USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 4
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
"Hugh Peters, too (a name not to be forgotten), who, with Vane and others, had arrived in New England the preceding autumn, and was now in Boston or the neighbourhood (for he was not settled at Salem till December, 1636), was in all probability at the gathering of our Cambridge
27
THE CHURCH
church. He, too, was one of the remarkable men of a remarkable period; and afterwards became a conspicuous actor in the revolutionary scenes in England. He was the chaplain and counsellor of Cromwell; distinguished by a quaint and homely, but original, vigorous, Latimer-like eloquence,; which made him one of the most popular and effective preachers of his time; an ardent, resolute, active and enterprising man, lion-hearted and trumpet- tongued, entering with characteristic enthu- siasm and energy into the political as well as religious controversies of the day, ready to fight or pray, as his services might be wanted, and finally, like Vane, dying upon the scaffold, and, like Vane, meeting his fate with an un- shaken fortitude and heroism. While he was in this country, his ministry at Salem, and his spirited public services of various kinds, made him a rich blessing to the town and the state in which he lived. Of quick mind and versa- tile talents, ready to act upon all occasions and in all matters, temporal as well as spiritual, the influence of his counsels and wise sugges- tions, of his labors and successful example, left a deep and enduring impression upon the character of his Salem flock.
"But time would fail me to speak fully of the honored and useful men, both among the laity and the clergy, who, we have good reason to be- lieve, stood sponsors at the christening of our ancient church. I can only mention the names of such men as Richard Bellingham, and Simon Bradstreet, one of the first settlers of Cam- bridge, both of them afterwards chosen several times to the chief magistracy, in Massachu- setts,-William Coddington, a wealthy Boston merchant, of high character, a friend and sup- porter of Mrs. Hutchinson, and afterwards among the founders of Rhode Island, and its governor at his death,-William Pynchon, the father of Roxbury, and then of Spring- field,-Increase Nowell, of Charlestown, for many years secretary of the colony,-who, with others of less note, filled the seats of the sanc- tuary.
"In frontof all were the pastor and the teacher of the first flock here gathered, Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone, who were soon to be the spiritual fathers of another colony at Hartford. Hooker was also one of the admired and
renowned preachers of his time, and became to Connecticut what Cotton was to Massa- chusetts, its ecclesiastical patriarch and oracle -'the light of the western churches.'
" 'His colleague, Stone,' as his contemporary, Morton, testifies, 'was another star of the first magnitude in New England,' -- 'a learned, solid and judicious divine,' celebrated not only for his ability as a disputant, but for his wit, pleasantry and good humor."
In front of the pulpit facing the congre- gation, sat Thomas Shepard, and with him the deacons of the newly-organized church. Governor Winthrop's journal records the pro- ceedings as follows: "This day, there met a great assembly, where the proceeding was as followeth: Mr. Shepherd and two others (who were after to be chosen to office), sate together in the elder's seat. Then the elder of them began with prayer. After this Mr. Shepherd prayed with deep confession of sin, &c., and exer- cised out of Eph. V.,-that he might make it to himself a holy, &c .; and also opened the cause of their meeting, &c. Then the elder desired to know of the churches assembled, what number were needful to make a church, and how they ought to proceed in this action. Whereupon, some of the ancient ministers, conferring shortly together, gave answer: That the Scripture did not set down any certain rule for the number. Three (they thought) were too few, because of Matt. XVIII an appeal was allowed from three; but that seven might be a fit number. And, for their proceeding, they advised, that such as were to join should make confession of their faith, and declare what work of grace the Lord had wrought in them; which accordingly they did, Mr. Shep- herd first, then four others, then the elder, and one who was to be deacon (who had also prayed), and another member. Then the covenant was read, and they all gave a solemn assent to it. Then the elder desired of the churches that, if they did approve them to be a church, they would give them the right hand of fellow- ship. Whereupon, Mr. Cotton (upon short speech with some others near him), in the name of their churches, gave his hand to the elder with a short speech of their assent, and desired the peace of the Lord Jesus to be with them. Then Mr. Shepherd made an exhortation to the
28
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
rest of his body, about the nature of their covenant, and to stand firm to it, and com- mended them to the Lord in a most heavenly prayer. Then the elder told the assembly, that they were intended to choose Mr. Shepherd for their pastor (by the name of the brother who had exercised), and desired the churches, that, if they had anything to except against him, they would impart it to them before the day of ordination. Then he gave the church thanks for their assistance, and so left them to the Lord."
