TAS ECCLESL JOHN HARVARD A HVTT"V I f I O nnTA/TT^ O IS MES HENRY C. SHELLEY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES This book is supplied by MESSRS. SMITH, ELDER & Co. to Booksellers on terms which will * not admit of their allowing a discount from the advertised price. JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES HARVARD HOUSE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON. FRONTISPIECE. Ste page 80 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES BY HENRY C. SHELLEY AUTHOB OF "UTEHAHY BY-PATHS OF OLD ENGLAND," ETC. WITH ILLUSTBATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE 1907 Copyright, 1907, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. All rightt reserved Published October, 1907 THE UNIVERSITY PBES8, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. TO CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT WHOSE PRESIDENCY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY ADDS AN ILLUSTRIOUS CHAPTER TO ITS ANNALS PREFACE AIONG the names graven on the foun- dation stones of American history none is so deeply carved or is so rich in prom- ise of endurance as that of John Harvard. In fact, no name has been for so many gen- erations so literally a household word. It was familiar long before the name of George Washington become a commonplace of Ameri- can speech ; and, no matter what new sons of fame may be born in the future, there is little fear that eclipse will overtake the renown of John Harvard. Yet, for all that, the founder of America's first seat of learning is one of the most shad- owy figures in the history of the Republic. Up to some twenty years ago, John Harvard was, in Lowell's phrase, "scarce more than a name." Earlier still another writer made the felicitous reflection that " John Harvard seems to be the * Melchisedec ' of the first age of the vii PREFACE Colony of Massachusetts. He is known to us only as * a priest of the Most High God,' and as one who 'gave gifts.' So far as any certified facts concerning his lineage or circumstances have been presented to us, he is * without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days,' nor a known resting-place for his mortal dust." Of course this paucity of knowledge could not be charged to a lack of zeal among those industrious genealogists for whom New Eng- land has long been famous. So far back as 1842, James Savage offered the seductive reward of five hundred dollars for five lines of information about John Harvard in any capacity, public or private. But no one could claim it. Unfortunately the reward does not still hold good. Otherwise there might be numerous applicants. To whom, however, the prize would fall need not be discussed here. It would make neces- sary an attempt to decide to whom belongs the honour of being the first discoverer of John Harvard's baptismal entry in the archives of St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, London. Without entering upon the somewhat heated viii PREFACE and ungenealogical wranglings which marred the unearthing of the Harvard baptismal rec- ords, wills, etc., a tribute of gratitude for much assiduous research must be paid to William Rendle and Henry F. Waters. Their labours have made this book possible. Perhaps, however, it may be necessary to add that for the theories advanced in these pages the present writer is alone responsible. No doubt most interest will be concentrated on the attempt to prove that the parents of John Harvard were introduced to each other by William Shakespeare. To the author, the ar- guments adduced constitute a strong case of circumstantial evidence. Perhaps the mere statement of those arguments may lead to further investigation and convincing proof. One other remark seems needful. This is a pioneer effort to reveal the character of John Harvard. It may seem incredible, yet is nevertheless strictly true, that the present vol- ume is the first to be written on the young minister whose generosity had such an impor- tant influence on the beginnings of education in America. The pioneer is liable to take the wrong trail now and then, and some allowances ix PREFACE will no doubt be made on that score. Yet the hope is entertained that the following chapters visualise the life and character of John Harvard to an extent hitherto believed impossible. H. C. S. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AN expression of sincere gratitude for generous assist- ance in the preparation of this volume is hereby ten- dered to William Chawner, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England ; the Hon. Joseph H. Choate ; John La Farge ; the Bishop of Southwark ; Sidney Colvin ; the Rev. W. Marrable, South Mailing, Sussex, England ; William C. Lane, Harvard University ; and Horace G. Wadlin and the Assistants of the Boston Public Library. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. ENVIRONMENT 1 II. PARENTAGE . 47 III. EARLY INFLUENCES 83 IV. THE HARVARD CIRCLE 117 V. CAMBRIDGE 135 VI. LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND 197 VII. THE NEW WORLD 235 VIII. THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD . . . 281 INDEX 323 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Harvard House, Stratford-on-Avon Frontispiece Old Houses, Southwark Page 42 Plan of Southwark, after a Drawing of the Sixteenth Century "49 The Globe Theatre, Bankside "68 Record of John Harvard's Baptism, from the Register of Saint Saviour's Church, South- wark " 81 Saint Saviour's Church, Southwark "126 Emmanuel College, Cambridge "149 Chapel of Emmanuel College "154 John Harvard's Signature in the Admission Fee Book, Emmanuel College "157 Book inscribed with John Harvard's name, in the possession of Emmanuel College ... "173 Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel College " 178 Dr. Anthony Tuckney "180 John Wallis, a Fellow-Student of John Harvard " 188 Dr. Ralph Cud worth "190 Archbishop Sancroft "192 South Mailing Church, where John Harvard was married " 199 xiii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Interior of South Mailing Church Page 207 Record of John Harvard's Marriage .... "213 Memorial Window in the Chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge " 240 Memorial Tablet in the Chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge " 260 Harvard Memorial Window, Saint Saviour's Church, Southwark "272 The Harvard Monument at Charlestown ... "283 Title-Page of " The Christian Warfare," pre- served in the Library of Harvard University " 299 Statue of John Harvard, on the Delta, Harvard University "312 Xiv I ENVIRONMENT John Harvard and His Times CHAPTER I ENVIRONMENT QUEEN ELIZABETH had been dead nearly five years when John Harvard was born. During even that brief period, the change which had been creeping over England in the closing years of her long reign had gathered considerable force. Broadly put, it was a change from the gaiety of the Renascence to the austerity of the Reformation. Potent though the Renascence had been in moulding the social and intellectual life of Elizabethan England, there were not lacking signs that the Reformation, retarded* for a time by the Catholic revival under Mary, was widening its influence. Nowhere is that fact more discernible than in the literature of the period. The final appeal was not always to 3 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the re-discovered classics; mingling with names and references which speak of Greece or Rome, we light upon others which show that the scholars of those days were placing the Bible beside Homer and Virgil. Sidney's "Defence of Poesie" makes sure of its final triumph by citing the Holy Scripture for argument, for that book, he noted, is seen to have " whole parts of it poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed to use the flowers of it." Part, no doubt, of the instantaneous pop- ularity of Spenser was due to the skill with which his verse reflected the mood of an age hovering " between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born." Of course his poetry, in its mere mechanism, owed much to the remembered pageantry of the age of chivalry, yet even that remembrance was seen through the new light of a reformed Christianity. Much more is it true that in the contents of his poetry the leaven of Puritanism was already at work. Four out of the twelve pastorals of his first poem, "The Shepherd's 4 ENVIRONMENT Calender," concerned themselves, symbolically, it is true, with those questions of church gov- ernment which were being so zealously de- bated in all circles, and in that age of conceits the symbolical garb with which he clothed his arguments and denunciations helped to inter- pret rather than disguise his meaning. Even if the reader of the verse had been in danger of missing its moral, the "glosse" or commentary which accompanied each poem enforced its teaching with unmistakable plainness. The holy water used by the priest is "foolerie" and "blindnesse"; such pastors as care more for their own pleasure than the well-being of their people are " shepeheardes for the Devils stedde, That play en while their flockes be unfedde " ; and the poet specially invents the fable of the Fox and the Kid to warn the Protestant "be- ware how he giveth credit to the unfaythfull Catholique." When Spenser addressed himself to the task of his life, the writing of "The Faerie Queene," it was with a deepened consciousness of his 5 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES mission as a preacher to his age. The fair Una of that dream-world is the symbol of Protestantism as represented by the person of Queen Elizabeth, and the revolting Duessa stands for the spirit of Catholicism as em- bodied in Mary Queen of Scots. With that key to its allegory kept in mind, little need be urged to enforce the truth that while in its form "The Faerie Queene" was a birth of the Renascence, in its spirit it yielded tribute to the peculiar genius of the Reformation. Not for many centuries had so momentous a change passed over the thoughts of men. Hardly had they been given time to look around them in the new world which the Renascence opened up to their astonished vision, when they were suddenly warned that man was something more than a mere vassal of pleasure; that life, instead of being an opportunity for enjoyment, was a stern school- house on the threshold of eternity. Una and her Red- Cross Knight, then, were no impal- pable children of an unsubstantial fairy-land; instead, they were types, as seriously real as ENVIRONMENT Bunyan's distressed pilgrim, of the conflicts and dangers which beset each individual soul in its war with evil. Beneath the smiling verse of Spenser runs an undercurrent of more sombre hue. For all the enchanted castles of this dream-land, for all its rich woodland glades where crystal streams sustain a cease- less melody, for all its "careless quiet" and "eternal silence," for all its lordly trees spread- ing wide their grateful shade in summer noon, for all its alternating pictures of " rosy-fingered morn" and "coal-black curtain" of "dark- some night," the stubborn reality of the con- flict of the soul is never far distant for long. It obtrudes itself, indeed, when least ex- pected. Under the lovely outward semblance of the seeming fair Fidessea is hidden the foulness of Duessa, the type, with Spenser, of the corruptions of Rome. Of a truth, then, "The Faerie Queene" does indeed strike the "note of the coming Puritanism." But with a limitation. The strict meaning of Puritanism is too often overlooked, and it was only in its original sense that Spenser was 7 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES f * its prophet. The cloak of Puritanism is fre- quently stretched to cover a multitude of sects such as it would have abhorred to gather under its shelter. The Puritan was really a member, and a devoted member, of the Church of England; all, in fact, that " the bulk of the Puritans asked was a change in the outer ritual of worship which should correspond to the advance towards a more pronounced Prot- estantism that had been made by the nation at large during the years of Elizabeth's reign.'* That this was Spenser's position is proved beyond question by a comment attached to one of the poems of "The Shepherd's Calen- der," to the effect that nothing in the verse was meant to "deny fatherly rule and government (as some maliciously of late have done, to the great unrest and hindrance of the Church) but to display the pride and disorders of such as, instead of feeding their sheep, indeed feed off their sheep." In that reference to the "some" who had recently disturbed the peace of the Church of England we have a glimpse of the doings of 8 ENVIRONMENT the Brownists, or Separatists, of those days. Under the leadership of the Rev. Robert Browne, they had carried their dissent from the church so far as to emigrate in a body to Holland, and thus they became the type of all those disaffected spirits who for one reason or another abandoned all hope of a purified Church of England. With sectaries of this type the Puritans would have no communion; for many years they were kept faithful by that astute policy which preserved the unity of the Church of England by repression of Catholics and Separatists alike. It must not be for- gotten that the Puritans and the Separatists were both typically represented among the earliest settlers in New England. It was because it had gone further than the Puritans that the congregation from which the Pilgrim Fathers came was hounded from England, and hence the Plymouth settlement was representa- tive of the Separatist element in English reli- gious life; on the other hand, the bulk of those who sought a new home along the shores of Massachusetts Bay belonged to the Puritan 9 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES camp, and their arrival in New England in ever- increasing numbers coincided with the repeated attacks made by Laud and others on the Puritan position. The fact that John Harvard elected Boston rather than Plymouth as his destination would seem to indicate that his sympathies were with the Puritan rather than the Separatist standpoint. Puritans and Catholics alike anticipated great things from the advent of James I. to the throne of England. The latter based their hopes on the new monarch being a son of Mary Queen of Scots; the former might have been excused for expecting sympathy from a sovereign who professed a Calvinistic theology and had grown up under the influence of John Knox and George Buchanan. Both par- ties forgot that James was a Stuart. Out of respect for what she had done for the nation, the Puritans refrained from troubling Elizabeth in her last years with demands for reform in the Church of England. No such scruples stood in their way with James. Long before he could reach London he was 10 ENVIRONMENT met by a deputation of ministers bearing the Millenary Petition, so called because it was thought to bear the signatures of a thousand ministers, and in that petition, while not asking any change in the government of the church, they pressed for the removal of superstitious usages from the Book of Common Prayer, for the disuse of the Apocrypha, for a stricter ob- servance of the Sabbath, and for the creation of a ministry capable of preaching to the people. In accepting the petition James prom- ised to summon a conference of bishops and divines for its discussion, but, when that con- ference met nearly a year later, only four Puri- tan ministers were invited to its proceedings, as compared with nine prelates known to be adverse to the petition. Even after the lapse of three centuries, it is impossible to read the proceedings of that con- ference unmoved. The conduct of James in that assembly alone was more than ample warrant for the witticism which described him as "the wisest fool in Christendom." Had he not been cursed with the fatal incapa- 11 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES city of the Stuart race to read the signs of the times, that conference might have established his throne immovably in the affections of his people. The prelatical party counted for little; they would have followed whither they were led; but those four Puritan ministers, if James had only known it, stood for all that was best in the nation, stood for the strength and courage which had scattered the Armada, and for that even more heroic energy which was to establish so surely the foundations of the great nation of the West. But the Stuart blindness clouded the vision of the king, and while the obsequious bishops applauded his clumsy witticisms as the "inspirations of the Holy Ghost," the earnest appeals of those four Puritans were answered only with scorn and ridicule. And then, as he saw the dauntless four still stand unmoved and heard them question his infallibility, he abruptly dis- banded the conference with the threat, "I will make them conform or I will harry them out of the land!" During the thirty years which John Harvard 12 ENVIRONMENT spent in England six distinct Parliaments were summoned for the despatch of State business, three in the reign of James I. and three in that of Charles I. To one of those Parliaments the courtiers applied the adjective of "Addled," but in truth that adjective might have described the whole six. James and Charles alike had an overweening conception of the royal of- fice; the former was never weary of defend- ing his thesis that kings had a divine right and absolute authority over all men, and the latter bade the representatives of the people "re- member that all Parliaments are altogether in my power." Given two monarchs holding such theories, it would have been easy and safe to prophesy serious conflicts between Crown and Commons. The history of the Parliaments of James and Charles is little less than a history of such conflicts. And, in the last resort, in nearly every case the question of religion, which in those days meant Puritanism, was the rock of offence. Summoned for the purpose of voting supplies, Parliament after Parliament refused to unlock the national 13 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES treasury save on the condition of debating the matter of religious reform. In the first Parliament of James the mem- bers listened unmoved while he dilated upon the two "gifts" he brought them, one of peace with other nations and the other of a union with Scotland. As soon as they were able to get to work, their legislative programme was seen to be practically a copy of the Mil- lenary Petition. In an address to the king they indulged in some wholesome plain speak- ing of a kind which was often to fall on Stuart ears in succeeding times; they warned the monarch that he would be living in a fool's paradise if he heeded the assertions of those who declared that the kings of England had any power over questions of religion save as that power was derived from the consent of Parliament. James was in no mood to listen to such language, then and always seditious in his opinion; and the bishops who sided with the Court party, taking heart from the king's attitude, secured a vote in Convocation which lifted the rites and ceremonies of the church into greater importance than they had had for more than thirty years. Rather than sub- scribe to the position represented by that vote, three hundred Puritan ministers elected the alternative of being ejected from their livings early in 1605. When, some six years later, James dissolved his first Parliament it was still the question of Puritanism which pre- vented king and Commons from reaching an agreement. James had not the least sympa- thy with any movement which would tamper with the episcopal character of the Church of England. His early experience in Scotland had made him hate the name of Presbyteri- anism, and his short-sighted vision could see no other goal for any efforts at reformation. "No bishop, no king!" was the limit of his creed; and in England as little as in Scotland could he realise that there were "two kings and two kingdoms" in his dominion, and that the better part of his subjects gave the first place in their loyalty to "Christ Jesus the King and his kingdom the Church." Brief as was the career of the "addled 15 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Parliament," it, like its predecessor, stoutly refused to consider the question of supplies until it had discussed more urgent matters, chief among those being the corruptions of the Church. For seven years thereafter James governed without a Parliament, and when his monetary necessities forced him to summon the Commons in 1621 it was not long ere the Journal of that chamber was engrossed with the Great Protestation. That notable docu- ment, a kind of late appendix to the Great Charter, claimed that affairs of King, State, and Church were equally legitimate subjects of debate in Parliament, and that in the discussion of such matters every member of the House was entitled to full liberty of speech. Al- though James tore the offending page from the Journal of the House, he could not so easily destroy the spirit which had prompted the lines it bore, and when, a few years later, death called upon him to lay down the power he had wielded so unwisely, there was no ver- dict save that of failure to be written against the record of his reign. "He had struggled 16 ENVIRONMENT with the Parliament, and the Parliament was stronger than ever. He had broken with Puritanism, and England was growing more Puritan every day." More tragic still was to be the failure of Charles I. None of his father's defeats con- veyed any warning to him. To him, indeed, was it given to start that train of events which led to the final and utter downfall of the Stuart race. When he flouted the wishes of his sub- jects by wedding a daughter of Catholic France he ensured a double nemesis in the loss of his own crown and life, and the ruin of his son who had imbibed only too thoroughly the reli- gious temper of his mother. That there had been no change in the temper of the nation was shown by the first act of the new Parliament. One of the court chaplains, Montague by name, in a recent sermon had exalted the Church of Rome at the expense of the Reformed Churches, and even went so far as to contend for the Real Presence in the Sacrament. Montague was called to the bar of the House of Commons and 2 17 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES committed to prison, from whence, however, he was soon released by the special command of the king. Here was proof enough that the old struggle with James was to be renewed with his son. If further proof were needed, it was furnished in full measure by the Parlia- ment of 1629, which, as with so many that had gone before, declined to vote the king any supplies until the state of the church had been dealt with. Of course the usual dead-lock followed; matters of religion, Charles answered, " only appertaineth to the clergy and Convoca- tion," and he knew he could count upon their docile support. The only course, as usual, was to dissolve the Houses, but ere the mem- bers were dispersed again to the four quarters of the kingdom the sturdy John Eliot had uttered his memorable prophecy " None have gone about to break Parliaments, but in the end Parliaments have broken them." Twenty years later Charles was to make good those words at the headsman's block. With the dissolution of 1629, Charles re- solved to repeat his father's experiment of 18 ENVIRONMENT governing without a Parliament, and thus it happened that no other House of Commons assembled during the remaining eight years which John Harvard was to spend in England. He had already been more than a year in his student quarters at Cambridge when Eliot's prophecy resounded throughout England, and when we remember the temper of the Cam- bridge undergraduates of those times we may be certain that the doings and debates in Parliament were keenly followed and discussed in that quiet University town. During the subsequent eight years, of which John Har- vard was to spend six at Emmanuel College, the activities of Laud were to furnish the Puritans with much cause for anxiety. If satire should ever inspire the actions of those who erect public statues, Laud might certainly count upon having a statue on American soil. He was the most efficient recruiting- sergeant New England ever had. On the eve of the Long Parliament, and when Laud was committed to prison, the Puritan emigration suddenly ceased. In the words of 19 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Winthrop, "the change made all men stay in England in expectation of a new world." The change, however, came too late to influ- ence John Harvard: he had been gone three years, and in his grave two. Although more than two and a half centuries have passed away since Laud was beheaded, it seems almost impossible for historians to write about his career without heat. In fact, he is nearly as potent a cause of partisan- ship as Mary Queen of Scots. Wordsworth thought he was " Prejudged by foes determined not to spare " ; Macaulay held that "contemptuous mercy was the only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous old bigot"; Coleridge absolved him of being a Papist but had no doubt he was on the high- road to Rome; and Carlyle regarded him as not dishonest, but "an unfortunate Pedant, rather than anything worse." One virtue at least may be granted to that famous church- man; he never wavered from the path he 20 ENVIRONMENT elected to follow early in life. As a student his good, or evil, star the reader will please make choice according to his standpoint guided him to St. John's College at Oxford, which was notoriously opposed to the Puri- tanism of most of the other colleges in that University, and had for its principal tutor one who was deeply learned in the early fathers of the Church. It may be that Laud owed his High Church tendencies to that tutor, but in any case those tendencies were already settled when, in 1602, he was appointed divinity lecturer to his own college. From the plat- form which that position gave him he at once began to inculcate the principles which influ- enced all his future actions and finally led him to the scaffold. To his thinking, the Church of England was linked in an unbroken succes- sion with the earliest ages of the Christian faith; baptism into that Church was, conse- quently, essential to salvation; and as bishops were the medium through which apostolic succession flowed, there could be no true Church without bishops. JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Later reflection caused him to amplify this programme in many details; as when, quite early in his career, he quickly repented having officiated at the marriage of a divorced lady and resolved to celebrate the anniversary of that offence as a day of humiliation ; but in the broad outlines of his policy he was consistent from first to last. When he was elevated to the bishopric of St. David's, he refused to accept consecration at the hands of Arch- bishop Abbot because that prelate had a short time before accidentally killed a keeper while hunting; but he gladly accepted the services of a commission of bishops selected by Charles. In that way, he doubtless thought, he had avoided the danger of a flaw in his own apos- tolical succession. Instead of betaking him- self to his distant see, as, by his own theory, he ought to have done in order to ensure the validity of baptisms in his diocese, Laud remained in London fully four and a half years out of the five during which he was bishop of St. David's. His reward came when he was translated to the see of London ENVIRONMENT in 1627, and thenceforward he waged war against Puritanism without mercy. Woeful tales were told by the Church party as to the neglect into which divine ser- vice had fallen in those years. While one parish rejoiced in "solemn ritual, beautiful music, and earnest preaching," in the next parish everything was literally going to the dogs, for had not such a quadruped actually stolen a loaf from the communion table while the people were wickedly absorbed in listening to the eloquence of some Puritan minister ? Laud revealed much astuteness in the methods he employed for the overthrow of Puritanism. At the outset he devoted his attention to the bench of bishops, and no doubt always had ready for reference that list of divines he had prepared for the king, and in which he had distinguished each name with an O or a P, the former standing for " Ortho- dox" and the latter for "Puritan." Having ensured that each see as it fell vacant should be suitably filled, he turned his attention to 23 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES another matter. Many of the Puritans who had been compelled to resign their livings found havens as chaplains in the homes of sympathetic country gentlemen, so word went forth to the effect that in future no one under the rank of a nobleman should be allowed to have a resident chaplain. Still, however, in the towns there remained the lecturers to be dealt with, lecturers who were supported by the operations of a fund specially created to purchase tithe impropriations which had fallen into the hands of laymen. Of course it was an easy matter for Laud to secure a verdict that a trust of this kind was illegal and that the tithe impropriations must revert to the king. Needless to say, he seems to have overlooked such a small matter as providing payment for the robbery. Having shown so much activity in his diocese of London, it was only to be expected that his elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury would be marked by a still more aggressive policy. The principal channel through which that activity was manifested was the famous 24 ENVIRONMENT three years' visitation of the province of Canterbury which he instructed his vicar- general to carry out. Never were archiepis- copal orders more ruthlessly obeyed. The ostensible object of the visitation was to "reform abuses and enforce the law" as Laud understood law and abuses. Inquisi- torial reporting of sermons was resorted to in every parish for the detection of heretical opinions; the communion table was removed from the centre of the church to within the chancel ; communicants were no longer allowed to receive the elements while seated but were obliged to kneel; bowing at the name of Jesus was rigidly inculcated as an essential act of divine worship ; and such matters as the decora- tion of the church with the sign of the cross, and the proper vestments to be worn by ministers, received minute attention. At a time, in short, when the bulk of the people of England felt they needed no external cere- monials to aid them in the worship of God, Laud insisted upon carrying out to the smallest detail his own opinion to the contrary. Even 25 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his advocates are forced to admit that he "was asking too much of his countrymen. To persuade them to decorous worship would be the work of time and gentleness. He strove to hurry it on ; and he would fail, for the pres- ent moment." Had Laud given heed to some of his own monitions for he was an intensely superstitious man Tower Hill might not have numbered him among its victims. In one of his letters, written when the storm-clouds of his own raising were gathering darkly around him, he recalled a warning which he had noted some years before. "When I first came to Lambeth," he said, "there were in the walks song- thrushes which even began to sing in February, and so continued, and the nightingales fol- lowed in their season. Both of these came my first year, I think to take their leave; for neither of them hath appeared ever since: and I presently said I should have a troublesome time in that see, and so it proves." There are many pathetic pages in the life- history of this self-willed churchman, but hardly one so 26 ENVIRONMENT pathetic as this record of the sweet songsters who came to "take their leave." Even James I. had wit enough to discern the weakness of Laud. When the Duke of Buck- ingham asked that he might be appointed to the see of St. David's, the king, in giving his consent, ejaculated, " He hath a restless spirit, which cannot see when things are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring matters to a pitch of reformation floating in his own brain. Take him with you, but by my soul you will repent it." Notwithstanding the fact that Laud's visitation resulted in many ministers Cotton and Hooker among the rest seeking a haven in New England, those Puritans who remained had not even yet been driven into an irreconcilable position. They were as deeply attached to their mother Church as Laud himself, and would fain continue to count themselves among her children if it were possible. Rarely has the Puritan position been more reasonably or pithily put than it was about this time by the Rev. Thomas Warmstry in these words: 27 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES "I disrelish neither the doctrine, nor the discipline, nor the government of the Church. Not the doctrine, I embrace it heartily; and I conceive the Church of England may be herein the pattern of the world: and that if ever any Church had taken that living water clearly and purely from the fountain, it is the Church of England. Not the discipline, I entertain it willingly, so far as it is established by law: I wish indeed there might be no private innova- tions. I love outward reverence in God's worship, so that it be directed to the right object; not to altars; not to images; but to God. I love all ceremonies that truly tend thereunto, or to decency, or to uniformity, which I acknowledge to be most necessary in religious actions. But I desire that in affecta- tion of reverence, we breed no contempt; that in contrivances of decency, we bring in no blemishes : that the Church may not seem to be infected with the humours of some women in this age, that never think themselves hand- somely dressed, but when they are in some new and fantastical fashion: that while we 28 ENVIRONMENT endeavour uniformity, we do not multiply division. We may be so busy in drawing the two ends together, that we may break the staff in the midst. That we be not so careful to preserve uniformity with others that are with- out, that we make dissensions within our own Church. The truth is, I wish there might be nothing scandalous, nothing frivolous in the Church. Nothing scandalous, not so much as a title. Though I love the sacrifice of alms, and praise, and I hope should not refuse my- self to be a sacrifice unto God, though a burnt one ; yet I know no need of any material altar ; because I know no material sacrifice, but that eternal sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. And though it may be urged, that the Primitive Church used the name of altar for the holy table, yet that makes it neither necessary nor warrantable for us to do the like; unless to- gether with the language we could call back the purity, the simplicity of the Primitive times. . . . Besides, the language of the Scripture and the Apostles is the most pure and the most ancient language of the Primi- 29 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES live Church; and we read of no altar there after Christ, but the altar of the cross, or Christ crucified. I desire there may be noth- ing scandalous: I wish the pure image of God in righteousness and true holiness may be restored in the spiritual temples of our souls. But I desire, at least, an abatement in the num- ber, and limitation, for the manner and situa- tion of images in the material churches, be- cause I doubt they are scandalous to all sorts. . . . And as I desire there may be nothing scandalous in the Church, so there may be nothing frivolous, or irrational, that our ser- vice may be a reasonable service. I know not why we should have candles in the day- time. I wish there may not be so much as an emblem of a fruitless Prelacy, or Clergy in the Church, that only fill the candlestick, but give no light. I love ornaments in the Church, so that they be not toyish or theatrical. I hold it very fit that God, as he is the author of our riches, so he should be served with them. Yea, an holy congregation is the best furniture of the Church. I wish our special care may be 30 ENVIRONMENT for this, and then let the outward adornation, as fair, as grave, as decent, not be neglected." What could be more temperate than this? Save for that gentle hint at the possibility of a prelate filling a candlestick but giving no light, surely even Laud, if he had been so conciliatory as we are often asked to believe he was, might have discovered a foundation for satisfactory compromise in such a spirit as this. That he would have been generously met by the Puritan leaders there can be no doubt, but the archbishop was either too proud, or too stub- born, or too conscientious as some would say to resile one inch from his position. It is idle, in the face of such an earnest exposition as that given above, to say that the Laudian party stood for a more sincere or effectual piety than the Puritans. In those excited times, extremists on either side made ludicrous charges as to the immorality bred of their rival creeds; neither Puritans nor Laudians possessed a monopoly of godliness. But it may be claimed for the Puritan that he was, at any rate at the outset, more reasonable than 31 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his opponent. In making that claim, however, it may be needful to except the rank and file of the party from full participation in its com- mendation. Materials for constructing a picture of the daily life of a Puritan tradesman in London, such as we know John Harvard's father to have been, are none too plentiful, but it fortunately happens that within the last generation our knowledge of that phase of seventeenth century life has been considerably increased. A part of that result has been due to the unearthing and editing of borough and parish church records in which so many anti- quarian societies have displayed so much com- mendable industry; but perhaps the most interesting contribution to our knowledge has been made by the publication of extracts from the diary and miscellaneous note- books of a London Puritan tradesman, Nehemiah Wal- lington by name. These records are specially useful in an attempt to depict the environ- ment of John Harvard, for while the social status of Nehemiah Wallington was closely 32 ENVIRONMENT akin to that of John Harvard, it also happens that each was living his daily life not only within about a quarter of a mile of the other, but also at nearly the same date. There was a difference of only nine years between the ages of the two men, Wallington having been born in 1598 and Harvard in 1607. Each had a tradesman for his father, Mr. Wallington senior being a turner and Mr. Harvard senior a butcher. And their several homes were separated only by the river Thames, the birthplace of Wallington being about the same distance from the north side of the river as Harvard's was from its south side. That the social status of the two fathers was much the same is suggested by the fact that each occupied a similar position, that of churchwarden, in their respective parish churches. Wallington's mother has often been cited as the type of a Puritan parent in the early seventeenth century, and her portrait, as sketched by the pen of her husband, may be presented here for the help it may afford in 3 33 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES giving a picture of the mother of John Harvard. "She was very loving and obedient to her parents, loving and kind to her husband, very tender hearted to her children, much affect- ing the sincere preachers of God's Word, lov- ing all that were godly, much misliking the wicked and profane. She was a pattern of sobriety unto many; very seldom was seen abroad, except at church; when others rec- reated themselves on holidays and other times, she would take her needlework and say, * here is my recreation.' She was of fine inventions for drawing works, and other choice works, and many a fine and a neat piece of work hath she soon despatched, she would so apply to it; besides a very good judgment in setting out work in colours, either for birds or flowers. God had given her a pregnant wit and an ex- cellent memory. She was very rife and per- fect in all the stories of the Martyrs, and could readily turn to them; she was also perfect and well seen in the English Chronicles, and in the Descents of the Kings of England. She lived in holy wedlock with the Husband of her 34 ENVIRONMENT youth twenty years wanting but four days." Apologists for the Cavalier dames often de- clare that those ladies were more devoted to fancy needlework than their Puritan sisters, but there appears to be small foundation for such a generalisation. It may be, however, that the efforts of the Puritan