USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of Boston, the metropolis of Massachusetts, from its origin to the present period; with some account of the environs > Part 9
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The jealousy entertained against Boston at this period was carried so far that an order was passed to have the courts both General and Quarter kept at Newtown, till further order. The publick stores of powder and arms were removed to Newtown and Roxbury, and the persons disarmed were ex- cused from performing military duty. The courts returned to Boston in the latter part of the next year, but the powder was kept at Roxbury till April 1645, when seventeen barrels of it were blown up. The explosion shook the houses in Boston and Cambridge like an earthquake, and burning cinders were brought by the winds beyond the Boston meeting house.t
* It is difficult to say positively where this building stood. Some expert antiquary may hereafter be able to ascertain the fact by tracing out the points in the following minute.
Town records March 6. 1637. Our brother Willyam Balstone shall have the remaining swampe on the backside of Mr. Coddington's swampe unto the widdow Burton's corner payle leaving out twoe rodde and a halfe for eyther of the highi wayes that are against it; the one being the way to the mylne and the other to the cove next unto Mr. Coddington's.
It appears that bricks were made here, from a record Dec. 26. 1636 : Thomas Mount has leave to fence in a piece of the marsh before his house for the making of brick.
t Cambridge received that name at the court in May 1638, in consequence of the College being established there, and the college received the name of Harvard in the same year. -Hubbard. 237. 430.
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
CHAPTER XV.
Emerging from a sea of dreams .
Tumultuous
Young.
THE winter of 1637-8 was very severe and the inhabitants of Boston suffered extremely for the want of fuel : the snow lay four feet and a half deep, from the fourth of November to March 23d. Gov. Winthrop relates that a party of thirty men started on a fair day (Jan. 13) for the purpose of cutting wood on Spectacle Island. The next night a N. E. storm set in and was followed by two days strong N. W. winds, so that the harbour was all frozen over, except a small channel, in which twelve of the men found their way to the Governour's Garden [Ft. Warren. ] Seven more were carried in the ice in a small skiff out to Broad Sound, and kept among the Brew- ster rocks without food or fire two days. The rest made for the main from the island, but two of them fell through the ice, and came near being drowned. Of the seven that fell among the rocks, all had their hands and feet frozen, some lost fin- gers and toes, and one died. On this occasion the Governour remarks in a letter to his son, that many were discouraged, and the settlement here was well nigh being broken up. It was probably in reference to the state of things, which exist- ed at this juncture, that Boston acquired the proverbial appel- lation of Lost Town.
A voyager of some little note visited these parts about this time, and the world has been favoured with his observations, under the title of New England's Rarities. John Josselyn, Gent. anchored in the bay of Massachusetts before Boston, July 3d. 1638. The tenth day, says he, 'I went ashore upon Noddle's Island to Mr. Sam. Maverick, for my passage, the only hospitable man in all the country, giving entertainment to all comers, gratis. Having refreshed myself for a day or two, I crossed the bay [harbour] in a small boat to Boston, which then was rather a village than a town, there being not above twenty or thirty houses : and presenting my respects to Mr. Winthorpe the Governour, and to Mr. Cotton the teach- er of Boston church, to whom I delivered from Mr. Francis Quarles the poet, the translation of the 16. 25. 51. 88. 113. 137. Psalms in English Metre for his approbation. Being civil- ly treated by all I had occasion to converse with, I returned in the evening to my lodgings.' Josselyn left on the twentieth of July for the eastward, where he had a brother, and return- ed Sep. 27th. 'Next day I went aboard of Mr. Hinderson,
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
inaster of a ship of 500 tons, and Capt. Jackson in the Queen of Bohemia privateer, and from thence I went ashore to Bos- ton where I refreshed myself at an Ordinary.' He also men- tions one Long's ordinary in Charlestown. There were two such ordinaries or houses of entertainment in Boston, into which if a stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that office, who would thrust himself into his company, uninvited, and if he called for more drink than the officer thought in his judgment he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and appoint the propor- tion beyond which he could not get one drop.
