USA > Massachusetts > Chronicles of the first planters of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1623-1636 > Part 40
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1 The child was baptized Februa- ry 7, 1636.
2 William Coddington. See note 1 on page 337.
3 It was on February 1st, 1636, old style, according to Winthrop, corresponding to Feb. 11th of new style. See a graphic and beautiful description of this transaction in "A
Discourse on the Cambridge Church- Gathering in 1636, delivered in the First Church of Cambridge, Feb. 22, 1846, by William Newell, Pastor of the Church." The next year, 1637, Shepard preached the Election Ser- mon and offered the prayer at the opening of the Synod at Cambridge. See Winthrop, i. 179, 221, 237.
35
546
TROUBLES FROM THE FAMILISTS.
CHAP. XXIV. longed for, so the Lord did so sweeten it unto her, that she was hereby exceedingly cheered, and com- 1636. forted with the sense of God's love, which continued until her last gasp.
May 25.
No sooner were we thus set down and entered into church fellowship, but the Lord exercised us and the whole country with the opinions of Fami- lists ; begun by Mrs. Hutchinson,1 raised up to a great height by Mr. Vane, too suddenly chosen Governor, and maintained too obscurely by Mr. Cotton, and propagated too boldly by the members of Boston, and some in other churches. By means of which division by these opinions, the ancient and received truth came to be darkened, .God's name to be blasphemed, the churches' glory diminished, many godly grieved, many wretches hardened, de- ceiving and being deceived, growing worse and worse. The principal opinion and seed of all the rest was this, viz. that a Christian should not take any evidence of God's special grace and love toward him by the sight of any graces, or conditional evan- gelical promises to faith or sanctification, in way of ratiocination, (for this was evidence, and so a way of works,) but it must be without the sight of any grace, faith, holiness, or special change in himself, by immediate revelation in an absolute promise. And because that the whole Scriptures do give such clear, plain, and notable evidences of favor to per- sons called and sanctified, hence they said that a second evidence might be taken from thence, but
1 See note 1 on page 360.
547
A SYNOD AT CAMBRIDGE.
no first evidence. But from hence it arose, that as CHAP. all error is fruitful, so this opinion did gender above XXIV. a hundred monstrous opinions in the country. Which 1636. the elders perceiving, having used all private broth- erly means with Mr. Cotton first, and yet no healing, hereupon, they publicly preached both against opin- ions publicly and privately maintained. And I ac- count it no small mercy to myself, that the Lord kept me from that contagion, and gave me any heart or light to see through those devices of men's heads ; although I found it a most uncomfortable time to live in contention ; and the Lord was graciously pleased, by giving witness against them, to keep this poor church spotless and clear from them.
This division in the Church began to trouble the Commonwealth. Mr. Wheelwright, a man of a bold and stiff conceit of his own worth and light, preached 1637. (as the Court judged,) a seditious sermon,1 stirring Jan. 20. up all sorts against those that preached a covenant of works; meaning all the elders in the country that preached justification by faith, and assurance of it by sight of faith, and sanctification, being enabled thereto by the spirit. The troubles thus increasing, and all means used for crushing and curing these sores, a Synod was thought of and called, from the example Acts xv .; wherein, by the help of all the elders joined together, those errors,
1 This sermon, the text of which was from Matth. ix. 15, has never been printed ; but the larger part of the original manuscript, being the last thirty-three pages, is preserved in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. A compara- tively modern hand has written on a
blank page, that " it was left in the hands of Mr. John Coggeshall, who was a deacon of the church in Bos- ton." A perfect copy of this ser- mon is contained in the first volume of the Hutchinson manuscripts, be- longing to the same Society. See Winthrop, i. 215.
548
RESULT OF THE SYNOD.
CHAP. XXIV. through the grace and power of Christ, were discov- ered, the defenders of them convinced and ashamed, 1637. the truth stablished, and the consciences of the saints settled ; there being a most wonderful pres- ence of Christ's spirit in that Assembly, held at Aug. 30. Cambridge anno 1637, about August, and continued a month together, in public agitations.1 For the issue of this Synod was this :
1. The Pekoat Indians were fully discomfited. For as the opinions arose, wars did arise; and when these began to be crushed by the ministry of the elders, and by opposing Mr. Vane, and casting him and others from being magistrates, the enemies be- gan to be crushed, and were perfectly subdued by the end of the Synod.
Nov.
