USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1630-1877. With a genealogical register > Part 12
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" Your petitioners are his Majesty's most loyal subjects and your Excellency's humble servants, in the name and by the order of the inhabitants of Cambridge.
JOHN COOPER, WALTER HASTING, FFRANCIS MOORE, JOHN JACKSON, SAMUELL ANDREW." 1
1 Mass. Arch., cxxviii. 297.
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In his rejoinder, Randolph gives an abstract of his petition and the order thereon, together with the objections urged by the inhabitants of Cambridge, and then proceeds thus : -
" To which the Petitioner answereth, that, in case the inhabi- tants of Cambridge do produce to your Excellency and the Coun- cil the royal grant to any person or persons of the said land peti- tioned for, and from such person or persons a legal conveyance to the inhabitants of the said town, and that the said town were by that name, or by what other name the same hath been to them granted, able and sufficient in the law to receive a grant of such lands, then the petitioner will cease any further prosecution of his said prayer : otherwise the petitioner humbly conceives the right still to remain in his Majesty, and humbly prays a grant for the same. ED. RANDOLPH. Boston March ye 17th 1687-8."1
Subsequently, another order of notice was issued : -
" Boston 22ยช June 1688. Mr. Sheriff, You may give notice to any persons that lay claim to the land in Cambridge petitioned for by Edward Randolph Esq., that on Thursday next, in the forenoon, they appear before his Excellency in Council, and give their full answer therein. I am, sir, your servant,
JOHN WEST, D. Sec."
Superscribed, " To Samuell Gookin Esq. High Sheriff of Mid- dlesex, at Cambridge." 2
At the time appointed, the proprietors of the lands in con- troversy presented their case more fully : -
" The Reply of the proprietors of those lands lying between Sanders Brook and Spy Pond near unto Watertown, in the County of Middlesex, to an answer made to their address pre- sented to your Excellency and the honorable Council, referring to the petition of Edward Randolph Esq., he praying a grant of seven hundred acres, part of the abovesaid tract of land, as vacant and unappropriated.
" Your humble suppliants do crave leave to remind your Ex- cellency and the honorable Council, that, in our former address, we have briefly declared and asserted our just title and claim to said lands, deriving the same from his Majesty's royal grant by his letters patent under the great seal, under the security whereof the first planters of this Colony adventured themselves into this then waste and desolate wilderness, and have here wasted and
1 Mass. Arch., cxxviii. 111, 112.
2 Ibid., p. 281.
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spent great estates and many lives, for the planting, peopling, and defending themselves and his Majesty's right therein. The abovesaid royal grant being made not only to the gentlemen named in said letters patent, but also to all such others as they shall admit and make free of their society, making them one body politic by the name of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, and under that name are empowered to make laws and ordinances for the good and wel- fare of said company and for the government and ordering of the said lands and plantation, and the people that shall inhabit therein, as to them shall seem meet. We further declared that, by the said Governor and Company, the lands petitioned for by Edward Randolph Esq. are granted to Cambridge, then called Newtown, and by the said town have been orderly distributed among their inhabitants, the grants and settlement whereof upon the several proprietors and their names as they stand entered upon the Town Book we do hereby exhibit to your Excellency and the Council. If further evidence be required of the same, or of our possession and improvement thereof, plainly evincing that those lands are neither vacant nor unappropriated, as the petitioner hath most untruly represented, we are ready to pre- sent the same, if your Excellency shall please to appoint us a time for so doing.
" Your Excellency have not required of us to show or demon- strate that the formalities of the law have been, in all the cir- cumstances thereof, exactly observed, nor do we judge it can rationally be expected of a people circumstanced as the first planters were, by whom those matters were acted in the infancy of these plantations ; they not having council in the law to re- pair unto, nor would the emergencies that then inevitably hap- pened admit thereof ; and, as we humbly conceive, nor doth the law of England require the same of a people so circumstanced as they then were. But from the beginning of this plantation [they] have approved themselves loyal to his Majesty, and in all respects have intended the true ends of his Majesty's royal grant, and, through God's great blessing on their endeavors, raised here a plantation that redounds greatly (as is now well known in the world) to the honor and profit of the crown. And his late Majesty, by his letters sent to the Governor and Com- pany, accordingly declared his royal acceptance thereof, with promise of protection in our long and orderly settlement of this Colony, as his Majesty was graciously pleased to term the same :
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the further security whereof, given us by the declaration of his late Majesty, when the Quo Warranto was issued forth against this Colony, as also by his present Majesty in his declaration, as in our address so we do hereby again humbly claim. If any thing be yet behind on our part, necessary for the evincing our claim, we humbly pray that we may be informed what those things are, and time given us to bring in our further answer to your Excellency and the Council. In the name and by the order of the proprietors, together with ourselves of those lands petitioned for by Edward Randolph Esq.
