USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 12
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To return to the war, the hostile Indians con- tinued their barbarons inroads upon the devoted inland towns of Middlesex. By the middle of
1 It should be said, in extenuation of this feeling, that Magun- kaqnog or Maguncook village was disaffected to the English. Probably a few in all the villages sympathized with Philip.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
April Philip had concentrated a force variously estimated at from four to fifteen hundred warriors in the vicinity of Marlborough, where a small garri- son was maintained by the English to cover the road to Brookfield and the Connecticut. There is no doubt Philip meant to make a clean sweep this time of all the border towns. On the 18th and 19th of April the enemy came into Marlborough and burned such few abandoned houses as the former fire had spared. We do not learn that they attacked the garrison at this time ; but, after finish- ing with Marlborough, the whole force moved off towards Sudbury.
Intelligence having reached Boston that the enemy were threatening Marlborough, the council ordered Captain Samuel Wadsworth to proceed there with his company. Wadsworth, with seventy men, left Sudbury on the evening of the 20th. He found Marlborough in ruins and the Indians gone. Without making any considerable halt to rest or refresh his men, this gallant soldier, fearing that he might be too late to save Sudbury, marched for that place, taking with him Brocklebank, the commander at Marlborough, and a few men of his garrison. Wadsworth's command now numbered about eighty.
Ou the morning of the 21st the Indians fell with fury upon Sudbury, the inhabited part of which was then chiefly within what is now Wayland. They succeeded in burning most of the houses not garrisoned. The alarm immediately spread to Con- cord on the north and to Watertown 1 on the east. Twelve " resolute young men " from the former place hurried to the assistance of their distressed neighbors. When near the garrison of Walter Haynes, they were decoyed into an ambuscade and eleven of them killed. The twelfth escaped.
The Watertown men, who had come to the rescue under Captain Mason, aided by the Sud- bury men, drove those Indians that had crossed the river back to the west side,2 where the main body was lying in wait for Wadsworth, of whose movements they were evidently apprised.
Wadsworth's devoted little band arrived within a mile and a half of Sudbury, early in the morning, having marched a part of the night, but with cau- tion, the distance between the two towns being only about ten miles. Upon the approach of the
English, the Indians resorted to their old trick of showing a few men who were to lure the soldiers into an ambuscade. The ruse again proved suc- cessful. The decoying Indians fled, pursucd by Wadsworth's men, until they entered the fatal en- closure, and were checked by a murderous dis- charge which threw them into confusion. Rallying under the voice and example of their leaders, the soldiers fell back, fighting, to the brow of a neigh- boring hill, where they kept their savage enemies for several hours at bay with no great loss to them- selves.
Mason and his men came gallantly to the res- cue, but the enemy met them with overwhelming numbers, and forced them to retire. Wadsworth continued to fight on, hoping, doubtless, to escape under cover of the night. Maddened by this pro- longed resistance, the savages now set fire to the dry grass. The flame and smoke were borne by the wind into the faces of the English, and com- pelled them to retire from their advantageous posi- tion. Now, while in disorder, scorched by the fierce heat and blinded by thick smoke, they were charged by ten times their numbers. A. desperate hand-to-hand fight took place. The soldiers de- fended themselves valiantly, but the odds were too great. Wadsworth, Brocklebank, and half their men fell bravely fighting here. Thirteen or fourteen escaped to a mill, where they were rescued the same night by Mason, Prentice, and Cowell. Wads- worth's whole loss could not have been less than fifty or sixty this day. Six of his men were taken alive, to be subsequently tortured to death by their inhuman captors.
With this victory the successes of Philip seem to have culminated. Several bloody engagements took place, in which the English killed and cap- tured numbers of the enemy. Roving bands still continued to harass the frontier settlements, but their power grew weaker day by day. Philip be- came a wanderer, and at length, with a handful of his warriors, was hunted to his old lair at Mount Hope, where he was killed, and his followers cap- tured or destroyed. This event took place on the 12th of August. With the fall of its great leader the league against the English crumbled in pieces. The bullet, which Increase Mather said the English did not cease crying to the Lord until they had prayed it into Philip's heart, struck down the proud- spirited Wampanoag at last.