2. The magistrates took courage, and exiled Mr. Wheelwright, Mrs. Hutchinson, and divers Islanders, whom the Lord did strangely discover, giving most of them over to all manner of filthy opinions, until many that held with them before, were ashamed of them. And so the Lord, within one year, wrought a great change among us.
At this time I cannot omit the goodness of God as to myself, so to all the country, in delivering us from the Pekoat furies. These Indians were the stoutest, proudest, and most successful in their wars of all the Indians. Their chief sachem was Sasakus, a proud, cruel, unhappy, and headstrong prince ; who, not willing to be guided by the persuasions of his fellow, an aged sachem, Monanattuck, nor fearing the revenge of the English, having first
1 See Sparks's American Bio- i. 237-241; Hutchinson's Mass. i. graphy, xvi. 249-260 ; Winthrop, 67-69.
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549
WAR WITH THE PEQUOTS.
sucked the blood of Captain Stone and Mr. Oldham, 1 CHAP. found it so sweet, and his proceedings for one whole XXIV. winter so successful, that having besieged and killed 1637. March.
about four men that kept Seabrook fort, he adven- tured to fall upon the English up the river at Wethersfield, where he slew nine or ten men, April women, and children at unawares, and took two 23. maids prisoners, carrying them away captive to the Pekoat country. Hereupon, those upon the river first gathered about seventy men, and sent them into [the] Pekoat country, to make that the seat of war, and to revenge the death of those innocents, whom they barbarously and most unnaturally slew. These men marched two days and nights from the way of the Naraganset unto Pekoat, being guided May 24. by those Indians, then the ancient enemies of the Pekoats. They intended to assault Sasakus's fort ; but falling short of it the second night, the provi- dence of God guided them to another, nearer, full of stout men, and their best soldiers, being, as it were, cooped up there, to the number of three or four hundred in all, for the divine slaughter by the hand of the English. These, therefore, being all night 25. making merry, and singing the death of the English the next day, toward break of the day, being very heavy with sleep, the English drew near within the 26. sight of the fort, very weary with travel and want of sleep ; at which time five hundred Naragansets fled for fear, and only two of the company stood to it to conduct them to the fort, and the door and entrance thereof. The English being come to it,
1 See pages 363 and 364.
550
THE PEQUOTS SUBDUED.
CHAP. awakened the fort with a peal of muskets, directed XXIV. into the midst of their wigwams; and after this, 1637. some undertaking to compass the fort without, some May 26. adventured into the fort, upon the very faces of the enemy, standing ready with their arrows ready bent to shoot whoever should adventure. But the Eng- lish, casting by their pieces, took their swords in their hands, (the Lord doubling their strength and courage,) and fell upon the Indians ; when a hot fight continued about the space of an hour. At last, by the direction of one Captain Mason, their wigwams were set on fire; which being dry, and contiguous one to another, was most dreadful to the Indians ; some burning, some bleeding to death by the sword, some resisting till they were cut off ; some flying were beat down by the men without ; until the Lord had utterly consumed the whole company, except four or five girls they took prison- ers, and dealt with them at Seabrooke as they dealt with ours at Wethersfield. And 't is verily thought, scarce one man escaped, unless one or two to carry forth tidings of the lamentable end of their fellows. And of the English not one man was killed, but one by the musket of an Englishman, as was conceived. Some were wounded much ; but all recovered, and restored again.1
Thus the Lord having delivered the country from war with Indians and Familists, (who arose and fell 1636. together,) he was pleased to direct the hearts of the Sept. 8. magistrates, (then keeping Court ordinarily in our town, because of these stirs at Boston,) to think of
1 See page 364, and note 2 on page 306.
551
HARVARD COLLEGE FOUNDED.
erecting a School or College, and that speedily, to CHAP. be a nursery of knowledge in these deserts, and XXIV. supply for posterity.1 And because this town, 1636. 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. Eaton2 to attend the School, the Court, for that and sundry other reasons, determined to erect the College here.3 Which was no sooner done, but the 1637.
1 " After God had carried us safe to New-England, and we had build- ed our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared conven- ient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after, was to advance learn- ing, and perpetuate it to posterity ; dreading to leave an illiterate min- istry to the churches, when our pre- sent ministers shall lie in the dust. And as we were thinking and con- sulting how to effect this great work, it pleased God, to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard, a godly gentle- man 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 in more; and the public hand of the State added the rest." New-England's First Fruits, p. 12, (London, 1643.)