lady often took the direction implied in this contemporary satire : " Nay, sir, she is a Puritan at her needle too : She works religious petticoats ; for flowers She '11 make Church histories ; besides, My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries And are so learned, that I fear in time All my apparel will be quoted by Some pure instructor." Unfortunately, Nehemiah Wallington does not assist us much in reconstructing the life of a Puritan boy. There is, however, one char- acteristic touch in his diary, where he records that "when I dwelt in the house with my father, I did use every day to go up alone into the high garret to pray, whether for fashion's sake, or custom's sake, I know not." Those were days of precocious piety. The memoirs 35 of that time introduce us to numerous infantile religious prigs, who are somewhat of an inflic- tion even in print. No doubt it was all the fault of their terribly serious elders. Then, as ever, the child acted " As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation." Wallington does not suggest that his daily climb to the "high garret" was prompted by any inward inclination to prayer for its own sake; his only difficulty in deciding his motive lay, as we see, between the alternatives of fashion or custom. We may hope that his childhood, and that of John Harvard, was not wholly devoid of playtime, even though such games as were allowed may, in the eyes of their parents, have had a useful symbolical meaning. It is asserted that the game of "Tom Tidler's Ground" had its origin at the Reformation, and that the Puritans were re- sponsible for many childish recreations which were specially designed to cast a slur on the old religion. In this category is placed that shadow-game in which the forefinger and 36 ENVIRONMENT thumb were wrapped in a handkerchief and were made to bow to each other to the accom- paniment of the words, "Father, father, I've come to confess." Perhaps young Nehemiah Wallington and John Harvard may have been permitted to wile away the long winter even- ings in their homes with allegorical amuse- ments such as these. Unlike John Harvard, Wallington did not go to either of the great universities, but in his twenty- second year he took to himself a wife and settled down in business on his own account as a turner. The house he occupied was situated not far from where the present Monument of London stands to mark the spot on which the great fire of 1666 originated. As with the Harvards, his place of business was also his home. Judging from his own account, Wallington appears to have been exceedingly industrious, for he never began his day's labours later than five o'clock in the morning, and sometimes he was at his work at the unearthly hour of three or even two. However early he rose, his first business was to be "in private 37 188410 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES prayer to my God," no longer doubtful, we may hope, whether it were fashion or custom which inspired his devotions. Then he turned to his calling, and " God sent in such a blessing, that it made me wonder and stand amazed, for I took three, four, five, six, seven, nay once I took ten pounds one a day." Grateful piety was probably responsible for an overestimate of these daily proceeds, for there were times when he refrained from a profitable expendi- ture of four pounds because "money is so short with me"; and when it came to writing his will he apologised to his wife in anticipa- tion for the smallness of his estate, and took refuge in the Scriptural excuse, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto you" -the "such as I have" being rather unrealisable assets in the shape of numerous pious precepts! Perhaps Puritanism in this instance was not conducive to business astuteness. At any rate, he kept his accounts in such a manner that it was possible for one of his workmen to rob him of nearly one hundred pounds in two 38 ENVIRONMENT years. In consideration of the man confessing his theft for which Nehemiah and his wife had been mutually accusing each other - the culprit was not handed over to the law, but Wallington no doubt "improved" the occasion by offering him some spiritual advice. He was liberal with that commodity. When another of his workmen left him, he gave him "a charge to be careful to keep the Lord's day holy." It was all in vain. He went "wrest- ling in the fields" on the Sabbath, and received such an injury that "within a short time he died of it." This incident furnished Walling- ton with another paragraph for the note- book in which he recorded "examples of God's judgments on those that break his holy Sabbath day." Professional house-breakers sometimes be- stowed their attentions upon Wallington's home. One visit of this kind was paid on a Sunday when all the family were at church. If the thieves had selected a house whose occupants were "in the fields" on that day, no doubt the incident would have been jotted 39 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES down in the note-book as another example of God's judgments, etc. The good Puritan never thought of complaining against a Provi- dence which could not take care of his goods while he performed his religious duties ; but he did find consolation in the fact that he "lost no more." Three pounds were gone from one desk, and about twenty shillings were missing from a receptacle marked "This is the Poors' box," the existence of which throws some light upon the charities exercised in these Puritan households. Apart from such losses as these, Wallington passed through an anxious experience, not unknown in modern days, through standing as surety for a friend. The bailiffs actually took possession of his prem- ises, and for two weeks he neglected his shop and "could scarce eat any supper." This episode had, of course, to be interpreted for spiritual ends, but one of the resolves it sug- gested was the practical and wholly worldly conclusion "to take heed another time of suretiship." Debarred by their creed from participating 40 ENVIRONMENT in the pleasures of the theatre, of which the most notable in London, the Globe, was within an easy walk of both Wallington's and Harvard's home, and cut off for the same reason from the bear-baiting gardens and all the kindred amusements of the time, one often wonders what these Puritans did for recrea- tion. Wallington supplies us with some sort of an answer to that question. The Thames was within a stone's- throw from his door, as it was from the home of John Harvard, and an occasional row on its waters was not deemed too worldly an amusement. Even in such innocent recreation, however, Wallington was not free from those miraculous " deliverences " which he so frequently notes in his diary. Once when rowing down the river on a visit to his sister, "and partly for refreshment," the man "rowed his boat over the cable rope of a ship which, as we all do think, was two feet above the water. And it was the great mercy of God that the boat did not overwhelm us all; and being low water, he rowed his boat two or three times upon the gravel, so that his 41 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES boat stuck fast, and put us in great fear; but God of His goodness carried us safe thither at last, where we were all very merry together." Another mild amusement in which Walling- ton indulged rather freely was to watch the numerous political processions as they passed on their way to the Houses of Parliament. Those were stirring times, and whenever the Commons were summoned to Westminster countless deputations made their way thither to present petitions of grievances against the State or the Church. At that time London Bridge was the only causeway over the Thames, and consequently all the petitioners from Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, etc., would use that bridge as their gateway to London. John Harvard would have a more enviable position from which to watch these processions, inasmuch as his father's house was by the side of the road along which they would have to pass, and thus he could observe them in comfort from the overhanging win- dows of his own home. But we have not exhausted the catalogue of 42 OLD HOUSES, SOUTHWARK. Puritan recreations. In the early years of the seventeenth century the printing-press entered in good earnest on its since ceaseless career of activity, and one of the events of the week in those days was the arrival of the pedler, or chapman, with his overflowing bundle of ballads, chapbooks, books of news, and con- troversial pamphlets. No one watched for his appearance with more lively anticipations than Wallington, and as his own particular chapman no doubt soon got to know the taste of this good customer, we may be sure that he always took care to have a copious supply of the very latest productions in the shape of Puritanical literature. Many of the little works which Wallington obtained in this way were really weekly newspapers in pamphlet form, in which the events of the day were generally recorded from the Puritan stand- point; others were of a distinctly controversial nature and were unsparing in their attacks on the doings of Laud and his followers. These miscellaneous publications evidently furnished the lighter relief of Wallington's 43 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES somewhat drab life. When the day's work of turning was done, and the shop closed, he would retire to his study with his pamphlets, and for long hours, night after night, he sat copying into various common- place books such passages or incidents as took his fancy, adding to them confirmatory notes from his own experience. Such was his zeal for the cause, that he contracted the habit of lending some of his books to others, and one man whom he had so favoured reported Wallington to the dreaded Star Chamber. The books for the possession of which he was arrested included the famous "Divine Tragedy" of Mr. Prynne, and the Rev. Henry Burton's equally notorious pamphlet books which probably also found a place in John Har- vard's home. When it is remembered to what an extent the life of the Puritan was made unbearable by constant if petty persecutions, all carried out under the cloak of zeal for the Church of England, it might be inferred that the bulk of them would have turned away from that 44 ENVIRONMENT Church in disgust. But their loyalty was proof against even such a test. To the end of his life, Wallington remained a member of the church in Eastcheap, and no doubt concluded that he had received his reward when the day came for him to be an eye-witness of the destruction of the candlesticks and the picture of the Virgin Mary, and the smashing of the stained-glass windows, of which he secured some fragments as a "remembrance to show to the generation to come"; and we have documentary proof that John Harvard's father and family remained in faithful communion with St. Saviour's Church, on the other side of London Bridge, through all the tribulations of those anxious years. More than that, it is a significant fact that almost up to the last these Puritans maintained unbroken their loyalty to the king. When Charles had gone to Scotland with an army which was to repress freedom of religious thought there, we find Wallington praying that the Lord would " send us our King in peace." If even at that late stage Laud had acted upon his own professed 45 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES belief that "differences in religion I conceived might better be composed by ink than blood," all would yet have been well. Instead, he elected to "bring matters to a pitch of refor- mation floating in his own brain." Such, then, was the England into which John Harvard was born. An England which was struggling grimly for each man's right to adjust his own relationship with God, and, less clearly, but none the less surely, for civil liberty for all men. 46 II PARENTAGE Here ndeth (he liberty of the Mayor * nd bejinneth the Kings The Christopher I The Spur CHAPTER II PARENTAGE THREE years before the sixteenth century ended, a young man named Robert Harvard had established him- self in business as a butcher in a shop in High Street, Southwark, London. That house, which we may easily imagine as one of those quaint, wooden structures with overhanging upper story, such as were the usual abodes of London tradesmen in Elizabethan times, was to be his home for the remainder of his life. Prior to his appearance as a tradesman, the life of Robert Harvard is a blank. His father's Christian name and occupation, his birth- place and the date of his birth all these particulars are at present unknown. Conse- quently it is impossible to say whence this young man derived the capital which would be necessary for his start in life, though one item of information which has been revealed by * 49 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES recent research may be thought to throw some light on that matter. In the month of August, 1592, a cloth worker, Peter Medcalfe by name, who lived in the parish of St. Olive's, not far from the High Street of Southwark, executed his last will, and among the various legacies mentioned in that document is the following: "I give and bequeath unto Robert Harvard, a boy which I keep, the sum of five pounds lawful money of England, to be paid unto him at his age of one and twenty years. So that he be ordered and ruled by my executrix, and that he do live to accomplish the age of one and twenty years aforesaid." It is true that in the original will the name of the "boy" is given as "Harvey," but in such documents, and also in parish records of those times, the name which we know certainly to be intended for Harvard is variously spelt as "Harwod," "Hervy," "Harwar," "Harward," "Hervard," "Harvye," "Harvey," etc. In fact, it is not unusual for the name to be spelt in at least two different ways in one and the same document. Those were happy days for 50 PARENTAGE people who were shaky in orthography. Among the very few books in general circula- tion, such a thing as a dictionary was practi- cally unknown; and even if that had not been the case, the spelling of surnames remained a matter of personal caprice for many genera- tions. Hence no objection can be raised to the "Robert Harvey" of Peter Medcalfe's will being regarded as the Robert Harvard of High Street, Southwark. No reference whatever is made to the lad being an apprentice; that would have involved a difficulty in the form of a change of occupa- tion; whereas Mr. Medcalfe merely describes his legatee as " a boy which I keep," an expres- sion which would harmonise with Harvard having been committed to his care as an orphan. Altogether, then, there are no insu- perable obstacles in the way of this lad being the Robert Harvard who had begun business on his own account in 1597. Now, as has been proved in the case of Nehemiah Wallington cited in the previous chapter, it was not unusual in those times for 51 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES a man to celebrate his majority by setting up in business. If Robert Harvard began his career as a tradesman when he was twenty- one, that would show him to have been born in 1576, and consequently in 1592, the date of Peter Medcalfe's will, he would only have reached his sixteenth year, and so might naturally have been designated "a boy." Presuming, then, that the legatee of the Medcalfe will was the young tradesman with whom we are concerned, the "five pounds lawful money of England" shows whence a part at least of his capital was derived. That may, indeed, have been nearly if not quite the total amount. Nor was it an inconsiderable or inadequate sum. For a butcher in the twentieth century to commence business with a capital of five pounds would doubtless be to court speedy disaster; but the value of money in the sixteenth or seventeenth century was fully eight times its value in the present age. And many flourishing businesses have been reared on foundations of even less value than forty pounds. Even so, and no matter whence Robert 52 PARENTAGE Harvard derived his capital, a study of the trade conditions of Southwark at that time suggests the question did he make a wise choice of a business ? In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, butchers' shops were ubiquitous in SouthVark. Along the High Street, almost every third or fourth building seems to have been occupied by a "flesh-monger," and one of Harvard's brothers appears to have followed that business in prem- ises not far from his own. When it is re- membered, also, that the population of South- wark at that time did not exceed five thousand persons, it is rather perplexing at first to under- stand how these numerous butchers managed to make a livelihood. What has to be borne in mind, however, is that in addition to its normal five thousand, Southwark could always count upon an impor- tant and numerous floating population. For all the south and west of England, and even for the Continent of Europe, this High Street where our young butcher began business was the gateway into London. By this time, too, " Lon- 53 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES don had developed into the general mart of Europe, where the gold and sugar of the New World were found side by side with the cotton of India, the silks of the East, and the woollen stuffs of England itself." As has been stated, London Bridge was the only causeway over the Thames, and the countless traders who had business in the capital would be obliged to use this route coming and going. One of the natu- ral consequences of this constant traffic shows itself in the numerous inns of the neighbour- hood. They appear to have been almost as ubiquitous as the butchers' shops. Indeed, the presence of the former accounts for the latter. Purveyors of food may naturally be expected to cluster in the near vicinity of houses of public entertainment. Such, at any rate, was the case in Southwark in Robert Harvard's time. Nor should it be forgotten that the most famous, and perhaps the most frequented of all London inns, the Tabard, was within a few hundred yards of Harvard's shop. Who can forget that, each year, 54 PARENTAGE " Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote," this was the favourite inn with all those who set their faces towards Canterbury? This, of course, was that "gentil hostelrye" where Chaucer assembled his famous tale- telling pilgrims together; where on the evening be- fore their departure " Greet chere made our hoste everichon, And to the soper sette he us anon ; And served us with vitaille at the beste." True, nearly two centuries had passed away since the Canterbury pilgrims had made the Tabard Inn famous, but that was all to the good of the tradesmen who supplied those "vituals of the best" which made its suppers the talk of every pilgrim. Notwithstanding, too, that a change in religion had taken place and somewhat deposed the Kentish shrine from its exalted position, we may be certain that the pilgrims continued even if the motive which originally prompted the journey had undergone a transformation. A well-worn path is not quickly deserted. 55 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES In addition to these constant streams of traders and travellers and pilgrims with their bodily wants, all to the good of the inn-keepers and butchers of Southwark, there was another reason why the neighbourhood was so good for trade. Along the south shore of the river Thames, Bankside as it was called, and west- wards from where St. Saviour's Church still stands, and indeed throughout the entire dis- trict of Southwark, stood the town houses of the leading ecclesiastics of the southeast of England. Not far from the church was Win- chester Palace, the metropolitan home of the bishop of the diocese; the bishop of Roches- ter had his London house close by; and in the immediate neighbourhood were the town residences of the abbots of St. Augustine of Canterbury, of Lewes, of Hyde, of Waverley, and of Battle. It has been seen that when Laud was appointed bishop of St. David's he yet spent nearly all his time in London, and he was not alone among the superior clergy in manifesting a preference for Court life. Even apart from personal inclination, the duties 56 PARENTAGE of the bishops and abbots necessitated their presence at Parliament and Court, and con- sequently these town houses at Southwark were frequently in use. It should be remem- bered, too, that in those days high ecclesiastics never travelled without a numerous retinue of attendants and servants, and thus altogether it is not difficult to understand why trade was so brisk in the vicinity of Robert Harvard's shop. Moreover, that particular period of English history was marked by an enormous increase in the consumption of meat. The people generally were abandoning the use of salt- fish in favour of those "great shins of beef* which so revolted the artistic temperament of Benvenuto Cellini. Even if these considera- tions had not justified Robert Harvard in his choice of a trade, that he had made a wise one was to become obvious when the time came for him to write his will. That prosperity was not long in waiting upon the efforts of the young tradesman seems an obvious inference from the fact that in June, 1600, he increased his liabilities by mar- 57 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES rying. His choice of a partner rested upon one "Barbara Destyn," who has left no me- morial of her life story save a few dates in the records of St. Saviour's Church. It was in that building the wedding took place, and naturally so, seeing that it was only a stone's throw from the bridegroom's home. Less than a year after the marriage, the records of St. Saviour's show that a daughter, Mary, was born to the young couple ; and fourteen months later a son, to whom his father's Christian name was given, was presented at the font for baptism. For this Robert Harvard, how- ever, only a brief spell of life had been ap- pointed; in two weeks he was dead, and little Mary Harvard was once more the only child in the house. Some thirteen months later there was to be another break in that small family circle. In the autumn of 1603, London had a serious visitation of the plague, so serious that the Globe Theatre near by which must soon figure conspicuously in this story was ordered to be closed. Many victims fell to the scourge in Southwark, and among them 58 PARENTAGE was the young wife of Robert Harvard. Thus, after a married life of little more than three years he is a widower, with a two-year-old infant added to his responsibilities. Widowers of the seventeenth century, and widows too, for the matter of that, as a rule do not seem to have unduly protracted their mourning. It is quite a common thing to find them remarrying within the space of a few months. Robert Harvard, however, not- withstanding the care of an infant needing a mother's oversight, allowed a year and a half to elapse ere he espoused a second wife. At that period of English history, when there were so few facilities for travel, it will be found that tradespeople generally married some one of their own immediate neighbourhood; the cases are very rare of a bride being sought a hundred miles away; and yet, for his second wife, Robert Harvard was to marry a young woman whose home was in a quiet country town, at least that distance from London. Considering all the circumstances, it is not unnatural to wonder how the young trades- 59 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES man of Southwark came to know and then to marry Katherine Rogers, of Stratford- on- Avon. Nor are there insuperable objections to the introduction having been effected by no less a person than William Shakespeare. It is true, there is no actual documentary evi- dence that Shakespeare helped Robert Har- vard to find his second wife in Katherine Rogers, but the circumstantial evidence which maybe adduced in favour of such a theory seems to be so conclusive in its cumulative effect that it is at least worthy of impartial consideration. At the outset it is necessary to take a glance at Stratford- on- Avon in the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century. In those days the population of the town did not ex- ceed two thousand souls all told, including infants, and it is necessary to insist that in a rural community of that size all the inhabi- tants of the same station in life would be in- timately known to each other. This is most emphatically true of an English country town of such a size in the present day, when indi- vidualism is supposed to have effected so much 60 PARENTAGE in the direction of isolation; much more was it true in the sixteenth century, when the gov- ernment of small communities was intensely collective in its spirit. Social distinctions, too, were more marked in those days, and if there was one class in a town bound together by common interests, it was that of the trades- people. Hence, we are on sure ground in drawing the conclusion that the tradespeople among a total population of two thousand souls were all well acquainted with each other. Such a presumption is all the stronger in the case of two tradesmen who are of the same generation. It is conceivable that a veteran of sixty might not possess many interests in common with a youth of one- and- twenty; ,but when the ages of two business men in a small town nearly approximate, it will follow almost inevitably that friendship will exist between them. Now, in the persons of John Shake- speare and Thomas Rogers we have two trades- men of whom that fact holds good. These two inhabitants of Stratford- on- Avon were married within five years of each other, and as in each 61 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES case it was a first wife they espoused, it is not illogical to conclude that there was little dif- ference between their ages. As John Shake- speare was the first to marry and the first to die, he may be granted to have been the senior by a few years. For forty years, however, he and Thomas Rogers lived and carried on busi- ness in the same town. Both these men were of the trading class. John Shakespeare appears to have combined several occupations, including those of a glover, a butcher, and a general dealer in malt, wool, and corn; while Thomas Rogers was of the yeoman class, and hence would fre- quently have for disposal some of the com- modities in which John Shakespeare dealt. It is practically certain also that until he built his house in the High Street, Thomas Rogers lived in the same thoroughfare, Henley Street, as that in which John Shakespeare had his home. Apart, however, from their being near neigh- bours, and from business transactions bringing them often together, in due time both John PARENTAGE Shakespeare and Thomas Rogers attained to office in the corporation of the town, and each eventually reached the position of alderman. As they were such close contemporaries, it is more than probable that they were often as- sociated together in controlling the affairs of the town from an official standpoint. That John Shakespeare was friendly with a Henry Rogers is proved beyond question by the records of Stratford-on-Avon, and as in so small a town those of the same name were usually relatives, that fact may be cited as an additional proof of friendship between John Shakespeare and Thomas Rogers. Further, it is a common experience that friendship between adults frequently grows out of friendship between their children, and in the fact that the sons of these two trades- men of Stratford-on-Avon would undoubtedly attend the grammar-school of the town may be found another argument in favour of the theory now advanced. Some four years be- fore the marriage of John Shakespeare, the grammar-school of the town had entered upon JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES a new lease of life, and the identical building in which boys of the sixteenth century were taught still exists in a practically unchanged condition. "To this school," says Mr. Sidney Lee, "the children of the Stratford freemen were sent with rare exceptions." In 1571, then, Master William Shakespeare, having now reached the necessary age of seven years, was enrolled among the scholars of the Strat- ford grammar-school, and began to store up those experiences which later in life were to prompt the picture of " The whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school." Twelve months later his schoolmates were in- creased by the advent of Master Charles Rogers, the eldest son of yeoman Thomas Rogers; and in the following year Shake- speare's brother Gilbert attained the regula- tion school age. These three lads, then, William and Gilbert Shakespeare and Charles Rogers, were practically contemporaries dur- ing the seven years over which the curriculum 64 PARENTAGE of the Stratford grammar-school extended, and as they belonged to the same social stratum of the town a close friendship between the three may be postulated with great certainty. Succeeding children of the Shakespeare and Rogers families were to be schoolmates under the same roof. Richard Shakespeare, who was born in 1574, no doubt found a playmate in Richard Rogers, who was a year younger; then the last of the Shakespeare boys, Edmund, who was born in 1580, may well have found a friend in Edward Rogers, whose birth took place the year before. Only one of the Shake- speare daughters, Joan, lived to adult age, and she was born just two years before the Joan of the Rogers family circle. These girls may rea- sonably be supposed to have increased on the feminine side the friendship cemented by their brothers; and there were other daughters in the rather prolific Rogers family whose ages would not debar them from becoming play- mates of the two Joans. When William Shakespeare left Stratford, about 1585, his sister and three brothers re- 5 65 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES mained to continue their friendship with the Rogers boys and girls, and it must be particu- larly noted that two, and two only, of those young people were destined to find a new home in that special district of London, that is, South- wark, with which the metropolitan life of the great dramatist was to be most closely associ- ated. One of these two was Shakespeare's youngest brother, Edmund, who became a "player" at the Globe Theatre, and, dying at the untimely age of twenty- eight, found a grave in St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, on the last day of December, 1607; the other was Kather- ine Rogers, born in 1584, who was destined to become the wife of Robert Harvard and thus to exchange her childhood's home at Stratford for a home as a wife at Southwark in the spring of 1605. That these two natives of the little Warwickshire town should have settled close to each other in the same district of London and not resumed the friendship of their earlier years seems quite improbable. But how, it may be asked, came Robert Harvard to make the acquaintance of Kather- 66 PARENTAGE ine Rogers ? To suggest an answer to that natural question it will be necessary to follow William Shakespeare to London. For the first year or two of William Shake- speare's life in London our information is ex- ceedingly scanty, but the purposes of this nar- rative are not concerned with his doings prior to his appearance in the Southwark district of the English capital. That this was not later than 1592 is an established fact. In February of that year a new playhouse, called the Rose Theatre, was opened at Bankside, its propri- etor being Philip Henslowe; and the company which performed at the opening ceremony was the band of actors known as "Lord Strange's men." Among those actors William Shake- speare had by this time attained an assured position, and it is the opinion of his most com- petent biographer, Mr. Sidney Lee, that in the following month his " Henry VI. " was acted for the first time at this particular theatre. Mr. Lee also says that " the Rose Theatre was doubtless the earliest scene of Shakespeare's pronounced successes alike as actor and dramatist." 67 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Each succeeding year saw Shakespeare more closely identified with the Bankside at South- wark. In 1596 he had a lodging near the Bear Garden in that neighbourhood, and when the famous Globe Theatre was built in 1599, his immediate interests became more and more centred in the district. For not only was the stage of that theatre occupied chiefly by Shake- speare's company, but he also soon acquired no inconsiderable share in its profits. It will be seen, then, that from 1596 onwards it is beyond question that Shakespeare was intimately asso- ciated with South wark, and up to the year 1611, when he practically retired to Stratford-on-Avon, this district undoubtedly saw more of him than any other in the whole of London. Not far from the Globe Theatre, it should be remem- bered, stood the home of Robert Harvard. Presuming, however, that Robert Harvard was a Puritan, what chance would he have of making the acquaintance of a "play-actor" such as William Shakespeare? On the one hand, it is no doubt true that the poet's refer- ences to Puritans in his plays are " so uniformly 68 PARENTAGE discourteous that they must be judged to reflect his personal feeling"; and on the other, it is well known that the theatre was regarded by most of the Puritans with abhorrence. To each of these statements, however, an excep- tion can be proved : Shakespeare is known to have entertained a Puritan minister in his home at Stratford, which may reasonably be regarded as a proof that he found individual Puritans tolerable ; and that some Puritans looked upon the theatre with no ill will may be inferred from the example of John Milton among others. Apart from the fact that "Comus" and "Sam- son Agonistes" might be adduced as qualifying him for inclusion among the playwriters, no poet had excelled Milton, ardent Puritan though he was, in praise of Shakespeare. " What needs ray Shakespeare for his honoured bones The labour of an age in piled stones ? Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid ? Dear Son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a livelong monument." 69 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES If it is objected that this tribute refers to Shake- speare's writings as literature, and not to their association with the theatre, it may be an- swered that in setting forth the praise of mirth he gives the theatre the last and most honoured place : " Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild." Milton, indeed, the sincerity of whose Puritan- ism no one will challenge, himself attended dramatic performances at Cambridge and in London, as we know from his own confessions. Nothing could be more unjust than to charge the narrowness of some Puritans to the account of all Puritans. There were many among their number who held that the graces of the Renascence were not inconsistent with the grace of the Reformation. " The figure of such a Puritan as Colonel Hutchinson stands out from his wife's canvas with the charm and tenderness of a portrait by Vandyck. . . . His artistic taste showed itself in a critical love of 70 PARENTAGE 'painting, sculpture, and all liberal arts/ If he was * diligent in his examination of the Scrip- tures,' 'he had a great love for music and often diverted himself with a viol, on which he played masterly.' ' If, then, there were some Puritans who were not averse to the pleasures of life, including the theatre, there can be no serious objection to Robert Harvard being numbered among those who frequented the Globe at Bankside now and then. Besides, it is by no means certain that this young tradesman was a rigid Puritan of the type of Nehemiah Wallington on the opposite bank of the Thames. Such facts as are avail- able appear to point in another direction. No trace of the peculiar phraseology of the strict Puritan can be detected in Robert Harvard's will, and, more significant still, not one of his seven children received a distinctively Biblical name. In nothing does the rigorous Puritan more surely reveal himself than in the names he bestowed upon his offspring. To him the Bible was not more certainly a guide to the 71 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES world to come than it was a detailed directory for the affairs of the world which now is, and while there were so many names to draw upon within its covers, he doubtless thought it sinful to seek cognomens for his children elsewhere. Hence the Hephzibah, Barachiah, Zebedee, Habakukk, etc., with which the unfortunate children of that age were labelled. We seek in vain, however, for any of these grotesque appellations among the names of the seven children of Robert Harvard. Undoubtedly, then, the presumption is in favour of Robert Harvard being a Puritan with reservations such reservations, in fact, as would not restrict him from enjoying an occa- sional visit to the Globe Theatre, or from cul- tivating the acquaintance of the actors them- selves. And it so happens that this is more than a presumption; it is an established fact. In the seventeenth century attendance at church was practically compulsory, and the most notable and the nearest church in the neighbourhood of the Globe Theatre was St. Saviour's. But we do not need to rely upon PARENTAGE such circumstantial evidence to prove that Shakespeare and his fellow actors actually at- tended St. Saviour's Church, for there are doc- umentary proofs that such was the case. While there are no records to show that Shake- speare himself ever held an official position among the leading laymen of the church, there are such records to prove that his colleague, Philip Henslowe, the owner of the Rose The- atre, did hold such a position, and that on one occasion he was associated with Robert Har- vard in a transaction of great importance to the congregation as a whole. That fact prac- tically makes it certain that Robert Harvard was intimately acquainted with all the leading spirits at the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare of course included. The records of St. Saviour's demonstrate that for some years the temporal affairs of the congregation were governed by a group of men among whom Henslowe and Harvard usually figure. The others included John Trehearne, servant to Queen Elizabeth and "gentleman porter" to James L; and John Bingham, who was saddler to both those 73 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES monarchs. Shakespeare's connection with the Court as an actor would give him many oppor- tunities of cementing his friendship with those other Court servants who, like himself, resided in Southwark and attended St. Saviour's Church. There are, then, many cogent rea- sons for believing that Robert Harvard was among those who actually knew the great dramatist in the flesh. As has been recorded earlier in this chapter, Robert Harvard was left a widower in the fall of 1603; and the fact that he allowed some eighteen months to elapse ere he married again seems, when we bear in mind the usual speedy remarrying of those days, to point to some difficulty or hesitation in seeking a second wife. There is nothing improbable in Har- vard's protracted widowhood forming the theme of conversation between Shakespeare and himself. Perhaps, indeed, in due course the poet himself suggested that it was high time the prosperous young tradesman es- poused a second wife, and such a remark may well have prompted Harvard to ask Shake- 74 PARENTAGE speare whether he could recommend a lady for the position. If Shakespeare had not re- newed his friendship with the Rogers family in his native town, it is conceivable that the existence of its numerous marriageable daugh- ters might have faded somewhat from his memory, and hence at this point it is neces- sary to narrate the reasons there are for be- lieving that the poet had renewed that early friendship. After an absence of eleven years, Shake- speare revisited Stratford-on-Avon in 1596. It is uncertain whether he returned early in that year, but it is practically certain that the death of his only son in August would occa- sion a second visit even if he had already been home earlier in that twelve months. In those eleven years of absence he had won not only fame, but substantial wealth, and hence he was able to lift the fortunes of his family out of the slough into which the ill-luck of his father had plunged them. If the associates of John Shakespeare had made good the words of his son 75 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES " Those you make friends And give your hearts to, when they once perceive The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye " the advent of that son, now famous and pros- perous, would no doubt rally them to his side again. But it is not necessary to imagine that the friendship of the Rogers family needed any rallying; children are not such sticklers as adults for the maintenance of a given social position; and the school- day bonds between the Shakespeare and Rogers boys and girls may be counted upon to have preserved the friend- ship of the families unbroken. If William Shakespeare would have much to narrate of his doings in the great world of London, it may be taken for granted that his brothers, and especially the youngest, Edmund, would have something to tell in turn of the history of their native town. In the particular year now in view, 1596, an event was transpiring in the Rogers family which would of itself be sufficient to arrest the attention of a native of the town returning after an absence of eleven years. Thomas 76 PARENTAGE Rogers had that year completed a new house in the High Street, and that it was the most notable example of domestic architecture in the town may be inferred from the fact that even to-day it is conspicuous among the show- places of Stratford- on- Avon. Rich though the town is in ancient buildings, there is no struc- ture which can display such a wealth of curious carving in detail, or present such an attractive picture as a whole. From what is known of the houses of Stratford in the sixteenth century, it is safe to conclude that this new home of the Rogers family must have been the talk of the town in the year of its completion, and there can be no doubt that Shakespeare took an early oppor- tunity of wandering through its various rooms. From 1596 onwards Shakespeare seems to have paid at least one annual visit to Stratford, and in 1602 he would have special business there in connection with the completion of his purchase of New Place. As these annual visits would provide him with many opportu- nities for deepening his friendship with the Rogers family, which now comprised ten sons .77 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES and daughters, it is far from improbable that it should have occurred to him that Robert Harvard might find a suitable second wife among the latter. By 1605 two of the Rogers girls were married, but there still remained three of a marriageable age, one of whom, Katherine, was in her twenty-first year. War- wickshire maidens even to this day are by no means the least beautiful among the daughters of England; and judging from her subse- quent conquests as a widow, Katherine Rogers undoubtedly possessed more than average attractions. For Shakespeare to have under- taken a description of her charms would have been more than ample inducement to start Robert Harvard on a hundred-mile journey in quest of a second wife. No evidence is forthcoming to show that the Harvards had any previous connection with Stratford-on- Avon, and when all the foregoing circum- stances are taken into account, it is not un- reasonable to conclude that Robert Harvard was introduced to the household of Thomas Rogers by William Shakespeare. 