USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 3
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From 1620 to 1626 Hooker was minister at Esher, a village some sixteen miles south- west of London. It was a modest post of service, but one which fell in the gift of a Puritan patron and did not require confirma- tion by a bishop. Here he married the wife who later accompanied him to America. In 1626 he became "lecturer" at Chelmsford, some twenty-nine miles east of London. It was the growing habit of the Puritan party, where they could not secure the kind of service they wanted from the regular parish minister, to settle a "teacher," or "lecturer, " as a kind of colleague to the parish minister. This was done usually by voluntary subscription and proved an efficient method of diffusing the Puritan principles. At any rate, the system was bitterly condemned by the Anglican party, and Bishop Laud was from the first its consci- entious and active enemy.
Hooker quickly won a high reputation as a preacher. He was thorough-going in his Protestantism and believed that it was his duty to do what he could to reform the Church of England into what he believed to be the pattern commended in the New Testament. He strove for the moral betterment of the people, and regarded the toleration in the Anglican church of an ignorant and lazy clergy as an abomination which was not to be sub- mitted to. He insisted on a searching, moral discipline and advocated the need of a learned, preaching ministry. Hooker's reputation for intense spiritual earnestness, strenuous in- dustry, vividness and aptness of public speech, soon brought upon him the condemnation of the Bishops. Laud was his immediate ecclesi- astical superior, and by the year 1629 he had forced Hooker out of his Chelmsford ministry. Not content with that he was cited before the
High Commission Court and obliged to flee to Holland. There he served for two years as one of the ministers of the Scotch Church at Delft; and again for a few months with an exiled congregation at Rotterdam. It was evident, however, that this Dutch residence was only a temporary refuge. Hooker obvi- ously kept in close communication with his former parishioners at Chelmsford, for in 1632 a considerable body of these people, together with others from the neighboring towns of Braintree and Colchester, sailed for New Eng- land, and we find them described in Governor Winthrop's Journal sometimes as "the Brain- tree Company," and sometimes as "Mr. Hooker's Company." It was evidently an- ticipated that Hooker would follow them to America and become their leader.
The following year, then, 1633, Hooker sailed for New England in company with Rev. Samuel Stone, who was his colleague throughout his American career. Rev. John Cotton, of the Lincolnshire Boston, who was going over to become the minister of the First Church of the Massachusetts Boston, and John Haynes, the leading layman of the Brain- tree church, who was afterwards to be governor successively of Massachusetts and of Connecti- cut, were also passengers in the "Griffin." The ship's company had plenty of preaching, for Cotton Mather writes, "They had three sermons for the most part every day: of Mr. Cotton in the morning, Mr. Hooker in the afternoon, Mr. Stone after supper in the evening."
Hooker found his congregation waiting for him at Newtown, and on October 11, 1633, he was settled there as a pastor, with Mr. Stone as teacher. This congregation was then the most influential in Massachusetts, not only in ecclesiastical but also in civil affairs. Hooker was rivalled among the ministers only by Cotton, and John Haynes in 1635 succeeded Dudley as governor. The reasons which led this congregation to leave the banks of the Charles and transfer itself to the banks of the Connecticut have already been described. In the late spring of 1636 Hooker and his parish- ioners built their new homes at the place which was soon to bear the name of Hartford. It was here, on May 31, 1638, that Hooker in his
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A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
sermon before the General Court of the little colony set forth the fundamental political principles which have ever since governed the development of American democracy. These principles were embodied two years later in the fundamental laws of Connecticut.
He was no less eminent as an expounder of the principles of congregational government. As the author of the book entitled, "A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline," he first laid down the principles of congregational independency. To his thinking, a true church was a company of Christian people united to one another in the service of God by a voluntary covenant, and owning no other leadership than that of Christ. He held that such a congregation possesses full and complete authority to administer its own affairs, choose and ordain its own officers, and govern its own members. This democratic conception of church organization was destined to be vastly influential in the development not only of New England but of American political and religious life. On July 7, 1647, Hooker died at Hartford, and will always be remembered as the pioneer advocate of the principle that a self-governing democracy is the proper basis of a Common- wealth and as the great expounder of the char- acteristic polity of the New England churches.