It was indeed a long way which these people had come from the stately ritual of the English prayer book to these simple and unpremedi- tated rites. The contrast between the elaborate ceremony of an Anglican induction into priestly orders and this plain, self-reliant procedure was as great as that between the lofty tower and splendid nave of St. Botolph's Church in the Lincolnshire Boston, of which John Cotton had been the rector, and the frame meeting-house in which he now gave "the fellowship of the churches" to the newly organized society.
It is most interesting to see how this ques- tion of a new form of church government and worship worked itself out in New England. It was done with very little friction, by perfectly natural and unconscious steps. The natural thing to do was to turn directly to the Bible and to shape the new organization and form of worship by the apostolic models. Already in Holland, as some of their own number knew, this had been long practiced. Already in Plymouth it had taken root in New England soil. Almost without discussion or dispute they adopted entirely new methods of pro- cedure, though in England they had barely
tolerated their Separatist neighbors, yet in America they rapidly became Separatists them- selves. Not a vestige of the supremacy of king or bishop remained when they reared their churches in the wilderness.
When the Massachusetts Company left England the leaders still acknowledged their allegiance to the Anglican Church. There are few more touching and persuasive documents of history than the farewell address of the exiles on the Arbella to the Church of England. It is entitled :
"The Humble Request of His Majes- tie's loyall Subjects, the Governour and the Company late gone for New England; To the rest of their Breth- ren, in and of the Church of England. For the obtaining of their Prayers, and the removall of suspitions, and mis- constructions of their Intentions."
and in it we read that they did not leave the Church of England "as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there; but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom of Christ Jesus."
"If there be any," goes on the Humble Request, "who through want of clear intelli- gence of our course, or tenderness of affection towards us, cannot conceive so well of our way as we could desire, we would entreat such not to despise us, nor to desert us in their prayers and affections, but to consider rather that they are so much the more bound to express the bowels of their compassion towards us, remembering always that both nature and grace doth ever bind us to relieve and rescue, with our utmost and speediest power, such as are dear unto us, when we conceive them to be running uncomfortable hazards."
Nearly all the first ministers of the Massa- chusetts Colony were ordained clergymen of the Church of England. Thomas Shepard made his first open renunciation of Episcopacy in entering upon his Newtowne pastorate. John Cotton served for twenty years under the Bishop of Lincoln as vicar in St. Botolph's Church at Boston, and before leaving his flock "Conferred with the chief of the people and offered them to bear witness (still) to the truth he had preached and practised amongst them .... if they conceived it any confirmation of their faith and practice." Hooker's ministry in the Church of England was shorter; but when it was found that the Bishop of London threatened to suspend him, a petition was pre- sented from forty-seven "conformable minis- ters" asking that he be retained. Nothing,
29
THE CHURCH
however, could be more remote from the prac- tice of the Church of England than the habits which these ministers adopted in America. The reaction was complete. There was no liturgy, no surplice, no stately ritual, no priestly offices. The minister became simply one of the congregation set apart by his fellow- worshippers to study, preach and conduct the public worship. Whatsoever the poverty of their outward surroundings, however lack- ing in grace, in beauty, in esthetic appeal, these brave and uncompromising folk had at least won the freedom to conduct their secular and religious affairs after their own fashion. They had founded a Commonwealth and or- ganized a church modelled and administered according to their interpretation of the Bible. In accordance with these principles they had built them a civil and religious temple, "Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone."
