USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 31
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54
The first building of Harvard College (completed in 1643) was not in quadrangular form, nor did it contain a separate chapel; but dormitory rooms, studies, library, dining hall (which served also as chapel and lecture hall), kitchen, and
332
HARVARD COLLEGE
buttery were duly reproduced, and the sizar was duly pro- vided.
The statutes of all Cambridge colleges were very detailed. They regulated the general administration of the college; they prescribed the duties of the various officers, and they specified in detail the dress, conduct and daily schedule of the students. The first Harvard statutes (1642) concerned the students chiefly. Very naturally, they were much like the rules for students in the Cambridge colleges.
The officers of a Cambridge college included a Master (President or Provost) and a number of Fellows varying in the different colleges from six to sixty. The Fellows held office for periods varying from six years to life. The Fellows served as tutors to the students of their college, as college lecturers, and often as college officers such as the dean. The larger colleges maintained a considerable staff of other offi- cials,-a bursar, an organist, choristers, a steward, an auditor, an attorney, and a long array of servants.
The students included several social groups. "Fellow- commoners" paid twice as much for board as ordinary stu- dents, and were privileged to dine with the Fellows. "Greater and lesser pensioners" paid successively smaller amounts than the fellow-commoners. "Scholars" and "exhibitioners" re- ceived a part of their support from the endowment. "Sizars", like many a modern college student, earned a part of their expenses by services to the college. The number of students varied from less than a hundred in the smaller colleges to the four hundred or more in Trinity College. The total number of students in the University was about 3,000.
The University, as distinguished from the Colleges, was a corporation composed of men who had taken the degree of Master of Arts or higher degrees and especially of those who were then resident at the University. This corporation pre- scribed the requirements for the various degrees and super- vised the examinations, orations and disputations (debates) which students from various colleges must pass before re- ceiving their degree. The University also owned a great li- brary, and certain lecture halls which were used by students of all the colleges for the "public" (or university) lectures, dec- lamations and disputations. These halls were known as the
333
EMMANUEL COLLEGE
"public schools". Together with the university library they formed a quadrangle more or less conveniently accessible from the sixteen colleges.
JOHN HARVARD ENTERS EMMANUEL COLLEGE (1627)
John Harvard matriculated at Emmanuel College on April 17th, 1627. He was then twenty years old. Boys usually entered at 14 or 16; the reason for John Harvard's late entry is not known. Emmanuel, a relatively small college founded by Sir Walter Mildmay in 1583-84, was under strong Puritan influences. Its purpose, emphatically stated in the statutes, was to prepare active preachers for the church ". . to
. instruct the people and undertake the office of pastors, which is a thing necessary above all others." The first Master of the college, Laurence Chaderton, emphasized this purpose be- fore his election by denouncing bitterly "the whole swarms of idle, ignorant, and ungodly Curates and Readers, who neither can nor will goe before the deare flocke of Christ in soundnes of doctrine and integritie of life." These "dumme dogges", he charged, often held two, three, four or more places, and rendered little or no service therein.
The course of life in Emmanuel College was sufficiently austere. It was overcrowded; two, three or even four stu- dents shared a single room. The students had but two re- gular meals a day ; dinner at eleven o'clock and supper at six. Dinner and supper were much alike: roast or boiled meat, and an occasional pudding. Between eight and eight-thirty in the morning, and seven and eight in the evening the stu- dent could get at the buttery a half-pint of beer and a half- penny loaf of bread with butter or cheese.
Seventeen hours constituted a day's work. "At St. Saviour's grammar-school, John Harvard had been accus- tomed, 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 Cambridge 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 devotions were prolonged by a short address from one of the fellows of the college. After a flying visit to the
334
HARVARD COLLEGE
buttery for sizings of beer and bread, the serious work of the day began."