Thomas Shepard represents a third type of Puritan-a man of gentle spirit, frail body, but a "gracious, sweet, heavenly-minded and soul-ravishing minister, in whose soul the Lord shed abroad his love so abundantly that thou- sands of souls have cause to bless God for him." We know the man's most private and inner- life, for he left behind him an autobiography which records the history of his personal and spiritual experiences as well as his public career. We know just how he felt, worked, dared and suffered. He was born in the little village of Towcester in Northamptonshire. "In the yeare," he wrote, "of Christ 1605, upon the day, & that very houre of the day wherein the Parlament should have bin blown up by Popish priests." His mother died when he was four years old and his father when he was ten, and his childhood was evidently one of no little hardship. At fourteen he was ad- mitted a pensioner at Emmanuel College and
made at the University a fine reputation for scholarship and high purpose. He received deacon's orders in the Established Church, but accepted an appointment as "lecturer" at Earls-Colne in Essex. Shepard's first charge was memorable, because it brought him into connection and close friendship with the stalwart young Puritan squire, Roger Harlakenden, who afterwards accompanied him to America, was the chief layman of the Church at Cambridge, and whose body was one of the first laid in the old Cambridge burial ground.
The young minister was not allowed to do his work in peace. He was promptly charged with being "a non-conformable man, when for the most of that time I was not resolved either way." After three years, and a little more, had passed, he was summoned before Laud, then the Bishop of London. The Bishop was more angry than was becoming to his sacred office, and his sentence was more explicit than paternal: "I charge you that you neither preach, read, marry, bury, or exercise any ministerial functions in any part of my Diocess; for if you do, and I hear of it, I'll be upon your back and follow you wherever you go, in any part of this kingdom, and so everlastingly disenable you." This far-reach- ing denunciation was fitted to have some effect in one direction or the other upon the "prating coxcomb." He must either conform or venture to defy the ecclesiastical decree. He took time to consider his course. The Puritan made haste slowly, it was a trait of his char- acter, but he did not go backward or sidewise. Shepard spent a few months with the Harla- kendens, while his spirit burned within him as he saw more clearly "into the evil of the English ceremonies, crosse, surplice and kneel- ing." Then the Bishop "fired me out of this place," a curiously modern phrase to find in a Seventeenth Century Journal and equally apt. He accepted an invitation to Yorkshire and became chaplain in the family of Sir Richard Darley, where he was kindly treated- very kindly, inasmuch as the knight's kins- woman became his wife. She was the first Margaret Shepard, who shared all her husband's hardships only to meet early death soon after landing in New England.
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THE FOUNDERS
But another ecclesiastic drove him from his pleasant Yorkshire refuge, and he went to Northumberland, where he thought he might preach in peace, "being far from any bishops"; but again he was silenced. Thus driven from pillar to post it was but natural that the thought of removing to New England should come to him. His reasons are on record in his "little booke." He saw no call to any other place in Old England. The Lord seemed to have departed from England when Mr. Hooker and Mr. Cotton were gone, and the hearts of most of the godly were set and bent that way. He was convinced of the intolerable evils in the Anglican Church. "I saw no reason to spend my time privately when I might pos- sibly exercise my talent publikely in New Eng- land. My dear wife did much long to see me settled there in peace and so put me on to it." He sailed with his wife and child in the year 1634: They encountered a great storm and with difficulty got back again to the English shore. Then his baby died, and the stricken father dared not be present at the burial, lest he should be arrested. He wondered if he was resisting the will of God and feared that he might have gone too far in separating from the " Assemblies in England." He spent the winter in Norfolk, with his expenses defrayed by Roger Harla- kenden. He could not preach in public, but he was busy with his pen. In the spring he went up to London, where he evaded the officers for a time, and in August he sailed once more for America, with his wife and a second son, his brother Samuel Shepard, his friend Roger Harlakenden, and other comrades. Their ship Defence was "very rotten and unfit for such a voyage," and again there were fears that they might be forced to put back. But through many storms they were carried safely, and on the 3d of October, 1635, they reached Boston harbor, and received a loving welcome from many friends. On the second day after their arrival, Shepard and his family came over to the Newtowne where he found Hooker and Stone, whom he had known in England, making their preparations to remove to the Connecti-
