of to-day understand how such earnest expressions, either de- scribing intimacy with God or recommending those who heard her to seek it, could become matter of political inquiry among the rulers of a State. But at that time all Protestant Europe remembered the extravagances which had shown themselves in the course of the last century, where men had declared that they had the immediate authority of God for what they did, and had declined to submit to Bible, church, or rulers. The rulers of this little State knew very well that they were most jealously watched by what was still the government of Eng- land ; and knowing how earnestly they had them- selves declared that they were seeking the present direction of a present God, they were simply afraid of being confounded with the extravagances of what were familiarly known as the Antinomians and the Familists. The moment, therefore, they had occa- sion to find fault with Anne Hutchinson, it was easy for them to persuade themselves that her enthusi- astic expressions were dangerous to the State. It is by the experiences which Europe had had of the extremes of fanaticism that we are to explain their readiness for drawing a series of purely theological expressions into the question or view of the civil tri- bunals. In the final trial of Mrs. Hutchinson, great. 108 A STUDY OF ANNE HUT CHINS ON. stress was laid upon an assertion which she made on the voyage, that she had had a divine revelation as to its length. Her friends appealed to a similar divine revelation which Thomas Hooker, a faniou.s preacher, had said he received about the political condition of England. It is clear, therefore, that they were willing to acknowledge that such a reve- lation was possible. The inevitable conflict was perhaps precipitated by the arrival of Mr. John Wheelwright in Boston. He was a brother-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson, having married the sister of her husband. He was, like Cotton, an enthusiastic preacher of the doctrine of the possible real presence of God with his children, and was disposed to refer those who heard him to immediate communion with the Holy Spirit. Mrs. Hutchinson intimates, as has been said, that from the public preaching of Wheelwright and of Cotton she had derived the light and life which quickened her own religious experience. So eminent was Wheel- wright, and so well-known his eloquence and fervor, that at first there was a disposition in the Boston Church to settle him as a preacher or teacher with Cotton, so that that church would have had three ministers. Nor does it quite appear how the tide of enthusiasm in this direction turned, for it would seem that a majority of the church were really de- sirous to take this step. But it was determined that they would not increase the number of their clergy, and arrangements were made that Mr. Wheelwright should preach to the church at Mount Wollaston, A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. 100 now called Braintree. Still he preached enough in Boston to excite the whole colony, and indeed to dis- play the flag around which the final battle of re- ligious liberty was fought and was lost. On the twentieth of January, 1637, a public fast had been proclaimed throughout all the churches, on account of their dissensions and the trouble with the Pequots. Wheelwright preached on that occa- sion to his church at Wollaston a sermon which did not help the matter. Complaints were made before the General Court that this sermon was seditious ; the court proceeded to try that question, and found Wheelwright guilty. Upon this, Vane and some others sent in a protest, which, however, the court did not accept. Finally, on the second of November, 1637, " Mr. John Wheel- wright, being formerly convicted of contempt and sedition, and now justifying himself and his former practice, being a disturbance of the civil peace, is by the court disfranchised and banished, having four- teen days to settle his affairs, and if within that time he depart not the patent, he promises to render him- self to Mr. Stoughton at his house, to be kept till he be disposed of ; and Mr. Hough undertook to satisfy- any charge that he, Mr. Stoughton, or the country, should be at." After this sentence of Wheelwright, the dominant party, or what we might call the country party, felt strong enough to deal with Mrs. Hutch inson herself. And the whole tragedy for it is one is brought to a close. Three years cover the whole history. For 110 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. she arrived in Boston on the eighteenth of Septem- ber, 1634. Three years after, the General Court pronounced her brother-in-law guilty of sedition, and exiled him and the most important of his friends. As if they were encouraged by the suc- cess of this tyranny, they then held a special court lor the trial of the woman who was now left in some sort alone, but whom they regarded as the instigator of all these troubles. The wretched injustice which resulted in both these instances taught its great lesson to the de- scendants of these men when they established the Constitution of this Commonwealth. The children separated forever their judicial tribunals from the transient prejudices of a day. The fathers, alas ! left to the same men who were directing affairs the trial and the punishment of those who crossed their path. There is no doubt that the wise men who sep- arated the judiciary from the executive and the leg- islature had before their eyes in every moment the injustice and cruelty of that General Court of 1637, which acted at once as law-maker, as judge, and as executioner. Anne Hutchinson's trial before this court was held at Cambridge. The court, which was re- solved to condemn her, would not meet in Boston for her trial, because in Boston she would be sur- rounded by her friends.