" SAMIL. ANDREW. WALTER HASTING. ZACHARIAH HICKS. JOHN GOVE." 1
On the same day, June 28, 1688, the Council passed the fol- lowing order : -
" Upon further hearing of the petition of Edward Randolph Esq., praying his Majesty's grant for a certain parcel or tract of vacant and mappropriated land, containing about seven hundred acres, lying between Spy Pond and Sanders Brook near Water- town in the County of Middlesex, as also a certain writing pre- sented by Samuell Andrews and others of Cambridge, termned the reply of the proprietors of the lands lying between Saunders Brook and Spy Pond to an answer made to their address : but they declaring they had no authority to speak in behalf of others but only for themselves 2 and by reason of the general description of the land petitioned for not knowing whether the lands claimed by them be within the quantity desired or not : It is ordered, that a survey and draught be forthwith made of the said land and returned into the Secretary's office accordingly.
" By order of Council, &c., JOHN WEST, D. Sec." 3
Nothing further is found in the Archives concerning this trans- action, and the Records of the Council are not accessible. As the title to the lands in controversy was not afterwards disputed, it seems probable that the act of robbery was not consummated ; or, if it was, such arbitrary proceedings were held to be utterly void, after the Revolution which soon followed.4
1 Mass Arch., cxxviii. 115, 116.
8 Mass. Arch., exxix. 3.
2 They could not speak by the authority 4 About two years before this Revolu- of the town, because the town was pro- tion, Cambridge lost one of her most hibited from holding meetings, except eminent citizens, Maj .- gen. Daniel Goo- once in each year for the choice of officers. kin, more familiarly known as Major
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Early in 1689, much excitement was produced by a rumor that the Prince of Orange had landed in England, with an armed force, and that a Revolution in the English Government was probable. This rumor took a more definite form, April 4, when " one Mr. Winslow came from Virginia and brought a printed copy of the Prince of Orange's declaration. Upon his arrival, he was imprisoned by Justice Foxcroft and others, for bringing a traitorous and treasonable libel into the country, as the mitti- mus expressed it. Winslow offered two thousand pounds bail, but it could not be accepted .. A proclamation was issued, charg- ing all officers and people to be in readiness to hinder the landing of any forces which the Prince of Orange might send into those parts of the world. The old magistrates and heads of the people silently wished, and secretly prayed, for success to the glorious undertaking, and determined quietly to wait the event. The body of the people were more impatient. The flame, which had been long smothered in their breasts, burst forth with violence Thursday, the 18th day of April, when the Governor and such of the Council as had been most active, and other obnoxious persons, about fifty in the whole, were seized and confined, and the old magistrates were reinstated." 1 Several accounts of this Revolu- tion appeared within a few months after it occurred, in which there is a substantial agreement in regard to the most important circumstances. Among others, a pamphlet of twenty pages, written by Judge Nathaniel Byfield, was published at London in 1689, entitled " An account of the late Revolution in New Eng- land, together with the Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants, of Boston, and the country adjacent, April 18, 1689." He describes the outbreak thus : "Upon the eighteenth instant, about eight of the clock in the morning, it was reported at the south end of the town that at the north end they were all
Gookin. Sad and disheartened at the loss of the Old Charter, yet cheered by the eonseiousness that he had faithfully and earnestly labored for its preservation, he survived the eatastrophe not quite a year. He found rest from his labors and deliv- erance from oppression, March 19, 1686-7, at the ripe age of 75 years; and a large horizontal slab marks the spot of his sep- ulture in the old burial-place. In his will, dated Aug. 13, 1685, he says, - "I desire no ostentation or much eost to be expended at my funeral, because it is a time of great tribulation, and mny estate
but little and weak." Henee it has been supposed that he was quite poor. On the contrary, while he was not rieh, the number of houses, and the quantity of silver plate and other goods bequeathed by him, in his will, denote that his estate was at least equal to the average at that period. His character is described very tersely by Judge Sewall, in his Journal : " March 19, Satterday, about 5 or 6 in the morn, Major Daniel Gookin dies. A right good man."