78 PARENTAGE Although he was a widower with a four- year-old daughter, and was at least in his twenty- ninth year, Robert Harvard's wooing of Katherine Rogers, not yet one- and- twenty, did not fail of complete success. That he had already built up a lucrative business seems more than probable, and there is every reason to imagine him as a likeable man, else had he been no friend of Shakespeare. His con- quest of Katherine under all the circum- stances speaks much in his favour. The fact that their homes were so far apart proves, in view of the irksomeness of travelling in the seventeenth century, that there were no liberal opportunities for courtship, and no doubt Robert Harvard was not the man to neglect his business. Perhaps his was another ex- ample of Veni, Vidi, Vici. At any rate, on the eighth day of April, 1605, a bridal party set out from that picturesque home of Thomas Rogers in the High Street of Stratford, and at the altar of Holy Trinity Church, close beside the spot where eleven years later to the very month the body of William Shakespeare was 79 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES to be laid to rest, Robert Harvard and Kathe- rine Rogers took one another for husband and wife. When the young wife passed once more through the portals of her girlhood's home it was with no prevision that the ceremony in which she had taken part a few minutes earlier would result, nearly three centuries hence, in that building being known as the "Harvard House." In her new home at Southwark Katherine Harvard would not be quite friendless. Even if the claims upon William Shakespeare's time left him few opportunities to visit Rob- ert Harvard's house, his young townswoman would see him frequently in St. Saviour's Church on Sundays ; and by this date Edmund, the youngest of the Shakespeare brothers, had made his way to London and started on his career as an actor. He, at any rate, might be relied upon to avail himself of the hospi- tality of his old friend from Stratford- on - Avon. Some seventeen months after her arrival in Southwark, Katherine Harvard found her 80 PARENTAGE duties as a hostess overshadowed by her re- sponsibilities as a mother, her first child, Robert, being baptized on the 30th of Sep- tember, 1606. Fourteen months later this entry was made in the baptismal records of St. Saviour's Church: "1607 November 29 JOHN HARVYE S. of Robt. a Butcher." Hardly had the future benefactor of learning in the great Republic of the West completed the first month of his life than the rooms of the house in which he lay echoed one morn- ing with the doleful knell of the great bell of St. Saviour's Church. On that December morning a company of mourners were as- sembled around an open grave in that sacred building. Among them stood William Shake- speare, watching with sad eyes the lowering of the coffin containing the body of his favourite brother Edmund. Nor is it improbable that Robert Harvard stood close by, in sympathy with the sorrow of his friend, and as repre- senting that household in Stratford-on-Avon which had given him a wife, and the dead actor many a playmate. 6 81 Ill EARLY INFLUENCES CHAPTER III ON the principle of the proverb that " one good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters," there are no obsta- cles to our believing that John Harvard had a particularly fortunate childhood. It is true there is only one document in existence from which we can form any idea of Katherine Har- vard's character, and it may be granted that a will is generally an unreliable witness in such cases; but there are many exceptions to such a rule, and these are mostly self-evident. Katherine Harvard's last testament seems to belong to that class. By reading between the lines it becomes clear that she was a woman of sincere and simple piety; was greatly at- tached to her friends ; and had a special affec- tion for her second son. A comparative study of the wills of this pe- riod shows that the exordium generally fol- 85 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES lowed a stereotyped form of expression; in a dozen such documents the opening sentence will scarcely vary by a word ; but the proem of Katherine Harvard's will is so definite in its profession of faith that evidently it was not the work of a mere scrivener. "I bequeath my soul," she said, "into the merciful hands of my dear Redeemer Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who by his Holy Spirit, as my trust and hope is, will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom." In the legacies enumerated both the ministers of St. Saviour's Church are re- membered liberally, and one of them is spe- cially favoured. Not only is his wife to have Mrs. Harvard's "best gold- wrought coif," but he himself, in addition to a money gift, is to receive the donor's "pair of silver-hafted knives." Apart from the two sons, no other legatees have such care bestowed upon their gifts as this minister and his wife, an attention which points to a warm friendship on Mrs. Harvard's part. If, indeed, the terms of this will are pondered in connection with the ex- pressions used towards the writer in the testa- 86 EARLY INFLUENCES ments of her three husbands and in the pro- vision they made for her, the conclusion is irresistible that she' realised the type of a true wife, and that her home was "a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose face none may come but those whom they can re- ceive with love." Fortunate in his mother, John Harvard was also favoured in not being an only son. If there had not been other children to share his par- ents' affection, and participate in the gifts of friends, he might never have learnt the virtue of generosity. When he was born he had a half-sister, Mary, who was in her seventh year, and a brother, Robert, more than twelve months old, to keep him company from his first moments of consciousness. Two years later another brother, Thomas, came to join the band; a sister, Katherine, arrived in 1612; and just as John would be beginning his school-life a third brother, Peter, was born. Up to the year 1625 this family circle of four sons and two daughters was unbroken. 87 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES When John Harvard commenced his school- life, most probably in the early days of 1615, just after the completion of his seventh year, the fact that his brother Robert was already a year advanced in his education would spare him much of the misery of first days among strange and unsympathetic companions. For there can be no doubt that all the Harvard boys would receive their early education at the same academy, namely, the St. Saviour's grammar- school, of which their father, Robert Harvard, was a governor. Thanks to the ancient records of that institu- tion, it is possible to arrive at a fairly adequate conception of John Harvard's school- days. The governors appear to have entertained a lofty ideal of what the character and accom- plishments of a schoolmaster should be, and the scholars were indeed fortunate if ever that ideal came within measurable distance of being realised. On the side of character, it was insisted that the master should be sound in the Christian religion " according to the law of the land," a proviso which is not without 88 EARLY INFLUENCES suggestiveness as to the kaleidoscopic changes which characterised those times. He was also to be "sound in body and mind"; sober, honest, virtuous, and discreet; gentle in his conversation; of a wise, sociable, and lov- ing disposition, devoid of hasty temper; and, above all, he was to possess great dexterity in discerning the individual temperament of his pupils, and be skilful in teaching and profiting them. The governors were not without suspi- cion that such an epitome of all the virtues might be difficult to discover, for they wisely added the saving clause, "if such may be gotten." No conditions, however, were attached to the catalogue of the accomplishments which were required of the master of St. Saviour's grammar-school. He was to be a Master of Arts, skilled in Latin, and thoroughly compe- tent to teach grammar, oratory, poetry, Greek, and the principles of Hebrew. For all these vir- tues and attainments the salary of twenty pounds a year was offered, which, meagre though it may seem to modern eyes, was twice the sum given 89 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES only half a century before to the head-master of Eton. The second master of the school, or usher, was to receive ten pounds a year, but his income was augmented by the fourpence a quarter which each scholar was to pay for his special benefit. If the usher was required to possess character and attainments in propor- tion to his salary, the governors may be cred- ited with a desire to obtain full value for their thirty pounds a year. At no time were the scholars to exceed one hundred in number, and preference was al- ways given to the children of parishioners. Judging from the almost universal rule of those days, the age of admission would be fixed at seven years, but even at that early period the pupils were required to be prodigies of learning. Before they could gain admission, they were required to be able to read English well, to write a legible hand (a matter, by the way, on which they seem to have held lax opinions three centuries ago!), and be com- petent to be entered straightway in Latin accidence. 90 EARLY INFLUENCES Such, then, we may conclude, were the rudi- ments of learning possessed by the youthful John Harvard when he presented himself for his first day at St. Saviour's grammar-school. On that occasion he would have to take with him the sum of two shillings and sixpence, the fee which every scholar was required to pay the master on entrance, and the little satchel slung over his shoulder contained that morning, in addition to school-books, and pens and ink and paper, a "little Bible" most probably the Geneva Bible, the popularity of which remained unaffected even by the pub- lication of the Authorized Version. As our young scholar began his schooling in the win- ter, his satchel would also contain a supply of "good candles," for in the long school-hours of those austere times many lessons would have to be conned by candle-light, and the pupils themselves were required to furnish the source of that illumination. John Harvard, indeed, would ponder his first lesson in school by candle-light, for even in the winter months the scholars had to be at their desks by seven 91 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES o'clock in the morning. At eleven o'clock les- sons were suspended for dinner, to be resumed again at one and continued until five. During the summer months, however, the grammar- school day extended to ten hours, that is, from six to eleven, and then from one to six. Not an unfitting early discipline, this, for one who had the hard conditions of New England life before him. In this somewhat sombre picture of John Harvard's school-life one has to look very closely to detect any lighter relief. Save on entrance days, and once a quarter when four- pence had to be forthcoming for the usher, and twopence as a contribution to the supply of brooms " and rods," no scholar was allowed to bring money to school, or to buy or sell there. For John Harvard, then, there were none of those rare "bargains" which con- tribute not a little to the delight of the modern schoolboy's life. Did he realise the satire of the regulation which prohibited him from taking pocket-money to school save on those quarter-days when he helped to buy a rod for 92 EARLY INFLUENCES his own back? Perhaps, however, ignorant of more lenient ways, he found ample enjoy- ment in the weekly break for play, even al- though the games in which he indulged were rigidly regulated by the laws of the school. No pupil was allowed to participate in any game for money, a restriction which seems to confer antiquity on "pitch and toss"; and recrea- tions undertaken for "betters," that is, to show you could do something better than any one else, were also prohibited. But the boys might leap, or run, or wrestle, or shoot with long bows, or play chess to their heart's content. Apart from the weekly vacation for such pastimes, John Harvard could look forward to only two breaks in his school-year. On one of those occasions he would be marched off, with his fellow scholars, to hear the ora- tions at the election days of the Merchant Taylors' and Westminster schools. The other event, anticipated no doubt all the more eagerly because of its rarity, was the breaking- up of the school for its annual week's holiday in the month of September. 93 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES No doubt that yearly holiday was all the more welcome because it ensured freedom from school at the time of the famous -Lady Fair of Southwark. Even in John Harvard's days this fair could boast an antiquity of a century and a half, and hence it had become exceedingly popular and was always attended by great crowds of people. As it was a gen- eral fair for all kinds of goods, it appealed to all classes of people, and the Harvard boys would derive unstinted amusement from wan- dering amid its streets of booths, and listen- ing to the flowery orations of the showmen setting forth the unrivalled attractions of their own particular entertainments. Much inno- cent mirth may be enjoyed at the fairs which are still held in the rural districts of England, many of which repicture the sights and sounds which John Harvard saw and heard every year at Southwark. Somehow, these are among the least changed of the survivals of the past. An ancient bird's-eye view of Southwark enables us to imagine the outward environ- 94 EARLY INFLUENCES ment of John Harvard's daily life for the two hours during which he was free from school. This, particular picture was drawn in the year 1616, that is, in Harvard's ninth year, and the standpoint of the artist embraces that part of the Southwark High Street which would be visible from the windows of the boy's home. Up the street, to the right, stands the gateway to London Bridge; and from the summit of that gatehouse project eighteen poles adorned with as many human heads. No one, how- ever, seems to pay any particular attention to those gruesome objects; it is too common an experience for malefactors' heads to be hoisted to that bad eminence. On either side of the street many of the numerous inns of the neigh- bourhood are in full view ; at the door of one a horseman has stopped for refreshment, and on benches outside other men are seated for more leisurely drinking and conversation. Two boys appear in the picture enjoying their brief respite from the grammar-school, and they are engaged in occupations which are not yet out of date : one is driving a hoop before him, and 95 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the other is attempting to achieve a surrepti- tious ride at the back of a covered waggon. Meanwhile, the more industrious members of the community are represented by a man who is pushing along a heavily-laden barrow, and by women and men who are attending to cus- tomers at two or three long stalls which stand in the middle of the street. Such are some of the sights which daily fill the boyish vision of John Harvard. Notwithstanding the absence of newspapers in the early seventeenth century, any event of importance to the nation at large quickly be- came public property, and the subject of dis- cussion all over England. This was specially so in London, then, as. now, the centre of interest. Among the topics which formed the theme of universal conversation in the metrop- olis in 1618, none absorbed more general at- tention than the interference of James I. with Sunday observance. So widely had the spirit of Puritanism leavened the nation that in- dulgence in games on Sunday was regarded by many with abhorrence. But this did not 96 EARLY INFLUENCES suit the temperament of the king. In every way he seemed to look upon his advent to the throne of England in the light of an oppor- tunity to run counter to all the conditions by which he had been restrained in Scotland. Under the plea, then, that indulgence in games would better fit his subjects for a time of war, he issued a declaration giving every one lib- erty to take part in certain sports every Sunday at the close of divine service. Not content with merely issuing this declaration, the king also ordered it to be read in every parish church throughout England. This, however, the majority of the clergymen in London re- fused to do, nor could fines, suspension, or imprisonment bend them to the king's will. Further, one Sunday while the dispute still ran high, the Lord Mayor of London refused to allow the king's carriages to proceed through the streets of the city during the hours of divine service. All these incidents would be often de- bated in the hearing of John Harvard, and thus early in life would accustom him to the thought that there were some matters in which not even 7 97 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES a king could interfere with impunity. It was not long, too, ere the lad would learn some- thing about that Great Protestation in the House of Commons to which reference has * already been made. A few days before John Harvard reached his sixteenth birthday, an event happened which was then and for long afterwards regarded as an evidence of Divine anger against the adherents of the Pope. Ad- joining the house of the French Ambassa- dor at Blackfriars, which was only a few minutes' walk from Harvard's home, was a large upper room sometimes used by Roman Catholics as a place of worship. On the after- noon of Sunday, October 26th, 1623, a larger crowd than usual had been attracted by the news that Father Drury, a well-known Jesuit, would preach, and it was while he was in the midst of his sermon that the floor of the room, without so much as a "charitable warning- groan," suddenly gave way, and the three hundred auditors became a heap of the dying and the dead. A contemporary account nar- 98 EARLY INFLUENCES rates that the preacher "inveighed bitterly against Luther, Calvin, and Doctor Sutton, a reverend preacher sometime of St. Mary Overy's, in London, who, travelling beyond the seas, was drowned. This preacher said that the sea swallowed him because he was not worthy the earth should receive him. At which words the house sank." This tragic accident, in which more than a hundred, in- cluding the preacher, lost their lives on the spot, would have a special interest for and perhaps be regarded as offering ' a notable warning in the Harvard household. St. Mary Overy was the name by which St. Saviour's Church was known in those days, and hence all the Harvard family would be well ac- quainted with the Dr. Sutton who had adorned the denunciation of the unfortunate Father Drury. Only a few weeks before, the whole of Lon- don had been deeply stirred by the arrival, brideless, of Prince Charles, soon to be Charles I. In the spring of that year it became known that the heir to the English throne had gone to 99 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the Court of Spain to woo the Infanta as his bride. By far the majority of the nation were aghast at the prospect of a Roman Catholic queen, especially the Puritans. To their vis- ion, the skies were yet lurid with the martyr flames of the "bloody Mary's" reign. No wonder, then, that they listened with breath- less interest to every item of news from Spain. Never were the churches so crowded, and for nothing did the Puritans pray more earnestly than that this evil wedding might be brought to naught. At last came the news that the prince was returning, and when he actually landed in London without the bride whose coming had been so dreaded, the whole city went wild with joy. The bells in the church steeples pealed out their merry chimes all the day long, busi- ness came to a complete standstill, and that peaceful saturnalia of heartfelt rejoicing con- cluded with such a glowing girdle of bonfires as even London had rarely seen. In many an after year John Harvard would be able to recall the excitement of that memorable episode. For it should be recollected that he was 100 EARLY INFLUENCES now of an age when he would take his place regularly every Sunday among the worship- pers of St. Saviour's Church, and hence had shared to some extent in the depression which the prospect of that ill-assorted marriage had created. Year by year his father had taken an increasingly prominent position among the vestrymen or wardens of the church, and there are many indications that the family were on terms of special friendship with both the chaplains of St. Saviour's. Per- haps that friendship was not so close with the Dr. Thomas Sutton, already mentioned, as with some of the succeeding ministers. That di- vine was eulogised for his "smooth and edify- ing way of preaching," but there is evidence on record to prove that his discourses did not always merit the first adjective. No doubt the Roman Catholic view of his preaching as being "froward" was not wholly impartial, but there seems to have been little justification and less discretion in an embittered attack he made upon the actors who were associated with the Globe Theatre. 101 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Evidence has already been adduced to show that the leading actors of the Bankside the- atres regarded St. Saviour's as their favourite church. Here they worshipped Sunday by Sunday; here they brought their children for baptism ; here, when the curtain of life fell, they were laid to rest. The records also show that these actors were not deemed unworthy to hold office as vestrymen or churchwardens, and on many occasions we find them associated with Robert Harvard and others in conducting im- portant transactions for the benefit of the con- gregation. Often, too, special appeals were made to them on behalf of the poor of the par- ish, and such appeals were never made in vain. Notwithstanding all these facts, Dr. Sutton seems to have made frequent and violent at- tacks on the theatre, attacks which he brought to a climax one Sunday by a sermon directed specially against the actors at the Globe, who were, he declared, undoubtedly among the damned. In order to sharpen the point of his moral, he introduced a story of a woman who had been seized with a fit while in a theatre, 102 EARLY INFLUENCES and represented the devil as confessing to her that he would not have had any power over her if he had not found her on his own ground. Robert Harvard, we may be sure, did not listen to that tirade with any pleasure. He was in a better position than Dr. Sutton to appraise the character of the men attacked. It is not improbable, too, that he might have made that sermon a question for discussion at the vestry had not Nathan Field, one of the actors, taken up the cudgels on behalf of his profes- sion. He did so in an epistle of "remon- strance,'* which was probably read in the Harvard household with as much satisfaction as among the writer's own colleagues. As the lapse of nearly three centuries has not rendered Field's arguments obsolete nor cooled the glow of his enthusiasm, a few of his cogent sentences will be read with interest. "Christ," he re- minded Dr. Sutton, " never sought the strayed sheep in that manner; he never cursed it with acclamation or sent a barking dog to fetch it home, but gently brought it upon his own shoulders. . . . Surely, sir, your iron is so 103 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES entered into my soul, you have so laboured to quench the spirit, to hinder the Sacrament and banish me from mine own parish church, that my conscience cannot be quiet within me until I have defended it by putting you in mind of your uncharitable dealing with your poor pa- rishioners, whose purses participate in your contribution and whose labour you are con- tented to eat, howsoever you despise the man that gains it or the ways he gets it, like those unthankful ones that will refresh themselves with the grape and yet break and abuse the branches. . . . You waded very low with hatred against us when you ransacked hell to find the register wherein our souls are written damned, and I make no question, so confident am I of my part in the death and passion of Christ, who suffered for all men's sins not ex- cepting the player, that if you had with charity cast your eyes to heaven you might more easily have found our names written in the book of life." Happily John Harvard would often hear a more tolerant voice than that of Dr. Sutton 104 EARLY INFLUENCES speaking from the pulpit of St. Saviour's. In 1618, Dr. Lancelot Andrewes became bishop of Winchester, a diocese which in those days included Southwark in its area, and as he was frequently in residence at Winchester Palace close by, he often preached in St. Saviour's Church. Bishop Andrewes has left a fragrant memory in the annals of the Church of Eng- land. He was one of those few conspicuous prelates in whom character was more than creed. Although belonging to the same camp as Laud, he was a much wiser and more tol- erant churchman. Nor did he ever demean himself by becoming a mere creature of James I. When that monarch, the day after he had prorogued Parliament in a passion, found himself in the company of bishops An- drewes and Neile, he asked them," My lords, cannot I take my subjects' money when I want it, without all this formality in Parliament?" Neile immediately rejoined, " God forbid, Sir, but you should ; you are the breath of our nos- trils." Turning to Andrewes, who was silent, James asked, "Well, my lord, what say you ?" 105 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES "Sir," replied Andrewes, "I have no skill to judge of parliamentary cases." But the king insisted upon an opinion. "No put-offs, my lord, answer me presently." "Then, Sir," said the ready bishop, " I think it lawful of you to take my brother Neile's money, for he offers it." With such an incident to his credit, it may be inferred that this was a bishop worth hear- ing in the pulpit. Such was undoubtedly the case. Even from the printed page his ser- mons still exhale a gentle, lovable, and tolerant spirit. It is easy to understand why that cor- pulent alderman who could not keep awake in church and was "preached at" in consequence, should appeal to Andrewes for advice; and it was characteristic of the man that he should assure the sleepy alderman that his affliction was only "an ill habit of body, not of the mind." Although he did not agree with the Puritans, he declared that they had "no re- ligion peculiar to themselves, but only a par- ticular form of discipline. They are," he added, "excessively devoted to their regimen, 106 EARLY INFLUENCES but in their document generally they are suffi- ciently orthodox." Andre wes was not so narrow-minded as to deny the character of a church to non-episcopal communions, nor did he ever abandon the doctrine of Augustine on predestination. Ceremonies were not every- thing in his eyes: "The grace of God," he said in one of his sermons, " is not tied to means, it is not bound but free, and can work without means either of word or sacrament; and as without means so without ministers, how or when to him seemeth good." As those words echoed through St. Saviour's Church, it is not unlikely that, after the custom of those days, the Harvards added their share to the applause which such a generous confession would in- evitably call forth. Andrewes had indeed set himself to present without controversy "the reasonableness and the attractions of a larger, freer, nobler, more generous system of teach- ing." Such a spirit cannot have been without marked influence on the character of John Harvard, who came under its spell in the most impressionable years of his life. Nor is it un- 107 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES reasonable to believe that he reflected the tol- erant mood of Andrewes in the few sermons he was spared to preach in the New World. That, at any rate, is a more attractive memory to retain of him than would have remained had he bequeathed a volume of discourses perme- ated with the usual intolerant spirit. There were Sundays, no doubt, when the ser- mon would not arrest the attention of the young Harvard, and on such occasions he would prob- ably find other sermons in the legends on the notable tombs which had already found a place in St. Saviour's Church. The monument to the "industrious Gower," as Lowell so happily christened him, could not fail to arrest the boy's attention, and its inscription of "whosoever praith for the soul of John Gower, he shall so oft, as he so doth, have a M and D daies of par- don" would remind him of an age when a dif- ferent faith was preached beneath that roof. On another tomb, that of the Humble family, John Harvard would read over and over again the then freshly- cut letters which conveyed this homily on the brevity of life: 108 EARLY INFLUENCES " Like to the damask rose you see, Or like the blossom on the tree, Or like the dainty flower of May, Or like the morning of the day, Or like the sun, or like the shade, Or like the gourd which Jonas had ; Even so is man, whose thread is spun, Drawn out and cut, and so is done! The rose withers, the blossom blasteth, The flower fades, the morning hasteth, The sun sets, the shadow flies, The gourd consumes, the man he dies." But of all the tombs in St. Saviour's probably none had greater attractions for John Harvard than that in which Bishop Andrewes was laid. By the time that monument found a place in the church he had most likely decided upon his own vocation in life, and if Tie could not enroll himself in that particular regiment of the Christian army to which the dead prelate belonged, he might well desire to possess something of his spirit. Altogether apart from the sermons which were preached in St. Saviour's Church, it is helpful to remember that if there was one idea which, more than any other, held pos- 109 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES session of and overmastered the majority of the people among whom John Harvard grew up to manhood, it was that conception of the order of the world which is called Calvinism. Luther had kindled the enthusiasm which made men possible martyrs; the Geneva re- former gave them the reasoned thought which transformed the possibility into deed. It is not a difficult matter to frame an apparently crushing indictment of Calvinism, but there is no escape from that other side of the picture which Froude sketched in these impressive words : " When all else has failed when patriotism has covered its face, and human courage has broken down when intellect has yielded, as Gibbon says, 'with a smile or a sigh/ content to philosophise in the closet, and abroad worship with the vulgar when emotion and sentiment and tender imagina- tive piety have become the handmaids of superstition, and have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is any difference be- tween lies and truth the slavish form of belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its 110 EARLY INFLUENCES many forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence, or melt under ener- vating temptation." For a time, as we have seen, men were con- tent to bask in the new light of the Renascence. It was good to be awakened to the beauties of architecture, the charms of art, the enchant- ments of music, the imaginations of poetry. But the reaction was not long in coming. The men of that age had been in contact with stern things, and when the strain was relaxed they needed something more satisfying than pictures and poems. It was in that hour they looked upon religion with fresh vision. Their natures had been deeply stirred, and they were in no mood to brook any longer that travesty of a faith into which the Church had degen- erated. Into this fertile soil the seed of Cal- vinism fell, with what result history records. Even more potent in moulding the char- acter of the youthful John Harvard was the influence of the Bible. Try as we may, we 111 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES cannot fully realise what that sacred volume was to Englishmen of the seventeenth century. When John Tyndale addressed himself to the task of making good his promise that he would cause a ploughboy to know more of the Scrip- tures than many a learned divine, he quickly discovered that not in London nor yet in all England was there any room for a man to translate God's Word. And when his work was completed in his place of exile on the Continent, and sent to England, its principal reception took the form of a huge bonfire under the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. A few years later, however, Henry VIII. com- manded of another version of the Bible, "in God's name let it go abroad among our people." But even yet the battle was not won, for the sinister influence of Queen Mary intervened and wrought its utmost to stamp out the Word of God. During those years when the Bible hung in the balance of royal favour, now dip- ping to the outstretched hands of the people and anon mounting up beyond their reach, the passion for its possession grew ever 112 EARLY INFLUENCES stronger. Listen to some voices of that ac- tual time: "Englishmen are so eager for the gospel as to affirm that they would buy a New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of money for it." Again: "It is wonderful to see with what joy this book of God was received among all the vulgar and common people; and with what greediness God's Word was read. Everybody that could bought the book, or busily read it, or got others to read it to them, and divers elderly people learned to read on purpose. And even little boys flocked among the rest to hear portions of the holy Scripture read." Those who retain a vivid memory of the profound interest which was awakened by the publication of the Revised Version of the New Testament a quarter of a century ago, possess some slight clue to the intense excite- ment which swept over England when the Bible at last became an open book for all. Yet even such will fail to take full account of all the circumstances of that unique event. 8 113 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES To the seeing eye, the pages of this book were blackened with the smoke, and charred with the flames, and stained with the blood of martyrdoms. It came, too, in an age of profound spiritual tension. The old faith had crumbled to dust, and the eyes of earnest men were straining into the darkness to find a new temple for the soul. Nor should it be for- gotten that the advent of the Bible took place at an era when lofty verse and stirring tragedy had created a new hunger in the hearts of men. To all these needs this one book gave a perfect answer. As it was read aloud in the churches, or in the family circle when the day's work was done, what enviable sensations took possession of those who heard for the first time the legend of the world's creation from the void and darkness of the face of the great deep; who followed with the zest of utter novelty the journeyings of the chosen race towards the promised land; who saw with new vision the labours and triumphs of the kings of Israel; whose ears drank in the stately cadence of Hebrew song and psalm; 114 EARLY INFLUENCES whose souls thrilled under the stern denunci- ations of prophets' voices or were enthralled with the untoward beauty of the parables of Christ. Coming as the Bible did to a people practically without books, and yearning for the accents of the voice of God, it is little wonder that the speech of those people be- came compact of its very words and phrases, or that to them this volume became not only a lamp to their feet in the narrow path that led to heaven, but also a beacon to their wan- derings in the world that now is. From his earliest days at St. Saviour's grammar-school John Harvard passed under the influence of this newly-given Bible. That copy of the Geneva version which he carried in his little satchel made the path of the reader easy by its copious notes of explanation. They told how the being planted and raised with Christ meant that "we grow up together with him as we see moss, ivy, mistletoe or such like grow up by a tree, and are nourished with the juice thereof"; and the locusts which were seen in the Revelation to ascend from the 115 bottomless pit were interpreted for the young lad as "false teachers, heretics and worldly subtle prelates, with monks, friars, cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, doctors, bach- elors and masters which forsake Christ to maintain false doctrine." Given a constant perusal and re-perusal of a Bible with such annotations there was only one goal which John Harvard could reach. 