'Oct. 11. our master having been ashore upon the Govern- our's Island gave me half a score very fair pippins which he brought from thence, there being not one apple tree nor pear planted yet, in no part of the country, but upon that island.' Several adventures are described by our author, which would do credit to a modern English traveller in America, but con- vey no other useful hints, except it be one, that Mr. Maverick had in his family an African slave.
Doubts have been somewhere expressed concerning the cor- rectness of Josselyn's statement in regard to the number of houses : but he repeats it in another part of his book, and must be understood to speak of the framed buildings then in the place, and not to have included the mud-wall cottages, of which many yet remained. The number of buildings likely to be permanent had become so great as to require such pro- visions as these :
1636. Oct. 4. There shall no house at all be built in this town in any of the streets or lanes, but with the advice and consent of the overseers of the town's occasions, for the avoid- ing of disorderly building, the inconveniences of streets and lanes, and for the more comely and commodious ordering of them, upon the forfeiture for every house built contrary to this order, of such sum as the overseers shall see fitting, un- der the sum of Xs.
17th. Item. John Gallop shall remove his pales at his yards end, within 14 days, and shall range them even with the cor- ner of his house, for the preserving the way upon the sea bank.
Dec. 10. Not above one dwelling house may be built on any one lot, without the approbation of the town's overseers.
1637. Sept. 25. Special permission is granted to William Hudson to set his new building one foot and a half into the street, towards the sea side where he dwelleth.
1640. March 30. We find this remarkable entry : John Palmer, carpenter, is allowed to be an inhabitant here, if he can get a house, or land to set a house upon, it being not prop- er to allow a man an inhabitant without a habitation.
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
These extracts sufficiently show what many similar records corroborate, that our ancestors were not so neglectful of the appearance of their town, as we have been in the habit of supposing them to have been.
During the scenes of confusion which formed the subject of our two last chapters, the colonists had occasion to exhibit their power and courage in a short conflict with the Pequod Indians, a tribe inhabiting the parts about Connecticut River. Mr. Endicott with a party of 80 men had chastised them in the summer of 1636, but they remained quiet only while he remained about them. In 1637 the three colonies, Massachu- setts, Plymouth and Connecticut, agreed to enter the Indian country with their joint forces, and attempt their entire des- truction. Massachusetts sent 160 men, under the command of Capt. Israel Stoughton : of these Boston furnished 26 .* Mr. Wilson, the pastor of Boston accompanied the expedition as chaplain : it fell to his part by lot, and he is represented to have gone with so much faith and joy, that he professed him- self as fully satisfied that God would give the English the victory, as if he had seen it already obtained. So spirited and so prophetick a soothsayer would in ancient times have received the highest veneration. His predictions were ac- complished and the army returned in triumph, with the loss only of one man, August 26, 1637.
In the next year after this expedition, the Ancient and Honourable Artillery company took its rise. The first notice of its origin appears in Gov. Winthrop's journal, February, 1638 : 'Divers gentlemen and others being joined in a mili- tary company, desired to be made a corporation, but the council, considering from the example of the Pretorian band among the Romans, and the Templars in Europe, how dan- gerous it might be to erect a standing authority of military men, which might easily in time overtop the civil power, thought fit to stop it betimes, yet they were allowed to be a company, but subordinate to all authority.'
From this note we should infer, that the associates at first asked to be created into an independent company, which was deemed inadvisable. There appears to have been no objec- tion to the association for the purpose of improvement in mili- tary tactics, and accordingly we find the company recognized as such in the Colony records of the 17th March 1638 : 'The Military Company of Boston, may present two or three to the council to choose a captain out of them.' Also 'Capt. Keayne and the Military Company have power to exercise
* In the same year Boston was assessed 594. 4s. of a tax of 400/.] These data give us some idea of the proportion which Boston bore to the whole colony.
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
where they please, and to make use of so many of the common arms as they need, and a warrant from any of the council is sufficient for the delivery of them unto Captain Keayne or such as he shall appoint.' The following is a copy of their charter .*
ORDERS
for the Military Company made by the Governour and Council, and confirmed by the General Gourt.