1 Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., i. 373.
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in arms ; and the like report was at the north end respecting the south end : whereupon Capt. John George 1 was immediately scized, and about nine of the clock the drums beat through the town, and an ensign was set up upon the beacon. Then Mr. Bradstreet, Mr. Danforth, Major Richards, Dr. Cooke, and Mr. Addington, &c., were brought to the Council-house by a company of soldiers under the command of Capt. Hill. The mean while, the people in arms did take up and put into goal Justice Bulli- vant, Justice Foxcraft, Mr. Randolf, Sheriff Sherlock, Capt. Rav- enscroft, Capt. White, Farewel, Broadbent, Crafford, Larkin, Smith, and many more, as also Mercey, then goal-keeper, and put Scates, the bricklayer, in his place. About noon, in the gal- lery at the Council-house, was read the Declaration here in- closed," etc.2 Under eleven heads, this Declaration sets forth the grievances which had become intolerable, and which justified armed resistance. It is scarcely possible that a document of such length and character could have been prepared in the four hours of intense excitement and confusion, between eight o'clock and noon. In all probability, it had been previously written in an- ticipation of some such occasion for its use. The twelfth article in this Declaration announces the conclusion : " We do there- fore seize upon the persons of those few ill men, which have been (next to our sins) the grand authors of our miseries ; resolving to secure them for what justice, orders from his Highness, with the English Parliament, shall direct ; lest, ere we are aware, we find (what we may fear, being on all sides in danger) ourselves to be by them given away to a foreign Power, before such orders can reach unto us : for which orders we now humbly wait. In the mean time, firmly believing that we have endeavored nothing but what mere duty to God and our country calls for at our hands, we commit our enterprise unto the blessing of him who hears the cry of the oppressed, and advise all our neighbors, for whom we have thus ventured ourselves, to join with us in prayers and all just actions for the defence of the land." 3 As a fitting result of this Declaration, Judge Byfield inserts the sun- mons sent by the magistrates and others to Sir Edmond Andros, who had retired to the fortification on Fort Hill : -
" At the Town House in Boston, April 18, 1689. Sir, Our- selves and many others, the inhabitants of this town and the places adjacent, being surprised with the people's sudden taking
1 Captain of the Frigate Rose, then at anchor in Boston harbor.
2 Revolution, etc., pp. 3, 4.
8 /bid., p. 19.
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of arms, in the first motions whereof we were wholly ignorant, being driven by the present accident, are necessitated to acquaint your Excellency that for the quieting and securing of the people inhabiting this country from the imminent dangers they many ways lie open and exposed to, and tendering your own safety, we judge it necessary you forthwith surrender and deliver up the government and fortification, to be preserved and disposed ac- cording to order and direction from the Crown of England, which suddenly is expected may arrive ; promising all security from violence to yourself or any of your gentlemen or soldiers, in per- son and estate ; otherwise we are assured they will endeavor the taking of the fortification by storm, if any opposition be made.
" To Sir Edmond Andross, Knight.
" WAIT WINTHROP. ELISHA COOK.
SIMON BRADSTREET. WILLIAM STOUGHTON. JOHN NELSON.
ISAAC ADDINGTON.
SAMUEL SHRIMPTON. ADAM WINTHROP.
BARTHOLOMEW GIDNEY. PETER SERGEANT.
WILLIAM BROWN. JOHN FOSTER.
THOMAS DANFORTH.
DAVID WATERHOUSE." 1
JOHN RICHARDS.
Unable to resist the force arrayed against him, the Governor obeyed this summons, surrendered the fort, and with his associ- ates went to the town-house, whence he was sent under guard to the house of Col. John Usher, who had been Treasurer under his administration, but, like Stoughton and other members of his Council,2 united with the patriotic party in this revolutionary movement. But this kind of duress did not satisfy the people ; and on the following day, at their urgent demand, he was impris- oned in the fort. Some of his associates shared his confinement, while others were committed to close jail. The day after the Governor was thus securely confined, some of the old magistrates, together with several other persons who had been active in over- turning the former government, organized a " Council for the Safety of the People and Conservation of the Peace," of which the old Governor, Bradstreet, was elected President and Isaac Addington, Clerk. The authority of this Council needed the support of a body more directly representing the people. " On the second of May, they recommended to the several towns in the
1 Revolution, etc., p. 20.
Gedney), and Brown, had been members 2 Winthrop, Shrimpton, Gidney (or of the Council.