Nathaniel Eaton, brother of Theophilus Eaton, of New Haven, was admitted a freeman June 9, 1638. He had been educated under Dr. Ames in Holland, and was known to Mr. Hooker whilst there, who says "he did not approve of his spirit, and feared the issue of his being received here." He was intrusted not only with the educa- tion of the students, but with the
management of the funds. For his cruel treatment of his usher, Bris- coe, he was dismissed from office, sentenced by the Court to pay a fine of twenty marks, and to pay Bris- coe £20. After this sentence, the church at Cambridge excommuni- cated him. He went first to Pisca- taqua, afterwards to Virginia, and then to England, where he lived privately till the Restoration, then conformed, and was settled at Bid- deford, where he persecuted the Nonconformists, and at last died in prison, where he had been put for debt." See Winthrop, i. 308; Mather, ii. 8; Hutchinson's Mass. i. 91.
3 Edward Johnson says, "For place, they fix their eye upon New- town, which, to tell their posterity whence they came, is now named Cambridge; and withal, to make the whole world understand that spiritual learning was the thing they chiefly desired, to sanctify the other, and make the whole lump holy, and that learning, being set upon its right object, might not contend for error instead of truth, they chose this place, being then under the orthodox and soul-flourishing minis- try of Mr. Thomas Shepard ; of whom it may be said, without any wrong to others, the Lord by his ministry hath saved many a hundred souls." Mass. Hist. Coll. xvii. 27.
552
JOHN HARVARD, OF CHARLESTOWN.
CHAP. chief of the magistrates and elders sent to England XXIV. to desire help to forward this work. But they all 1638. neglecting us, in a manner, the Lord put it into the Sept. heart of one Mr. HARVARD,1 who died worth £1600,
14. to give half his estate to the erecting of the School. The 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 given, but Mr. Eaton, (professing eminently, yet falsely and most deceit- fully, the fear of God,) did lavish out a great part of it, and being for his cruelty to his scholars, 1639. especially to one Briscoe,2 as also for some other wantonness in life, not so notoriously known, driven 1640. the country, the Lord, about a year after, graciously
Aug.
17. made up the breach by one Mr. Dunstar,3 a · man
1 Of JOHN HARVARD little is not above thirty, supposing he en- known. In 1628, he entered Em- tered college between his seven- teenth and twentieth year. Froth- ingham makes it probable that his widow married the Rev. Thomas Allen, of Charlestown. His library consisted of 260 volumes, a cata- logue of which is preserved, though the books were destroyed in the fire of 1764. On the 26th of Sept. 1828, a monument of granite, a solid obelisk, fifteen feet high and four square at the base, was erected to the memory of Harvard in the burying-ground at Charlestown ; on which occasion an eloquent address was delivered by Edward Everett, now President of the College which he founded. See Winthrop, ii. 88, 342; Mather, ii. 7; Everett's Orations, p. 163 ; Frothingham's Charlestown, p. 74 ; Budington's Charlestown Church, pp. 44, 182, 247; Mass. Hist. Coll. xvii. 16, 28, xxviii. 248, 249. manuel College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of A. B. in 1631, and of A. M. in 1635. He was admitted an inhabitant of Charles- town Aug. 6, 1637, " with promise of such accommodations as we best can ; " was made a freeman Nov. 2 ; was admitted, with his wife Anna, a member of the church at Charles- . town Nov. 6; and " was sometime minister of God's word here," as assistant to the Rev. Zechariah Symmes. There is no account, however, of his ordination. The town records state that he had a lot of land assigned him in 1637, and the next year his share in an- other allotment was a third larger than Mr. Symmes's. He was ap- pointed, April 26, 1638, one of a committee "to consider of some things tending towards a body of laws," and had a grant of three and a half feet of ground for a 2 See an account of this in Win- throp, i. 308. portal to his house. He died of a consumption Sept. 14, 1638, aged Henry Dunster is placed by Cot- 3
553
HENRY DUNSTER, OF CAMBRIDGE.
pious, painful, and fit to teach, and very fit to lay CHAP. the foundations of the domestical affairs of the Col- XXIV. lege ; whom God hath much honored and blessed. 1640.