At first the New England churches acted as purely independent bodies. Then the common sense of loneliness and of danger drew them into close alliance. In all exigencies they learned more and more eagerly to seek each other's sympathy and counsel. The identification of church with state, whereby the members of the several churches found themselves constantly acting together in both the civil and the religious affairs of all the com- munities, accustomed them to concerted action. And so it happened that, in spite of occasional protests from individual towns, jealous of their rights, there grew up by mutual consent a certain affiliation of the churches, and mutual concern in each other's welfare, which, however familiar to us today, was then something new in the world.
This is not the place to trace the development of this new polity. It is interesting for us, however, to remember that the first announce- ment to the world of this new order of religious government, and, indeed, the first recognition on the part of the churches themselves of the fact that they had committed themselves to a common polity, was directly associated with the church in Cambridge and its first pastor. The hour comes when every new movement,
just becoming conscious of its own identity and its own purpose, takes to itself a name of its own. That moment came, as we shall see later, when the synod of Cambridge, assembling again in the little meeting-house on Dunster Street, declared that the New England churches were not Independent, but Congregational.
"So sprung up," said one of Shepard's suc- cessors, "a new Christian order,-an order in which the individual churches, while preserving their individuality and claiming each congre- gation as the source of all ecclesiastical power, yet consented to invest the assembled churches with certain authority over the several parts. It had been evolved, as we have seen, out of the practical exigencies of the situation. It had no justification in any previous traditions of church policy. It was very illogical, and showed in the statements and arguings of its own platform an uneasy consciousness that it was striving to combine things inherently incompatible. The churches were independent, yet they were not; each parish claimed the absolute right of controlling its own affairs, yet delegated part of its authority to councils or synods. With every new generation and at every new juncture down to the present day, Congregationalism has been forced to state its principles anew, and decide afresh just how much authority resides in the council and how much in the congregation. With the unity and aggressive power of an established church it has certainly never shown itself able to compete.
"Yet, logical or illogical, it was, as we have seen, very spontaneous, and it has proved itself singularly adapted to its work. In the new life of the Western Continent during those early centuries, if not throughout the nation's entire life, it was exactly what was needed. What it lost, as compared with Episcopacy or Pres- byterianism, in sheer working power, it gained in elasticity and freedom. It has proved strong enough to hold together its scattered forces through the simple sentiment of brotherhood; it has proved supple and free enough to adapt itself to the growth of democratic institutions and the spread of new religious thought."
IV
THE COLLEGE
U PON the main gate of Harvard College is written today an inscription taken from one of the earliest chronicles, entitled "New England's First Fruits," and published in 1643.
" After God had carried us safe to New Eng- land and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship and settled the Civil Government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in dust."
It was on the 28th day of October, 1636, Sir Harry Vane being the Governor, that the General Court of the colony passed the memorable vote: "The Court agrees to give £400 towards a school or college-whereof £200 shall be paid the next year and £200 when the work is finished." This is the sig- nificant act that marks the distinction between the Puritan colony and all pioneer settlements based on material foundations. For a like spirit under like circumstances history will be searched in vain.
"This act," said James Russell Lowell, "is second in real import to none that has happened in the Western hemisphere. The material growth of the colonies would have brought about their political separation from the mother country in the fulness of time, but the founding of the first college here saved New England from becoming a mere geographical expression. It did more, it insured our intellectual inde- pendence of the Old World. That independ- ence has been long in coming, but the chief names of those who have hastened its coming are written on the roll of Harvard College."
On November 15th, 1637, the General Court took the next step by voting that "the Colledg is ordered to bee at Newetowne," a place, as Winthrop wrote, "most pleasant and accom- odate" and "then under the orthodox and
soul-flourishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Shep- herd." Newtowne was then renamed Cam- bridge and twelve of the leading citizens of the Colony were commissioned to see that the votes establishing the College were carried out.