116 IV THE HARVARD CIRCLE CHAPTER IV THE HARVARD CIRCLE A if day during the first week or two of the month of July 1625, meal- time in the Harvard home in South- wark saw a little circle of eight persons gathered around the table. At the head, of course, sits the father, now a man of about fifty summers. Robert Harvard can hardly be other than satisfied with his outlook on life. A large measure of prosperity has attended him in busi- ness ; he has many congenial friends ; for some years he has been regarded as one of the most respected and useful lay officials of St. Sav- iour's Church; and for full twenty years his home life has been brightened by the wife he fetched from Shakespeare's native town. She, now in her forty-first year, sits opposite him, and on either side of the table are the five chil- dren of their marriage and the one daughter 119 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES whom his first wife bore him. That, daughter, Mary Harvard, has reached her twenty-fourth year and, we may presume, has long been the helper of her step- mother in household duties. For some thirteen years, Mary has possessed a home companion of her own sex in little Kath- erine Harvard, her only half-sister. Four sons are also seated at this table, of whom the eldest, Robert, is now approaching his nineteenth year. As there are no indica- tions to the contrary, it may be inferred that he is destined to succeed to his father's business, and has perhaps already become of consider- able usefulness in that direction. The brother next to him in age is John Harvard, who is more than half-way through his seventeenth year, and has no doubt even at this stage given many proofs of his scholarly inclinations. On the other hand, Thomas, who will be sixteen next December, has probably expressed his preference for the occupation of a clothworker, and is looking forward to his apprenticeship two years hence. Peter, the baby of the fam- ily, is only in his eleventh year, and so must 120 THE HARVARD CIRCLE hurry back to St. Saviour's grammar-school as soon as dinner is over. In those sunny days of early July, meal- time was, no doubt, a happy hour for the Harvard family. And, when the work and the school of the day were past, it is not improbable that the long mid- summer evenings were happily occupied now by a pleasant row on the waters of the "silver- streaming Thames" close by, or some other time by a ramble amid the verdant meadows which were not far afield. Upon all this quiet happiness, however, a sombre shadow was soon to fall. During that summer London experienced the second of those three disastrous visits of the plague which darken the annals of the seven- teenth century. The first of these visitations, as already noted, took place twenty- two years earlier, and had claimed Robert Harvard's first wife as one of its victims. But now a far heavier toll was to be exacted from this household. Only the sad witness of entry after entry in the burial records of St. Saviour's Church sur- 121 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES vives for the repicturing of this melancholy chapter in John Harvard's life, but some con- ception of the experiences through which his family passed may be derived from the narra- tive which Nehemiah Wallington committed to paper in the midst of these anxious days. That Puritan tradesman's house, it will be remembered, was only separated from the Harvard home by the width of the Thames, and consequently what he saw and heard and felt may well reproduce the sights and sounds and emotions experienced by the Harvard fam- ily. As soon as the plague broke out, thou- sands of Londoners fled, but Wallington and his family, as well as the Harvards, remained in that "doleful city, hearing of bells tolling and ringing out continually." Not a day passed without news of this friend or the other having succumbed to the remorseless scourge; hardly an hour which did not bring with it the pass- ing- by of a coffin. It was a common tale how whole families had been swept away, and how thirty, forty, or even sixty deaths had taken place in one small street. THE HARVARD CIRCLE Deep anxiety, no doubt, reigned in the Harvard household as it did in the home of Nehemiah Wallington, and under each roof it was probably a common reflection that even when the deaths decreased to two or three in a week, some of the victims might be claimed from families which had hitherto escaped the infection. Mrs. Wallington had a serving- maid who appears to have been somewhat careless in the discharge of her duties, and on one occasion when she had done something amiss she found herself ad- dressed by her mistress in these terms : " Why, Ruth, mend it, for how doth thou know but thou mayest die this sickness time, although the bills do grow less; and when there dieth but two or three in a week, you or I may be one of those two for ought we know, and therefore, let us prepare for death." While such exhortations were being given in the kitchen, the master of the house was meditating in his little study. "What," he was thinking, " if the sickness should come into this house; who would I be willing to spare? JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Then would I say, 'the maid.' (Poor Ruth!) Who next? 'My son John.' Who next? 'My daughter Elizabeth/ Who next? 'My- self.' But what if God should strike thy wife, or thy father, or thy brother John? How would I take it then? I did think to take it patiently and to comfort myself in the Lord, considering the sorrows and troubles they were gone out of, and the pleasure and joy that they are gone into. 'For in thy presence is the ful- ness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' Many tears did I shed with these thoughts, and I desired the Lord, if it might stand with his glory and my soul's good, that I might die first and never see that day." At first the anxious Nehemiah must have thought that the order of his sacrifice was to be observed, for a few days later the unfor- tunate Ruth complained that she had a " prick- ing in her neck" and was forthwith sent to bed. The dreaded plague had come at last. With Ruth in bed, there was more work for Mrs. Wallington, and of a kind with which she was THE HARVARD CIRCLE not usually troubled. That same evening, then, while in the kitchen washing up some dishes, her little daughter Elizabeth joined her, and in a merry childish mood asked, "What do you here, my wife?" To her father, when she had been put to bed that night, the lively child said, "Father, I go abroad to-morrow, and buy you a plum pie." But there was to be no going abroad for little Elizabeth, and no plum pie for her father. 'These were the last words I did hear my sweet child speak, for the very pangs of death seized upon her on the Sabbath day morning, and so she continued in great agonies (which was very grievous unto us the beholders) till Tues- day morning, and then my sweet child died." In the Harvard home on the opposite shore of the Thames death was not content with one victim. The first to sicken was Mary, the eldest of the family, who was buried on July 22nd, 1625, and hardly could Mrs. Harvard realise that she had lost her own special com- panion when, only four days later, her husband was bereft of his helpful son Robert. How 125 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES keenly the uncertainty of life was realised in these anxious times is shown by the fact that two days after his son's death Robert Harvard made his will. Ere, however, it could be put into its final form, little Katherine was taken from the family circle. And even yet the death-roll was not complete. After a three weeks' interval, the baby of the family, Peter, was laid in his grave ; and when five days more had elapsed the father himself was carried into St. Saviour's Church for burial. In less than five weeks the plague had exacted as many victims from this one happy home. Only Katherine Harvard and her two sons, John and Thomas, remained. In the will he executed less than four weeks before his death, Robert Harvard had be- queathed a sum of two hundred pounds to each of his three remaining sons, with a pro- viso that if either of them died his portion was to be divided equally among the sur- vivors. As Peter was already dead, John and Thomas were thus entitled to a sum of three hundred pounds each on reaching 126 THE HARVARD CIRCLE their twenty- first birthday. In the interval Mrs. Harvard was to have the use of those sums for the "education and bringing up" of the two lads ; but that the money might event- ually be forthcoming when they came of age the will stipulated that the mother, within three months of the death of her husband, or at the latest before she married again, was to become bound in a sum of one thousand pounds for that purpose. Having provided for several legacies to friends, including twenty shillings each to his cousin Thomas Harvard and to his "good neighbour and friend,'* Mr. Richard Yearwood, for "rings for remembrance," Robert Harvard willed all the residue of his possessions to his "well- beloved wife." No provision of any kind seems to have been made for carrying on the business in which he had been so prosperous. His son Robert, who might have done that, was dead, and neither of his other sons was old enough, or had shown any inclination for the occupation of a butcher. Before five months had elapsed, the eventu- 127 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES ality which Robert Harvard had foreseen came to pass. Katherine Harvard married again. In the marriage register of St. Saviour's, under the date of January 19th, 1626, appear the names of John Elletson and Katherine Har- vard. That union, however, was not to be of long continuance. As she had been less than five months a widow, so only five months were to go by ere Katherine Elletson became a widow once more. Still, her union with John Elletson had achieved an important end in the material increase of her estate, thus con- siderably augmenting the fortune she was able to bequeath eventually to her two sons, John and Thomas Harvard. The will of Mr. Ellet- son, who was a citizen and cooper of London, reveals him to have been a man of consider- able means. He possessed house property in various districts of London, and land and houses in several of the southern counties of England. He also held a half share in the "good Bark called the Jane of Gosport"; and the number of debts, several for large sums, which he "forgives" in his will, show 128 THE HARVARD CIRCLE him to have been not only possessed of an ample banking account, but also depict him as a generous friend and helper of those not so fortunately situated. That generosity was also freely manifested in his bequests to his five-months' wife. They included an income of twelve pounds a year secured by property in the county of South- ampton; two- thirds of the rent of some dwell- ing-houses in East Smithfield; the lease and all the rents and profits of some premises in All Saints Barking, held from the Master of St. Katherine's hospital; and all the re- mainder of Mr. Elletson's possessions not otherwise bequeathed. For some ten months after her husband's death, Katherine Elletson continued to reside on the north, or Middlesex, side of the Thames, to which she had removed on her marriage, a fact which explains why John Harvard de- scribed himself as of Middlesex rather than of Surrey when he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From that circumstance it may also be concluded that John and Thomas ac- 9 129 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES companied their mother when she became Mrs. Elletson; probably, indeed, she made it a condition of the marriage that she was not to be separated from her two surviving children. Considerable changes were in store for Mrs. Elletson and her two sons in the year 1627. Doubtless after much anxious thought and debate with their mother, John and Thomas Harvard had made final choice of their life occupation, the former deciding in favour of the ministry and the latter for the business of clothworker. About this time the Rev. Nicho- las Morton was elected one of the chaplains of St. Saviour's Church, with which the mother and her two sons had no doubt maintained a close connection, and it is highly probable that his advice was sought as to a suitable college for John. Mr. Morton was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and had been a fellow there on the Dixie foundation. That he became a close personal friend of the family is obvious from the references to him in the wills of the mother and Thomas Harvard, and 130 THE HARVARD CIRCLE it is not unlikely that it was on his recommen- dation John Harvard made choice of Emman- uel College. Thither, at any rate, he went in the April of this year. Ere the following month closed, Mrs. Ellet- son had become a wife for the third time, her husband being Robert Harvard's "good neigh- bour and friend," Richard Year wood. This wedding took her back once more to South- wark, where Mr. Year wood was in business as a grocer in St. Saviour's parish. No doubt Thomas Harvard accompanied his mother as before, but after less than a month in his new home he bound himself apprentice for eight years to a clothworker of the name of William Cox. Thus within three months the mother and her two sons had each marked out a new path in life, and the daily companionship which had hitherto known no break came to an end. Apart, however, from the many friends she had made in Southwark as the wife of Robert Harvard, Katherine Yearwood had for some six years enjoyed a renewal of companionship 131 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES with her sister Rose. One of the intimate ac- quaintances of Robert Harvard was a gold- smith, William Ward by name. He seems to have become a widower about 1620, for in October of the following year he married Rose Rogers, the youngest but one of the sisters of John Harvard's mother. In less than three years she lost her husband, but she married another goldsmith, Ralph Reason by name, and so continued to reside in London within easy distance of her sister Katherine's home. By this date, also, Mrs. Yearwood numbered the wife of the Rev. Nicholas Morton among her special friends, and of the Harvard family she appears to have always made a special confidant of her husband's cousin, Thomas. As was the case with her second husband, Richard Yearwood was a widower when he married Katherine Elletson, and although his family included a grown-up son that young man was hardly likely to furnish any compensation for the absence of her own two sons. On his father's testimony, he was of a "wasteful" tem- perament and gave little inclination of reforming 132 THE HARVARD CIRCLE and becoming a "frugal man." Owing to the extravagances of this son, Richard Yearwood's will did not add materially to the estate of his wife when he died in the fall of 1632. It is true she was allowed to continue the use of her husband's house in St. Saviour's parish at a re- duced rent of five pounds a year, but otherwise the total amount of her legacy seems to have been "all such household stuff and so much value in plate as she brought with her when I married her." Hence the assertion, so often made, that each of the three husbands of Kath- erine Rogers bequeathed her a large amount of property needs to be qualified so far as the third of those husbands, Richard Yearwood, is concerned. Nevertheless, her means were more than ample for her own needs, and also for the college expenses of her eldest son, John, whose career at Cambridge now calls for at- tention. 133 V CAMBRIDGE CHAPTER V CAMBRIDGE DANGEROUS as it generally is to in- dulge in sweeping generalisations, there can be little question that the broad distinction which still characterises the theological position of the universities of Ox- ford and Cambridge, held good in the main when John Harvard entered his name as a student of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on April 17th, 1627. For many generations' Ox- ford had been the home of High Churchism, and Cambridge the champion of the opposite theory of ecclesiastical doctrine. Translated into the nomenclature of the early seventeenth century, this means that while Laud and the king could count upon the loyal support of Oxford, the Puritans and the Parliamentary party were equally sure of the adhesion of Cambridge. 137 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Still, the cause of Puritanism, even at Cam- bridge, was not always triumphantly in the ascendant. There were times when the ex- cesses of its zealous champions cooled the ardour of its less enthusiastic disciples and threatened a reaction in Laud's favour. At the Restoration, indeed, that reaction became an accomplished fact for a time. During the closing years of Elizabeth's reign, the pulpit of St. Mary's Church, which was the common platform from which the prevailing opinions of Cambridge University were enunciated to the world, often resounded with ultra-Puritan doctrines. Preacher after preacher took up his parable against abuses in the Church of England: one urged, only too effectually, the destruction of such painted windows as displayed the figures of saints or were inscribed with injunctions for prayers for the dead ; another declared that bishops, arch- bishops, and the like were the inventions of the devil; a third utterly condemned the practice of kneeling at the communion, and turning the face to the east ; while a fourth, after protesting 138 CAMBRIDGE against quotations in sermons from profane authors, gave it as his opinion that nine- tenths of the ministers of the Church of England were but " dumb dogs," and that a minister who was not able to preach was as useless for edification as an eight-year-old boy. To such a pitch, in- deed, did the Puritan fuhninations from the pulpit of St. Mary's attain, that in 1603 the Senate passed a law debarring any future of- fender from proceeding to his degree. It was felt by the more moderate members of the uni- versity that theological contentions were an impediment to "all useful and learned stud- ies." One such complained "that these men had by their counsels so disturbed all things, that the time which was wont heretofore to be employed in good arts and sciences was now spent and consumed in trivial j anglings." During the decade which preceded the ad- vent of John Harvard at Emmanuel College, James I. had done his best to make Cambridge as obedient to his will as the sister university. While staying at Newmarket in the early days of December 1616, he appears to have sent for 139 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the heads of the leading colleges expressly to read them a lecture on their duties to his own august person. So enamoured was the king of the perfect wisdom of the directions he was pleased to utter on that occasion, that on his return to London a few days later he com- manded the Bishop of Winchester to repeat his homilies in writing. That prelate seems to have been amazed at the royal condescension, for he tells the Vice- Chancellor of Cambridge that it is without precedent that a king should " with his own mouth, then with his own hand'* give such directions. It is conceivable that the Vice- Chancellor did not appreciate the honour. Disagreeable orders are not palliated by being written as well as spoken. However desirous, for worldly reasons, the masters of the colleges may have been to stand well in the king's favour, they. were no doubt practically unanimous in thinking that favour was dearly purchased by the terms laid down. These included an injunction to the effect that no student should be allowed to take any de- gree unless he subscribed to the three Articles 140 CAMBRIDGE of Religion. Three years before the king had made that stipulation apply only to gradua- tions in divinity and the like ; now it was to be extended to every degree. In view of the fact that John Harvard had to subscribe to the three Articles of Religion when he took his B. A. degree, and again when he commenced M. A., the actual terms of those articles are worthy of quotation: 1. "That the King's Majesty, under God, is the only supreme governor of this realm, and of all other his Highness's dominions and coun- tries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal; and that no for- eign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, eccle- siastical or spiritual, within his Majesty's said realms, dominions, and countries. 2. "That the Book of Common Prayer, and of ordering of bishops, priests, and deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God, and that it may lawfully so be used. 3. "That we allow the Books of Articles of 141 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Religion agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both provinces, and the whole Clergy in the Convocation holden in London in the year of our Lord 1562; and acknowl- edge all and every therein contained, being in number nine- and- thirty, besides the ratifica- tion, to be agreeable to the Word of God. "We whose names are here underwritten do willingly and ex animo subscribe to the three Articles above-mentioned and to all things in them contained." How Puritans, especially of the austere type, could reconcile their conscience to adhibiting their signature to such a sweeping declaration, made "willingly" be it noted, might prove an attractive question in casuistry. There the articles were, however ; without accepting them as they stood no degree could be obtained; and the signature of John Harvard to them is but one example out of many incongruous sub- scriptions which are still to be seen on the pages of the registry of Cambridge University. James, however, did not stop here. From the date of his royal mandate, no ministers 142 CAMBRIDGE were to be allowed to preach in the town save such as were " every way conformable both by subscription and every other way " ; all the students were to be compelled to attend the ad clerum discourses in St. Mary's Church, and indeed restrained from attending any other place of worship when there was a sermon at St. Mary's ; divinity students were to be di- rected to such books as were "most agreeable in doctrine and discipline to the Church of England"; and, finally, no teacher either in the pulpit or the schools was to be permitted to "maintain dogmatically any point of doc- trine that is not allowed by the Church of England." One would think that such restric- tions and detailed directions might have been relied upon to episcopalianise every student in Cambridge, but even yet we have not ex- hausted the efforts made by the king to crush Puritanism in that university. In a further order, each college master was commanded to celebrate Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and Whitsunday in strict agreement with the ser- vices of the Prayer Book, and no member of 143 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the college or any student was to be allowed to absent himself from those services unless upon some "just and necessary occasion.'* Moreover, the communion was to be received kneeling, and proper surplices and hoods were to be worn at all the services. These orders, the king was considerate enough to explain, were designed to encourage such colleges as were already walking in the right path, and also to serve as "an injunction for speedy ref- ormation in such as are culpable." That the last phrase was inserted for the special benefit of John Harvard's own college of Emmanuel will soon become obvious. Under pressure from the king, whose labours were seconded later by Laud, some of the col- leges at Cambridge became tainted with the spirit of High Churchism, but it is a notable fact that neither the precepts of that party nor the stern doctrines of the Puritans had the result which might naturally have been expected. From the moral standpoint, the condition of the university as a whole in the early seventeenth century left much to be de- 144 CAMBRIDGE sired. Creed seems to have had little practi- cal influence on character. No doubt too much importance may be attached to the negative evidence furnished by such laws as prohibited "all manner of unprofitable and idle games," including bull-baiting, bear- baiting, and the like; or to injunctions against keeping greyhounds for coursing and horses for hunting; but when an order is based spe- cifically upon a given kind of offence because it was the type of many more, its witness to the manners of the times cannot be ignored. On that evidence it is obvious that riotous con- duct among the students was of common oc- currence. The fact that a play or some other function was in progress in the hall of one college appears to have been the signal for the gathering together of the unruly spirits of all the other colleges, who amused them- selves for a couple of hours on end by "great outcries and shouting," by throwing stones through the windows of the hall where the play was being given, and finally by the uprooting of a "great post of timber" and 10 145 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES employing it as a battering-ram against one of the gates of the building. Nor were moral offences lacking. The combined influences of 'Laudism and Puri- tanism could not purge the university from drunkenness and immorality. The former evil was so pronounced at one period that it was made the subject of a special edict, which, after lamenting the " waste of expense, besides the hurt of body and mind, and evil example from those that profess learning and sobriety," set forth a series of drastic punishments for future offenders. Even innkeepers who har- boured students on their premises "after the bell hath done ringing at the usual hour of the night" were to be fined a considerable sum. Two years after John Harvard had become a student at Cambridge, Charles I. issued an order specially directed against the growing practice of undergraduates who, "not regard- ing their own birth, degree, and quality, have made divers contracts of marriage with women of mean estate and of no good fame in the town." Innkeepers' daughters appear to have 146 CAMBRIDGE been most successful in throwing their coils around the young scions of noble or wealthy families, and consequently the order was di- rected particularly against that class of the community. On the least suspicion that any clandestine match was in progress, or that any immoral intrigue was being indulged, the woman in question was to be banished from the town, or, on failure to obey that order, to be imprisoned. In the same mandate from the king, all the regulations against students frequenting inns to drink, play, or smoke, especially at night, were sternly reaffirmed. That all these enactments offer by inference no unfaithful picture of Cambridge as John Harvard knew it, is confirmed by independent testimony. Only a few years prior to that time, a young student, Simon D'Ewes by name, was entering in his carefully kept diary a record of his reflections at the close of his university career. He was not sorry to leave Cambridge, for, he wrote, "the main thing which makes me even weary of the college was, that swearing, drinking, rioting, and 147 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES hatred of all piety and virtue under false and adulterate nicknames, did abound there and generally in all the university. Nay, the very sin of lust began to be known and practised by very boys; so as I was fain to live almost a recluse's life, conversing chiefly in our own college with some of the honester fellows thereof. But yet no Anabaptistical or Pela- gian heresies against God's grace and provi- dence were then stirring, but the truth was in all sermons and divinity acts asserted and maintained. None then dared to commit idolatry by bowing to, or towards, or adoring the altar, the communion table, or the bread and wine in the sacrament of the Lord's Sup- per. Only the power of godliness in respect of the practice of it, was in a most atheisti- cal and unchristian manner contemned and scoffed at." Seeing that each college was a self-contained community, controlling its own affairs to a large extent independently of the Senate, it will be interesting to gain some idea of the conditions which prevailed in Emmanuel Col- 148 CAMBRIDGE lege, where John Harvard spent the seven years of his student life. Considering the special purpose of its foundation, it is not unreasonable to expect that its internal econ- omy and history presented some points of contrast as compared with the other colleges. Only forty- three years had passed away since Sir Walter Mildmay had signed the foundation deed of Emmanuel. Over the gateway at the entrance of the building ran the legend, Sacrce Theologies Studiosis Gual- terus MUdmaiiUj and if that were not suffi- cient to indicate the primary purpose of the founder, he made that object perfectly clear in the statute which said, "I wish all to un- derstand, whether Fellows, scholars, or even pensioners, who are to be admitted into the College, that the one object which I set before me in erecting this College was to render as many as possible fit for the administration of the Divine Word and Sacraments; and that from this seed-ground the English Church might have those that she can summon to instruct the people and undertake the office 149 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES of pastors, which is a thing necessary above all others." Hardly could language define more clearly that the mission of Emmanuel College was to train ministers of a conform- ing type, and such an explicit statement might, one would think, have deterred Queen Eliza- beth from ejaculating to the founder, " I hear, Sir Walter, you have been erecting a Puritan foundation." What the Queen meant by Puritan differed from the interpretation given to that term by Sir Walter Mildmay, and hence the fence of his ready reply: "No, Madam, far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof." Puritan foundation, however, Emmanuel was, and that, without doubt, with the ex- press connivance of its founder. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain his persistence in combating the objections of Laurence Chaderton to becoming the first master of the college: "If you won't be master, I won't 150 CAMBRIDGE be founder." For that Chaderton was a pro- nounced Puritan was well known, and by no one more fully than Sir Walter Mildmay, who had been intimate with him for many years. He had, indeed, fought his way to that faith through serious obstacles. His father was a strict Roman Catholic, and as a lad the future master of Emmanuel was, in Fuller's phrase, "much muzzled up in Popish superstitions." In his student days, however, he came under Puritan influences, and finally decided to change his creed. The elder Chaderton was irate at the news. "Son Laurence," he curtly wrote, "if you will renounce the new sect which you have joined, you may expect all the happiness which the care of an indulgent father can secure you; otherwise, I enclose a shilling to buy a wallet. Go and beg." Chaderton no doubt devoted that shilling to some other end. At any rate, he had no need to "go and beg." He soon became a fellow; built up a reputation as a scholar; and then speedily acquired even greater fame as a preacher. Many stories are related of 151 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his influence in the pulpit, but none is more to his credit than that which tells how, when he contemplated resigning his lectureship at St. Clement's Church, Cambridge, he received an address from forty clergymen imploring him to postpone his resignation, and assert- ing that they all owed their conversion to his preaching. Fuller also tells how the an- nouncement of the conclusion of a sermon by Chaderton two hours in length was greeted by his listeners with shouts of "for God's sake, sir, go on, go on!" Under such a master, who, however, never renounced his connection with the Church of England, or associated himself with the ultra- Puritan attacks on prelacy, Emmanuel Col- lege speedily acquired a favourable reputation for the purity of its doctrinal tuition. And it remained faithful to its ideal in spite of tempta- tions and enemies. The temptations were crys- tallised on the occasion of the visit of James I. to Cambridge in 1615; the attacks of its enemies were of many dates. Oxford had been favoured with two visits before the king 152 CAMBRIDGE announced his intention of conferring a like honour on Cambridge, and hence the report that James had at length decided to visit the university inspired superhuman efforts to make the occasion an emphatic success. One of the instructions issued by the Senate recommended a new coat of paint for every college ; the roads were to be freshly strewn with gravel; and minute directions were formulated as to how the students were to dress and behave them- selves on this momentous occasion. From all this fuss, however, Emmanuel studiously held itself aloof. It would not even expend a pound of paint for the royal visit. Hence the point of this contemporary satire: " But the pure house of Emmanuel Would not be like proud Jesabel, Nor show herself before the King An hypocrite or painted thing ; But that the ways might all prove fair Conceived a tedious mile of prayer." Many proofs are available of the persistence of Puritan tendencies at Emmanuel College. One note- taker of the seventeenth century re- 153 cords that while all the other colleges con- formed to the ordinances of the Church of England, in Emmanuel " they do follow a pri- vate course of public prayer, after their own fashion, both Sundays, holy- days, and week- days." Further, in that college the rule as to kneeling at the communion was wholly ig- nored, and those who took part in that sacra- ment were charged with "sitting upon forms about the communion table, and do pull the loaf one from the other, after the minister hath begun." Notwithstanding the absence of fresh paint, James went over the buildings of Emmanuel on the occasion of his visit, and some good friend of the college called the at- tention of the king to the fact that the chapel was "far out of the eastward position." That busy-body, however, was rewarded with a snub for his pains: "God," said the king to Chaderton, "will not turn away his face from the prayers of any holy and pious man, to what- ever region of heaven he directs his eyes. So, doctor, I beg you to pray for me." It should be remembered that these particulars relate to 154 CAMBRIDGE the condition of the college twelve years before John Harvard became a student there, but that they apply also to his time is proved by a report which was made to Laud by one of his agents in 1636. In the category of Emmanuel's sins it is recorded that the chapel was "not conse- crate"; that "riming Psalms" were sung in- stead of hymns ; that the order of the calendar in the reading of the Bible was not followed, etc., etc. In fact, all through this period, and onwards until the Restoration, the col- lege maintained the reputation with which it was credited in the old song of "The Mad Puritan": " Am I mad, most noble Festus, While zeal and godly knowledge Has made me hope To deal with the Pope As well as the best in the college ? " Boldly I preach, hate a cross, hate a surplice, Mitres, copes, and rotchets ; Come, hear me pray, nine times a day, And fill your heads with crotchets. " In the house of pure Emanuel I had my education, 155 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES While my friends surmise I dazzled my eyes With the light of Revelation." Although Chaderton resigned his master- ship of Emmanuel five years before John Harvard entered his name on its books, it is impossible to believe that the young student did not come under his influence during the seven years of his residence. One of the win- dows in the north wall of the college chapel is devoted to perpetuating the memory of Lau- rence Chaderton and John Harvard, who divide the lights between them, and that fact seems an appropriate suggestion of a life- time intimacy between the two men. True, the late master was now an old man ; in the quaint phrase of Fuller, in these years he was " never seen without snow on the top"; but grey hairs did not indicate waning powers, for even when he died, in 1640, he was still in the possession of all his faculties. One who visited him a few years before his death saw him reading a Greek Testament of very small type without glasses, and specially noted that he did not repeat him- 156 CAMBRIDGE self in conversation. Now, as Chaderton, on his resignation, took up his abode in a house near the college, and continued to take an ac- tive part in its affairs up to the time of his death, it is certain John Harvard must have become acquainted with him. Probably it will never be known why John Harvard did not begin his university career until he was in his twentieth year. Although it is impossible to reach any definite conclusion on this matter, the weight of evidence is in favour of the statement that sixteen was the average age at which students entered the uni- versity in the early seventeenth century. That Harvard's age exceeded this average by the large margin of four years may have been due to his health ; perhaps even in his youth he may have been subject to that delicacy which is so often the precursor of the fell disease to which he eventually succumbed. In that event, he would hardly be likely to make the journey from London to Cambridge on horseback, as seems to have been the usual custom, but in- stead probably availed himself of the services 157 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES of Thomas Hobson, the "immortal carrier" of Milton's well-known verses. For full sixty years Hobson had journeyed regularly every week between Cambridge and the Bull Inn of Bishopsgate Street, London, and hence he was as famous a character in the capital as in the university town. He, it will be remembered, gave origin to the proverb about " Hobson's choice." Besides being a carrier, he kept some forty horses for hiring purposes, and it was the rule of his stable that each customer should take the horse which stood nearest the stable door: no one was allowed to pick and choose ; it was the first horse or none, and thus circumstances which presented no alternative became "Hobson's choice." If John Harvard made his journey to Cam- bridge under Hobson's auspices, he would probably be some twelve hours on the road, and his expenditure would amount to about ten shillings. This was much the safest method of travelling in those days. Students who jour- neyed on horseback were specially watched for by highwaymen, for it was the custom of 158 CAMBRIDGE many of them to carry on their persons a sum of money averaging some fifty pounds, with which to pay their fees and expenses for the year. In the company of old Hobson, how- ever, John Harvard would have no fear as to the safety of his person or his purse. So long as that worthy carrier lived, the young student no doubt generally elected to travel with him when he went home for the Long Vacation, and Hobson's waggon doubtless transported many letters and parcels to and fro between Harvard and his mother. Out of the twenty colleges which consti- tute the university of Cambridge to-day, no fewer than sixteen were already in existence in 1627, and although much has been accom- plished in improving their architectural ap- pearance during the intervening centuries, even at that far-off period their outward as- pect was sufficiently imposing. In the closing years of the previous century, indeed, the col- leges of Cambridge had greatly impressed the Frenchman, Peter Baro, who was able to com- pare them with similar structures on the Con- 159 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES tinent. In the course of a sermon preached before the university he spoke of "the found- ers of your colleges, who have erected unto you these so sumptuous and stately buildings, and enriched them with such ample revenues, that there are scarce any in all Europe to be com- pared with yours." That this was not another example of that polite flattery in which for- eigners are expected to indulge, is evident from the testimony of a play descriptive of Cam- bridge life in the early part of the seventeenth century. One of the characters declares that those colleges ought to have other occupants than the "ragged clerks" or "weavers' and butchers' sons" who were mostly in evidence: " Knights, Lords, and lawyers, should be lodg'd and dwell Within these over stately heaps of stone, Which doting sires in old age did erect." Duly impressed as he no doubt was by these "over stately heaps of stone," the par- ticular "butcher's son" with whom these pages are concerned probably found as much to interest him in the three thousand students among whom the next seven years of his life 160 CAMBRIDGE were to be spent. If he could have glanced forward some fifty years in the history of Eng- land, his interest in the youths who thronged the streets of Cambridge two hundred and eighty years ago would have been deepened. In that far- distant year, as Mr. J. B. Mullinger has pointed out, "we may mark not a few, in the humble garb of a studious undergraduate- ship, destined to leave to their countrymen a bright example, and to win a deathless fame. We see Milton, with his maiden face, hardly on the best terms with the authorities of Christ's, but already gaining credit by his exercises and epigrams; Fuller, the future Church historian, the quaint humorist, to whom is reserved the task of chronicling with filial affection the history of his own Alma Mater; Henry More, the Platonist, a 'tall thin youth, of clear olive complexion and a wrapt expression'; Seth Ward, my future lord bishop, his flaxen hair and boyish stature win- ning, sadly to his discomfiture, the attention of grave seniors whenever he ventures beyond the walls of Sidney; Cleveland, the