The sin of Mr. Eaton was at first not so clearly discerned by me. Yet, after more full information, I saw his sin great, and my ignorance, and want of wisdom, and watchfulness over him, very great ; for which I desire to mourn all my life, and for the breach of his family.
ton Mather among the ministers of his "first class," that is, such as were in the actual exercise of the ministry when they left England. But neither he, nor Morton, nor any other writer, mentions the place of his ministry or birth. He was edu- cated at Emmanuel College, Cam- bridge, where he received the de- gree of A. B. in 1630, and of A. M. in 1634. He arrived in New-Eng- land in 1640, and was admitted a freeman June 2, 1641. The au- thor of New-England's First Fruits (1643) says, "Over the College is Master Dunster placed, as Presi- dent, a learned, conscionable, and industrious man." Edward John- son (1652) speaks of him as "one fitted from the Lord for the work, and by those that have skill that way, reported to be an able profi- cient in both Hebrew, Greek and Latin languages." He remained in office fourteen years, till, as Mather says, "his unhappy en- tanglement in the snares of Ana- baptism filled the Overseers with uneasy fears lest the students by his means should come to be en- snared. Wherefore they labored with an extreme agony either to rescue the good man from his own mistakes, or to restrain him from imposing them upon the hope of the flock. Of both which finding themselves to despair, they did as quietly as they could procure his removal. Their uneasiness was so signified unto him that on Oct. 24,
1654, he resigned his president- ship." On leaving Cambridge, he retired to Scituate, where he was employed in the ministry till his death, Feb. 27, 1659. Mather re- marks, that "he died in such har- mony of affection with the good men who had been the authors of his removal from Cambridge, that he, by his will, ordered his body to be carried unto Cambridge for its burial, and bequeathed legacies to those very persons." Morton says, that " his body was embalmed, and removed to Cambridge, and there honorably buried." The Corpora- tion of the College have lately taken measures to erect a monument to his memory on the spot where he is supposed to have been buried, as indicated by the ruins of a former monument, on which no traces of an inscription remain. Dunster re- vised and polished the New-Eng- land version of the Psalms, which had been translated in 1640, by Eliot, Weld, and Mather, as men- tioned on page 511. His wife Elizabeth was the widow of the Rev. Jesse Glover, who died on his passage to New-England in 1639 ; and he had three sons ; David, born May 16, 1645, Henry, born in 1650, and Jonathan, born in 1653. See Mather, i. 366, ii. 8, 10; Morton's Memorial, p. 283; Deane's Scitu- ate, p. 179 ; Peirce's Hist. of Har- vard Univ. p. 7; Mass. Hist. Coll. xvii. 25, 31, xxviii. 248; Farmer's Genealogical Register.
554
SHEPARD MARRIES HOOKER'S DAUGHTER.
CHAP. XXIV. But thus the Lord hath been very good unto me, in planting the place I live in with such a mercy 1640. to myself, such a blessing to my children and the country, such an opportunity of doing good to many by doing good to students, as the School is.
After this, I fell sick after Mr. Harlakenden's death, my most dear friend, and most precious ser- vant of Jesus Christ. And when I was very low, and my blood much corrupted, the Lord revived me, and after that took pleasure in me, to bless my labors, that I was not altogether useless nor fruitless ; and not only to speak by me to his people, but likewise to print my Notes upon the Nine Principles, I intended to proceed on with in Yorkshire, but never intended them, or imagined they should be for the press. Yet six of them being finished in Old England, and printed, and the other three de- sired, I finished (the Lord helping,) those at Cam- bridge ; and so sent them to England, where they also are printed ; which I do not glory in, (for I know my weakness,) that my name is up by this means, but that the Lord may be pleased to do some good by them there in my absence. For I have seen the Lord making improvement of my weak abilities as far as they could reach, and of myself to the utmost ; which I desire to bless his name forever for.
Oct. 1637.
The year after those wars in the country, God having taken away my first wife, the Lord gave me a second, the eldest daughter of Mr. Hooker,1 a blessed store ; and the Lord hath made her a great
' Her name was Joanna. See Farmer's Gen. Reg., art. Shepard.
555
TWO OF HIS CHILDREN DIE.
blessing to me to carry on matters in the family CHAP. with much care and wisdom, and to seek the Lord XXIV. God of her father.
The first child I had by her, being a son, died through the weakness of the midwife, before it saw the sun, even in the very birth. The second, whom 1641. the Lord I bless hath hitherto spared, viz. my little Oct. Samuel,1 is yet living. The third son, viz. my son John, after sixteen weeks, departed, on the Sabbath day morning, a day of rest, to the bosom of rest, to Him who gave it ; which was no small affliction and heart-breaking to me, that I should provoke the Lord to strike at my innocent children for my sake.