'Whereas divers gentlemen and others, out of their care of the public weal and safety, by the advancement of the milita- ry art, and exercise of arms, have desired license of the Court to join themselves in one company, and to have the liberty to exercise themselves, as their occasions will best permit ; and that such liberties and privileges might be granted them, as the Court should think meet, for their better encouragement and furtherance, in so useful an employment ; which request of theirs being referred by the Court unto us of the Standing Council, we have thought fit, upon serious consideration, and conference with divers of the principal of them, to set down and order herein as followeth :
IMPRIMIS.
We do order, that Robert Keayne, Nathaniel Duncan, Robert Sedgwick, William Spencer, Gentlemen, and such others as are already joined with them, and such as they shall from time to time take into their company, shall be called the Military Company of the Massachusetts.
SECONDLY.
They, or the greater number of them, shall have liberty to choose their Captain, Lieutenant, and all other officers. Their Captain and Lieutenant to be always such as the Court or Council shall allow of; and no other officer be put upon them, but of their own choice.
THIRDLY.
The first Monday in every month is appointed for their meeting and exercise ; and to the end that they may not be hindered from coming together, we do hereby order, that no other training in the particular towns, nor other ordinary town meetings, shall be appointed on that day ; and if that day prove unseasonable for the exercise of their arms, then the sixth of the same week is appointed for supply. This not
* 'As extracted from the original records of the colony' and published in Whitman's Ilis- torical Sketch of the Company-to which the reader is referred for a fund of interesting in- formation. Shaw has given a copy which contains the following article between the 3d. and 4th. 'None of the said Military Company (except such as shall be officers of any other train- ed band in any particular town) shall be bound to give attendance upon their ordinary train- ings.'
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
to extend to Salem, or the towns beyond, nor to Hingham, Weymouth, Dedham, nor Concord.
FOURTHLY.
They have liberty and power to make orders amongst them- selves, for the better managing their military affairs ; which orders are to be of force, when they shall be allowed by the Court or Council; and they may appoint an officer to levy any fines or forfeitures, which they shall impose upon any of their own company, for the breach of any such order, so as the same exceed not twenty shillings for any one offence.
FIFTHLY.
The said Military Company are to have one thousand acres of land, (in some such place as may not be prejudicial to any plantation,) to be granted by the Court to some of the said company, and such as shall succeed in the same; to be im- proved by them within a time convenient, for providing ne- cessaries for their military exercises, and defraying of other charges, which may arise by occasion thereof.
SIXTHLY.
The said company shall have liberty, at the time before appointed, to assemble themselves for their military exercises, in any town within this jurisdiction, at their own pleasure ; provided always, that this order or grant, or any thing therein contained, shall not extend to free the said company, or any of them, their persons or estates, from the Civil Government and Jurisdiction here established.
JOHN WINTHROP, Gov. THOMAS DUDLEY, Dep. Gov.
The company was first organized on the first Monday in June, 1638-when Capt. Robert Keayne was elected com- mander, Daniel Hough, lieutenant, and Joseph Welde, ensign. Of the two last we have no information : Capt. Keayne was by profession a merchant tailor, and had belonged to the Hon- ourable Artillery Company in London. Many important of- fices and trusts were committed to his charge, both in town and state affairs. He was a man of large property, was fre- quently a representative, and in every plan for improvement, or enterprize, his name appears as a patron.
Nathaniel Duncan, the second person named in the charter, was a merchant and lived in Dorchester. Robert Sedgwick, the third charter member and next on the roll, belonged to Charlestown : he was, says Johnson, stout and active in all feats of war, nurst up in the London's Artillery Garden, be- sides having the help of a very good head-piece. He was the leader of the first train band formed in Charlestown, and afterwards was promoted to the highest military rank in the colony. William Spencer, the fourth and last named in the
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
charter, was also a merchant and resided at Cambridge. Thus it appears the charter was granted to four persons, re- siding each in a different town, with their associates, and this may serve to correct a mistaken idea, that the company in its origin and progress has been confined to Boston.