satirist, 11 161 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES and Crawshaw, the sweet lyric poet, both al- ready giving promise of their future powers; Pearson, the interpreter of the faith to many a succeeding generation; Cudworth, destined to a foremost place in philosophic thought; Mede, now a senior fellow at Christ's, deep in astrology and Apocalyptic studies; Jeremy Taylor, just elected to his fellowship at Caius; all these might probably have been met on the same day in the streets of Cambridge." Had Milton been a member of Harvard's college, it would have been natural to postu- late an acquaintance between the two men. But he was not. As, however, Harvard and the poet were contemporaries for nearly five years, it is not unreasonable to imagine that they were at least known to each other by sight. Indeed, we may go further than that. Even while a student, Milton gave unmis- takable proofs of his Puritan tendencies, and the fact that Emmanuel College was the rec- ognised home of Puritanism may well have led him to take a greater interest in its students than those of any other college. Hence it is 162 CAMBRIDGE not unlikely that he was often a guest at Emmanuel on special occasions. When, too, any unusual function was held at Milton's own college, it was customary for students from other houses to attend, and in that way Har- vard may have heard Milton deliver his famous "Vacation Exercise" in 1628. Apart, how- ever, from all these considerations, Milton's fame as a student, and his striking personal appearance, which earned for him the nick- name of "the Lady," all point to his being a conspicuous figure in those days, and Harvard, we may be sure, would often gaze upon the face even if he never made the personal ac- quaintance of the poet of Puritanism. Emmanuel College was such a law unto itself in most matters that it is hazardous to conclude that such manners and customs as obtained in other colleges were also observed within its walls. That being the case, per- haps John Harvard was not called upon to go through the ordeal of "salting," which seems to have been common in Cambridge in those days. This was a mock ceremony 163 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES of initiation through which most freshmen had to pass, and was conducted in the com- mon hall by the senior members of the college. Each new-comer was called upon to make a brief speech, and his subsequent treatment depended upon the amount of humour he was able to impart to his remarks. If he were successful in moving his audience to laughter, he was rewarded with copious libations of sack or beer; if he failed, he was required to swallow a formidable draught of salt and water. The next item on the programme consisted of the operation of "tucking," that is, the making of such an incision in the lip or chin as would cause the blood to flow. And finally each freshman had to take an oath, to which he was sworn by kissing an old shoe. Truly, "There are our young barbarians, all at play!" For several years before leaving London, John Harvard had probably been able to call one room in his home his own, but no such luxury was in store for him at Emmanuel College. While at this period most of the 164 CAMBRIDGE colleges were overcrowded, Emmanuel was specially so. It was the youngest save one of all the foundations, and its accommodation was quite inadequate to the growing demands made upon it. Instead, then, of having a room to himself, Harvard would certainly share the apartment with one fellow student, and it may be with two or even three. For that divided accommodation he would have to pay any sum per annum between two shillings and ten shillings, according to the position of his room. Whilst he was still at college, however, the rents were raised to ten shillings for the cheapest, and twenty- six shil- lings for the dearest respectively. Another matter which caused the young student anxious thought at the outset of his career was the matter of dress. All through this period the university authorities and the students were constantly at variance on the subject of clothing. Even James I. bent his royal mind to such small details, for one of his directions inculcated the duty of wearing " scholastical habit"; and a statute of the 165 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES university imposed a fine upon any student possessing a degree who did not wear "a gown reaching down to his ankles and a hood befitting his degree, or at least having a sacer- dotal distinction." In spite of these, and nu- merous kindred regulations, the students of Harvard's time continued to be a law unto themselves in the matter of dress. That agent of Laud who penned the report already quoted, gave this picture of the sartorial sins of the Cambridge students: "Their other garments are light and gay, some with boots and spurs, others with stockings of diverse colours re- versed one upon another, and round rusty caps they wear (if they wear any at all) that they may be the sooner despised, though the fashion here of old time was altogether Pileus quadratus, as appears by retaining that cus- tom and order still in King's College, in Trinity and at Caius, whose governors here- tofore were more observant of old orders than it seems others were. But in all places among the graduates, and priests also, as well as the younger students, we have fair roses upon the 166 CAMBRIDGE shoe, long frizzled hair upon the head, broad- spread bands upon the shoulders, and long, large merchants' ruffs about the neck, with fair feminine cuffs at the wrist." Perhaps some of the gaily- bedecked youths who helped to suggest this picture may have hailed from the " house of pure Emmanuel," for not all its students were of the stern Puritan cast; yet, somehow, the imagination refuses to de- pict John Harvard as garbed .otherwise than in the long gown and square cap affected by those students who were amenable to the rules of the university. In time, some of the Puri- tans grew to despise the gown as much as the surplice. A satirist of the century represents a Puritan as preaching in these terms: "We read that honest Paul left his cloak at Troas: Why, Sirs, you see plainly from this text, that Paul had not a gown but a cloak, for says the text, he left his cloak, it does not say that he left his gown, never a gown had that precious man to leave, beloved, and therefore you may be sure he was no prelate." Inasmuch, how- ever, as Laud's spy had nothing to say about 167 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the dress of Emmanuel students, we may be certain that in this matter at least they con- formed to the regulations of the university. Than in the seventeenth century, probably there never had been a time when "high thinking and low living" were so rigidly the rule at Cambridge. Practically, the students were restricted to two meals a day: dinner and supper. The first was served at eleven o'clock in Emmanuel College, and the second at six in the evening. Considering that the college day lasted from five o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, seventeen hours in all, two meals a day cannot be said to have erred on the side of repletion, much less luxury. In the previous century, dinner, which was served an hour earlier, consisted of a "penny piece of beef among four, having a few porage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal and nothing else." For supper, the Spartan students of those times "had not much better than their din- ner." The die try had improved somewhat by John Harvard's days, but even then the daily 168 CAMBRIDGE menu had few variations. The changes were rung incessantly on roast or boiled meat, with an occasional pudding. Of vegetables no mention is made. The hungry student could, however, resort to the buttery between eight to eight- thirty in the morning, or between seven and eight o'clock in the evening, and there regale himself with a "halfpenny loaf and butter or cheese," and a "farthing- worth of samm-beer." No wonder we find students imploring their mothers to send them "a cake and a cheese" or "a pound or two of almonds and raisons." At St. Saviour's grammar-school, John Harvard had been accustomed, as we have seen, to begin his day's lessons at six o'clock in the morning during the summer months and an hour later in the winter, but at Cam- bridge he was roused at five o'clock every morning by the ringing of the bell which called all the students to chapel for morning prayers. On some occasions those early de- votions were prolonged by a short address from one of the fellows of the college. After 169 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES a flying visit to the buttery for a morning draught, the serious work of the day began, the morning hours being divided between attendance on the college lectures, the lec- tures of the university professors, and the disputations of such students as were pre- paring for their degrees. Dinner over, there were declamations and more disputations to hear; after supper came evening chapel, and at eight o'clock each student was required to attend prayers with his own particular tutor. At ten o'clock the college bell was rung and the gates were shut for the night. In this programme of incessant piety and tuition, room could only be found for a couple of hours in which the student was free to indulge his own inclinations, and even those two precious hours were liable to be encroached upon by some "public exercise of learning or religion." So far as official approval went, the only recreations in which the students could in- dulge were quoits, football, archery, bowling, shovel-board, and chess. It has been seen that such sports as coursing, hunting, and 170 CAMBRIDGE bull- and bear-baiting were specially for- bidden, and a similar prohibition was in force against "common plays, public shows, inter- ludes, comedies and tragedies in the English tongue, and games at loggetts and ninepins." Plays in Latin, however, did not come within the forbidden degree, and on special occasions such amusement was largely resorted to. For the rest, the student to whom the recognised recreations did not appeal, often followed his own bent in defiance of the authorities, and was duly punished when found out; while others sought amusement in music or some equally innocent occupation for leisure hours. Several of John Harvard's fellow students, such as Worthington and Sancroft, were skil- ful players and excellent singers, and we may hope that he was sometimes invited to their rooms for a musical evening. Those students who aspired to the degree of Master of Arts were required to spend seven years at the university, that period being divided into the Quadriennium, or four years of undergraduateship, and the Trien- 171 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES nium, or three years of bachelorship. The Quadriennium consisted of eleven full terms, and the Triennium of nine more, the terms of each year being those of Michaelmas, Lent, and Easter. During the first period the course of study included rhetoric, logic, phil- osophy, Greek, and geometry; the second period embraced public lectures in philosophy, astronomy, perspective, and Greek. When the student entered upon the last year of his Quadriennium he was expected to take part in the public debates in school and chapel. Those debates, in which subtle moral or meta- physical questions were keenly discussed, fur- nished an important element in the intellectual training of the seventeenth century, and were no doubt responsible for the interminable ar- guments which characterise the theological literature of the period. With the exception of theology, Mr. J. B. Mullinger remarks, "logic was undoubtedly the study which at this period engrossed the largest amount of attention, forming in conjunction with rhetoric the chief element of the ordinary academic 172 RETECTION, OR DISCOVERIE OF A FALSE DE- TECTION: Containing a true defence of two bookes, intituled, Synopfif P*ptfmi,*nd Tetr.tfyloH Pt- p//2/fOT,togcihcr with the author of tlicm,ai;ainft Jicatians 0/j*f/;ori,corruptions of Scrip- ture, obicftcd againft the laid bookes inaccrrainc Libcll lately published, jft Wherein the vniuft accufotions of the Libeller, his fophiflicatt cauils, and v r.ch irritable ftann~ tiers are dif played. IOB.JI.J5. Though mine aducriaric (hould write a booke againft irc,would not 1 take it vpon my ihouldci^and bindc u a a crowncvntomc? . Anytime cent.Petiliaa lib. j *.7(fl ri, L'n ti ti. ARCHBISHOP SAXCROFT, A FELLOW STUDENT OF JOHN HARVARD. Po^e 192. CAMBRIDGE thou lovest; she shall shave her head, and pair her nails: or goatishness, sipharnea. We saw it in Saphira: the goat: as also seir, is hair, and a goat." According to a narrative which is set forth in great detail by the credulous Cotton Mather in his "Magnalia," Sadler foretold the great fire of London three years before it happened, and als6 prophesied many other wonderful events which are now somewhat overdue. Apart from these vagaries, which not un- naturally earned for him the reputation of being a bit of a lunatic, it should be placed to Sadler's credit that it was through his in- fluence the Jews first obtained permission to build a synagogue in London. He was also sane enough to reach the conclusion that, however painful it might be to send Charles to the scaffold, "his life could not consist with the people's peace and safety, which I may acknowledge the supreme and highest law humane." What exactly may have been the special affinity between Harvard and Sadler there is 193 are no means of deciding with certainty, but that a close friendship existed between the two is obvious from the fact that Sadler's sister was to figure largely in Harvard's life. Mr. Sadler's father, the Rev. John Sadler, was vicar of Ringmer, a pleasant Sussex vil- lage in the vicinity of Lewes, and thither, without doubt, John Harvard was invited by his fellow student to spend at least part of his Long Vacation. In the vicarage there he made the acquaintance of his friend's sister, Ann Sadler, who was to accompany him to New England as his wife. Amid the influences which have been indi- cated in the foregoing pages, and in daily intercourse with some of the most notable students of the university, Harvard's seven years at Cambridge wore away. In July 1635 he secured his degree of M.A., and adhibited his signature for the last time to the Three Articles of Religion. But his last impressions of Cambridge were probably min- gled with sad reflections as to the future of religion in that seat of learning. It so hap- 194 CAMBRIDGE pened that Simon D'Ewes, who has already been referred to more than once in this chapter, was present at the Commencement at which John Harvard took his final degree, and a page in his diary enables us to participate in one of the incidents of that day. "I de- parted," he wrote, "early on Monday, 16th day of July, to Cambridge, for the Commence- ment, where the next day one ffevel, a young impudent scholar, being a fellow of Pem- broke Hall, and answering the Bachelor of Divinity's act in the morning, maintained openly justification by works, and that the very outward act of baptism took away sin. His brazen-faced assertion of these Popish points, especially the denying of justification by faith, was abhorred by myself and all the orthodox hearers in the Commencement House ; and Dr. Ward, the Lady Margaret's Pro- fessor, and Master of Sidney College, sitting moderator the same day, openly rebuked the same Nevel for broaching those gross heresies, contrary not only to the canonical Scriptures, to the articles and homilies of our Church, 195 but to the tenets and writings also of all our Protestant divines, as well Lutheran as Cal- vinistic. I supped at night at Sidney College, with the same Dr. Ward, where we both la- mented the times that this wicked Nevel durst so impudently and openly maintain the vilest and most feculent points of all Popery." With such a daring attack on Luther and Calvin ringing in his ears, Harvard took a last farewell of his university. On the journey to his home in Southwark he would have ample time to reflect on the years that were gone and his projects for the years which were to come. Already many of his predecessors at Emman- uel, including John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, and Samuel Stone, had sailed away to the New World in quest of that religious liberty which was denied them in their native land ; and it may be that the voice of this "wicked Nevel,'* raised in defence of principles dear to the heart of Laud, warned John Harvard that his path, too, lay across the waves of the Atlantic. 196 CHAPTER VI LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND HAD all been well in his Southwark home, John Harvard would have joyfully welcomed the day of his re- turn thither. For seven years he had been severed from that affectionate mother whose companionship had been his constant happi- ness from his birth to his twentieth year. No doubt his character had undergone consider- able change during his residence at Cambridge, but that his absence from home had lessened his love for his parent is beyond belief. On the contrary, it is not unreasonable to think it had increased its strength. Whatever, too, may have been his reflec- tions concerning the future of Puritanism at Cambridge and in his native land, John Har- vard, as he looked back on his university ca- reer, can have had no cause for self-reproach. That his personal conduct had been free from 199 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES blame, is demonstrated by the absence of his name from the "admonitions" which, among the records of Emmanuel College, perpetuate the various delinquencies of some of his fellow students ; and that he had devoted himself per- sistently and successfully to his studies is ob- vious from his having taken the B.A. and M.A. degrees in the minimum time in which they could be secured. Hence, now that his face was turned towards home once more, he had good cause, if ever student had, for being satisfied with his own achievements, and an- ticipating a few months' happy intercourse with his mother ere addressing himself to the serious work of life. But no such happiness was in store for John Harvard. It was to a darkened home he re- turned. His mother was dead. Whether he was by her side when she passed away is doubtful. Her final illness appears to have taken a rapid course, for only seven days after she had signed her will she was buried in St. Saviour's Church. With such a brief illness, it may easily have happened that Harvard 200 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND heard of his mother's sickness and death at the same time. In 1635 the postal system of Eng- land was in a crude condition; to many dis- tricts letters were delivered only once a week; while even in the most favoured towns the mails were received and despatched only on alternate days. Further, as the illness of Harvard's mother coincided with the busy preparations for Commencement at Cambridge, when her son was to take his final degree, it is probable that she herself would oppose, until it was too late, any suggestion for his return home. Al- together, then, the conclusion is inevitable that of her two surviving children only one, Thomas Harvard, was by her side when Katherine Yearwood closed her eyes in death. For John Harvard there remained only the sad satisfac- tion of visiting her grave in that church where he had been baptized and had so often sat by her side in the happy Sundays of his boyhood. Although he was not by her side when she gave instructions for her will on July 2nd, 1635, the fact that John Harvard had the first place in that document indicates that he was 201 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES uppermost in his mother's thoughts. After commending her soul " into the merciful hands of my dear Redeemer," she said, "I give to my eldest son, John Harvard, clerk, all that my messuage, tenement, or inn, commonly called or known by the name of the Queen's Head, in the borough of Southwark aforesaid, with the appertenances, and all my deeds and writ- ings touching and concerning the same, and all my estate, right, title, interest, term of years, and demand whatsoever which I have of and unto the same, and of and unto every part and parcel thereof." In addition to that property, he was also to enjoy a half share in the houses in the parish of All Saints Barking which, as has been recorded in an earlier chapter, had been bequeathed to Katherine Yearwood by her second husband, John Elletson. Apart, too, from this real estate, John Harvard was to re- ceive a legacy of two hundred and fifty pounds. To her other son, Thomas Harvard, the mother left the remaining half share in the property at All Saints Barking, and a sum of one hundred pounds. What minor bequests she made, 202 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND such as gifts to one of the two ministers of St. Saviour's Church and legacies to the other minister and his wife, have already been re- corded, and it only remains to be noted that such residue of her estate as remained was to be equally divided between her two sons. By far the most considerable item in the property which John Harvard received from his mother, and that from whence the largest share in his legacy to the infant college of New England was derived, was the Queen's Head Inn in the borough of Southwark. Ample evidence has already been adduced to show what valuable sources of income the inns of Southwark were in the seventeenth century, and this particular hostelry, which was close to the famous Tabard, seems to have enjoyed a reputation equal to the best. It had been established for many years, and was the recog- nised headquarters for the numerous carriers plying between London and such important places as Godstone, Rye, and Portsmouth. That it also enjoyed a good local reputation is manifest from the fact that the vestrymen of 203 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES St. Saviour's Church were wont to hold their social gatherings and annual dinners under its roof. A record of one such dinner, which took place on March 2nd, 1636, when the inn had passed into the possession of John Harvard, reveals an expenditure of nearly five pounds on one meal. If that sum is multiplied by eight in order to bring it into harmony with modern currency, it will be seen that a few such gather- ings would represent no inconsiderable addi- tions to the revenue of the hostelry. A suggestion has been made that Harvard's mother became possessed of the Queen's Head under the will of her second husband, but there is no evidence to support such a theory. In 1593 the property was owned by a man named Richard Bowmer, who in that year willed it to his wife, Rose Bowmer. Two years later Rose Bowmer bequeathed it to her son-in-law, Gregory Franklin, and he, in 1624, left the property to his young son. That be- quest, however, was made under such condi- tions as to make it doubtful whether the legacy was valid; at any rate, the will of Gregory 204 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND Franklin's son, dated February, 1635, makes no mention of the Queen's Head. It seems probable, then, that Katherine Yearwood had purchased the inn on her own account for the express purpose of bequeathing it to her eldest son. During the early days of his return home, John Harvard was busily occupied with his brother Thomas in carrying out the directions of his mother's will, of which the two sons were joint executors; and one of the earliest actions of the two brothers was to make good their title to the property situated in the parish of All Saints Barking on the other side of the Thames. This had been held by their mother under two leases from the master of St. Kath- erine's hospital, the first being that which se- cured the property to her second husband, John Elletson, and the other that which trans- ferred his rights to her. As the property had been left to the brothers in equal shares, a new lease became necessary for the purpose of legal- ising the joint- ownership, and a copy of that document, dated July 25th, 1635, and bearing 205 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the signatures of John and Thomas Harvard, may be seen among the muniments of St. Katherine's hospital. In this lease the brothers are described as "John Harvard, clerke, and Thomas Harvard, citizen and clothworker of London." How and when Thomas Harvard obtained his right to call himself a "citizen of London" may be easily verified. His house and place of business were situated in the parish of St. Olive's, Southwark, in the county of Surrey, and that district was outside the London boundary of those days. Hence, on the sur- face, it would seem as though he had no au- thority to assume the title of "citizen of Lon- don." If, however, reference is made to the records of the Clothworkers Company of Lon- don, it will be found that Thomas Harvard was admitted a freeman of that corporation on December 3rd, 1634, and that fact gave him full authority to assume the designation of "citizen of London." On the other hand, it is not at present known whence and when John Harvard ac- 206 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND quired the right to describe himself as a "clerk." He is so designated for the first time in his mother's will, and twenty- three days after that document was signed he assumed the title in the new lease for the All Saints Barking property. In the record of his mar- riage there is no mention of his occupation, but in the will of his father-in-law, which was drafted in February 1637, he appears once again as "clerke." As a general rule in the seventeenth century, the word "clerk" im- plied an ordained clergyman, and its appli- cation to John Harvard by his mother and its assumption by himself would seem to in- dicate that he was ordained prior to July, 1635. That such was the case, however, still awaits confirmation by adequate documentary evidence. Having discharged his duties in connection with his mother's will, it is not improbable that John Harvard spent a considerable portion of the remainder of the summer of 1635 at Ringmer, in Sussex. In the vicarage there he would be able to resume his intercourse with 207 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his favourite fellow student, John Sadler, and beyond that he had most likely discovered ere this a greater attraction in the person of his friend's sister, Ann Sadler. The leading fam- ily in the Ringmer parish of those days was that of the Springetts, into which, some nine years later, was to be born a daughter who became the wife of William Penn. Had he been able to foresee that event, John Har- vard would, no doubt, have taken a still keener interest in his visits to the parish. Nor, prob- ably, would he have been indifferent to the fact that the gentle- hearted curate of Selborne, Gilbert White, was to make many visits to Ringmer in the years unborn. Such love-stories and love-letters as survive from the seventeenth century possess so unique a charm that the lack of any record of John Harvard's courtship is greatly to be regretted. That Puritanism was not fatal to the tenderer emotions of the men and women of those times receives emphatic confirmation from the de- lightful letters which passed between John Winthrop and his wife, and if further proof is 208 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND required, it may be found in the pages of the little-known diary of John Worthington, who was one of Harvard's fellow students at Em- manuel College. Worthington delayed his en- try into the wedded state for ten years longer than Harvard, he being thirty-nine at the time of his marriage while Harvard was in his twenty- ninth year. There was a greater dis- parity, also, between their ages and those of the ladies they married, for while Worthington's bride was twenty- two years younger than him- self, only a little more than seven years sepa- rated the ages of John Harvard and Ann Sadler. In other respects, however, the courtship of these two fellow students may well have had much in common, and in the absence of any love- epistles between Harvard and his be- trothed it may not be uninstructive to cite a letter each from Worthington and Mary Whichcote as vicarious evidence in the love- story of Harvard and Ann Sadler. Only a month after he had first proposed to Miss Whichcote, Worthington addressed her in these stately terms: i* 209 "DEAREST LADY. The ambition of these lines is to present my most real and dearest affections: To do this in this paper- way, is all that can be done at this distance of place; but I am and shall be passionately desirous, to do this in person, before the end of this month. It is now a week since I left Frogmore, which upon other occasions is accounted no long time, but to me, it is a week many times told. For the present I please myself, in the constant re- membrance of your loves and sweetnesses, and all those your lovely and endearing perfections, both of body and mind, disposition, and de- portment, not forgetting your music. And I shall hasten to prepare for that happy time of enjoying your ever desired company, and the crowning of our affections; for love affects not delays. In the meanwhile I shall be exceed- ingly desirous in a few lines to understand your good health: which with all the happi- ness that may attend this life, and that which is to come, is entirely desired by him, who is "Madam, your servant, "JOHN WORTHINGTON." 210 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND If this were an initial attempt, Worthington was certainly to be congratulated on his suc- cess as a writer of love-letters; but if he is to be praised for that effort, no encomium can be too great for Mary Whichcote's reply, the work, be it remembered, of a mere girl of seventeen. "HONOURED SIR. Your welcome lines are come to my hand, than which nothing but yourself could have been more welcome to me; in which you have expressed a great deal of love to me, and that far above my de- serving. I cannot but acknowledge the mov- ing of my heart to you, that of all the men that ever I saw, if I were to chuse of ten thousand, my heart would not close with any, as with yourself, you having such knowledge, good- ness, and lovely disposition, which you have manifested to me, and suitableness of temper, and in my eye, no person so desirable. And if it be the will of God, that we shall be united together, I desire your prayers unto him, that he would be pleased to enable me to walk to JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his glory in my place and relation, and that our coming together, may be for his glory and our comfort. Love covers a multitude of faults; and I am persuaded that your love, and wisdom, will cover my weaknesses. I bless God, I have my bodily health, though weak other ways, yet I am willing to be "Honoured Sir, your servant "MARY WHICHCOTE." Probably no violence would be done to the facts of the case if we were to substitute the names of John Harvard and Ann Sadler for those which are adhibited to these two digni- fied, yet fascinating letters. In any event, they bear witness to the courtly grace which characterised the love-making of the seven- teenth century. Seeing that Ann Sadler's father was vicar of Ringmer, it would have been natural to look for the record of her marriage with John Harvard in the register of that parish, and it seems difficult to understand why the ceremony did not take place in her father's s --*. r- LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND church. Whatever the cause, the wedding was transferred to the adjacent church of South Mailing, rebuilt eight years previously, in the records of which this entry may be seen: "Maryed the 19 day of April, 1636. Mr. John Harvard, of the p'ish of St. Olive's, neere London, and Anne Sadler of Ringmer." Some ten months were to elapse ere John Harvard and his wife sailed for New England, and as he is described as of the parish of St. Olive's it is likely that those months were mostly spent under his brother's roof, for, as has been stated above, Thomas Harvard's home was in that parish. Perhaps John Harvard was already meditating his depart- ure, and in that event he would naturally desire to enjoy the utmost of his brother's company, for he alone remained as a link between the present and the happy home of his boyhood. Besides, Thomas Harvard's health was far from satisfactory, and the fol- lowing July it became so precarious, he was so "sicke and weake in bodie," that he thought fit to make his will. Apart from its substan- 213 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES tial bequests, this document breathes such a spirit of affection for its writer's " well-beloved brother, John Harvard" as to make it clear that the two brothers were deeply attached to each other. As had been the case with his father, Thomas Harvard appears to have prospered greatly in business, for his legacies included four hun- dred pounds to his wife and three hundred pounds to any posthumous child she should bear. As, however, no such child was born, such details in Thomas Harvard's will as relate to that eventuality may be ignored, with the result that John Harvard became entitled to a sum of two hundred pounds; to his brother's half share in the property at All Saints Barking minus thirty pounds a year as an income for the widow; and to a half of such residue of the estate as should remain when all other legacies had been provided for. Besides these gifts, Thomas Harvard specially reserved for his brother " my standing bowl of silver gilt, and my chest with two locks before excepted, together 214. LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND with my best whole suit of apparel and my best cloak." An interesting additional proof of the friendship existing between the Har- vard family and the Rev. Nicholas Morton, of St. Saviour's Church, is furnished by the fact that he was associated with John Harvard as joint-executor of the will. Perhaps towards the close of 1636, or, at the latest, early in the following year, John Harvard arrived finally at a decision to emi- grate to New England, and that being the case he would naturally desire to realise as much as he possibly could of his property. The Queen's Head was too profitable a source of income to part with; and as the tenements at All Saints Barking were held conjointly with his brother, who was still alive, he could not dispose of them. In addition, however, to his other property indicated above, he had somehow come into the possession of four small houses in the parish of St. Olive's, and these he sold to a sea captain on February 16th, 1637, for the sum of one hundred and twenty pounds. 