The Lord thus afflicting, yet continued peace to the country, that amazing mercy, when all England and Europe are in a flame. The Lord hath set me and my children aside from the flames of the fires in Yorkshire and Northumberland, whence if we had not been delivered, I had been in great afflictions and temptations, very weak and unfit to be tossed up and down, and to bear violent persecution. The Lord therefore hath showed his tenderness to me and mine, in carrying me to a land of peace, though a place of trial; where the Lord hath made the savage Indians, (who conspired the death of all the English by Miantinomo upon a sudden, if Uncas 1643. could have been cut off first, who stood in their
1 He was born in October, 1641, and was brought up, I believe, in the family of his grandfather Hook- er, at Hartford. In an unpublished letter that I have seen, written by Samuel Stone of Hartford, and dated July 19, 1647, in which he gives a very affecting account of
the death of his colleague, he says, " Little Sam. Shepard is well." He was ordained at Rowley Nov. 15, 1665, the third minister of that town, and died April 7, 1668, aged 26. See Gage's History of Rowley, pp. 19, 74.
556
HIS SECOND WIFE DIES.
CHAP. way,1 and determined an open war upon us by the
XXIV. privy suggestions of some neutral English on the 1645. Aug. 26. Island,)2 to seek for peace from us upon our own terms, without bloodshed, August 26, 1645.
1646. April 2.
But the Lord hath not been wont to let me live long without some affliction or other ; and yet ever mixed with some mercy. And therefore, April the 2d, 1646, as he gave me another son, John, so he took away my most dear, precious, meek, and loving wife, in child-bed, after three weeks' lying-in ; hav- ing left behind her two hopeful branches, my dear children, Samuel and John. This affliction was very heavy to me; for in it the Lord seemed to with- draw his tender care for me and mine, which he graciously manifested by my dear wife ; also refused to hear prayer, when I did think he would have hearkened and let me see his beauty in the land of the living, in restoring of her to health again ; also, in taking her away in the prime time of her life, when she might have lived to have glorified the Lord long ; also, in threatening me to proceed in rooting out my family, and that he would not stop, having begun here, as in Eli, for not being zealous enough against the sins of his sons. And I saw that if I had profited by former afflictions of this nature, I should not have had this scourge. But I am the Lord's, and He may do with me what he will. He did teach me to prize a little grace, gained by a cross, as a sufficient recompense for all outward losses.
1 See Winthrop, ii. 131-134 ;
2 I suppose he means Gorton and Hutchinson's Mass. i. 136, 138; his company. Hazard's State Papers, ii. 7-9.
t
1
f r
1 f
557
HER CHARACTER.
But this loss was very great. She was a woman CHAP.
of incomparable meekness of spirit, toward myself XXIV. especially, and very loving ; of great prudence to 1646. take care for and order my family affairs, being neither too lavish nor sordid in anything, so that I knew not what was under her hands. She had an excellency to reprove for sin, and discern the evils of men. She loved God's people dearly, and [was] studious to profit by their fellowship, and therefore loved their company. She loved God's word ex- ceedingly, and hence was glad she could read my notes, which she had to muse on every week. She had a spirit of prayer, beyond ordinary of her time- and experience. She was fit to die long before she did die, even after the death of her first-born, which was a great affliction to her. . But her work not being done then, she lived almost nine years with me, and was the comfort of my life to me ; and the last sacrament before her lying-in, seemed to be full of Christ, and thereby fitted for heaven. She did oft say she should not outlive this child ; and when her fever first began, by taking some cold, she told me so, that we should love exceedingly together, because we should not live long together. Her fever took away her sleep ; want of sleep wrought much distemper in her head, and filled it with fantasies and distractions, but without raging. The night before she died, she had about six hours' unquiet sleep. But that so cooled and settled her head, that when she knew none else, so as to speak to them, yet she knew Jesus Christ, and could speak to him ; and therefore, as soon as she awakened out of sleep, she brake out into a most heavenly, heart-
558
THOMAS SHEPARD'S MEMOIR.
CHAP. breaking prayer, after Christ, her dear Redeemer, XXIV. for the spirit of life, and so continued praying until 1646. the last hour of her death, "Lord, though I [am] unworthy, Lord, one word, one word," &c .; and so gave up the ghost.
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