\ ^fe trtfJiL p&wgr £a ^*7= MAKERS OF AMERICA" JOHN WINTHROP JHtst <3abmwx at tjje iWaggarfjuwtta BY JOSEPH HOPKINS TWICHELL NEW YORK DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY 1898 <$* Copyright, 1891, By Dodd, Mead, and Co All rights reserved. SPRECKELS John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. TO The City of Hartford, Where John Winthrop's priceless Journal was first printed \ the Capital of the Commonwealth of which his oldest son was eighteen times chosen governor y Wqis Foiume is ^ffccttonatelg IBrtitcatrtr* That the "sense of difference between Right and Wrong " had filled all Time and all Space for man, and bodied itself forth into a Heaven and Hell for him; this constitutes the grand feature of those Puritan, Old-Christian Ages; this is the element which stamps them as Heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all generations. It is by far the memorablest achieve- ment of our Species; without that element, in some form or other, nothing of Heroic had ever been among us. Thomas Carlyle. PREFACE. Readers of this little book will considerately bear in mind that it aims to be a biography, and not a history. John Winthrop was indeed so generally identified with the public occurrences and events of his day in the Massachusetts Colony that there are few of them of which any sketch of his career does not require at least a mention. The proportion of notice they receive is, according to our design, and as will be seen in numerous instances, ruled not by their importance in relation to the Colony, but by their importance in relation to him. And even so, with much that is memorable in the annals of Win- throp's time put mostly to one side, various historic passages that no memoir of him could pass by have, by reason of our prescribed limits, been denied the ampler exhibition for which they pleaded, and which under other circumstances they would claim. For aid in his work the writer is beholden to more sources than he can undertake to set down. Yet he may be permitted to express his grateful sense of obligation to the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, both for the copious treasure of material afforded by his Vlll PREFACE. Life and Letters of John Winthrop, and for additional private assistance most kindly given. Also to his friend and neighbour the Hon. J. Hammond Trum- bull for abundant and beyond measure patient ser- vices of counsel and criticism, the value of which it is quite unnecessary to remark. Among recent authors in the field of early New England history, he is spe- cially indebted to Mr. John Fiske and Dr. George E. Ellis. His principal authority has, of course, been John Winthrop's own Journal. He has, however, while continually citing it, thought it best not to encumber the pages of so small a volume with foot-notes of reference to it ; since the reader who may desire, in the case of any extract, to consult the original, will, guided by the date, have no difficulty in finding it. Hartford, Conn., 1891. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Little Speech. Page Anticipatory Incident. — Impeachment of Deputy-Governor John Winthrop. — The Occasion. — The Scene. — The Acquittal. — The Little Speech . . i-n CHAPTER II. The Coming Man. His Birth. — The Suffolk Winthrops. —-Childhood and Youth. — Undergraduate at Cambridge. — Early Mar- riage. — Mary Forth. — Lord of Groton Manor. — Reli- ' gious Character. — " Experiencia." — "Christian Ex- perience." — The Evil Times. — Relation to the Puritan Leaders. — Death of Mary Forth. — Second Marriage. — Thomasine Clopton. — Her Death. — Third Marriage. — Margaret Tyndal. — Her Children. — Winthrop the Lawyer. — Professional Success. — Attorney of Court of Wards and Liveries. — John Winthrop the Younger. — Education and Travels. — Correspondence of John and Margaret Winthrop i 2 ~33 CHAPTER III. Farewell, England. Thinks of emigrating somewhither. — The Purpose a good while delayed. — Sudden Resolve on Massachusetts. — X • CONTENTS. Pagb Cambridge Agreement — Bay Colony Grant. — The Salem Vanguard. — Charter secured. — Bay Company organized. — Salem reinforced. — Enter Winthrop. — Enlargement of Bay Company Plan. — Vindicates the Colony Project. — Opposition of Friends. — Elected Governor. — The Long Toil begins. — Margaret cheers her Husband. — The Preparations completed. — The Embarkation. — Farewells. — The Last Word . . 34~54 CHAPTER IV. Westward Ho. The Governor's Journal. — Its History. — The Voyage. — Perils in the Channel. — The Weary Passage. — The "Model of Charity." — Land in Sight. — Hail, New England 55-61 CHAPTER V. The Day of Distress. The Gloomy Surprise. — The Governor's Promptitude and Energy. — Drowning of Henry Winthrop. — The Dis- persion. — The Sickness. — The Mortality. — Winter. — Hunger. — The Brave Leader. — Testimonies to his De- votion. — Bread at last. — News from Home, Joyful and Sorrowful. — Thanksgiving 62-71 CHAPTER VI. The Government, Civil and Ecclesiastical. Formation of Churches. — The Congregational Way y adopted. — Explanation of the Fact. — Ci vil Gover n- men t set in Motion. — Cou rts of Assistants. — Morton of Merry Mount. — Pater nalism of Ma gistrates. — Their Impartiality. — Th e NewFre emen. —Alarm of MagTT- traTes.^=-€olony consents to R ule of Magistr ates. — Precautionary Legislation by Leaders 72-81 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER VII. Boston. Page Removal to Shawmut. — The Original Bostonian, good William Blackstone. — Shawmut Peninsula. — Indian Relations. — Missionary Intent of the Massachusetts Bay Company. — The Governor's Distinguished Guests. — Assigned to Pastoral Duty. — First Winter over. — The Gloom lightens. — Ten Hills Farm. — The Governor builds a Ship. — His Public Thrift. —His Night Ad- venture. — Arrival of his Family.-^ His Christian Dream. — His Exploration of the Country . . . 82-94 CHAPTER VIII. Simmering of the Political Caldron. The Deputy quarrels with the Governor. — The Wrath of Dudley. — Successive Pacifications and New Outbreaks. — The Final Reconciliation. — The Freemenjjot satis- fied. — The Situation favourable to Political Develop- ment. — The Freemen mutter. — Watertown speaks out. — Magistrates recede a Space. — The Governor desires not to receive Private Gifts. — His Island of Gover- nor's Garden. — Good State of Feeling in the Colony. — Religion the Chief Concern. — The Governor visits — Plymouth 95-m CHAPTER IX. Boiling of the Political Caldron. New Arrivals. — Thomas Hooker. —John Cotton. — Puri- tan Peers propose to join the Colony. — Conditions found to be impossible. — Freemeri_jtnpxe uneasy. — AgV tn «^>g tVig TKarfAr — Cotton's Unavailing Election Sermon. — The Governor retired. — The Freemen's Inning. — Ex-Governor Winthrop renders his Account. Xll CONTENTS. Page — Danger from Abroad. — The Hand of Laud. — The Lords Commissioners. — First and Second Assaults on the Charter. -^- Qhaxter-ofdexed-iiome. — The Colony defiant. — Defensive Preparations. — Policy of Avoid or Protract. — The Danger passes. — Winthrop's Influ- ence paramount. — His Indian Story. — First Citizen of Boston 112-126 CHAPTER X. Winthrop Disciplined for Lenity. Emigration renewed. — Revival of Political Agitation. — Israel Stoughton's Heresy. — Project of Code of Laws. — Temporarily abandoned for Reasons. — Young Sir Henry Vane and Hugh Peter arrive. — They mark an Alienation and inquire into its Cause. — Find it to be Winthrop's Clemency as Magistrate. — Winthrop prom- ises Amendment. — Roger Williams. — His Character. — His Troublesomeness. — His Libel of the Charter. — Trial and Banishment. — Not a Victim of Religious Bigotry. — Endicott's Blunder. — He mutilates the King's Colours. — Consequences. — Third Assault on the Char- ter. — Dissolution of Council for New England. — Par- tition of New England. — Quo Warranto. — Extremity of Peril. — " The Lord frustrated their Design " . 127-140 CHAPTER XI. Sir Henry Vane Governor. Vane's Coming Welcome. — Elected Governor. — Legis- lation, Conservative and Progressive. — Council for Life. — The Connecticut Secession. — Opposed by Winthrop. — First Collision with the Indians. — Col. John Win- throp. — Founding of Harvard. — Ministers foremost in the Work of Education. — Not a Priestly Class. — Eu- logy by Archbishop Hughes. — The Antinomian Con- CONTENTS. xni Page troversy. — Mrs. Ann Hutchinson. — Her Tenets.— HefX)i5c1pIesT~ Capt. John Underhill. — The Outraged Ministers. — Boston follows Mrs. Hutchinson. — But not Winthrop, nor the Country. — The Fl ame o f Faction. — Vane would resign, but is dissuaded by Boston. — General Court quits Boston. — The Stormy Election at Newtown. — Antinomians go to the Wall. — Win- throp again Governor. — Writes the " Christian Experience" 141-15 8 CHAPTER XII. Winthrop at the Helm again. His Fifth Term. — Petulance of Vane. — His Debate with Winthrop. — Exit Vane. — Angry Boston. — Faction Persists, to the Damage and Danger of the State. — Loss of New Haven Colony. — Signs of New Peril to the Charter. — The Government resolves to act. — The Strong Hand. — Purgation of the Bay. — Mrs. Hutchin- son and others banished. — The Pequot War. — The Indian Peril. — Winthrop's Humane Mind . . . iS9~ l 73 CHAPTER XIII. Fresh Danger from Abroad. Winthrop's Sixth Term. — Donation of Land to him by the General Court. — His Dangerous Illness. — Happy Public Effect of it. — Cotton Mather's Story of him. — Large Emigration. — Lords Commissioners' Futile At- tempt to Hinder it. — Fourth Assa ult on t heXharter. — It must be returned forthwith. — General Court re- fuses. — The Governor's Letter to the Lords Commis- sioners. — Avoid or Protract again successful. — Win- throp's Seventh Term. — Increasing Rate of Emigration. — New Broil of Domestic Parities-.— Temperance Legis- lation. — Trouble at Harvard. — The Governor makes a Will. — Impoverished by Fraud of his Steward in Eng- xiv CONTENTS. Page land. — Expressions of Sympathy, Public and Private. — Colony threatened with Desertion. — The Governor's Protest 174-190 CHAPTER XIV. New Aspects, Home and Foreign. Winthrop again retired. — Succeeded by Dudley. — Next Year by Bellingham. — Revolution in England. — New Freedom to the Colony. — Annexation of New Hamp- shire Towns. — Body of Liberties adopted. — Revolution puts an End to Emigration and English Trade. — Ex- treme Hard Times in Consequence. — Discouragement and Retreat. — To Winthrop's Deep Displeasure. — Winthrop re-elected Governor. — His Eighth and Ninth Terms. — The Sow Business. — Conflict again between Magistrates and Commons. — The Commons win. — Reconstruction of the Legislature. — The_NejK-Eng4ami Confederacy. — Winthrop President of the United Col- onies Commission. — Acadian Relations. — The La Tour d'Aulnay Episode. — The Governor once more unpopu- lar. — His Third Retirement. — Letter to his Oldest Son 191-211 CHAPTER XV. Winthrop's Last Defence of the Charter. Dudley Governor. — Winthrop in the Second Place. — Further Challenge of the Magisterial Prerogative by the Commons. — Winthrop champions the Prerogative. — Conservatism holds its own.— - Parliament's Colonial Commission. — Authority of it not acknowledged by Massachusetts. — " Must not meddle with any Ships in our Harbor." — Endicott Governor. — Winthrop Deputy again. — The Hingham Business. — The Dep- uty on Trial. — Conservatism again holds its own. — Winthrop restored to the First Place. — Tenth Term. CONTENTS. XV Pack — Followed by Eleventh. — The Dissenters' Cabal. — Fifth Assault on the Charter. — Winthrop to the De- fence. — The Enemy carries the War into England. — 3iUie shall go thither to speak for the Colony? — Winslow of Plymouth called in. — The Cause won. — To which Opportune Events contribute. — The Cam- bridge Synod a Sequel. — The Mother Church of New England 212-226 CHAPTER XVI. The Old Governor's Closing Days. Death of Margaret. — The Governor loses not Heart or Hope. — Twelfth Inauguration. — Omens of the Time propitious. — Prospects of Massachusetts never so bright before. — The Governor again married. — Mis- tress Martha Coytmore. — Last Sickness. — Death. — Funeral. — The Public Grief. — The Story Ended 227-234 Index 235-245 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SPEECH. There is preserved to us in the early story of Massachusetts a scene so interesting in itself, so illus- trative of the time in which it occurred and of the actors appearing in it, that it may fitly be recalled by way of introducing the subject of this volume, who is its central figure. The date is July 3, 1645 J tne place the meeting-house of the town of Boston, where a long session of the Great and General Court, or Legis- lature, is drawing to a close. ^ Thirteen magistrates and thirty-five deputies from me twenty-three towns of the colony, whose total population numbers about fifteen thousand, have been in attendance, according to the roll. A memorable session it has been, en- gaging to an extraordinary degree the public atten- tion ; for since it opened, on the 14th of May, it has been largely occupied with what is in effect the impeachment of Deputy-Governor John Winthrop. He is the recognized chief man of the colony j gen- erally hitherto its most honoured citizen, — as he will be henceforward, — but now for a brief period 1 2 JOHN WINTHROP. he has been under a no slight cloud of popular dis- pleasure. The cause of his offending is his pro- cedure as a magistrate ; not, however, his procedure separately, but as participant with the majority of his fellow magistrates in an official act in which, it is alleged, they have exceeded their due authority. The question specifically concerns the right of the town of Hingham to choose the captain of its train-band ; but the whole affair is incident to a conflict with which the colony is vexed relative to the sphere in the government of the magistracy and of the people, respectively. In the present instance the issue has been in favour of the magistracy, and John Winthrop is acquitted. The scene which has been referred to took place in the General Court upon the announce- ment of this result. At the beginning of the trial Mr. Winthrop had declined the privilege of sitting among his peers while it was in progress. It was the first time in the history of the colony that he had been absent from that position. The account of it in his own trans- parently true Journal reads thus : — " The day appointed being come the court assembled in the meeting house at Boston. Divers of the elders were present and a great assembly of people. The dep- uty governor coming in with the rest of the magistrates placed himself beneath within the bar, and so sate un- covered. Some question was in the court about his being in that place (for many both of the court and the as- sembly were grieved at it) But the deputy telling them that being criminally accused he might not sit as judge in that cause, and if he were upon the bench it would be THE LITTLE SPEECH. 3 a great disadvantage to him, for he could not take that liberty to plead the cause which he ought to be allowed at the bar, upon this the court was satisfied." His reasons were good, yet one perceives that his heart was sore. Called to plead, after saying " that he accounted it no disgrace but rather an honour put upon him to be singled out from his brethren in the defence of a cause so just (as he hoped to make that appear) and of so public concernment," he had stated the grounds on which he might justly demand a dismissal of the suit ; but had waived the claim, as preferring " to make answer to the particular charges, to the end that the truth of the case and of all pro- ceedings thereupon might appear to all men," and had remained there " beneath within the bar uncov- ered " throughout the six or seven weeks' hearing that followed. What part he had taken in the examina- tion — marked by excitement and heat of temper, though apparently cooling in its later stages — we are not informed. The end is finally reached, and the Court has judged " the deputy governor to be legally and publicly acquit of all that was laid to his charge." What ensues is, in view of the circumstances that have been noted, in a high degree dramatic ; but it cannot possibly be better told than in the simple words in which Winthrop himself tells it. " Presently . . . the magistrates and deputies took their places in the meeting house, and the people being come together, and the deputy governor placing himself within the bar as at the time of the hearing, etc., the 4 JOHN WINTHROP. governor l read the sentence of the court without speak- ing any more, for the deputies had (by importunity) obtained a promise of silence from the magistrates. Then was the deputy governor desired by the court to go up and take his place again upon the bench, which he did accordingly, and the court being about to arise, he desired leave for a little speech." Before we listen to the Little Speech, — which is a very great one, as shall be seen, — we will pause to contemplate a moment the speaker, also to remark the surroundings. As amid a profound sensation he stands forth in the presence of the hushed assembly, his broad - brimmed hat again in place, all eyes fastened on him, he is a notable person to look upon ; a gentle- man at first glance ; in stature somewhat above the medium, showing under a thoughtful forehead, from which his parted locks fall upon a wide ruff, a coun- tenance , bearded, grave, strong- featured, traced with the fleep-lined * pathetic^ signatures of anxiety and jcare, but withal of an aspect noble, refined, sincere, kindly ; a face that, scanned in the Vandyke portrait which hangs in his house near by, and which it will be the fortune of Massachusetts to inherit, is, as a modern writer has felicitously said, "expressive of what was finest in the age of Elizabeth, — the face of a spiritual brother of Raleigh and Bacon." John Winthrop is in his fifty-eighth year, yet seems older, — in fact, somewhat broken. Already some while ago he has written to a friend : " Age now comes 1 Thomas Dudley. THE LITTLE SPEECH. 5 upon me, and infirmities therewithal, which makes me apprehend that the time of my departure out of this world is not far off." The fifteen years that have passed over him since he set foot in New England have told upon him. During all that time he has borne without respite the ever-harassing burden of the common enterprise there as no other man has borne it ; and a life-consuming burden it has been. Private troubles have befallen him, — saddest bereavements, < , loss of estate ; he is a poor man as well as an old. Yt't his one thought from first to last has been the wel- fare of the colony, content with whatever might happen to himself if only it prospered. This all who are sitting or standing there before him, as he rises to address them, know; and perhaps some of them, the passion of their late anger being abated, are thinking of it with compunction ; or, if not so soon, they will when once he begins. In the company of magistrates grouped behind him, not all of whom have been on his side, we mark other men whose presence contributes impressiveness to the hour. There is impetuous Thomas Dudley, the governor, sprung from the same stock with the hapless young husband of Lady Jane Grey and with Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester, but of how dif- ferent a strain. There is stern-visaged, stern-hearted John Endicott, the colony's sergeant-major-general, — he who formerly at Salem in public with his sword ripped the idolatrous cross from the ensign of St. George. There is the deputy-governor's eldest son, John Winthrop, Jr., wise beyond his years, presently 6 JOHN WINTHROP. to bend his steps toward Connecticut, where by ser- vice of the state he will win deserved renown. There are Simon Bradstreet and Richard Saltonstall and William Pyncheon and Richard Bellingham, — all worthies of the colony, destined to long remem- brance among men. Nor among the reverend elders present do we fail to note masterful John Cotton, minister of the congregation in whose meeting-house the court is convened, looking the scholar that he is; and beside him John Wilson, his colleague, — both Winthrop's loving friends, as their faces to-day betoken. And somewhere in the throng Peter Hobart, minister of Hingham, principal insti- gator of the prosecution just concluded, — with what countenance we may conjecture. The vanquished deputies are in their places; the whole remaining space crowded with spectators — freemen of the little commonwealth — drawn thither by news of the event on hand. Not one but is eager to hear what the deputy-governor will say ; to whom, as his calm voice breaks the silence, we may now attend. The Deputy-Governor's Speech. I suppose something may be expected from me upon this charge that is befallen me, which moves me now to speak to you ; yet I intend not to intermeddle in the pro- ceedings of the court, or with any of the persons con- cerned therein. Only I bless God that I see an issue of this troublesome business. I also acknowledge the jus- tice of the court and for mine own part I am well sat- isfied. I was publicly charged and I am publicly and THE LITTLE SPEECH. 7 legally acquitted, which is all I did expect or desire. And though this be sufficient for my justification before men, yet not so before the God who hath seen so much amiss in my dispensations (and even in this affair) as calls me to be humble. For to be publicly and criminally charged in this court is matter of humiliation (and 1 desire to make a right use of it) notwithstanding I be thus acquitted. If her father had spit in her face, (saith the Lord concerning Miriam,) should she not have been ashamed seven days ? Shame had lien upon her, what- ever the occasion had been. I am unwilling to stay you from your urgent affairs, yet give me leave (upon this special occasion) to speak a little more to this assembly. It may be of some good use to inform and rectify the judgments of some of the people, and may prevent such distempers as have arisen amongst us. The great questions that have troubled the country are about the authority of the magistrates and the liberty of the people. It is yourselves who have called us to this office, and being" called b y you, we have ou r authori ty^ f rom Cod , in way ot an ordinance, such as hath the ima^e of God eminently stamped upon it, the contempt and violation whereof hath been vindicated with examples of divine vengeance. I entreat you to consider, that when you choose magistrates, you take them from among your- selves, men subject to like passions as you are. There- fore when you see infirmities in us, you should reflect^ _ upon your own, and t hat would make you bear the more m with us, and not be severe censurers of the failings of ._ your magistrates, when yo n have continual experience of t he like infirmities in yourselves and others, We account him a good servant, who breaks not his covenant. The covenant between you and us is the oath you have taken of us, which is to this purpose, that we shall govern you and judge your causes by the rules of God's laws and our own, according to our best skill. When you agree with a workman to build you a ship or house, etc., he under- 8 JOHN WINTHROP. takes as well for his skill as for his faithfulness, for it is his profession, and you pay him for both. But when you call one to be a magistrate, he doth not profess nor under- take to have sufficient skill for that office, nor can you furnish him with gifts, etc.. therefore you ™" s * rnn f hf hazard of his skill and abilj ty^^^But if he fail in faithful- ness, which by his oath he is bound unto, that he must answer for. If it fall out that the case be clear to com- mon apprehension, and the rule clear also, if he transgress here, the error is not in the skill, but in the evil of the will: it must be required of him. But if the case be doubtful, or the rule doubtful, to men of such under- standing and parts as your magistrates are, if your magis- trates should err here, yourselves must bear it. For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the country about that. There is a two- fold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now cor- rupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath, liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts : omnes sumus licentid deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to re- strain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal ; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it ; and it is a lib- erty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever THE LITTLE SPEECH. 9 crosseth this, is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of sub- jection to authority ; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free., The woman's own choice makes such a man her husband ; yet being so chosen, he is her lord, and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way of liberty, not of bondage ; and a true wife accounts her subjection her honour and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free, but in her subjection to her husband's authority. Such is the lib- erty of the church under the authority of Christ, her king and husband ; his yoke is so easy and sweet to her as a bride's ornaments ; and if through frowardness or wan- tonness, etc., she shake it off, at any time, she is at no rest in her spirit, until she take it up again ; and whether her lord smiles upon her, and embraceth her in his arms, or whether he frowns, or rebukes, or smites her, she ap- prehends the sweetness of his love in all, and is refreshed, supported, and instructed by every such dispensation of his authority over her. . On the other side, ye know who they are that complain of this yoke and say, let us break their bands, etc., we will not have this man to rule over us. Even so, brethren, it will be between you and your magistrates. If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority, but will murmur and op- pose and be always striving to shake off that yoke ; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful lib- erties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you, in all the administrations of it, for your good. Wherein if we fail at any time, we hope we shall be will- ing (by God's assistance) to hearken to good advice from any of you or in any other way of God ; so shall your liberties be preserve d in upholding the hon our and, power of authority amongst you. " 10 JOHN WINTHROP. It has been said by John Winthrop's most distin- guished descendant, — the venerable Robert C. Win- throp, happily still with us, — that while " American history furnishes many noble subjects for the skill of the painter, it may be doubted whether a nobler one could anywhere be found " than the scene which witnessed the utterance of this address. " It recalls," observes one of our national historians, " the most interesting scenes of Greek and Roman history ; " adding, of the address itself, that, "in the wisdom, piety, and dignity that it breathes, it" resembles the magnanimous vindication of a judge in Israel." Another discriminating pen pronounces it " equal to anything in antiquity, whether we consider it as com- ing from a philosopher or a magistrate." "No one who brings sympathy to his perusal of the annals of the Massachusetts Bay Colony but will assent to these glowing judgments. Nor will an impartial estimate of the quality of John Winthrop, as derived from those annals and all supplementary sources, hesitate to allow that his appearance in the scene so spoken of is fairly representative of him, — of the man, his character, his ideas. As for his ideas, while time proved a particular conclusion he deduced from them in 1645 untenable, — for the paternal view of the magistracy in a free government, as he held it, passed away, — what more adequate statement than his on that occasion of the fundamental nature of civil liberty have the two and a half succeeding centuries produced? They who are not able to discern in our earlier and THE LITTLE SPEECH. 1 1 humble day the vital operation of the life-principle of the better future we behold because it is seen en- cumbered with excrescences from the past; who [disparage our fathers because, while blazing the trail of freedom, they did not lay a course for it that required no subsequent correction, and make it a macadamized road ; in whose regard their merit, wherein they were in advance of their time, is can- celled by the fact that in some points they were men of their time ; who in their case put aside the rule that " we are to judge the actions of men by the light we have, but men by the light they have," — will have little difficulty in maintaining a slighting and even contemptuous opinion of the Puritan age in Massa- chusetts. They who think otherwise, will have as little in reading in the tale of those years, " in which the strongest race that Massachusetts will ever see, grew up on her lean soil," a shining chapter in the evolution of those causes " which have shifted the world's political centre of gravity from the Mediter- ranean and the Rhine to the Atlantic and the Mis- sissippi, from the men who spoke Latin to the men who speak English." 1 And to such, the Puritan chief who delivered the Little Speech in the meeting-house at Boston will be accounted one of the princes of our civilization. 1 Beginnings of New England, John Fiske, p. 50. 12 JOHN WIN THRO P. CHAPTER II. THE COMING MAN. (1588 -1629.) " John, the only sonne of Adam Winthrop and Anne his wife, was borne in Edwardston abovesaid on Thurs- day about 5 of the clocke in the morning the 12 daie of January anno 1587 in the 30 yere of the reigne of Qu: Eliza : " So, exactly, reads his birth-record, — a smiling one, plainly, — as his father set it down in his private diary a little more than three hundred years ago. The date is expressed after the rule of the Old Style ; now it would be Jan. 22, 1588. Within the year preceding the fated Queen of Scots had laid her fair head upon the block. The last night of the July following saw the signal-fires flaming all up the coast that announced the arrival of the Armada in the Channel. The child was born away from home, under the roof, pro- bably, of his maternal grandparents. Adam Winthrop lived at Groton, contiguous to Edwardston, in the lower part of Suffolk, sixty miles northeast of Lon- don; was lord of Groton Manor, an estate granted to his father — also named Adam, as was his father before him — by Henry VIII. at the dissolution of the monasteries. THE COMING MAN 13 These Suffolk Winthrops were a family of substance and honourable repute for several generations anterior to that in which this history arises \ of whom much might be told, had we time, to show, in the lineage of the man we are to speak of, the preparation of his character and his career. Adam Winthrop (3d) died in 1623 j Anne Browne, his wife, in 1629, only a year before her son embarked for America. Their tomb is still to be seen in Groton churchyard. The time-blurred Latin inscrip- tion ends with — BEATI . SUNT . PACIFICI . NAM . II . DEI . FILII VOCABUNTUR. Ere our tale is concluded, we shall find reason to judge that the same Beatitude was part of the in- heritance they bequeathed. Of John Winthrop's boyhood nothing whatsoever, except his own Later mention of a juvenile peccadillo, — which, on the whole, we are glad to hear of, — and of his religious state at the ages of ten and twelve, is at this time discoverable. Of the kind of lad he was, of his sports, of how and where he was schooled, not even Adam Winthrop's gossiping and very miscella- neous diary affords a hint. If it be supposed that during this period he remained at his father's house amid the quiet Suffolk landscapes, he must have seen and heard much in the company which the abound- ing hospitalities of Groton Manor brought thither, to form his mind and induce that reflectiveness and 14 JOHN WINTHROP. that quickening of the spiritual nature which were presently manifest in him. Inhabiting the East Anglian section of England, — which was the cradle of Puritanism ; which con- tributed its supreme hero, Oliver the Protector ; on the western border of which sat Cambridge University, its nursing mother, — the Winthrops were of the ori- ginal Puritan faith and fellowship, and it was in a Puritan atmosphere that John Winthrop first breathed the breath of life. His boyhood proper was brief, for in December, 1602, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, — at a surprisingly early age even for that day, for he had not yet completed his fourteenth year. His university course, however, was soon interrupted and prematurely terminated by a fact still more sur- prising; namely, his marriage in April, 1604, which took place with the consent, as we are expressly assured, of all parties concerned, he being not much past seven- teen, — or, precisely, as Adam Winthrop figures it in his diary (with paternal pride, one fancies), seventeen years three months and four days. He was but a month over eighteen when his oldest son, John Win- throp, Jr., future governor of Connecticut, was born. So he missed his degree. His principal biographer, as we learn from himself, 1 formerly queried for a time, while examining Winthrop's correspondence, if a re- mark in a letter of 1627, " I purpose to send up ^10 for my A. B.," might not, in spite of the wrong order of 1 Life and Letters of John Winthrop, by Robert C. Winthrop, vol. i. p. 213 (note). THE COMING MAN. 15 the initials, refer to the supplying of that deficiency ; but the matter was solved by its coming to light in another letter that the "A. B." stood for a certain Aunt Branch, otherwise unknown to history. The young woman (she was four years his senior) who thus changed John Winthrop's plan, — and here again whatever folly under influence of youthful passion he may have been chargeable with in the case is rather gratifying to us than the reverse, — was Mary Forth, daughter of an ancient and distinguished family in Essex, who brought him " a large portion of outward estate." Of the six children she bore him, four grew up, — John, Henry, Forth, and Mary who became the wife of Thomas Dudley's son in Massachusetts. The record of Winthrop's outward life for a number of years succeeding his marriage is very scanty. He pursued the practice of the law; was made (says Cotton Mather) justice of the peace at the age of eighteen. Part of the time he resided at Great Stambridge, Essex, the home of his wife, though he " kept his first court " in Groton in October, 1609, — which seems to imply that he became lord of the manor on attaining his majority. But of his inward life we have a full account. It is minutely described in a remarkable journal of his soul, called by him " Experiencia," which he began in 1606 and continued till 1628; is rehearsed also in another spiritual autobiography called u Christian Experience," written in later years in New England. Though in the case of all such self-revelations of the 1 6 JOHN WINTHROP. Puritan religious stamp we expect to find the abase- ments and conflicts of the penitent the emphatic feature, these private disclosures of Winthrop are unusually marked thereby. The "Christian Experience," drawn up in New England when he was fifty years old, opens as fol- lows : — In my youth I was very lewdly disposed ; inclining unto and attempting (so far as my heart enabled me) all kinds of wickedness, except swearing and scorning reli- gion, which I had no temptation unto in regard Of my education." Having then spoken of a certain " savour of reli- gion " which arose in him subsequently, namely, when he was twelve, — but polluted with his conceit of it, as he recalls, — he proceeds : — " Yet I was still very wild and dissolute ; and, as years came on, my lusts grew stronger, but yet under some re- straint of my natural reason, whereby I had that command of myself, that I could turn into any form. I would, as occasion required, write letters, &c, of mere vanity ; and, if occasion was, I could write savoury and godly counsel." Presently his state somewhat improved : — " About fourteen years of age, being in Cambridge, I fell into a lingering fever, which took away the comforts of my life : for, being there neglected and despised, I went up and down mourning with myself ; and, being deprived of my youthful joys, I betook myself to God, whom I did believe to be very good and merciful, and would welcome any that would come to him, especially such a young soul, and so well qualified as I took myself to be ; so as I took pleasure in drawing near to him." THE COMING MAN 17 1 Still, as he sees looking back, the vice of self- esteem infested him. But better things were near. At eighteen, "being a man in stature and under- standing, and lately married," he underwent, not without turmoil, the crisis of conversion. " Now came I to some peace and comfort in God and in his wayes : my chief delight was therein. I loved a Christian, and the very ground hee went upon. I honoured a faithful minister in my heart, and could have kissed his feet. Now I grew full of zeal (which outranne my knowl- edge, and carried mee sometimes beyond my calling), and very liberall to any good wor k. I had _anjaasatiable thirst after the word of God ; and could not misse a good sermon, though many miles off, especially of such as did search deep into the conscience." It is at this point that the earlier " Experiencia " takes up the story, starting off thus : — "Worldly cares thoughe not in any grosse manner out- wardly, yet seacreatly, togither w lh a seacret desire after plesures & itchinge after libertie & unlawfull delightes, had brought me to waxe wearie of good duties and so to forsake my first love, whence came muche troble & danger." Which represents in a general way the theme of the whole, as in its enlargement it extends over the space of the score of years covered by it. He has much to say of his carnal proclivities, temptations, downfalls ; but when he comes to specify his trans- gressions, beyond such faults as pride, unthankfulness, vanity of mind, love of this world, he alleges nothing against himself more serious in the concrete than fits 2 1 8 JOHN WINTHROP. of impatience, sitting up too late nights, eating more than he ought, overmuch gunning (needing reform, though he owns that his luck as a sportsman is habitually but small) ; the worst, a slighting perform- ance of the duty of conducting family worship. Of the period of his young manhood, by his confession so sadly blemished with lapses from grace, what Cotton Mather has learned is, that 'Ihe had so bound himself to the behaviour of a christian as to become exemplary for a conformity to the laws of Christianity," — which without question indicates the character he bore in the eyes of his cotempo- raries. Nevertheless, his own tale is true enough, no doubt, and moves in the field of most genuine realities. It reveals a^ jm nd saturated with the Bible, and accompanied by the vision of " superior beings and eternal interests." It is the transcript of the mutations, the ups and downs, the eclipses and new irradiations, the alternate fainting and strength- ening, dryness and refreshing, which ever in this world attend the earnest aim of living after the highest moral ideal; andjt breathes the air of en- tire sincerity on every page. It registers his dejections and his upliftings, his terrors and his ecstasies. Now it is " Avoyd Sathan ! " with him ; and now, " O my Lord, my love, how wholly delectable art Thou ! " It contains — particularly in the earlier portion — memoranda of his successive new formal consecra- tions, vows, resolutions, covenants (too many of them he made, more than were good for him, he thinks afterward), his exercises under the dealing of THE. COMING MAN 19 Providence ; with many deep-hearted divine medi- tations, and here and there acute discriminating observations upon himself as a person whom, though a cunning dissembler, he was learning to penetrate. It is excellently well written, with pith and grace of diction, and is thoroughly interesting to read throughout. But it attends to one thing only. As in the case of some like journals that were kept in New England a century and a half later, in the times of the Revolution, there is, beyond the merest hint now and then, nothing to denote his concern in the public movements and events with which the while the land was in commotion. Yet it was impossible that the unremitting fierce contention of People and Crown in those years of James and his Buckingham, when the English heritage of freedom seemed likely to be lost, was not a concern of immense magnitude to the serious young Puritan squire of Suffolk, — as the issue to which it finally determined him proved it to have been. The twenty-five years from 1604, when Winthrop assumed the duties of manhood, to 1629, when he resolved on emigrating to Massachusetts, were a pe- riod in England during which the comparative quiet and prevalence of the spirit of toleration between parties, both civil and ecclesiastical, which marked the close of Elizabeth's reign, — whereof Bacon and Richard Hooker may be considered exponents, — were succeeded by the rekindling of all the elements of strife, to blaze higher and ever higher till mounting to the catastrophe of the Revolution. 20 JOHN WINTHROP. To name in the way of barest index — more we have not room for now — the representative con- troversies and events which remain the salient me- morials of that quarter-century, is to suggest the character and the fortunes of the causes whose conflict, not wholly on English soil, it witnessed. Gunpowder Plot ; Breach of King and Commons ; Royal Impositions ; Sale of Monopolies ; Sale of Offices ; Great Contract ; Three Hundred Ministers Deprived ; Spanish Marriage Question ; Sacrifice of Raleigh ; Bohemian War ; Revival of Impeachments ; Abortion of Cadiz j Loss of the Palatinate ; Question of French Marriage ; Question of Tonnage and Poundage ; War with France ; Forced Loans ; Abor- tion of Rochelle ; Petition of Right ; Breach of New King and Commons; Imprisonment of Sir John Eliot, — these, we say, may serve as indicia to de- note the contents of that chapter of English history which Winthrop, while advancing from youth to the maturity of mid-manhood, saw enacted. The drift of all was to the increase of the burdens of the people, and to the darkening of the prospects of Puritanism. Worse, indeed, was in store. Not yet had" Charles filled up, as he would go on to do, the measure of his father's and his own offence against the nation. Nor was Laud for three years yet Archbishop of Canter- bury, though as Bishop of London he was subterra- neously pushing the policy which ripened into the Reign of Thorough when his opportunity came. But the times were very evil. England aside, the situ- ation for Protestantism was waxing desperate. By the fall of Rochelle the Huguenot cause was lost in THE COMING MAN 21 France. All North Germany lay torn and bleeding under the feet of Wallenstein and Tilly. To some watchers — Winthrop one of them — there was at home and abroad an outlook only of ruin. While he lived in the breath of all that tempest, to what extent or in what manner he participated in it has passed out of knowledge. His " Experiencia," as we have remarked, supplies next to no information on the point; his letters very little, not much more than is to be gathered from casual references to current news, — assembling of Parliament ; ending of Spanish Match treaty ; " newes from Bohemia is very baddj" "the Duke is gone to Portsmouth;" "2 or 3 Londoners coinitted aboute the Loane," — mere references, usually without comment, yet with impli- cation of his sympathies. His only correspondence of the period that has come to light, it is to be borne in mind, is that of a domestic nature, — mostly letters written during business sojourns in London, to his wife, or to his young sons away from home, in which naturally he would not discuss themes of church and state. His other correspondence, which one must think was copious, is irrecoverably lost. But there are two facts of record to be adduced that carry with them the inference that he was on terms of personal acquaintance and friendship with the chiefs of the Puritan party, and in their councils. One is, that Isaac Johnson, a foremost adventurer of the Mas- sachusetts Bay Company, the wealthiest of them all, Earl of Lincoln's son-in-law, in a will he made before 22 JOHN WINTHROP. quitting England, named John Winthrop joint exec- utor of his estate with John Hampden, — which proves his intimacy with both, and leaves no doubt of their intimacy with each other. The other is, that Sir John Eliot, while prisoner in the Tower, where he was, alas, to die, had with him there a notable writing of Winthrop's, — to be hereafter spoken of, — relative to the Emigration Enterprise; and that he corre- sponded with John Hampden about it. Which not only raises a strong presumption that Eliot and Win- throp knew each other, but also makes it a reasonable conjecture that Eliot and Hampden partook Win- throp's judgment of the inauspicious look of things in England, and had thoughts of themselves leaving it behind. At any rate, that ili-omened aspect seems to have been the decisive consideration in the case with Winthrop He saw only more trouble ahead. He was not in the least a timid man ; of an high-hearted, virile courage, rather; full of the spirit of an uncon- querable fortitude, — the years to come were abun- dantly to demonstrate that, — but by his make he was not belligerent. The element of strife was un- congenial to his nature ; by all means not to be lived in, were it avoidable ; and that, as it bore upon the question, at such a juncture, of his staying in Eng- land or departing from it, was probably the deter- mining factor. Whether or not America proved a land of peace to him will appear further on. But before we proceed to the subject of his emi- gration thither, some further note is due, such as the scarcity of the authentic data permits, of his private THE COMING MAN 23 employments and happenings in those years, from 1604 to 1629, we are now touching upon. They brought him many changes, domestic and other. With Mary Forth, the wife of his youth, dimly shadowed to us as a woman of still ways, ever dutiful as modest, Winthrop lived eleven happy years, till she was parted from him by her death in 16 15. He was shortly married again, to Thomasine Clop- ton, of a neighbouring family of distinction in Suf- folk, to which belonged that Sir Hugh Clopton of Stratford-upon-Avon, the appalling fate of whose daughter, entombed alive there in the Great Plague, Shakspeare is surmised to have turned to account in " Romeo and Juliet." The term of this union was sadly brief. Just after the close of its first year the new wife died in child- bed, and her child with her, leaving Winthrop, not yet twenty-nine years old, the second time a widower. Nothing that he ever wrote is to this day more mov- ing to read than the long, broken-hearted rehearsal, in his " Experiencia," of her last sickness, in which, .with many exquisite touches of pathos, he describes its alternations of hope and fear, the sweet, submissive patience with which its sufferings — aggravated, poor thing ! by the horrible medical practice of the time — were endured, and the tender outgoings of affection in which her gentle spirit passed away. A bitter, desolating stroke this was to him, quite turning earth to emptiness for a while, driving him more than ever to thoughts of religion. 