ACADEMIC EXERCISES AT EMMANUEL
The student's work was divided between "college" exer- cises and "university" exercises. In his college the student studied his text books or perhaps more frequently read over the day's lesson with his tutor. In the latter case, the tutor explained the text, and sometimes as in the case of Greek and Hebrew lessons, translated the passage with the pupil. The tutor in those days was usually, if not always, one of the Fellows of the College,-men who usually held at least the degree of Master of Arts and who were maintained by the endowment of the college. These men, from their close daily associations with their pupils, were in a position to in- fluence their entire under-graduate life. The lesson so read over was to be recited the next day. Various Fellows, se- lected as college lecturers, gave lectures to groups of students connected with the subject of study. The tutor also assigned the tasks in composition, in Latin or Greek. These were read or declaimed before the tutor, preparatory to their de- livery before students of the college or the entire university. The subjects became somewhat hackneyed in the course of centuries; indeed many of them were selected from classical writers of fifteen hundred years earlier. A number of these are preserved in the writings of John Milton, who was a con- temporary of John Harvard at Cambridge, though not of his college. "Whether night is more excellent than day" is one of these topics. On one occasion Milton discoursed "on the Music of the Spheres" in order, as he said, to "eschew those threadbare and hackneyed subjects" usually discussed. His other speeches included more serious topics: "Against the Scholastic Philosophy", "In the destruction of anything what- soever there is no resolution into first matter" (a sufficiently scholastic subject, of the kind which he had condemned in the preceding oration) ; "There are no partial forms in an animal in addition to the total" (also scholastic) ; "Art (i. e., a liberal education) is more conducive to human happiness than ignorance."
335
EMMANUEL COLLEGE
Another type of exercise which occupied perhaps the chief place in the university curriculum was the disputation or de- bate. The student, perhaps under guidance of his tutor, pre- pared arguments on both sides of such questions as "The Knowledge of the Languages is Most Useful"; "Greek is the most Copious of Languages"; "The Art of the Orator is to Conceal Art"; "Universals do not Exist Outside the Mind"; "Modesty is the Chief Ornament of Youth"; "Justice is the Mother of all Virtues" and the like.
Having prepared his arguments, the youth, twice in the four years, offered to defend in public (i.e., university) de- bate, against all comers, one side or the other of his thesis. Twice also he had to appear as the opponent of such a de- fender. Attendance on the disputations of students formed a part of each week's work. The debate might be given in the college chapel as a "college" exercise, or it might be given in the "public schools", as a "public" or university exercise.
Besides the university disputation there were the university lectures, which students of all colleges were required to at- tend. These were lectures in Divinity, Civil Law, Physics, Greek, Hebrew and Mathematics. They also were given in the "public schools".
Lectures and exercises were almost invariably in Latin; Greek was used occasionally. Students were required, under penalty of fines, to speak nothing but Latin or Greek in their ordinary conversation. Monitors were appointed to report to the Dean all who committed the offence of speaking Eng- lish, without special permission.
Dinner followed the morning exercises, after which "there were declamations and more disputations to hear; after sup- per 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."
On Sundays there was morning service in the college chapel, forenoon service at St. Mary's, the University Church, and the privilege of attending afternoon service in the town church, where the sermon was usually preached by someone of the University Fellows. Sunday evening gave one an opportunity of "enlarging and correcting such notes as he
336
HARVARD COLLEGE
had taken on these various services in his commonplace book", -which his tutor or the dean often examined.
"Commonplaces" played a large part in the work of the student in Cambridge, as later at Harvard. These included at least four different kinds of exercises: (1) Notes of im- portant passages from the student's general reading, (2) notes of sermons which the student had heard, (3) the written or oral discussion of theological questions, such as the nature of God, the cause of sin, the nature of faith, free grace, pre- destination, baptism, penitence and Christian liberty; (4) ex- ercises like sermons, written and delivered by Bachelors of Arts as a part of their preparation for the M.A. degree. Commonplace books of the first two types mentioned above often grew to large proportions. Some of those written in John Harvard's time have been preserved; Milton's has been published. "Commonplaces" of all four types formed an im- portant part of the early work at Harvard also.