This Committee consisted of six magistrates and six ministers. The magistrates were John Winthrop, who was again Governor; Thomas Dudley, the Deputy-Governor; Richard Belling- ham, who was Governor a few years afterwards; John Humphrey of Lynn, one of the original adventurers and an assistant; Roger Harla- kenden of Cambridge, Shepard's friend and protector; and Israel Stoughton of Dorchester, who was an assistant for eight years and the father of the future Governor Stoughton. The six ministers were John Cotton and John Wilson of the Boston Church, Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, Thomas Weld of Roxbury, Hugh Peters, then settled at Salem, and John Davenport, who had just arrived in Boston, and who went on within a few months to the planting of New Haven. We do well to re- member these men. Humphrey and Peters tarried but a short time in New England, the brave young Harlakenden died before the College got started, and though Davenport returned to Boston in his old age, his fame is chiefly association with New Haven. The other eight bore names that have ever since been closely and honorably associated with Harvard College. All of the eight sent their own sons to the College and the descendants of these men have been enrolled among its scholars, teachers and administrators ever since. The names of Weld and Stoughton are borne by two of the buildings in the College Yard. There are more than forty Welds and Wilsons in the list of Harvard graduates, more than a score of Cottons and Winthrops and almost as many Dudleys and Shepards.
This efficient Committee got to work at once, and in 1638 work began under the guidance of one Nathaniel Eaton. At first the word
31
THE COLLEGE
school was a more appropriate description than College, and Eaton was never known by any other title than schoolmaster. His stay was short. He was soon accused of the " cruell and barbaros beating of Mr. Nathaniel Briscoe and for other neglecting and misusing of his scholars," and accordingly on September 29, 1639, he was dismissed and later fined and obliged to pay Mr. Briscoe, who was his assist- ant teacher, £30, in satisfaction of the wrong done him. Governor Winthrop in his History of New England told the story at great length, and evidently the affair created no little com- motion in the community. Later Eaton went to Virginia, whence he returned to England, and at the Restoration conformed to the Church of England and had a living at Biddeford until he died in a prison where he was confined for debt.
Meanwhile, the Committee had gone for- ward with the erection of a building to house the scholars. It was a slow and difficult task, for all the timber had to be hewn by hand, and the shingles split with a saw. It stood at what is now the southern extremity of the College Yard, and, indeed, probably projected into what is now Massachusetts Avenue, opposite Holyoke House. It fronted to the south toward Massachusetts Avenue, then called Braintree Street. At the western end of the ground floor was a hall and a kitchen, and the same wing contained "the buttery and a study for the Senior Fellows." The eastern end of this floor was divided into chambers, within which were partitioned off small rooms called studies, each about six feet square. Each student had one of these studies allotted to him, but the chambers were shared in com- mon. On the floor above was a good-sized room for a library, and more chambers and studies. There were but two chimneys, and evidently most of the chambers were entirely without heat. In the accounts of the Com- mittee the bill of glazing is so small that it is obvious that very little glass was available. Probably oiled paper served as a substitute. Lime was very difficult to obtain, and the in- terior, like the interior of the little Meeting House, was daubed with clay as a substitute for plaster. There is some reason to suppose that certain chambers and studies were finished
according to the wishes or the means of the students who first occupied them. Hence, while some were calked with clay, others were apparently ceiled with cedar and one or two were apparently lathed and plastered. There are charges for both clapboards and shingles in the accounts. It is, therefore, probable that the exterior walls were clapboarded and the roof shingled. It was, obviously, a primi- tive structure, yet the author of "New Eng- land's First Fruits," said of it,-"the edifice is very fair and comely within and without, having in it a spacious hall where they will meet at commons, lectures and exercises, and a large library with some books in it, the gifts of divers of our friends. Their chambers and studies also fitted for and possessed by the students and all other rooms and offices neces- sary and convenient with all needful offices thereto belonging." Johnson, in his book called "Wonder-working Providence," later stated that the College was "a fair building, thought by some to be too gorgeous for a wilderness and yet too mean in others' appre- hension for a College." There was at the top of the building a turret or cupola, for we have record of the fact that a bell given to the College was placed in the turret. No provision was made for lighting the place, and there early appear in the records charges against students for the "public candle." It is evident also that most of the students used the hall or dining-room as a living-room. There a fire was maintained at the expense of the students and there by the light of the "public candle" they must have studied during the winter evenings.