24 JOHN WINTHROP. In his first grief he even contemplates the aban- donment of secular pursuits altogether, to devote the rest of his life to the service of the Christian min- istry ; but on examination finds such not to be his calling. His journal shows that while he went punc- tually about his duties as lawyer and magistrate, this was a season of thick weather with him in his soul ; clouds much prevailing ; the infernal powers press- ing him sore, and though repulsed, persistent to return. It was under these troubled skies that the light of Margaret Tyndal rose upon him, — light clear- shining, benignant, steady, destined to attend his life- pilgrimage through many still darker passages and almost to its close. The daughter of Sir John Tyndal, Knight, of Essex, she was a rarely perfect example of that type of womanhood which, it is scarcely too much to say, is universally conceded to be among the fairest products of our English civilization, — the Puritan maiden. She became Winthrop's third wife in 1618, not — as transpires in one of his ante-nuptial letters to her, a composition so quaint and delightful that it is a hardship to omit it here, but it is copious, and incapable of exhibition by specimen — without op- position from her family, on the score, as is hinted, of his inequality in fortune to such a match. But Margaret was on his side, even when "myselfe too cowardly & unkindly ioyned armes w th thine opposers against thee," and won the cause for them both. With which upshot it seems the Tyndals were soon THE COMING MAN. 25 well content, for Winthrop had subsequently no stancher friends. Of the eight children that were the fruit of this marriage, — six sons and two daughters, — four (Ste- phen, Adam, Deane, Samuel) reached maturity, and came to New England ; note of whose history, since it must be the briefest, it will be as convenient to insert here as anywhere. Stephen served the Massachusetts Colony in im- portant offices, but returned to the old country at the time of the Revolution, where he was one of Crom- well's colonels and member of Parliament. Adam died at Boston in early manhood. John Winthrop, LL.D., whose long and distinguished service of Harvard University, in the chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, terminated during our War of Independence, was his grandson. Deane lived in honour in the colony to an advanced age. From him the town of Winthrop, where his residence was, takes its name. Samuel ultimately settled in the island of Antigua, where he was deputy-governor. The late Lord Lyons, British minister to the United States dur- ing our civil war, was his descendant, as is the present Duke of Newcastle. While of the first decade of Winthrop's manhood the record, as we have said, is very slight, thence onward, from his letters principally, its occupations and main incidents are traceable. He passed much of his time in London and on circuit, on his profes- sional business, which was growing and profitable. His clientage and his gains were by and by increased 26 JOHN WINTHROP. by his appointment (date uncertain, but about 1623) to an attorneyship in the important Court of Wards and Liveries, — a court somewhat answerable in its functions to our Probate Courts. His advancement to this office and his deprival of it later, in 1629, pretty certainly indicate his recognized political con- sequence; quite certainly his excellent standing in his profession. He was also employed in the draft- ing of parliamentary bills, — then a lucrative branch of legal work, since become more so. Between these various concerns and the care of his estate, together with his magisterial and other duties as lord of Groton Manor, he led an extremely busy life, and he prospered exceedingly. In 16 18, when he married Margaret Tyndal, his assured annual income, so he told her, was eighty pounds, — a competence for those times, though a modest one, equivalent to three or four times that sum now. In 1629 it had risen to seven hundred pounds, or thereabouts, and he was a wealthy man. Meanwhile his family was growing in number and growing up ; his older sons verging on manhood. John, Jr., in 1622, at the age of seventeen, entered Trinity College, Dublin, being sent thither partly, it would seem, for economy, though on a yearly allowance of thirty pounds, and more " if occasion be," — well toward half his father's income four years earlier, — partly for the advantage of domicile with godly kinsfolk residing there ; the Downings, parents of Sir George Downing to be mentioned hereafter. The best of sons was John, Jr., always, in whom THE COMING MAN. 27 his father delighted ; whose letters to him at college are pleasant reading, — plenty of cheerful, good advice in them, garnished with Latin and sweetened with a tone of unmistakable pride and fondness. Pleasant reading, too, are the letters the collegian gets from Forth, some years his junior, with their ceremonious prefaces, like the following : — To his most lovinge Brother M r John Winthroppe at Trinitie Coll : neere Dublin, give thes. Ireland. Most lovinge brother, — I received youer letters the 16 of Aprill whereby I perceived your great love & respect towards me which alwaise hath binne : I thank you for your good admonitions which you in your letters sent me for to alwaise goe on as I haue begunne ; knowinge that althow the waye to lerninge seeme verry hard & difficult, yet the frute & end is sweet & pleasant. I hope althow the distans of place hath set us one from another yet nether sea nor land nor anythinge else can part our affections one from the other: I had an intention to have written to you by one of Bury that went over, but he went over so speedilie as I cold nott have time to wright: but having so fitt an opportunitie I will wright. I wold I cold find matter wherein I might expresse my mind to you : for sich are our sinnes to God as they dailie cry for vengans uppon us, & so littell love or charitie one to another in these daies as it is Gods mercy that we are nott consumed. Thus the lad of thirteen to his big brother, but with very natural boy-talk and school-gossip and home-news (i??ipri?nis, new baby) coming after. It had been expected that John, Jr., would follow the law; and after his graduation he was admitted 28 JOHN WINTHROP. to the Inner Temple, London; but before he was called to the bar, he broke off his legal studies, for no reason given, to accept the place of secretary to the commander of one of the king's ships about to sail in Buckingham's grand fleet, going to the relief of Rochelle. On the return of that ill-starred expe- dition, late in 1627, he was seriously of a mind to join a "religious company" soon to embark from England, — Endicott's Salem party, no doubt ; van- guard of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ; sailed June 20, 1628, — but father not favouring the idea, John gave it up, and presently set out on a long fourteen months' voyage, in which he visited many strange cities in many lands, — Constantinople the most remote, — and during which not a single letter from home, of the many despatched, succeeded in reach- ing him, so uncertain were the then existing means of transmission. On setting foot again in England, August, 1629, he found, to his utter astonishment, his family getting ready to leave England forever. • One under strict compulsion of brevity, like the present writer, must deplore the necessity laid upon him of denying the space it pleads for to the corre- spondence of Winthrop and his Margaret, which is the literary memorial of their life together in Old England. It may all be found in "The Life and Letters of John Winthrop," by Robert C. Winthrop, — in the ancient spelling the larger portion, the rest left by the editor (to our regret) as modernized in a previous publica- tion, — where readers are urged to look for it, and THE COMING MAN 29 prove for themselves its singular beauty. A mirror of truest manliness and womanliness it is all through, and brimming with various interest. The England of the seventeenth century, urban and rural, is a good deal reflected in it. It antedates the era of mail service, and apparently of public conveyance, between London and such a place as Groton. Letters pass to and fro by private messenger, and the lawyer travels on his own horses. Margaret's shopping commissions are not few, affording glimpses of London shops at that day, with goods and prices. Though sometimes lodging with a kinsman, Winthrop generally, it ap- pears, keeps house after a fashion in his city chambers ; for Margaret, staying by at home, is constantly send- ing him supplies. — a turkey, " cupple of capons," cheese, puddings, "syder," etc., — and she sedulously and particularly cares for his wardrobe. It comes out that he was fond of his pipe ; also, that once, at least, he quit smoking, like other men. By ever so many such items and details the curi- osity is charmed, and we are drawn into human sym- pathy with the minor economies of these long- vanished lives. But the principal grace of the letters is the aroma _oT^n^^ and domestic piety which they exhale. They are love letters every one ; and the love in them lives in the element of Christian faith, other- wise it could not be so high and pure a passion. A few extracts only, dates omitted (Margaret's are usually wanting), must suffice for a taste of their quality. 30 JOHN WINTHROP. These from Winthrop : — My most deare & sweet Spouse, — I received thy kinde Lettre, the true Image of thy most lovinge heart, breathinge out the faithfull desires of thy sweet sowle, towards him that prizeth thee above all thinges in the world : & blessed be o r good God & heavenly father, who of his rich mercye is pleased still to afforde us matter of ioy & thankfullnesse in the good newes of each others wellfare, & of those w ch are neere & deare unto us : our onely care must be how to be answearable in o r thank- fullnesse & walkinge worthy his great mercies. My sweet Wife, — I blesse the Lorde for his con- tinued blessings upon thee and o r familye : & I thanke thee for thy kinde lettres ; But I knowe not what to saye for myselfe : I should mende & growe a better husband, havinge the helpe & example of so good a wife, but I growe still worse : I was wonte heertofore, when I was longe absent, to make some supplye w th volumes of Let- tres ; but I can scarce afforde thee a few lines : Well, there is no helpe but by enlarginge thy patience, & strengtheninge thy good opinion of him, who loves thee as his owne soule, & should count it his greatest Afflictio to live without thee : but because thou art so deare to him, he must choose rather to leave thee for a tyme, than to enioye thee : (From his good-by on board ship about to sail for America, she staying a few months behind. No sweeter valedictory anywhere in the English tongue, that we know of.) " And now (my sweet soul) I must once again take my last farewell of thee in Old England. It goeth very near to my heart to leave thee ; but I know to whom I have committed thee, even to him who loves thee much better THE COMING MAN 31 than any husband can, who hath taken account of the hairs of thy head, and puts all thy tears in his bottle, who can, and (if it be for his glory) will bring us together again with peace and comfort. Oh, how it refresheth my heart, to think, that I shall yet again see thy sweet face in the land of the living ! — that lovely countenance, that I have so much delighted in, and beheld with so great con- tent! I have hitherto been so taken up with business, as I could seldom look back to my former happiness ; but now, when I shall be at some leisure, I shall not avoid the remembrance of thee, nor the grief for thy absence. Thou hast thy share with me, but I hope the course we have agreed upon will be some ease to us both. Mon- days and Fridays, at five of the clock at night, we shall meet in spirit till we meet in person. Yet, if all these hopes should fail, blessed be our God, that we are assured we shall meet one day, if not as husband and wife, yet in a better condition. Let that stay and comfort thy heart. Neither can the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies destroy, nor any adversity deprive thee of thy husband or children. Therefore I will only take thee now and my sweet children in mine arms, and kiss and embrace you all, and so leave you with my God. Farewell, fare- well. I bless you all in the name of the Lord Jesus." These from Margaret : — My most kinde & lovinge Husband, — I did re- ceve your most sweet Letter by my brother Goslinge, and doe prayse God for the continuance of your health, and the rest of our frends. I thanke the Lorde wee are also in health, and thinke longe for your coming home. My good husband y or love to me doeth dayly give me cause of comfort, and doeth much increce my love to you, lor love liveth by love. I ware worse than a brute beast if I should not love and be faythfull to thee, who hath de- 32 JOHN WINTHROP. served so well at my hands. I am ashamed and greved with my selfe that I have no thinge within or without worthy of thee, and yet it pleaseth thee to except of both and to rest contented. I had need to amend my life and pray to God for more grace that I may not deceve you of those good hopes which you have of me, — a sinfull woman, full of infirmyties, continually fayleinge of what I desire and what I ought to performe to the Lorde and thy selfe. (Winthrop has been suffering from a felon, which explains her compassion in this next.) LOVINGE AND MOST DEARE HUSBAND, — Now in this solytary and uncomfortable time of your longe ab- sence, I have no other meanes to shew my love but in theese poore fruts of my pen, with w ch I am not able to expresse my love as I desire, but I shall endeavor allwaies to make my duty knowne to you in some measure though not ans wearable to your deserts and love Although it pleseth God to part us for a time, I hope he will bringe us together againe and so provide that we may not be often asunder, if it may be for our good and his glory ; and now I thinke longe to heare of thee and of your safe cominge to London. I will not looke tor any longe letters this terme because I pitty y or poore hande ; if I had it heere I would make more of it than ever I did, and bynde it up very softly for fear of hurting it. But I doubt not but you have better helps. My most sweet Husband, — How dearly welcome thy kind letter was to me, I am not able to express. The sweetness of it did much refresh me. What can be more pleasing to a wife, than to hear of the welfare of her best beloved, and how he is pleased with her poor endeavors ! I blush to hear myself commended, knowing my own wants. THE COMING MAN 33 But it is your love that conceives the best, and makes all things seem better than they are. I wish that I may be always pleasing to thee, and that those comforts we have in each other may be daily increased, as far as they be pleasing to God I will use that speech to thee, that Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of my lord. I will do any service wherein I may please my good husband. I confess I cannot do enough for thee ; but thou art pleased to accept the will for the deed, and rest contented. I have many reasons to make me love thee, whereof I will name two : First, because thou lovest God ; and, secondly, because that thou lovest me. If these two were wanting, all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave this discourse, and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife to be so long from them; but 1 must needs borrow a little time to talk with thee, my sweet heart. And so, while in their public aspects the times are evil to the lord of Groton Manor, they enclose for him in private an experience even idyllic in its felicity, the stay and solace of which will pass with him into the strange days to come. 34 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER III. FAREWELL, ENGLAND. (1629- 1 630.) Not till Winthrop is at the point of committing himself to the venture of emigrating to Massachusetts does any intimation occur that such a thing — that thing, at all events — is in his mind ; and it is cer- tain that his resolution in the case was suddenly adopted. The thought of leaving unhappy England, it is true, had forced itself upon him. As far back as 1623 he wrote to John, Jr., in college, " I wish oft that God would open a way to settle me in Ireland." That impulse was transient ; for as late as 1627 he seriously contemplated the removal of his residence to London or its vicinity, for the accommodation of his business. But early in 1629 we find him saying in a letter to Margaret, — " My dear wife, I am veryly persuaded, God will bringe some heavye Affliction upon this lande, & that speedylye • but be of good comfort. - . . If the Lord seeth it wilbe good for us, he will provide a shelter & a hidinge place for us & others, as a Zoar for Lott, Sareph- tah for his prophet." FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 35 And again at about the same time, — " Where we shall spende the rest of o r short tyme I knowe not : the Lorde, I trust, will direct us in mercye ; my comfort is that thou art willinge to be my companion in what place or conditio soevere, in weale or in woe." From which it is clear that the possibility, and even probability, of departing the country was before him ; yet, so far, nothing to show an eye turned toward America. The Pilgrims had now been nine years and more at Plymouth ; but not a syllable to suggest that he so much as knew of them, — though, of course, he did know. How son John's recent inclination to try New England was discouraged by him we have seen. It is to our surprise, therefore, that two months only after he writes the second of the letters to Margaret just quoted from, it transpires that his plan of going to Massachusetts is completely determined. A convenient point from which to survey the cir- cumstances attending the formation and execution of this plan is an Agreement to which, with eleven others, — Richard Saltonstall, Thomas Dudley, William Vas- sall, Isaac Johnson, John Humphrey, Increase Now- ell, William Pyncheon, names of most note among them, — he set his hand August 26, 1629. The Cam- bridge Agreement it is called, having been signed under the shadow, perhaps within the walls, of the old University, — not unlikely in Forth Winthrop's rooms in Emanuel College, where he was now an undergraduate. The vital substance whereof , was contained in these paragraphs : — 36 JOHN WINTHROP. " It is fully and faithfully Agreed amongst us, and every one of us doth hereby freely and sincerely promise and bind himself, in the word of a Christian, and in the presence of God, who is the searcher of all hearts, that we will so really endeavour the prosecution of this work, as by God's assistance, we will be ready in our persons, and with such of our several families as are to go with us, and such provision as we are able conveniently to furnish ourselves withal, to embark for the said Plantation by the first of March next, at such port or ports of this land as shall be agreed upon by the Company, to the end to pass the Seas, (under God's protection,) to inhabit and continue in New England : Provided always, that before the last of September next, the whole Government, together with the patent for the said Plantation, be first, by an order of Court, legally transferred and established to remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said Plantation." To this so solemn compact, with the proviso attached, — the same to be particularly remarked, — there were antecedents, a glance at which is necessary. The story of the royal grants of American territory to English colonists, from 1606, when James I., on the basis of Cabot's discovery, assumed jurisdiction of the entire Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine, — the whole named Virginia, — is quite too long and complicated to recapitulate here. At the stage of the present history the privilege of disposing of all rights to the province in which Massa- chusetts was included, vested in a corporation of forty members, of which the Duke of Buckingham was presi- dent, styled "The Council for New-England," — one FAREWEL ^4g8$$§*y 37 of the monopolies by which James sought to replace the revenues denied him by parliament. It was from this corporation that, in March, 1628, an association of six gentlemen — John Endicott the best known — secured, by aid of the well-disposed Earl of Warwick, the grant to a tract of country extending from three miles north of the Merrimack River to three miles south of the Charles River, and between those bounds westward to the Pacific. The grant was in conflict with other previous grants cover- ing portions of the same territory, about which there would be trouble by and by ; but it proved the title that held good in the event. The knowledge of American geography was at that time very small. It was commonly supposed that the Pacific Ocean lay not far beyond the Hudson River, and that New England was an island. It had even been conjec- tured by some that a route to the East Indies might be opened by way of the Charles River or the Mystic. The prime mover in this affair was the Rev. John White, eminent among Puritans, rector of Trinity Church, Dorchester. His most immediate object, though he had larger views, was the succour and rein- forcement of a little company lodged on the Massa- chusetts coast some while before, in 1623, for the spiritual behoof of a fishing-fleet sent into those parts by merchants of Dorchester, parishioners of his, — Dor- chester Adventurers, so called. The fishing enterprise having been abandoned for want of success, a portion of the shore company had, at White's urgency, remained 38 JOHN WINTHROP. behind, and were now at Naumkeag (Salem), holding on there in some distress, in charge of Roger Conant, a seceder from Plymouth Colony. White, sharing the opinion then gathering force in England, — by this time Charles was king, — that many of his sort would soon be obliged to think of betaking themselves abroad, judged that the little remnant at Salem, could it be saved, might prove the beginning of something of consequence. All haste was made to despatch Endicott, who reached Salem with supplies and a small party in September, 1628, superseding Conant in charge of the settlement, which still counted, with those he added to it, no more than fifty or sixty all told. Meantime the chance opened by the grant above spoken of had attracted attention in important quar- ters. The original grantees were joined by not a few persons of mark, and a more considerable project was conceived among them. No sooner was Endicott off than measures were taken through which, with the help of friends at court, it came about that on the 4th of March following (1629) those original gran- tees with twenty of their new associates were by royal patent constituted a body politic, entitled " The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." By the terms of this patent, — as shaped, of course, by the intending colonists, — the government of the corporation it created was to be administered by an official board consisting of a governor, a deputy-governor, and eighteen magistrates called Assistants, annually elected by all the mem- FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 39 bers. Once a month, or oftener, this Board was to meet for the transaction of business ; and the whole Company four times a year in a Great and General Court of power to admit new members and to make the laws and ordinances by which the Company should be ruled, " so as such laws and ordinances be not contrary to the laws and statutes of the realm of England." How elastic, in the possible interpretation of it, the condition defined in the last clause, will develop as we proceed. The concession of so liberal a charter is the more remarkable, if viewed in connection with the circum- stance that only six days after it passed the seals, Charles, in hot anger, dissolved his third parliament, — parliament in hot anger too, — proclaiming that thenceforth he would rule without parliament, which for the eleven years succeeding he did, if ruling it could be called. That charter was to be, for half a century to come, the peculiar treasure of Massachusetts, the sole instru- ment of her government, the aegis of her liberties ; to be, moreover, in all future times especially associated with the memory of John Winthrop. But as yet no Winthrop appears on the scene. Several who will be among his principal coadjutors in the labour of carry- ing out the scheme thus initiated when presently he becomes its head, — his most intimate friends some of them, — are members of the new Company ; but his name is not on its list. In its first organization Matthew Cradock, mer- chant of London, was chosen governor. No time was 40 JOHN WINTHROP. lost in sending forward another party to strengthen the occupation of Salem. Six vessels were fitted out with all speed, which by the end of June added to Endicott's community four hundred souls, with store of cattle, tools, and arms. The leaders of this reinforcement — the larger part " godly Christians," though in fortune mainly of the humbler sort, and a considerable share of them " in- dented servants " under contract to work out the cost of their transportation — were the Rev. Francis Higgin- son, of Jesus College, Cambridge, deprived for non- conformity, and the Rev. Samuel Skelton, a friend of Endicott, both men of superior quality. And now, at length, the New England enterprise being advanced to this point, Winthrop first comes into sight in connection with it. The earliest hint of the engagement of his interest in that direction is probably a note in the " Experiencia," dated July 28, 1629, recording his thanks for deliverance from peril of drowning in the fens of Ely while riding with his brother-in-law Emanuel Downing into Lincoln- shire ; for in Lincolnshire lived Isaac Johnson, Earl of Lincoln's son-in-law, as before mentioned, the most prominent promoter of the enterprise in the more important character it had latterly assumed. Considering the moment, it is scarcely doubtful that the two were going to see him concerning that mat- ter. At any rate, not till close about this time is Winthrop discovered as identifying himself with the project. Nor, in the light of related facts and occur- rences, is it less than obvious that it was at the solici- FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 4 1 tation of those already embarked in it that he did so. More than that, -there is ground for thinking that to secure him (and others with him) the Company- shaped its plan to meet his views in an important respect, namely, the location of the government of the colony to be, — his views, we say, speaking from our subsequent knowledge. It had been managed, when the charter was ob- tained, that no special place for the meetings of the Company was prescribed in it, — which was unusual. Such patents were customarily kept in England, where also the corporations they created had their legal residence and seat of authority. And this, in fact, had been provided in the original draft of the Massachusetts patent ; but — as we learn from Win- throp in later days — " with much difficulty we gott it abscinded." "We," he says historically, meaning the Company, of which he himself had not been a member at the time. Soon after the granting of the patent the question is up with the Company, whether, since the thing may be done, it will be advisable to transfer it, and the administration under it, over seas, with the colony that is being formed. At a meeting of the Company in London, July 28 (the very date of Winthrop's reference to his late trip into Lincoln- shire), Governor Cradock, "for the advancement of the Plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant themselves and families, and for other weighty reasons," proposed that that measure be resolved upon. A month later, a meeting was called " to give answer to divers gen- 42 JOHN WINTHROP. tlemen intending to go into New England, whether or no the chief government of the Plantation, to- gether with the patent, should be settled in New Eng- land or here." At an adjourned session the next day (August 29), the transfer was, "after long debate," declared the will of the Company; and presently, upon the advice of "learned counsel" that no valid legal objection lay against it, was " completely settled upon " — with consequences of incomputable magni- tude to the history of mankind. For so the charter became the constitution of an independent, self- governing commonwealth. * Governor Cradock's proposal, the record says, was "conceived by himself;" but it is .sufficiently plain that there was pressure in the case, and some of it from outside. The circumstance that this decision followed so immediately — the interval is three days only — upon the Cambridge Agreement, inevitably suggests a re- lation between them ; and that the signers of the Agreement, or a part of them, were among the " divers gentlemen " to whom the decision gave an- swer. Though they speak of having " engaged " themselves in the New England enterprise, not all were yet members of the Company. Some were, and had hastened down from Cambridge to attend the meetings of August 28 and 29, no doubt with the Agreement in hand to exhibit; but the names of some, one of them Winthrop, had thus far not appeared on the Company's record, — which leaves it a reasonable judgment that his and their actual en- FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 43 trance into the Company was finally and fully deter- mined by the action relative to the transfer of the charter. Once in, however, Winthrop, at least, was ■in with all his heart. Concurrently, also, with his committal to the great venture there seems to have been taken up the idea of an emigration not only larger than had before been thought of, but weightier in its personnel. To this idea he gave his most earnest advocacy. There were soon passing from hand to hand in Puritan circles copies of a tract prepared by him, — the writing to which reference has been made as read by Sir John Eliot in the Tower, 1 — which is of the greatest in- terest, and too important for its revelation of his thoughts, and of the thoughts of many like him in England at that juncture, to be omitted. Reasons to be considered for iustifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England, d^ for incouraginge such whose hartes God shall move to ioyne wth them in it. I. It will be a service to the Church of great conse- quence to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, to helpe on the comminge of the fullnesse of the Gentiles, & to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of Ante- Christ w ch the Jesuites labour to reare up in those parts. 1 Page 22. The authorship of this paper is not altogether undisputed. It has been ascribed to Francis Higginson. But after reading what Mr. Robert C. Winthrop (Life and Letters of John Winthrop, vol. i. pp. 317, 318) and Mr. Thomas Went- worth Higginson (Life of Francis Higginson, Makers of America Series, pp. 38, 39) say upon the question, few will be likely to regard it an open one. 44 JOHN WINTHROP. 2. All other churches of Europe are brought to deso- lation, & o r sinnes, for w ch the Lord beginnes allreaddy to frowne upon us & to cutte us short, doe threatne evill times to be comminge upon us, & whoe knowes, but that God hath provided this place to be a refuge for many whome he meanes to save out of the generall callamity, & seeinge the Church hath noe place lefte to flie into but the wildernesse, what better worke can there be, then to goe & provide tabernacles & foode for her against she comes thether : 3. This Land growes weary of her Inhabitants, soe as man, whoe is the most pretious of all creatures, is here more vile & base then the earth we treade upon, & of lesse prise among us then an horse or a sheepe : masters are forced by authority to entertaine servants, parents to mainetaine their owne children, all townes complaine of the burthen of theire poore, though we have taken up many unnessisarie yea unlawfull trades to mainetaine them, & we use the authorise of the Law to hinder the increase of o r people, as by urginge the Statute against Cottages, & inmates, & thus it is come to passe, that children, ser- vants & neighboures, especially if they be poore, are compted the greatest burthens, w ch if thinges weare right would be the cheifest earthly blessinges. 4. The whole earth is the Lords garden & he hath given it to the Sonnes of men w th a gen 1 Comission : Gen : 1 : 28 : increace & multiplie, & replenish the earth & subdue it, w ch was againe renewed to Noah : the end is double & naturall, that man might enioy the fruits of the earth, & God might have his due glory from the crea- ture : why then should we stand striving here for places of habitation, etc, (many men spending as much labour & coste to recouer or keepe sometimes an acre or twoe of Land, as would procure them many & as good or better in another Countrie) & in the meane time suffer a whole FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 45 Continent as fruitfull & convenient for the use of man to lie waste w th out any improvement. 5. We are growne to that height of Intemperance in all excesse of Riott, as noe mans estate allmost will suffice to keepe saile w th his aequalls ; & he who failes herein, must liue in scorne & contempt. Hence it comes that all artes & Trades are carried in that deceiptfull & unright- eous course, as it is allmost impossible for a good & upright man to mainetayne his charge & liue comfortablie in any of them. 6. The ffountaines of Learning & Religion are soe corrupted as (besides the unsupportable charge of there education) most children (euen the best witts & of fairest hopes) are perverted, corrupted, & utterlie overthrowne by the multitude of evill examples & the licentious gou- ernm t of those seminaries, where men straine at knatts & swallowe camells, use all seuerity for mainetaynance of cappes & other accomplyments, but suffer all ruffianlike fashions & disorder in manners to passe uncontrolled. 7. What can be a better worke & more honorable & worthy a Christian then to helpe raise & supporte a par- ticular Church while it is in the Infancy, & to ioyne his forces w th such a company of faithfull people, as by a timely assistance may growe stronge & prosper, & for want of it may be put to great hazard, if not wholly ruined •. 8. If any such as are knowne to be Godly, & liue in wealth and prosperity here, shall forsake all this, to ioyne themselues w th this Church & to runne an hazard w th them of an hard & meane condition, it will be an example of great use both for removinge the scandall of worldly & sinister respects w ch is cast upon the Adventurers; to give more life to the faith of Gods people, in their piaiers for the Plantation ; & to incorrage others to ioyne the more willingly in it. 9. It appeares to be a worke of God for the good of his 46 JOHN WINTHROP. Church, in that he hath disposed the hartes of soe many of his wise & faithfull servants, both ministers & others, not onely to approve of the enterprise but to interest themselves in it, some in their persons & estates, other by their serious advise & helpe otherwise, & all by their praiers for the wealfare of it. Amos 3 : the Lord revealeth his secreat to his servants the prophetts, it is likely he hath some great worke in hand w ch he hath revealed to his prophetts among us, whom he hath stirred up to en- courage his servants to this Plantation, for he doth not use to seduce his people by his owne prophetts, but comitte that office to the ministrie of false prophetts & lieing spiritts. To these Reasons is appended a supplement much longer and still more interesting, but of not so mate- rial import, in which " diverse obiections w ch have been made against this Plantation," are copiously ex- amined and answered ; of which we will transcribe the heads only : — " 2. It will be a great wrong to o r Churche & Countrie to take awaye the good people, & we shall lay it the more open to the Judgm* feared. " 3 We have feared a Judgment a great while, but yet we are safe, it weare better therefore to stay till it come, & either we may flie then, or if we bee overtaken in it we may well content o r selves to suffer w th such a Church as ours is. 11 4. The ill successe of other Plantations may tell us what will become of this. *' 5. It is attended w th many & great difficulties. "6. It is a worke above the power of the undertakers. "7. The Countrie affordes not naturall fortifications. " 8. The place affordeth not comfortable meanes to the FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 47 first planters, & o r breedinge here at home hath made us unfltte for the hardshippe we are like to endure there. " 9. We must looke to be praeserved by miracle if we subsiste, & soe we shall tempt God. " 10. If it succeed ill, it will raise a scandall upon or profession." With what thorough scrutiny on all sides Winthrop had canvassed the subject of his course, and that his decision upon it was not impulsive, but circumspect and deliberate in the extreme, this document is proof. Naturally there were not wanting those around him whose judgment of his duty was opposed to his, and who expostulated with him accordingly. Some of the Tyndalls shook their heads. Letters remain — curiosities of orthography; "anarchy," for example, represented by " & r ch " in one — in which his friend Robert Ryece, the distinguished Suffolk antiquarian, urges upon him the preponderant reasons why he would better abide in England. The nature of the dissuasions he met is derivable from the caption of a briefer document from his pen in those days : " Some Gen 1 Conclusions shewinge that persons of good use heere (yea in publike service) may be transplanted for the furtherance of this plantation in N : E : " This, too, has an appendix : " Particular considera- tions in the case of J : W : " Of which, — they are five in number, — the first, of significance in explaining the Cambridge Agreement, is this : — " It is come to that issue as (in all probabilitye) the wellfare of the Plantation dependes upon his goeiqge, for divers of the Chiefe Undertakers (upon whom the reste depende) will not goe without him." 48 JOHN WINTHROP. The recognition of Winthrop's part in bringing the plan of the projected enterprise into the shape it has now taken, and the place among his associates by general consent awarded to him, are at once apparent. At a General Court on the 20th of October (1629), Cradock having resigned, he was chosen governor. Thenceforward he is manifestly the man of the Com- pany, and passes under a weight of chief responsibility for the conduct of its affairs that will lie upon him the rest of his life. The lord of Groton Manor was in his forty-second year when thus called to the helm of the Massa- chusetts Bay Colony, and in the prime of his mature manhood. The same day he wrote to Margaret : " So it is that it hath pleased the Lorde to call me to a further trust in this businesse of the Plantation, then either I expected or finde myselfe fltt for, (beinge chosen by the Company to be their Governor). The onely thinge that I have comforte of in it is, that heerby I have assurance that my charge is of the Lorde & that he hath called me to this worke : O that he would give me an heart now to answeare his goodnesse to me, & the expectation of his people ! I never had more need of prayers, helpe me (deare wife) & lett us sett o r hearts to seeke the Lorde, & cleave to him sincearly." The five months remaining before he sailed for New England were heaped with activities to the new governor, who about this time, it is of significance to note, adopted the Dove of Promise for his private seal. There was a multiplicity of business requiring management, — difficulties at Salem to be resolved in FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 49 endless Company consultations ; funds to be raised ; ships to be chartered ; supplies to be gathered ; min- isters and a "chirurgeon " to be obtained; various questions of adventurers' interests to be settled ; ob- stacles to be surmounted ; infinite minor details to be adjusted. Though there were others to divide the work with him, — especially John, Jr., his industrious adjutant, — he held the labouring oar. The disposing of his private affairs — insecurely, as it turned out — had the while to be attended to. It is an amusing circumstance that in all that rush and hurry he is called in for sympathy and counsel in two cases of love just then simultaneously occurring in his domes- tic circle. His boy Forth, in a blushing but grandiose epistle, confides to him that he is enamoured to the matrimonial pitch, of Cousin Ursula Sherman ; and his sister-in-law, widowed mother of the same young lady, wants his assistance in resolving her doubts of the answer she shall give a worthy gentleman who is teasing her to marry him. Three times only in those months can he contrive to run home from London on short visits to his fam- ily, — once just after he was made governor, again at Christmas, and again the last week in February, to say good-by. Margaret is approaching her confinement and will not be able to go with him ; but she con- tinually sends him brave, cheerful letters, that though sometimes they " dissolved my head into tears," strongly stay up his spirit. Some wives of the Com- pany there are, it appears, who are afraid; but not she. She writes : — 4 50 JOHN WIN THRO P. " My good Husband : cheare up thy hart in the ex- pectation of Gods goodnesse to us, & let nothinge dismay or discorage thee ; if the Lord be with us who can be against us : my grefe is the feare of stayinge behinde thee, but I must leave all to the good providence of God." To which he replies : — " Blessed be God, who hath given me a wife, who is such a helpe & incouragem 1 to me in this great worke, wherein so many wives are so great an hinderance to theirs : I doubt not but the Lorde will recompence abun- dantly the faithfullnesse of thy love & obedience, & for my selfe, I shall ever be mindfull of thee, & carefull to requite thee." At length the task of preparation draws to an end. Taking leave of his household, — all but Henry, Ste- phen, and Adam (little fellows the last two), who are going with him, — and of the graves of his kin- dred, Winthrop returns once more to London, and in a few days passes on to Southampton, where the bulk of the emigration is to embark. (One ship-load of a hundred and forty — the West Country contingent — sails from Plymouth, and will be off first.) Thither come the East Country people, seven hundred in number, to meet their eleven ships, the Pilgrims' Mayflower one of them. Thither flock friends and neighbours to say farewell and God-speed ; among these the Rev. John Cotton, of Boston in Lin- colnshire, — to be conspicuous in this history by and by, — who preaches to them from 2 Sam. vii. 10: " Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 51 and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more ; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any moi'e, as before time" At a "solemn feast" with his especial intimates, Winthrop, essaying to speak a parting word, " finding his bowels yearn within him, instead of drinking to them, by breaking into a flood of tears himself set them all a weeping with Paul's friends, while they thought of seeing the faces of each other no more in the land of the living." On the 2 2d of March, 1630, the four ships that were quite ready, the Arbella, the Ambrose, the Jewel, the Talbot, received their passengers and weighed anchor. The Arbella had before been the Eagle, but was now gallantly re-christened in honor of Lady Arbella John- son, the gentlewoman of the exodus. She was admiral of the fleet also, and carried the governor ; the Lady Arbella and her husband Isaac Johnson, and Sir Rich- ard Saltonstall, and William Coddington, — governor of Rhode Island afterward, — and Thomas Dudley, and George Phillips being among his companions for the voyage. Ere the Channel was gained, however, obstinate contrary winds forced them to seek harbour on the Isle of Wight, first at Cowes, then at Yarmouth ; and it was a fortnight before the cliffs of Cornwall faded from their view. But they lived no more in England. All the way from home, from London, from South- ampton, from Cowes and from Yarmouth waiting for the wind, to the last possible moment, Winthrop sent back "Tetters to Margaret pouring out his love upon her in 52 JOHN WIN THRO P. tenderest endearments and benedictions (" Mine own Sweet Self," he calls her; again, " My Love, my Joy, my faithful One ; " again, " Mine owne, mine onely, my Best Beloved"), comforting her concerning her- self and concerning himself and her young sons with him. " Our boys," he says at Cowes, " are well and cheerful, and have no mind of home. They lie both with me, and sleep so soundly in a rug (for we use no sheets here) as ever they did at Groton." Over and over he binds himself to keep their covenant of a spiritual meeting Monday and Friday evenings. In addition to such private messages the departing colonists sent ashore at this time, during the detention at Yarmouth, a remarkable and affecting public appeal entitled "The Humble Request of His Majesty's Loyall Subjects, the Governor and the Company late gone for New England ; to the rest of their Brethren in and of the Church of England ; for the obtaining of their Prayers, and the removal of suspicions, and miscon- structions of their Intentions ; " the character and substance of which the following extract will suffi- ciently reveal : — Reverend Fathers and Brethren, — The general rumour of this solemn enterprise, wherein ourselves with others, through the providence of the Almighty, are en- gaged, as it may spare us the labour of imparting our occasion unto you, so it gives us the more encouragement to strengthen ourselves by the procurement of the pray- ers and blessings of the Lord's faithful servants. For which end we are bold to have recourse unto you, as those whom God hath placed nearest his throne of mercy ; which as it affords you the more opportunity, so it im- FAREWELL, ENGLAND. 53 poseth the greater bond upon you to intercede for his people in all their straits. We beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of the Lord Jesus, to consider us as your brethren, standing in very great need of your help, and earnestly imploring it. And howsoever your charity may have met with some occasion of discouragement through the misreport of our intentions, or through the disaffec- tion or indiscretion of some of us, or rather amongst us (for we are not of those that dream of perfection in this world), yet we desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our Company, as those who esteem it our honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother; and cannot part from our native Country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have ob- tained in the common salvation we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk where- with we were nourished there ; but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavour the continu- ance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the Kingdom of Christ Jesus. What we entreat of you that are the ministers of God, that we also crave at the hands of all the rest of our brethren, that they would at no time forget us in their private solicitations at the throne of grace. What goodness you shall extend to us in this or any other Christian kindness, we, your brethren in Christ Jesus, shall labour to repay in what duty we are or shall be 54 JOHN WINTHROP. able to perform;, promising, so far as God shall enable us, to give him no rest on your behalfs, wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your ever- lasting welfare when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of suppli- cation, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may not altogether unexpectedly nor, we hope, un- profitably, befall us. And so commending you to the grace of God in Christ, we shall ever rest Your assured friends and brethren, John Winthrope, Gov. Richard Saltonstall, Charles Fines, Isaac Johnson, Thomas Dudley, George Phillipps, William Coddington, &c. &c. From Yarmouth, aboard the Arbella, April 7, 1630. Who it was that drew up this address, is not known ; but the preponderance of opinion ascribes it to Win- throp. Whether it had been prepared before the embarkation or was the inspiration of the hour, is uncertain. The fact that it was dated April 7, and signed only by those who were together on the Ar- bella favors the latter conclusion. It was a moving plea for English Puritans to read and ponder, think- ing that they from whom it came were far out of sight, tossing on stormy seas, facing an unknown future. WESTWARD HO. 55 CHAPTER IV. WESTWARD HO. (I6 3 0.) By far the most competent extant source of our information concerning John Winthrop personally henceforward, and as well of our comprehension of the experience of the Massachusetts Colony in its planting period, is an ample private Journal, or Nar- rative, which he began at the outset of the voyage to New England. It opens: "Anno Domini, 1630, March 29, Monday [Easter Monday]. Riding at the Cowes, near the Isle of Wight, in the Arbella," and continues to the time of his death. No more valuable relic of its kind anywhere exists. It bears on every page ^^^ddent-^iam^jess.