It will be observed that the name of this company, which is the 'oldest military establishment in the United States,' was by their charter the Military Company of the Massachusetts. The names of the Artillery Company, and the Great Artillery, and the First Artillery, which were carly applied to it, origi- nated from the introduction of field pieces into their exercise. The General Court recognized the institution by the name of the Artillery Company as early as sixteen hundred and fifty- seven. The oldest printed sermon, delivered on their anni- versary, June 3, 1672, was preached " on the day of the Ar- tillery Election." Cotton Mather, in his sermon 1691, in his address to the company calls them the Artillery Company.
Sept. 2, 1700. The title ANCIENT AND HONOURABLE is first used in the 'original records.' All the sermons printed down to 1708, bear the name of the Artillery Company on the title page, but in the sermon for that year they are styled the Hon- ourable Artillery Company. This is uniformly the style in the title pages until 1738. The address in the sermon for 1720, uses the appellation Ancient and Honourable, and in that for 1737, the words Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company are once introduced. Dr. Colman's century ser- mon, in 1738, has in the title page the words "preached be- fore the Honourable and Ancient Artillery Company." From that period to the present all the sermons are said to have been preached before the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company.
The records of the company do not mention either the words Honourable or Ancient until long after these appella- tions had been applied to them by the publick. The present name appears but once, (in 1762,) previous to the year 1789, when the company was revived after the revolution : the Legislature in their militia laws have since confirmed it to them. It is therefore probable they retained the name of Artillery, after they had relinquished the use of field pieces, by common consent. The addition of Honourable was made by the people, in regard to the many distinguished men, who had belonged to and commanded it, and for the great benefit and service the institution had rendered to the community. This name for the same reason they continue to merit ; and the term Ancient has been added by general usage since the expiration of their first century, with that sort of venera-
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
tion which untarnished reputation always ensures to gray hairs .*
In May 1639, the whole military of the Bay were mustered at Boston in two regiments, to the number of a thousand sol- diers, able men, well armed and exercised. They were head- ed the one by the Governour (Winthrop) who was General of all, and the other by the Deputy who was colonel. The cap- tains and others showed themselves very skilful and ready in various sorts of skirmishes and other military actions, wherein they spent the whole day.' We notice also another general training in Boston, Sept. 15, 1641, which lasted two days. About 1200 men were exercised in most sorts of land service ; yet it was observed that there was no man drunk, though there was plenty of wine and strong beer in the town-not an oath sworn, no quarrel, nor any hurt done. A more lofty but less perspicuous account of one of these military displays, is given in a narrative of the first thirty years by Old Planters. It is said to have taken place at Fox Hill, a spot of rising ground, which formerly existed at the bottom of the Common. The pomp and circumstance of the exhibition were so striking that some people entertained fears, lest offence might be taken in the parent country, as if the colonists were (even then) looking up to a state of independence.
While the soldiery at home were thus improving themselves and amusing their neighbours, our seamen were accidentally raising the fame of Boston abroad.t The Viceroys of New Spain and Peru having advice from the court of Spain, that the attempt for finding a Northwest passage, which had been tried before by Capts. Hudson and James, was again attempt- ed in 1639 by some industrious navigators from Boston, de- spatched Admiral de Fonte to discover and seize them. He sailed from Lima on the 3d of April 1640. On the 17th of July about lat. 61. N. he came to an Indian town, and the natives told his interpreter, that a little way from them lay a great ship, where there never had been one before. He sailed to the place and found only one man advanced in years, and a youth : the man exhibited the greatest skill in the me- chanical parts of the mathematics of any that he had ever met. They informed him that their ship was of New-Eng- land, from a town called Boston. The owner and the whole ship's company came on board, and the navigator of the ship told the admiral that his owner was a fine gentleman, and a
* See Whitman's Sketch, p. 8-12. 104. Mass. II. C. 2. ii. 160. 185. i. xxix. W. W. P. ch. xxvi.
t Memoirs of the Curious, April and June 1708, as quoted in an account of the N. W. pas- sages, 1748.