cut. The new-comers were received into the families of Hooker's company and in many cases made arrangements to buy the houses of those who were to depart. A new church was organized with Shepard as its minister, and for twelve years he "exercised his gifts" in a way which both enlarged his own reputa- tion and served the infant Commonwealth. He was in a position in which his influence was widely felt. There were strong men in his congregation who were leaders in Church and State and through whom his teachings reached far beyond the walls of his humble meeting- house. He was a studious man, who prepared his sermons with infinite care and who left behind him books which show his learning, the acuteness of his reason, the fervor of his imagination, the depth of his sincerity. He was an active missionary and worked in fellow- ship with John Eliot for the welfare of the Indians. He could not preach in the Indian tongue, but he wrote the tracts which Eliot translated for the use of the Indian converts. He made his short life long by fidelity and indefatigable industry. He died in 1649 at the early age of 44, leaving behind him a repu- tation for saintliness unsurpassed by anyone in the annals of New England. Grace and mercy, faith and conscience, met in him and gave power to his words.
We discover, then, in these Puritan founders of Cambridge the elements of power which have always profoundly affected the life of humanity. All the great human forces become the servants of the men who carry in themselves the passion for righteousness, the love of free- dom, and a confidence in unseen and eternal realities. The qualities of these three men, efficiency, foresight, steadfastness and saint- liness, uncompromising righteousness and the sense of communion with and commission from God, are the permanent foundations of the Puri- tan Commonwealth. If such men come at the turning of the tide they stand forever as cardi- nal figures of history, and whether their per- sonal genius be great or small, they leave an undying influence upon the story of their race.
III
THE CHURCH
W 'E can understand the early history of Massachusetts only when we remember that the great aim which the settlers proposed to themselves was to found "a civil and ecclesiastical government modelled, constructed and administered on the Bible as the common source of all divine knowledge and authority." In such a system the religious organization was not an accident or an appendage. It was the fundamental institution, and the "meeting-house" was the central necessity of a Massachusetts town.
We have no complete description of the first meeting-house in Cambridge, but it stood in the middle of the village, on the south- western corner of what are now Dunster and Mt. Auburn Streets. In comparison with the mud walls and thatched roof of the Boston meeting-house, the hewn frame of the Newtowne house, with roof of slate or boards, though probably less picturesque, no doubt looked to our ancestors much more complete and dig- nified. The interior was as simple and un- ecclesiastical as the exterior. There was no altar, no choir, nothing even that in olden countries would be called a pulpit; only a desk, with seats before it for deacons and elders, and rows of benches beyond, for men on the one side, and for women on the other. Indeed, it was not primarily a church at all. It was a meeting-house: a place, that is, where the people of the town gathered for all common purposes, on week-days to arrange their secular affairs, on the seventh to worship God. In the Plymouth Colony, the meeting-house (built more than ten years before) was also a fort, the roof being a flat platform, with six little cannon mounted on it; the worshippers, on Sunday, assembling by beat of drum, and marching together to their meeting place.
On Monday morning, February 11, 1636, this meeting-house was the scene of the gather- ing of the new church which was to take the place of Hooker's congregation soon to depart
for Connecticut. "There was," said Dr. Newell, in his Anniversary discourse two hundred and ten years later, "a Sabbath-like quiet and gravity in the looks and movements of the people. There were signs of preparation for some special solemnity. The signal for a public gathering was heard; and, as the in- habitants issued from their dwellings and passed with sedate step through the streets, others of less familiar countenance, who had spent the Sabbath with them that they might be here in season, or who had just arrived from the neighbourhood, were seen mingling with them as they went. Gathering from all quarters came the fathers of the infant church and commonwealth of Massachusetts, to sanc- tion by their presence the solemn act which was about to be performed. From Boston, from Charlestown, from Roxbury, from Dor- chester, from Watertown, and the towns which were within convenient travelling distance, the 'messengers' of the invited churches, and others, drawn hither by curiosity and religious interest, were seen wending their way, as they then best could, over new-wrought roads, or across the open fields and over the ice-bridged rivers and streams, to the humble Puritan sanctuary. In the midst of the newly-risen dwellings which had sprung up as by magic under the diligent hands of the Christian ad- venturers who first planted the town, on the rising ground just above the marshes, and in the principal street, leading down to the river,- which bore, as its still bears, the name of their king,-stood the House of Prayer. A plain, roughly-finished edifice it was but as precious in the sight of God as the marble and gilded cathedral.