-of-ca»dour and: - veracity, that no one has been found to impeach the witness of the writer regarding his own acts, which it contains, or to doubt that his individual traits are truly mirrored in it. While it is devoted, with slight exceptions, to public concerns, its frequent incomplete- ^ ness throughout — the record in hundreds of places, and at important points often, breaking off with " etc." — indicates that, primarily, he wrote it for himself; though his calling it, as it grew upon his hands, * The History of New England," and the occurrence of numerous blank spaces left apparently to be filled 56 JOHN WINTHROP. in afterward, but especially the fact that it is writ- ten in the third person, suggest that he was not without thought of its ultimate publication, or, at all events, of its use by others. This Journal has an interesting history of its own. For a century after Winthrop's death its three manu- script volumes were accessible. The most notable annalists of New England in that period, Mather, Hubbard, Prince, consulted them. Then for nearly half a century they were out of sight, till Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, of Connecticut, during the Revo- lutionary War, discovered the first two volumes in possession of John Winthrop, Jr.'s descendants, in New London. Finding in them matter of great interest, and, for reasons that will abundantly appear further on, of peculiar interest to one, like himself, a leader in the struggle for political independence then going v on, he, with the assistance of John Porter, his secretary, copied a considerable part of their con- tents, — of which Gen. George Washington, the next time he was Brother Jonathan's guest, the two being seated together in the famous "war-office" at Leba- non, heard passages, it is safe enough to conjecture. Soon after Governor Trumbull's death, Noah Webster, learning of this copy "by accident," engaged Porter to make another for him. Upon reading which, he was convinced that such a treasure ought to be printed ; accordingly, with the consent of the Win- throp family, and with the collaboration of Porter in completing the copy and improving it by a fresh examination of the original, Mr. Webster published it at Hartford in 1790, — Winthrop then having WESTWARD HO. 57 been more than a hundred and forty years in his grave. Meanwhile the third volume was missing till the spring of 1 8 1 6, when it came to light in the tower of the Old South Church in Boston, in the library of Thomas Prince, the historian, — minister of the Old South in his time, — stored there for safety during the occupation of Boston by the British, who used the Old South for a cavalry riding-school. The third volume, thus happily recovered, was committed to the hands of the assiduous and expert colonial an- tiquarian, James Savage, — eminent president, later, of the Massachusetts Historical Society, — to prepare for the press ; he at the same time undertaking to edit anew the other volumes, the Hartford edition, as he found on collating it with the originals, leav- ing much to be desired on the score of accuracy. Mr. Savage's first copy of the third volume he had the misfortune to lose, and was obliged to do that portion of the work over again j but before his labours were ended, a further and more serious misfortune befell in the destruction by fire of the second volume of the original, with all but a few pages of his new copy of it, — a remediless disaster. So that the second volume of the journal, as published by him in 1825, is the comparatively uncritical text of the first publication. The priceless first and third vol- umes of the original are preserved in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. We return to the Arbella and her consorts, the Talbot, the Jewel, the Ambrose, now breasting the 58 • JOHN WINTHROP. Atlantic waves. Of the leavetaking, protracted, as we have seen, for several days while they waited be- low Southampton for the wind's favour, the governor's new Journal notes pleasing incidents. At Yarmouth, April 6, " Captain Burleigh, captain of Yarmouth castle, a grave comely gentleman, and of great age, came aboard us and stayed breakfast, and offering us much courtesy he departed, our captain giving him four shot out of the forecastle for his farewell. He was an old sea captain in Queen Elisabeth's time, and being taken prisoner at sea was kept prisoner in Spain three years." The same day ex-Governor Cradock also paid the Arbella a visit, and was dismissed with like salute of honour. Not so pleasing the accident by which Henry Winthrop, happening ashore at Cowes when the wind changed, had to be left behind to take pas- sage in one of the later ships. The perils of the deep to be encountered at this time were not all those of nature. There was war between England and Spain; and Dunkirk, across Dover Strait, was a nest of Spanish privateers. The word at Yarmouth was that down the Channel the en- emy was in waiting. So when off Portland eight sail were spied, apparently bearing down on them, they guessed them the reported " Dunkirkers." There is a fine animation in the governor's account of how the little squadron, dressing quickly for fight, " tacked about and stood to meet them. . . . Not a woman or child that showed fear j " but they proved nothing of the Dunkirker species, to their great joy. Through- WESTWARD HO. 59 out the passage a strange sail was an alarm till it dis- appeared or its harmlessness was ascertained. A long, long passage it was : rainy, chilly, tempestuous exceedingly, — one storm lasting ten days; seventy of the two hundred cattle the fleet carried, bruised to death by it, — fraught with anxiety for consorts blown out of sight in mid- ocean, with discomfort beyond imagining, yet all borne with a cheerful, steady mind, " no fear or dismayedness " at any time manifest. It developed, indeed, that among their quota of indented servants were some rude fellows, whose ill manners it was occasionally required to rebuke with discipline; but these aside, the Arbella (where this history keeps with Winthrop while the colony is afloat) was as a church of God on the waters. In spite of circumstances, there was much spiritual employ in preaching and in catechising; some recreation, too, the weather permitting, — as when "our Captain (Peter Milborne) set our chil- dren and young men to some harmless exercises, which the seamen were very active in, and did our people much good, though they would sometimes play the wags with them." In all the huddle the calm governor found op- portunity to write his Journal punctually, detailing the experiences, greater and lesser, of each day. And now and then he recorded natural phenomena that drew his attention. Thus, the seventh week out, — "Four things I observed here. i. That the declina- tion of the pole star was much, even to the view, be- 60 JOHN WINTHROP. neath that it is in England. 2. That the new moon, when it first appeared, was much smaller than at any time I had seen it in England. 3. That all the way we came, we saw fowls flying and swimming, when we had no land near by two hundred leagues. 4. That wheresoever the wind blew, we had still cold weather, and the sun did not give so much heat as in England." In the course of the passage he also composed an elaborate discourse, giving expression to the thoughts with which, as leader of the people who were sailing with him, he' communed; to whom, there is no rea- son to doubt, he delivered it, though he makes no mention at all of it himself. The copy (by some later hand) in which it survived bears the title : " A Modell of Christian Charity, written on board the Arbella, on the Atlantic Ocean, by the Hon. John Winthrop, Esq., in his passage (with a great company of Religious peo- ple, of which Christian tribes he was the Brave Leader and famous Governor;) from the Island of Great Brittaine to New-England in the North America, Anno 1630." It defines the object of their " Solemn Venture " as " by a mutual consent, through a special over-ruling of Providence, and a more than ordinary approbation of the Churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical." And for a main condition of success it enjoins : — M For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities. WESTWARD HO. 61 We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other ; make other's condition our own ; rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer to- gether, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body So shall we kerp the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and . . . make us a praise and a glory, that men shall say of suc- ceeding plantations, ' The Lord make it likely that of New England? " Not often in the course of human experience has plainer living gone with higher thinking than on board the Arbella in 1630. On the sixty-eighth day from the embarkation, shrouded in fog but knowing that they neared land, they observed " in the great cabin " a fast for the Divine protection; the next day, the fog having lifted, a thanksgiving. One day more, and through the dissolving mist land was descried, — the coast of Maine to the eastward of Mount Desert. " Then we tacked and stood W. S. W. We had now fair sun- shine weather, and so pleasant a sweet air as did much refresh us ; and there came a smell off the shore like the smell of a garden." It was still a week before the Arbella entered (June 22, 1630) Salem harbour, where shortly she was joined by her consorts ; and the weary voyage of eighty-four days from Southampton was over. 62 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER V. THE DAY OF DISTRESS. (1630-1631.) For the emigrants now at their journey's end a gloomy surprise was in store. They had anticipated rinding Endicott's settlement in a thrifty state, with quarters ready for their occupation, and growing crops sufficient — with what they brought — for their sustenance the coming winter ; and with reason. It was partly with that object in view that the well- equipped party — three hundred of them men — had been sent over with Higginson and Skelton in the spring of the year before ; and accounts received of them had been of a character to warrant confidence of at least a tolerably furnished welcome. Higgin- son's first impressions of Massachusetts had been most favourable. In his " Short and True Description of the Commodities and Discommodities of that Country," sent home three months after his landing (June, 1629), and immediately printed, he had laid chief emphasis on the Commodities, — of climate, soil, resources, — all of which he praised with the ardour of youth. "A sup of New England's air," he said, "is better than a whole draught of old Eng- land's ale. . . . The abundant increase of corn proves THE DA Y OF DISTRESS. 63 this country to be a wonderment. . . . Yea, Joseph's increase in Egypt is outstripped here with us. Our planters hope to have more than a hundred fold this year. The abundance of sea fish are almost beyond believing." And of sea fowl there was no end. Land game, too, in profusion, — turkeys, pigeons, partridges " as big as our hens." " Here is good living for those that love good fires." He reported that at Salem they were making all haste to build houses, " so that within a short time we shall have a fair town;" also that a detachment sent down to Mishawum (Charlestown) on the Bay, in obedience to the Company's orders, was " beginning to build a town there." But the expectation inspired by so hopeful an esti- mate from such a source was now rudely disap- pointed. In the year that intervened between the writing of Higginson's bright prospectus and the ar- rival, the situation in Massachusetts had undergone a melancholy change. The winter brought sickness well-nigh universal, and to more than a quarter of the plantation fatal. Higginson himself, who in his "Short and True Description" exulted in his own extraordinarily good health, had sunk into a decline, and was in a dying state when Winthrop came. All work had been interrupted, nor in the debilitated condition of the community could it be resumed, either planting or building, to much effect in the spring. " All the corn and bread amongst them all," wrote Thomas Dudley the next year to the Countess of Lincoln, " was hardly sufficient to feed them for 64 JOHN WINTHROP. a fortnight." The governor, now charged with the oversight of affairs, — for with his coming Endi- cott's authority ceased, — found himself, the moment his foot was on land, in difficulties far exceeding the worst he could have feared. There were a thou- sand people to be fed, and scarcity was at the door ; the larger part of that number to be sheltered, and the short summer was passing. Strong men were at his side with whom to counsel, but he was chief. His action in the emergency was marked by fitting promptitude. A large number of indented servants were discharged from their contracts, to take their chances with the rest. The first available ship — the Lyon, William Peirce master, calling on the way up from Plymouth, thirty miles below — was despatched to England for supplies. It was necessary that the colony should be located with the least pos- sible delay ; and since " Salem pleased them not," the governor set out at once to explore the region of the Bay for a desirable site. The entries in his Journal just along here are few and short; not one word does he say of the state of things at Salem. While so sorely harassed by his public cares, a heavy stroke of private grief added to his burden. His son Henry, whose accident of missing passage by the Arbella has been noted, the very day after his arrival by another ship, swimming a creek near Salem to fetch across a canoe, was drowned. Henry, the second born of Mary Forth's children, had been the black sheep of Winthrop's flock ; yet THE DAY OF DISTRESS. 65 not so very black ; not, for all that appears, vicious, but a thriftless wight, of an unsteady mind and wayward temper, decidedly non-Puritan in his bent. At twenty (in 1627) his father had furnished him the means for a tobacco-planting venture in the Bar- badoes, which by his negligence resulted in failure and his return home in some disgrace. But he mar- ried well soon after, and seems to have turned over a new leaf. And here, in a strange land and at a strange moment, his life, of a sudden, sadly ends. The governor's note of the tragedy occupies but a single line of the Journal : " My son, H. W., was drowned at Salem," — wherein the pathetic mark of his agitation is his use of the first person : it is one of the two or three instances in which it occurs for nineteen years. / Under pressure of the circumstances, it was speedily decided that the plan of keeping the colony as closely together as had been contemplated, was impracticable. Says Dudley, in the Countess of Lincoln letter above referred to : — " We were forced to change counsel and for our pres- ent shelter to plant dispersedly. . . . This dispersion troubled some of us ; but help it we could not, wanting ability to remove to any place fit to build a town upon and the time too short to deliberate any longer lest the winter should surprise us before we had builded our houses." Accordingly the body of the emigrants — all but a few who continued at Salem with Endicott, and a few more who stopped at Saugus (Lynn) — divided into parties, some magistrates with each, and disposed 5 66 JOHN WINTHROP. themselves at different places on the Bay and its two rivers, as they chose : the largest with Winthrop and Deputy-Governor Dudley at Charlestown, where some sort of a Government House had been erected ; the others at Maiden, at Watertown, at Roxbury, and the West Country people at Dorchester. After a General Thanksgiving for deliverance from the perils of the sea, all betook themselves to the en- deavour of averting, so far as might be, the perils now succeeding. Spaces were cleared in the primeval forest, where, amid the stumps, their villages of grass- thatched log cabins clustered close about a meeting- house, were in the few weeks of available weather left erected. And then soon began a wrestle with Death. With autumn, sickness — sequel, as before, to the hard- ships of the voyage, precipitated by the inevitable un- sanitary conditions of hastily prepared lodging — broke out afresh, and the tribulation of the previous winter was reproduced. The scourge fell heaviest on Charles- town, "where the multitude set up cottages, booths, and tents about the Town Hill." Among the earliest victims was the gentle Lady Arbella Johnson, who, as Cotton Mather says, " took New England on her way to heaven." Her husband, Isaac Johnson, one of the choicest men of the colony, as he was the wealthiest, survived her but a month. By December, in the sev- eral plantations around the circle of the Bay, no less than two hundred had been buried ; not a few of them those that could least be spared. " It may be said of us," wrote Dudley, " almost as of the Egyptians, that there is not a house where there is not one dead." THE DAY OF DISTRESS. 6j Meantime the slender stock of provision was wast- ing. With such cold and snow as they had never seen till then ; swept by the sea-winds, dismal, hoarse ; behind, the grim silent wilderness ; starvation stalking among them ; they were, indeed, in woful case. " It would," says Edward Johnson the historian, who saw it all, " have moved the most lockt up affection to tears, no doubt, had they past from one hut to another and beheld the piteous case these people were in." Surely the winter stars never looked down on a forlorner sight. Till the ship should come there was no resource except the scant uncertain product of winter fishing, with clams and mussels from the icy beach, eked out with acorns and ground nuts, and the trifle of corn that could be obtained from the Indians ; of whom, however, they saw, and in their evil plight were content to see, very little. The most explicit record by an eyewitness of the distress of that winter of 1 630-1 631 — for the gover- nor's Journal is silent on the subject, and in his letters he treats it with rigid brevity — is preserved in the memoirs of Capt. Roger Clap, of Dorchester, com- posed for his children in his old age. He says : — " Bread was so very scarce that sometimes I thought the very crusts of my father's table would have been very sweet to me. And when I could have meal and water and salt boiled together, it was so good, who could wish for better ? . . . Many were in great straits for food for themselves and their little ones. Oh the hunger that many suffered, and saw no hope in an eye of reason to be supplied." 68 JOHN WINTHROP. It was not in human nature that in an extremity so nearly desperate there should be none whose resolu- tion failed. About a hundred — some without much delay — retreated back to England ; the rest that lived abided their fortunes. As to Winthrop, if he was the man of all who in his person represented the motive and original design of the enterprise, he was now the exponent of the spirit that bore it through its season of mortal travail. He himself was untouched by the sickness, though twelve of those housed under the same roof with him perished. His letters, as we have said, do not dwell on the sad scenes passing before his eyes, or betray any trace of disheartenment or regret on account of them. Dudley might write : " If any come hither to plant for worldly ends that can live well at home, he commits an error of which he will soon repent him ; " but not a word in that strain from the governor. Writing to Margaret in September, after speaking of "our days of affliction," which he hopes will "soon have an end," he says : '" I thank God I like so well to be here as I do not repent my coming ; and if I were to come again I would not have altered my course though I had foreseen all." Yet before closing he owns that he has been so overpressed by business as often to forget those Monday and Friday spiritual appointments he had with her. Again, in Novem- ber : " My dear Wife, we are here in a paradise. Though we have not beef and mutton etc., yet (God be praised) we want them not j our Indian corn an- swers for all." A paradise in posse he intended, — it THE DA Y OF DISTRESS. 69 was in no sense a paradise in esse at that moment, — meaning what he had written to John, Jr., awhile before : " Here is sweet air, fair rivers and plenty of springs, and the water better than in England. Here can be no want of anything to those who bring means to raise out of the earth and sea." It was ever a mark of Winthrop's unreserved and irrevocable adoption of New England as the country of his earthly hope, that from the hour he trod its soil his whole sentiment of home loyalty was unalterably fixed upon it. In every thought of his heart he be- came its champion. He mitigated the charge of unwholesomeness the sickness might raise against it by noting that it was most fatal in the case of " such as fell into discontent and lingered after their former conditions in England," — which was entirely true, no doubt. He never counted himself an exile. Almost the only trace in the Journal of his revisiting in fancy the scenes of his former life is his remark of an earthquake that occurred in 1638, that it sounded " like the rattling of coaches in London." It was always a sore trial to his patience that any one should " abase the goodness of the country," and the supreme trial that any one should forsake it. To his eye it was henceforth the best land the sun shone on. Of the governor's bearing through all this tragical experience, how unselfish and brave ; of the example of fortitude with which he sustained the courage of the stricken colony, — with which his own modesty would not have acquainted us, — we fortunately have knowledge by the testimony of contemporaries and of 7° JOHN WIN THRO P. credible tradition. Of the former is the renowned Capt. John Smith, who as early as 1614 had explored, and with substantial accuracy mapped, the Massachu- setts coast, and who gave New England its name. He, describing, very near the time, the misfortune of this period, reports : — " Notwithstanding all this, the noble Governour was no way disanimated, neither repents him of his enterprise for all those mistakes, but did order all things with that tem- perance and discretion, and so releeved those that wanted with his owne provision." Another contemporaneous narrative (narrator's name lost) , in an account of the same, says, — " Now so soone as Mr. Winthrop was landed, per- ceiving what misery was like to ensewe through theire Idlenes, he presently fell to worke with his owne hands, & thereby soe encouradged the rest that there was not an Idle person then to be found in the whole Plantation." Cotton Mather is a later witness ; but in likening him to "Joseph unto whom the whole body of the people repaired when their corn failed them," and in relating that " when he was distributing the last hand- ful of meal in the barrel unto a poor man distressed by the wolf at the door, at that instant they spied a ship arrived at the harbour's mouth laden with provi- sions for them all," he shows how the story of the governor's self-devotion, that first dreadful winter, lived in men's mouths, and was a fireside tale in Massachusetts down to the end of the century. Such a report of him went home to England that THE DAY OF DISTRESS. 7 1 his friend John Humphrey (deputy-governor before the embarkation) wrote to him in a strain of earnest remonstrance, entreating him to beware lest his " bodie, not accustomed to hardnes of unusual kindes, & not necessitated unles by a voluntarie & contracted ne- cessitie, should sinke under his burthen, & fall to mine for want of a more conscionable tenaunt." The -arrival of the Lyon in February, 1631, — seven months she had been gone, — while it did not terminate the public affliction, for the mortality continued excessive till summer, lightened the gloom and alleviated much of the suffering. The private news she brought Winthrop was both very joyful and very sorrowful. Margaret had passed safely through the perils of childbed, and he had another daughter; but Forth (third child of his first mar- riage), just out of Cambridge, — contemporary of Mil- ton there, — fondly beloved, consecrated to the gospel ministry, had died in November ; had been weeks in his grave when his father, unsuspicious of the heavy tidings then on the way, was writing to John, Jr., " I never had letter yet from your brother Forth." Alas, poor governor ! Twice so bereaved in one year ; and the skies so dark overhead ! The Lyon's freight of supplies was at once dis- tributed, and then (February 22) the occasion was solemnized by the observance of a day of thanksgiving throughout the colony, — inauguration of New Eng- land's characteristic and most distinctive festival. Sit perpetua. 72 JOHN WIN THRO P. CHAPTER VI. THE GOVERNMENT, CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL. (1630-1631). In order not to interrupt the story o_ the Day of Distress, we have run by events that are very important. Not even the shock of the discovery of their un- provided condition, nor the ensuing bitter struggle for existence, could divert the minds of the emigrants from that which was the main object of their expatri- ation, — the planting of a church. Immediately upon the dispersion from Salem, in the month of July, 1630, on the basis of a covenant of fellowship in Christian living, subscribed — with the accompani- ment of prayer and fasting — by Governor Winthrop, Deputy-Governor Dudley, the Rev. John Wilson, and Isaac Johnson, a church was formed at Charlestown, which a few days after, enlarged in the interval by considerable additions, completed its organization in the election by all its members and out of their own number, of Mr. Wilson as teacher, of a ruling elder, and of two deacons. The institution of like churches in the several plantations followed ; except Dorchester, the people there having so organized be- FORMATION OF CHURCHES. 73 fore leaving England. At Salem the same had been done the previous year. Thus the ecclesiastical constitution of the original churches of Massachusetts was that of Congregation- alism pure and simple ; and the same was true of their customs. How this came about has been the subject of no little diversity of opinion. It has sometimes been assumed that it was mainly due to the exigencies of the situation, and was, in that sense, accidental. But what there was in the circumstances to make so com- plete a departure from the church ways altogether in which they had been bred, more convenient than to abide in them, — which in many particulars (use of liturgy, for example) there was nothing to prevent, — it is not easy to see. The Puritans were not, like the Pilgrims, Separatists on principle. We saw how fondly, in the last words with which Winthrop and his asso- ciates took leave of England, they protested their filial love for the English Church. Higginson's leave- taking, before them, had been in the same strain : — " We- will not say, as the separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England, — Farewell Babylon ! Fare- well Rome ! but we will say, farewell dear England ! farewell the Church of God in England, and all the Chris- tian friends there!" The explanation that would reconcile such expres- \ sions with the procedure so soon adopted must be largely an inference ; for the Puritans took little care to explain it themselves, — so little as to suggest that the inconsistency was to them not so great as it seems 74 JOHN WINTHROP. to later observation. The principal solution of the matter probably is that the Church of England, as they meant it, was broadly distinguished from the Establishment. It was the Church spiritual, com- posed of those who held the reformed faith in true godliness of life. In the communion of such the Church had its vital being. The doctrine of the Thirty-nine Articles had no more earnest confessors than the Puritans ; but beyond that, they were greatly out of correspondence with the Establishment, — nonconformists, as all men knew. Their nonconformity was, however, of differing degrees, as the ground covered by what they regarded the corruptions of the Church, and "scrupled" accordingly, was less or more. This our emigrants exemplified. The ministers with them were all Church of England clergymen. In the organization of the Salem and the Dorchester churches this fact had counted for nothing as qualifying for the pastoral office, which was held to require ordination de novo. At Salem, moreover, John Browne and Samuel Browne, brothers, whom the course taken there displeased, and who, with some others likewise dis- affected, stood aloof from the congregation, and insisted on worshipping by themselves, using the service of the Prayer-Book, were, for that non- conformity to nonconformity, though men of good esteem otherwise, sent back to England as factious persons. From which it appears that the view pre- vailed at Salem that both episcopal orders and liturgy were of the " rags of popery," to be eschewed. FORMATION OF CHURCHES. 75 But when Mr. Wilson was chosen pastor of the Charlestown church, — though installed by " imposi- tion of hands," it was, says Winthrop, "with this protestation by all, that it was only as a sign of election and confirmation, not of any intent that Mr. Wilson should renounce his ministry he re- ceived in England," — betokening a lighter shade of nonconformity. ^It was a good while before the Church of England question, in its theoretical aspect, was fully settled at the Bay, but the procedure was substantially Separa- tist from the start. Ten years later, Winthrop would note it in the Journal as " a thing worthy of observa- tion," that "Mr. Winthrop the younger, one of the magistrates, having many books in a chamber where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek testament, the psalms, and the common prayer were bound together. He found the common prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though there were above a thousand." But it is altogether unlikely that in 1630 he would have deemed such a hap on that wise observable. It is undeniable, however, that the prelacy feature of the Church of England had become — and for obvious reasons — an offence to the Puritan element, and that the Massachusetts colonists, under liberty of a charter construed — for example, by Winthrop in the " Model of Charity " — as conferring the privilege of shaping a " due form of government, civil and eccle- 76 JOHN WINTHROP. siastical" and emboldened, perhaps, by their remote situation, were unanimously bent on its omission from the religious institutions of the new commonwealth. And therewith they purged out all customs that in their view savoured of sacerdotalism. Only the civil magistrate could solemnize marriage ; there was no religious service at funerals ; the fasts and feasts of the Christian year were ignored ; the 'reading of the Bible in public worship without exposition was dis- allowed lest it should become ritual. How far the order taken had been planned in ad- vance is not clear. The fact that upon hearing the story of the banished Brownes the Company in London had written at once to Endicott, expressing the apprehension that possibly " some undigested counsels have too suddenly been put in execution, which may have an ill construction with the State here ... to which (as we ought) we must and will have an obsequious eye ; " together with the fact that the advice of the chiefs of the Plymouth Colony — the "Old Colony," as it was called — was sought in organizing the Salem church, the pattern of which the other churches closely followed, makes it probable that not till the emigrants arrived on the ground was the mode of " church estate " they should adopt fully known to themselves. Their haste to fix that mode may well have been occasioned by circumstances. Plunged in trouble and forced to scatter, they had never needed the supports of religion and of its ordinances more ; and great solace for their season of extremity they CIVIL GOVERNMENT SET IN MOTION 77 found therein. Says old Capt. Roger Clap, reverting to that time : — " God's holy spirit in those days was pleased to ac- company the Word with such efficacy upon the hearts of many, that our hearts were taken off from Old England and set upon heaven. The discourse not only of the aged but of the youth also was not ' How shall we go to England ? ' (though some few did not only so discourse, but also went back again) but ' How shall we go to Heaven ? Have I true grace wrought in my heart ? Have I Christ or no ? ' . . . O the many tears that have been shed in Dorchester meeting-house at such times, both by those that have declared God's work in their souls, and also by those that heard them. In those days God, even our own God, did bless New England ! " The civil government was likewise promptly in operation. As soon as the bustle of landing and getting into place was over, the Courts of Assistants began. The business transacted by them was for a time mainly the small municipal, quite a little of it of the police-court order, — the subjects generally varlets of the servant class, prone to sins of the flesh, — but some of it important. The first, at Charlestown, August 28, — nine magis- trates in attendance, — provided for the maintenance of the ministers, and appointed justices of the peace. It also cited that old offender, Thomas Morton, of Merrymount (Quincy), once expelled the country by Plymouth Colony, but now back again, and re- suming his scandalous practices, — which were indeed such, — to appear and answer for the same. At the next session it ordered his goods confiscated to pay 78 JOHN WIN THRO P. costs of suit, his house burned in satisfaction to the Indians of wrongs he had done them, and himself " sett into the bilbowes and returned prisoner to England." Morton, in his book, "The New English Canaan," published in 1637, in which he endeavours to get even with his persecutors, says that at his trial, attempting to protest against his sentence, he was silenced by a general clamour of " Hear the Gov- ernor ! hear the Governor ! " But the impression of the governor left with him after all is denoted by the fact that while he lampoons other members of the court under cover of opprobrious fictitious names, the worst he does in his case, beyond dubbing him King Winthrop, is to call him "Joshua Temperwell." The doings of these early Courts of Assistants show that the view of the magistrates as to their powers and duties was emphatically paternal. Yet they were beautifully impartial. They fined one of their own number, Sir Richard Saltonstall, five pounds for an infraction of their rules. And when Endicott, a justice of the peace, was accused of assault and bat- tery on the person of goodman Dexter, they had the matter looked into, to the result that the choleric worthy paid forty shillings' damage, notwithstanding he wrote to Winthrop : " I acknowledge I was too rash in striking him. . . . But if you had seen the manner of his carriage, with such daring of me with his arms on kembow, &c, it would have provoked a very patient man." The first Great and General Court was held in October, 1630. Only about twenty — twelve of THE NEW FREEMEN. 79 them magistrates — were qualified as members of the Company, to sit in it. But upon its meeting, no less than one hundred and eighteen more applied to it for admission to the list of freemen. Now, whatever had been the original design of the provision in the charter that all members of the Company should have a voice in affairs, — presumably it was to induce persons of quality to join, — nothing was further from it than to institute anything in the nature of popular government. Winthrop's personal theory of the true policy of government is reflected in his famous say- ing, that of the civil community " the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser." The prospect of so large an addition to the voting element — for denying the applicants seems not to have been thought of — struck the administration with something like dismay, as it was quite natural it should, especially at that juncture. To avert the hazards involved in it, a measure was framed by the Court to the effect that thenceforth the scope of political action by the whole body of freemen should be limited to the election of Assistants ; the Assistants to choose the governor and the deputy-governor out of their own number; and the board of magistrates to do all the governing. This measure, though squarely opposed to the express terms of the charter, was, at a public gathering of the colony, " fully assented to by the general vote of the people and erection of hands," and then the appli- cants were received. But that was not all. As a further safeguard, the Court of Assistants in March So JOHN WINTHROP. following (1631) ordered that the acts of a majority of the Assistants resident in the colony, whether or not they were a full board, should be valid ; the object of which was to forestall the risk of having vacancies filled by the commons with unsuitable per- sons, and at the same time to leave such vacancies open for certain gentlemen whose arrival from Eng- land was looked for. Yet not even with these steps of prudence were the leaders satisfied. The first Court of Elections (May, 1631) supplemented them with two more. It made a rule which in its practical working would keep the Assistants already in office in their places without re-election till removed for cause. It also passed the celebrated law that " to the end the body of commons may be preserved of good and honest men, ... for time to come no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same." That all this usurpation — it was no less — was acquiesced in by the people, must be attributed in some degree to their ignorance, as was afterward said, " of what prerogative and liberty they had of the charter ; " more to the great and deserved respect in which the magistrates and the ministers were per- sonally held, who represented and who felt it to be necessary; most of all to the preoccupation of the general mind with the sufferings of the time. It was mischievous legislation, and so turned out; but it was inspired by wholly disinterested motives, and was conformed to ideas most sincerely entertained by those WELL-MEANT USURPATION. 81 with whom it originated. That it was oppressive, they would have deemed the absurdest misjudgment. The rule relating to church-membership, it should be observed, was not in itself an innovation. It existed in England then and for a very long while after. It is celebrated, as we have said, because the estate of church-membership in the Massachusetts Colony was conditioned on what was approved as evi- dence of actual Christian character. That was the only singularity attaching to it, and is the principal ground of its lasting offence. The derision of the piety of the Forefathers is of ancient date. An extant letter of Endicott's to Winthrop describes its practice in the very beginning by sailors ; tells how on the passage they would " in a scoffe ask when they should come to the holie Land ; " and in harbour, would remark upon a colonist coming aboard ship : " This is one of the holie brethren, mockinglie and disdainefullie ; n and feign surprise that such people offered to buy pro- vision, observing " that they could not want anything, they were full of the spiritt." But however freely the leaders, having on one side, so far as might be, insured the public welfare, breathed for a season, the problem of government at the Bay was not yet solved by a good deal, as will be seen. 82 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER VII. BOSTON. (1630-1631.) A memorable event of the colony's first year, not yet noticed, is the removal of Winthrop and the most of the people with him at Charlestown, to Boston, — which happened on this wise. A particular hardship experienced at Charlestown had been lack of good water. Across the Charles River, on the peninsula then called Shawmut, less frequently Trimountain, lived, and had for some while lived, one of those few lone planters lodged at various points on the New England coast, named William Blackstone, conjec- tured to have been a tenant agent in some sort of a claim to the Massachusetts territory thereabout, based on a grant prior to that of the Bay Company. Mr. Blackstone seeing the distress of Charlestown, and its aggravation by reason of insufficient water, moved with generous pity, " came and acquainted the gov- ernor " of a copious and excellent spring over on his land, — " withal inviting and soliciting him thither." Accordingly, early in autumn (1630), the shift was made. The Common was part of this good Black- stone's farm. Washington and Tremont Streets, says tradition, " follow the windings " of his cow. He is the original Bostonian, and for his hospitable spirit SUA WMUT PENINSULA. 83 worthy of the honour, — otherwise worthy also. He was a Cambridge graduate, a clergyman, and of schol- arly, bookish tastes. The colony, while brushing aside the claim he represented, treated him afterward with grateful liberality ; and he continued to reside in Boston till 1635, when, being a lover of seclusion, he retired elsewhere. He became a freeman of the Com- monwealth, but would never connect himself with any of its churches ; when urged to do so, replying with a humour not wholly inapt, " I came from England because I did not like the lord-bishops ; but I cannot join with you because I would not be under the lord- brethren." The Boston peninsula of 1630 was between seven and eight hundred acres in extent, or of less than half its present area. By the earliest descriptions it was scantily wooded, bushy, with " hideous thickets " at intervals where "wolves and bears nursed up their young from the eyes of all beholders." That it was " environed by brinish floods," and was of such an elevation on its " frontice-part next the sea," were regarded features of peculiar advantage as favourable to its fortification. The new occupants took up their quarters on the east or seaward side, — the site of the governor's house, homely but spacious, being op- posite present Milk Street, and his garden including the ground on which stands the Old South. Under his roof the sessions of the Court were held, and probably, till the meeting-house was built two years later, the congregation assembled for worship. Among the official duties of the chief of the state, 84 . JOHN WINTHROP. during this initial period, was the superintendence of Indian relations. Of the New England aborigines there were then in Massachusetts and the regions bordering several thousands, of half-a-dozen different tribes ; but the number in the near vicinity of the Bay was quite small, — at most, two or three hundred ; the bulk of them, under Chief Chickatabot, dwelling on Neponset River east of Dorchester; though, of the early writers, Wood speaks of a " duke of Saugus " (Lynn), and Johnson of the "earldom of Agawam" (Ipswich) . The original missionary intention of the Puritan colonists toward this native people was expressly de- clared in the charter, and shortly illustrated in the apostolic labours of Eliot ; it was attested also in the device of the colony seal, — a savage armed with bow and arrow (as on the present State seal) and issuing from his mouth the motto, " Come over and help us." In the company's letters to Endicott be- fore Winthrop sailed, it is much insisted on, that the purpose of their evangelization shall be kept in view. They must be courteously and honestly dealt with, and all offences against them strictly punished. The effort must be diligently made to teach and train their children " whilest they are yonge." In particular, if they lay claim " to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent," — claim compara- ble to that of the Pigmies to the Aruwimi Forest, — the endeavour must be " to purchase their title so that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion." The Colony Records very abundantly show that great INDIAN RELATION'S. 85 care was used by the government to secure these poor wild neighbours Christian treatment. It is a false charge that alleges the contrary. The sentence against Thomas Morton that has been referred to, is one of a very numerous class of penalties awarded by the Court for injuries done them. Winthrop's Journal throughout is witness that their conversion was never out of his thoughts. At a certain conjunc- tion of affairs relating to them, which occurred toward the close of his life, he says : — " We now began to conceive that the Lord's time was at hand for opening a door of light and grace to those Indians, and some fruit appeared of our kind dealing with them and protecting them, and righting them." Notwithstanding they betrayed in general no dis- position of hostility on the first appearance of the emigrants* it was deemed a wise precaution, consider- ing the exposure, to organize a night-watch on their account in the several settlements. The fear of them that was felt is reflected in a lively narration by Dud- ley, of an alarm which arose from the firing of mus- kets at Watertown to scare the wolves away from a strayed calf, and spread to Roxbury and thence to Boston, turning the whole population out of bed. " So in the morning," he concludes, "the calf being found safe, the wolves affrighted, and our danger past, we went merrily to breakfast." But the next Court or- dered that whoever fired a musket again for such a cause after the watch was set, should pay a fine of forty shillings or be whipped. 86 JOHN WINTHROP. It is amusing to read the governor's account — and there is a recognizable flavour of amusement in it ; very grave though — of some of the hospitalities he was incidentally called to exercise in his Indian diplomacy. Thus in March, 1631, the great Chick- atabot came, with his " sannops and squaws," and a present of corn, to visit him. " After they had all dined and had each a small cup of sack and beer, and the men tobacco, he sent away all his men and women, (though the governor would have stayed them in regard of the rain and thunder). Him- self and one squaw and one sannop stayed all night, and, being in English clothes, the governor set him at his own table, where he behaved himself as soberly, etc., as an Englishman." Three weeks later, — " Chickatabot came to the governor and desired to buy some English clothes for himself. The governor told him that English sagamores did not use to truck ; but he called his tailor, and gave him order to make him a suit of clothes ; whereupon he gave the governor two large skins of coat beaver, and after he and his men had dined they departed, and said he would come again three days after for his suit." Which he punctually did ; and the tailor was punctual too, — " Chickatabot came to the governor again, and he put him into a very good new suit from head to foot, and after he set meat before them ; but he would not eat till the governor had given thanks, and after meat he desired him to do the like, and so departed." THE GOVERNOR AS PASTOR. 87 These scenes solicit Fancy to try her pencil upon them. It was but a little over a year since Winthrop had bid adieu to that fair Suffolk hall where he was wont to have the choicest of England for his guests. There were certainly queer contrasts in the life of the lord of Groton Manor. Other like visitors the governor had in those days : among them a sachem from Connecticut, attended by Jack Straw, " an Indian who had lived in England and served Sir Walter Raleigh, and was now turned Indian again," who made tempting overtures look- ing to a white settlement in his country; but the governor, learning that he was at war, scented an ulterior design and turned him off, though not till he was well fed. jftft f««*W ^ Jjft ^dre* and rfjsfr creet management, he established terms of amity with trie savage people that were unbroken for a good while. To his multifarious civil functions in these difficult times were added others ; for Elder Wilson, pre- vious to setting out for England in the spring (1631) to bring over his family, designated the governor as one of three members of the Boston congregation most fit for " the exercise of prophecy " in his ab- sence ; and so he had to take his turn at preaching. It required, however, no special commission to charge the governor with the moral oversight ot his colony. How he exemplified the fatherly char- acter in this field is suggested by an entry in the Journal at about the date of the transfer from Charlestown : — 88 JOHN WINTHROP, " The governor, upon consideration of the incon- veniencies which had grown in England by drinking one to another, restrained it at his own table and wished others to do the like, so as it grew by little and little to disuse." The doleful winter at length wore away ; and though there was scarceness still, the warmer suns, the abate- ment of the sickness, and the opportunity for work, combined to lighten the load of all hearts. In the deficiency of the peninsula for their farming needs, the Boston settlers occupied lands contiguous. Winthrop fixed on Mystic, on the river, in from Charlestown Neck toward Medford village ; the Court giving him title there to six hundred acres, — named by him Ten Hills ; that number of hills to be seen from it; so called to this day, — where he built a house for summer use. Where, also, by the beginning of July, 1 63 1, he had launched a bark of thirty tons, christened "The Blessing of the Bay," — name not at all prosaic, half sportive, it seems ; at any rate, indica- tive of a cheerful spirit in him. "The Blessing," as she was familiarly styled, proved a nimble craft, and immediately became active in the public service, voy- aging to Maine, to Connecticut, to Long Island, to New Netherlands, — from which last, in 1633, she brought Winthrop a letter from its governor, " called Gwalter Van Twilly, very courteous and respectful as it had been to a very honourable person." Not more thrifty was Frederick the Great for his kingdom, nor Queen Elizabeth for hers, than was ever the first governor of Massachusetts for his little ADVENTURES AT MYSTIC. 