215 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES In the records of the equipments of the earliest expeditions to New England, little is said about provision being made for the intellectual life of the emigrants. That the needs of the body should be carefully catered for was only natural, and there survive many evidences of the attention devoted to food supplies; on the other hand, it is very rarely indeed that one comes across a reference to books, and that omission would seem to imply that little thought was given to providing sustenance for the mind. That this was gen- erally the case is obvious from the fact that the warm welcome accorded to the widow and family of William Ames owed not a little of its cordiality to their having brought with them the library of that distinguished divine. However, no matter what may have been the custom of previous emigrants, John Harvard had prescience enough to recognise what an inestimable value would attach to a good library in the New World, and we may be certain that one of his chief occupations during his last few months in England was 216 the collecting of the books which formed no inconsiderable part of his generous legacy to the cause of education in New England. Now, the collecting of a library in the seven- teenth century was no light task. Money, the only obstacle in the way of the book-lover to- day, was not the chief difficulty then. Har- vard did not lack for money; but, incredulous as it may seem, what he would lack was the opportunity to spend it! To spend it, that is, in harmony with his predominant inclinations. Strangely enough, even those historians who enter into most detail concerning the life of this period have little to say about the re- straints by which the circulation of theological literature was handicapped; it is only by a minute and comparative study of many docu- ments stored among the state papers of the reign of Charles I., and earlier, that some idea may be obtained of the obstacles which in those days barred the path of the man who was set upon building up a library repre- sentative of the conflicting religious thought of that age. If he were a Papist or a Puritan, 217 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his difficulties were increased, for the official ban rested with almost equal weight upon the books of both those parties. What with the Stationers' Company to reckon with, and the vigilance of the Star Chamber, and the power which officials of the crown possessed to seize and destroy books and printing-presses alike, the Papist or Puritan who attempted to in- troduce himself to the reading public found he had undertaken a formidable task. Among the many and devious methods which Laud adopted to secure the success of his eccelesiastical policy, he was astute enough to include the muzzling of the press. No book could be legally published unless it had been licensed by the Stationers' Com- pany, and that license could not be obtained without the consent of the bishop of London or the archbishop of Canterbury. To the first of those offices Laud was elected in 1628, and to the second in 1633, so that the activity he displayed in the repression of Puritan lit- erature was in full operation at the time John Harvard was collecting his library. Proofs 218 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND of that activity are scattered all over the records of the court of High Commission, that iniquitous tribunal which stains the pages of the history of England with its nearest ap- proach to the Inquisition of Spain. It is a significant fact that Laud's elevation to the bishopric of London coincides in point of time with a report prepared by three of the messengers, or spies, of the High Commis- sion, embodying a careful return of the names of such booksellers in London as dealt in old libraries, mart books, or any others. The anonymous "Lordship" for whom this report was prepared can hardly have been other than Laud himself, for his hand can un- doubtedly be recognised in the "directions" which the messengers had duly communi- cated to the booksellers upon whom they had called. Those directions included strin- gent orders to all the booksellers in question to catalogue all their future purchases, and refrain from selling any of them until they had received his "Lordship's" permission to do so. In this curious document of 1628, 219 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the writers make special mention of two volumes which they had instructed a book- seller not to part with until he received further orders. Both those obnoxious volumes found a place in John Harvard's library, and who can refrain the wish that they may have been the identical copies which figure in this report to his "Lordship" of London? Nor, at this distance of time, when the sects have learnt toleration, will any lover of liberty refrain from taking a certain amount of mali- cious pleasure in the many tribulations which Laud and his precious Commission were called upon to suffer at the hands of a London book- seller named Michael Sparke. That worthy tradesman deserves to be canonised among the apostles of freedom. He appears to have attached as much importance to the High Commission as to the man in the moon. During an entire decade, he made fre- quent appearances before that tribunal as a culprit, and although he was often admon- ished, and many times given an opportunity to reflect upon the evil of his ways in the 220 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND quiet seclusion of a prison, nothing could induce him to conduct his business on the principles desiderated by the High Commis- sion. The messengers of that court cannot have enjoyed their visits to % this sturdy book- seller. On one occasion, such a messenger, acting in the protective interests of the king's printer, for trying to force his way into Sparke's warehouse on a search expedition, was him- self arrested on the bookseller's initiative and made the subject of legal action; and another messenger, who was sent specially by the High Commission to seize a prohibited book and take Sparke into custody, was himself seized and detained by the offender he had come to secure ! Evidence is not lacking that Michael Sparke showed as much enterprise in his business as in foiling the efforts of the High Commission. He had numerous agents scattered all over England, and such books as he could not get printed in London, owing to the vigilance of Laud's agents, he sent to Oxford to be put to press there. This astute move involved an 221 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Oxford printer, William Turner by name, in trouble with Laud's inquisition. Among the books which Turner was charged with print- ing "without authority" were some sermons by Dr. Preston, and a volume entitled "The Saints' Legacies," of which he prepared edi- tions of two thousand and fifteen hundred copies respectively. Both these works were included by John Harvard in his library, and it is to be hoped that he purchased them from the irrepressible Sparke. Indeed, it would be pleasant to learn that most, if not all, his books were purchased from a tradesman who evi- dently deserved well of every lover of liberty. How, under such adverse circumstances, the supply of books was kept up would be difficult to understand were it not for the light thrown on that matter by the state papers mentioned above. Holland, it ap- pears, did more than any other country towards maintaining the supply of Puritan literature. At this date Sir William Boswell held the post of English ambassador at the Hague, and his diplomatic duties seem to 222 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND have included the keeping of a sharp eye on the operations of those Dutch printers who returned to England in book form those Puritan manuscripts with which they were so liberally supplied. With one of his letters to the English Secretary of State, Sir William Boswell enclosed a specimen of a book " wholly directed against the ceremonies of the Church of England, and in many points very scan- dalous against the same," of which the author was one Dr. William Ames. Vigorous efforts, he said, were being made to get this volume into circulation in England. A man named Puckle, who, according to the ambassador, was "an ignorant, unworthy fellow," was in the habit of haunting the quayside at Rotter- dam for the purpose of selling the book to passengers bound for England, and, in addi- tion, Sir William Boswell learnt that some three or four hundred copies were being de- spatched to London to be "passed for white paper, and so never looked into." Dr. William Ames was such a popular author among the Puritans that the English 223 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES booksellers and their Dutch agents exercised considerable ingenuity in the smuggling of his works. In addition to that "white paper" device, the masters of the ships from the Low Countries, who were nearly all engaged in this contraband traffic, had a way, as they said, "to cozen the devil." A favourite plan was to run their vessels ashore on some sandy beach of the English coast, get rid of their passengers under the pretext of the ship being in danger, and then safely discharge their cargo of prohibited divinity. The English agents were always on the alert for such un- ceremonious deliveries of books, and porters, who apparently knew nothing of the contents of their loads, were instructed at what shops to leave them. On one occasion, three Lon- don booksellers were summoned before the High Commission to explain why they had a certain prohibited book on their premises, and they each told a delightful story of how the volumes had been deposited in their shops by a porter who came they knew not whence and vanished they knew not whither. Of 224 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND course our good friend Michael Sparke was one of the three. He told a similar story, but garnished it with a statement to the effect that when he had read the book and found it "dangerous" he saw it was his duty to bring the remaining copies into the court. He did not add that he had probably sold sufficient copies to recoup him for his out- lay in that little speculation. Because the works of Dr. Ames were so popular, the agents of the High Commission kept a keener watch for his productions than for those of any other Puritan. Two book- sellers who had purchased a miscellaneous consignment of volumes from Holland at this date were, after much pleading, allowed to retain and sell all save those whose title- pages bore the obnoxious name of William Ames. Those particular volumes, which were nothing more controversial than commentaries on the Psalms, were not to be sold in England under pain of a penalty of one hundred pounds. Nevertheless, for all the restrictions which were placed on the books of this author, John Har- 15 225 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES vard did not fail to secure several representa- tive volumes for his library. Perhaps it is not surprising that more than sixty per cent, of the books Harvard brought to New England were of a theological char- acter, and that fact, in view of what has been recorded above, throws an instructive light upon the amount of labour and caution he must have expended in gathering them to- gether. Still, when his exertions were at an end, and he was able to survey the portly folios he had collected at such cost and risk, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he was in the possession of a library which not unworthily represented the position of the religious thought of his day. Thanks to the Reformation, theological opinion was still in a state of constant flux. Old landmarks had been swept away, and each labourer in that chaotic world addressed himself to the task of uprearing new ones. It is pathetic to watch how, by innumerable councils, and synods, and assemblies, the divines of those days struggled with the her- 226 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND culean labour of formulating a new creed which should faithfully define the boundaries of the new spiritual world. In the reports of some of these synods which Harvard in- cluded in his library he at least made sure of taking to his new home the very latest deliv- erances of theological experts. Nor were the controversies of the times less faithfully re- flected in other works of a different type. While, on the one hand, he was catholic enough in his tastes to include some samples of the writings of Bellarmine, the redoubt- able champion of the Roman church, he made sure of an antidote by securing a copy of the "Bellarminus Enervatus" of William Ames. The presence, too, of a work by Du Plessis Mornay is a significant proof of Har- vard's unshaken confidence in the Protestant cause. That learned author was none other than the Huguenot champion, who, by relying upon forged quotations from the fathers with which he had been craftily supplied, met such an ignominious defeat at the hands of the Papal advocate during the conference at 227 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Fontainebleau before Henry IV. in 1600. Evidently Mornay had not lost his reputa- tion in the Puritan camp. Of course the works of Calvin found ade- quate representation in Harvard's library ; per- haps he, like John Cotton, was in the habit of "sweetening his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he went to sleep." Such unconscious forerunners of the Geneva theologian as Au- O gustine and Thomas Aquinas also figure in this storehouse of divinity ; and among posthumous adherents Zanchius and William Ames were not overlooked. The name of the latter must be familiar to the reader who is acquainted with the early history of New England, for, to cite only one example, it figures frequently amid the sandy tracts of John Cotton's prose, and also among the still more dreary desert places of the doggerel which he mistook for poetry. That John Harvard, however, was more en- amoured of exegesis than of systematic the- ology seems a reasonable conclusion to adduce from the prominence he gave in his library to 228 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND commentaries on the Scriptures. Nor could any fault be found with the authorities he se- lected in that department of sacred learn- ing. Certainly, than Henry Ainsworth, Hugh Broughton, and John Lightfoot there were not in those days three more accomplished or profoundly erudite Rabbinical scholars. The first named was represented by his deservedly famous "Annotations on the Pentateuch"; and it may be hoped, for the sake of lighter relief, that the pamphlets which are included under Broughton's name embraced those amusing papers in which the two scholars gravely de- bated whether the High Priest's ephod was of silk or wool, and whether its colour were of blue, or scarlet, or green. That controversy, we are told, was followed with breathless interest by all the dyers in Amsterdam, and it was carried on with as much zest and activity as though the most vital interests of religion were at stake. A striking illustration of Ainsworth's devotion to oriental learning is provided by the story which tells how, when he had found a diamond of great value, and a Jew came to claim it, the 229 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES only reward he exacted was that the owner of the precious stone should secure him a confer- ence with some of his Rabbis, with whom Ainsworth was desirous of discussing the Old Testament prophecies relating to the Messiah. Harvard's marked attention to such works as bore upon the text of the Old Testament, which is further emphasised by the number of Hebrew grammars and lexicons included in his library, is a significant proof of the extent to which he shared the Puritan preference for the Old Testament. It is strange that men who laid so much stress theoretically on the grace of the New Testament should have yielded themselves so completely to practical bondage to the harsh legalism of the Old Tes- tament. That, no doubt, accounts for the unlovely traits of the Puritan character. And it is difficult to understand the inconsistency which, while ignoring such Levitical com- mands as those relating to circumcision, ruth- lessly enforced the Mosaic law in cases of adul- tery, in inexcusable forgetfulness of the "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast 230 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND a stone at her" of Christ. Did the New Eng- land Puritan never preach on the eighth chap- ter of the gospel according to John ? For all the care which Harvard evidently bestowed upon the selection of the theological portion of his library, is there one among those ponderous folios which to-day is ministering to the living religion of men? Even if those particular books which Harvard's own hands had touched had been fortunately spared from the holocaust of flames in which they were re- duced to ashes, would they not have been reposing quietly on the upper shelves of the li- brary, encrusted with the dust of many gener- ations ? If, now and then, at rare intervals, their repose had been disturbed by some curi- ous student of the dead past, who can doubt but that they would have been returned to their place with Browning's emphatic verdict: " Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day ! " Few, very few indeed, of the some three hun- dred volumes which Harvard carried with him to New England are continuing an active min- 231 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES istry in the intellectual life of to-day. Among the classics, it is true, he chose with rare wis- dom ; nor Homer, nor Plutarch, nor Pliny, nor Juvenal, nor, above all, Horace, will ever lose their hold over the hearts of men. Bacon's Essays, too, possess the secret of perennial youth; but among all the rest of these books it would be difficult to find one which has been thought worthy of republication during the last few generations. When we recall the deathless names which were written in the annals of English literature during the Elizabethan era, it is surprising that Harvard's library has so few connecting links with works which are still the delight of count- less thousands. Did he really subscribe to the ultra-Puritan tenet that it was sinful to read the " Faerie Queene"? Or was he of the opinion that the "Mirror for Magistrates," the "Divine Emblems" of Quarles, and the effu- sions of Wither were ample representatives of English poetry? Wither was so innoxious that his popularity with the Puritans is not difficult to understand ; but his reputation out- 232 LAST YEARS IN ENGLAND side their camp is perhaps best illustrated by Sir John Denham's plea to the king to spare that versifier from the scaffold on the ground that "so long as Wither lives, I shall not be the worst poet in England." Perhaps Harvard had little inclination for poetry, and in that event he might have been excused if he had restricted himself to the "Mirror for Magistrates" alone. In the eight hundred and seventy-five folio pages of that compendium of verse, wherein many different authors gave poetical form to the deeds of the unfortunate characters of English history, there was copious reading for count- less leisure hours. And the famous "In- duction" of Sackville, with which the volume opened, was no mean example of the imagina- tive and vivid poetry of the Elizabethan period. It would be exceedingly difficult, if not im- possible, to arrive at an accurate estimate of the total amount Harvard spent on his library. That he did not spare his purse is evident from his purchase of Savile's famous Eton edi- tion of the works of Chrysostom, which, pub- lished in 1612, consisted of eight volumes and 233 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES cost nine pounds a set. When the average price of books in those days is taken into ac- count, it seems reasonable to conclude that in acquiring the three hundred or so volumes of which his library consisted, Harvard must have expended a sum not much less than two hundred pounds. If, to adjust once more the wide difference between seventeenth century and modern currencies, that amount is mul- tiplied by eight, it will be seen that here at any rate was one prospective citizen of New England who, whatever fate might be in store for the hunger of his body, was re- solved that the hunger of his mind should not go unappeased. 234 yn THE NEW WORLD CHAPTER VII THE NEW WORLD SEVERAL of the ministers who became conspicuous in the early history of New England placed on record an explicit statement of the reasons why they left their native land. John Cotton confined himself to three causes, which set forth how he was de- barred from exercising his ministry in his old home; how Christ had commanded his disci- ples when they were persecuted in one country to flee to another; and, finally, what longing he had to enjoy all, and not merely one or two, of the ordinances of God. Thomas Shepard entered into fuller de- tails. His Apologia comprised eight different counts, the last of which, in true sermonic style, embraced five subdivisions. Having been ejected from one church, no call to any other had reached him ; his friends and his wife were in favour of his going ; he was now convinced of 237 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the "evil of ceremonies," and shared Cotton's eagerness to enjoy all the ordinances; more- over, he felt that " the Lord departed from Eng- land when Hooker and Cotton went," a reason which, while highly complimentary to the two divines in question, seems to suggest a remiss- ness of Providential care for those thousands of the faithful who were never able to leave their native land. It is not necessary to repeat the five subdivisions of Shepard's eighth cause for emigrating, especially as one of them seems to make all the others as unnecessary as the unrecorded seventeen reasons why Queen Elizabeth was not honoured with a salute from that town which did not possess any guns. " / saw" wrote Shepard with remarkable pre- science, " that this time could not be long with- out trouble from King Charles." Which, or how many, out of all these reasons influenced John Harvard it is impossible to say. His early death from consumption suggests that considerations of health may have played some part in his decision. What, however, must not be lost sight of, is the fact that his 238 THE NEW WORLD seven years at Emmanuel College had familiar- ised him with the idea of the new home which America was offering to all those who yearned for greater religious and civil liberty than was possible in the England of Laud and Charles. It should not be forgotten that one of the most important meetings of that pioneer band which included John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley among its number, was held at Cambridge in the month of August, 1629, when Harvard had been a student there for more than two years. Dudley, it will be remembered, was steward to the Earl of Lincoln, in whose household, as has been stated in a previous chapter, Anthony Tuckney, one of the tutors and leading fellows of Emmanuel, had served as chaplain. Hence, it is not improbable that, in conversation with Tuckney, Harvard became early acquainted with the inner history of the Winthrop settle- ment. Certainly it is unlikely that Dudley would visit Cambridge without having an in- terview with Tuckney. Some time early in the month of May, 1631, the Countess of Lincoln had delivered into her 239 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES hands the lengthy letter which Thomas Dud- ley had despatched from New England on the last day of March. Those were times when a letter from that quarter of the world "was venerated as a sacred script, or as the writing of some holy prophet; 'twas carried many miles, where divers came to hear it." That more than usual publicity was given to this letter, which Dudley wrote so laboriously by the fireside, and on his knee for lack of a table, can- not be doubted. He penned the epistle spe- cially for the guidance and " use of such as shall hereafter intend to increase our Plantation," and that several manuscript copies were made of it is beyond question. One copy, we may be sure, passed into the hands of Tuckney, who at this time was associated with John Cot- ton in ministerial work in Old Boston, and by him it would doubtless be forwarded to Em- manuel College for the information of such students there as had given signs of a desire to proceed to New England. In this way it may well have happened that Dudley's letter came under the eyes of John Harvard. If so, per- 240 MEMORIAL WINDOW IN THE CHAPEL OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Pa^e 240. THE NEW WORLD haps he read these words as a call to himself: "If any godly men, out of religious ends, will come over to help us in the good work we are about, I think they cannot dispose of them- selves nor of their estates more to God's glory and the furtherance of their own reckoning." None of the colleges of Cambridge contrib- uted so liberally to. the ministerial ranks of early New England as Emmanuel. As we have seen, that foundation was essentially Puritan in its spirit and reputation, and those of its sons who had found and were enjoying unstinted religious liberty in the New World lost no opportunity to advertise their happiness among such of their brethren as were still in bondage. Hence, during the entire period of his career as a student, Harvard must have been in close and constant touch with the latest news from that happy land where the uncon- stitutional extortions of Charles and the re- ligious despotism of Laud were unknown. Nor should another important factor be overlooked. By the time Harvard had com- pleted his career as a student, a considerable 16 24! JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES literature relating to New England was in existence. The redoubtable John Smith had been early in the field with his three volumes, in which he had penned many a sentence calculated to sharpen the curiosity of such as pined for "fresh woods and pastures new." On the mere topographical side, he may have greatly helped Harvard to his decision. To a contemplative man, whose moorings to his native land were none of the strongest, such a picture as this must have appealed with irresistible force: "Here nature and liberty affords us that freely, which in England we want, or it costeth us dearly. What pleasure can be more, than to recreate themselves before their own doors, in their own boats upon the sea, where man, woman, and child, with a small hook and line, by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasures?" What, however, counted for far more with Harvard than the natural attractions of the New World was, we may be sure, its freedom from religious oppression ; and, seeing that 242 THE NEW WORLD he made Charlestown his objective, he un- doubtedly would take most interest in such publications as offered information concern- ing the colony in Massachusetts Bay. In the London shop of Michael Sparke, whose sturdy Puritan inclinations were noted in a previous chapter, Harvard would be able" to purchase a copy of Francis Higginson's " New England's Plantation." Many a voyager to the New World seems to have found the chief motive for his journey in the highly- coloured narrative of that volume, the first in point of time, and not the least in persuasive eloquence, of those recruiting pamphlets which in after years were to pour forth in such abundance from the press of America. Higginson even excelled Smith in his eulogy of the natural charms of New England. To his fertile im- agination, those attractions presented them- selves in such legions that his chronicling pen seems to toil after them in vain. Such a fertile soil as was to be "admired at"; kine and goats do thrive and prosper "scarce to be believed"; even in those early days they 243 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES had "already a quart of milk for a penny"; while to speak of corn increasing sixty-fold was mere child's play, "what will you say of two-hundred-fold, and upwards?" By an easy sum in arithmetic, thirteen gallons of corn were magically transformed in a year into hard cash to the amount of over three hundred pounds. Why, even children, by casting a little corn into the earth, could earn more than their own maintenance. And as for green peas, and turnips, and parsnips, and carrots well, the governor had grow- ing in his garden as good peas as any ever seen in England, and the representatives of those other humbler vegetables were un- doubtedly "bigger and sweeter" than any to be found in the old home. Perhaps, how- ever, Higginson rose to his most chastened eloquence in his description of the air of New England. To Harvard it may have counted little that a mouthful of that air was "better than a whole draught of Old England's ale"; but he probably scanned with a wistful eye those hurrying sentences 244 THE NEW WORLD in which Higginson piled up proof after proof of the health-giving properties of that most wonderful atmosphere. Perhaps Harvard did not learn until later that even that marvellous elixir could not keep Higginson alive for much more than a year. More sober and far more accurate were the pages of William Wood's "New England's Prospect," which Harvard would have been able to peruse at least two years before "his departure. That veracious chronicler did not omit the shadows of the picture, albeit he showed that much of the shadow was born of the lack of foresight which hurried a man into a new country without provision for his common needs. If, then, Harvard restrained the imaginative flights of Higginson with the ballast of Wood's facts, he should have been under no delusions as to the country towards which his thoughts were turning. During the two years which had passed away since Thomas Shepard sailed, much had happened in England to make good his prophecy as to the speedy coming of " trouble 245 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES from King Charles." Eight years had al- ready gone by without the representatives of the people in Parliament assembled having any voice in the government of the nation. The king had been his own Parliament and his own ministry. He and his two willing tools, Wentworth and Laud, had controlled the affairs of State and Church utterly heed- less and independent of public opinion. Now, however, that unholy triumvirate was drawing near to its final catastrophe. Still, as the tragedy moved to its close, it was to be accom- panied by events which were more potent than any before or since in directing the thoughts of Englishmen across the Atlantic. That his treasury might be replenished with means ample enough for the support of a standing army, the one weapon he lacked in completing the oppression of England, Charles readily agreed to the imposition of a national tax under the specious name of Ship Money. In previous generations, in times of war,' the seaport towns of England had willingly provided ships, or money with 246 THE NEW WORLD which to purchase ships, in defence of their native land. But England was at peace with the world, and this tax was to be paid by dwellers in the most remote rural districts as well as by those who lived along the coast; and, above all, the object of the tax was well known to be not maritime defence but the creation of such an army as would banish the thought of liberty for ever. In the pros- pect of such an eventuality, and in the face of this most iniquitous attack upon its civil rights, England was more deeply stirred than she had been for many generations. With this hour of crisis, came the man in the per- son of John Hampden, whose stalwart fight against the king and all his minions must often have thrilled the spirit of John Harvard during his last months on his native soil. As Wentworth was working his way to the headsman's block by his activity in the matter of Ship Money, so Laud was preparing a similar doom for himself by his insane efforts to force a liturgy on the people of Scotland, a liturgy too, which, "wherever it differed 247 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES from that of England, differed, in the judg- ment of all rigid Protestants, for the worse." Hitherto the Scots had used, and had grown to revere, that order of divine service which John Knox had drafted in harmony with the spirit of Calvin; now, to the accompaniment of compulsory surplices, and the introduction of a book of Canons which placed the govern- ment of the church solely in the hands of bishops, this was to give place to a liturgy which out-Lauded the prayer-book of the Church of England. With such clouds as these brooding darkly over his native land, what wonder was it that John Harvard should turn to New England and its clear skies of civil and religious freedom? When he sailed is not known. All that is certain is that it was on some date subsequent to February the 16th, and prior to May the 5th, 1637. It has been shown that on the first of those days John Harvard concluded the sale of some of his real estate in South- wark; and on the second, the Rev. Nicholas Morton presented alone for probate the will THE NEW WORLD of Thomas Harvard, and was granted the usual power of executor. The document re- cording that fact bears that a similar power was reserved for John Harvard, "when he should come to seek it." That phrase is as conclusive proof that he had left England, as the document of February the 16th is that at that date he was still in the country. Some- where, then, between the middle of February and the first week in May, Harvard had sailed away to the New World. The prob- abilities are all in favour of his departure hav- ing taken place at the end of April. His earliest appearance in the annals of New England bears the date of August the 6th, and as that is a record of his being admitted a townsman of Charlestown it is probable that he had been some few days at least in the country. Seeing that voyages to New England were made in periods of time vary- ing from five weeks to six months, no hard and fast average can be arrived at, but it seems to have been thought that a passage of twelve weeks was what might generally 249 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES be expected. That being the case, Harvard may well have spent the months of May, June, and July on the ocean. So much light has been thrown upon his life- story by the discoveries of recent years, that further research among the records of the past may yet reveal the actual date of his sailing, and the name of the ship in wliich he made his journey. Given those facts, we may then be able to decide whether he had much difficulty in leaving his native land. That it was no easy matter to get away, especially at the time he sailed, is made clear by several records in the Colonial Papers of Great Britain. A few years before, the Coun- cil for New England had formulated a strin- gent order to the effect that no ships, passen- gers, or goods were to be allowed to leave for that country without its authority. Of course John Harvard would not have any difficulty in obtaining the permission of the Council for New England; but greater and more peremptory than its authority was that of the officers of the crown. Only a month or 250 THE NEW WORLD so before he sailed, the owners of a ship named the "Hector" appealed to the Admiralty for the release of their vessel, which was under contract for a voyage to New England, and which, when all the passengers were on board, and everything ready for a start, had been seized for the king's service. Perhaps the seductive bribe of three thousand pounds, which the king was to receive upon the im- ported goods brought back by the vessel, had most to do with securing its release. It was not alone in their choosing for a new home a land of which very few had certain knowledge, that the heroism of the pioneers of New England consisted. Much greater courage, surely, was manifested in their so cheerfully facing the dangers of the ocean in the tiny, and often unseaworthy, vessels of the seventeenth century. To the modern traveller, the largest of the pilgrim ships would seem fitted for little more than the life- boat service of an ordinary liner. Now and again in these days some wooer of sen- sational fame makes his way across the 251 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Atlantic in a small craft, solely for the news- paper "glory" which is certain to reward his feat; but the pioneers of New England did that sort of thing all the time, and seem to have thought little of it. Exactly a year after the most probable date of Harvard's departure, the credulous John Josselyn made his first voyage to the New World, and the picture he gives of his journey can hardly be an unfaithful record of the ex- periences of a year before. Harvard's ample means would allow him to take a passage on such a ship of three hundred tons as that on which Josselyn travelled. He, too, would probably make his departure from Grave- send, and may also have witnessed the "press- ing" for the royal navy of several of the sailors of the ship before she was free of the English coast. An equipment of twenty cannons, an ominous reminder that there were pirates on the high seas in those days, appears to have been usual on a vessel of this size; while, with a crew of some fifty men, and a passenger list totalling up to thrice that figure, such a 252 THE NEW WORLD craft would carry on an average some two hundred souls. On that long voyage there was little to vary the monotony of daily life. It is true the Puri- tans lost no time in availing themselves of their religious freedom; no sooner was England left behind than they began to revel in prayers, and sermons, and other pious exercises. Even for such enthusiasts, however, it must have been a relief to sight an " island of ice, three leagues in length, mountain high, in form of land, with bays and capes like high cliff land, and a river pouring off it into the sea." Apart from such sights at sea as still greet the traveller on the Atlantic, the voyages of these pioneers seem to have been marked by few incidents save such as were caused by the unruly spirits from which none of the vessels appear to have been free. The ship which carried John Winthrop to his destination had several lawless passen- gers on board. Two were of a pugnacious disposition, but their ardour for fisticuffs was probably cooled by their having their hands tied behind them and being compelled to pace 253 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the deck until nightfall in that condition. Even the servants of Winthrop's company were not above reproach, for one of them was dis- covered to have bargained with a child for three biscuits a day in return for a box valued at three-pence. No doubt the sinfulness of this unequal bargain was regarded as consisting in its inducement to foster a habit of theft in the child, and that may account for the severity of the servant's punishment, which adjudged him to have his hands tied to a bar while, for a couple of hours, he stood with a stone- weighted basket slung from his neck. Such offences as these, with thefts of drink and lem- ons and other luxuries, which occurred on Josselyn's boat, may also have caused a little excitement on the voyage of John Harvard. On four days out of each week, these seven- teenth century passengers seem to have been regaled with a fish diet, and on other days the rations included about a pound of salt beef or pork for each adult. Dried peas appear to have been the only vegetables carried; and for the rest the daily menu comprised oat- 254 THE NEW WORLD meal, bread, butter, and cheese, and copious draughts of what was called "six shilling beer." Now and again the sailors caught some fresh fish, but if their angling was prosecuted on Sunday, Harvard may have followed the ex- ample of the Puritans who sailed with Josselyn and thrown his share back into the sea. Rarely indeed was one of these protracted voyages completed without death making its appearance on the vessel. If the victim hap- pened to be a sailor, he was usually "a most profane fellow," and his demise was interpreted as a divine judgment; if, on the other hand, the child of a Puritan was taken, it was either regarded as a call to increased godliness or ex- plained by the reflection that the child would not have lived long even on land. The dreaded smallpox sometimes broke out in mid Atlantic, and it is not uncommon to find a death attrib- uted to consumption. Perhaps, on that score, Harvard's wife may have had many anxious thoughts for her husband on their long journey. She knew not that neither the perils of the ocean nor the ravages of disease could thwart 255 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the service he was destined to render on the shores of the New World. Not unnaturally, perhaps, many of the Puri- tans have been charged with leaving England in anything but an amiable state of temper; one writer, indeed, noted the " savage fury with which they deserted their native land"; but that this was the emotion with which the ma- jority of the exiles started on their long journey it is impossible to believe. The eloquent Hig- ginson is said to have improved the occasion by calling all the passengers to the stern of the ves- sel and delivering himself of the apostrophe: " We will not say, as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England, * Farewell, Babylon ! Farewell, Rome ! ' But we will say, * Farewell, dear England ! Farewell, the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there ! ' In their valedictory address, Winthrop and his company declared that they could not part from their native country " with- out much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes"; and Edward Johnson, who was one of that band, protested that "for England's 256 THE NEW WORLD sake they are going from England, to pray without ceasing for England." Harvard, we may be sure, shared to the full in those natural emotions. The graves of those he loved were all in the soil of that " dear, dear land"; and there, too, as he then thought, still lived his one brother, the last save himself of that happy family circle of but a few years ago. Nor is it believable that the prospect of religious freedom in a far-off land could crush down that devoted affection for England which her children have never cherished more warmly than they did in the seventeenth century. Such sad thoughts, too, as would inevitably arise as he saw the green fields and white cliffs of his native land fading from his sight, must have been overcast with a deeper melancholy by the remembrance of his brother's ill-health. John and Thomas Harvard were never to meet again. Only a few days at the most after his brother sailed, Thomas Harvard closed his eyes in death. Thus, long ere he set foot on the shores of the New World, John Har- vard's personal estate had been materially in- JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES creased under the provisions of his brother's will. Harvard was fortunate and yet unfortunate in the hour of his arrival in New England; fortunate in the season of the year, unfortu- nate in that the entire community was dis- tracted by a rancorous religious controversy. To eyes which had gazed for so many weeks upon the ocean's wide expanse, the picture of Boston Bay in those midsummer days of 1637 must have been a grateful relief. On the left the headland of Hull, and on the right Win- throp promontory, stretched out a sheltering welcome to the weary voyagers, a welcome which would gather emphasis as the high cliffs of the harbour islands were seen to "shoul- der out the boisterous seas." Island and mainland alike were clad in their full summer verdure, the rich green of grass and tree blend- ing harmoniously with the white surf which laved the shore and the clear azure of the over- arching heavens. In the background, prime- val forests lent a darker mass to the picture which shaded off in final distance to the purple 258 THE NEW WORLD haze of Blue Hills. A great contrast, no doubt, in Harvard's eyes, to the well- trimmed land- scapes of his native land, but fair in promise of the natural attractions of his new home. As the vessel which bore him manoeuvred her way to her moorings, it is not improbable that Harvard had sight of the ship in which Sir Henry Vane was setting out on his return journey to England, for it is not unlikely that the arrival of Harvard and the departure of Vane would synchronise almost to a day. So notable, too, was the send-off of the late Gov- ernor that even a new arrival would realise that more than usual importance attached to the parting guest. The vessel in which Vane was to sail was at anchor not far from Long Island, and the boat which carried him on board was accompanied by quite a flotilla of small craft, filled with his enthusiastic friends. Such as watched his departure from the shore sped him on his way with repeated musket- volleys, the echoes of which were soon lost in the salute poured forth by the guns of the fort. Harvard may well have wondered what all 259 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES this enthusiasm might portend. But not for long. Landing, as it seems, at Charlestown, Har- vard would soon learn that no one there, or in any other settlement of the colony, dared give habitation to himself and wife for longer than three weeks unless he was able to produce an official permission. No doubt he had brought with him such credentials from Anthony Tuck- ney and other well-known Puritans as enabled him readily to obtain the necessary permission, for on August the 6th he was received as a townsman at Charlestown "with promise of such accommodations as we best can"; but that he should have been met on landing with such a law, enacted only a month or two earlier, must have prompted questions which speedily led to his learning the reason for Vane's bois- terous send-off. For the alien act of May, 1637, the first example of such legislature in the annals of America, had immediate refer- ence to the religious controversy which was raging in Boston when John Harvard reached New England. 