* The tribunal consisted of one or two deputies * The young people who reside in the neighborhood should know that they crossed at Charlestown by a ferry and then went over Charlestown Neck by what is now called Main Street to Cambridge, so that it was then said to be seven miles from Boston. A STUDY OF ANNE HUT CHIN 8 ON. Ill from each of the twelve towns, of the magistrates for the year, and virtually of twelve or more min- isters, who, though they were not proper members of the court, sat with it, spoke when they chose, and exercised to the utmost the authority which their profession then gave them. Winthrop, who was then Governor, presided, and it is a pity to have to say that he showed as bad a spirit as the worst of them. For friends, she had Codding- ton, Nowell, Bartholomew of Salem, and her brother- in-law, John Wheelwright, who was however himself under sentence. Cotton, who should have stood by her to the last, showed the white feather, and seems to have thought only of himself. They did not venture to accuse her of sedition, which was the crime alleged against Wheelwright and his friends. They charged her simply with dis- turbing their peace ; and for the specific disturbance, they said that she had maligned their preachers, charging them with preaching only a covenant of works, and not being able ministers of the New Testament.* To give to the trial all its terrible burlesque, it should be remembered that every man in the tribu- nal had said these same things and much worse of all the prominent ecclesiastics in England. Indeed, those of them who were exiles and outlaws, as were Cotton and Peters and Shepherd, were exiled on pre- cisely this charge, that they created a disturbance by their lectures. Before such a tribunal the exam- * It must be remembered these are Scriptural expressions. 112 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. ination of the prisoner proceeded. It soon degene- rated into a controversy of brisk repartee, varied by a long episode, which was introduced by Mrs. Hutch- inson and her friends, as to whether the ministers, who were at once witnesses and accusers, should be sworn. But from the whole report, which is made by some one not unfriendly to the prisoner, one can pick out all the more important details of the story. Her extravagances on shipboard, which had so alienated Symmes, are stated thus. One day she said, " What should you say if I told you we should arrive in three weeks ? " Again she said that she had taken great comfort in Hooker's declaration that England should be destroyed, and that she would not have followed Cotton to America, had she not believed him. She denied saying that she was disgusted by the meanness of Boston. As to- her meetings, she said herself that having absented herself from certain meetings she did not like, she was severely criticised and that it was precisely be- cause she would not hold herself aloof from the rest that she had established her own lectures for women. On the other side it is conceded that for several months, six or more, these meetings continued with- out offense. We should probably, therefore, be right in saying that they did not attract the anger of the country until after the arrival of Vane and his dis- tinguished companions. And it seems probable that the condescending criticism which the new-comers all together made upon the wilderness habits of those who had had to rough-hew destiny, had a A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. US good deal to do with the ill-favor with which the old settlers received them and theirs. We have two reports of the trial, beside Win- throp's general statement. One of these is from her friends, and was taken quite at length, probably in shorthand. The other is from Weld, the minister of Roxbury, who was one of her bitterest enemies. It must be observed that it is in no sense a trial for heresy, but that she is charged with disturbing the peace of the country. No one cares now to follow the detail of her quick repartee, or of the confession either of the court or of the elders who were present. She was sentenced thus : " Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of Mr. William Hutchinson, being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in the country, she declared voluntarily her revelations, and that she should be delivered, and the court ruined with their posterity, and thereupon was banished, and in the meantime was committed to Mr. Joseph Weld (of Roxbury) until the court shall dispose of her." That winter she spent at Roxbury, with Joseph Weld, a brother of the clergyman who afterward prepared a bitter history of all this matter, very strongly prejudiced against her. In the course of the winter, the First Church of Boston, of which she was a member, had an ecclesiastical trial, which ended in her excommunication, although in the course of it she withdrew almost all the heresies which were considered as of the first importance. She and her husband, with their family, removed 114 A STUDY OF ANNE HUTCHINSON. to Aquidneck, which is now Newport, of which he was one of the purchasers. She afterward left this beautiful home and settled in Connecticut, to the west of the colony of New Haven and to the east of the Dutch, in a region where the Indians were under no restraint from either party. And there she and her children were killed in an Indian massacre. I am sorry to say that the Massachusetts writers opposed to her regarded the massacre as a divine judgment upon her. It is difficult to draw any les- son from the whole story. But it does serve as one illustration in a hundred of the tremendous serious- nesses of moral purpose which was wrought in with all the fortunes of the infant State. ANNE HUTCHINSON'S EXILE.