89 commonwealth. The higher character and ends of the enterprise in which he was enlisted unfailingly held the foremost place in his regard. But he had withal a just appreciation of the material elements of success, and a quick sagacious eye always to its inter- ests in that direction. A generally complete view of the colony development on this side is deducible from the Journal. He pushed trade zealously from the outset, — a little too zealously his neighbours of Plymouth thought, finding their preserves invaded. It was at Ten Hills, in the fall of 1631, that while resting there from cares of state and looking after his property, he had an adventure, his report of which, for the revealing hints of one kind and another it affords, is worth quoting : — " The governour, being at his farm house at Mistick, walked out after supper, and took a piece in his hand, supposing he might see a wolf, (for they came daily about the house, and killed swine and calves, etc. ;) and, being about half a mile off, it grew suddenly dark, so as, in coming home, he mistook his path, and went till he came to a little house of Sagamore John, which stood empty. There he stayed, and having a piece of match in his pocket, (for he always carried about him match and a compass, and in summer time snakeweed,) he made a good fire near the house, and lay down upon some old mats, which he found there, and so spent the night, sometimes walking by the fire, sometimes singing psalms, and some- times getting wood, but could not sleep. It was (through God's mercy) a warm night ; but a little before day it be- gan to rain, and, having no cloak, he made shift by a long pole to climb up into the house. In the morning, there came thither an Indian squaw, but perceiving her before 90 JOHN WINTHROP. she had opened the door, he barred her out ; yet she stayed there a great while essaying to get in, and at last she went away, and he returned safe home, his servants having been much perplexed for him, and having walked about, and shot off pieces, and hallooed in the night, but he heard them not." A little after this, with a considerable attendance, he paid an official and friendly visit on foot — a rough tramp it must have been — to Lynn and Salem ; at which latter Endicott entertained him with honour and such bounty as he could. But the supreme event of the year, that was to dis- pel its shadows and crown its mercies to Winthrop, was now close at hand, — the arrival of his family. In a letter to Margaret in March, — the last she had from him in England, — speaking of his anticipation thereof, he said : — " These things I durst scarce think of heretofore ; but now I embrace them oft, and delight my heart in them, because I trust, that the Lord, our God, who hath kept me and so many of my company in health and safety among so many dead corpses, through the heat of the summer and the cold of winter, and hath also preserved thee in the peril of childbirth,* and upheld thy heart in the midst of so many discouragements, with the life of all thy company, will, of his own goodness and free mercy, pre- serve us and ours still, that we shall meet in joy and peace, which I daily pray for, and shall expect in the Lord's good time." Most of his correspondence in the interval of their separation had been with John, Jr., on whom fell the care of all preparation for the approaching jour- ARRIVAL OF HIS FAMILY. 91 ney, and mainly concerned that business. The chief matter involved was the sale of the homestead at Groton, which was at last effected, though at a sacri- fice. Winthrop had appraised it at ,£5,760. It brought £4,200. In his instructions regarding outfit, taught by experience, he laid much emphasis on the provision stock. He was also particular on the subject of medicines, which was natural under the circumstances ; but he was always a good deal of a doctor, as crops out in both his letters and the Jour- nal by frequent signs, of which the snakeweed in his pocket when he was lost is a specimen. When he lay dying in 1649, m ^ e public exercises of a solemn fast for his recovery, it was named among his eminent services that he had been " an help to our bodies by physick." Margaret and her company, with John Eliot for fellow-passenger, sailed in August by the same ship — the Lyon — that brought relief to the famished Bay in Februaiy. The passage was nearly as long as the Arbella's ; but on the 2d of November the Lyon was reported at anchor off Nantasket, whither the gov- ernor — back just in time from his Salem trip — hastened, and beheld once more the face that was sweetest on earth to him. It smiled on him through tears, however. There was a sad check to the first gladness of the meeting; for Margaret's babe was not in her arms, and she had to tell of its burial at sea nine weeks before. The public congratulation was fervent in the ex- treme, and evidence of Winthrop's place in the gen- 92 . JOHN WINTHROP. leral.heart. When the Lyon moved up into Boston harbour, " at their landing, the captains, with their companies in arms, entertained them with a guard, and divers vollies of shot, and three drakes ; and divers of the assistants and most of the people of the near plantations, came to welcome them, and brought and sent, for divers days, great store of provisions, as fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese, partridges, etc., so as the like joy and manifestation of love had never been seen in New England. It was a great marvel, that so much people and such store of provisions could be gathered together at so few hours' warning." Boston further celebrated the happy occasion by a day of thanksgiving. The joy was felt beyond the limits of the Bay, as the good news sped. Governor Bradford came up from Plymouth to testify in person his sympathy with it. So the governor had his living family — all but Deane, nine years old, left behind at school — with him again and around his board. There was Mar- garet, on whom to look purged his bosom of trouble and filled him with content ; there was good son John, with his lately wedded bride ; and Mary, and Stephen, and Adam, and little Sam. Vacant places, too, there were ; but great was the gratitude of the master of that household. It was a rude dwelling to which he introduced them. How pure and elevated the in- fluences pervading the home life there resumed is suggested by an exquisite passage which the governor by and by, in a season of many public solicitudes, turned his pen aside, as it were, to inscribe in the BOSTON. 93 Journal. He has interrupted his wonted strain of business to speak of the spiritual experience of certain young children of " one of the magistrates," — writing in the third person as usual and naming no names, but he can refer to no one but himself, — and thus continues : — ' ' *' " Upon this occasion it is not impertinent (though no credit nor regard be to be had of dreams in these days) to report a dream, which the father of these children had at the same time, viz., that, coming into his chamber, he found his wife (she was a very gracious woman) in bed, and three or four of their children lying by her, with most sweet and smiling countenances, with crowns upon their heads and blue ribbons about their leaves. When he awaked, he told his wife his dream, and made this inter- pretation of it, that God would take of her children to make them fellow heirs with Christ in his kingdom." In the course of the winter of 1631-1632 the gov- vernor found time to explore inland somewhat, this way and that, — eight miles beyond Watertown up the Charles, northward above Medford, southward in the Neponset region, — and everywhere he went he left names. A tributary of the Charles was called Masters Brook, " because the eldest of their company was one John Masters ; " and a Jiuge split boulder Adam's Chair, " because the youngest of their com- pany was Adam Winthrop." This was fun for Adam, it is safe to guess : he was twelve years old. On the Medford expedition "a very great pond" was discovered, with " divers small rocks standing up here and there in it," and called for that reason Spot Pond 94 JOHN WINTHROP. (so named still) ; and a rock where they lunched " they called Cheese Rock, because, when they went to eat somewhat, they had only cheese, — the gov- ernor's man forgetting in haste to put up some bread." Evidently no want of blithe spirits on these excursions. SIMMER OF THE POLITICAL CALDRON. 95 CHAPTER VIII. SIMMER OF THE POLITICAL CALDRON. (1631-1633.) But the governor had on hand at about this time matters less agreeable than those with which the last chapter concluded, — a complication of them, in fact. The most vexatious to him was a difference — begin- ning of a series of differences — in which he became personally involved with Deputy-Governor Dudley. That such a thing occurred at all, is, considering the character of the two men, — though Dudley was by constitution touchy, — to be largely attributed to the situation ; in some points resembling that of the rear column of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition; ex- tremely harassing; calculated to subject the temper of those thrown together in leadership to severe strain. The origin of the trouble is obscure ; but from Winthrop's own report it appears to have started in a soreness on Dudley's part, produced by Win- throp's disapproval of certain bargains he had made as hard ; by the governor's criticism, also, of a house the deputy was building at Newtown (name changed to Cambridge in 1638, till when we will call it New- town only) as too expensive. \ 96 JOHN WINTHROP. As Dudley was several years Winthrop's senior, and a person of honourable degree,, it naturally required much grace to take such faithful dealing with entire meekness, — more, it seems, than the deputy had. The first open manifestation of his disaffected state was his quitting a session of the Assistants' Court in April, 1632, leaving in the hands of the secretary his resignation. This the Court did not accept, but invited Dudley to a conference about it ; at which conference he gave as the reason of his action, that it was his only way to avoid freeing his mind on some subjects, as for the public peace he would prefer not to do. To the opinion of all the magistrates that it was not allowable to relinquish office in that fashion, he replied that his opinion, by which he proposed to be guided, was different. Upon mention of his hard bargains he waxed wrathy, " tell- ing the governor that if he had thought he had sent for him to his house to give him such usage he would not have come there." He averred that the trans- actions in question were lawful, " and that he never knew any man of understanding of other opinion ; and that the governor thought otherwise of it, it was his weakness." " The governor," the Journal proceeds, " took notice of these speeches, and bare them with more patience than he had done on a like occasion at another time." With regard to the wainscot, which, it comes out, was the special offence of the new house, the deputy declared that " it was for warmth, and the charge was little, being but clap- boards nailed to the wall in the form of wainscot." THE WRATH OF DUDLEY. 97 But Winthrop somehow privately succeeded in soothing his friend's irritation for the time ; for at the annual Court of Elections, a few days on (May 8), the whole government being continued in office, Dudley " accepted of his place again, and the gover- nor and he being reconciled the day before, all things were carried very lovingly amongst them all, etc." This proved, however, only a truce. The variance shortly revived, and grew to such a pitch that in August the two principals and five of the leading ministers met at Charlestown to have the matter out, and see what could be done about it. There, at length, Dudley did free his mind. Having the floor, he began by saying that, passing some particular grievances (probably the more private), he would "come first to complain of the breach of promise both in the governor and others in not building at Newtown." From which (and the reply to it) we learn that a plan at one time agreed upon to make Newtown the colony capital, had been given up, but not till Dudley, on the strength of it, had put up there that extravagant log mansion of his. For himself, Winthrop's answer was, " that he had performed the words of the promise ; for he had a house up, and seven or eight servants abiding in it, by the day appointed : and for the removing of his house, he alleged, that, seeing that the rest of the Assistants went not about to build, and that his neighbours of Boston had been discouraged from removing thither by Mr. Deputy himself, and there- upon had (under all their hands) petitioned him, 98 JOHN WINTHROP. that (according to the promise he made to them when they first sate down with him at Boston, viz., that he would not remove, except they went with him) he would not leave them ; — this was the occa- sion that he removed his house." Upon this count, the ministers, retiring for con- sultation, found that the governor was excusable "a tanto but not a to to ; " that he " was in fault for re- moving of his house so suddenly, without conferring with the deputy and the rest of the Assistants:" which fault the governor willingly acknowledged. So far so good ; but there was more to follow. After an intermission for dinner, the deputy resumed, at first in a mild strain, saying that what he should now bring forward would be " in love and out of his care of the public, not by way of accusation, but for his own satisfaction." He then proceeded to some very searching inquiries on subjects of great moment, which immediately touched the governor to the quic k. He de si red | Jo | kp Qy„,flif hi™ Jitha*.^^ ground, _a nd r ) i „ miK , tfrl ; i ■■^fc **ky** '>' ^' > « w*^>iy*«w»i»*^» patent or otherwise." So here was the root of the deputy's discontent, after all. The governor fired upat once : he had, he said, the authority the patent gave him. "Then," said the deputy, "' ex- cept power to call courts, and precedency for honour and order,' you have no more authority than every Assistant." " I have more," cried the governor ; "I have whatsoever belongs to a governor by common law or the statutes ; and T desire you to show wherein I have exceeded it ! " THE WRATH OF DUDLEY. 99 "Speaking this somewhat apprehensively" (we return to the Journal, this is Winthrop's own ac- count, be it remembered) , " the deputy began to be in a passion, and told the governor that if he were so round he would be round too. The governor bade him be round if he would. So the deputy rose up in great fury and passion, and the governor grew very hot also, so as they both fell into bitterness; but by mediation of the mediators they were soon pacified." Order being restored, the deputy went on to name a list of particulars in which, in his judgment, the governor had exceeded his right. He wanted to know by what authority he had removed the ordnance and erected a fort at Boston ; by what authority he had lent powder to Plymouth ; by what authority he had licensed a certain person to settle at Merrimack ; by what authority he had given leave for the erection of a fish weir upon Charles River ; by what authority he had disposed of lands to divers parties ; by what authority he had allowed certain banished persons to linger in the colony ; by what authority certain fines decreed by the Court had not been enforced; by what authority he had reopened cases once adjudi- cated by the Court, and moved to alter the sentence. So the governor's executive sins, as the deputy conceived them, were set in order before him. To these interrogations Winthrop, lawyer-like, claimed that, as the charges conveyed in them were unknown to him till that moment, and as for his official acts he was accountable only to the Court, he might justly ioo JOHN WINTHROP. refuse answer. Yet, for the sake of peace, and to clear himself with the mediators present, and to dis- abuse the deputy of the absurd notion that he had sought " to make himself popular that he might gain absolute power and bring all the Assistants under his subjection," he would answer them ; which he did, seriatim, and on the whole successfully. But he owned that in the case of the unenforced penalties, he had, from motives of humanity, no doubt stretched his prerogative. As for that, though, he could easily prove that the deputy in his place had done the same. He " desired the mediators to consider, whether he had exceeded his authority or not, and how little cause the deputy had to charge him with it; for if he had made some slips in two or three years' government, he ought rather to have covered them, seeing he could not be charged that he had taken advantage of his authority to oppress or wrong any man, or to benefit himself; but, for want of a public stock, had disbursed all common charges out of his own estate." The meeting having closed — as it had opened - — with prayer, "the governor brought the deputy on- ward of his way, and every man went to his own home." The mediating elders, whose position was certainly not enviable, in due time announced the result, — which Winthrop accepted, — that for the relief of Newtown, left in the lurch by the change of plan about the seat of government, the governor should obtain the people there a minister, and assist in his maintenance for a season ; or, did that prove THE WRATH OF DUDLEY. 101 impracticable, that he should "give the deputy toward his charges in building there twenty pounds." The minister could not be procured, as turned out, and the twenty pounds were paid; which Dudley returned "with this reason to Mr. Wilson," one of the mediators, — who saw that it got to the proper ear, — " that he was so well persuaded of the governor's love to him, and did prize it so much, as, if they had given him one hundred pounds instead of twenty pounds, he would not have taken it." Thence on for another while the sky was clear, — for such a while that Winthrop turned back the leaves of the journal to insert, just after the above extract : " Notwithstanding the heat of contention, which had been between the governour and deputy, yet they usually met about their affairs, and that without any appearance of any breach or discontent ; and ever after kept peace and good correspondency together, in love and friendship." But the announcement was premature. The clouds gathered again. In November, 1633 (this runs ahead of our history a little, but we may as well finish the episode) , Dudley took umbrage at what he reck- oned an inequitable levy on Newtown for labour on the fortifications of Boston, and flatly declined to furnish it. Winthrop "wrote friendly to him," but failed to mollify him j he remained stiffly mutinous. Mr. John Haynes and Rev. Thomas Hooker (just come from England, and Dudley's guests,) went to see the governor about the matter, carrying with them a letter from the deputy, which, upon reading, 102 JOHN WINTHROP. his Excellency found " full of bitterness," and pres- ently handed it back to Mr. Hooker, saying, " I am not willing to keep such an occasion of provocation by me." But the governor had learned his man. " Soon after he wrote to the deputy (who had before desired to buy a fat hog or two of him, being somewhat short of provisions) to desire him to send for one, (which he would have sent him, if he had known when his occa- sion had been to have made use of it,) and to accept it as a testimony of his good will ; and, lest he should make any scruple of it, he made Mr. Haynes and Mr. Hooker (who both sojourned in his house) partakers with him. Upon this the deputy returned this answer : ' Your over- coming yourself hath overcome me. Mr. Haynes, Mr. Hooker, and myself do most kindly accept your good will ; but we desire, without offence, to refuse your offer, and that I may only trade with you for two hogs ; ' and so very lovingly concluded." An incident set down in the Journal a good dis- tance further on, in 1638, — by which time the gov- ernor's Mary had become the deputy's daughter-in- law, — reveals the issue of all controversy between these worthy gentlemen. " The governour and deputy [who have not been gov- ernor and deputy the whole interval, but are so now again] went to Concord to view some land for farms, and going down the river about four miles, they made choice of a place for one thousand acres for each of them. They offered each other the first choice, but because the deputy's was first granted, and himself had store of land already, the governour yielded him the choice. So, at the place where the deputy's land was to begin, there were two great THE FREEMEN DISSATISFIED. 103 stones, which they called the Two Brothers, in remem- brance that they were brothers by. their children's mar- riage, and did so brotherly agree, and for that a little creek near those stones was to part their lands." The summer of 1631 also brought the beginning of that political controversy that in one form and another was to vex the colony for many years, and in which Winthrop bore the most conspicuous part. & No sooner was the pressure of the winter's misery relieved, than the freemen bethought them of the shape the government had assumed, — the powers thereof, legislative, judicial, executive, all lodged in a few hands, their own share reduced to the mini- mum, — and found themselves dissatisfied. It had, indeed, reverted to the type of an almost patriarchal simplicity. The handful of magistrates by theory followed the rule of the common law of England ; but there was no code, and practically causes, as they arose, were determined at their discretion, or as the Scriptures were by them thought to prescribe. The government was, in short, a theocracy administered by an oligarchy. Such it was impossible for it there to remain. Evolution out of that simplicity into the articulate system of a free state was inevitable in a community which held the materials of it in solution. "All the factors of previous living — home, church, military organization, political representation — were enfolded in the families and persons of these English men and women." In several points of view the "existing conditions specially favoured the development that was soon in 104 JOHN WJNTHROP. process. The charter favoured it. The Massachusetts Bay Company had projected no such outcome; for that matter, they intended and believed in the rule of the few. But the charter itself stood in their way, as it proved. They who framed it most em- phatically "builded better than they knew." The compulsory dispersion of the colony into separate plantations favoured it; for of it came, by natural consequence, the municipality of the town, — most potent of all circumstances to generate ideas that would antagonize the civil order established, and gradually replace it with republican institutions. The slow and moderate increase of the colony at first, ■^ favoured it. For a whole year after the Winthrop emi- gration less than a hundred joined it ; and down to 1634, — when Laud set the stream aflow again, — only about a thousand in all. This small accession — small compared with what had been calculated on — was due to the rumour at home of the hardships of the colony, and to other malicious ill reports of it, and was a great disappointment. But it was a very fortunate thing. With a vital and delicate work of political readjustment going on, it was well that the body of freemen participating in it — no more than three hundred and fifty were admitted to the franchise in those three years — should be ; as it was, composed of those who stood on terms of personal acquaintance and respect. The influx of a crowd of strangers would have seriously enhanced the difficulties of the situation. The first distinct intimation of a rising concern on the part of the commons regarding their position, THE FREEMEN MUTTER. 105 is Winthrop's note in the Journal that at the confer- ence (May, 1632) about Dudley's resignation, he communicated the fact " that he had heard that the people intended at the next General Court to desire that the Assistants might be chosen anew every year, and that the governor might be chosen by the whole Court and not by the Assistants only." This was startling, unacceptable news. Assistant Roger Ludlow, of Dorchester, on hearing it, " grew into a passion, and said that then we should have no government, but that there would be an interim wherein every man might do what he pleased, etc.,'' and declared that did such a thing come about, he would go back to England. <-<^ A previous occurrence, however, was symptomatic of the awakening doubt of the people concerning their rights under present arrangements. Watertown, on advice of its ministers, publicly given, " that it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage," de- clined to furnish its quota of a general tax assessed in February (1631) by the magistrates to meet the cost of a u pally sadoe " at Newtown. The Court had there- upon called Watertown to serious account, and had obtained its submission. " The ground of their error was," says Winthrop, " for that they took this government to be no other but as of a mayor and alderman, who have not power to make laws or raise taxations without the people, but understanding that this government was rather in the nature of a parlia- ment . . . they were fully satisfied." 106 JOHN WINTHROP. They did not stay satisfied, though, very long. The same questioning, as we judge from subsequent disclosures, was audible in other quarters. There was wisdom enough in the administration to recog- nize the state of things, and to discern that the counsel of Roger Ludlow's passion was not to be taken in meeting it. At the Court of Elections in May, 1632, the first thing done was to rescind the rule by which the Assistants alone had power to choose the executive, and to adopt another, giving the free- men a direct voice in that election. The rule, too, that the Assistants once chosen should hold their places till removed for cause, was dropped ; but more significantly still, it further ordered the ap- pointment of a committee of two or three from each plantation (of which there were now eight) " to con- fer with the Court about raising of a public stock, so as what they should agree upon should bind all," — which committee was the egg of a house of repre- sentatives in due time. These were important steps toward possessing the commons of their chartered privilege, the extent of which neither they nor the leaders thus far apprehended. But paternalism was very slightly hurt as yet. The Journal acquaints us with the circumstance that at this same court " a proposition was made by the people that every com- pany of trained men might choose their own captain and officers, but the governor giving them reasons to the contrary they were satisfied without it." The election, on the reformed basis, continued the entire government in office, as has been before THE GOVERNOR DECLINES GIFTS. 107 noted, 1 and added three new members to the Board of Assistants, — one of them, John Winthrop, Jr. That, notwithstanding something in the nature of a political opposition had developed, there was and had been a state of prevalent good feeling in the colony, is shown by the tenor of a speech Winthrop made in Court, after taking his oath as governor this third time, which merits insertion, both for the in- formation it conveys and for the quality of the speaker reflected in it. He had, he said, " received gratuities from divers towns, which he received with much comfort and content; he had also received many kindnesses from particular persons, which he would not refuse, lest he should be accounted un- courteous, etc. ; but he professed, that he received them with a trembling heart, in regard of God's rule, and the consciousness of his own infirmity; and therefore desired them, that hereafter they would not take it ill, if he did refuse presents from par- ticular persons, except they were from the assistants, or from some special friends ; to which no answer was made ; but he was told after, that many good people were much grieved at it, for that he never had any allowance towards the charge of his place." It may be remarked here, that it was not till the year following, when Winthrop was the fourth time elected governor, that any appropriation out of the public funds was made for the salary of the chief magistrate, and then it was ^150. This year, however, he received from the Court the grant, or a perpetual lease at a 1 Page 97. 108 JOHN WINTHROP. nominal rent, of Conant's Island in the harbour, called thereafter " The Governor's Garden," which continued in possession of his family till purchased by the United States for the site of Fort Winthrop. To judge that Massachusetts in those earliest days or at any time in that generation was, except for brief periods, preoccupied with politics, would be an error. The conscious life of the community was above all religious, and centred, not about the General Court, but about the meeting-houses. In 1633 the Court found it even necessary to re- strain by regulation an excessive employment of time in week-day religious services. Compared with spiritual concernments, those of civil government were, to aristocrats and democrats alike, second- ary. The State was incident to the Church, and its servant. The bond that incorporated and held the colonists together as a society was the fellowship of the sanctuary. One mark of the supremacy with them of the ecclesiastical view of the structure they were rearing in the wilderness, was their reading of those unusual phenomena of Nature, which, after the manner of their time, they scanned as portents. Thus, for instance, in this summer of 1632, the governor records : — " At Watertown there was (in the view of divers wit- nesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake ; and, after a long fight, the mouse prevailed and killed the snake. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, holy man, hearing of it. gave this interpretation : That the snake was the devil ; the mouse was a poor contemptible THE GOVERNOR VISITS THE PILGRIMS. 109 >♦ people, which God had brought hither, which should over- come Satan here, and dispossess him of his kingdom. Upon the same occasion, he told the governour, that, be- fore he was resolved to come into this country, he dreamed he was here, and that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and became a marvellous goodly Church." Nor in their isolation and pinch of adversity, was their care for the interest of religion restricted to their own Zion. Twice, during 1632, successes of the Protestant cause in Germany, of which new-comers brought word, were included in the subjects of their public thanksgiving ; and all through their struggling period they are seen continually responding with thanksgiving or with fast, as the case may be, to the shifting phases of the great battle for a purer faith going on in the Old World. Late in the fall of 1632 the Massachusetts gov- ernor returned his brother of Plymouth's compli- ment of the previous year by paying him a week's visit, on which occasion Puritans and Pilgrims had a good time together. The brave ship Lyon, sail- ing for England, — her last voyage ; she laid her hon- ourable bones on a Virginia shoal not long after, — brought Winthrop and his party, including Elder Wilson, on their way as far as Wessaguscus (Wey- mouth), whence they continued their journey, twenty- five miles farther by an Indian* trail, on foot. "The governor of Plymouth, Mr. William Bradford (a very discreet and grave man), with Mr. Brewster no JOHN WIN THRO P. the elder and some others, came forth and met them without the town, and conducted them to the governor's house, where they were kindly enter- tained, and feasted every day at several houses." The Journal's account of the Sunday that came into the visit is especially quaint and pleasing. In the forenoon " there was a sacrament, which they did partake in;" in the afternoon a sermon, and "ac- cording to their custom," a question propounded for discussion, to which " the governor of Plymouth spake; . . . after him, the elder; then some two or three more of the congregation. Then the elder desired the governor of Massachusetts and Mr. Wil- son to speak to it, which they did. When this was ended, the deacon, Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their duty of contribution ; whereupon the governor and all the rest went down to the deacon's seat, and put into the box and then returned." During the visit — though probably not on Sun- day — a point of casuistry, warmly in dispute in Plymouth at that time, namely, whether, since it was * sinful to call any man good," the title " good- man," as commonly used, were permissible, was sub- mitted to Winthrop for an opinion. His answer — which composed the strife — was, that it was a mere conventionality, as in the case of the court-crier's "Good men and true," understood by no one to refer to moral quality ; an ancient . custom, which it would be a pity to disturb. When the visitors could stay no longer, though the start homeward was made before sunrise, the THE GOVERNOR VISITS THE PILGRIMS, m Plymouth governor with the principal men of the colony attended them " near half a mile out of town in the dark," and some others of less dignity a dis- tance of ten miles with the " governor's mare " for his distinguished guest to ride. Over the North River, which crossed their route, they were carried pick- back " by one Luddam, their guide, (as they had been when they came, the stream being very strong, and up to the crotch;) so the governour called that passage Luddam's Ford. Thence they came to a place called Hue's Cross. The governour, being displeased at the name, in respect . that such things might hereafter give the Papists occasion to say, that their religion was first planted in these parts, changed the name, and called it Hue's Folly. So they came, that evening, to Wessaguscus . . . and the next day came safe to Boston." The governor was a trifle over- scrupulous about Hue's Cross, as well as less broad-minded than he had been on the "goodman" question, since it really meant Hue's Crossing; somewhat over-free, too, for it was not in his jurisdiction. H2 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER IX. BOILING OF THE POLITICAL CALDRON. (1633-1635.) Though the increase of the colony by emigration the first three years was inconsiderable in numbers, it included several persons of eminence in the annals of Massachusetts and of New England. Among them, besides John Eliot and John Winthrop, Jr., already named, were Roger Williams and John Humphrey; the latter son-in-law (like Isaac Johnson) of the Earl of Lincoln, signer of the Cambridge Agree- ment, former deputy-governor of the Company in England, who was made Assistant immediately upon his coming. But by far the most important arrival was a company or congregation of two hundred, led by its pastors, Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone, and by John Haynes, — men of high merit, all three, — that landed in September, 1633, ana " settled in Newtown. In the same ship came also John Cotton, — he who preached the farewell at Southampton, — henceforward prominently identified with the colony as long as he lived. He had held a distinguished position at home as rector for twenty years of St. Botolph's parish, Lincolnshire ; its church one of the noblest ecclesiastical structures in England ; the same JOHN COTTON. 1 13 whose bells "rung out the Brides of Enderby" in the High Tide of 15 71 ; the lantern in whose tower, long a beacon to mariners on the North Sea, was said to have gone out when Cotton went away. He now crossed the Atlantic " to preach the gospel," says Palfrey, " within the mud walls and under the thatched roof of the meeting-house in a rude New England hamlet ; " for he was soon installed Mr. Wilson's col- league in the ministry of the church in the Massa- chusetts Boston. These four gentlemen, — Hooker, Stone, Haynes, Cotton, — though one vessel brought them to the Bay, and though the warmest friends, were not of the same political stamp. The first three were in sym- pathy with the popular idea of government ; Cotton, on the contrary, was of the aristocratic creed. In a letter to Lord Say and Sele, not long after he landed, he wrote : " Democracy I do not conceive that God ever did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be the governed." Yet his aristocracy, it is due to say, was of a qualified sort. The occasion of the letter just referred to, was a proposal privately sub- mitted to the colony leaders by several Puritan peers to cast in their lot with Massachusetts, provided that for their rank they received a certain indicated place in the government, — the same to be hereditary. An impossible proposal it was at once seen, and the deli- cate duty of declining it assigned to Cotton, who, in a suitable circumspect manner but unequivocally, so did ; saying that while, without doubt, the noble per- 8 H4 JOHN WINTHROP, sonages themselves, should they — to our universal congratulation in so rich a blessing — join our humble colony, would be honoured "in our public elections" as became their illustrious merit ; yet, " if God should not delight to furnish some of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose them rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than exalt them to honour, if we should call them forth, when God doth not, to public . authority." Both parties to the difference existing in the colony being thus reinforced, there was a renewal of its agi- tation. Hooker and his associates, indeed, were not forward to go into it, — partly out of their great re- spect for Winthrop ; and partly for another reason, hereafter to transpire. Their attitude, however, was well known, and had its influence. M' After his [Hooker's] coming," says historian Hubbard, " it was observed that many of th(L freemen grew to be very jealous of their liberties.' J But Cotton plunged in at once with all the ardour of his nature. He seems to have begun with persuading the authorities that it was their prudence and their duty to recover some part of the power which they had relinquished. [At any rate, in a sermon preached at the first Court of Elections after his arrival (May, 1634), he advanced and defended the theory, lately abandoned in prac- tice, " that a magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause." He had never before spoken in ears so deaf to his teaching. FREEMEN ASK TO SEE CHARTER. 115 A short time before the meeting of this Court, a memorable thing had happened. [^Sixteen men — two from each of the towns — had gone together to Bos- ton, and asked for a sight of the charter. Upon perusing which./( scene for a painter; those grave, strong- featured, shrewd, English-yeoman faces, bent over the parchment; in the speech the while going on, the eastern counties' accent mingling with that of Devon and Dorset), ^conceiving thereby," says Winthrop, [" that all their laws should be made ate the generaicourt, repaired to the governor" — him- self, of course — " to advise with him about it 1!j (another scene for a painter). To whom he serenely expounds that while it is true the charter does read as they say,uhey are to bear in mind that the number of freemen is now much larger than was anticipated, and that for the present they are not qualified to direct the course of the government. Since they are solicitous, however, they may, if they will, when the Court meets, choose a committee to scrutinize the acts of the administration, and to move for their amendment if tfrey are wrong, " but not to make any new laws.") guch a committee, he presumes, — indeed, he can promise, — would be consulted on the subjects of the taxes and of the disposal of lands, — matters they appear particularly concerned about^j The delegation take their leave, but have their own thoughts on the governor's exposition, and trudge or paddle back home to talk. They are pretty certainly among the members of the General y n6 JOHN W1NTHR0P Court who a month later sit before Mr. Cotton delivering his dictum that the tenure of the magiste- rial office is properly permanent, and have not an ear to hear him. And there are many besides on hand there like them, — a majority, in fact. For, the discourse ended and the election being in order, upon canvass of the vote for chief executive (it is "by papers," the first political use of the ballot on record), lo, Governor Winthrop is retired, and Thomas Dudley is promoted to his place. ( But the commons having thus in his revered person rebuked the permanent tenure doctrine, choose him Assistant, so that he is not out of the government) And — it is pertinent here to note — at the three elections following, the same thing would be re- peated; namely, a new man would each time be made governor : a circumstance which seems not to have received due attention from those who allege that in the early day the ministers — for the body of whom there is every reason to judge Mr. Cotton spoke — carried Massachusetts in their pocket. The freemen now had their inning, and proceeded to increase their score. LXhey restored the four annual General Courts provided in the charter ; repealed orders of previous Courts ; fined the Court of Assistants for exceeding their authority in a cer- tain case (but the fine was remitted before adjourn- ment) ; enlarged the liberty of the towns ; forbade Assistants, on pain of a fine, to absent themselves from Court without leave (apparently lest in pique some of them should retire to their tents) j required WINTHROP RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT. 117 the late governor to render account of his adminis- tration of the public funds and other property ; and, most important of all, ordained, as a fixed feature of the government, a regular representation of the towns in the General Court by deputies clothed with all powers, " making and establishing lawes, granting of lands, etc.," belonging to the commons by the charter ; — " the matter of election of magistrates and other officers only excepted, wherein every freeman is to give his own voice," [J* Many good orders were made > by this Court," says Winthrop, — an observation some- what comical under the circumstances. But Winthrop, though his soul was tried by the turn of affairs, was no man to sulk. None knew better than he how to bend to a storm. He dis- misses his brief resume of the doings of the Court with the note that " the new governor and the assist- tants were together entertained [the italics are his own] at the house of the old governor as before." The call for his account, inasmuch as it was cap- tiously meant, was naturally felt by him as some- thing of an unkind cut; but he made ng> cavil or delay about it. It was punctually ready against the next meeting of the General Court (September, 1634), and was marked by minuteness of detail and by great dignity. In the course of it he takes occasion to say,— " I was first chosen to be governor without my seeking or expectation (there being then divers other gent, who for their abilities every way were far more fit). Being chosen I furnished myself with servants and provisions n8 JOHN WINTHROP. accordingly, in a far greater proportion than I would have done, had I come as a private man, or as an assist- ant only. In this office I continued four years and near an half, although I earnestly desired, at every election, to have been freed. " He then reluctantly states — what he would have been satisfied to keep to himself had he been per- mitted — that in those four and a half years he has paid out for the colony, over and above all he has received, not less than ^1,200 of his own money. And he thus finishes : — "In all these things I refer myself to the wisdom and justice of the court, with this protestation, that it repent- eth me not of my cost or labour bestowed in the ser- vice of this commonwealth ; but do heartily bless the Lord our God r that he hath pleased to honour me so far as to call for any thing he hath bestowed upon me for the service of his church and people here, the prosperity whereof, and his gracious acceptance, shall be an abun- dant recompense to me. I conclude with this one re- quest, Cwhich in justice may not be denied me,) that, as it stands upon record, that, upon the discharge of my office, I was calkd to accompt, so this my declaration may be recorded also ; lest hereafter, when I shall be forgotten, some blemish may lie upon my posterity when there shall be nothing to clear it." His request was complied with, and the Massachu- setts State records forever graced with this patriotic and self-respecting deliverance. The late,r royal governor and historian of Massa- chusetts, Hutchinson, observes upon this incident that Winthrop "might have torn his books of ac- DANGER FROM ABROAD. 119 counts, as Scipio Africanus did, and given the un- grateful populace this answer : A Colony, now in a flourishing estate, has been led out and settled under my direction. My own substance is consumed. Spend no more time in harangues, but give thanks to God." But of such resentment Winthrop was quite in- capable. He accepted his inferior station with entire meekness, and abated the heartiness of his public spirit and of his public service not a jot ; nor, for all he was not chief magistrate, did he cease to be chief man of the colony. New and pressing need of the kind of service he was peculiarly fitted to render soon arose. Whatever jealousy was the cause or the consequence of the overturn that unseated him from the place of prin- cipal authority, was abruptly disarmed by the sudden revelationlin the following August (1634) of a danger from abroad the fear of which all shared alike, for it jeopardized what was to all alike politically a su- preme interest, — the colony's prerogative of self- government.J One peril of the sort had already been encountered and safely weathered. \_Late in 1632 Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason had induced the Privy Coun- cil to attend to a claim which on the basis of an earlier grant (that which William Blackstone is supposed to have represented) they laid to a portion of the Bay territory^ This proceeding had been zealously abetted by the Brownes lately of Salem, by Thomas Morton the scamp of Merrymount, and by other individuals expelled from New England ; who had been indus- 120 JOHN WINTHROP. trious in giving currency to the worst possible ac- counts of the condition of things there. But when it came to the hearing, friends like ex-Governor Cradock and John Humphrey and Emanuel Down- ing and Sir Richard Saltonstall (fortunately in Eng- land on business) were on hand to put a different face on the colony and its doings. Strange to say, a wit- ness in its favour came forward in the person of a gentleman — Thomas Wiggin his name — who had been superintendent of a plantation at Piscataqua (Portsmouth), of which Gorges and Mason were pro- prietors. With indignation at the " false informa- tions " lodged with the Council, he earnestly, " out of respect to the general good, being none of their plan- tation, but a neighbour by," affirmed the praise- worthy character, to his knowledge, of the defamed community, both leaders and people. Of Winthrop he testified : " I have observed him to be a discreete and sober man, giving good example to all the planters, wearinge plaine apparell, such as may well beseeme a meane man, drinking ordinarily water, and when he is not conversant about matters of justice, putting his hand to any ordinarye labour with his servants, ruling with much mildness, and in this particular I observed him to be strict in execution of Justice upon such as have scandalized this state, either in civill or ecclesi- asticall government, to the great content 1 * 1 ' of those that are best affected, and to the terror of offendors." The result of this attempt had been that the de- fendant came off with decidedly flying colours. But that of which the colony now had intelligence was WILLIAM LAUD. 12 1 much more alarming. Back of it was William Laud, under whose inspiration since his elevation to the archbishopric (August, 1633) the hostility of the royal government to all Puritan works and ways had grown steadily more pronounced, and who was eying New England, where everything most odious to him was rife, with profound displeasure. Of Laud, as- signed by fate the role of evil genius in this history, it is just to say, not only that he rose by force of great abilities, but that, while narrow even to a signal de- gree in an age of narrowness, and a burning enthusi- ast in his antipathies, he was not a bad man. He was by no means lacking in personal piety ; his diary shows him capable of celestial dreams as well as Win- throp : and beyond question his public course was conformed to his sincere convictions. Certainly he was a spirit of boundless courage ; and in his en- counter with the spirit that opposed him it was diamond cut diamond. His particular attention was drawn to Massachusetts by the departure of Hooker's company, which he in vain sought to obstruct. I To strengthen his hand for such work he then shortly procured (April, 1634) the transfer of the control of English colonial affairs from the Privy Council to a special Commission — consisting of himself, the Arch- bishop of York, six lay peers, and three high officers of court — invested with all comprehensive authority in its province, extending to the recall at discretion of letters patent. Very little delay did it make in proceeding to business, for before summer was over there was received at the Bay from ex-Governor 122 JOHN WIN THRO P. Cradock a copy of an order of the Commission just passed, requiring the charter of Massachusetts to be sent to England/) Near the same time there was given into Winthrop's hands a private letter of Merry- mount Morton's, which was, from beginning to end, an abusive exultant crow over the same fact, and boasted that a royal governor was presently coming to whip your plaguy colony into order. Here was trouble enough. What to do was the question. What had we best tell Mr. Cradock to say? — or shall we hold our peace ? After long consultation we finally agree to send him word — which he will make such use of as he sees fit — that no action can be had on the subject of his communication before the next meeting of the General Court, which will not be till September. Then, in a day or two, we all pull out to Castle Island on a military engineering trip ; to the result that we conclude to erect a fortifica- tion there and mount some guns, the work to begin forthwith, under superintendence of Deputy-Governor Roger Ludlow, who for present outlay may draw on each of us for five pounds, — but the General Court will probably finish it7\ The General Court limply justified this confidence. When it met (September 3) the official copy of the new Commission's "Hemand had come. But Cradock's warning had given the Commons time to think and to confer, and they were ready to act. The conscious- ness of their larger part and responsibility in the gov- ernment was now a circumstance in the highest degree favourable to the public interest. Their spirit THE COLONY DEFIANT. 