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Major General in the largest colony in New-England, called the Massachusetts. On this he received him like a gentleman, and told him his commission 'was to make prize of any people seeking a Northwest or West passage into the South Sea, but he would look on them as merchants trading with the natives for beavers and otters and other furs and skins; and so for a small present of provisions which he had no need of, he gave him a diamond ring that cost him 1200 pieces of eight, which the modest gentleman received with difficulty; and having given the brave navigator Capt. Shapely for his fine chart and journals a thousand pieces of eight, and the owner of the ship, Seimor Gibbons, a quarter cask of good Peruan wine, and the ten seamen each 20 pieces of eight, they set sail on a farther expedition. The behaviour of Admiral de Fonte evinced great politeness. He might have taken Shapely's charts forcibly, but chose to give a considerable price for them, on pretence that they were curious, when the true reason was that they might not be used as guides to others.
This story is solemnly related by the Admiral with every particular, and has been copied into foreign works with the remark that the ardour of enterprize at that period seemed to have passed from the English to their colonists at Boston .* It probably originated in the following simple fact,t out of which the Magnalia makes a story as doleful as the foregoing is im- probable. , About this time came home a small pinnace of 30 tons which had been gone eight months and was given up for lost. She went to Bermuda, but by continual tempests was kept from hence and forced to bear up for the W. Indies, and being in great distress arrived at Hispaniola, and not daring to go into any inhabited place there, the men went ashore in obscure places and lived on turtles and eggs. At last they were forced into a harbour, where lay a French man-of-war with his prize, and had surely made prize of them also, but that the captain, one Petfree, had lived at Piscataqua, and knew the merchant of our bark, one Mr. Gibbons : whereupon he used them courteously, and for such commodities as she carried, furnished her with tallow and hides, and sent home with her his prize, which he sold for a small price to be paid in New England.
Mr. Gibbons brought home an Alligator, which he gave to the Governour. This may be recollected as the first thing of the kind exhibited here; since which almost every living thing has found its way to Boston.
* See Hist. Gen. de. Voyages, 1757, tom. 15. p. 161.
t Winthrop, June 1637. Magnalia 2. 297.
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HISTORY OF BOSTON.
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CHAPTER XVI.
The house of God They first re-edify, and for a while In mean estate live moderate. . . Par. Loet.
THE temper of these early times is manifest in the continued care of the court to guard against extravagance in dress. Mr. Cotton's lectures against veils appear to have been soon for- gotten. Some of the magistrates imagined that the women indulged themselves in too much expense. They accordingly conferred with the ministers on the subject, and charged them to address themselves to the consciences of their hearers. 'The ministers promised a compliance, but it was found that so many of their own and the elders' wives participated in the fault, that there could be little hope of reformation through this means. .
The appetite as well as the fondness for dress was put under restraint. Colony records, Nov. 1637: No person shall sell any cakes or bunns either in the market or victualling houses, or elsewhere, upon pain of ten shillings fine, provided, that this order shall not extend to such cakes as shall be made for any burial, or marriage, or such like special occa- sion.
A lesson on morals may be taken from a circumstance which happened in the year 1639. At the General Court holden in November, great complaint was made of the op- pression suffered by the people in the purchase of foreign commodities. Capt. Keayne, who kept a shop in Boston was notoriously above others observed, and charged with such particulars as these ; for taking in some cases above six pence in the shilling profit, in some above eight pence, and in others two for one. He was convicted and fined. After the court had censured him, he was called to account by the church. He acknowledged his fault with tears and bewailed his cove- tous and corrupt heart, and a partial defence was set up by him or his friends, on the ground that if a man lost in one commodity, he might make it up in another, and that if through ignorance a man had given more for an article than it was worth in Europe, he might sell it for more than it was worth in New-England.
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HISTOY OF BOSTON.
Some of the members were earnest to have Capt. Keayne excommunicated, but Mr. Cotton did not consider his offence to be of that nature which is condemned in the scriptures, and he was excused with a simple admonition, on the presump- tion that his errour was rather in his judgment than in his heart : for he was otherwise a liberal man, very hospitable and generous in his contributions towards the church expen- ses. What would have been the effect on the mercantile character of Boston, if the rigour exercised in this case had continued to be exercised to this day, we leave the reader to surmise.
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