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colony to meet and depute persons, not exceeding two for each town, except Boston four, to form an assembly, to sit the ninth of the same month. Sixty-six persons met and presented a dec- laration to the president and former magistrates in particular, taking no notice of such as lad associated with them, but upon receiving an answer in writing, they desired the whole council to continue in their station until the twenty-second instant, at which time it was agreed there should be a meeting of the representatives of all the towns in the colony, at Boston, who were to be specially instructed by their towns." 1 A large majority of the towns in- structed their representatives to vote in favor of reassuming the old Charter. The magistrates hesitated to adopt such a decisive measure ; but at length, when a new House of Representatives, which assembled on the fifth of June, " urged the council to take upon them the part they ought to bear in the government, ac- cording to the charter, until orders should be received from Eng- land, and declared ' they could not proceed to act in any thing of public concerns until this was conceded,' an acceptance was voted, this declaration being given as the reason of the vote. By these steps the change was made from the unlimited power of Sir Edmund and four of his council, to the old government, which had continued above fifty years ; but the weight and authority did not return with the form." 2 This form of government, by consent of the King, was administered about three years, until Sir William Phips arrived, in 1692, with the new Charter.
In this change of government, the inhabitants of Cambridge were actively engaged, and took their full share of the responsi- bility. Their delegate to the Convention which assembled on the ninth of May, presented the following declaration : 3 __
" Cambridge, May 6, 1689. We, the freeholders and inhabitants of the town of Cambridge, being very sensible of and thankful unto God for his mercy in our late deliverance from the oppres. sion and tyranny of those' persons under whose injustice and cruelty we have so long groaned ; and withal desirous heartily to express our gratitude to those worthy gentlemen who have been engaged in conserving of our peace since the Revolution ; yet withal being apprehensive that the present unsettlement may expose us to many hazards and dangers, and may give occasion to ill-minded persons to make disturbance : - do declare that we expect that our honored Governor, Deputy Governor, and assis-
1 Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., i. 382, 383.
2 Ibid., pp. 387, 388.
8 Mass. Arch., cvii. 20.
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tants, elected by the freemen of this Colony, in May, 1686, to- gether with the Deputies then sent down by the several respec- tive towns to the Court then holden, which was never legally dissolved, shall convene, and re-assume and exercise the Govern- ment as a General Court, according to our Charter, on the ninth of this instant May, or as soon as possible. And in so doing, we do engage that, to the utmost of our power, with persons and estates, we will contribute to their help and assistance, as in duty and equity we are bound, praying that God would direct them in this difficult juncture ; and do hope that all that are con- cerned for the peace and good of this land will readily join with us herein.
" Memorandum. It is here to be understood that what we expect to be done, as above, is only for a present settlement until we may have an opportunity to make our address unto, or shall be otherwise settled by, the supreme power in Eng- land.
"These lines above written, as they are worded, was agreed upon by the inhabitants of the town of Cambridge, this 6th of May, 1689, as attests Samuel Andrew, Clerk, in the name of the town."