260 IN MEMORY OF JOHN HARVARD A.M. AMEMBERofEMMANUEL COLLEGE WHO EMIGRATED TO MASSACHUSETTS BAY AND THERE DYING IN 1038 BEQUEATHED TO A COLLEGE NEWLY ESTABLISHED BY THE GENERAL COURT HIS LIBRARY AND ONE HALF OF HIS ESTATE WHEREFORE HIS NAME IS BORNE BY HARVARD COLLEGE THAT ELDEST OF THE SEMINARIES WHICH ADVANCE LEARNING AND PERPETUATE IT TO POSTERITY THROUGHOUT AMERICA THISTABLET ERECTED BY HARVARD MEN RECORDS THEIR GRATITUDE TO THEIR FOUNDER IN THE COLLEGE WHICH FOSTERED HIS BENEFICENT SPIRIT MEMORIAL TABLET IN THE CHAPEL OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Page 260. THE NEW WORLD There is no chapter in the early annals of the Bay State which one would so willingly ef- face as that which records the pitiless persecu- tion and clerical vengeance with which Anne Hutchinson was hounded from Boston. She may have been a visionary, and possessed by an over- weening confidence in her own ability to interpret the Bible, but the same charges may with equal truth be urged against her per- secutors to a man. To claim, as has so fre- quently been done, that her heresy needed to be crushed in the interests of the community at large, is to admit that Laud himself was the purest and most zealous patriot that ever lived. For Winthrop himself, for the Rev. John Wilson, and all the ministers who figured so shamefully in that episode, no defence is pos- sible which does not at the same time elevate Laud to the rank of a martyr. There is no other alternative. For more than a year prior to Harvard's arrival, the doings and doctrines of this female heretic had been the chief topic of debate in Boston and its vicinity. Nor, probably, did 261 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES the good Puritans of those times regret the initiation of a discussion which lent a spice of excitement to the humdrum routine of their daily life. And as it was a discussion about religion, it harmonised perfectly with their temperament. Even to this day, the more a congregation prides itself upon its orthodoxy, the keener is its relish of a heresy hunt. Every fresh arrival at this time was speedily plied with all the pros and cons of the Hutchinsonian controversy, and Harvard, being a minister, would be supposed to be specially interested in the matter, and coached accordingly with the fullest possible details. What did he think of it all ? During those weary weeks on the ocean, his heart must have been full of the ideal New England to which he was sailing; a country, as he fondly thought, where the Church of God was at peace, and the only strife of the righteous would be a zealous emu- lation of one another in Christian graces. That the serpent of false doctrine should have obtruded into this paradise, would never cross his thoughts. To find this ideal so rudely and 262 THE NEW WORLD so quickly shattered must have been a griev- ous disappointment to John Harvard, as it was to that other new-comer whose distress is so quaintly pictured in a record of the time. Landing with high expectations of the feast of divine ordinances he was so soon to enjoy, this fresh arrival fell into the hands of the heretics themselves, whose expositions of the "new light" they had found so bewildered the poor stranger that he "betook himself to a narrow Indian path, in which his serious meditations soon led him, where none but senseless trees and echoing rocks make answer to his heart- easing moan." If a few of the orthodox had emulated this forerunner of Thoreau, it might have tended to the peace of the Boston Church. Instead of pouring out their sorrows to "senseless trees and echoing rocks," they were, at the time of Harvard's arrival, preparing to proclaim them from the house-tops. Matters had, indeed, reached such a crisis that the or- der had gone forth for the assembling qf a synod at Newtown the Cambridge of to-day whereat, once and for all, the collective 263 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES clerical and lay wisdom of the colony was to adjudicate on the false doctrines which Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends were teaching. All this hubbub had had an apparently inno- cent beginning. About a couple of years after her arrival in Boston, Mrs. Hutchinson con- ceived the idea of holding meetings for her own sex in her own home, the primary idea of which was praiseworthy enough. Many of the moth- ers of the community were not always able to attend the Sunday services in the meeting- house, and in order that they might not be de- prived of the wisdom which fall from the lips of the ministers, Mrs. Hutchinson undertook to entertain them with a summary of what had been said in the sermons they had not heard. So far all was well. In fact, those informal gatherings were regarded as additional evi- dences of the divine presence. Ere long, how- ever, from being a mere reporter of the good things spoken by the Rev. John Wilson and his colleague, the Rev. John Cotton, Mrs. Hutchinson developed into an expositor of their utterances, and then into a critic. In 264 THE NEW WORLD fact, she evolved a religious system of her own which, in substance, was little more than an adaptation of the leading tenet of Antinomian- ism. Briefly put, she came to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit dwelt actually in every true believer, and that such were, in conse- quence, under no obligation to the law of the Old Testament. It was a necessary corollary of this position that correct conduct in life and outward sanctity of demeanour were by no means infallible tokens that the persons who produced such evidences were really the chil- dren of God. By these leading principles Mrs. Hutchinson proceeded to criticise the preachers of the New England churches, with the result that she soon decided there were only two who were in the Covenant of Grace, those two being the Rev. John Cotton, and her brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright. All the others, including the Rev. John Wilson, the pastor of the Boston church, were under the Covenant of Works, and hence numbered among the eternally damned. Such was the magnetism Mrs. Hutchinson 265 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES exercised that the majority of the members of the Boston church became her adherents, chief among them being Sir Henry Vane. So long as he remained in the colony he, both in the affairs of the church and in the delibera- tions of the General Court, afforded the Hutch- insonian party his unfailing support; and it was to mark their appreciation of his services, and their hostility to Winthrop, who sided with the Rev. John Wilson, that they had given him that notable send-off which Harvard had most likely witnessed on his arrival. Hardly had Vane sailed away, than prepar- ations were set on foot for the synod which has been referred to above. Its members included "all the teaching elders through the country,'* in other words, all the twenty-five ministers who already held charges in the colony; and also "some new come out of England, not yet called to any place here." That statement from Winthrop's pen suggests the inevitable conclusion that John Harvard was one of the clerical members of the famous Newtown (or Cambridge) synod. It is certain that he had 266 THE NEW WORLD arrived before August the 6th, and, as Win- throp states, the fact that he had not been called to any church would not disqualify him from becoming a member of the assembly, which did not meet until the last day of August. Harvard, as a new-comer was in a position to regard the proceedings of the synod from a more impartial standpoint than almost any other member, and that he took a keen interest in those twenty-four days of theological dis- cussion may be reasonably inferred from the fact that in collecting his library he had de- voted so much attention to the reports of other synods already famous in 'the history of the church. To the modern mind, however, which has not the faintest interest in the futile talk on which those old Puritans wasted twenty- four precious days, what is most of note is that Harvard's presence at the synod made him familiarly acquainted with those verdant acres on which his own immortal monument was to arise. For the heresy hunt of the autumn of 1637 was conducted in the Newtown church, a structure of roughly- hewn logs, which was sit- 267 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES uated not far from the spot where the buildings of Harvard University now stand. Happily it is not necessary to follow the proceedings of the Newtown synod, nor the equally sterile debates which in General Court and Boston church- meeting marked the sev- eral stages of Mrs. Hutchinson's relentless per- secution. Perhaps Harvard was present on most of those occasions, without, however, taking any active part therein. As a compar- ative stranger, he would be little disposed to interfere in that unseemly family wrangle, and, moreover, there was one side issue of the con- troversy in which he had far greater interest. For, when all the circumstances are consid- ered, it does not seem improbable that the original conception of the "schoale or col- ledge," which makes its sudden appearance in the records of the General Court in 1636, had its origin in the Hutchinsonian contro- versy. There can be no question whatever that the primary idea of those who promoted the college was to ensure a supply of ministers untainted by any of the heresies of the Old 268 THE NEW WORLD World; and the advent of Wheelwright, and the alien law of May, 1637, which was intended to protect the community from such of his supporters as were on their way to New Eng- land, are, in the relation of cause and effect, indications that the authorities were alive to theological danger. No doubt, under any circumstances, provision would have been made for education in due time, but that the scheme for a college specially for the train- ing of ministers should so soon have occupied the attention of the General Court was not improbably due to the Hutchinsonian controversy. Two explanations may be offered for Har- vard's decision in making his home on the Charlestown peninsula instead of in Boston. For several years the latter town had been growing in popularity with the settlers, and it may well have been a much simpler matter to secure adequate accommodation in Charles- town than in Boston. Again, Harvard would naturally locate himself in the district which promised to offer him a field in which to exer- 269 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES cise his ministry, and he would speedily learn there was no prospect of an immediate open- ing on the Shawmut peninsula. What with Mrs. Hutchinson's efforts to have Wilson ousted and Wheelwright installed in his place as the associate of Cotton, Boston was suffer- ing from a plethora of ministers. Such was not the case at Charlestown. In fact, there was already a vacancy in the church there, for although the Rev. Zachariah Symmes held the position of pastor, no one had been elected to the office of teacher since the Rev. Thomas James had been dismissed because of some disagreement with his fellow minister. It should be remembered that in the early days most churches had two ministers, distin- guished as pastor and teacher respectively. The duty of the pastor was to "exhort and apply the precepts of Scripture to practice"; that of the teacher to "explain and defend the doctrines of Scripture." It was to the latter office in the Charlestown church that John Harvard was in due time appointed. As a necessary preliminary to such an ap- 270 THE NEW WORLD pointment, he first, with his wife, joined the full fellowship of the church. The date of their admission was November the 6th, 1637, when Harvard was drawing near to his thirti- eth birthday. In signing the church-roll, these two new members subscribed to the cov- enant and undertook to "solemnly and re- ligiously as in his most holy presence, promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways ac- cording to the rules of the Gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances; and in mutual love and respect to each other: so near as God shall give us grace." Four days earlier, at the General Court held at New- town, which pronounced sentence of banish- ment on Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson alike, John Harvard had been admitted a free- man of the colony. Some time during the closing months of 1637, a lot of land was assigned to Harvard at Charlestown, whereon he no doubt speedily commenced the erection of that house in which, some fifty years later, Judge Sewall lay awake so long musing over the providence which had 271 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES made such comfortable provision for his night's lodging. The fact that Harvard's allotment exceeded in area the plot granted to Mr. Symmes, seems indicative of the esteem his character inspired, an inference which is strengthened by the fact that in the April of the following year he was associated with a few of the principal men of Charlestown on a committee appointed to "consider something tending towards a body of laws." Harvard's library included several volumes relating to legal matters, and if it were possible to com- pare the Charlestown "body of laws" with those volumes it might not be difficult to indi- cate what part Harvard played on that com- mittee. Rude, indeed, was the temple in which Har- vard exercised his ministry at Charlestown as compared with the churches which would be uppermost in his memory. Than the stately fane of St. Mary's at Cambridge, and the noble gothic proportions of St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, no building could present a more striking contrast than the crude struc- 272 COPVRIOHT, 19O4, BY JOHN L FAROE HAKT.VRD MEMORIAL WINDOW, SAINT SAVIOUR'S CHURCH, SOUTHWARK. - Page 272. THE NEW WORLD ture where he was now a teacher of the Word. At first, several years prior to Harvard's ar- rival, the Sunday services at Charlestown were held beneath the shade of a spreading oak- tree, but, owing to the Governor's removal to Boston, it was not long ere " the Great House," which had been built for his use, became avail- able for church services, and it was in that building the Charlestown people listened to the voice of John Harvard. It stood on the west side of what is now City Square, and the house of the young minister was little more than a stone's throw distant. In 1637 the congregation would comprise some two hundred souls, all of whom, we may be sure, gave regular attendance at the two services which were commonly held every Sunday. The first service commenced at nine o'clock in the morning, or even earlier; the second being held in the afternoon soon after the mid-day meal. One important function of the afternoon gathering is depicted for us in this record of the pen of John Josselyn, who was in the country at the time of Harvard's 18 273 ministry: "On Sundays in the afternoon when sermon is ended the people in the gal- leries come down and march two a-breast up one aisle and down the other, until they come before the desk, for pulpit they have none: before the desk is a long pew where the Elders and Deacons sit, one of them with a money box in his hand, into which the people as they pass put their offering, some a shilling, some two shillings, half a crown, five shillings, ac- cording to their ability and good will, after this they conclude with a Psalm." Absorbed first in the building of his house, and then in his preparations for the discharge of his duties as teacher, Harvard's few short months moved onwards to their close. Apart from his services on that committee which was charged with drafting a "body of laws," he does not appear to have taken any active part in the affairs of the young community. It may be that his health was now rapidly fail- ing, and that he felt he should reserve such O' little strength as he had for the discharge of his ministerial duties. 274 THE NEW WORLD There was one matter, however, in which he certainly took a keen interest, and that was the proposal for the establishment of a college. This had been under consideration some nine months before he landed in New England, for the records of the General Court, under date October 28th, 1636, include this entry: "The Court agreed to give .400 towards a school or college, whereof .200 to be paid the next year, and .200 when the work is finished, and the next court to appoint where and what building." But the "next court" did not fulfil that obligation. No doubt the explanation may be sought in trouble with the Indians, religious controversy, and the pressure of more urgent business; but, whatever the cause, it should be noted that more than a year elapsed ere the college question again came before the General Court. Even then the record, under date November 15th, 1637, only states that "The college is ordered to be at Newtown." How- ever, now that the matter was revived it was not to be shelved any more, and consequently 275 five days later the Court formally appointed a committee of the leading laymen and min- isters " to take order for a college at Newtown." Building operations were, no doubt, forth- with begun, and concurrently therewith Mr. Nathaniel Eaton was appointed first master. Unfortunately he seems to have been made treasurer as well, and that he availed him- self of the opportunity thus afforded him of exercising an early genius for "graft" seems only too probable. Whether that was so or not, it is interesting to note that the next entry in the colonial records was made on March 13th, 1639, and was in these terms: "It is ordered, that the college agreed upon formerly to be built at Cambridge shall be called Harvard College." Two events, then, tad taken place. In honour of the university town of the majority of New England min- isters, the name of Newtown had been changed to Cambridge; and, in meet praise of one whose dying thought had turned to the in- fant seminary, that nameless school had re- ceived the title by which it was to become 270 THE NEW WORLD world famous. It was to matter little that no stone was upreared over the grave of the young minister to perpetuate the name of John Harvard; while that name was still freshly remembered, it was taken from the grave of its owner and rewritten on a memo- rial which no lichen-growth can efface or ravage of time destroy. It was as the year turned to the fall that John Harvard died. Having withstood the severity of one New England winter, he and his wife may have had good hopes that he would survive many more. But destiny had ordered it otherwise; and on September the 14th, 1638, the last member of that Southwark home passed away. The probabilities are that death came so suddenly at last that no oppor- tunity offered for the preparation of a formal will; at any rate, no such document has sur- vived. Yet Harvard was able to make it perfectly clear to his wife and his friends that one-half of his estate, and the whole of his library, should be given to the new college at Cambridge, little knowing that that death- 277 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES bed bequest was to have such momentous results. Some difference of opinion has been ex- pressed as to the actual money value of Har- vard's legacy. The chronicler of his death uses a phrase which may be interpreted as meaning that the total value of Harvard's estate was only some seven hundred pounds, but that it was greatly in excess of that amount must be obvious from the account given of that estate in the previous chapter. Un- doubtedly the weight of evidence is in favour of Harvard's property realising fully sixteen hundred pounds, and that being so the round figure of eight hundred pounds used by Win- throp may not unfaithfully represent the sum the young minister intended to give. Whether, however, through some unknown cause, the funds of the college benefited to that ex- tent seems doubtful. Nor does that affect the value or lessen the generosity of Har- vard's notable gift. If the sum were only four hundred pounds, he would still have made a bequest equal in value to the gift of 278 THE NEW WORLD the entire state as represented by the General Court. None of the records relating to Harvard's legacy make any reference to his widow. Perhaps that is not surprising when it is re- membered that she did not remain a widow for long. In little more than a year after Harvard's death, his place as teacher in the Charlestown church was filled by the ap- pointment of the Rev. Thomas Allen, who, not long after, espoused the widow of his predecessor. Naturally, then, the adminis- tration of Harvard's estate was placed in his hands, and it is he who figures in the records of the college as handing over various sums of money payable under Harvard's will. Nor, it seems, did the General Court lack at least the intention of requiting Mr. Allen's services. Among some old records in England is pre- served an extract from the minutes of the Boston General Court, which states that on May 22nd, 1668, the court granted "to Mr. Allen five hundred acres in regard of Mr. Harvard's gift." It is true that no confirma- 279 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES tion of this gift is to be found in the Colonial Records, but the existence of the copy of the minute surely proves that the matter must have been before the General Court. Mr. Allen had returned to England sixteen years pre- viously, and although he had long completed his services in connection with Harvard's leg- acy, it is evident that their value had not been forgotten. Or, rather, perhaps this intended grant of land witnesses to the fact that the thirty years which had elapsed since Harvard's death had revealed to a new generation the real value of his generous gift. 280 VIII THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD THE HARVARD MONUMENT AT CHARLESTOWN ON THE SUPPOSED SITE OF HIS GRAVE IN THE PHIPPS STREET BURYING GROUND. Page 283. CHAPTER VIII THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD HAD the gift of perspective been granted in greater measure to the early historians of New England, we should not have to deplore the paucity of contemporary references to John Harvard. Even in the space of those fourteen months which were all that were allotted to him on American soil, he must have made the ac- quaintance of at least the leading ministers, if not the principal laymen, of the colony. Among the former were many who, like Harvard himself, were the sons of Emmanuel College, and that fact alone, in a strange land, would provide a strong bond of union. Cotton had been a fellow of Emmanuel, and as he was related to Anthony Tuckuey by marriage, and had been associated with him in ministerial work in Old Boston, it is quite likely that Harvard bore a letter of introduction from 283 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES his old tutor to the teacher of the Boston church. Yet Cotton, for all his voluminous writing, is dumb as to Harvard and his gen- erous help to the Cambridge college. Nor should it be forgotten that the Rev. Zachariah Symmes, with whom Harvard was associated in the oversight of the Charlestown church, was also a graduate of Emmanuel, and it might have been expected that he would have placed on record some account of the life of his colleague, especially in view of the service he had rendered to the young community in the cause of education. How willingly we would have spared the dreary sermons, and the still more dreary records of the theological hair-splitting of those times, for a few pages of incidents in Harvard's New England life! It is somewhat difficult to decide which of the early references to Harvard should be given priority in point of time. No doubt the bald statement of Governor Winthrop to the effect that "Mr. Harvard gave to the college about ,800" must be placed first in THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD the chronicle of Harvard's praise, for that entry appears to have been made by Winthrop prior to the year 1641; but it is so meagre in its particulars as makes its order in the story of little consequence. When, however, records richer in detail have to be considered, the contest for priority seems to rest between the "Autobiography" of Thomas Shepard and the early pamphlet entitled "New Eng- land's First Fruits." Shepard may have written his brief tribute to Harvard soon after his death, but as his "Autobiography" was not published for some years, the reference made by the writer of "New England's First Fruits" may justly be awarded pride of place in this connection. Those settlers in New England who were sturdy enough not to allow the minor incon- veniences of their surroundings to outweigh the primary advantage of religious freedom, were commendably zealous in advertising their felicity by means of letters to their friends in the old home. Some of those enthusiasts, as we have seen in the case of the exuberant 285 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Higginson, rather overstepped the boundary of truth; but others, among whom the an- onymous, author of "New England's First Fruits" must be included, gave a perfectly honest account of the real conditions of life in the new country. It appears that the narrative of the last-named writer took the form of a copious letter to some friends in England, and that it was penned in Boston on September 26th, 1642, or four years after Harvard's death. The person, or persons, to whom this epistle was addressed acted wisely in sending it to the press, and in that way it became possible for the London reader of 1643 to learn something of the generous legacy which had been made in New England by a Southwark man only five years earlier. Unfortunately, Thomas Harvard had not lived to see that early record of his brother's praise, but it is not improbable that friends and rela- tives of the family may have had this pamphlet brought under their notice. No doubt they would have found little to interest them in those pages which were devoted to an ac- 286 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD count of the conversion of some Indians in the vicinity of the settlement, but the follow- ing passage would bring back vividly to their memory that friend who sailed away to the New World only a few years before. "After God had carried us safe to New England," wrote this unknown historian, "and we had builded our houses, provided neces- saries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government: one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning, and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. And as we were think- ing and consulting how to effect this great work; it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, there living amongst us) to give the one half of his estate (it being in all about 1700) towards the erecting of a college, and all his library: after him another gave .300, others after them cast 287 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES in more, and the public hand of the State added the rest: the college was, by common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge, a place very pleasant and accommodate, and is called (according to the name of the first founder) Harvard College." When a careful comparison is made between that narrative and the account given by Thomas Shepard, it would seem that the latter must have been committed to paper before the former. For it will be noticed that while the author of "New Eng- land's First Fruits" writes of the college as at Cambridge, and specially mentions why Harvard's name had been bestowed upon it, Shepard still keeps to the old name of New- town and makes no reference to the college under the title by which it has become so famous. Shepard's record, it will be ob- served, opens with a reminiscence of the Hutchinsonian controversy. "Thus the Lord," he gratefully notes, "having delivered the country from war with the Indians and Familists (who arose 288 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD and fell together), he was pleased to direct the hearts of the magistrates (then keeping Court ordinarily in our town, because of these stirs at Boston), to think of erecting a school or college and that speedily to be a nursery of knowledge in these deserts and supply for posterity, and because this town (then called Newtown) was through God's great care and goodness kept spotless from the contagion of the opinions, therefore at the desire of some of our town the deputies of the Court having got Mr. Eaton to attend the school, the Court for that and sundry other reasons determined to erect the college here, which was no sooner done but the chief of the magistrates and elders sent to England to desire help to forward this work, but they all neglecting us (in a manner) the Lord put it into the heart of one Mr. Harvard, who died worth 1600, to give half of his estate to the erecting of the school. This man was a scholar and pious in his life and enlarged towards the country and the good of it in life and death, but no sooner was this 19 289 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES given but Mr. Eaton did lavish out a great part of it." Although it is impossible to locate the exact date when Captain Edward Johnson, the somewhat discursive author of the "Wonder Working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England," wrote his account of the founding of the college, its publication in London in 1654 indicates that his narrative should be placed next in chronological order. Johnson's account, which occupies a place in his history under the date of 1638, is as meagre in its refer- ence to Harvard as those already cited. He appears to have been conscious of the defect, and valiantly tried to make amends by eking out his notice with a more than usually dis- tressing example of what with him did duty for poetry. "This year" (1638), Johnson wrote, "al- though the estates of these pilgrim people were much wasted, yet seeing the benefit that would accrue to the churches of Christ and civil government, by the Lord's blessing, upon learning, they began to erect a college, the 290 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD Lord by his provident hand giving his appro- bation to the work, in sending over a faithful and godly servant of his, the reverend Mr. John Harvard, who joining with the people of Christ at Charlestown, suddenly after departed this life, and gave near a thousand pounds towards the work; wherefore the government thought it meet to call it Harvard College in remembrance of him. " If Harvard had with riches here been taken, He need not then through troublous seas have past, But Christ's bright glory hath thine eyes so waken, Nought can content, thy soul of him must tast : O tast and tell how sweet his saints among, Christ ravished hath thy heart with heavenly joys To preach and pray with tears affection strong, From heart's delight in him who thee employs. Scarce hast thou had Christ's Churches here in eye, But thou art call'd to eye him face to face ; Earth's scant contents death calls thee from, for why ? Full joy thou wouldst that 's only in heaven's place." Most of the early founders of New England laboured under the delusion that they could write poetry. Indeed, the first volume pub- lished in British America, the "Bay Psalm Book," was thought to be a volume of verse, 291 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES although, it is true, the authors were candid enough to confess that what they had aimed at had been "fidelity rather than poetry." Perhaps their statement was unnecessary; few could possibly have suspected otherwise. And yet all the metrical productions of those days manifest such a sublime oblivion of the essential element of poetry, that even John- son's lines and Cotton's "elegies" may have passed for genuine products of the muse. Perhaps, under the circumstances, we should be grateful that so few of the New England poets selected John Harvard as the theme for their painful efforts, especially when it is re- membered that the following lines from the pen of the Rev. John Wilson undoubtedly reach the high- water mark of such efforts: " Your patron's voice my eager spirit hears Nay ! spurn it not with dull and listless ears, He speaks. God, through the boundless mercy of his Son, Called to my spirit sweetly led me on Filled me with strength divine, and showed the way Which made life blessed to its latest day. That call I heeded : though unworthy still, I strove to do my heavenly Master's will ; 292 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD Chosen of God to found, through grace divine, For Christian Learning an enduring shrine. Not that no spouse sustained my fainting head, Or loving children watched my dying bed ; These I remembered, yet a half of all I gave to you who throng this sacred hall. The common weal, the glory of my God, The love of man these lured me where I trod. Strong was my faith 't was all I asked that ye Would shine as lights of truth and piety. This hope, in life so blessed, adds a zest To the high pleasure of this heavenly rest. But if, degenerate, ye shall ever find Sloth dearer than the riches of the mind ; If losing virtue, nought is left beside A bloated ignorance, inflamed by pride ; If darling heresies delight afford, And ye deny your conscience and your Lord, How will ye spurn the path your founder trod How tempt a covenant-keeping God ! Yet blend not thoughts like these with thoughts of me ; A better fortune seem these eyes to see. Nay ! Heaven itself could scarce suffice my heart, If hope like this should languish and depart. Thus far our God each pure endeavour cheers, And will supply the strength of future years. Walk by his light, His wisdom and His will He shall reveal a brighter glory still. And if, like David's Peter's from the way Of virtue any heedless foot shall stray, Yet if, like them, the wanderer shall repent, 293 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES Our God doth pardon every penitent. To Him be glory ! to his glory, too, Do whatso'er your hands shall find to do. And as old Cambridge well deserved its name, May the new Cambridge win as pure a fame." To what date the above effusion should be assigned, is unknown; it appeared first in Cotton Mather's " Magnalia," which was pub- lished in 1702. Wilson died in 1667, but his papers were placed in Mather's hands when he was in labour with his voluminous history, and that accounts for Wilson's poem making its first appearance under his auspices. Of course the monumental "Magnalia" has something to say about the founding of the college, but it was characteristic of the care- lessness of its author that he should have as- signed the grant of <400 by the General Court to the year 1630 instead of to 1636. However, it may be placed to his credit that he realised the importance of Harvard's gift, for, after recording the vote of the General Court, he added: "But that which laid the most signifi- cant stone in the foundation, was the last will of Mr. John Harvard, a reverend and excel- 294 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD lent minister of the gospel, who, dying at Charlestown of a consumption, quickly after his arrival here, bequeathed the sum of seven hundred, seventy-nine pounds, seventeen shill- ings and twopence towards the pious work of building a college, which was now set on foot. A committee then being chosen to prosecute the affair so happily commenced, it soon found encouragement from several other benefactors : the other colonies sent some small help to the undertaking, and several particular gentlemen did more than whole colonies to support and forward it: but because the memorable Mr. John Harvard led the way by a generosity ex- ceeding the most of them that followed, his name was justly seternised, by its having the name of Harvard College imposed upon it." Before passing away from these early trib- utes to Harvard, one or two suggestions arising therefrom call for brief comment. It will not have escaped notice, for example, that Wil- son's verses credit Harvard with children as well as a wife. Those children were a figment of the poet's fancy. John Harvard had no 295 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES children; indeed, with him, as has been hinted already, the family of Robert Harvard became extinct. His widow bore her second husband, the Rev. Thomas Allen, four daughters, of whom one at least was living when Mary Sad- ler, the mother of Harvard's wife, made her will in 1645, for that document specially men- tions the testator's "daughter Anne Allin and her daughter Mary." In other respects, the pious and orthodox sentiments which Wilson places in the mouth of Harvard probably do little violence to his character or opinions, and that being so it may be doubted whether the original benefactor of the college would be altogether satisfied with its later theological developments. Unless, indeed, the spirits of the just may be supposed to advance pari passu with the trend of reli- gious thought in this mundane world. Unfortunately, the records quoted above are not of material service in enabling us to reach a final decision as to the exact amount of Har- vard's bequest. No fewer than five different sums are named, but three out of those totals 296 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD approach sufficiently near to the specific amount named by Cotton Mather as to make it probable that his statement may, for once, be relied upon. The fact that he is so detailed as to include the "twopence" makes it practi- cally certain that he derived his information from the old records of the college, where Har- vard's legacy is stated in the exact figures of seven hundred and seventy- nine pounds, sev- enteen shillings, and twopence. So far as those records go, however, a sum of a little less than four hundred pounds was all that the college authorites received. As Harvard's real estate was situated in England, some time would elapse ere everything could be realised, and, considering the condition of England at the time, it is not surprising to learn that even by December, 1643, the "accounts of Mr. Har- vard's gift" had not been finally settled. As, however, the statement in the college records quoted above was entered long subsequent to 1643, it seems only reasonable to conclude that the sum mentioned therein represented the ex- act half of the total proceeds of Harvard's es 297 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES tate at the final settlement, and full credit is due to him for that amount, no matter what ill chance may have prevented some of it from reaching the college treasury. Nor, in esti- mating the generosity of that gift, should we forget to once more multiply those seventeenth- century figures by eight, in order that the modern mind may arrive at an adequate conception of the relative value of Harvard's legacy. That, half a century after his death, the peo- ple of New England had learnt to appreciate the action of the young minister at its real value is obvious. By that time Harvard College had en- tered in good earnest on its triumphant career as the centre of learning in America, and the name of its earliest benefactor had already gath- ered around it the beginnings of that honour in which it was to be more securely enshrined in the thought of later generations. Nowhere, perhaps, does that reverence find more attrac- tive record than in this page from the diary of Judge Sewall, which is dated January, 1696: "I lodged at Charlestown at Mrs. Shepherd's, TITLE-PAGE OF "THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE," PRESERVED IN THE LIBRARY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Page 299. THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD who tells, me Mr. Harvard built that house. I lay in the chamber next the street. As I lay awake past midnight, in my meditation, I was affected to consider how long ago God had made provision for my comfortable lodging that night; seeing that was Mr. Harvard's house." Remorseless, indeed, has been the oblivion which has overtaken and utterly effaced every record of the footsteps of John Harvard on American soil. Even that house in which Judge Sewall spent such a comfortable night has shared in the general fate, for there is no record of its existence subsequent to the con- flagration of June 17th, 1775. Eleven years earlier, too, the same devouring element had reduced to ashes all the books of John Har- vard's carefully gathered library, save one volume, which seems to have owed its escape to having been in the hands of a borrower on that wild January night when Harvard Hall was obliterated by the flames. Hence that one book, a portly Puritan folio entitled "Christian Warfare," is the only actual relic 299 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES of the young minister which survives in New England. Although the general Court of the Bay State has often been eloquently and worthily eulo- gised for its grant of ,400 on October 28th, 1836, it seems necessary in the interests of ac- curacy to point out that no record exists of that sum ever having been paid into the college funds. The accounts appear to show that so far as the original grant is concerned, there is still a balance of .350 due to the college, which, perhaps, it may be too late in the day to claim ! Moreover, the General Court appears to have been so short of ready cash in those days that