123 was up. "j!he Court endorsed at once the initiative of defence the administration had taken, and adopted further measures in the same direction; voting not only to go on with the fortification of Castle Island, but to strengthen that of Boston, and to fortify the approaches to the harbour, at Dorchester and at Charlestown, as well. It also ordered the full arming and more systematic training of the militia, and raised a committee of five, in which Winthrop was named next after the governor, to conduct " any warr that may befall us." To meet the expense of these prep- arations it levied a tax of six hundred pounds. During the winter (January, 1635) the magistrates called the fourteen or fifteen ministers together at Boston, and asked their advice (who better to ask? men of education, every one university-bred, men of sense and of highest public spirit, but by their calling incapable of civil office,) on the question, "What we ought to do if a general governor should be sent out of England? " To which the unanimous answer was that " we ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions, if we were able ; otherwise to avoid or protract."''; L_That phrase " avoid or protract " let the reader mark. It perfectly expresses the policy Massachusetts steadfastly and successfully pursued on like occasions, as they arose at intervals, for fifty years to come} (The next General Court (March, 1635) appropri- ated five hundred pounds more to the fortifications ; increased the military committee to eleven, and gave it power to imprison or even put to death public 124 JOHN WINTHROP. enemies; imposed an oath of allegiance to Massa- chusetts on all male citizens above the age of six- teen; caused the beacon, whence Beacon Hill is named, to be set up "to give notice to the country of any danger ; " ordered the towns to provide suit- able storage for the powder and ammunition distrib uted to them ; and, to ensure a stock of musket-balls, made them legal tender to a certain amount at a far- thing each. And that was the only reply the colony made to the demand from England. It provokes a smile to see the little commonwealth (of less than five thousand souls at the time) doub- ling up its infant fist in this manner ; but there was infinite pluck in it, — the budding of what came to flower a century and a half later. It was far from a childish defiance, though ; simply the assertion of the instinctive law of self-preservation. Q?he stake was nothing less than existence. The rights guaranteed by the charter were vital, — covering not alone the institutions of society, but the private title to lands and houses. The loss of the charter, says John Fiske, meant that " every rood of the soil of Massa- chusetts became the personal property of the Stuart king, who might . . . turn out all the present occu- pants, or otherwise deal with them as trespassers." There were no chances, however desperate, that in such an emergency it was not a necessity to take. _HioiigliJ &i m, rxTO^ in office, it is plain to see that no other individual exercised such an 'influence both with: the government and with the people, in determining what should be done at this THE INDIAN STORY. 125 time, as did he. He was the statesman of the commonwealth. It is a token, by inference, of his equal mind in circumstances so critical, that, in the interval between the arrival of Cradock's letter and the meeting of the General Court in September, occurs the only out- and-out humorous entry the Journal contains, — an Indian story from Plymouth, which had evidently provoked much laughter at the Bay, — as follows : " One pleasant passage happened which was acted by the Indians. Mr. Winslow coming iti his bark from Con- necticut to Narigansett, — and he left her there, — and intending to return by land he went to Osamekin the sag- amore his old ally, who offered to conduct him home to Plimouth. But before they took their journey, Osamekin sent one of his men to Plimouth to tell them that Mr. Winslow was dead; and directed him to show how and where he was killed. Whereupon there was much fear and sorrow at Plimouth. The next day when Osamekin brought him home, they asked him why he sent such word, etc. He answered that it was their manner to do so, that they might be the more welcome when they came home." If Winthrop was the foremost man of the colony, he was jalso the fir^jdtjzejri^pX^pj|pn ? ,_.The earliest records of the town that are preserved begin in 1634, and are in his handwriting. The Journal tells of a matter occurring late in that year which incidentally discloses the estimation in which he stood among his fellow-townsmen, and is of interest otherwise. A town-meeting being held to elect a committee of seven to allot the town lands, of the candidates bal- 126 JOHN WINTHROP. loted for, — there were, it seems, a good many of them, — Winthrop was the only magistrate chosen ; the rest, all but one or two, " of the inferior sort." "This they did as fearing that the richer men would give the poorer sort no great proportions of the land, but would rather leave a great part at liberty for new comers and for common, which Mr. Win- throp had oft persuaded them unto as best for the town, etc." In view of this result and its cause, Winthrop de- clined to serve, giving as his reason, that though " for his part he did not apprehend any personal in- jury, nor did doubt of their good affection toward him, yet he was much grieved that Boston should be the first who should shake off their magistrates." And he named in particular Assistant Coddington, whom they had rejected, as a man deserving better of them; "adding further reason of declining this choice, to blot out so bad a precedent." Whereupon, after reflection and hearing Mr. Cotton on the subject, " they all agreed to go to a new elec- tion ; " which issued in a board of another com- plexion, that for one of its acts, carrying out what it appears was an idea of Winthrop's, — at all events, an idea with which he was specially associated in the public mind, — endowed future Boston with the noble legacy of her Common. REVIVAL OF POLITICAL STRIFE. 127 CHAPTER X. WINTHROP DISCIPLINED FOR LENITY. (1635-1636.) The revival of emigration, which Winthrop had judged it wise to forecast in handling the land ques- tion, set in with vigour in 1634, — Laud supplying the motive. Ships began to arrive in numbers, — in a single month of that year as many as fifteen, — bring- ing passengers, cattle, military and other stores ; and returned freighted with timber, furs, fish. The pulse of the colony life quickened ; new towns were planted, Ipswich, Newbury, Hingham, Weymouth ; trade, Eng- lish, Dutch, West- Indian, grew apace. All of which Winthrop observes with great satisfaction. But Massachusetts yet fell short of domestic peace. QJnanimity of sentiment regarding possession of the charter did not cure division regarding government under it. The Court of Elections of May, 1635, repeated, as we have said, its practical comment of the previous year on Mr. Cotton's view of official tenure, by choosing John Haynes to succeed Gov- ernor Dudley, — " partly," explains Winthrop with a touch of irony, " because the people would exercise their absolute power." Still the majority were not 128 JOHN W1NTHR0P. of the radical creed in all applications ; for a sen- tence of three years' disability from office passed by the General Court next preceding on Deputy Israel Stoughton of Dorchester, for openly maintaining that the power of Courts of Assistants was simply " min- isterial according to the greater vote of the General Court, and not magisterial according to their own discretion," was by this Court reaffirmed^ notwith- standing Stoughton had meantime recanted.) The subject, however, of regulating the exercise of authority by means of " a body of grounds of laws, in resemblance to a Magna Charta," was brought up and discussed, and some steps taken to provide such an instrument j but, upon further reflection, was indefinitely postponed, being found to involve the ticklish question of the charter. How so, Winthrop, some while after, sets forth. vjhe only laws, he says in substance, which it is prudent for us to have, are those that arise "pro re nata ; upon occasions ; cus- toms ; consuetudines." Should we frame a written code, it would have to be, in points, repugnant to the laws of England, and so transgress the charter ; but to raise up laws by practice and custom is no trans- gression. Thus, for example, " to make a law that marriages should not be solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws of England ; but to bring it to a custom by practice for the magistrate to perform it (as is the case with u.s.) is no law made repugnant " to the laws of England^) Nice steering, lawyer Win- throp, but it will answer. Among the new-comers of 1635 were young Sir YOUNG SIR HENRY VANE. 1 29 Henry Vane and Rev. Hugh Peter, whose connection with the colony, though transient, is of permanent interest. The latter — a man of extraordinary talent and energy, and an early member of the Bay Com- pany — was installed pastor at Salem, where, beside car- ing for the church, he did much to foster the spirit of commercial enterprise, in his estimate of the impor- tance of which he was after Winthrop's own heart. Five years later, while in England on public business, he became active in the struggle between king and parliament, and never returned. He was chaplain to Cromwell, at whose funeral he walked beside Milton ; was one of the Regicides, and ended on the scaffold at the Restoration. Vane was a youth of twenty-three, but old beyond his years, and already of no slight experience in affairs of State. He was, as the world knows, one of the most pure, enlightened, gallant spirits of his age ; des- tined also, like his fellow-voyager to New England, to seal his devotion to liberty with his blood. " Being called," says Winthrop, "to the obedience of the Gospel, he forsook the honours and preferments of the Court to enjoy the ordinances of Christ in their purity here." His father, chief member of the royal Privy Council, displeased with his Puritan bent, would have prevented his going; but on bringing the matter to the king's notice, strangely enough Charles had taken the young man's part, and given him three years' leave of absence for the trial of his experiment. Vane and Peter at once interested themselves with 9 130 JOHN WINTHROP. good will, heartily, in all colony concerns. One evidence of which is that soon after they came they invited a meeting of the leaders in Boston, to see if a certain alienation, which they were sorry to ob- serve among them, and which they judged to head somehow in Winthrop and Dudley, could not be healed by an open friendly talk together. The meeting having convened, Vane and Peter declared its object, and exhorted to freedom of utterance. As is usual in such cases, nobody wanted to speak first. Winthrop, being appealed to, said that he was not aware of any alienation on his part, certainly not from his brother Dudley since their happy reconcil- iation ; neither was he aware that any one was alien- ated from him, — though he might have noticed a manner inclining to be distant toward him in some quarters of late. But if he had done aught amiss " in his government or * otherwise," and it were pointed out to him, he would endeavour, by God's grace, to amend it. Dudley, in his turn, said the same : there was no present difference between him- self and his brother Winthrop that he knew of; and he "left it to others to utter their own complaints." Finally, since some one must, Governor Haynes, with great reluctance, and hoping not to give offence, uncovered the cause of the infelicity Messrs. Vane and Peter had remarked. ''The fact was, Mr. Win- throp, as magistrate, had a habit of dealing "too remissly in point of justice," — the fault of an ex- cessive leniency, of which such and such instances were examplesTl An old fault this was, — one occa- WINTHROP THE LENIENT. 131 sion, it will be recalled, of Dudley's former grievance, who still, it may be surmised, though now holding his peace, viewed it with disapprobation. Winthrop, while protesting that the indictment was overdrawn, admitted that for substance it was true. But at the same time he avowed that "it was his judgment, that in the infancy of plantations justice should be administered with more lenity than in a settled state," which the reverend elders present, being asked what they thought about that, agreed was a mistake ; that, on the contrary, " strict discipline, both in criminal offences and in martial affairs, was more needful in plantations than in a settled state," since they were essentially in the position of an army in the field. To this verdict Winthrop submitted without con- troversy, and promised that he would try to do better. \Whereupon ensued a general love-feast of fraternal sentiment, and for practical outcome a written cov- enant subscribed by the magistrates, to use all care in the future to work harmoniously together, and to rule themselves in every way to promote the respect and dignity of their office. Item : to diminish oc- casions of discord, "trivial things should be ended in the towns," — a particular worthy of note as illus- trating the process of political evolutional That Winthrop changed his mind on the subject of clemency it is not at all necessary to suppose. It was his practice to make the best of circumstances he could not control. There were those present at this meeting who, rather than put up with what they did not like in Massachusetts, would erelong leave it 132 JOHy WINTHROP. altogether. He was going to stay ; and because he stayed Massachusetts came through the manifold tribulations of her genesis alive. It is a not improbable conjecture, — though only a conjecture, — that the specific " remissness in point of justice " leading to Winthrop's call to account at this time had been in the case of Roger Williams. That extraordinary personage came over by the ship that brought bread in the Day of Distress (Feb- ruary, 1631). Whether, on the whole, since he was a passenger, the arrival of that ship was a bless- ing, may be held questionable; for, from his stepping on shore till he was got rid of, he never ceased to be a thorn in the side of Massachusetts, and more than that, distinctly one of her dangers. In some respects he was of singular merit. His name is venerated as that of the original promulgator of the political principle of religious toleration. He was a Christian whose grace was universally con- fessed by his contemporaries; and he exhibited, his whole life through, a spirit of incomparable benevo- lence and magnanimity. The sweetness of his tem- per was proof against every trial incident to a long career of unbroken disputation. The wrath he in- cessantly and justly provoked he did not in the least himself share. He was never known to speak an angry word. Seldom was a man so highly re- garded for his virtues as was he by the very people he tormented. But he was the genius of social in- compatibility. Everywhere he lingered, there forth- ROGER WILLIAMS. 133 with sprang up strife, and in an acute form. The community in which he sojourned he invariably set by the ears and embroiled with its neighbours. It was he who started the "goodman" wrangle at Plymouth, 1 where he lived a short time. Salem, where he dwelt longest, he was nearly the ruin of. At one period he raised an incredible pother there by teaching that women ought never to sit unveiled in a public as- sembly ; and would not, on principle, engage in acts of domestic worship with his wife because she de- clined to go all lengths with him in making obedience to that rule a test of Christian character. The story of all the trouble he made is quite too long to tell. But he began by preaching that it was the duty of the churches to repent publicly of the sin of their former communion with the Church of Eng- land ; and the duty of such as did it to withdraw fellowship from such as did not, — which was enough to send a shiver through the General Court, thinking how it would sound in England. He also taught, in application of his doctrine of " soul liberty," that magistrates had no warrant of the gospel to punish infractions of the First Table of the Decalogue ; including atheism, blasphemy, and Sabbath-breaking. It was not for such things, however, that he was ulti- mately banished. He is often spoken of as the victim of religious bigotry. He was nothing of the sort. In his general onslaught on the errors prevailing around him, — -and to his view little else did pre- vail, — he fell foul of the charter. This he went up 1 Page no. 134 JOHN WINTHROP. and down declaring an instrument of no validity what- soever, a royal thief's conveyance of property that was none of his, not worth the paper it was written on ; that all titles based on it were wholly spurious, and to hold them otherwise a crime. As for himself, he would not, by becoming a freeman, partake the iniquity. The outraged government of course com- manded him to stop that kind of talk, or it would be the worse for him. For a wonder, — it was his only moment of such weakness, — he promised to do so. But he was not able to keep his word. His " violent and tumultuous carriage against the charter " was resumed and maintained with exhaustless perti- nacity. From time to time he added fresh aggrava- tions; for example, he proclaimed that the magis- trates, in tendering to unregenerate persons the oath of loyalty to the commonwealth, were guilty of causing God's name to be taken in vain. Plainly he was a man impossible to put up with in the circumstances. At length (November, 1634) the Assistants, informed that he " had broken his promise to us in teaching publicly against the king's patent, and our great sin in claiming right thereby to this country, etc., and for usual terming the churches of England anti- Christian," took order for his trial. There was delay in the proceedings ; but the General Court of September, 1635, finding him incorrigible, commanded him to leave Massachusetts within six weeks. Before the limit expired — it being under- stood that he planned going to Narragansett Bay to start a new settlement there — it was extended to ROGER WILLIAMS. 135 spring. The respite thus given Williams improved by opening such a winter campaign for his intolerable tenets as convinced the authorities not only that the postponement of the execution of sentence against him had been a mistake, but that Narragansett Bay was not sufficiently remote for the place of his future residence. Accordingly a military guard was sent to bring him to Boston for shipment by a vessel about to sail for England. But he had taken flight. He presently turned up at Narragansett Bay, where in the unfolding of events he became the father (though always the uncomfortable father) of Rhode Island, fulfilling there the term of his mortal belligerency. His liberal, ever ready, sometimes heroic, on notable occasions invaluable, good offices in behalf of Massa- chusetts, toward which he characteristically bore not the slightest malice, were a feature of his later career. It is a suggestive circumstance that it was only a few days after Williams's escape that Winthrop was dealt with for his fault of lenity. That he warned him to take himself away or was suspected of it, there is nothing to show. But the fact disclosed by Wil- liams thirty years later that during his succeeding wanderings in the wilderness there reached him a communication from Winthrop of friendly sympathy and counsel, leaves small room for doubt that the escape was not unwelcome to him ; none at all that he had opposed the extreme measure of transporta- tion. .The two maintained an affectionate correspond- ence as long as Winthrop lived. It is even a marvel that the colony bore with Roger Williams as it did, 136 JOHN WINTHROP. when its alarm for the charter is considered. Which alarm was heightened the last year of his sojourn in Massachusetts by an incident for which he is supposed to have been largely responsible. In a letter of Winthrop's (November, 1634) to John, Jr., on a visit to the old country, he advises him of the Court's information, " that some of Salem had taken out a piece of the cross in their ensign ; whereupon we sent forth an attachment to bring in the parties at the next Court, where they are like to be punished for their indiscreet zeal, for the people are generally offended with it." The awkward news was couched in these general terms, with no names given, and the unpopularity of it represented, to put it in as good shape as might be for English ears. The writer well knew the author of the unlucky mishap he announced. It was Endicott. A short time before, — at the regular Training Day in September, on a guess, — in an access of indigna- tion inspired by the recent intelligence of the recall of the charter, mingled with scorn of a popish em- blem (though that, perhaps, was an afterthought, more or less), he had ripped or slashed the St. George's Cross out of the British flag, in the face and eyes of all beholders. Tradition, intrinsically credible, as- cribes the outburst to the immediate influence of Roger Williams. No more unfortunate a thing could have occurred at that juncture. By it the Salem worthy had made himself the enfant terrible of his political household. ENDICOTT' S BLUNDER. 137 The government, frightened at prospect of the trouble his blunder will make abroad, — the more so as he is a magistrate, — take instant measures to obtain its formal condemnation by the Legislature ; which proves not an easy thing to accomplish. The free- men, just now in fighting mood, are disposed to view the redoubtable Endicott as a hero rather than as a culprit ; not only so, but to our further embarrassment (though, if the truth were told, we a good deal sym- pathize with the idea) , they loudly propose that here- after we dispense with the king's colours altogether. The colony is in a highly irrational state. The best that can be done 'for the time is to send a letter " under all our hands " (Winthrop most probable draughtsman), to private parties in England, giving it to be understood there that our zeal against popery is at the bottom of all the fuss. As to what, in the pres- ent excitement, shall be done about our train- band ensigns, we refer it to the Military Commission with power, by whom it is allowed that they be laid aside, and others, purified of the cross, used instead, ex- cept that Castle Island shall float the king's arms, which, however, it somehow fails to do ; as will prove awkward for us, when by and by ships from England — for instance, the St. Patrick, owned by Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford — coming into harbour, notice the omission. It was not till the Court of Elections the next year (May, 1635) tnat tne matter could be got to an issue. First, Endicott was left out of his place as magistrate, which the deputies by that time could see was unavoidable ; then, upon 138 JOHN WINTHROP. recommendaLion of a committee, the court " censured him to be sadly admonished for his offense, which accordingly he was, and also disabled from bearing any office in the commonwealth for the space of a year next ensuing." (JBut all this while, in the English quarter the skies were darkening, and the third attempt on the charter impending. At length the king's government was taking Massachusetts seriously. When Charles granted the charter in 1629, it was, as is conceivable, in the thought that it was a convenient thing thus to facili- tate the elimination from the ranks of his subjects of the heads of an element that was his pest. It was a good way to be rid of them ; and once out of sight they were pretty much out of mind in high places, for a time. But now the thing they had planted in the obscure distance was becoming somewhat, and a considerable somewhat, with unruly ways of its own, capable of such mischief, obviously requiring attention. The failure (and more) to obtain surrender of the charter in 1634 had shown that the new royal com- mission needed further means of enforcing its decrees. These would soon be forthcoming. Meantime effort was made to arrest the growth of the ill-behaved colony. Better deal with our rebellion-breeding non- conformity here, than at arms' length across the Atlantic. By* dktMfHTlssaea in December, 1634, the lords commissioners undertook to block emigration, but without success. Ways were found of getting through the net. A more promising scheme, however, THIRD ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 139 was maturing. In April, 1635, tne °M Council for New England, of which the Bay Company had its original grant, and which in not less than twenty-three similar grants had conveyed all the territory at its disposal, — portions of it over and over, — applied to the crown for leave to dissolve. Whose hand directed this move, and the object of it, may be not doubtfully gathered from the fact that among the reasons of it assigned were, that the charter of the Bay Company had been "surreptitiously gotten" in derogation of previously existing rights ; and that the occupants of the land in that manner possessed " made themselves a free people and for such hold themselves at pre- sent." For this there was no remedy but " for his Majesty to take the whole business into his own hands," — which meant more distinctly than before the revocation of all the Council's grants, and the rever- sion of the title of the whole of New England to the crown. Laud was behind it. It was his improved way of getting at Massachusetts. But the Council made a condition ; namely, that the domain thus reclaimed should be cut into sections and parcelled by lot among its members, — which condition was accepted. In this partition Massachusetts fell to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Marquis of Hamilton, and John Mason, with slices to some of the rest. Next a Quo War- ranto suit to oust the Company was brought in Westminster Hall, and, not without resistance from members and friends in England, was carried. Next the king appointed Gorges governor-general of New England, for whose speedy despatch thither prepara- 140 JOHN WINTHROP. tions were immediately set in train. Nor was he to go unfurnished for his occasions : a thousand soldiers wpuld accompany him. "\To every human appearance it is all over with Massachusetts. Where the charter is, is of no con- sequence now. There is no alternative but to aban- don the country or lie down under Laud's sceptre.^J Of the colony's bearing under this sentence of death, which ere it was aware was on point of exe- cution, there is little record; but we apprehend a sigh of deep exquisite relief, as of one who has been holding his breath, in Winthrop's entry in the Journal when the danger is past: "The project took not effect. The Lord frustrated their design." Gorges's departure was delayed ; the " great ship " in which he was to embark, "being launched, fell in sunder in the midst." John Mason, chief insti- gator of the hostile enterprise, named Vice-Admiral of New England under the new regime, died. At that moment the Ship Money question assumed the volcanic phase. Scotland's wrath at the attempt to bow her neck to the yoke of prelacy boiled over. All at once the royal government had its hands too full to spare a finger to the colonies. " All the busi- ness fell on sleep ; " and so Massachusetts again escaped like a bird out of the snare of the fowler, unhurt and safe for the present. SIR HENRY VANE GOVERNOR. 141 CHAPTER XI. SIR HENRY VANE GOVERNOR. (1636-1638.) The coming of young Vane (October, 1635) at a moment when the fate of the colony was in suspense was exceedingly welcome. He was a scion of nobil- ity, whom it was hoped other like-minded noble- men would follow, — a circumstance ardently desired, both for honour and for safety. He was, moreover, eldest son of one of the most powerful of British subjects, and was himself on friendly personal foot- ing with the king. No time was lost in turning to account the good fortune of his appearance on the scene. Boston received him socially with open arms ; the General Court appointed him to a vacancy in the Military Commission ; and at the next Court of Elections (May, 1636) he was elevated over all heads to the highest office, with Winthrop for his deputy. " Because he was son and heir to a privy counsellor in England," says Winthrop, " the ships congratulated his election with a volley of great shot." The first matter he was called, as governor, to deal with, was a very serious situation, produced by the non-display of the British flag from the fort on Castle Island, at which 142 JOHN WINTHROP. certain masters of British vessels had taken great umbrage. It could hardly be otherwise than that one so young and so new to the country as Vane should prove on the whole unequal to the responsi- bilities of his position. Yet it may be doubted if there was any one besides in Massachusetts who could have handled that difficulty so successfully, — partly because he was the known son and heir of a privy councillor, and partly by the diplomatic tact with which he managed the scandalized captains. Too recently arrived to be affected by the agitation Endicott's raid on the cross had kindled, he clearly saw that the fort must fly the king's colours, and carried the point, against opposition from influential quarters. But he would not always be so judicial. The year of his administration was fruitful of events, and in passages tempestuous. Delivered for the time out of the paw of the lion, the colony, now fast growing in numbers and full of the spirit of energy, was astir with life in all direc- tions. \Jfhe General Court of May, 1636, did things more important than elect the new executive. It set forward changes in the government, — progressive mostly, but with one conspicuous exception. That exception was the institution — before determined on, however — of a Standing Council, consisting of " a certain number of magistrates for the term of their lives " (the governor for the time being to be always a member and president), of authority to ex- ercise " out of court " such powers as the legisla- ture should ordain. Winthrop and Dudley were COUNCIL FOR LIFE. M3 created members of it. This was nothing less than the erection of a new branch of government, and one wholly unprovided by the charter. But our particular intention therein — for by the hand of Master Cot- ton we instantly inform Lord Say and Sele of what we have done — is to meet, so far as in us lies, the views of those noble personages who are inclined to join us. We are unable to concede them the dignity of an hereditary order in our commonwealth, but we will come as near to it as we can. And beyond this, it will perhaps not be amiss to cast such an anchor to windward against the democratic tendency so ob- servable among our people^ The Standing Council was a weakling from the start. The only other member ever added to it was Endicott, a year later. Since the noble personages it was to allure were not forthcoming, Massachusetts had no use for it. \ltgrew into general disfavour, and the General Court uy and by hamstrung it by ruling that though the members of it had a life tenure, their annual election was required to keep their authority alive. It was practically defunct from that time, though it remained above ground some years longer. Winthrop, while saying that with the honour of it he " was no more in love than with an old frieze coat *m a summer's day," championed it to its last breatr^S, \Other acts of this Court (May, 1636) were of a aiftcrent tenor, and mark a stage of healthful expan- sion in the organized life of the State, — particularly the establishment at separate points of four local courts, at which " places of judicature," by the way, 144 JOHN WINTHROP. "the king's majesty's arms shall be erected," as, doubtless, Governor Vane insists^ This year 1636 brought to the colony what was felt to be a great and irreparable loss, — the migra- tion, under leadership of Thomas Hooker, of the three plantations of Newtown, Watertown, and Dor- chester to Connecticut. The large notice in the Journal of this secession — for such it was — re- veals the consequence Winthrop attached to it. That it caused him extreme sorrow is plain. As has been said, nothing was ever so trying to him as that any one should voluntarily forsake Massachusetts. This departure was not, indeed, like retreating back to England ; but for all that it was a desertion that could not be justified, and that he strove by every means in his power to avert. It had been a good while in train. When Hooker, Haynes, and Stone, with their company, landed in the autumn of 1633, they found, it will be remembered, magistrates and freemen in warm contention. Their position be- tween the parties was embarrassing, — their sym- pathies going personally one way, politically an- other. They were apparently not long in deciding to evade the conflict, which they foresaw would be protracted, by taking themselves entirely away. Con- necticut was known to be a place desirable for settle- ment, and upon it they fixed their choice. From the outset the Bay leaders discouraged and opposed the design, — vetoed it to the extent of their power. The kind of reasons brought forward against it in THE CONNECTICUT SECESSION. 145 the General Court we learn from Winthrop, — the impression being unavoidable that in reporting them he reports himself. They were, in condensed form, as follows : That our friends, " being knit to us in one body," are in conscience bound to abide with us \ that for our own sakes, in our weak and exposed condition, we ought not to consent to their going ; besides, the rumour of their going will tend to keep others from coming, — to our injury; that Connec- ticut is a region of unknown perils, lying, moreover, beyond our patent, which we may not safely give any one authority to inhabit ; that there is plenty of room for Mr. Hooker and his congregation in Massa- chusetts, of which we beg them to take their choice and be content ; that, finally, " the removing of a candle- stick is a great judgment which is to be avoided." The argument, it is true, did not touch the real point, yet there was much force in it ; a good deal of pathos, too, when it is considered what a serious diminishing of the little commonwealth, whose " chief poverty," as John Cotton said, was "poverty of men," the proposed exodus would be. It seems to have been not without effect. At any rate, for a time after its first broaching the matter rested. The elec- tion of Mr. Haynes governor the next year (1635) may have had an influence to postpone it, — was perhaps of that intention ; but it was only postponed. In the summer of 1636 the project — joined meanwhile by the bulk of Watertown and Dorchester, in which the anti-magisterial element was strong — was carried out ; and Connecticut's original Three River Towns, 10 146 JOHN WINTHROP. Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, were planted, 1 — whereby a quarter of the strength of Massachusetts quitted her jurisdiction, and without her will. But it produced no breach of friendship. Winthrop and Hooker loved each other living and dying, and in the end the withdrawal proved an auspicious enlargement. Of it came a new State, which in important respects profited by its mother's experience ; for the Con- stitution of Connecticut, when it came presently to be framed, embodied none of those features that were the cause of strife in Massachusetts. During Vane's administration occurred the first serious collision with the Indians. The occasion of it was the killing of the adventurous John Oldham, the colony's explorer-in-chief, by the Block Island natives, — summarily avenged, though not without previous endeavour to bring the guilty individuals to justice, — in the ravage of Block Island and a bloody stroke on the Pequots of the neighbouring mainland, suspected of harbouring the murderers, by a force under Endicott. A page of early Massachusetts his- tory not pleasant to read ; but it shows the apprehen- sion of danger from the savages, by which the colony was haunted, that it was deemed necessary to strike terror into them by such a blow. It was probably in consequence of this incident that the colony at about that time bettered its military establishment by organizing the militia of the towns into three regi- 1 The same migration also included a company from Rox- bury that planted at Agawam (Springfield), which, however, the subsequent adjustment of boundaries restored to the Bay. FOUNDING OF HARVARD. 147 ments, — named the East, South, and North Regi- ments, — of which Winthrop, Haynes, and Endicott were made the colonels. Colonel Winthrop thence- forward comes often into view on duty as a soldier, diligently attentive to the discipline of his command. Vane's term is illustrious in the annals of Massa- chusetts and of America, as identified with the incep- tion of the collegiate school which was the embryo of Harvard University. For its foundation the General Court of October, 1636, set aside out of the public funds ^"400, — a magnificent sum, when the resources of the colony, at that moment strained to meet its mili- tary expenses, are considered. The execution of the plan was intrusted to a commission, of which, it almost goes without saying, Winthrop was chairman. The rest were all ministers. With the ministers the idea had originated. They were the pre-eminent fathers and fosterers of the educational institutions of the State, soon to include the system of common schools, — which fact is of itself their sufficient clear- ance of the charge that they held themselves a priestly class, appointed to rule the minds of men by force of official authority. That they had reached the final, irrefragable interpretation of the Christian doctrines they were, it is true, as absolutely certain as the Vatican. They abominated dissent, and were in- tolerant of it. Yet as religious teachers they were far from requiring acceptance of those doctrines on the faith of a blind acquiescence. For their saving effect they depended on an intelligent embrace of them in 143 JOHN WINTHROP. the light of their reasons. It was, in their view, the property of a man to have opinions, and of a Chris- tian man to read the Bible for himself and to know the grounds of his creed. Of such an exaltation of individual responsibility, consequences they would have deemed frightful would be the ultimate fruit; but they believed in it, and on that account set the value of a vital interest on education. Scarcely could there be expressed a more appreci- ative and just eulogy of the Massachusetts founders in this respect — applicable to the ministers, above all — than that pronounced by the late Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes, in a public lecture given in the city of New York in 1852 : — "Next to religion they prized education. If their lot had been cast in some pleasant place of the valley of the Mississippi, they would have sown wheat and educated their children ; but as it was, they educated their children, and planted whatever might grow and ripen on that scanty soil with which capricious Nature had tricked oifand dis- guised the granite beds beneath. Other colonies would have brought up some of the people to school; they, if I may be allowed so to express it, let down the school to all the people, not doubting but by doing so the people and the school would rise of themselves." But the year of Vane's administration was also made unhappily memorable, and his official experi- ence embittered, by the rise and rage of the great Antinomian Controversy. Of this famous convul- sion, theologically viewed, it is no simple matter, at this day, to form a clear idea, much less give a clear THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY. 149 account. Not for lack of material. A considerable library of its literature survives as its relic, if one has the fortitude to read it. It originated in the religious teaching of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson, ancestress of the later royal governor and historian of that name. This lady came to Bos- ton with her husband in 1634, drawn, it is said, by her desire to enjoy again the ministry of John Cotton, who had been her pastor in England. She was a woman of extraordinary talent, of an intense, enthusiastic religious nature, with a mind ab- sorbed in spiritual contemplations, and with views of her own on some very deep questions; of a rarely benevolent heart as well, abounding in offices of neighbourly kindness, especially toward those of her own sex, with whom in her new home she soon became a favourite, and among whom she after a time established a meeting for religious edification. At this meeting her mischief began, for there she ex- pounded her peculiar tenets, and having a witching tongue, soon made converts to them, — Mistress Mar- garet Winthrop not one, we may be sure. These tenets Winthrop, whose report of the Con- troversy in its progressive stages — albeit thickly in- terspersed with the " etc.'s " and blank spaces that denote the record unfinished — is quite full, suc- cinctly describes as follows : " 1 . That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a sanctified person. 2. That no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." "Dangerous errors," he calls them, adding that 150 JOHN WIN THRO P. from them "grew many branches," — proof of which latter statement is afforded in the circumstance that at a three weeks long synod convened in the course of the Controversy, as many as eighty-two distinct false opinions, progeny of said errors, were " confuted and confounded." When Winthrop himself says, referring to one of several occasions on which it was endeavoured to end hostilities by conference, that the differences were stated " in a very narrow scantling," — so narrow that u except men of good understanding, and such as knew the bottom of the tenents of those of the other party, few could see where the difference was, and indeed it seemed so small as . . . they might easily have come to reconciliation," — one may be excused for judging the attempt to unravel the jangle, however successful, not at present worth while. The term "Antinomian," it should be understood, applied to the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, was an opprobious epithet by which they were stigmatized as reproducing the scandal of a fanatical German sect so named, cast up in the ferment of the Reformation ; its distinguishing feature the doctrine — said to have been illustrated in practice — that justification by faith releases from the moral law. Those to whom the name was given in Massachu- setts — Winthrop never uses it — ever protested themselves libelled by it. Nor, with insignificant ex- ceptions, were facts to justify the insinuation it con- veyed even alleged. The only exception, indeed, at all noteworthy, was Captain John Underhill, the Stand- THE ANTJNOMIAN CONTROVERSY. 15 1 ish of the Bay, whose espousal of the Hutchinson principles may well have been to the dismay of other adherents. Of undoubted merit as a soldier, his rep- utation as a saint was subject to frequent eclipse by his lapses from morality. His standing in the church was maintained by a succession of public repentances, or explanations of ambiguous appearances, which Winthrop describes with a serious gravity that reveals his own guileless heart. At last, however, even Win- throp found his contrition unedifying ; for in setting down one of the last of its many displays, he inter- jects the contemptuous remark, " He spake well save that his blubbering, etc., interrupted him." An Anti- nomian gospel was just suited to the captain's needs. Recounting, himself, his happy experience thereby, he said that • " he had lain under a spirit of bondage and a legal way five years, and could get no assurance ) till at length as he was taking a pipe of tobacco, the Spirit sent home an absolute promise of free grace with such assurance and joy as he never since doubted of his good estate, neither should he though he should fall into sin." Questioned with regard to the tobacco clause, he had the effrontery to reply that " as the Lord was pleased to convert Paul as he was in persecuting, etc., so he might manifest himself to him as he was taking the moderate use of the creature called tobacco." The assurance of his good estate did not fail of being put to the identical test he indicated. He was shortly summoned before the church to answer to the charge of incontinency, with the evidence quite against him. 152 JOHN WINTHROP. Tangled as the Controversy was in its polemical aspect, how it produced the state of things and led to the issues identified with it, it is not difficult to understand. The differences it bred soon passed the bounds of opinion. Mrs. Hutchinson's radical offence in the first place was her claim of a special spiritual illumination, than which nothing was more abhorrent to the Puritan principle of solving all questions of faith and duty by the light of the Written Word. She also, in the same line of departure from estab- lished modes of thinking, taught that the state of grace was alone to be predicated on an explicit inte- rior supernatural certification, lacking which there could be absolutely no evidence of it. All this was extra- biblical, and neither more nor less than a creed of moral anarchy. Erected into a standard by which ministers were judged as to whether or no their gospel was genuine, it soon developed the conclusion, which was proclaimed, that the only ministers of the entire colony who preached "a covenant of grace," and were entitled to respect in the sacred office, were John Wheelwright, Mrs. Hutchinson's brother-in-law, and Mr. Cotton. The rest preached " a covenant of works," and were all frauds. " Now," said Elder Welde, of Roxbury, " the faithful ministers of Christ must have dung cast on their faces, and be no better than legal preachers, Baal's priests, Popish factors, Scribes, Pharisees, and opposers of Christ himself." In Boston the novelty spread as by contagion. The church there as a whole, magnates and all, with Gov- ernor Vane in the lead, went after Mrs. Hutchinson, THE ANTIN0M1AN CONTROVERSY. 