"The little church was soon filled to over- flowing. The day, perhaps, was one of the mild and bright days which February often mingles with its snows and storms; and even if it were not, our hardy sires who had left their pleasant homes in Old England for the
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THE CHURCH
'stern and rockbound coast' of the New, who had deliberately exchanged their dear native soil for the uncertainties and discomforts of a colony in a heathen and savage land, who had traversed the wide, weltering sea for the privilege of worshipping God in purity and freedom,-men who made their religion the sun and centre of their being,-were not to be daunted by a little cold or a little damp in the preformance of its duties; and though our modern safeguards against snow and wet were unknown to their pilgrim feet, though neither stove nor furnace-those innovations of modern church-comfort-softened the chilly air, or dissolved the curling breaths that rose thickly upward in the sanctuary, they never thought of complaining, much less of staying at home. . .
"And first among the forms which stand out on the historic picture, as it presents itself to the eye of a Massachusetts memory, is that of John Winthrop, now in the meridian of life, the father of our commonwealth, the first governor of the colony, and always among its ruling and guiding spirits,-'the Nehemiah,' as Mather calls him, 'of our American Jeru- salem,'- the able, discreet, faithful, noble- spirited, open-handed servant of the rising state, for which he freely spent his time, his property, and his strength,-a man of many and great virtues, both in public and in private life, and whose errors were the errors of his age,-of well-balanced mind, sound judgment, great courtesy and self command,-prudent in counsel, energetic in action, mild and con- siderate in the exercise of authority, so as even to be charged by his more rigid associates with over-lenity, patient of personal injuries, and overcoming evil with good, firm and in- trepid in his adherence to right, meek and magnanimous in his acknowledgment of wrong, and pursuing through the little and great trials of his lot the even tenor of his way,-frugal, abstinent, laborious, self-denying, wisely and manfully accommodating himself to his new situation, avoiding in himself and discouraging in others all show and expensiveness in dress and style of living, foregoing for example's sake many of the elegancies and comforts to which he had been accustomed, but at the same time dispensing promptly and bountifully to the wants of the needy, and impoverishing himself
in the public service,-the true gentleman, the kind-hearted and benevolent neighbour, the loving husband and father, the humble and devout Christian.
"Next we discern the sterner countenance of Thomas Dudley, another of the trusty and devoted servants of the colony, whose name is so often associated with Winthrop's; the first deputy-governor, and afterwards from time to time governor, the principal founder of our town, and the zealous champion of its interests, whose house stood close by the church,-and his heart, too ;- a man of great integrity and independence, of strict honor and truth in his dealings, hardy in body and in mind, able in business, well qualified in most respects for public office, which he retained till his death, but at the same time of an irritable tempera- ment and strong passions, somewhat close, it was thought, in money matters, with a soldier's roughness of speech, severe and unbending in the administration of the laws, and zealously intolerant in his religious sentiments.
"John Haynes, too, is there; that 'heavenly man,' as Roger Williams calls him, the gov- ernor for the present year, another of the early settlers of Cambridge under the ministry of Hooker, and afterwards with him one of the fathers of Connecticut, where he enjoyed an unbounded and uninterrupted esteem and popularity at the head of affairs in that colony ; his wealth, as well as his wisdom and upright- ness, giving him an influence which he con- tinued to possess and to deserve through life.