This revolutionary movement was full of danger. It was not yet known here whether the Prince of Orange would be success- ful in his attempt to dethrone King James the Second. If he should fail, those who had resisted and imprisoned the king's Governor might well expect the direst vengeance. But this peril did not prevent the inhabitants of Cambridge from pledging their " persons and estates " to the support of the principal act- ors ; nor did it prevent their favorite and trusted leader, Thomas Danforth, from taking a conspicuous position in the front rank of those actors. The venerable Bradstreet, indeed, was made President of the Council of Safety, and reinstated as Governor, when it was decided to organize the government according to the old Charter ; but he was now eighty-seven years of age, and however desirable and important it may have been to con- nect his name and his presence with the enterprise, he was incapable of energetic action. Moreover, he was timid and yield- ing in disposition, and counselled submission rather than resist- ance during the controversy which preceded the abrogation of the Charter. On the contrary, Danforth had been recognized as a skilful and resolute leader through the former struggle; and now, at the age of sixty-seven, he retained the full possession of
8
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lis faculties, and bated not one jot in his hatred of tyranny. He was reinstated as Deputy-governor,1 ostensibly the second office, but, under the circumstances, the chief position of labor and re- sponsibility. What Palfrey says of their respective capacity, when originally elected Governor and Deputy-governor in 1679, had become even more manifestly true at this later period : - Bradstreet "can scarcely be pronounced to have been equal, either in ability of mind or in force of character, to the task of steering the straining vessel of state in those stormy times. More than any other man then living in Massachusetts, Thomas Danforth was competent to the stern occasion." 2 Danforth did not hesitate to act, though fully conscious that his head was in danger, if King James succeeded in retaining the throne, - the more because he liad so long been the leader in opposition to arbitrary authority, - and, even if the Prince of Orange became King, that this seizure of the government, in opposition to the constituted authority, miglit be regarded and punished as an act of treasonable rebel- lion.3 Yet he took the prominent position assigned to him, and manfully performed its duties for the space of three years, until Sir William Phips became Governor under the new Charter in 1692. For some reason he was not one of the Councillors ap- pointed under the new Charter ; but his fellow citizens mani- fested their regard for him and their approbation of his long and faithful services, by placing him in the Council, at the first general election, 1693, and kept liim there by successive elections as long as he lived. They could not reinstate him in his former position, nor promote him to a higher, because, under the new charter, both the Governor and Lieutenant-governor were appointed by
1 Also, as President of Maine, June 28, 1693.
2 Hist. New Eng., ii. 332.
8 In a letter to Governor Hinkley of Plymouth, dated April 20, two days after Sir Edmund Andros was deposed, he says, "I yet fear what the consequences thereof may be. I heartily pray that no bitter fruits may spring forth from this root. We have need of God's pity and pardon ; and some do apprehend it will be wisdom to hasten our address to those that are now supreme in England for pardon of so great an irruption, and for a favorable settlement under the sanetion of royal authority." - Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., xxxv. 192.
Three months later, writing to Rev. In- crease Mather, then in London, he says : -" I am deeply sensible that we have a wolf by the ears. This one thing being eirenmstaneed with mueh difficulty, - the people will not permit any enlargement, they having accused them of treason against their king and country ; and those restrained, they threaten at a high rate for being denied a habeas corpus. I do therefore earnestly entreat of you to pro- cure the best advice you can in this mat- ter, that, if possible, the good intents of the people and their loyalty to the Crown of England may not turn to their prej- udice." - Hutchinson's Coll. Papers, 568, 569.
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the King. Before his election to the new Council, he had been appointed one of the judges of the Superior Court. His asso- ciate, Judge Sewall, in his Journal, thus refers to his appoint- ment : " Tuesday Dec. 6, [1692.] A very dark cold day; is the day appointed for chusing of Judges. Wm. Stoughton Esq. is chosen Chief Justice, 15 votes (all then present) : Tho. Dan- forth Esq., 12: Major Richards, 7: Major-Gen1. Winthrop, 7 : S. S.,1 7. .... This was in Col. Page's 2 rooms, by papers on Wednesday, Xr. 7th, 1692." 3 " Dec. 8, Mr. Danforth is invited to dinner, and after pressed to accept his place." This place, which he seems to have accepted with some hesitation, he retained through life, and presided in a court at Bristol, less than two months before his death.
It is due to the reputation of Danforth, to state emphatically, that he was not a member of the court which tried and con- demned the unhappy persons accused of witchcraft. That spe- cial Court of Oyer and Terminer, appointed by Governor Phips and his Council, May 27, 1692, consisted of William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathanael Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholo- mew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, and Peter Sargeant ; 4 and it completed its bloody work before the next December, when the Superior Court was organized, of which Danforth was a member. Notwithstanding he held no judicial office during this period (except that he was one of the first Jus- tices of the Peace and Quorum), the name of Danforth has often been very improperly associated with the witchcraft tragedy. Even Savage, familiarly acquainted as he was with the history of that period, was so forgetful as to say that he was appointed " in 1692, judge of Sup. Court for the horrible proceedings against witches." 5 The only connection he had with those proceedings, so far as I have ascertained, is mentioned by Hutchinson.6 Be- fore the arrival of Governor Phips, he presided as Deputy-gover- nor, over a Court of Assistants at Salem, April 11, 1692, for the examination of accused persons, - not for their trial. There is no evidence that he was satisfied with the result of that examination, which, according to Hutchinson's account, seems to have been conducted chiefly if not entirely by Rev. Samuel Parris." On the
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