153 and endorsed this intolerable discrimination. There were numbers who, for a testimony, when Elder Wilson — he was among the banned — rose in the pulpit, would leave the meeting-house. Of Cotton it should be said, that while for a time counted in the Hutchinson party, it was rather by allowance on his part, for old friendship's sake. Before matters came to their worst, after some trimming he extricated him- self, though not without damage. Not quite everybody went with the stream. There were a few who kept their heads, — a small few, — and one of them was John Winthrop. When the infatuated church would have brought in Wheelwright to supply what, since Wilson was an empty vessel, was now held a vacancy in its ministry, he would not have it. He was pacific in tone, but very plain-spoken and decided. Those who were grieved by the positiveness of his oppo- sition he reminded that " they well knew his manner of speech was always earnest in things which he con- ceived to be serious." A line of personal portraiture this, to be made note of. He had a strong way of speaking, it seems, not soothing to the opposite side. Referring to the inward-light doctrine, he said that as for himself, " if any brother desired to see what light he walked by, he would be ready to impart it to him." Upon which offer there seems to have been a pause and a silence ; for the Journal remarks, " How this was taken by the congregation does not appear, for no man spake to it." But the church forbore to install Mr. Wheelwright. Though the Hutchinson faction made so nearly a 154 JOHN WINTHROP. clean sweep of Boston, its conquest, save in the case of individuals, extended "no farther. The people of the other towns naturally stood by their insulted pas- tors. It was Boston against the Colony. Through- out the Bay the excitement rose to an intense pitch. To Governor Vane, freely charged with being respon- sible for all the trouble, the situation became ex- tremely uncomfortable. Anxious to take himself out of it, he called the General Court together (De- cember, 1636), and desired of it leave to resign his office and go home, pleading that his private interests required his presence there. This was a surprising request, and, in view of diffi- culties with the Indians and with the French in Nova Scotia just then arising, untimely ; and he was urged to reconsider it. Whereupon the worried youth " brake forth into tears," saying that since he was accused of being the cause of the miserable dissen- sion into which the Commonwealth was fallen, "he thought it best he should withdraw." The Court then yielded its consent. Boston, however, which could not spare him, persuaded him to stay. He had reason to regret his compliance. At a meet- ing of magistrates and elders soon after held to discuss the condition of affairs, Hugh Peter came down from Salem, and openly gave his friend Vane a very plain piece of his mind, to the purpose that he was quite too presuming and heady for so young a man, — which the governor neither took kindly nor profited by. This meeting had an effect contrary to that de- THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY. 155 signed. Indeed, whatever was tried to assuage the strife seemed but to contribute to its violence. A nominally irenic sermon by Wheelwright at a fast for reconciliation (January, 1637) went so wide of its mark as to be understood to suggest the policy of forcible resistance to the civil arm in not impossible contingencies, and to occasion the preacher's arraign- ment by the next General Court; which found him guilty of utterances dangerous to the state, as tending to sedition. Against this judgment Vane and some other members of the Court offered a protest, but it was not received. A numerously signed petition of the Boston church in Wheelwright's behalf — some- thing less than respectful, though, and backing in substance his offensive positions — was likewise un- availing ; but it was filed for future reference, and the petitioners would hear of it again. Sitting in Boston was now, for the General Court, a good deal like sitting in a hornet's nest. Before adjournment a motion was made to hold the next session — annual Court of Elections — at Newtown. Governor Vane refused to put the motion. Deputy- Governor Winthrop feeling, as a Boston man, a ' clelicacy about doing it, Endicott put it, and it was carried. The meeting at Newtown (May, 1637) was a battle. It was held in the open air. Both parties were out in strength and in hot blood. Vane took the chair and began to read a petition sent in from Boston, vaguely described in the Journal as " being about pretence of liberty, etc." Winthrop interrupted him as out of order, and, since the election had pre- 156 JOHN WINTHROP. cedence of all other business, moved that it be pro- ceeded to at once. An immense commotion and uproar ensued, in which the bystanders joined. The question was, Shall the election be the first thing? Elder Wilson in his zeal " gat up on the bough of a tree," and made thence a speech to the crowd in the affirmative, arguing that the point was settled by the charter. The contention was long, and threatened at times to assume a physical character. The day was passing ; the cry of " Election ! Election ! " grew clamorous. Finally Winthrop, since Vane would not, called for a vote. It was Yes, by a large majority. Still Vane balked. " Then," said Winthrop, " we will go on without you ! " The result was a matter of course : the Antinomians went to the wall ; Winthrop was governor again, with Dudley for his deputy, — the old firm. While throughout the Controversy, Winthrop, as we say, stood with "the country" against Boston, the circumstance that the Antinomians were his fellow-townsmen operated, together with his native disposition, to preserve him in general from that intemperance of passion into which both parties were betrayed, — constituted him a mediating element but for presence of which, the look is, Massachusetts would have gone to wreck ; made him also chief healer of the wounds of the conflict afterward. There is evidence that it was to him the season of a great chastening of spirit, and incidentally of the most searching and solemn self-inquest. It was while the strife of tongues was loud around him that, in "CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE" WRITTEN. 157 hours of privacy, he wrote that "Christian Expe- rience " spoken of in an earlier chapter, which ap- pears to have come about in this wise : Late in 1636 he had drawn forth from its long repose his old religious diary, the " Experiencia," and made an entry in it, — the first since he left Groton Manor. What suggested it the entry itself explains : " Upon some differences in o r . Churche about the waye of the Spirit of God in the worke of Justif : myselfe dissentinge from the reste of the brethren, I had occasion to examine mine owne estate," — which ex- amination, he goes on to say, had lasted some days with much perturbation, but had issued in a new peace with Heaven. Recording this seems to have led him into wider reflections, and finally to have moved him to indite a statement at large of the way of God with his soul. So he sat down with his pen, and looking back reviewed, in the subdued light of memory, the spir- itual changes and events of all his bygone years, — unto a conclusion bearing on present circumstances; for he closes with saying, — "The Doctrine of free justification, lately taught here, took me in as drowsy a condition, as I had been in (to my remembrance) these twenty years, & brought me as low (in my own apprehension) as if the whole work had been to begin anew. But when the voice of Peace came, I knew it to be the same that I had been acquainted with before, though it did not speak so loud nor in that measure of joy that I had felt sometimes. Only this I found, that I had defiled the white garments of the Lord Jesus. . . . 158 JOHN WINTHROP. "The Lord Jesus who (of his own free grace) hath washed my soul in the blood of the everlasting covenant, wash away all those spots also in his good time. "Amen, even so doe, Lord Jesus." The date subscribed with his name, "The 12 th of the 1 i th month 1636," — N.S.Jan. 22, 1637 — is, as he notes, that of his fiftieth birthday. This paper is justly to be held the most signifi- cant — as it is the most pleasing — personal memo- rial of the Antinomian Controversy as concerns John Winthrop. There can be no doubt that it reflects the prevailing attitude of his mind in relation to it. WINTHRQP AT THE HELM AGAIN. 159 CHAPTER XII. WINTHROP AT THE HELM AGAIN. (1637-1638.) The ship of state, when Winthrop took the helm in 1637, was labouring heavily in tempestuous seas, with breakers not far away. There was no one of all her crew with calmer brain or steadier hand to pilot her through the jeopardy than he, — none certainly to whom ship and freight were more precious, — but it was a task of extreme difficulty, nor soon to be accomplished. Vane, in the election just described, had been re- tired not only from the first place, but from office altogether, as had been likewise the Boston Assistants Coddington and Dummer. Each and all, they were "returned to the condition of private men," — a thing which the ministers had once disallowed, but had lately, we may assume, come to view in a new light; Master Cotton's great scriptural demonstration on the subject now appearing less luminous than for- merly. Boston was full of wrath. A town- meeting next day after the election sent Vane and Coddington back to the General Court as deputies. On a tech- nicality — slight defect of legal warning of said town- l6o* JOHN WINTHROP. meeting ; two freemen not notified of it — the Court refused to seat them, and they had to be elected over again. In contrast with Winthrop in like circum- stances, Vane took his reverse with bad grace. He belied his gentle breeding by treating his successor with marked discourtesy. When the latter in person invited him to sit with the magistrates in the meeting- house at public worship, he petulantly declined. When Winthrop again invited him with others to meet at dinner Lord Leigh, the Earl of Marlborough's son (visiting the colony on his travels), he not only would not come, — impudently pleading conscientious scruples, — but carried off Lord Leigh, who was a boy in his teens, to dinner elsewhere ; acting like a boy himself. He also — nothing amiss but for the spice of anger in it — disputed with the governor the legality of an order of the General Court virtually prohibiting the residence of new-comers in the colony without official leave first obtained, — an order de- signed to prevent the importation of recruits to the Antinomian party. In his attack upon it — it was an affair of pamphlets — Vane incidentally lays down, in impressive style, those fundamentals of civil and reli- gious freedom, his intrepid vindication of which on a larger arena in days to come would win him immortal renown, u^inthrop, in his defence of it, develops more articulately and amply than on any other occa- sion that interpretation of the charter by which it invests Massachusetts with the authority of self-gov- ernment") His exposition displays his intellectual characteristics, and is a good example of his work EXIT VANE. 161 in that kind. The whole discussion, able and volu- minous on both sides, and exceedingly interesting, may be read in Hutchinson's " Collection of Original Papers." Vane lingered not much longer at the Bay. He sailed for England in August, and the juvenile Lord Leigh with him, amid the farewells of his Boston friends, and with a parting artillery salute ordered by Winthrop, excused by pressure of official duties from being himself on hand to see him off. It is a pleasure to record that he went home to cherish no resentment toward the community in which he had fared so unhappily, or toward the persons with whom he had come most sharply into collision. Years after, Winthrop paid him the tribute of saying that " though he might have taken occa- sion against us for some dishonour which he appre- hended to have been unjustly put upon him here, yet ... he showed himself a true friend to New England, and a man of noble and generous mind." Outside Boston, the new accession of Winthrop to the chief magistracy was the subject of ardent congratulation. Going soon after the election to Lynn, Salem, and Ipswich, the exulting citizens es- corted him from town to town. But Boston was in another temper, and he was made to feel it. " Sad Boston," Margaret called it in a letter to him at New- town, — letter beginning " Dear in My Thoughts." It had been an unseemly incident of election-day that the four sergeants composing the governor's guard of honour, "being all Boston men . . . laid down ii 1 62 JOHN WINTHROP. their halberds and went home." " The country," learning of this, would have provided a detail for the duty from the near towns. Boston, for shame, then offering — but churlishly — to furnish a guard, Winthrop begged to be excused; some of his own servants would answer. But he reminded his neighbours of their error in forgetting that "the place drowns the person be he honourable or base." Though the Antinomian Controversy had its crisis in the battle at Newtown, the end was not yet. The divided state of the colony wrought by it was a condition of immediate danger not to be ignored. Indian hostilities were at the point of outburst, and faction was military weakness. Moreover, there was well-grounded solicitude regarding the effect the schism would produce abroad, — its effect, for one thing, on emigration. Anxious pains had been taken to soften the report of it. "Tell our countrymen," said Cotton, early in 1637, to some who were going to England, " that all the strife amongst us is about magnifying the grace of God, . . . and that if there are any among them that would strive for grace they should come hither." But the colony had visibly before it evidence of the repelling operation of its domestic broil. In the summer of 1637, just after the election, two ship- loads of emigrants, led by the Rev. John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, landed at Boston. Davenport was an intimate of Cotton's, and had been by him induced to come over. Eaton had been a member FRUITS OF FACTION. 163 and an Assistant of the Massachusetts Bay Company in England, and was a gentleman of ample estate. It was a reinforcement to repair to a considerable ex- tent the loss of the Connecticut secession, the wound of which was still fresh. Not long, however, after their arrival they began looking for a place of outside settlement; and the following spring passed on to Quinnipiack, on Long Island Sound, and founded the New Haven Colony. Whether they would in any case have remained at the Bay is perhaps uncertain ; but it had been expected that they would remain, and it was felt at the time that the state of things they found there had to do with determining their course. Winthrop smooths over their departure — of which at a later period he confesses he was " im- patient" — in terms in which they doubtless smoothed it over to him j attributing it to the attraction of Quinnipiack, and to their wish to be out of the way of a "general governor." Then, again, the representations — such, for in- stance, as Vane might make — of the prevailing dis- order as bordering on anarchy, would afford a new pretext of assault on the charter. The charter ques- tion, in one shape or another, was apt to be involved in all colony difficulties. It was so now. Young Lord Leigh, while in Boston, was told by some gos- sip of a certain Eure having declared "that if the king did send any authority hither against our patent he would be the first should resist him." At which treasonable speech the boy nobleman was so horrified that he brought the matter to the attention of the 1 64 JOHN WINTHROP. governor, naming his informant. Winthrop, much less scandalized, felt it expedient under the circum- stances that some notice should be taken of it. On interrogation of Eure by the Court, it came out that in his strong talk he had not named the king at all, but had said that "if there came any authority out of England contrary to the patent he would withstand it ; " which the governor pointed out to the Court, and to his callow lordship, and to the no doubt astonished Eure, was a quite fundamentally different thing, — in fact, the opposite thing. Rightly understood, Eure was a model of British loyalty ; for our patent, his excellency expounded, is of royal ori- gin, and " it is lawful to resist any authority which was to overthrow the lawful authority of the king's grant," — an argument very like one that would be heard on the same soil some generations later, about the time of the battle of Bunker Hill. The discussion between Winthrop and Vane that has been referred to, about the Court's order rela- tive to permission of residence, also rubbed against the subject of the charter. Vane in his reasoning continually assumed the king's right of control over the colony ; showing that he was not grounded in the true doctrine. Lawyer Winthrop had to tread very gently, and use his nicest skill, in repudiating the false premise without doing it too explicitly. Nor was the apprehension of trouble from abroad by reason of the controversy merely speculative. Positive signs of such a consequence developed. In June, 1637, — so Winthrop reports, — word was re- >f\B R A * ^S, tf Of TH£ A ( UNIVERSITY J FRUITS OFltfCr/qM c sj 165 ceived that " on pretence there was no lawful author- ity in force here," the Lords Commissioners had appointed " divers of the magistrates to take charge of the government." The scheme alluded to, what- ever it was, blew over, for we hear no more of it ; but it meant that the news in England was that things were in a bad way in Massachusetts. Altogether with interests of the most vital moment demanding, depending on, domestic harmony, some- thing — and whatever was needful — must be done to restore it. No prospect appeared that it would come of itself. When, in the summer of 1637, volunteers were wanted for the Pequot War, which had surprised the colony in the midst of its household fight, the Boston Antinomians, because the chaplain of the force to be raised would be a covenant-of-works minister, — their own Elder Wilson, — would not enlist. The reprobations and admonitions of the protracted synod already mentioned 1 produced no effect. The government resolved to act. The following November the General Court, " finding upon consul- tation that two so opposite parties could not contain in the same body without apparent hazard of ruin to the whole, agreed to send away some of the principal." To John Wheelwright's conviction of nine months be- fore was now added the hitherto deferred sentence. \jle was disfranchised and banished ; filling up the measure of his offence by an appeal to the king, — which the Court disposed of in short order. Mrs. Hutchinson was put on trial. She defended herself 1 Page 150. 1 66 JOHN WINTIIROP. like a woman of spirit. It was give and take between her and her judges, upon whom and their posterity- she, by revelation, denounced bitter woes. She was banished, — the sentence not to be executed, however, till spring. The signers, or justifiers, of the Wheelwright petition before spoken of, were next taken in hand. Several, including two of the Boston deputies, were de- posed from office and disfranchised ; some fined, and one banished. The Court adjourned a fortnight, to give persons concerned in the line of procedure now inaugurated time for meditation, and then re- sumed the work. Other official heads fell, Cap- tain UnderhilPs for one ; several citizens more were disfranchised ; fifty-eight Bostonians, with a few from other towns, were required to deliver up all arms in their possession ; and the colony ammunition stored in Boston was ordered to be removed else- where. This was a serious turn of affairs. The Wheel- wright petitioners — there had been sixty of them — betook themselves to petitioning on their own ac- count ; about a third of them seeking, and for their penitence obtaining, forgiveness of the Court. " They did ingeniously acknowledge," says Winthrop, " how they had been deceived and misled . . . and blessed God that had so timely discovered their error and danger to them." Mrs. Hutchinson had yet to undergo her ecclesiastical trial by the Boston church. It took place in March, 1638, with incidents char- acteristic of such occasions everywhere in those days, but to modern views forbidding ; and resulted in her THE STRONG HAND. 167 excommunication. Poor lady ! she had lost her army of friends. There were very few to stand by her. The church did, however, make a rally in the form of endeavouring to bring the governor to book for his share in causing the publication in England — by which they felt injured — of all the Court had done to the Antinomians. But nothing came of it except an elaborate argument from Winthrop to prove that a magistrate was not obnoxious to church discipline for acts performed in his judicial capacity. The purgation of the Bay — there were, it is ob- servable, no confiscations, nor, beyond detentions inci- dent to trial, imprisonments — was not a numerous one. Four only were sent away ; though eleven more wiro were advised that their absence was desirable, and about forty sympathizers who chose to leave of them- selves, departed in their company, — most of whom subsequently returned, satisfied upon reflection to live in Massachusetts. Wheelwright and his adherents went to New Hampshire ; but he in *clue time came back, by permission of the Court. Mrs. Hutchinson and her party of refugees turned southward, and set- tled on the island of Narragansett Bay whence Rhode Island took its name. But there new illuminations were vouchsafed her which her little community — of nineteen persons to begin with — could not pos- sibly accommodate, and by which it was soon forced apart. She "could not," says Palfrey, " willingly be quiet, or be second, anywhere." Eventually, with a following, she migrated westward, and took up her abode in the vicinity of New York, near the present Astoria, — then Dutch country, — where, in 1643, sne > 1 68 JOHN WIN THRO P. and all but one of her household with her, lamentably perished in an Indian massacre. To claim that Mrs. Hutchinson and her associates in banishment were a sacrifice to religious bigotry is no more tenable than a similar claim in the case of Roger Williams. The idea of religious liberty indeed, in the nineteenth century sense, then no more ob- tained in Massachusetts than it did in England. Of the duty and right of purifying the state of aggres- sive dissent to its established religion by exclusion, there was no doubt whatsoever. From time to time persons were banished for their opinions when offen- sively published, — like Hugh Bewett, for example, in 1640, "for holding publicly and maintaining that he was free from original sin, and from actual also for half a year before." There are preserved in Mather's u Magnalia " some verses composed by Thomas Dudley in his old age, taking leave of life ; an extract from which illustrates the sentiment of that age on the subject of toleration : " Farewel dear wife, children and friends, Hate heresie, make blessed ends. Bear poverty, live with good men ; So shall we live with joy agen. Let men of God in courts and churches watch O're such as do a toleration hatch. Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison all with heresie and vice. If men be left, and otherwise combine, My Epitaph's, I dy'd no libertine." The birth of freedom at that point was slow. Not even the plainest proofs of its policy could hasten it before its time. When, twenty years after the Anti- THE PEQUOT WAR. 169 nomian Controversy, the banished Quakers, wearying of Rhode Island because they were there let alone, re- turned to Massachusetts, where they could be sure of not being let alone, — persecution attracting them as sugar attracts flies, — and so incurred the martyrdom they coveted, it did not occur to the tormented colony, wanting nothing but to be rid of them, that, did it but lay no hand on them, it likewise would be too insipid a place of sojourn for them to endure. But Mrs. Hutchinson was not persecuted. It is quite true her errors were reckoned monstrous, dam- nable, heaven-defying, inviting judgment upon the community to which she belonged. Yet not for her opinions was she cast out. A saying about her of early date sums up the whole story : " She was like Roger Williams, or worse." By her means Massa- chusetts was brought to the edge of social and politi- cal disruption, and, beset by gravest perils from without, was crippled in the power of self-defence, small at best. On the principle affirmed by Oliver Cromwell, that " without being, well-being is not pos- sible," her expulsion was a necessity. The Pequot War, to which reference has been made as coincident at a certain stage with the Anti- nomian imbroglio, belongs to Connecticut rather than to Massachusetts history ; though Massachusetts took part in it, and was immensely concerned in its issue. It was already in progress when Winthrop's election (May, 1637) took place. Endicott's bloody reprisal of the summer before, instead of cowing the spirit 170 JOHN WINTHROP. of the Indians, had kindled it into a blaze of wrath, from which Hooker's colony just then planting on the Connecticut immediately began to suffer. That settlement was in a frightfully exposed position. Iso- lated, with no more than two hundred and fifty men capable of bearing arms, it lay within reach of as many as five thousand fighting barbarians ; one thou- sand of them, two days' march to the eastward, Pe- quots, most warlike of all. We estimate the situation from the white man's side. Of course there was a red man's point of view too. He also was hemmed in. He had a history parallel to that we are recounting, — an epic of pro- foundest pathos, — though he has no historian. • During the autumn of 1636, as became known throughout the country, the Pequots addressed over- tures to the powerful Narragansetts — their neigh- bours, but their hereditary foes — to make common cause with them in the enterprise of destroying the English entirely out of the land; and but for the interposition of Roger Williams they were likely to have succeeded, — to the woe, possibly to the doom, of New England. Williams, who in his banishment had made friends with the Narragansett chiefs, now, at extreme hazard of his life, repaired to them in per- son, and by dint of utmost endeavours induced them, instead of joining the Pequots, to send an embassy to Boston to enter into treaty alliance with Massachu- setts against them. Winthrop's detailed account of the negotiation, — it was conducted with no little state, — and his transcription of the nine articles of THE PEQUOT WAR. 171 the compact entered into, attest the deep concern with which the threatened coalition had been viewed. The Pequots, left to carry on the crusade alone, began operations in the spring of 1637, with murders on the Connecticut, appalling in their incidents as Indian murders are wont to be. The people there — the black danger closing round them, and their destruc- tion apparently imminent — cried to Massachusetts and to Plymouth for help, themselves sternly gird- ing on the sword. The Massachusetts General Court responded by a levy of one hundred and sixty men, — the Boston quota, for Antinomian reasons, as before stated, hard to get, — who were despatched by water to the seat of the impending war. Vane had, how- ever, previously sent forward to Saybrook a vanguard of twenty with Captain Underhill, — happily so spared the dispiriting weight on his valour of the covenant- of- works chaplain, — to report to Capt. John Mason, coming down the river in command of the Connecti- cut column. This detachment, as it turned out, was the only Massachusetts force that participated in the memorable " divine slaughter " — as good elder Thomas Shepard of Cambridge afterward called it — that was the decisive action of the campaign. Such another grim tragedy it was as those which in the same days were marking the track of Tilly and Wallenstein in the Palatinate. It annihilated the Pequot tribe. Comparing, in point of exposure to Indian perils, the situation of the colonists with that of the mod- ern settlers of our western frontier, it is to be con- sidered that the latter have a great nation behind 172 JOHN WIN THRO P. them ; while the former, in their few scattered villages on the ocean's edge, were alone, with no succours to invoke, and no retreat possible. The extermination of the Pequots was dictated by the imperious instinct of self-preservation. It ac- complished its object. For a whole generation there- after there was no formidable outbreak of savage violence against the whites of New England. A year later there appeared in Boston a delegation of Mohe- gans- from Connecticut, headed by their chief Uncas, on the anxious mission of explaining the circum- stances in which they had allowed a few Pequot fugitives to live among them. Winthrop alwa^sjoJ)Sj^^^ Trareg[^SS3^y er y now and then in his commen t s ^ g p^ ^b^Hjr!-' -TH ■ he notes with implied "aSmiration the "very safe and wary conditions" on which the Narragansett Canonicus at the time of the Oldham murder engaged to assist in its punishment. One can almost hear the laugh with which in an- other place he tells how an honest plain settler, having been asked by a native what were the first principles of a commonwealth, and " being far short in the knowledge of such matters, yet ashamed that an Indian should find an Englishman ignorant of anything," replied, after taking time to think, that the first principles of a commonwealth were salt, iron, and ships. " Alas, saith the Indian, then I fear we shall never be a commonwealth." On occasion of the visit from the Mohegans above referred to, he was impressed with the eloquence of THE PEQUOT WAR. 173 Uncas, so much so that he preserves a passage of it as follows : — " This heart (laying his hand upon his breast) is not mine, but yours; I have no men; they are all yours; command me any difficult thing, I will do it; I will not believe any Indians' words against the English; if any man shall kill an Englishman, I will put him to death, were he never so dear to me." The " divine slaughter " was, indeed, efficacious. 174 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER XIII. FRESH DANGER FROM ABROAD. (1638-164O.) When the Court of Elections of 1638 came round, Winthrop was continued governor, as was also Dudley deputy. This was breaking the rule of late followed, but the freemen felt that it was no time now to pass by the fittest men. The Antinomians and the Pe- quots were subdued, but in both cases there were re- mainders that rendered a change of executive highly impolitic. At this Court the grateful country voted the gov- ernor and the deputy a liberal donation of land. — land lying above Concord this was, in contiguous sections ; the division boulders named the Two Broth- ers in pleasing circumstances before related. 1 The very day of his election to this his sixth term, Winthrop was prostrated by a fever, the consequence probably of the strain he had been under, which brought him to death's door. One happy result of it, we must suppose, was the softening toward him, while he lay so sick and his re- covery in doubt, of many hearts that the controversy 1 Page 103. SEVERE ILLNESS. 175 had estranged. At all events, he was soon reinstated in the good graces of his Boston neighbours, — the residual penalties of whose late insubordination the government, at the first signs of their return to a better mind, was prompt to remit. While " firm and resolute in the execution of his office," says Hutchin- son, " and steady to his principles, yet in private life he behaved with much moderation. He was obliging and condescending to all, and by this means in a short time recovered their affections and was in greater esteem than ever." Cotton Mather tells a story of him — without date, but the fact of a wood- famine in Boston in the winter of 1637-38 assigns it to this period — that, as an illus- tration of his ways, gives insight of the reasons why the eclipses of his popularity were at all times brief. " In an hard & long winter, when wood was very scarce at Boston, a man gave him private information, that a needy person in the neighbourhood stole wood sometimes from his pile ; whereupon the governour in a seeming an- ger did reply, ' Does he so ? I '11 take a course with him ; go, call that man to me, I '11 warrant you I '11 cure him of stealing.' When the man came, the governour con- sidering that if he had stolen, it was more out of neces- sity than disposition, said unto him, ' Friend, it is a severe winter, & I doubt you are but meanly provided for wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my wood- pile till this cold season be over.' And he then merrily asked his friends, ' Whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing his wood ? '" But the governor's public duties during this term, though less painful than those of the preceding, were 176 JOHN WINTHROP. onerous. " There came over this summer," as he records with exultation, "twenty ships and at least three thousand persons, so that they were forced to look out new plantations." This made work for the governor, but it was work in which his soul delighted. Such an accession just now was in every way a boon. It was a large increase of strength, and it di- verted the thoughts of the people from sore subjects. There was relief, too, in the proof it afforded that, bad as the times were in New England, they were enough worse in Old England still to tip the scales in the former's favour ; for which Winthrop must have been almost ready to thank God. Yet so bright a smile of fortune was not without an attendant frown. The departure of so numerous a body to reinforce the refractory colony had startled the Lords Commissioners, who did all they could to prevent it, — " the Archbishops caused all the ships to be stayed," — though without avail; commercial influences shaking off the arrest, to their chagrin. "For sure the Lord awed their hearts," says the governor, " and they and others (who savoured not religion) were amazed to see men of all conditions, rich and poor, servants and others, offering them- selves so readily for New England, when for furnish- ing of other plantations, they were forced to send about their stalls, and when they had gotten any, they were forced to keep them as prisoners from run- ning away." But the resolution was taken to renew the attempt of bringing Massachusetts under control. Accordingly, there arrived in Boston, in season to FOURTH ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 17 7 be laid before the fall meeting of the General Court, now sitting there again, a document dated " White- hall, April 4, 1638," bristling with great names, — Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Keeper,- Lord Treas- urer, Lord Privy Seal, Earl Marshal, etc., a round dozen of them, — recapitulating the facts relative to the miscarriage of 1635, an d on the ground of mul- tiplied new complaints of "want of a settled and orderly government " in the Colony, requiring now the return of the charter, and that instantly. No trifling this time. Said letters-patent are to be sent back by the same ship that brings this order, or " their lordships will cause a strict course to be taken against them, and will move his Majesty to resume into his hands the whole plantation." The General Court without hesitation " agreed not to send home the patent," but that " a letter should be written by the governor in the name of the Court to excuse our not sending of it." The governor, of course, was the man for that business. Both at home and abroad he had come to be specially associated with the policy of keeping hold of the charter at all risks whatsoever. In their order the Lords Commis- sioners had spoken of the charter as " alleged ... to be in the hands of Mr. Winthrop," and had required its surrender by " the said Winthrop, Or any other in whose power or control it might be ; " — but evidently they judged he had charge of it. They had also di- rected their clerk in forwarding the order to enclose with it a letter " from himself to Mr. Winthrop." All which suggests that, his office aside, Winthrop was 12 178 JOHN WINTHROP. regarded the individual head and front of the previous offending. The governor wrote his letter, ceremoniously and loyally phrased, expressing our astonishment at this strange, inexplicable demand of your lordships ; for not immediately complying with which we crave your lordships' indulgence, while we humbly ask to know what we have done to provoke it. Should we not, at least, have the chance to plead to any accusa- tion lodged against us? As to the Quo Warranto your lordships mention, be assured we were never called to make answer to it, as we do not doubt we could have done to your satisfaction. But will your lordships deign to consider the great evils to re- sult from the recall at this time of the charter we had from his Majesty, through which his dominion in these parts has been secured? Not to speak of the loss inflicted on us who are heads of the state here founded, by our being forced to abandon the country, — perhaps your lordships have thought we would stay here, but you were mistaken, — that removal would leave other English plantations near by so naked as to force their abandonment by their leaders also. Whereupon the French and the Dutch, whom we are holding in check, would have that free field here- abouts they so eagerly covet. Let your lordships think, too, what effect the revocation, without cause shown, of our patent will have on other of his Maj- esty's subjects who may be contemplating enterprises like ours, which it is obviously for the glory of his reign to promote. Finally> should the extinguish- FOURTH ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 179 ment of our liberties oblige our responsible and rul- ing class, the competent element of our community, comprising our men of wisdom and estate, as a body to withdraw, will not the common people that are left, seeing themselves cast off by his Majesty, on their part cast off that allegiance hitherto so scrupu- lously taught them by our word and example, and set up some government of their own, to the sacrifice, in the event, of all interests involved? "Upon these considerations we are bold to renew our humble sup- plication to your lordships, that we may be suffered to live here in this wilderness, and that this poor plantation, which hath found more favour with God than many other, may not find less favour from your lordships. . . . We do not question your lordships' proceedings, we only desire to open our griefs where the remedy is to be expected. If in any thing we have offended his Majesty and your lordships, we humbly prostrate ourselves at the footstool of supreme authority." In such garments did the governor, pursuant to the policy of Avoid or Protract, dress the Won't Do It the General Court instructed him to send the Lords Commissioners. The answer, however, was not so audacious as it seems. It was well known to the General Court that the crown was less prepared than in 1635 t0 enforce its demand. Winthrop was aware that the Scottish troubles " did so take up the king and council that they had neither heart nor leisure to look after the affairs of New England." Still more safe did they feel to maintain the attitude 180 JOHN WINTHROP. of disobedience when the next year (June, 1639) they had from their lordships another communica- tion, — not so formally transmitted, it seems, — much milder in tone, deprecating the hostile construction put upon their order, promising " to continue our liberties," yet renewing the previous command to despatch the patent home at once ; which they played with in this fashion : — "This order being imparted to the next general court, some advised to return answer to it. Others thought fitter to make no answer at all, because, being sent in a private letter, and not delivered by a certain messenger, as the former order was, they could not proceed upon it, because they (their lordships, to wit :) could not have any proof that it was delivered to the governour ; and order was taken, that Mr. Cradock's agent, who delivered the letter to the governour, etc., should, in his letters to his master, make no mention of the letters he delivered to the governour, seeing his master had not laid any charge upon him to that end." The ship on which Mr. Cradock's agent was pas- senger brought news that when it left England the king was marching into Scotland at the head of an army; wherefrom Governor Winthrop and his col- leagues inferred that they might rest easy about the charter for the present. They were right. Avoid or Protract had perfectly served its end the third time, and would do so again. In Cromwell's day, parlia- ment would call it into exercise by sending for the charter, with the professed view of arranging a more perfect correspondence of the colony with the home SEVENTH TERM. 18 1 government. On which occasion the colony, having kept a year's silence, would reply : Thank you, but we are very well satisfied with things as they are ; and, as usual, a war would step in — Dutch war then — to bar further proceedings. Not till forty-nine years after, when Cromwell's day was past, and the reign of Charles II. drawing to a close, and Winthrop long at rest from his labours, was the patent of 1629 torn from the hands of Mas- sachusetts ; and then the liberties for more than half a century nourished under its shelter had struck too deeply into her soil to be uprooted. The next electi on (16 ^ saw Winthrop again re- turned governor, — the seventh time, and the third in immediate succession. With the momentous con- cern of the charter in process of manipulation, it was still not seasonable to install another in the first place. Besides, contrary to fears of its stoppage by the use that would have been made against the colony at home of its late contumacy, the stream of emigra- tion increased in volume. " Ships came to us from England and divers other parts, with great store of people and provisions of all sorts." One of these ships brought over the colony's first printing-press, which was set up in Cambridge ; the printer, Stephen Daye, direct lineal forefather there, in his art, of the printers of this book. The towns now numbered twelve, and ground was broken for several new plantations. 182 JOHN WINTHROP. \J3ut with the pressure of the life and death ques- tion somewhat lifted, the old unsettled issue between magistrates and commons revivedj It emerged at the May meeting of the General Court, 1639, Win- throp's record of which begins : " The court of elec- tions was; at which there was a small eclipse of the sun." Whether he speaks literally or figuratively is left a little in doubt, for he proceeds to say that the choice of governor was not unanimous ; explain- ing with frank simplicity that it was " not out of any dislike of him, (for they all loved and esteemed him,) but out of their fear lest it might make way for having a governor for life." But that was not all. Emanuel Downing, to whom the colony was beholden for important services in England, who had come over the year before, and who was the governor's brother-in-law, being nomi- nated Assistant by the magistrates, was defeated. The commons also kicked vigorously against a prop- osition of the magistrates to reduce the number of deputies from each town to two, — it had been three, — though in view of the growing state of the country they finally consented to it. A petition for the repeal of this change, with the names, as he regrets to see, of "learned and godly" elders in the list of its signatures, disturbs the governor deeply. He doubts if it is lawful, as putting dishonour upon the court li against the tenor of the fifth commandment." It was at an adjourned session of this Court that the deputies fell foul of the Council for Life, and practi- cally disabled it in the manner already described. 1 1 Page 143. \Pvt DOMESTIC POLITICS. 183 iere is an unwonted tinge of sarcasm in the governor's closing comment on these various doings. I Ic finds it observable " how strictly the people would seem to stick to their patent, where they think it makes for their advantage, but are content to decline it, where it will not warrant such liberties as they have taken up without warrant from thence, as ap- pears in their strife for three deputies, etc., when as the patent allows them none at all, but only by inference, etc." The fact is, your excellency, — if you but saw it, — they have only discovered that stretching the charter is a game that two can play atj The legislation of 1639 included its share of curi- osities : such as restraint upon " excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities; " prohibition of Thomas Lechford — the first of what Carlyle calls " the attorney species " who undertook to set up business in New England — " from pleading any man's cause . . . unless his own ; " but most notably an order for the abate- ment of intemperance. Whether or not increase of drunkenness had resulted from the extraordinary public excitement of the past two or three years, a degree of it existed that led the Court, for several reasons assigned, — among them that " it occasioned much waste of wine and beer," — to pass a law abol- ishing " the abominable practice of drinking healths ; " whereby it appears that life in early New England was not altogether so funereal as some suppose. That this was on the governor's motion is as good as certain. Perhaps no writing of his more vividly sug gests hiTTfaihTng'and his logical habit than the fol •*»» 1 84 JOHN W1NTHR0P lowing memorandum, found among his papers, of the argument he obviously used in speaking for it. It is curious to see such an engine of analytical ratiocina- tion brought to bear on such a subject. " (i ) " Such a law as tends to the suppressing of a vain custom (quatenits it so doth) is a wholesome law. This law doth so, — ergo. The minor is proved thus : I. Every empty and ineffectual representation of serious things is a way of vanity. But this custom is such : for it is intended to hold forth love and wishes of health, which are serious things, by drinking, which, neither in the na- ture nor use, it is able to effect; for it is looked at as a mere compliment, and is not taken as an argument of love, which ought to be unfeigned, — ergo. 2. To em- ploy the creature out of its natural use, without warrant of authority, necessity or conveniency, is a way of vanity. But this custom doth so, — ergo. " (2.) Such a law as frees a man from frequent and needless temptations to dissemble love, etc. (quatenns it so doth) is a wholesome law. But this doth so, — ergo" Winthrop had very great annoyance and vexation this year (1639), as charged with the chief responsi- bility of looking after the colony's young college. Established at Newtown, — for its sake fondly re- christened Cambridge, — and bearing now the name of its first private benefactor, John Harvard, it had, under Rev. Nathaniel Eaton, head-master, matric- ulated its first undergraduate class, "sons of gen- tlemen and others of best note in the country;" one of its members the future Sir George Downing, destined to act a great part in England's approaching Revolution, — Downing Street in London his me- GOVERNOR'S PECUNIARY REVERSE. 185 morial. But misfortune befell it at the threshold. Master Eaton immediately proved himself a huge mistake; no less, in short, than a scoundrel and a ruffian. His brief administration was marked by an incredible meanness and violence. Students and instructors alike he treated with extreme outrage and cruelty, beating them inhumanly on the least pre- text, — one of the latter he clubbed nearly to death, — meantime keeping them on a starvation diet. By Winthrop's account he seems to have been insane. Both state and church took him in hand; but he slipped away to Virginia, where, says the Journal, " he took upon him to be a minister, but was given up of God to extreme pride and sensuality, being usually drunken, as is the custom there." The governor never had a liking for Virginia. A new head for the college was found in the Rev. Henry Dunster, — the first entitled president, — fresh from Old Cambridge, a gentleman in all ways wor- thy of the office, which he adorned thirteen years ; though he, too, saw tribulation in it before he was done, in consequence of turning Baptist. But to Winthrop's public cares the weight of pri- vate adversity was at this time added. In the autumn of 1639 ne sat down to make or to complete his will. He had made one nineteen years before in the old country. In the interval, however, both his family and his estate had enlarged ; he had now an extensive property in New England to bequeath. He begins with assigning, in case of 1 86 JOHN WIN THRO P. his death, the proceeds of the sale of his house in Boston, of his land "beyond Powder-horn Hill," of his interest in the windmill and in the fishery at Mystic, to the discharge of his debts. Then, — we note the principal items only, omitting minor bequests, explanations of the equity of the dis- tribution, and, with especial regret, personal touches that suffuse the document with affection and reflect the testator's domestic happiness, — to Margaret he gives half of Ten Hills farm during her life ; to John the other half, and eventually the whole; to Adam his island called the Governor's Garden ; to Stephen his half of the Isle Prudence in Narragansett Bay; to Deane his land at Pullen Point, — present town of Winthrop, — and, should it be not sold, the land beyond Powder-horn Hill ; to Samuel his lot at Con- cord and half his twelve hundred acres above Con- cord ; the remaining half and all his other lands not devised — there are still two thousand acres due from the country — to John, "my good son John," who has freely relinquished his rights " both in his moth- er's (Mary Forth's) inheritance and mine to a great value," for which " I do commend him to the Lord in all that the blessing of a father may obtain for an abundant recompense upon him and his." Not till a year and a half later — June 25, 1641 — did Winthrop put his name to this writing, when he finished it thus : " My estate becoming since much decayed through the unfaithfulness of my servant Luxford, so as I have been forced to sell some of my land already, and must sell more for satisfaction of GOVERNOR'S PECUNIARY REVERSE. 