"Not far from him, in the seats allotted to the most honored of the assembly, I see one, lately arrived from England, whom the veering popu- lar favor is about to place-though but for a single term-in the chief magistracy occupied successively by Winthrop, Dudley and Haynes, men of more than twice his age ;- a young man of twenty-four, of noble birth and more noble spirit, of rich genius and accomplishments, of persuasive eloquence, in after life at least, as Hume testifies, of consummate ability and address, remarkable even in that age so famed for its active talents,-of patrician family, but of republican and Puritan principles,-a most pure and devout Christian, a far-sighted and profound thinker, an ardent lover and consistent defender of civil and religious liberty
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A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
in its widest extent, a zealous seeker and champion of truth, one of the earliest ex- pounders, not to say discoverers, of the funda- mental principles of a constitutional republic,- whose high and eventful career, commencing amid controversy and tempest in the New World, and passing through scenes of intense and varied excitement in the Old, is to termi- nate in a martyr's calm and heroic death upon the scaffold,-a death worth more to mankind than a thousand common lives,-a death which made all England's heart thrill, which drew admiration even from his enemies, and forced from one of the bystanders, a zealous loyalist, the applauding and expressive ex- clamation, 'He dies like a prince!' I see him in the midst of the magistrates and elders, with that composed thoughtfulness of aspect, and grave majesty of demeanor, which gave to his blooming manhood the weight and authority of age ;- his reserve and quietness of manner, like the snows over a still volcano, covering from a stranger's eye the intense enthusiasm and energy which glowed in the deep soul beneath ;- his peculiar and striking countenance having that in it which at once commanded attention, and, as Clarendon says of it, 'made men think there was something in him extraordinary,' as there indeed was. We do well to remember the name, the charac- ter and the fortunes of Sir Henry Vane. ...
"Near him is his chosen preacher and friend, John Cotton; the ecclesiastical patriarch of the Massachusetts colony, silenced by Laud for the unpardonable sin of Puritanism and neglecting to kneel at the sacrament, but now rejoicing in his banishment from country and home as the opening, in Providence, of an enlarged sphere of active usefulness and influ- ence in which his learning and popular talents, his piety and zeal, the weight of his character, and the mildness of his spirit, placed him at the head of the clergy.
"By his side sits his colleague in the ministry, John Wilson, the first pastor of the Boston church, of which Cotton was the teacher,-of whom it was said by the celebrated Dr. Ames, 'that if he might have his option of the best condition this side of heaven, it would be that of teacher in a congregational church of which Mr. Wilson was pastor'; and of whose preach-
ing our own Shepard, when he first heard him, exclaimed: ‘Methinks I hear an apostle when I hear this man. .. . '
"Among his brethren who appear in the scene as it rises before us out of the mist of time, we may discern James and Symmes, of Charles- town, and Phillips, of Watertown, the fellow- passenger of Winthrop in the Arbella, of whom the governor writes, at his death, as 'a godly man, specially gifted, and very peaceful in his place, much lamented of his own people and others.' And in another seat is the future pastor of Concord, one of the strictest of the Puritans, Peter Bulkley, a gentleman by birth and education, a scholar of no mean attain- ments, with a well-furnished library (of which he gave a considerable part to the College in this place) and a large estate, of which he made most bountiful and judicious use in the ad- vancement of private and public good.
"Another glance shows us Richard Mather, of Dorchester, an eminent divine and controver- sialist, and the progenitor of the many distin- guished ministers of that name. His neighbour, the pastor of Roxbury, that zealous opponent of the new lights of his time, Thomas Weld, now chiefly remembered as the author of "The Rise, Reign and Ruin of the Antinomians," has accompanied him on the way, and has taken his place among the delegates of the invited churches. And there, too, is his beloved colleague, the self-sacrificing and tender- hearted Eliot; the apostle to the Indians, and their devoted and unflinching friend, the first and most efficient Protestant missionary to these wild men of the soil, who, a few years after this, with the aid of Gookin, one of the distinguished inhabitants of this place, com- menced his labors among the savages, and made his first conversions at Nonantum, then lying within the limits of Cambridge. His efforts and sacrifices were rewarded, indeed, with but a temporary and inadequate success; but his loving and saintly spirit enjoyed its reward, as it still toiled on in patience and hope.
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