RECREATION AT EMMANUEL
"In this programme of incessant piety and tuition," says Mr. Shelley "room could only be found for a couple of hours in which the student was free to indulge in his own inclina- tions, and even those two precious hours were liable to be encroached upon by some 'public exercise of learning or re- ligion.' "
"So far as official approval went, the only recreations in which the students could indulge were quoits, football, arch- ery, bowling, shovel-board, and chess. It has been seen that such sports as coursing, hunting, and bull- and bear-baiting were specially forbidden, and a similar prohibition was in force against 'common plays, public shows, interludes, come- dies and tragedies in the English tongue, and games at log- getts and nine-pins.' 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 recognized recreations did not appeal, often fol- lowed his own bent in defiance of the authorities, and was duly punished when found out; while others sought amuse- ment in music or some equally innocent occupation for leisure
337
EDUCATED EMIGRANTS
hours. Several of John Harvard's fellow students, such as Worthington and Sancroft, were skillful players and excellent singers, and we may hope that he was sometimes invited to their rooms for a musical evening."
DEGREE REQUIREMENTS AT EMMANUEL
The studies required for the B.A. degree included rhetoric, with written themes and declamations; logic, with its appli- cations in disputations on such questions as those above noted; philosophy, Greek and geometry. The work for the degree of M.A. included the study of astronomy, perspective, more Greek and more philosophy. Each degree was conferred only after an oral examination of the student and after he had given a fixed number of public declamations, usually two, and after he had appeared in the "public schools" at least twice as defender and twice as opponent in a disputation.
The study of lessons under tutors; lectures, declamations, written themes and disputations or debates; together with religious exercises at least twice a day, were characteristic features of the Harvard program in the seventeenth century, as will duly appear.
EDUCATED EMIGRANTS (1630-1650)
With this sketch of English education in the early 1600's in mind, we may now inquire as to the schooling of the men and women who came to the wilderness of New England be- tween 1630 and 1650. The total number of these, including children, was about 25,000, of whom some 21,000 settled in Massachusetts. They represented, as is well known, a bet- ter-than-average-selection of English middle-class families. Little is known of the actual schooling of most of the colonists ; but various lines of evidence, including the educational situation above described, suggest two inferences as reasonable: First, it is probable that the great majority who were old enough to have gone to school before they left England, could read the catechism and the English Bible, could write more or less legibly in one of the twenty-eight styles of handwriting then in vogue, and could do simple problems in addition and sub-
338
HARVARD COLLEGE
traction. Second, it is reasonable to assume that among the men a considerable number, possibly 300 or 400 in all, had attended one of the Latin grammar schools above described. The English Bible and the Psalms (turned into verse for singing), were the chief books of these groups.
The known facts are more important. It has been proved that among the 25,000 colonists above mentioned there were not less than 135, and probably more, men with University training ; i.e., one in every 200 of the entire population. Only about a dozen of this group had not remained at the Univer- sity long enough to take a degree. Among these were men of such distinction as Governor John Winthrop, Governor Henry Vane and several members of the Court of Assistants, -e.g., John Winthrop, Jr., afterward Governor of Connecti- cut, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Giles Firmin, and William Pyn- chon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the 120- odd Bachelors of Arts, 55 held also the degree of Master of Arts; half a dozen had been Fellows in one or another of the Colleges of Cambridge or Oxford; and one,-Charles Chauncy, afterwards President of Harvard,-had been Pro- fessor of Greek and Hebrew at Trinity College, Cambridge. These men read, spoke and wrote Latin with fluency. They were at home with the Old Testament in the original Hebrew and the New Testament in the original Greek. Their li- braries contained imposing lists of Latin works on theologi- cal questions of the day. Their sermons and other printed works show not only active thought on contemporary religious and political questions, but also comprehensive scholarship. The Bay Psalm Book (1640), the second work to be printed on the press which Mrs. Glover had brought to Cambridge, was translated from the original Hebrew by clergymen of the Colony. The Reverend John Norton, pastor of the church in Ipswich, wrote a work of 170 pages on church government, entirely in Latin,-an achievement which probably few scho- lars in the United States today would be able to duplicate. The Reverend John Eliot translated the entire Bible into the Indian language.