187 ^2,600 debts, whereof I did not know of more than .£300, when I intended this for my testament, I am now forced to revoke it, and must leave all to the most wise and gracious providence of the Lord, who hath promised not to fail nor forsake me, but will be an husband to my wife and a father to our chil- dren, as he hath hereto been in all our struggles. Blessed be his holy name." The postscript does not reveal the full dimensions of his loss. By the em- bezzlement of James Luxford, steward of his English property, he had been reduced from circumstances of affluence, for those times, to poverty, — and he a man no longer young. Tidings of the matter had followed close upon the draughting of the will ; but there was 'suspicion of something wrong already, as the will itself' intimates. The governor took his hard fortune like a man and a Christian, as might be expected. He makes no moan, but keeps on with the Journal, noting all events, political, ecclesiastical, commercial, in copious detail, as if nothing had happened. Letters of sym- pathy came to him from all sides — some from Eng- land — such as he deserved. Stanch Endicott wrote from Salem, — sickness ties him at home or he would come to see him, — pouring out his honest heart im- petuously in really a flood of endearments, praises, benedictions. Winslow of Plymouth did the same. Nor were words all. For his relief the people of the towns made up a subscription of nearly ^500. Richard Dummer of Newbury sent him ^100, — which meant a good deal, for he had been one of the 188 JOHN WINTHROP. disarmed Antinomians. The General Court joined in the manifestation of good- will by voting Margaret three thousand acres of land, — not much money's worth in it, to be sure, but the treasury was quite empty just then. Most significantly of all, the Bos- ton church — But we will let the governor himself tell about that : — "By this time there appeared a great change in the Church of Boston; for whereas, the year before, they were all (save five or six) so affected to Mr. Wheelwright & Mrs. Hutchinson, & those new opinions, as they slighted the present governor & the pastor, looking at them as men under a covenant of works, & as their greatest enemies ; but they bearing all patiently, & not withdraw- ing themselves (as they were strongly solicited to h:-.ve done,) but carrying themselves lovingly & helpfully upon all occasions, the Lord brought about the hearts of all the people to love & esteem them more than ever before, & all breaches were made up, & the Church was saved from ruin beyond all expectation ; which could hardly have been, (in human reason,) if those two had not been guided by the Lord to that moderation, etc. And the Church (to manifest their hearty affection to the governour, upon occasion of some strait he was brought into through his bailiff's unfaithfulness) sent him ^200." Brother Winthrop's behaviour had beyond ques- tion been of a highly gospel sort; but the disaster helped considerably also, no doubt, — as the sickness did awhile ago. A grateful balm to his excellency's feelings this Boston demonstration must have been, for the es- trangement it showed at an end was a lover's quarrel. MOVEMENT OF DESERTION. 1 89 Winthrop was a poor man the rest of his life. His heart and hope for this world, however, were chiefly bound up in his colony, — had been and continued to be. JSo that Massachusetts were spared and pros- , pered, all else might go ; he had enough to live for. For the present, his private reverses trouble him less than does the outcrop of certain untoward cir- cumstances of a new kind as affecting the prospect of the country. His friend John Humphrey, — signer with him of the Cambridge Agreement, his original deputy, always hitherto one of the colony's stand-bys, — being, like himself, by some means " brought low in his estate," thinks he will mend his affairs by moving to the British West Indies, where he has influential acquaintance, and where they will make him gover- nor. Moreover and worse, he is, on promise of ease and plenty there, recruiting a company to go with him, — which Winthrop likes exceedingly ill. What nonsense, when people who some time since came thence to us brought, as we saw, " meagre and un- healthful countenances," but here soon became " fat and well-liking." And what folly, when they will there have perfidious Spaniards for their neighbours, and no such liberties as our charter assures to us. And what a wrong, when their leaving will be inter- preted abroad as a sign that this colony is not to be desired. But the plan was " crossed by the hand of God " in the way of obstacles and accidents that brought it to small result. Mr. Humphrey did not get away at all, and the few who did shortly came back. 190 JOHN WINTHROP. The same West Indies cloud, however, arose from another quarter. Word came that Lord Say and Sele in England was advocating emigration thither in preference to Massachusetts, and for a bribe was engaging to furnish colonists with as good a charter as ours. This was uncomfortable news indeed. The governor wrote to Lord Say and Sele — it was in the last days of his term (1639-40) — remonstrating with him; showing him "how evident it was, that God had chosen this country to plant his people in, and therefore how displeasing it would be to the Lord, and dangerous to himself, to hinder this work, or to discourage men from supplying us, by abasing the goodness of the country, which he never saw, and persuading men, that here was no possibility of sub- sistence ; whereas there was a sure ground for his children's faith, that, being sent hither by him, either he saw that the land was a good land, and sufficient to maintain them, or else he intended to make it such, etc." To which his lordship replied, freely owning that the report of his proceedings was true, but saying that the West Indies was, in his opinion, so much better a place than Massachusetts that " we were all called to remove thither." Than which no judgment could possibly have been more unsatisfac- tory to his correspondent. But neither by this movement was New England much the loser. SECOND RETIREMENT. IQI CHAPTER XIV. NEW ASPECTS, HOME AND FOREIGN. ( 1 640-1 644.) HAvrNG borne the highest office three years running, Winthrop was now (in 1640) again released from its yoke, and to his entire content. The succession fell on Dudley. The treatment of the retiring incum- bent on the occasion was becomingly considerate. Not only was he retained in public service as head of the bench of Assistants, but the elders — more in sympathy with the commons since the Antinomian experience than formerly — who, " fearing lest the long continuance of one man in the place should bring it to be for life, and in time hereditary," had openly advised the change, deputed some of their number " to acquaint the old governor with their desire, and the reasons moving them, clearing themselves of all dislike of his government, and seriously professing their sincere affections and respect towards him, which he kindly and thankfully accepted, concurring with them in their motion, and expressing his unfeigned desire of more freedom, that he might a little intend his private occasions, wherein (they well knew) how much he had lately suffered." 192 JOHN WINTHROP. Moreover Governor Dudley is, in his regard, "a gentleman ... of approved wisdom and godliness, and of much good service to the country, and there- fore it was his due to share in such honour and benefit as the country had to bestow." Completing the election record of the period to be covered by this chapter, there will be in 1641 another shift, — Dudley sent down to the rank of Assistant, and Richard Bellingham made governor; but in 1642 — from which date as a standpoint we resume — it is Win- throp again, and for a double term, — for then once more there are reasons imperatively requiring the Best Man. In the interval of Dudley's and Bellmgham's admin- istrations much has happened. Events in England have moved at a rapid pace. Long Parliament has met ; Strafford's head has fallen ; Laud is in the Tower ; issue between liberty and the tyranny of Charles Stuart is finally joined. A new day, bright with new hopes for the people, has dawned, though erelong it will darken into civil war. Massachusetts shares the congratula- tion of the auspicious hour, and in some ways par- takes the benefits of it, — v^njpys an unprecedented sense of security, and is released into freedom of action, before restrained, in various directions. Thus we annex to our jurisdiction, at their desire, a* cluster of New Hampshire towns, conceived on a liberal construction of the Merrimack River clause — the Merrimack sources are up that way — to be within our patent. We admit them, and give their deputies voice in our General Court, yet, as calls for note, with- out imposing on them the same church-membership THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 193 rule of civil privilege by which we are bound. \jye are also free, with the charter so safe in hand, to furnish our commonwealth with a legal code of our own, which we have long desired ; and do accord- ingly adopt a scheme of laws,j2ne hundred in num- ber, styled the\Body of Liberties j) mainly the draught of Nathaniel Ward, elder of Ipswich, but lawyer- bred and highly competent for that work ; the most humane code to this time enacted in Christendom, with, for one item, a list of but eleven capital offences to England's thirty-two. We furthermore, John Eliot urging us to it, take more earnestly Jrito consideration our duty of evangelizing the Indians. But the new posture of affairs in the old country is also the source of great detriment to New England, — of distress even. It puts a stop to emigration for good and for all. Twenty one thousand in round numbers, it is estimated, had come over thus far; that is, in the Puritan exodus. Of these with their increase, about fifteen thousand — census of a Boston suburb at present — were included in the population of Massachusetts ; and there her growth by emigra- tion reached its period. It is Hutchinson's judg- ment that from 1640 onward for an hundred years and more not so many came from England to the colony as went from the colony to England. From the moment the omens of the Revolution became clear and decided, heroic spirits on this side were fired with the impulse to hasten across and throw themselves into it. When word came, says Winthrop, of "^e, calling of a parliament, and the hope of a 13 194 JOHN WIN THRO P. thorough reformation, . . . some among us began to think of returning back to England." Numbers did so ; twelve of the first twenty graduates of Harvard, and of other representatives of the leading families of the country not a few, — Stephen Winthrop one. Indeed, in the whole tremendous chapter of English history then beginning, New England played, from first to last, a by no means inconsiderable part. Nor was it without invitation. When the Westminster Assembly of Di- vines was about to be convoked by Parliament, Cotton of Boston, Hooker of Hartford, and Davenport of New Haven were, by letter, — five peers and Oliver Crom- well in the imposing list of its signers, — urged to assist in its deliberations. A ship would be sent for them. They did not go, — for prudential reasons chiefly. New England was wary of all ventures that might involve risk to her independence in church or state ; but that they were wanted denotes the repute abroad of the New England leaders. The immediate effect, however, of the turn of af- fairs in the mother country, which, Winthrop observes, " caused all men to stay in England in expectation of a new world," — a little ruefully he seems to speak, and as if he were not quite so sanguine as some of the millennium right off, — was extreme hard times. Not alone emigrants ceased to arrive, but ships as well. English trade was disastrously knocked in the head. An incidental result was to stimulate efforts to enlarge commerce up and down the American Atlantic coast, and especially to develop the enterprise of ship- building. In the summer of 1642 five sea- going HARD TIMES. 195 vessels were launched, and in no long time Massachu- setts had a sufficient merchant fleet of her own ; but for the present the colony was in straits. " All foreign commodities grew scarce, and our own of no price." The country was drained of money : and obligations falling due in England could not be met, to our deep chagrin, and, we fear, to the hurt of our credit. The uneasy General Court sends over Elder Hugh Peter of Salem, — whom we shall never see again, — Elder Thomas Welde of Roxbury, and merchant William Hibbins of Boston, with whom goes also John Win- throp, Jr., "to congratulate the happy success there," to do what they can to accommodate matters with our creditors, and to obtain relief for our necessities ; " but with this caution, that they should not seek to supply our wants in any dishonourable way, as by begging or the like," though they may collect money for the sup- port of our Indian missions. There was further caution observed in the pre- mises. Some, on suggestion of friends in England, had thought it advisable to have recourse to the well- disposed Parliament for the alleviation of the colony's embarrassment. But upon that the sages in council had cried, Hold ! Go carefully there ! We no more want to let Parliament into the management of our affairs than any other outside authority ! No word of instructions, therefore, from the General Court ! The delegation did, nevertheless, get the case before Par- liament ; and Parliament showed practical sympathy by granting Massachusetts free trade till further orders, and was pleased at the same time to annul all legal 196 JOHN WINTHROP. proceedings that lay against the charter. But in that our friends acted wholly on their private responsi- bility ; the colony government, as such, had nothing to do with it, — though for so valuable favours exceed- ingly obliged. It could not be that in such a thrifty, self-reliant community the hard times would long continue at the pinching point ; but they were very hard while they lasted. The supply of food even was short, and there was positive suffering. The worst consequence, however, to Winthrop's view, was the despairing flight from the country of a considerable number, including several persons of importance, — some to the West Indies, some to New York, but the most to Eng- land. To him this was a desertion in the highest degree ignominious. He could not bear with it. It was ever his wont to discern in adversities befalling those who forsook Massachusetts a testimony of Providence against them. On this occasion he so interprets a variety of ills, in their persons, families, affairs, that certain of the fugitives presently incurred, — as the manifest frown of heaven. He pours out in the Journal the bitterness of his grieved and indignant soul, in language of imaginary address to the rec- reants, repeating obviously the substance of remon- strances exhausted upon them : — 14 Ask thy conscience if thou wouldst have plucked up thy stakes, and brought thy family 3,000 miles, if thou hadst expected that all, or most, would have forsaken thee there. Ask again, what liberty thou hast towards others, which thou likest not to allow others towards thyself ; for \ RECONSTRUCTION OF LEGISLATURE. 197 if one may go, another may, and so the greater part, and so church and commonwealth may be left destitute in a wilderness, exposed to misery and reproach, and all for thy ease and pleasure, whereas these all, being now thy brethren, as near to thee as the Israelites were to Moses, it were much safer for thee, after his example, to choose rather to suffer affliction with thy brethren, than to enlarge thy ease and pleasure by furthering the occasion of their ruin." It was inevitable that in a season of reverse and foreboding, when men's hearts were failing them, he who was not only ablest chief, but whose anchorage to the public interest was, as all knew, a religious consecration, should be recalled to power. During the two terms Winthrop now served — his eighth and ninth — important things occurred in the field both of home politics and of New England rela- tions. In the second year — and by the way that year (1643) tne P^dge of fealty to our Sovereign Lord King Charles, who had set up his standard at Notting- ham the previous summer, was left out of the gover- nor's oath — the Great and General Court underwent a notable modification, external and internal. Hitherto the two orders composing it, though voting separately, had met in one assembly. It was now divided into two chambers, — of magistrates and of deputies re- spectively, — each to meet and act by itself. Hitherto in case of disagreement between deputies and magis- trates, the prerogative of veto — or of the negative voice, as it was called — had rested with the latter only, though not without protest. Now the veto 198 JOHN WIN THRO P. power was to be mutual, the concurrence of both chambers being required to effect legislation, — as remains the rule to this d aj^ "^These changes in the chieflnstitution of the civil stafe were a victory for the commons. For the agita- tion through which they came about the colony had a good while been ripening ; but it was precipitated by a trifling and even a ridiculous occasion, — as the governor humorously feels, for in his long, entertain- ing account of its sequel he dves it the name it bears in history, the Sow Business. ] It will be necessary to condense our statement of the affair into briefest compass, omitting numerous collateral and related incidents. A stray pig wandered into the yard of Captain Keayne of Boston. It was advertised at the time in vain ; but nearly a year after, Mrs. Sherman, who had lost a pig, appeared, and failing to identify the stray, claimed that a pig of his own Captain Keayne had meanwhile butchered was her missing property, — claimed it so noisily that Elders Cotton and Wilson inquired into the matter and found for Captain Keayne. Then Mrs. Sherman sued him. Defendant won the case, with three pounds' costs ; and in his turn brought suit against Mrs. Sherman, who had charged him with theft, for defamation of character, recovering twenty pounds' damages. The lady appealed to the General Court. The General Court took a week to hear both sides, when the magistrates, seven to two, reaffirmed the judgment, and the deputies, fifteen to eight, re- voked it. On a joint ballot Mrs. Sherman had a ma- THE SOW BUSINESS 199 jority j but according to precedent, the magistrates being against her, her appeal had failed. And now — six years after its origin, for the stray pig dated back to 1637 — the cause passed into poli- tics. The general public went into debate upon it. The facts that Captain Keayne was a rich man with a reputation for hard dealing, and that Mrs. Sherman was poor, were made great use of to give an odjous colour to the result the magistrates had reached. [The cry of reform was raised. Down with that instrument of injustice, the Negative Voicejj The magistrates were put on their defence. The governor took up his lawyer's pen, and wrote out for circulation a charac- teristically painstaking, elaborate digest of the whole matter from the beginning, to demonstrate the right- eousness of the conclusion arrived at. The elders examined the evidence, and declared their mind upon it to the same effect. But the people would not be satisfied. They had countenance of the magisterial minority, — especially of Richard Bellingham, late gov- ernor, who had formerly quarrelled with Winthrop and was always an uncomfortable worthy. A petition for the reopening of the question was submitted to the General Court, and reported favourably by a committee. But upon Captain Keayne's restoring, at private instance of friends, so much of Mrs. Sherman's damage money as had been paid him, the Court was content to go no further. The contention, however, held on with ris- ing passion ; and endeavours were put forth to allay it. The governor, perceiving that his argument in behalf of the magistrates had angered the opposition, took 200 JOHN WINTHROP. occasion — apparently at the 1643 Court of Elections — to make a conciliatory speech. He began : " I understand divers have taken offence at a writing I set forth about the Sow Business ; I desire to remove it, and to begin my year in a reconciled state with all." Then, premising that he still stood by the matter of what he had written, — no one surely would ask him to do otherwise, seeing it was his real opinion, — he owned that as to the manner of it there was some- what to be repented of. He had allowed impatience to betray him into a tone of too little consideration for the judgment and feeling of those who differed from him ; which he now entreated all who had been hurt by it to pardon and pass by. " If you please to accept my request," he concluded, "your silence shall be a sufficient testimony thereof unto me, and I hope I shall be more wise and watchful hereafter." This grace of his excellency mollifie(L^he temper of the dispute, but did not terminate it. The Negative Voice was fully discovered to be intolerable ; and the freemen ceased not — equis et velis, says Winthrop — to urge its abolition. The magistrates resisted stoutly. We cannot constitutionally abdicate our prerogative, they pleaded ; it will alter the frame of the government. Winthrop resorted to his pen again. What is proposed — he reasoned with great vigour and at great length — is contrara to the charter, and will make us g a mere democracyj' The elders thought so too. \Bj>t all availed not, and finally the magistrates yieldea ; not indeed in laying down the Negative Voice, but — what was the same in effect — THE UNITED COLONIES. 201 in conceding it to the commons also, as has been stated^ True to his habit and principle of accepting accom- plished facts, Winthrop simply records the result, with no remark save that thus was " determined the great contention about the negative voice." Parallel to the Sow Business in its later stages, another weighty concern, devolving a great responsi- bility upon the governor, was dealt with and brought to an issue, -4)he formation of the New England ConfederacA whereby the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven were leagued together for their mutual protection and peace. Their distance apart, originally in some cases occa- sioned by want of accord, now made a reason for their combining. They were exposed to inroad from the Manhattan Dutch and Delaware Bay Swedes below, from the French above, and on all sides from the In- dians. In case of aggression, the mother country, torn by civil strife, could not be looked to for assistance. They must therefore be ready to help one another. The scheme of such a coalition had been broached by Connecticut just after the Pequot War, and had repeatedly since been a subject of ineffectual confer- ence; but in 1643 Connecticut, of late on bad terms with her Dutch neighbours, moved again in the matter, and this time with result. A conven- tion of delegates, assembled in Boston, framed a con- tract by which the United Colonies of New England bound themselves to act together in various specified contingencies, and in relation to their common inter- 202 JOHN WINTHROP. ests, — the execution of the contract to be intrusted to a board of eight commissioners, two from each colony. The plantations in Maine, Sir Ferdinando Gorges proprietor, asked for admission to the league, but were refused, " because they ran a different course from us, both in their ministry and civil administra- tion." The Rhode Island and Narragansett planta- tions also wanted to join, but were likewise refused, on the ground that they lacked the qualification of a sufficiently fixed and stable government. They might come into the benefits of the pact by annexa- tion to Massachusetts or to Plymouth if they thought best. The commissioners met for the first time, Sep- tember, 1643, * n Boston, and — what it needed not a prophet to foretell — organized by choosing John Winthrop, of Massachusetts, president. The Confed- eracy went into immediate practical operation ac- cording to its design. It did not always escape dis- sension in its councils ; but on the whole it answered its purpose, and played an important part in pro- moting the progress of the country. By its means many differences between the parties to it were har- monized, and New England presented a single front to her adversaries. It lasted more than forty years, till the day of royal governors, and bequeathed to later times a memory and a lesson that were not lost. If one may judge, this second year (1643-44) of his occupancy of the chief office at this time — his ninth term — was the hardest working year Winthrop THE ACADIAN BOTHER. 203 saw in Massachusetts ; unless it were the year follow- ing the arrival. It had begun with a circumstance of noteworthy interest as exactly reproducing, in one point, a circumstance of his retirement in 1634, but with a difference to Winthrop. As on the earlier occasion John Cotton's election sermon 1 against change in the magistracy had been futile, so was Ezekiel Rogers's election sermon in 1643, vehemently dissuading the General Court fronV " choosing the same man twice together." The labour of the worthy elders was equally lost in eithef rs ease/ t " > But the term inaugurated with so signal a rnksl/of public favour the governor was not permitted to end without tasting again the disagreeable experience of unpopularity ; which arose from the development just then of a new chapter of the memorable D'Aulnay- La Tour episode in New England's foreign relations, the long confused story of which, with its multitu- dinous ins and outs, it would take a volume to tell. One day in June Winthrop and his family, recreat- ing themselves on the Governor's Garden, saw a boat pulling toward them with all speed, closely followed by another that had put off from a ship just entering the harbour. Boat number one proved to contain Mrs. Captain Gibbons, of Boston, and her children, all in a fright at being so pursued. There was no reason for alarm, however ; it was a friendly chase, as in a few minutes transpired. For out of boat number two stepped ashore Monsieur Charles La Tour, of New Brunswick, whose acquaintance both Mrs. Gibbons 1 See page 116. 204 JOHN WINTHROP. and the governor had made when he was in Boston some time since, and who explained that, recognizing the lady as she passed near his vessel, he had de- scended to pay her his complimentary devoir- All very well so far. But the ship was full of soldiers, and there were circumstances to suggest a question whether its arrival in port were of an answerably pa- cific intent. There was so much room for doubt on the subject that, swift oars or sails having run ahead with the news of its approach, by the time it anchored before Boston the militia was out, and three shallop- loads of armed citizens were on the way to the Gov- ernor's Garden. Meanwhile over the supper-table there Monsieur La Tour was telling the governor how it was that he had appeared in such shape. For the reader's understanding we are obliged to give a statement of antecedents, which shall be the shortest possible. Not to go further back than is necessary, at the period of the settlement of Massa- chusetts all the East Country from the Penobscot to Cape Breton — called at large Acadie — was French territory, of which Charles La Tour and D'Aulnay de Charnise each claimed to be rightful governor, and denounced the other as a rebel. Both were on the ground ; La Tour holding the New Brunswick region, D'Aulnay Nova Scotia and Maine. Both had fortified posts, and they were at open war, each striv- ing to oust the other by force of arms. Each had powerful friends at the French court to sustain his cause, where such a game of checkmate was played for them, that for a series of years each could make THE ACADIAN BOTHER. 205 out a plausible case for himself on the basis of official credentials. Both were money-makers, — trapping their main pursuit, — both wanted to trade with New England, and with both New England wanted to trade. The difficulty was to keep out of their quarrel, — which, however, could not be managed, for each held him- self free to molest the business of the other. Hence endless annoyance and no small damage to New Eng- enders who tried commercial ventures with either. The account of his surprising entry which La Tour is giving Winthrop over the supper- table at the Gover- nor's Garden is this : While in his fortress at the mouth of the St. John River expecting a ship from home bringing him supplies, men, and latest new documents with which to trump those of his adver- sary, D'Aulnay had blockaded the port with such a force that when the ship came it could not get in. Whereupon he (La Tour) had stolen through the blockade by night, boarded the ship, and brought it just as it was to Boston. What he wants is help to drive off D'Aulnay. The governor is inclined in his favour, but must refer the question to the magistrates. Accordingly the two take boat for Boston. There, under escort of a guard of musketeers, the governor conducts La Tour to Captain Gibbons' s house, where, as has been arranged, he will lodge. So the visitor, leaving his ship at anchor yonder, and placing his person in the power of the authorities on shore, makes clear — what till then was not quite clear — that he means peaceably. But Winthrop has noted that since the 206 JOHN WIN THRO P. Castle Island defences have been suffered to fall into a ruinous state there is nothing to hinder an enemy from sailing in and doing his will on Boston un- checked ; which blunder of false economy the Gen- eral Court ought immediately to repair, and will. Next day the magistrates are called together, and the case stated. La Tour produces his commission as " King's Lieutenant- General in Acadie," dated 1 64 1, — revoked, it seems, by machinations of D'Aul- nay some while since, but of that he makes no mention. The magistrates, though sympathizing with him, and satisfied that his is the winning side which it were good policy to back, find that the business be- longs decidedly to the new United Colonies Commis- sion ; that Massachusetts by herself can do nothing officially about it. But they judge — too hastily, as Winthrop afterward acknowledges — that he is at lib- erty to make up a military expedition by private contract, and will not interfere with his doing so. Four hired ships with their crews and seventy paid volunteers were soon en route for the scene of war. The blockade was broken ; but the war went on still other years with infinite small campaigning and di- plomacy, and no end of bother to New England, cajoled and threatened by either Frenchman in turn, till D'Aulnay died and La Tour consolidated the rival interests by marrying his widow. The tale of the whole affair in its shifting phases, as long drawn out in the Journal, is replete with in- cidents and comments — reflections of the manners and thoughts of the time — that are diverting to THE ACADIAN BOTHER. 207 read. There is an element of comedy in it : for ex- amples, — the embarrassment of the presence in Bos- ton on a Sabbath of two Franciscan friars of D'Aulnay's suite ; what to do with them an intricate matter ; solved by Winthrop's inviting them to his house, " where they continued private all that day until sun- set, and made use of such books, Latin and French, as he had, and so gave no offence, etc. ; " — Winthrop's utilization as a present to D'Aulnay of a sumptuous sedan-chair, originally "sent by the viceroy of Mexico to a lady, his sister," but made prize of in transit, and by its captor given to the governor, u worth forty or fifty pounds, . . . but of no use to us ; " — the punc- tilios of etiquette and the military pageantry with which the warring chiefs of Acadie, now one and now the other, were entertained by the Puritans of the Bay. The unofficial concession to La Tour in the sum- mer of 1643, which has been described, created much displeasure in the colony. Some of the ministers strongly condemned it, as did also a minority of the Assistants who had opposed it at the time. It was pronounced against on several grounds. It was aid- ing Roman idolaters. La Tour, indeed, pretended Huguenot sympathies, and went to meeting when he was in Boston ; but that was unquestionable sham. Again, it was a shrewd scheme to capture trade for Boston j and Essex County, — the thirty towns had recently been divided into four counties, Suffolk, Nor- folk, Essex, Middlesex, — with Salem for its port, was commercially jealous of Boston. But what was made 208 JOHN WINTHROP. most of was the danger it invited of vengeance from D'Aulnay. The disaffection was first formally expressed in a protest, bearing the names of a number of leading citizens, mostly from Salem and thereabouts, addressed to the governor. Winthrop's voluminous reply to it, though frankly admitting that the authorities had probably erred in adopting a less circumspect attitude toward La Tour than was due, is pervaded with a fine dignity, and spirited. The terror of D'Aulnay moves him to contempt : — " All amounts to this summe, the Lord hath brought us hither, through the swelling seas, through perills of pyrates, tempests, leakes, fires, rocks, sands, diseases, starvings, and hath here preserved us these many yeares from the displeasure of Princes, the envy and rage of Prelates, the malignant plots of Jesuits, the mutinous contentions of discontented persons, the open and secret attempts of barbarous Indians, the seditious and under- mineing practices of hereticall false brethren ; and is our confidence and courage all swallowed up in the feare of one D'Aulnay ?" While the excitement of this broil was nothing like so hot as the fierce combustion of the Antinomian Controversy, the popular feeling against the^ magis- trates was very warm, and, as was natural, it focussed on the governor. He had friends, however, who with- stood the contagion of it. Loyal Endicott wrote from Salem — the very heart of the discontent — to assure him that though he thought he had made a mistake, he and a plenty more in that quarter believed wholly in RETIRED AGAIN. 209 the integrity of his motives. " Sir, be of good com- fort," he said, " I doubt not but our God who is in heaven will carry you above all the injuries of men, for I know you would not permit anything, much less act in anything, that might tend to the damage of this people." Assistant Bradstreet, of Ipswich, a signer of the protest, also wrote declaring in the strongest terms the respect and honour in which he held him \ and others in like manner testified the same. But when it came to the next election (May, 1644) he was not chosen governor. That he was only transferred to the second place, and that, not Belling - ham chief fomenter of the present dissatisfaction, but Endicott, was put above him, denotes the good will toward his person with which the change was made, and, at the same time, the public sense of the expediency of retaining him in high position. The more direct rebuke of the course taken in the case of La Tour with which he was identified, was expressed in his and Dudley's removal from their postsasxoaw_ missioners of the United Colo nies, an d the substi- TuTion of representatives of the opposition view, — which view the commission, as a whole, would adopt, crossing the Bay magistrate's tacit sanction of the St. John expedition with explicit disapproval. None the less, therefore, will John Winthrop be ready on every occasion, without stint of pains, to help the country work out the tangled problem of Acadian relations. For two more years now, Massachusetts is to fare on without her Best Man at the helm, though in all 14 2IO JOHN WINTHROP. emergencies much depending on him ; then she will call him back to it, to keep him there till he dies. No more impressive memorials of this Father of Massachusetts survive than the revelations of his inner man in seasons of outward infelicity. It was in the course of 1643, when, as we nave seen, his experience was so vexed on the surface, that out of a full heart brought to overflow by his daughter Mary's recent death, and in thought of his own waning years, he wrote a letter to his oldest son, — more like a brother to him than a son, — a large fragment of which is preserved in Mather's " Magnalia," that opens a clear glimpse into the life he was the while living with him- self. We grudge to omit a word of it, but must be content with passages. " You are the chief of two families ; I had by your mother [Mary Forth] three sons and three daughters, and I had with her a large portion of outward estate. These now are all gone ; mother gone ; brethren and sisters gone ; you only are left to see the vanity of these temporal things, and learn wisdom thereby, which may be of more use to you, through the Lord's blessing, than all that inheritance which might have befallen you : and for which this may stay and quiet your heart, that God is able to give you more than this ; and that it being spent in the furtherance of his work, which hath here prospered so well, through his power hitherto, you and yours may certainly expect a liberal portion in the prosper- ity and blessing thereof hereafter; and the rather, be- cause it was not forced from you by a father's power, but freely resigned by yourself, out of a loving and filial respect unto me, and your own readiness unto the work LETTER TO HIS ELDEST SON. 211 itself. From whence as I often do take occasion to bless the Lord for you, so do I also commend you and yours to his fatherly blessing, for a plentiful reward to be rendred unto you. ... If you weigh things aright, and sum up all the turnings of divine Providence together, you shall find great advantage. — The Lord hath brought us to a good land ; a land, where we enjoy outward peace and liberty, and above all, the blessings of the gospel, without the burden of imposition in matters of religion. Many thousands there are who would give great estates to enjoy our condition. Labour, therefore, my good son, to increase your thankfulness to God for all his mercies to thee, especially for that he hath revealed his everlast- ing good will to thee in Jesus Christ. . . . He it was who gave thee favour in the eyes of all with whom thou hadst to do, both by sea and land ; he it was who saved thee in all perils, and he it is who hath given thee a gift in un- derstanding and art. . . . In all the exercise of your gifts, and improvement of your talents, have an eye to your master's end, more than to your own; and to the day of your account, that you may then have your Quietus est, even, Well done, good and faithful servant ! But my last and chief request to you, is, that you be careful to have your children brought up in the knowledge and fear of God, and in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. This will give you the best comfort of them, and keep them sure from any want or miscarriage : and when you part from them, it will be no small joy to your soul, that you shall meet them again in Heaven." 212 JOHN WINTHROP. CHAPTER XV. WINTHROP'S LAST DEFENCE OF THE CHARTER. (1644-1648.) On no previous occasion did retirement from the chief magistracy bring Winthrop so little relief of public care as in 1 644 ; for the agitation of the principal questions touching interests both at home and abroad which were ever to him of most vital moment, passed at that point into new phases. r*The reconstruction of the colony legislature, with enlarged powers to the commons, did not give quietude to the strife about government. \u\ party arose to challenge the title of the magistrates to exercise authority in the intermissions of the Gen- eral CouftTjXThe deputies framed and adopted a measure providing that such authority devolve on a joint committee of magistrates and deputies, plus one of the ministers) This the magistrates vetoed as not allowed by the charter. The Court being about to adjourn, the deputies then requested the magistrates to abstain from acts of government dur- ing the recess. Non possumus, they replied ; it will not be right for us to do so. "Then," said Speaker Hathorne of the Lower House, "you will THE JEALOUS COMMONS. 213 not be obeyed ! " The threat was not executed, for the magistrates issued orders during the recess and were obeyed. But here was a new departure in political doctrine and a new critical situation. It was the resurrection of, Israel Stoughton's old heresy of ten years back^jjliat the power of the Court of Assistants was " ministerial according to the greater vote of the General Court, and not magis- terial according to their own discretion ; " not now as then, however, to be suppressed by the strong handT) The magistrates were put on their defence against the charge of seeking to exalt themselves above law, or of standing for the arbitrary principle of civil rule. Winthrop, — at all times a conservative ; a champion, by triple conviction, of what was biblical, of what was constitutional, and of what was expedient, of the magisterial prerogative, on every such occasion — flew to arms, that is, to his pen. He composed a treatise — a strong, sinewy piece of work, as well as a long — entitled ^Arbitrary Government Described and the GovemmentTlof the Massachusetts Vindicated from that Aspersion ; " a copy of which falling into posses- sion of the leaders of the commons was read by them, not to their satisfaction. Winthrop's intention was to present it u orderly " at the General Court, and he had not put his name to it : of which circumstance advantage was taken to anticipate its introduction by a motion for its cen- sure by the deputies as an anonymous screed reflect- 1 Page 128. 214 JOHN WIN THRO P. ing injuriously upon them. But probably through veneration of the person of the author, of whose identity no one was ignorant, the attempt failed. \ TJie Court then submitted the subject in debate to the elders, whose unanimous opinion was that the argu- ment was with the magistrates. Upon which the reformers surrendered the contest; and, for once, conservatism held its own. 1 Whatever soreness re- mained was soon healed, except in the case of As- sistants Bellingham and Saltonstall, who had taken part against their fellow- magistrates and were on the beaten side. They naturally were much exasperated by the issue, and showed it. Saltonstall in his cha- grin openly expressed the wish never to hold office again. This exhibition of temper Winthrop notes with pain, but with the utmost generosity of judg- ment. " Such as . . . had not well known the per- sons," he says, "would have concluded such a faction here as hath been usual in the council of England and other states, who walk by politic principles only. But these gentlemen were such as feared God, and endeavoured to walk by the rules of his word in all their proceedings, so as it might be conceived in charity that they walked according to their judg- ments and conscience." But while this gust of domestic politics was blowing, fresh questions of foreign relations had to be met, upon which the mind of the colony was not divided. These questions, as they concerned England, where now were two governments, — the king's and Parlia- ment's, — though less dangerous, were more difficult PARLIAMENT INSTRUCTED. 215 and delicate to handle than ever before. The forma- tion of the New England Confederacy (1643) seems to have called the attention of Parliament to the colonies as in the distraction of the times it had not till then been called, and to have been misliked in that quarter. Very shortly after, at any rate, Parlia- ment created a Commission for the Colonies of six peers and eighteen commoners, — Earl of Warwick chairman, — and armed it with powers similar to those before vested in the Lords Commissioners, — powers that would prove as indigestible to New England from that source as from the other. With reference to the struggle going on in the mother country, Massachusetts occupied no equivo- cal position. Her sympathies were all one way. The General Court of May, 1644, declared openly for Parliament, and made adhesion to the royal cause an offence "of a high nature against this commonwealth." But events soon developed what that meant, — rather what it did not mean ; for when in the course of that same month a London (Parliament) ship, full- armed, demanded and received, in sight of all Bos- ton looking on from Windmill Hill (Copp's Hill), the surrender of a Bristol merchantman (Bristol held for the king) lying at anchor in the harbour, Win- throp — Governor Endicott, who lived at Salem, not being on hand — immediately sent an official summons to the London captain to appear and show his right to make such a seizure there. The captain exhibited a commission from the Earl of Warwick, — Winthrop 2l6 JOHN WINTHROP. copies the superscription of it : Robertus Comes Warwiciy etc., magnus Admirallus Anglice, etc., om- nibus cujuscunque status honoris^ etc., salutem, — authorizing him to make prize in all places what- soever of vessels bearing the king's papers. The deputy required him to carry it to the governor at Salem, where the magistrates would give it their attention, and, provisionally, till the commissioners for the United Colonies should meet, judge its value. The incident made a great stir. Universal as the sympathy for Parliament was, the view prevailed — the elders enforcing it in sermons — that a liberty had been taken with Boston harbour that was wholly in- admissible, and that the captured ship must be re- stored to its owners. No commission from any source can supplant our charter, by which we alone have admiralty jurisdiction of these ports ! In the course of ten years the School of the Bay Colony — John Winthrop instructor- in-chief — has thoroughly mas- tered the catechism of its political independence. After a very careful balancing, however, of the pros and cons in the present case, the administration finally thought it best, under all the circumstances, to let the matter go as it was, — but with the caveat that no precedent was thereby established. " Parliament has itself taught us that salus populi is suprema lex.'' 1 Let Parliament understand that we now act by that rule and propose to do so hereafter, ourselves being judges of its applicability at all times. Parliament soon had reason to know that this was something more than vaporing. Four months later THE HINGHAM BUSINESS. 217 another London ship showing her teeth in the harbour at another king's ship, Massachusetts) after warning, the deputy-governor in absence of the governor again giving orders, fired on the former, — a shot from our shore battery, that cut her rigging ; had her captain returned it, M we had resolved to have taken or sunk him," — and sent a reinforcement of forty soldiers on board the latter ; by such means convincing the Lon- doner that he really must not " meddle with any ship in our harbour." The question of Parliament's au- thority in New England was to come up presently in other shapes, but not again in this. The election of 1645 replaced Dudley with Endi- cott as governor, but left Winthrop where he was. His second term now as deputy was more unquiet to him than the first had been, and in the arena of home affairs. For this year (1645-46) was the memorable year of the Little Speech dwelt upon in our first chap- ter. The story as there hinted in connection with the denouement described, needs to be a little supple- mented ; though it must be with merest indication of the facts and rigorous suppression of details. The militia company of Hingham, offended at the magistrates for imposing on them — without swarrant, they held — an unacceptable commanding officer, had mutinied ; and the whole town, including Peter Hobart the minister, had backed them in their mu- tiny. The Court of Assistants called the ringleaders to account, and committed them for trial. Hingham thereupon addressed a memorial to the General Court asking it to inquire if that committal, together with 2l8 JOHN WINTHROP. its antecedents, were justly within bounds of the magisterial discretion, alleging that it was not. This request the deputies granted. The magistrates, though ill-pleased with the alacrity of the deputies in the case, also granted it, provided the memorialists would for- mulate their charges and name the magistrate or mag- istrates in particular against whom they were laid. Accordingly they named the deputy, who indeed had appeared in the front of the affair on the magistrates' side from the start ; and the inquiry proceeded, with what results and closing incidents has been already related. It was a sharp collision. " Thejjingham business was bad," says the colony Record. But once more the magistrates held their own. \\X, ap- pears, though, to have been a sequel to the fresh dis- cussion of their prerogative at this time, that order was taken by the General Court soon after to add a considerable number of new laws to the Body of Lib- erties, by which the range of administrative discretion was in several particulars contracted^ The Little Speech, which must have lingered in the thoughts of all who heard it, — an audience represen- tative of the whole colony, — probably bore some part in procuring Winthrop's restoration to the head of the state the following spring (1646), where he would continue the short remainder of his life. But the other reasons — the customary ones — of his re- call to that place were not wanting. The supreme political interest of the commonwealth, the liberty of self-government, was again menaced ; and from a strange quarter, — from its own hearthstone. The gov- THE DISSENTERS' CABAL. 