Rules and regulations hedged in the students at every turn. They were not permitted to use the English language, except in the public exercises where it was particularly prescribed. Their conversation was presumably in Latin. They were not allowed to buy, sell, or exchange anything to the value of a six pence without the permission of their parents or tutor. They were not allowed to attend public meetings of any sort, and many were the misdemeanors which were punishable either by fine or by whipping. In the early days there was so little money in the colony that the wampum of the Indians was made by law a legal tender
32
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
for debts. Under these circumstances the College steward received in payment for tuition such articles as the homes of the students could furnish. Accounts were liquidated with live- stock, grain, groceries, and solids and fluids of various descriptions. The building of the house and the opening of the school strained to the uttermost the limited resources of the colony. Indeed the enterprise could hardly have been carried to success at all had it not been for the memorable gift of a young Puritan minister, a graduate of Emmanuel, who was another of the dauntless Puritan saints who "took New England on their way to Heaven."
"As we were thinking and consulting," wrote John Winthrop, "how to affect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. John Harvard, a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, then living among us, to bequeath the one-half of his estate, in all about £700, toward the erection of the College, and all his library." It was this gift which really made the enterprise possible, and it was in acknowl- edgment of it that the General Court voted, in 1638, "that the College at Cambridge be called Harvard College.
There is no more interesting story of genea- logical research and discovery than that which describes the successful effort of Mr. Henry F. Waters, in 1885, to trace the history of John Harvard. By patient industry and skill, Mr. Waters was enabled to reconstruct the geneal- ogy which had been completely obliterated by the flight of time. John Harvard had become almost a mythical figure, but now we know more about him than we do of most of the early settlers of New England. His family story runs back to a fine old Elizabethean house, still standing in the High Street at Stratford-on-Avon, and now restored and known as the Harvard House. This house was built in 1596 by Thomas and Alice Rogers of Stratford, and therein they reared a thriving family. Thomas Rogers was the leading citizen of the little Warwickshire town, an alderman, and later baliff or mayor. By trade he was a marketman, or provision dealer in a general way, and he evidently prospered in their world's goods. Near by lived one John Shakespeare, who also had sons and daughters in goodly number and who was also an alder-
man. The children of these two houses were close neighbors. They went together to the famous grammar school and they went to the same church. The children were paired, William Shakespeare with Charles Rogers, Richard Shakespeare with Richard Rogers, Edmund Shakespeare with Edward Rogers. Their fathers were trustees of the grammar school and the children played together on the village green. One of the Rogers children was named Katherine, and in April, 1605, this Katherine Rogers, going out from the timbered house on the High Street to Holy Trinity Church, was married to Robert Harvard, a young market-man living in the Borrough of Southwark in London. It has been suggested that Robert Harvard and Katherine Rogers were brought together by no less a person than William Shakespeare, for Shakespeare had left Stratford and gone to London, and was living in Southwark. He had known the Rogers children intimately, and it is not un- likely that in London he met Robert Harvard. A more probable suggestion is that as Thomas Rogers, the father, was in the same business as Robert Harvard, the two young people came together on the occasion of some business visit of the young provision dealer to Strat- ford. At any rate, they set up their home in Southwark, and there John Harvard was born in November, 1607. Their house was in the shadow of St. Saviour's Church, which is now Southwark Cathedral. The Bankside Theatre where Shakespeare played was not far away, and it is a fair guess that Shakespeare some- times rocked John Harvard's cradle or took the child on his knee to tell him stories. When the boy was eighteen years old the black plague descended upon London, and his father, two brothers and two sisters died of it within five weeks. Katherine Harvard was left a widow with her two boys John and Thomas. She married for a second time John Elletson, a well-to-do cooper in London and took steps at once to send her boy John to Emmanuel College at Cambridge, where he entered in 1627, being recorded on the books of the College as coming from "Middlesex," which indicates that the Elletsons had moved from Southwark into London. It is interesting to remember that the English Cambridge was
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.