The presence of so large a body of university-trained men gave to the Colony "a cultural tone unique in the history of colonization." Very naturally these men sought to establish
339
NEW ENGLAND EDUCATION
in the New World educational opportunities such as they themselves had known in England.
EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS IN NEW ENGLAND (1635)
Hence it was that in 1635, five years after the arrival of Governor Winthrop and his associates, the leaders of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay began to provide for the edu- cation of the children and youth of their growing common- wealth. The conditions were favorable for action in the mat- ter. The Colony was well established in a dozen little settle- ments on or near the shores of Massachusetts Bay, with two flourishing outposts-Ipswich and Newbury,-thirty and forty miles to the north of Boston on the shores beyond Cape Ann. The total population of the Colony in 1634 was about 4,000, and it was destined to increase by immigration from England at the rate of about 2,000 a year for the next eight years. In modern phrase, the colony was booming. The quality of the immigrants was even more important than the quantity, as will presently appear.
A representative government, the Great and General Court, had been set up. This included the Governor and his twelve or more Assistants (commonly known as the Court of As- sistants) and two representatives from each of the towns. In 1634 (and indeed during the first twenty years of the Colony) the Court of Assistants always included four or five men who had had some University training, although only one of them, Simon Bradstreet, M.A. actually held a degree. The members of the General Court, as a group, were suffi- ciently trained at least to act on educational policies with foresight and intelligence. Events amply proved this to be the case.
By 1634 churches and ministers had been established in ten of the towns. Five of these churches were supplied not only with pastors "to exhort the people with a word of wis- dom", but also with teachers "to expound the doctrine with a word of knowledge". The education of these fifteen clergy- men deserves attention. Thirteen were graduates of the Uni- versity of Cambridge; two were graduates of Oxford; several held the degree of Master of Arts. Needless to say, they
340
HARVARD COLLEGE
supported, and indeed in some cases led, the movement for schools in the colony.
PURPOSES OF EDUCATION
By the end of 1634 at least twenty men with more or less university training,-one in every two hundred of the entire population,-were in positions of influence in the various towns and in the government of the colony. These men had no doubt as to the fundamental importance of the school and the college in the new nation which they were building. In their view, education was essential, not only to the welfare of the individual, but also to the welfare of the state and the church. By education "the Commonwealth may be furnished with knowing and understanding men in all callings, and the Churches with an able ministry in all places." Without schools "it is easy to see how both these estates (Common- wealth and Churches) may decline and degenerate into gross ignorance."
To the individual, education furnished the way to attain the chief purpose of life, which was in the words of the Westminister Catechism, "to glorify God and enjoy him for- ever". "The end then of learning" said John Milton, writing in 1643, "is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regain- ing to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection."
The records of the period show that these purposes were generally recognized by leading persons throughout the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.
FIRST SCHOOLS (1635-1650)
This being the case, various towns of the colony, the Gen- eral Court, and public spirited persons acting in groups or as individuals joined in the movement to establish schools and a college. The steps which they took in this matter dur- ing the early years of the colony largely determined the future course of education in Massachusetts. Between 1635 and
341
FIRST SCHOOLS
1650 they founded Harvard College; they set up Latin gram- mar schools preparatory to the college in eight of the larger towns (Boston, Charlestown, Salem, Dorchester, Cambridge, Roxbury, Braintree, and Dedham), and they presumably es- tablished schools, or at least teachers, for reading, writing, and arithmetic in each town of the colony as soon as it at- tained a population of fifty or more families.