219 ernor's last service is required for its defence, and much of his last strength. The residue of the Journal is largely occupied with the story of how the indepen- dence of Massachusetts, hitherto his peculiar charge, was, in the final attempt upon it in his day, under his leadership asserted and maintained ; in what circum- stances cannot be more concisely told than in his own language : — " One Mr. William Vassall, sometimes one of the as- sistants of the Massachusetts, but now of Scituate in Plimouth jurisdiction [in Plymouth jurisdiction, but ad- jacent to mutinous Hingham, where elder Hobart and others are in a chafed and restive condition since their late defeat ; suggestive of conference across the border], a man of a busy and factious spirit, and always opposite to the civil governments of this country and the way of our churches, had practised with such as were not mem- bers of our churches to take some course, first by petition- ing the Courts of the Massachusetts and of Plimouth, and (if that succeeded not) then to the parliament of England, that the distinctions which were maintained here, both in civil and church estate, might be taken away, and that we might be wholly governed by the laws of England ; and accordingly a petition was drawn up to the parlia- ment, pretending that they being freeborn subjects of England, were denied the liberty of subjects both in church and commonwealth, themselves and their children debarred from the seals of the covenant, except they would submit to such a way of entrance and church covenant as their consciences would not admit, and take such a civil oath as would not stand with their oath of allegiance, or else they must be deprived of all power and interest in civil affairs, and were subjected to an arbitrary govern- ment and extrajudicial proceedings, etc." 220 JOHN WINTHROP. The assault upon the charter — for that it was — outlined in this statement, as waged in both Englands, extended over a large part of Winthrop's tenth and eleventh gubernatorial terms. Evidently, on his own showing, it had the advantage to begin with of a great plausibility in its argument. It had other ad- vantages. They who joined in it took counsel of opportunity. Two years ago Laud had followed Straf- ford to the block, and Presbyterianism reigned in England in his stead, or was on the point of reigning as it seemed ; and between Laud's Episcopacy and Parliament's Presbyterianism, New England Congre- gationalists had nothing to choose. Furthermore, a quite new theory of the constitutional relations of Massachusetts to the English government was affirmed, by which every privilege heretofore claimed as the gift of her charter was entirely swept away. By fiction of law, the territory comprised in the original """grant to the Bay Company was held as of the manor of East Greenwich. The colony, therefore, was con- structively represented in Parliament by members of the borough in which the manor of East Green- wich lay, and so was in Parliament's jurisdiction. Nor had it been in the power of the crown, inde- pendently of Parliament, to release it from that jurisdiction. For an item of further special advantage, prime- mover William VassalPs brother was on the parlia- mentary Commission for the Government of Foreign Plantations, and was with all his heart favourable to the hostile design. THE DISSENTERS' CABAL. 221 The programme of its attempted execution, re- capitulated by Winthrop, was carried out. Vassall procured the presentation at the General Court of a Remonstrance and Humble Petition, subscribed by citizens of Massachusetts of both Episcopal and Presbyterian sympathies, — Dr. Robert Child most prominent among them, — praying for relief from their religious and civil disabilities ; and avowing their purpose, in case of refusal, to invoke the interposition of Parliament in their behalf. Copies of this paper were scattered throughout the colony and beyond, to notify all malcontents of the enterprise on hand. The General Court, of course, did refuse, and at the same time published a Declaration setting forth in extenso — work of the governor's pen undoubtedly; fitted for perusal in England — their reason and right therein. The next news being that some of the petitioners were off for Westminster, the General Court required to see them j but no, they were done with the General Court ; they appealed their cause to a higher tribunal. Arrest, trial, and fines followed. The news being presently again that certain of the offenders — chiefly Dr. Child — were planning another start for West- minster, a seizure of persons and papers brought to light the boasted appeal, all in shape, addressed in due form to the Commission for the Government of Foreign Plantations, reciting the oppressions which English subjects suffered in Massachusetts, and the treason with which Massachusetts was rife ; entreating that a general governor might be appointed to reform so great abuses. 222 JOHN WINTHROP. The incensed Court added heavier fines to those before imposed, but recognized that something beside dealing with ill-affected individuals at home was be- coming necessary. In view of the inevitable bruit of all these matters in England, somebody, it was felt, must go thither to stand in the way of mischiefs pos- sible to come of it. In fact, this occasion apart, there was already rea- son why Massachusetts ought to have a suitable agent in attendance on her interests in England. For at that very time Samuel Gorton, whose story this memoir may omit, was clamorously besieging the Foreign Plantations Commission to overturn sen- tences of the General Court, and of the New England Confederacy as well, for the righting of his wrongs ; and there were signs that he was in danger of suc- ceeding. Who, then, should be sent over to foil these devices? The General Court fixed on Edward Winslow of Plymouth — of singular capacity for the business, and particularly well known to the parlia- mentary commissioners — as the man to employ. But the query was raised outside, if it were not better to send a citizen or citizens of Massachusetts, — for instance, the governor, accompanied, perhaps, by one of our most eminent ministers. The idea at first met much approval. Obviously the governor was the man of all men for such work, — the situation being so critical, and everything for us depending on the way things should turn. Upon second thoughts, how- ever, that would not do. The governor, once in England, no effort would be spared to keep him there. THE DISSENTERS' CABAL. 223 Hugh Peter — himself enlisted in the Revolution — had lately, as the colony was aware, been doing his best to convince him that the Lord's cause on the old soil was in need of him. Again, a good many " were on the wing " as it was, and for the chief of the State to take wing just now would be very unseason- able. And then, with this revolutionary movement alive, who could tell what might not happen to Mas- sachusetts in his absence? Mr. Winthrop must not go, after all ; let it be Mr. Winslow. This conclusion was wholly agreeable to his ex- cellency, who says : " The governor was very averse to a voyage into England, yet he declared himself ready to accept the service if he should be called to it, though he were then fifty-nine years of age wanting one month ; but he was very glad when he saw the mind of the Lord to be otherwise." He did his part by draughting the papers (Address to the Commissioners, Instructions to Agent ; in both matter and style they bear throughout his legible mark) with which Winslow, late in 1646, departed on his mission, — strong, lucid papers, in which once more he goes over the grounds whereon Massachusetts maintains that her charter is suchf" a free donation of absolute government " as puts itTmF* of the power of any authority anywhere to revise her judicial actsTl Appeals like that of Gorton have no legal quality~whatsoever ; therefore she will decline to contest them. But with the constitutional argument the argu- mentum ad hotninem is freely mingled. May there 224 JOHN W1NTHR0P. be no cause — he pleads — for those who come after us to say : — " England sent our fathers forth with happy liberties, which they enjoyed many years, notwithstanding all the enmity and opposition of the prelacy and other potent ad- versaries. How came we, then, to lose them under the favour and protection of that state, in such a season when England itself recovered its own ? In freto viximus, in fiortu morijnur. . , . Our humble petition to your honors is, that you will be pleased to continue your favourable aspect upon these poor infant plantations, that we may still rejoice and bless our God under your shadow, and be there still nourished (tanquam calore et rore ccelesti /) and while God owns us for a people of his, he will own our poor prayers for you and your goodness towards us, for an abundant recompense." Winslow managed the trust confided to him with competent skill, and carried his points completely. Gorton was nonsuited, as was also Dr. Child, who closely followed Winslow to England, and made a great noise there with his complaints. The former subsequently returned furnished with certain requests and recommendations in his behalf from the Earl of Warwick to the General Court, but distinctly no commands. The Commissioners w T rote over all their signatures protesting their intent not " to encourage any appeals from your justice, nor to restrain the bounds of your jurisdiction to a narrower compass than is held forth by your letters-patent, but to leave you with all that freedom and latitude that may in any respect be duly claimed by you." THE CAMBRIDGE SYNOD. 225 It is to be observed, however, that on this as on other occasions the conjunction of opportune circum- stances contributed to the event. As usual, the stars in their courses fought against the adversaries of the colony. " As for those who went over to procure us trouble," says the Journal, " God met with them all." While Winslow was anxiously labouring, Cromwell's army declared for religious toleration, Pride's Purge took place, and the great Presbyterian hope fell to the ground ; which upset was a providence of good fortune to Massachusetts at that moment. The governor's view of the extreme gravity of the situation developed by the Dissente rs' Cab al, as we may term it, and the gratitude with which he recurred to the issue of it, are curiously exhibited in his inter- pretation of an incident which happened a year after at a session of the famous Cambridge Synod. This synod was, by the way, we pause to note, itself an outcome of that plot. It had discovered to the col- onists that with their rule of the strict autonomy of each separate congregation as hitherto followed, they were not prepared to resist ecclesiastical aggression. They lacked a basis of co-operation, — a defect to be repaired. Hence the Synod; and the Platform of Discipline, matured, with amplest deliberation, which gave the shape it still essentially bears to the polity of what has been appropriately called the Mother Church of New England. But to our incident, which occurred during the opening sermon of an adjourned assembly of the Synod, Mr. Allen of Dedham being preacher : — l 5 226 JOHN WINTHROP. 11 It fell out, about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat, where many of the elders sate be- hind the preacher. It came in at the door where people stood thick upon the stairs. Divers of the elders shifted from it, but Mr. Thomson, one of the elders of Brain- tree, (a man of much faith,) trode upon the head of it, and so held it with his foot and staff with a small pair of grains, until it was killed. This being so remarkable, and nothing falling out but by divine providence, it is out of doubt the Lord discovered somewhat of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil ; the synod, the representa- tive of the churches of Christ in New England. The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and dissolution ; but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and crushed his head." Not the quaint telling alone assigns the scene to the seventeenth century instead of the nineteenth. DEATH OF MARGARET. 22 J ! CHAPTER XVI. THE OLD GOVERNOR'S CLOSING DAYS. (1648- 1 649.) While the solicitudes inspired by the final jeopardy to the liberties of Massachusetts he would be called to witness were as yet unrelieved and weighty upon him, the governor soon after entering on his eleventh term had been visited with sorrow unspeakable in his own house. When in the summer of 1647, he sets down in the Journal the sad news, which comes very near to him, of the death, by a prevailing epi- demic, — something in the nature of La Grippe, apparently, — of his old and most dear friend Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, he little thinks how much nearer and heavier a stroke is impending. But the next time he takes his pen it is to write : — " In this sickness the governour's wife, daughter of Sir John Tindal, Knight, left this world for a better, being about fifty-six years of age: a woman of singular virtue, prudence, modesty, and piety, and specially beloved and honored of all the country." Margaret died June 14, 1647, having been but a few hours ill. It was twenty-nine years since she became the bride of the lord of Groton Manor j go- 228 JOHN WINTHROP. ing on sixteen years since her arrival in New Eng- land, — anticipating which her husband had said, " Oh, how it refresheth my heart to think that I shall yet again see thy sweet face in the land of the living ; that lovely countenance that I have so much de- lighted in and beheld with so great content." Through all those years, in sunshine and in shadow, she has been to John Winthrop everything a wife might be ; his incomparable benefactor, — benefactor, too, albeit a still one, of the cause he has travailed in, — his chief good angel of faith and patience, we must suppose ; entitled as truly as any to rank a New England Worthy. Of the thoughts with which, alone with his dead and with his memories, he now looks on that sweet face, we may not speak. His sons are most of them, perhaps all, away from home, though Adam and Deane will probably come in time for the burial. John is in Connecticut, where he is governor ; Samuel in the West Indies ; Stephen in England at the wars, to whom are sent his mother's ring and Bible for keepsakes. The letters of the last two, received by and by, remain to testify how they honoured both mother and father. " Greife cuts me offe," says Samuel, " that I cannot write either what nor as I would." The governor returned from Margaret's grave to go on his way and about his duties as before, a little more bent it may be, and a little less firm of step, but with good heart and courage still for service of the state. It is six months since Winslow sailed. He is in London face to face with the enemy, and word of PUBLIC OUTLOOK HOPEFUL. 229 how it fares with him is anxiously awaited. When the word comes — such as was hoped for, it proves — a full relation is committed to the Journal, with the customary diligent transcription of the official docu- ments essential to the record. The closing sessions of the Cambridge Synod, Confederacy transactions, Dutch correspondence, also have due mention an- swerable to their importance. On the whole, though, the volume of the Journal perceptibly dwindles. The miscellany of minor occurrences is short of its wonted measure. But this, perhaps, is in part owing to the fre- quent letters he is writing to John, Jr., which are alive as ever with interest in contemporary matters, lesser and greater, near and far, — Commencement at Cam- bridge ; the copper- mine Mr. Endicott has found on his land ; the bog-iron ore smelting experiment at Sau- gus (Lynn), which promises well; items of marine intelligence ; state of the missionary work among the Indians ; latest accounts, as of one thoroughly posted, of English events, particularly of the Scottish campaign in which Stephen is fighting, etc., etc. It would, indeed, seem that a few months further on, after his twelfth inauguration, with his official load, at the point where its pressure had been sorest, lightened by Par- liament's answer of peace, the governor found him- self in a manner set free. He could give more attention than he had for some while of late been able to do, to many things belonging to the public welfare. With her liberties secure, it might now be hoped permanently, and her people united as hardly ever 230 JOHN WINTHROP. before, why should it not be that Massachusetts was on the threshold of better days than any she had known? In Old England and in New England, by the wonder-working of God's Providence, the omens of the time were propitious. The governor felt his spirit freshen. Spite of his years and some touches of infirmity, there was yet life before him. Of such a thought moving in him, one sign, so at least it is permitted to divine, was that about a year after Margaret left him — must it be told ? — he married again. But the hospitalities of the chief magistrate's house much needed a presiding lady, and the master of that house at his solitary fireside was very lonesome. Lonesome also, it appears, was Mistress Martha Coyt- more, three years the widow of Thomas Coytmore, of Charlestown, sister of Increase Nowell, long the colony's secretary. At all events, and whether we quite like it or not, they were married ; and the gov- ernor, like patriarch Jacob, had a son born to him in his old age. But the end of his pilgrimage was not far off. A fever in the autumn of 1648 reduced his vigour, sapped already by the wear and tear of twenty over- tasked years ; and when, the following spring, a sec- ond attack supervened, he had not strength left to resist it. The intelligence that his sickness was like to be his last, smote the heart of the colony with uni- versal distress. "The whole church fasted as well as prayed for him." At a public service of interces- sion in his behalf, Mr. Cotton, preaching from the. text, " When they were sick I humbled myself with LAST SICKNESS AND DEATH. 231 fasting; I behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother; I bowed down heavily as one that mourned for his mother' 1 '' (Ps. xxxv. 13, 14, as cited by Mather), he said, with what recollections rising in his soul we know : " Upon this occasion we are now to attend to this duty for a governour . . . who has been unto us as a brother ; not usurping au- thority over the church ; often speaking his advice, and often contradicted, even by young men, and some of low degree ; yet not replying, but offering satisfaction also when any supposed offences have arisen ; a gov- ernour who has been unto us as a mother, parent-like distributing his goods to brethren and neighbours at his first coming; and gently bearing our infirmities without taking notice of them." And so saying he spoke the thought uppermost in every breast. All were his friends now. But the governor's hour was come. He fell asleep, " in the great consolations of God," March 26, 1649, m ms sixty-second year. The funeral was delayed till John could come from Connecticut. It was to be so ordered — as said the summons, dated " your father's parlor," despatched by fleet-footed Indian messenger, the ever troublesome Bellingham its first signer — " that it may appeare of what precious account & desert he hath ben, & how blessed his memoriall." It took place April 3, being conducted " with great solemnity and honour," both civic and military. The place of interment was what is now called the King's Chapel Burying-ground, — the spot to be seen at this day. The death of Winthrop produced a profound sen- 232 JOHN WINTHROP. sation throughout the country. Massachusetts over- flowed with sorrow and with tears. It was in all quarters recognized that not alone the Man of that colony, but the Man of the United Colonies had fallen. Peter Stuyvesant even, governor of the New Nether- lands, declared himself and his people partakers in the lamentation of the common loss. Our story is now ended. We have little to add in the way of reflections. What manner of person John Winthrop was, what the mind that was in him, what the part he acted in his time and place, we have aimed to supply our readers the means of judging. His public statues in Boston and in the National Capital present him with the Holy Bible in one hand and the Charter of Massachusetts in the other. No emblematic expression could be more true. Without question he was primarily a man of religion. To himself the main purport of the work he wrought was_ religious. In his eyes Massachusetts was ever, before all things else, a Church. The State was for the sake of the Church, incident and subordinate to it. And this probably is the reason why he so quietly accepted and adjusted himself to changes in the interior civil polity of the commonwealth that were adverse to his judg- ment. They concerned the secondary interest. While in his political principles he was liberal in that large sense in which Puritanism was liberal, in his practical view of government, as between aristocracy and de- mocracy he inclined to the former. Yet his temper was such as..tQ..ma ke.,iiim a potent mediator between THE STORY ENDED. 233 the aristocratic and democratic elements that were ever in conflict around him. By the moderating in- fluence of his self-control, rTulmlity, J ^o!rslnte"r^tBdness, patriotism, the strife of rival parties was again and again so restrained as to save the State from serious detriment. In this respect he was a prototype of Abraham Lincoln. The particular service with which, above all his contemporaries, he stands identified is that of the defence of the Charter. Which is to say that he was the pre-eminent representative in the Massachusetts colony of the idea of independent self-government. Cotton Mather for the last word of his eulogy. of him, adapts and applies to him a translation of the Greek of Josephus " about Nehemiah the governor of Israel." VIR FUIT INDOLE BONUS, AC JUSTUS : ET POPULARIUM GLORIA AMANTISSIMUS : QUIBUS ETERNUM RELIQUIT MONUMENTUM, Novanglorum moznia. Novanglorutn moenia, — the walls of New England ! These were the foundations on which his chief labour was spent, — foundations deep-laid, indestructible, on which a mightier Commonwealth than he could dream was in later times to rise ; a free nation, of which he above all who bore the burden of its first planting was thus a Maker. The product of the best in the gener- ations behind, he was the prophet of the best in the generations before. Could he, from his dying bed, have looked forward fifty years, he would have felt that his life had failed. Could he have looked forward a hundred years, and have heard young Sam Adams, in 234 JOHN WINTHROP. his Master's oration at Harvard, inquire whether it Be Lawful to Resist the Supreme Magistrate if the Commonwealth Cannot otherwise be Preserved, and have seen all that in the next fifty years was to follow ; could he have beheld the face of Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut flushing and brightening with a new inspiration of courage, as in the time-yellowed pages of the Journal he read the tale of what in a former day had on these shores been dared in the cause of free government, he, would have known that his life had not failed. ^Fgr of the American spirit of Liberty through which American Independence was finally achieved, is it aught less than true to say that it wa>tthe spirit of John Winthrop risen from the dead? \ INDEX. ACADIE, 204. Adams, Samuel, 233. Agawam, see Ipswich. "Ambrose," the, 51, 57. Antigua, island of, 25. Antinomian Controversy, 148-158; its origin, 149; its tenets, 149; meaning of the term as applied to Mrs. Hutchinson's followers, 150; Winthrop a mediator in, 156; its crisis, 156; its results, 162-167. " Arbella," the, 51, 57, 59, 61. Astoria, 167. Bacon, 19. Beacon Hill, 124. Bellingham, Richard, 6, 192, 199, 209, 214. Bewett, Hugh, t68. Blackstone, William, 82-83, 119. " Blessing of the Bay," the, 88. Block Island, 146. Board of Assistants, 106-107. Body of Liberties, the, 193, 218. Boston, first settlement at, 82-83 > its fortifications, 99, 101, 123 ; its reception of Sir Henry Vane, 141 ; its sympathy with the Anti- nomian doctrines, 152-156; in a state of great excitement, 155, 159-162, 165-167 ; formation of the New England Confederacy at, 201, 202 ; Salem commer- cially jealous of, 207, 208. Boston Common, the, 126. Bradford, Governor, 92, 109-111. Bradstreet, Simon x 6. Brewster, Mr., 109. Browne, John, 74, 76, 119. Browne, Samuel, 74, 76, 119. Buckingham, Duke of, 36. Burleigh, Captain, 58. Cambridge, formerly Newtown, 95, 181, 184. " Cambridge Agreement," the, 35-36, 42. Cambridge Synod, the, 225-226, 229. Cambridge University, 14. Canonicus, 172. Castle Island, 122^ 123, 137, 141- 142, 206. Charles River, 93, 99. Charles I., 20, 38, 39, 197. Charles II., 181. Charlestown, 97 ; first settlement at, 63 ; Winthrop removes to, 66 ; first church at, 72 ; first law court, yj; its lack of good water, 82 ; fortified, 123. 236 INDEX. Charnise, D'Aulnay, 204-208. Chickatabot, Chief, 84, 86. Child, Dr. Robert, 221. "Christian Experience," the, 15, 16-17, 156-158. Church of England, 74, 75, 133- Clap, Captain Roger, quoted, 67, 77- Clopton, Sir Hugh, 23. Clopton, Thomasine, second wife of John Winthrop, 23 ; her death, 23. Coddington, William, 51, 54, 126, 159. "Collection of Original Papers," 161. Commission for the Colonies, the, 215, 220, 22T, 222. Conant, Roger, 38. Conant's Island, 107-108. Concord, 174. Congregationalism, 73, 220. Connecticut, emigration from Massachusetts to, 144-146 ; the Pequot War, 169-172 ; the New England Confederation, 201- 202. Copp's Hill, 215. Cotton, Rev. John, 6, 126, 127, I43> 1 45» 153. 159.194, 198,203; preaches the farewell sermon to Winthrop's company on leaving England, 50, 112 ; rector of St. Botolph's, 112-113; comes to Massachusetts, 112; a sympa- thizer with aristocracy, 113; enters politics in Massachusetts, 114, 116; greatly admired by Ann Hutchinson, 149, 152; his last tribute to Winthrop, 230- 231. "Council for New England," the, 36, 138-139. Court of Assistants, the, 77-78, 96, 116, 128, 134, 213, 217. Court of Elections, 80, 97, 106, 114, 127, 137. 141, 155-156, 174, 200. Coytmore, Martha, the fourth wife of John Winthrop, 230 ; bears him a son, 230. Coytmore, Thomas, 230. Cradock, Matthew, 58, 120, 122; first governor of the Massachu- setts Bay Company, 39 ; the prime mover in transferring the Company's Charter to New England, 41-42; resigns his office of Governor, 48. Cromwell, Oliver, 14, 180, 194, Davenport, Rev. John, 162, 194. Daye, Stephen, 181. Dorchester, 66, 84 ; first church at, 72, 74; fortified, 123; its migra- tion to Connecticut, 144-166. Downing, Emanuel, 40, 120, 182. Downing, Sir George, 26, 184. Dudley, Thomas, present at the impeachment of John Winthrop, 6; connected with Winthrop by marriage, 15, 102 ; a signer of the 11 Cambridge Agreement," 35 ; leaves England with Winthrop, 51, 54; quoted, 63, 65, 68, 85, 168; Deputy-Governor of Mas- sachusetts, 66, 106-107, 156, 174; settles at Charlestown, 66; a founder of the first church at Charlestown, 72 ; quarrels with Winthrop, 95-103, 130-131 ; causes of the quarrel, 95 ; re- signs from the Assistants' Court, 96, 105 ; resumes his position in Assistants' Court, INDEX. 237 97; questions Winthrop's au- thority, 98-100 ; issue of the controversy with Winthrop, 102 -103 ; Governor of Massachu- setts, 116, 191, 192, 217; de- feated for Governor, 127; cre- ated a member of the M Standing Council," 142-143; removed from the United Colonies' Com- mission, 209. Dummer, Richard, 159, 187. Dunster, Henry, 185. Eaton, Rev. Nathaniel, 184, 185. Eaton, Theophilus, 162-163. Edwardston, birthplace of John Winthrop, 12. Eliot, John, 84, 91, 112, 193. Eliot, Sir John, 22, 43. Emanuel College, 35. Endicott, John, 5, 65, 76, 84, 155, 187, 215, 229 ; leaves England, 28 ; takes charge of the settle- ment at Salem, 38 ; reinforced, 40'; superseded by Winthrop, 64 ; fined for assault and bat- tery, 78; quoted, 81; enter- tains Winthrop at Salem, 90 ; his mutilation of the British Flag, 136-138, 142 ; his punish- ment, 137-138 ; appointed to the "Standing Council," 143 ; his punishment of the Pequots, 146, 169; a colonel of militia, 147; loyalty to Winthrop, 208- 209 ; elected Governor, 209 ; de- feated for re-election, 217. Episcopacy, 220. " Experiencia," 15, 17, 21,23,40. Fines, Charles, 54. Fiske, John, quoted, 124. Forth, Mary, first wife of John Winthrop, 15; her death, 23; her children, 64, 210. Fuller, Deacon, no. General Court, the, 39, 116, 122, 128, 141, I44, 159,177,182, 188, 192, I95, 212,213, 215,217, 218, 221, 222; first founded in the Massachusetts Colony, 78- 80; not the centre of colonial life, 108 ; town representation in, 117; Governor Winthrop summoned before, 117-118; ban. ishes Roger Williams, 134-135 ; its changes in the government, 142-144 votes money to found Harvard College, 147; arraign- ment of John Wheelwright, 155 ; tries the leading Antinomians, 165-167 ; levies soldiers, 171 J reconstruction of, 197-198, 199- 201. Gibbons, Captain, 205. Gibbons, Mrs., 203. Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 119, 139, 140, 202. Gorton, Samuel, 222, 223, 224. " Governor's Garden," the, 108, 186, 203, 204, 205. Great Stambridge, 15. Groton Manor, John Winthrop's English home, 12, 13, 15, 91. Hamilton, Marquis of, 139. Hampden, John, 22. Hartford, 144-146. Harvard, John, 184. Harvard University, 147, 184-185, 194, 234. Hathorne, Speaker, 212. Haynes, John, 101-102, 130 ; his anival in Massachusetts, 112; 2 3 8 INDEX. in sympathy with popular gov- ernment, 113, r44; chosen Gov- ernor, 127, 145 ; a colonel of militia, 147. Henry VIII., 12. Hibbins, William, 195. Higginson, Rev. Francis, 43 note 1 ; in charge of reinforcements to Salem, 40 ; his glowing descrip- tion of New England, 62-63 ; his death at Salem, 63 ; quoted, 73- Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 43 note 1. Hingham, 12, 127, 217, 219. Hobart, Peter, instigator of Win- throp's impeachment, 6, 217, 219. Hooker, Richard, 19. Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 101-102, 121, 170, 194; his arrival in Massachusetts, 112; a sympa- thizer with popular government, 113, 114; migrates to Connecti- cut, 144-146 ; a close friend of Winthrop, 146 ; his death, 227. Hubbard, quoted, 114. Hughes, Archbishop, quoted, 148. Humphrey, John, 120, 189; a signer of the " Cambridge Agreement," 35, 112; quoted, 71 ; son-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, 112; his arrival in Massachusetts, 112. Hutchinson, Mrs. Ann, 188 ; the author of the Antinomian Con- troversy, 149 ; description of, 149 ; her most offensive claims, 152; trial and banishment of, 165-166 ; excommunication of, 166-167; settles in Rhode Island, 167; massacred by Indians, 167-168 ; not sacrificed to re- ligious bigotry, 168, 169 ; nearly caused Massachusetts' disrup- tion, 169. Hutchinson, Governor, quoted, 1 1 8-1 19. Indians, the, 83-87, 146-147, 154, 162, 168, 169-173, 193, 229. Ipswich, 84, 161. Isle Prudence, 186. James I., 36. "Jewell," the, 51, 57. Johnson, Edward, quoted, 67. Johnson, Isaac, 84; an intimate friend of John Winthrop, 21 ; a signer of the " Cambridge Agree- ment," 35; son-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, 40, 112 ; leaves England with Winthrop, 51, 54 ; died at Charlestown, 66 ; a founder of the church at Charlestown, 72. Johnson, Lady Arbella, sails for New England, 51 ; dies at Charlestown, 66. Keayne, Captain, 198, 199. King's Chapel, 231. La Tour, Charles, 203-208. Laud, Archbishop, 20, 104, 192, 219; his hostility to the Puri- tans, 121, 127, 139, 140. Lechford, Thomas, 183. Leigh, Lord, 160, 161, 163. " Life and Letters of John Win- throp," 28, 43 note 1. " Life of Francis Higginson," 43 note 1. Lincoln, Abraham, 33. Lincoln, Countess of, 63, 65. INDEX. 239 Lincoln, Earl of, 40, 112. Long Parliament, 192. Lords Commissioners, 165, 215 ; in charge of colonial affairs, 121 ; recall the Massachusetts charter to New England, 122, 176-177, 180 ; their endeavours to block emigration to America, 138. Luddam, m. Ludlow, Roger, 105, 106, 122. Lynn, 65, 84, 161, 229. " Lyon," the, 64, 71, 91, 109. Lyons, Lord, 25. 11 Magnalia," Mather's, 168, 210, Maine, 202, 04. Maiden, 66. Mary, Queen of Scots, 12. Mason, John, 119, 139, 140. Massachusetts, a grant of the land secured by John Endicott and others, 37 ; Rev. John White the prime mover in its settlement, 37-38 ; Endicott emigrates to, 38 ; organization of a company for its settlement, 38-40 ; John Win- throp's' emigration to, 50-54, 57- 61 ; condition of the colonists at first, 62-64, 65-69, 71, 88; forma- tion of churches, 72-77 ; organ- ization of civil government, yj- 81 ; settlement of Boston, 82-83 ; dealings with the Indians, 83- 87 ; controversy between the Gov- ernor and Deputy-Governor, 95-103 ; political troubles, 103- 106, 182, 212-214 ; reforms in government, 106-107, 183-184; new arrivals in the colony, 112-113, 127, 128-129, 176, 181 ; renewal of political agitations, 114-115 ; Thomas Dudley, Gov- ernor, 116, 191, 192; its charter attacked, 1 19-124, 138-140, 218- 225 ; the especial object of Arch- bishop Laud's hostility, 121, 139 ; its charter recalled to Eng- land, 122, 177-180; measures for its defence, 123-124 ; its pol- icy of Avoid or Protract, 123, 180 ; increase of trade, 127 ; domestic dissensions, 127-128, 130-13 1 ; the charter assailed by Roger Williams, 133-135 ; Wil- liams banished, 134 ; election of Sir Henry Vane as Governor, 141 ; migrations to Connecticut, 144-146 ; Indian troubles, 146- 147, 154, 162; improvement of the military organization, 146- 147; French hostility, 154; its indebtedness to Winthrop as me- diator in the Antinomian contro- versy, 156; Winthrop re-elected Governor, 156, 159, 174; Win- throp' s interpretation of the charter, 1 60-1 61 ; results of the Antinomian controversy, 162- 167 ; ideas of religious liberty in, 168-169; return of the Quakers, 169 ; its narrow escape from dis- ruption by Mrs. Hutchinson, 169; the Pequot War, 169-173; alli- ance with the Narragansetts, 1 70; arrival of the colony's first print- ing-press, 181 ; Richard Belling- ham Governor, 192 ; period of great progress, 192 ; cessation of emigration, 193 ; population, 193 ; emigration to England, 193-194, 196 ; hard times, 194- 197 ; reconstruction of legisla- ture, 197-198, 199-201 ; the " Sow Business," 198-200 ; the New England Confederacy, 201- 202 ; the Acadian trouble, 203- 208 ; divided into four counties, 240 INDEX. 207 ; foreign relations, 214-217 ; supports Parliament in opposi- tion to the king, 215 ; instructs Parliament, 215-217 ; the Hing- ham trouble, 217-218; the Cam- bridge Synod, 225-226 ; John Winthrop's death, 231-232. Massachusetts Bay Company, the, formation of, 38-40 ; its first Governor, 39 ; sends reinforce- ments to Salem, 39-40 ; the charter transferred to New Eng- land, 41-42; its Indian policy, 84 ; its narrow escape from Qtco Warranto, 139. Masters, John, 93. Masters Brook, 93. Mather, Cotton, 15, 168, 210 ; quoted, 18, 70, 175, 233. Medford, 88, 93. Merrimack, 99. Merrymount, see Quincy. Milborne, Captain Peter, 59. Military Commission, the, 137, 141. Mishawum, see Charlestown. " Model of Charity," the, 75. Mohegans, the, 172. Morton, Thomas, 77-78, 85, 119, 122. Mystic, 88. Nantasket, 91. Narragansett Bay, 134, 135, 167, 202. Narragansett Indians, the, 1 70-1 71. Naumkeag, see Salem. Neponset River, the, 84, 93. New Brunswick, 204. New England Confederacy, the, 201-202, 215, 222. " New English Canaan," the, 78. New Hampshire, 167. New Haven Colony, 163, 201-202. New York, 167. Newbury, 127. Newcastle, Duke of, descendant of Samuel Winthrop, 25. Newtown, 100, 155, 184; after- wards Cambridge, 95 ; Dudley's house at, 95, 96 ; designed for the capital of the Massachusetts Colony, 97 ; Winthrop's house begun at, 97-98; taxed for Bos- ton's fortifications, 101 ; fortifica- tion of, 105 ; new arrivals at, 112 ; its migration to Connecticut, 144-146. Nova Scotia, 204. Nowell, Increase, a signer of the "Cambridge Agreement," 35, 230. Oldham, John, 146. Palfrey, quoted, 113, 167. Peirce, William, 64. Pequots, 146, 165, 169-172. Peter, Rev. Hugh, 154, 223 ; ar- rival in Massachusetts, 128-129 ; installed pastor at Salem, 129; fosters commerce, 129; active in the English Revolution, 129 ; Cromwell's chaplain, 129 ; one of the Regicides, 129 ; died on the scaffold, 129; mediator be- tween Winthrop and Dudley, 1 30-1 3 1 ; sent on a mission to England, 195. Phillips, George, 51, 54. Pilgrims, the, 35, 7 3 , 109. Piscataqua, see Portsmouth, 120. Plymouth, 35, 76, 77, 89, 99, 109- i", 133, *fh 201-202. Porter, John, 56. Portsmouth, 120. INDEX. 241 Presbyterianism, 220, 225. Pride's Purge, 225. Prince, Thomas, 57. Privy Council, its proceeding against Massachusetts, 1 19-120 , loses control of colonial affairs, 121. Protestantism, its desperate situ- ation, 20 ; its fortunes watched by the Bay Colony, 109. Pullen Point, 186. Puritans, the, 109; not Separa- tists on principle, 73-74; non- conformists, 74; opposed to the Church of England Establish- ment, 75 ; their Indian policy, 84 ; Archbishop Laud's hostility toward, 121. Pyncheon, William, present at John Winthrop's impeachment, 6 ; a signer of the " Cambridge Agreement," 35. Quakers, the, 169. Quincy, 77. Quinnipiack, 163. Rhode Island, 135, 167, 202. Rochelle, 20. Rogers, Ezekiel, 203. . " Romeo and Juliet," conjectural origin of the Tomb Scene, 23. Roxbury, 66, 146 note I. Ryece, Robert, 47. Salem, 136, 161 ; original settle- ment at, 37-38 ; arrival of Win- throp at, 61 ; its location unsat- isfactory, 63-64, 65 ; its first church, 73, 74, 76 ; commercially jealous of Boston, 207, 208. Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 6, 54, 78, 120 ; a signer of the " Cambridge Agreement," 35 ; leaves Eng- land with Winthrop, 51. Saugus, see Lynn. Savage, James, 57. Say and Sele, Lord, 113, 143, 190. Saybrook, 171. Shawmut, old name for Boston peninsula, 82, 83. Shepard, Thomas, 171. Sherman, Mrs., 198, 199. Sherman, Ursula, 49. Skelton, Rev. Samuel, 40, 62. Smith, Captain John, 70. Sow Business, the, 198-200. Spanish Armada, the, 12. Spot Pond, 93. Springfield, 146 note 1. 11 Standing Council," the, 142-143, 182. " St. Patrick," the, 137. Stone, Samuel, 112, 113, 144. Stoughton, Israel, 128, 213. Strafford, Earl of, see Thomas Wentworth. Stuyvesant, Peter, 232. 11 Talbot," the, 51, 57. Ten Hills, 88, 89. " Thanksgiving Day," its origin, 11 Thirty-nine Articles," the, 74. Tilly, 21. Trimountain, see Shawmut. Trinity College, 14, 26. Trumbull, Gov. Jonathan 56, 234- Tyndal, Margaret, the third wife of John Winthrop, 24 ; her beau- tiful character, 24. Tyndal, Sir John, father of Mar- garet Tyndal, 24, 227. 16 242 INDEX. Uncas, 172, 173. Underhill, Capt. John, 150-151, 166, 171. United Colonies of New England, the, 201. Van Twilly, Gwalter, 88. Vane, Sir Henry, 144, 164, 171 ; his arrival in Massachusetts, 128- 129, 141 ; experienced in affairs of State, 129; interests himself in colonial matters, 129-130 ; a mediator between Winthrop and Dudley, 1 30-1 31 ; a personal friend of the king, 141 ; ap- pointed on the military com- mission, 141 ; elected Gover- nor, 141 ; the Castle Island af- fair, 1 41-142 ; Indian troubles, 146-147 ; a firm believer in the Antinomian doctrines, 152 ; his unpopularity, 154-156; fails of re-election as Governor, 156, 159; elected to the General Court, 159-160 ; his discourteous treatment of Winthrop, 160 ; re- turns to England, 161 ; Win- throp's tribute to, 161. Vassall, William, a signer of the "Cambridge Agreement," 35, 219, 220, 221. Virginia, 185. Wallenstein, 21. Ward, Nathaniel, 193. Warwick, Earl of, 37, 215, 224. Washington, Gen. George, 56. Watertown, 66, 93 ; its refusal to pay taxes, 105 ; its migration to Connecticut, 144-146. Webster, Noah, 56-57. Welde, Elder, 152, 195. Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford, 137, 192, 219. Wessaguscus, see Weymouth. West Indies, 189, 190. Wethersfield, original settlement of, 144-146. Weymouth, 109, no, 127. Wheelwright, John, 152, 153, 188 ; convicted of seditious utter- ances, 155 ; banished from Massachusetts, 165, 167. White, Rev. John, 37, 38. Wiggin, Thomas, 120. Williams, Roger, 136, 168, 169 ; his arrival in Massachusetts, 112, 132 ; a source of annoyance to Massachusetts, 132-135 ; a pro- mulgator of religious toleration, 132 ; his sweetness of temper, 132 ; the personification of social incompatibility, 132-133 ; not the victim of religious bigotry, 133, 168 ; attacks the Massa- chusetts charter, 133-135; flees to Narragansett Bay, 135 ; his good-will toward Massachusetts, 135 ; a close friend of Win- throp, 135 ; intercedes with the Narragansetts, 170. Wilson, Rev. John, 113, 153, 156, 165, an intimate friend of John Winthrop, 6; a founder of the church at Charlestown, 72 ; returns to England for his fam- ily, .87 ; accompanies Win- throp on a visit to Plymouth, 109-110; John Cotton's col- league in Boston, 113; speech from a tree, 156. Winslow, Edward, 187, 222, 223, 224, 228. INDEX. 243 Windsor, 144-146. Winthrop, town of, named for Deane Winthrop, 25, 186. Winthrop, Adam, father of John Winthrop, 12 ; died, 13. Winthrop, Adam 2d, son of John Winthrop, 25, 50, 92, 93, 186, 228 ; died at Boston, 25. Winthrop, Anne, mother of John Winthrop, 12; died, 13. Winthrop, Deane, son of John Winthrop, 25, 186, 228 ; left at school in England, 92. Winthrop, Forth, son of John Winthrop, 15 ; letters to his brother John, 27 ; a student at Emanuel College, 35 ; matrimo- nial intentions, 49. Winthrop, Henry, son of John Winthrop, 15,50,58; drowned at Salem, 64-65. Winthrop, John, 78, 126, 151, 161, 163, 167, 215, 216 ; impeachment of, 1-9, 218 ; his personal ap- pearance, 4-5 ; his speech of de- fence, 6-9, 217, 218 ; birth, 12 ; the descendant of an old and hon- ourable family, 13 ; his boyhood, 13 ; reared in a Puritan atmos- phere, 14; his marriage, 14; birth of his first child, 14 ; other children of this marriage, 15 ; misses his university degree, 14- 15 ; practises law, 15 ; justice of the peace, 15 ; becomes lord of Groton Manor, 15; his inward life as described in the " Expe- riencia" and "Christian Expe- rience," 15-19, 156-158; his in- timate relation with the Puritan leaders, 21-22 ; death of his first wife, 23 ; second marriage, 23 ; loses his second wife, 23 ; his great grief at her death, 23-24 ; marries his third wife, 24 ; chil- dren by this marriage, 25 ; suc- cess in his profession, 25-26 ; at- torney in the Court of Wards and Liveries, 26 ; preparations for leaving England, 28, 48-50*; his life in England, 28-33 5 cor- respondence with his wife, 30- 33* 34» 35> 48, 5°> 5i~5 2 > 68, 90, 161 ; thoughts of leaving Eng- land, 22, 34-35 ; a signer of the " Cambridge Agreement," 35 ; determines to go to Massa- chusetts, 35-36 ; not an original member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, 39, 42 ; his first connection with the New Eng- land enterprise, 40-41, 42-43 ; his writings justifying the pur- pose of the Massachusetts Bay Company, 43-47 ; governor of the Massachusetts Bay Com- pany, 48 ; departure from Eng- land, 50-51 ; his private journal, 55-57, 59-60; arrival at Salem, 61 ; assumes charge of affairs at Salem, 64 ; his trying position, 64, 68 ; in search of a new place of settlement, 64; death of his son Henry, 64-65; removes to Charlestown, 66 ; his steadfast loyalty to New England, 69-71 ; birth of a daughter, 71 ; death of his son Forth, 71 ; a founder of the church at Charlestown, 72; quoted, 75, 127, 128, 136, 140, 141, 144-145) MQ-^Oj 166, 176, 182, 183, 188, 196-197,200, 208, 214, 219, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228 ; his " Model of Charity," 75 ; his theory of governmen t, 79 ; re- moval to Boston, 82 Relations with the Indians, 83-87; his summer house at Mystic, 88 ; 244 INDEX. makes official visits to Lynn and Salem, 90 ; arrival of his family in Massachusetts, 90-92 ; sale of Groton Manor, 90-91 ; death of his youngest child, 91 ; inland explorations, 93-94; quarrel with Dudley, 95-103; his authority questioned, 98-100 ; his daugh- ter Mary married to Dudley's son, 102 ; final issue of the con- troversy with Dudley, 102-103 ; political troubles, 103-106, 182, 212-214; constitutional reforms, 106-107, _i 83-1 84 ; re-elected Governor, 106-107, 156, 174, 181, 192, 197, 218; remunera- tion for his services, 107-108; his visit to Plymouth, 1 09-1 11 ; defeated for Governor, 116, 191, 209; chosen assistant, 116; renders account to the Gen- eral Court, 117-118; the fore- most man in the colony, 119, 124-126 ; appointed member of the military committee, 123; dis- ciplined for lenity, 130-132, 135 ; his friendship for Roger Wil- liams, 135 ; chosen Deputy-Gov- ernor, 141, 209, 217 ; created a member of the " Standing Coun- cil," 142-143 ; his sorrow at the Connecticut migrations, 144 ; his friendship for Thomas Hooker, 146 ; a colonel of militia, 147 ; chairman of the commission for founding Harvard College, 147 ; not in sympathy with the Anti- nomian movement, 153, 156- 158 ; mediator in the Antinomian controversy, 156; his fiftieth birthday, 158 ; Sir Henry Vane's discourtesy to, 160; his inter- pretation of the charter, 160- 161, 164 ; his tribute to Vane, 161 ; his popularity outside Boston, 161-162 ; kindly dis- posed toward the Indians, 172-173; prostrated by fever, 174; friendly relations restored with Bostonians, 174-175, 188; anecdote about him, 175 ; his dealings with the Lord Com- missioners, 177-179; his super- vision of Harvard College, 184- 185 ; private adversity, 185-189; devoted to Massachusetts, 189; displeased at the West Indies emigrations, iSg-igof'igo ; pres- ident of the New England Con- federacy, 202 ; the Acadian trou- ble, 203-208 ; removed from the United Colonies Commission, 209 ; letter to his v eldest son, 210-21 1 ; the Dissenter's Cabal, 218-225; narrowly escapes going on a mission to England, 222- 223 ; his closing days, 227-232 ; death of his wife Margaret, 227- 228; his cares lightened, 229- 230; fourth marriage, 230; a son born to him, 230 ; his last sickness, 230; his death, 231 ; buried in King's Chapel Bury- ing-ground, 231; mourned by the whole country, 231-232; statues of him, 232; subordi- nated the State to the Church, 232 ; conservative in politics, jffi: a mediator between rival parties, 232-233; the represen- tative of independent self-gov- ernment^233. WinthropTjohn, Jr., eldest son of John Winthrop, 5-6, 15, 35, 49, 69, 112, 136, 186, 229; his birth, 14; goes to Trinity College, Dublin, 26; his father's pride in him, 26-27 ; admitted to INDEX. 245 the Inner Temple, 27-28 ; gives up the law and enters the navy, 28; dissuaded by his father from going to America, 28 ; accompanies his mother to Mas- sachusetts, 90-91; married, 92; elected to the Board of As- sistants, 107 ; returns to Eng- land, 195 ; governor of Connecti- cut, 228 ; summoned to his fa- ther's funeral, 231. Winthrop, John, LL.D., professor at Harvard College, 25. Winthrop, Margaret, wife of John Winthrop, 24, 186, 188 ; corre- spondence with her husband, 30- 33, 34, 35, 48, 5°» 5 l S 2 > 68, 90, 161 ; joins her husband in Massa- chusetts, 90-92 ; loses her youngest child, 91 ; her death, 227-228. Winthrop, Mary, daughter of John Winthrop, 15 ; daughter-in-law of Thomas Dudley, 15, 102; her death, 210. Winthrop, Robert C, quoted, 10; his " Life and Letters of John Winthrop," 14 note 1, 28, 43 note 1. Winthrop, Samuel, son of John Winthrop, 25, 92, 186, 228 ; gov- ernor of Antigua, 25 ; ancestor of Lord Lyons and Duke of Newcastle, 25. Winthrop, Stephen, son of John Winthrop, 25, 50, 92, 186, 194 ; takes part in the English Revo- lution, 25, 228, 229. MAKERS OF AMERICA. The following is a list of the subjects and authors so far arranged for in this series. The volumes will be published at the uniform price of $1.00, and will appear in rapid succession : — Christopher Columbus (1436-1506), and the Discov- ery of the New World. By Charles Kendall Adams, President of Cornell University. John Winthrop (1588- 1649), First Governor of the Massachusetts Colony. By Rev. Joseph H. Twichell. Robert Morris (1 734-1 806), Superintendent of Finance under the Continental Congress. By Prof. William G. Sumner, of Yale University. 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