it actually borrowed nearly two hundred pounds from Harvard's legacy. These facts enable us the better to appraise that legacy at its real worth. If ever there was a case which illus- trated conclusively the truth of bis dat qui cito dat, this was one. The idea of the college was in the air, no doubt; nay, more, it existed on the records of the General Court; but some- thing seemed lacking to resolve the idea into visible form. That something John Harvard 300 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD supplied. He, indeed, "led the way"; his was the example of practical help which served the vital function of stimulating the liberality of others. Adequately, then, did he earn the honour of being canonised as the " principal founder" of the university whieh bears his name. And yet, such is the indifference with which we regard our greatest benefactors, nearly two hundred years were allowed to pass away ere the first effort was made to pay any spe- cific tribute to the memory of John Harvard. The honour of heading the movement which effected that tardy reparation belongs to Ed- ward Everett, one of Harvard's best-known sons. At his instigation, during a social gath- ering of some fellow-graduates held under the roof of Dr. George Parkman, in Boston, a dis- cussion arose as to the desirability of erecting a monument to the memory of John Harvard, and the idea was so warmly approved that a committee to further its execution was at once formed. A few days later, a letter was ad- dressed to the alumni of the university, stating 301 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES that it was proposed to erect a suitable monu- ment in the Charlestown burial ground, and notifying that the subscription was limited to one dollar from each individual. "In our an- cient and venerable University," this letter remarked, "a most illustrious, and, we trust, imperishable monument has been reared to his memory. But it has appeared to many of the children of our alma mater, that a common re- spect towards the name of a public benefactor suggests the propriety of marking out, by a suitable memorial, the spot where his mortal remains are deposited. It seems unbecoming that the stranger, who inquires for such a me- morial of the earliest benefactor of the cause of education in the country, should be told that none such has been raised." So liberal and ready was the response to this appeal, that on September 26th, 1828, a solid obelisk of American granite stood on the summit of burial-hill, Charlestown, awaiting unveiling. That this monument, however, marks the exact spot where John Harvard's body was laid to rest seems improbable. Tra- 302 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD dition alone remained as a guide in that mat- ter ; and altogether it seems true that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes stated in his poem at the cele- bration of 1886, " In vain the delving antiquary tries To find the tomb where generous Harvard lies." As was most appropriate, the address at the unveiling ceremony of September 26th, 1828, was delivered by Edward Everett. It had been expected that President John Quincy Adams would have taken part in the ceremony, but, having to leave Boston unexpectedly, his sympathy with the event was expressed in a notable letter instead of by the living voice. In that letter, after commenting on the religious character of the New England settlement, President Adams said: "Harvard was himself a clergyman. Possessed of a fortune compe- tent to a comfortable subsistence in his native country, his emigration could have been dic- tated only by principles of moral and religious duty. But these motives were common to the great mass of the first settlers, whose sincerity had been tested by greater sacrifices and suffer- 303 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES ings than appear to have been required or en- dured by him. He probably was not involved in those vehement religious controversies upon questions unintelligible to us and to them, but upon which they wasted their understanding and their affections. He was not distin- guished among the divines of the age as a dis- putant. He took a less beaten path to the veneration of after times, and a shorter road to heaven." Although little was known about John Har- vard at the time the Charlestown monument was erected, Mr. Everett marked with unerring intuition wherein he had rendered the com- munity his best service, for he saw that "but for his generosity" the project for the erection of a college might have been delayed many years. Many passages in Mr. Everett's ad- dress have been rendered obsolete by the fuller knowledge we now possess, but the following sentences are as timely to-day as when they were first spoken: " And now let no man deride our labour, how- ever humble, as insignificant or useless. With 304 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD what interest should we not gaze upon this simple and unpretending shaft, had it been erected at the decease of him whom it com- memorates, and did we now behold it gray with the moss and beaten with the storms of two centuries! In a few years, we, who now per- form this duty of filial observance, shall be as those who are resting beneath us; but our children and our children's children, to the latest generation, will prize this simple memo- rial, first and chiefly for the sake of the hon- oured name which is graven on its face, but with an added feeling of kind remembrance of those who have united to pay this debt of gratitude. "When we think of the mighty importance in our community of the system of public in- struction, and regard the venerable man whom we commemorate as the first to set the exam- ple of contributing liberally for the endowment of places of education (an example faithfully imitated in this region, in almost every suc- ceeding age), we cannot, as patriots, admit that any honour which it is in our power to pay 20 305 to his memory, is beyond his desert. If we further dwell on our own obligation, and con- sider that we ourselves have drunk of the streams that have flowed from this sacred well, that in the long connection of cause and effect, which binds the generations of men in- dissolubly to each other, it is perhaps owing to his liberality that we have enjoyed the ad- vantages of a public education, we shall surely feel, as students, that the poor tribute we have united to render to his memory falls infinitely below the measure either of his merit or of our obligation. "But, humble as they are, let these acts of acknowledgment impress on our bosoms a just estimate of desert. Of all the first fathers of New England, the wise and provident rulers, the grave magistrates, the valiant captains, those who counselled the people in peace, and led them in war, the gratitude of this late posterity has first sought out the spot where this transient stranger was laid to rest, scarce a year after his arrival in America. It is not that we are insensible to the worth of their 306 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD characters, nor that we are ungrateful for their services. But it was given to the venerated man whom we commemorate this day to strike the keynote in the character of this people first to perceive with a prophet's foresight, and to promote with a princely liberality, consid- ering his means, that connection between pri- vate munificence and public education, which, well understood and pursued by others, has given to New England no small proportion of her name and praise in the land. What is there to distinguish our community so honour- ably as its establishments for general educa- tion, beginning with its public schools, sup- ported wholly by the people, and continued through the higher institutions, in whose en- dowment public and private liberality has gone hand in hand ? What so eminently reflects credit upon us, and gives to our places of education a character not possessed by those of many other communities, as the number and liberal- ity of the private benefactions which have been made to them? The excellent practice of liberal giving has obtained a currency here, 307 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES which, if I mistake not, it possesses in few other places. Men give not merely from their abundance but from their competence; and following the great example, which we now celebrate, of John Harvard, wno gave half his fortune and all his books, it is no uncommon thing for men to devote a very considerable portion of estates not passing the bounds of moderation, to the endowment of public institutions. "And well does the example of Harvard teach us, that what is thus given away is in reality the portion best saved and longest kept. In the public trusts to which it is con- fided, it is safe, as far as anything human is safe, from the vicissitudes to which all else is subject. Here, neither private extrava- gance can squander, nor personal necessity exhaust it. Here it will not perish with the poor clay to whose natural wants it would else have been appropriated. Here, uncon- sumed itself, it will feed the hunger of the mind, the only thing on earth that never dies, and endure, and do good for ages, 308 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD after the donor himself has ceased to live, in aught but his benefactions." Eight years later, on September 8th, 1836, the two hundredth anniversary of the founda- tion of Harvard University was celebrated with considerable pomp and ceremony, the pro- ceedings of the day being held in a spacious pavilion in the grounds, specially erected for the occasion. At the banquet, no fewer than forty sentiments were presented, the second of which, honoured by the entire company up- standing, was in these terms: "The sacred memory of John Harvard, who set the first example, on the American continent, of a union between private munificence and public edu- cation, which has bound successive genera- tions, as with links of steel, together, and has given to an unknown stranger a deathless name.*' Apart from that toast, which was neither prefaced nor followed by any special address, an examination of the numerous speeches at the banquet reveals the surprising fact that practically no references were made to the "principal founder" of the university. 309 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES It seems, also, that no invitation to the cele- bration had been addressed to John Harvard's old college of Emmanuel. At any rate, no representative was present from the English Cambridge. That university, however, was not entirely overlooked, for Judge Story, at the close of a speech recounting the obligations of New England to the scholars and ministers who took part in the early settlement, toasted, " Our Ancient Mother, the University of Cam- bridge in old England. Salve, magna Par ens, Magna Virum." When, nearly half a century later, the ter- centenary of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, was duly celebrated, the praise of John Har- vard did not lack adequate utterance. In connection with that event, the chapel of the college was thoroughly renovated, and it was as a part of that scheme that the Harvard win- dow was placed in that building. The first invitation to the proceedings, which took place on June 19th and 20th, 1884, was addressed to the authorities of Harvard University, and in cordial and prompt reply Professor Charles 310 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD Eliot Norton was delegated to represent the university on the occasion. Another illustri- ous son of Harvard was also present in the person of James Russell Lowell, then occupy- ing with such brilliant success the position of American Ambassador in England. In the speeches on that occasion many references were made to the enviable position Emmanuel occupied as "a mother of Univer- sities," and alike at the banquet on the first day and at the luncheon on the day following, no toast was received with greater cordiality than that of "Prosperity to Harvard College.'* On each occasion, of course, the duty of reply- ing fell to Professor Norton, and although he dwelt to some extent upon the achievements in New England which other scholars of Em- manuel had placed to their credit, he naturally gave most prominence to the name of John Harvard. After relating the few facts which were all that were then known of his history, he added: "We see him now as one of the Great- hearts of his generation whom England begot, Cambridge bred, and Emmanuel in 311 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES special nurtured; men who went forth from here full of the faith which gives steadiness to high resolve, rich in the culture which invig- orates as well as refines, and strong in a cour- age which no perils could daunt because its source was in the Rock of Ages, men who went forth to cross the vast and solitary sea, and in the wilderness on its further shore to lay the little stones which were to prove the more than Cyclopean foundations of an unparal- leled commonwealth, not unworthy to be called by the great name of New England.'* Ere the year which had marked the placing of a window in Emmanuel chapel to the memory of John Harvard had ended, that suggestive statue which stands on the Delta in the grounds of Harvard University was unveiled to public gaze. This memorial was the generous gift of an alumnus of the university, Samuel J. Bridge, whose Charlestown pastor, the Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D., was deputed to deliver the address at the unveiling ceremony on Oc- tober 15th, 1884. "Reverence, love, gratitude, and honour," 312 STATUE OF JOHN HARVARD ON THE DELTA, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Page B12- THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD Dr. Ellis remarked in the course of his ad- dress, "have combined to enlist genius in their service, that there may be a personal memorial of Harvard on these grounds, which his living feet, doubtless, often trod. There is not known to be extant a portrait or any delineation or description of his per- sonality, his form, or features. Is not the prompting, however, fair and allowable, that there should be some artistic memorial of him on these grounds ? Let it be distinctly and frankly avowed, for record on this precise day of the unveiling of a statue as a simulacrum of John Harvard, so that only wilful error, or a fond, mythical invention can ever mis- lead or falsify a generous and grateful prompt- ing, that this exquisite moulding in bronze serves a purpose for the eye, the thought, and sentiment, through the ideal, in lack of the real. ... It shows us a young scholar in the aca- demic costume and garb of his time, with the refinement and gravity of pure high- thinking. Gently touched by the weakness which was wasting his immature life, he rests for a mo- 313 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES ment from his converse with the wisdom on the printed page, and raises his contemplative eyes to the spaces of all wisdom. The seal of his English college is on the left of the pedestal, and that which was so felicitously seized upon for the college to which he transferred learning from the Old World to the New, is on the right. Let this memorial be richly garlanded with summer flowers on your high class days! Let the pensive beauty of that sweet countenance be cheer and inspiration to the student passing by it, under fair, or clouded, or stormy skies, or by the illumination of the moon!" In accepting the custody of the statue on be- half of the university, President Charles Wil- liam Eliot epitomised in few but felicitous words the most outstanding lessons of Har- vard's life: "The University counts of ines- timable worth the lessons which this pure, gentle, resolute youth will teach, as he sits in bronze looking wistfully into the western sky. He will teach that one disinterested deed of hope and faith may crown a brief and broken life with deathless fame. He will teach that 314 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD the good which men do lives after them, fruc- tified and multiplied beyond all power of meas- urement or computation. He will teach that from the seed which he planted in loneliness, weakness, and sorrow, have sprung joy, strength, and energy ever fresh, blooming year after year in this garden of learning, and flourishing more and more, as time goes on, in all fields of human activity.'* Two graceful tributes to the memory of John Harvard adorn the record of the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the university. On that occa- sion the proceedings extended over four days, from the 5th to the 8th of November, 1886; and they were rendered memorable by the de- livery of Lowell's historic oration. Strangely enough, however, he made no more than a passing reference to "the gentle and godly youth from whom we took our name, him- self scarce more than a name." All too few, also, were the words in which Robert C. Win- throp, a descendant of the Governor Winthrop whom Harvard knew, spoke of the "young 315 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES graduate of Emmanuel" who had won so un- consciously such an enduring fame. There was not, he said, "any other name in all the annals of literature and learning so sure to hold its place in the grateful and affectionate remembrance of generation after generation to the last syllable of recorded time.*' At this celebration, John Harvard's college of Emmanuel was worthily represented by Mandell Creighton, the historian and bishop whose premature death inflicted such a griev- ous loss on the world of learning. Possessing, as he did, the historic faculty, it was natural that his thoughts should turn chiefly to the figure of John Harvard. "To me," he said, "the solitary figure of the unknown scholar, from whom you take your name, has a special significance through its very indistinctness. To some it is given to work out their ideas through a long course of intellectual produc- tion or public service; others can only express themselves in some one decisive act. We know enough of John Harvard's character to justify our admiration; we know that he was 316 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD devoted to the spread of learning and the pro- motion of the public welfare. His munificence was applied to further the object of popular aspiration. What the scanty revenues of the country could scarcely compass was accom- plished by the example which his hopefulness set forth. He was at once a scholar, a states- man, a philanthropist; a man whom Emman- uel may be proud to have trained, and Harvard may be proud to recognise as her founder. It matters not that John Harvard cannot be shown to have been a man of social or intellec- tual distinction. It may be that John Har- vard's teachers shook their heads sadly over an awkward lad who sat silent in their lecture- rooms; but the name of John Harvard's teachers are, I fear, forgotten, while John Harvard's name lives and is venerated to-day, and, judging from to-day's enthusiasm, is likely to live through the long future of this great University. For John Harvard learned a les- son beyond what his teachers could impart; his fine sense caught the spirit of the institu- tion which had inspired his intellectual life, 317 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES and with the strength of that spirit he could inspire others." Although the twentieth century has not reached its first decade, it has already wit- nessed the erection of two memorials in John Harvard's honour. The first of these, the gift of Harvard alumni, takes the form of a memo- rial brass, which was placed in the chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on August 25th, 1904. The tablet bears that it is to per- petuate the gratitude of Harvard men " to their founder in the college which fostered his beneficent spirit." The other memorial is a stained-glass window of rare beauty, which, owing to the generosity of Ambassador Joseph H. Choate, now adorns the Lady Chapel of St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, where Harvard was baptised. The donor himself unveiled the window on May 22nd, 1905, and in his brief address he noted how " the name of John Har- vard, unknown and of little account when he left England, has been a benediction to the New World, and his timely and generous act has borne fruit a millionfold." 318 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD What other tributes to the praise of John Harvard this and other centuries shall see, no prophet can foretell. Perhaps that peaceful English village church in which he was mar- ried may some day be able to treasure its ap- propriate memorial. Nor, although their vir- tues may never be recorded on stone or brass, should we forget to stem back the waters of Lethe from the names of Harvard's parents and brother. It was to the arduous industry of Robert Harvard, to the motherly economy of Katherine Yearwood, and to the generosity of his brother, that John Harvard was indebted for the power to achieve his great work in the New World. Something of the affectionate honour which has gathered around his name belongs of right to them, too. How it would have soothed the death-bed of the young minister could he have foreseen whereunto that last generous deed of his life would tend! It was in a strange land he passed away. The few months he had spent therein cannot have wholly transferred his affections to the soil of New England. That 319 JOHN HARVARD AND HIS TIMES other England, as we know it did with many of the pilgrims, pulled at his heart in his hours of depression; and perhaps in his last days he asked to be placed at the window of his death- chamber that he might gaze wistfully over the wide waters towards that "precious stone set in the silver sea." It is not improbable that the rough conditions of life in the New World may have had much to do with Harvard's early death; but that sacrifice, and all the pathos of loneliness, would have been far out- weighed in his thoughts could he only have known. Around John Harvard in New England as he lay on his death-bed, were many ministers whose names, he must have thought, were des- tined to achieve a far greater and more endur- ing fame than his own, little dreaming that such of them as would be remembered would owe their renown to some casual mention of his own name. And of the others, how could he foresee that their painfully written tomes of evanescent theology would, in a few gener- ations, be scornfully cast as dust to the void ? 320 THE PRAISE OF JOHN HARVARD In that other England, too, he knew he had left men, students at Emmanuel with himself, whose names were to be carved deeply in the history of his native land; who, in the Senate, at the Court, and in the Church, would infal- libly rise to high places and be accounted leaders in the nation's life. Yet, while even the greatest of these are known to few save the diligent student of history, while their Court honours have turned to dust and their achieve- ments are lost in oblivion, the dying inspira- tion of John Harvard has given him an immortality which gathers brighter radiance with every passing generation. 321 INDEX ABBOT, Archbishop, 22. Adams, John Quincy, 303. Ainsworth, Henry, 229, 230. Alien act, the, 260, 269. Allen, Anne, 296. Allen, Mary, 296. Allen, Rev. Thomas, 279, 280, 296. Allen, Mrs. Thomas. See Har- vard, Mrs. John. Allin, Anne. See Allen, Anne. AJlin, Mary. See Allen, Mary. All Saints Barking, 129, 202, 205, 207, 214, 215. Ames, Dr. William, 216, 223, 225, 227, 228. Amsterdam, 229. Andrewes, Dr. Lancelot, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109. " Annotations on the Pentateuch," Ainsworth's, 229. Antmomianism, 265. Apologia, Shepard's, 237. Aquinas, Thomas, 228. Arminianism, 181. Articles of Religion, the, 140-142, 194. Augustine, 228. BACON'S Essays, 232. Bankside, 56, 67, 68, 71, 102. Baro, Peter, 159. Battle, the Abbot of, 56. " Bay Psalm Book," the, 291. Bear Garden, Southwark, 68. Bellarmine, 227. " Bellarminus Enervatus," 227. Bible, the, 4, 91 ; its influence on John Harvard, 111-116. Bingham, John, 73. Bishopsgate St., London, 158. Blackfriars, 98. Blue Hills, the, 259. Books, the scarcity of, 217-226. Boston, 10, 180, 258, 260, 261, 264, 265, 266, 269, 270, 273, 286, 289, 301, 303. Boston, Old, 240, 283. Boswell, Sir William, 222, 223. Bowmer, Richard, 204. Bowmer, Rose, 204. Bridge, Samuel J., 312. Broughton, Hugh, 229. Browne, Rev. Robert, 9. Browning, 231. Brownists, the, 9. Buchanan, George, 10. Buckingham, the Duke of, 27, 178. Bull Inn, the, 158. Burton, Rev. Henry, 44. CAIUS College, Cambridge, 162, 166. Calvin, 99, 110, 111, 196, 228, 248. Calvinism, 110, 180, 191. Cambridge, England, its Puritan 323 tendencies, 137-144 ; its morals at Harvard's time, 144-148 ; its appearance in 1627, 159-161; 19, 70, 133, 152, 153, 157, 158, 168, 169, 173, 175, 176, 178, 185, 194, 195, 199, 201, 239, 241 310, 811. See also Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., synod at, 263, 266, 268, 271 ; church at, 267 ; establishment of college at, 275-276, 288, 289. Cambridge, the Vice-Chancellor of, 140. Canterbury, 24, 25, 55, 190. Canterbury, the Archbishop of, 218. Canterbury pilgrims, the, 55. Carlyle, 20. Catholic revival, the, 3. Catholicism, 6. Catholics, 9, 10, 98. Cellini, Benvenuto, 57. Chaderton, the elder, 151. Chaderton, Lawrence, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 178. Chambers, 179. Charles I., 13, 17, 18, 22, 45, 99, 146, 173, 174, 182, 183, 184, 185, 191, 193, 217, 238, 241, 246. Charlestown, Mass., Harvard be- comes a townsman of, 249, 260, 269, 270; Harvard's life in, 270-274; 243, 271, 279, 284, 291, 295, 298, 302, 304. Chaucer, 55. Chichester, 188. Choate, Joseph H., 318. ' ' Christian Warfare," 299. Christ's College, Cambridge, 161, 162. Chrysostom, 233. Church of England, the, 8, 9, 10, 15, 21, 28, 44, 45, 105, 138, 139, 143, 152, 154. City Square, Charlestown, 273. Cleveland, 161. Clinton, Theophilus, 180, 239. Clothworkers Company of Lon- don, the, 206. Coleridge, 20. Colonial Papers of Great Britain, the, 250. Colonial Records, the, 280. Commencement House, Cam- bridge, 195. " Comus," 69. Cotton, Rev. John, 27, 179, 196, 228, 237, 238, 240, 264, 265, 270, 283, 284. Council of New England, the, 250. Council of State, the, 187. Cox, William, 131. Crawshaw, 162. Creighton, Mandell, 316. Cromwell, 182, 192. Cudworth, Ralph, 162, 189, 190. " DEFENCE of Poesie," Sidney's, 4. Dell, William, 185. Denham, Sir John, 233. Destyn, Barbara, her marriage to Robert Harvard, 58 ; her death, 59. D'Ewes, Simon, 147, 175, 176, 195. " Divine Emblems," Quarles', 232. " Divine Tragedy," Prynne's, 44. Dorchester, the Marquis of. See Pierrepont, Henry, 324 INDEX Drury, Father, 98. 99. Dudley, Thomas, 239, 240. Duessa, 6, 7. EASTCHEAP, 45. East Smithfield, 129. Eaton, Nathaniel, 276, 289, 290. Eliot, Charles William, 314. Eliot, John, 18, 19. Elizabeth, 3, 6, 8, 10, 138, 150, 238. Elletson, John, married to Kath- erine Harvard, 128; his death, 128; his will, 128-129, 202, 205. Elletson, Katherine. See Har- vard, Mrs. Robert. Ellis, Rev. George E., 312, 313. Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Harvard decides to attend, 131 ; Harvard enters, 137; its con- ditions at Harvard's time, 148- 155; 168-177; customs at, 163-164; influence of Preston upon, 178-180; notable stu- dents attending at Harvard's time, 181-193; Harvard leaves, 194-196; mentioned, 19, 129, 130, 144, 156, 162, 200, 209, 239, 240, 241, 283, 284, 310, 311, 312, 316, 318, 321. England, 3, 9, 13, 15, 17, 19, 46, 53, 56, 96, 97, 112, 128, 201, 221, 223, 225, 242, 245, 246, 247, 256, 259, 280, 286, 289, 297, 311. English Chronicles, the, 34. Eton, 90. Eton edition of Chrysostom, the, 233. Europe, 53, 54. Everett, Edward, 301, 303, 304. "FAEHIE Queene," the, 5-7, 232. Fidessea, 7. Field, Nathan, 103. Fontainebleau, 228. Franklin, Gregory, 204. Fraus Honesta, 174. Frogmore, 210. Froude, 110. Fuller, 151, 152, 156, 161, 179. GENERAL Court, the, 268, 269, 271, 275, 279, 280, 289, 294, 300. Geneva Bible, the, 91, 115. Gibbon, 110. Globe Theatre, the, 41, 58, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 101, 102. Godstone, 203. Gower, John, 108. Gravesend, 252. Great Charter, the, 16. Great Protestation, the, 16, 98. HAGUE, the, 222. Hampden, John, 247. Harvard, various spellings of name, 50. Harvard, John, his environment, 32^.6 ; his birth, 81 ; his school- days, 88-93; his holidays, 94- 96; influence of religion upon, 107-116; his home life, 119- 121 ; death of father, 126 ; be- quest from father, 126-127 ; de- cides upon the ministry, 130; chooses Emmanuel College, Cambridge 131 ; enters Emman- uel College,137 ; probable influ- ence of Chaderton, 156-157 : his journey to Cambridge, 157-159 ; 325 INDEX his possible acquaintance with Milton, 162-163; his life at Emmanuel College, 163-194, 199-200; his college contem- poraries, 181-193; meets Ann Sadler, 194 ; [leaves Cambridge, 194-196; returns home, 199- 201; death of mother, 200- 201 ; bequest from mother, 201-205; his property affairs, 205-207, 215; his courtship, 207-212; his marriage to Ann Sadler, 213; bequest from brother, 214, 257; his library, 216-234; influenced to go to America, 238-248; his jour- ney to New England, 248-258 ; his arrival in Boston, 258-260; finds religious dissension, 261- 269; becomes teacher in Charlestown church, 270-271; admitted freeman of colony, 271 ; his life in Charlestown, 271-274; interested in estab- lishment of college, 275; his name given college, 276; his death, 277; bequest to Har- vard College, 277-280; 296- 298; paucity of contempo- rary references to, 283-295; his lack of children, 295-296; his personal record effaced, 299-301; first movement for memorial to, 301-304; Ever- ett's address at unveiling of monument to, 304-309; later honors paid to, 309-321 ; men- tioned, 10, 12, 19, 20, 85, 87, 97, 98, 100, 104, 126, 128, 129, 133, 139, 141, 142, 147, 149, 163, 299. Harvard, Mrs. John, her mar- riage, 213; joins church at Charlestown, 271; death of husband, 277; her marriage to Ilev. Thomas Allen, 279; 255, 260, 296. See also Sad- ler, Ann. Harvard, Katherine, (mother of John Harvard). See Harvard, Mrs. Robert. Harvard, Katherine (sister of John Harvard), 87, 120, 126. Harvard, Mary, 58, 87, 120, 125. Harvard, Peter, 87, 120, 126. Harvard, Robert, his early life a blank, 49; his legacy from Peter Medcalfe, 50-51 ; known as " Robert Harvey," 50-51 ; his start in trade, 52-57; his marriage to Barbara Destyn, 58; his children by his first wife, 58; his first wife's death, 59; his marriage to Katherine Rogers, 59-60, 79-80; possi-. bly introduced to Katherine Rogers by Shakespeare, 60-78; his children by second wife, 81 ; his home life, 119-121 ; his death, 126; his will, 126-127; mentioned, 32, 33, 45, 88, 101, 102, 103, 132, 296, 319. Harvard, Robert, Jr., 58. Harvard, Robert (3d), 81, 87, 88, 120, 125, 127. Harvard, Mrs. Robert (first wife), See Destyn, Barbara. Harvard, Mrs. Robert, her prob- able similarity to description of Mrs. Wallington, 33-35; her marriage to Robert Harvard, 59-60,66,79-80; possibly in- 326 INDEX traduced to Robert Harvard by Shakespeare, 60-78; birth of her children, 81, 87; her will, 85-87, 201-205 ; her home life, 119-121; death of hus- band, 126; bequest from hus- band, 127; her marriage to John Elletson, 128; death of Mr. Elletson, 128; bequest from Mr. Elletson, 128-129; her marriage to Richard Year- wood, 131 ; death of Mr. Year- wood, 133 ; her means, 133 ; her death, 200-201 ; mentioned, 132, 319. Harvard, Thomas (cousin of Robert), 132. Harvard, Thomas (son of Rob- ert), 87, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 201, 202, 205, 206, 213, 214, 249, 257, 286, 319. Harvard College, name given to, 276, 288, 291, 295; 290, 298. Harvard Hall, the burning of, 299. " Harvard House," the, 80. Harvard University, 268, 309, 310, 311, 312, 314, 315, 317. Harvard window in Emmanuel College, the, 310. " Harvey," Robert, 50, 51. Harvye, JoVn. See Harvard, John. " Hector," the, 251. Henley Street, Stratford, 62. Henry IV. of France, 228. " Henry VI.," 67. Henry VIII., 112. Henslowe, Philip, 07, 73. Higginson, Francis, 243, 244, 245, 256, 286. High Churchism, at Oxford, 137 : at Cambridge, 144. High Commission, the court of, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225. High Street, Southwark, 49, 50, 51, 53, 95. High Street, Stratford, 62, 77, 79. Hill, Thomas, 180. Hobson, Thomas, 158, 159. " Hobson's choice," origin of, 158. Holland, 9, 222, 225. Holland, Lord, 173. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 303. Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, 79. Homer, 4, 232. Hooker, Thomas, 27, 196, 238. Horace, 232. Horrox, Jeremiah, 188. Hull, Mass., 258. Humble family, the, 108. Hutchinson, Anne, 261, 264, 265, 268, 270, 271. Hutchinson, Colonel, 70. Hutchinsonian controversy, the, 261-269, 271, 288. Hyde, the Abbot of, 56. INQUISITION, the, 219. " Intellectual System," Cud- worth's, 190. JAMBS I., 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 27, 96, 105, 139, 142, 152, 153, 154, 165. James, Rev. Thomas, 270. " Jane of Gosport," the, 128. Johnson, Capt. Edward, 256, 290. Josselyn, John, 252, 255, 273. Juvenal, 232. 327 INDEX KING'S College, Cambridge, 166. Knox, John, 10, 248. LADY Fair of Southwark, the, 94. Lambeth, 26. Laud, Archbishop, 10, 19-27, 31, 45, 56, 105, 137, 138, 144, 155, 166, 167, 176, 185, 196, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 241, 246, 247, 261. Lee, Sidney, 64, 67. Lewes, Sussex, 194. Lewes, the Abbot of, 56. Lightfoot, John, 229. Lincoln, the Countess of, 239. Lincoln, the Earl of. See Clin- ton, TheophUus. London, 32, 41, 49, 53, 54, 56, 58, 66, 68, 70, 96, 97, 99, 100, 112, 121, 128, 132, 140, 142, 157, 158, 185, 193, 203, 206, 219, 221, 223. London, the Bishop of, 218, 219. London, the see of, 22, 24. London Bridge, 42, 54, 95. Long Island (Boston harbor), 259. " Lord Strange's men," 67. Lowell, James Russell, 108, 311, 315. Luther, 99, 110, 196. MACAULET, 20. " Mad Puritan," the, 155. Magna Charta. See Great Char- ter. Magnalia," Mather's, 193, 294. Mary I., Queen of England, 3, 100, 112. Mary, Queen of Scots, 6, 10, 20. Massachusetts Bay colony, the, 243. Mather, Cotton, 187, 193, 294, 297. Medcalfe, Peter, leaves a bequest to Robert Harvard, 50, 51. Mede, 162. Merchant Taylors' school, the, 93. Middlesex, 129. Mildmay, Sir Walter, 149, 150, 151. Millenary Petition, the, 11, 14. Milton, John, 69, 70, 158, 161, 162, 163. " Mirror for Magistrates," the, 232, 233. Montague, court chaplain, 17. Monument of London, the, 37. More, Henry, 161. Mornay, Du Plessis, 227, 228. Morton, Rev. Nicholas, 130, 215, 248. Morton, Mrs. Nichoks, 132. Mullinger, J. B., 161, 172. Munster, 192. NEILE, Bishop, 105, 106. Nevel, 195, 196. New England, 9, 10, 19, 27, 180, 185, 187, 213, 215, 216, 217, 226, 228, 237, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 248, 249, 251, 258, 262, 275, 283, 285, 287, 291, 298, 300, 306, 307, 310, 311, 312, 319, 320. " New England's First Fruits," 285. 286, 288. " New England's Plantation," 243. "New England's Prospect," 245. Newmarket, 139. New Place, Stratford, 77. 328 INDEX Newton, Sir Isaac, 188. Newtown. See Cambridge, Mass. Norton, Charles Eliot, 311. " OLBIA," Sadler's, 192. Old Boston. See Boston, Old. Oxford, 21, 137, 152, 221, 222. PARKMAN, Dr. George, 301. Parliament, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 246. Parliament, the, "Addled," 13, 15, 16. Parliament, the Long, 19. Parliament of 1629, the, 18. Pearson, 162. Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 195. Penn, William, 208. Peterhouse chapel, 177. Pierrepont, Henry, 182, 183, 184. Pierrepont, William, 182, 184. Pilgrim Fathers, the, 9. Plague, the, 58, 121, 122-126. Pliny, 232. Plutarch, 232. Plymouth, 9, 10. Portsmouth, 203. Presbyterianism, 15. Preston, Dr., 222. Preston, John, 178-180. Protestantism, 6, 8. Prynne's " Divine Tragedy," 44. Puckle, 223. Puritan emigration, the, 19. Puritanism, 4, 7, 8, 13, 15, 17, 21, 23, 38, 138, 143, 162, 163, 179, 181, 187, 191, 199, 208. Puritans, the, 8, 9, 10, 19, 24, 27, 31, 68, 69, 70, 71, 100, 106, 137, 142, 144, 178, 184, 190, 232, 256, 262. QUARLES, 232. Queen's Head Inn, Southwark, 202, 203-205, 215. REASON, Ralph, 132. Reformation, the, 3, 6, 70, 226. Renascence, the, 3, 6, 70, 111. Restoration, the, 138, 155, 191. Ringmer, 194, 207, 208, 212, 213. Rochester, the Bishop of, 56. Rogers, Charles, 64. Rogers, Edward, 65. Rogers, Henry, 63. Rogers, Joan, 65. Rogers, Katherine. See Harvard, Mrs. Robert. Rogers, Richard, 65. Rogers, Rose, 132. Rogers, Thomas, 61, 62, 63, 64, 77, 79. Roos, Lord, 183. Rose Theatre, the, 67, 73. Rotterdam, 223. Rubens, 174. Ruth (servant of the Walling- tons), 123, 124. Rye, 203. SACKVILLE, 233. Sadler, Ann, meets John Har- vard, 194 ; courted by Harvard, 207-212 ; her marriage to Har- vard, 213. See also Harvard, Mrs. John. Sadler, John, 191-194, 208. Sadler, Rev. John, 194. Sadler, Mary, 296. St. Augustine of Canterbury, the Abbot of, 56. St. Clement's Church, Cam- bridge, 152. 329 INDEX St. David's, the see of, 22, 27, 56. St. John's College, Oxford, 21. St. Katherine's hospital, 129, 205, 206. St. Mary Overy's, London, 99. See also St. Saviour's Church, Soufliwarle. St. Mary's Church, Cambridge, 138, 139, 143, 176, 272. St. Olive's, the parish of, 50, 206, 213, 215. St. Paul's Cathedral, 112. St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, known as St. Mary Overy's, 99 ; mentioned, 45, 56, 58, 66, 72, 73, 74, 80, 81, 86, 101, 102, 105, 107, 108, 109, 119, 121, 126, 128, 130, 203, 204, 215, 272, 318. St. Saviour's grammar school, the, 88, 89-90, 91, 115, 121, 169. St. Saviour's parish, 131, 133. " Saints' Legacies," the, 222. " Samson Agonistes," 69. Bancroft, William, 171, 190, 191. Sandcroft, William, 187. Savile, 233. Scotland, 14, 15, 45, 97, 247. Seaman, Lazarus, 184, 185. Selborne, 208. Separatists, the, 9. Sewall, Judge, 271, 298, 299. Shakespeare, Edmund, 65, 66, 76, 80, 81. Shakespeare, Gilbert, 64. Shakespeare, Joan, 65. Shakespeare, John, 61, 62, 63. Shakespeare, Richard, 65. Shakespeare, William, his possi- ble connection with Robert Harvard's marriage, 60-78 ; 79, 80, 81. Shepard, Thomas, 196, 237, 238, 245, 288 ; his "Autobiography," 285. Shepherd, Mrs., 298. " Shepherd's Calender," the, 4, 8. Ship Money, 246, 247. Sidney, Sir Philip, 4. Sidney College, Cambridge, 162, 195, 196. Smith, John, 242, 243. Southampton, the county of, 129. South Mailing, 213. Southwark, London, described in 1616, 94-96 ; 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 74, 80, 105, 119, 131, 196, 199, 202, 203, 206, 248, 272. Spain, 100, 219. Sparke, Michael, 220, 221, 222, 225, 243. Spenser, 4, 5, 7, 8. Springetts, the, 208. Spurstowe, William, 184. Star Chamber, the, 44, 218. Stationers' Company, the, 218. Sterry, Peter, 187. Stone, Samuel, 196. Story, Judge, 310. Stratford-on-Avon, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80. Stuart race, the, 12, 17. Sunday observance, 96-97. Surrey, 129, 206. Sutton, Dr. Thomas, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104. Symmes, Rev. Zachariah, 270, 272, 284. Synagogue in London, the first, 193. 330 INDEX TABARD Inn, the, 54, 55, 203. Taylor, Jeremy, 162. Thames, the, 33, 41, 42, 54, 56, 121, 122. Thoreau, 263. "Tom Tidler's Ground," the game of, 36. Tower Hill, 26. Trehearne, John, 73. Trinity College, Cambridge, 166, 175. Tuckney, Anthony, 180, 239, 240, 260, 283. Turner, William, 222. Tyndale, John, 112. UNA, 6. "VACATION Exercise," Milton's, 163. Vane, Sir Henry, 259, 260, 266. Virgil, 4. WALLINGTON, Elizabeth, 124, 125. Wallington, John (brother of Ne- hemiah), 124. Wallington, John (son of Nehe- miah), 124. Wallington, Mrs., 33. Wallington, Nehemiah, 51, 71, 122, 123, 124; his diary and note-books, 32-46. Wallington, Mrs. Nehemiah, 123, 124. Wallington, ST., Mr., S3, 124. Wallis, John, 188. Ward, Dr., 195, 196. Ward, Seth, 161. Ward, William, 132. Warmstry, Rev. Thomas, 27. Waverley, the Abbot of, 56. Wentworth, 246, 247. Westminster Abbey, 42, 183. Westminster Assembly, the, 184. Westminster school, the, 93. Wheelwright, Rev. John, 265, 269, 270, 271. Whichcot, Benjamin, 185-187. Whichcote, Mary, 209-212. White, Gilbert, 208. Whitehall, 185. Wight, the Isle of, 184. Williams, Roger, 187. Wilson, Rev. John, 261, 264, 265, 266, 270, 292, 294, 295, 296. Winchester, the Bishop of, 105, 140. Winchester Palace, 56, 105. Winthrop, Mass., 258. Winthrop, John, 20, 208, 239, 253, 256, 261, 266, 267, 278, 284, 285, 315. Winthrop, Robert C., 315. Wither, 232, 233. " Wonder Working Providence," the, 290. Wood, William, 245. Wordsworth, 20. Worthington, John, 171, 209-212. YEARWOOD, Richard, his mar- riage to Mrs. Elletson, 131 ; his death, 133; his will, 133; 127, 132. Yearwood, Mrs. Richard. 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