During the same period the General Court provided for the future development of these institutions by a series of laws, unusually enlightened for their time, and to-day re- markable for their far-reaching consequences. The laws of 1642 and 1647, respecting the schools, embodied for the first time in history the policy of universal, tax-supported and state-controlled education as contrasted with the English method of private endowed schools. These laws mark the be- ginning of the systems of free public schools which in the nineteenth century spread throughout the United States, and far beyond its borders. Other laws enacted in 1642 and 1650 gave to Harvard College its general form of government, and the charter which is still in force.
No less important than these achievements was the example set by the leaders of the colony in the practice of individual giving for educational purposes. These gifts supplemented and often exceeded the enterprise of the towns and the Gen- eral Court in the establishment and support of the schools and the college. Two or three among many examples may be cited : the town of Boston in 1635 elected a school master, but apparently made no appropriation for his support. In 1636, however, a group of "the richer citizens" subscribed nearly fifty pounds for the support of a free school. The town later took over this school, and has continued it to the present day as the Boston Public Latin School. In the ad- joining town of Roxbury, a group of leading citizens formed a private corporation in 1645 for the maintenance of a school. Thus was established, and continued, the Roxbury Latin School, which is to this day open free of charge to all boys residing within the ancient limits of the town. A similar situ- ation existed in regard to Harvard College. In 1636 the Gen- eral Court of Massachusetts agreed to give four hundred pounds for a school or college, but apparently not over fifty
342
HARVARD COLLEGE
pounds of this money was ever paid over. The bequest of nearly eight hundred pounds by John Harvard in 1638, and the gifts of many others were necessary to maintain this insti- tution.
Thus during the fifteen epoch-making years, 1635-1650, the founders of Massachusetts established the policy of public and private support for education, set up a system of public schools and a college, and enacted laws which have shaped the development of these institutions to the present hour.
Bearing in mind the English background and the general educational situation in Massachusetts we turn to the origins and early history of Harvard College.
BEGINNING OF HARVARD COLLEGE (1629-1636)
The idea of a Puritan College in the New World seems to have been in Governor Winthrop's mind, as early as 1629, the year before he sailed for Massachusetts. The plan may well have been discussed by the Governor and Company of Massa- chusetts Bay in their eventful meetings of that year in London and Cambridge. In Winthrop's view, the English universities, Oxford and Cambridge, called by various writers "the foun- tains of learning and religion" were hopelessly corrupt. Win- throp in fact sent his own son, John Winthrop, Jr., to the university at Dublin, Ireland chiefly to escape the evil in- fluences of the English institutions. His view was shared by many others of his time. In his famous paper, "Con- clusions for the Plantation in New England" the following statement appears among the "Reasons to be considered for Justifying the undertakers of the intended plantation in New England and for encouraging such whose hearts God shall move to join with them in it:"
"The fountains of learning and religion [Oxford and Cam- bridge] are so corrupted (as beside the unsupportable charge of the education) most children (even the best wits and fair- est hopes) are perverted, corrupted and utterly overthrown, by the multitude of evil examples and the licentious govern- ment of those Seminaries where men strain at Gnats, and swallow Camels, use all severity for maintenance of cappes,
343
BEGINNING OF HARVARD COLLEGE
and other accomplishments but suffer all Ruffian-like fashion and disorder in manners to pass uncontrolled."
This seems clearly to imply the idea of a university, or at least a college in which these conditions did not exist. During the next five years this idea must have been made clearer to the New England readers by the activities of Arch- bishop Laud against the Puritans in England, and especially against those in the universities. The time seemed at hand when no one who did not conform to the doctrines and the ceremonies of the Church of England would be admitted to the universities. This could only mean that Puritans would be deprived of the opportunity for university education, and consequently that the supply of educated men for the New England colonies would be cut off. A college in Massachu- setts was the natural answer to this situation. Here morals and manners could be regulated. Puritan ideals and religious doctrines could be inculcated, and the learning of the Old World could be made available for Puritans of both New and Old England.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.