The historian Hubbard says that the attack on Sudbury and defeat of Wadsworth took place on
1 Watertown, or that part now Weston, then adjoined that part of Sudbury now called Wayland.
2 The settlement must have been almost wholly in what is now Wayland.
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Death of Philip.
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KING PHILIP'S WAR.
the 18th of April. Hubbard was a contemporary, | brought no particulars. Gookin also says the but neither an actor in, nor an eyewitness of, the news came on Lecture-day, which we know was Friday. He immediately ordered a squadron of Prentice's troop and Ilunting's newly raised In- dian infantry to the scene of action. IIunting, he says, " got not to Sudbury until a little within night," when they found the enemy had retreated to the west side of Sudbury River, " where also several English inhabited." So far Gookin. events he describes. Only those who have been perplexed and exasperated by this author's frequent inaccuracies, his incoherence, his disorderly ar- rangement, can justly appreciate his value when the truth of his statements is called in question, as it has been in regard to the date of Sudbury fight. We do not undervalue Hubbard, but we do him no injustice in saying that, with the means of verifica- tion he possessed, his carelessness is inexcusable in a historian. His mistake in giving the date of Sudbury fight multiplied and thus strengthened itself until investigation traced its numerous prog- eny to their original source. Hubbard's error has been long enough used in support of Hubbard's accuracy.
In 1852 a monument was erected on the battle- ground at Sudbury to commemorate an historical event. The tablet bears the erroneous inscription of April 18, 1676. A controversy arose as to the true date, which was finally made the subject of investigation by one of our historical societies. An analysis of the evidence then procured, and a care- ful comparison of those authorities who have the best claim to accurate knowledge of this affair, conclusively establish Friday, the 21st of April, 1676, as the true date of Wadsworth's defeat.
Where a historian is believed to be inexact, the only trustworthy sources of information are official documents or public records, if such exist. The entries made in diaries by individuals, from hear- say or from common rumor, are not substantiated by being printed ; they only become more mischiev- ous if erroneous.
Sudbury fight occurred in Middlesex County. In October, 1675, the shire regiment was ordered to be put in condition for active service, and the command given to General Daniel Gookin. It was his province to superintend all military affairs within the county, to furnish quotas for service outside of its limits, to arm, equip, and put them in the field. Gookin was military commandant in his district. His headquarters were at Cambridge, and any military intelligence originating within his command would be transmitted to him as a matter of official duty by his subordinates. Gookin has fortunately left an account of the Sudbury affair in his history of the war.
" April the 21st, about midday," he says intel- ligence reached Charlestown that the enemy had attacked Sudbury that morning. The messengers
Edward Rawson, secretary of the supreme coun- cil, which conducted the war, sat down on the same day to write by its direction this news to Governor Winslow. His letter is preserved in the Massachusetts archives.1 In this communication, which is dated April 21st, Rawson writes thus : " This day we have intelligence in general that Sudbury was this morning assaulted and many houses burned down. Particulars and the more full certainty of things are not yet come." He says, further, that the remaining houses in Marl- borough were burned "Tuesday and Wednesday last," or April 18th and 19th. Mather gives the 19th as the date. But Hubbard says (p. 79, Lon- don ed.) this occurred on the 17th. Either the sec- retary of the council, who plainly designates the days of the week, or the author of the Present State of New England, was misinformed.
Here the secretary sustains the soldier in several important particulars. The intelligence came to Charlestown and Boston on the 21st, at which time nothing was known of the destruction of Wads- worth's command, and it reached those places on the same day the attack took place. If the assault on Sudbury and death of Wadsworth were on the 18th, a delay of three days seems quite unaccount- able when it is shown that messengers came with the first news in a few hours, and that Hunting's men marched from Charlestown to Sudbury between midday and nightfall. The council did learn of Wadsworth's disaster on the 22d.
Fortunately the Plymouth authorities reply, April 26th, to Rawson, and their letter is also on the State files. It refers to the secretary's an- nouncement of the assault of " Friday" on Sud- bury, which again fixes the date, " since which " __ that is, after the receipt of Rawson's letter - they learn that Captain Wadsworth and Brocklebank were lost "on the same day." In other words, from some unknown but independent source they
1 The relevant portions of the testimony we are citing may be read in Vols. VII., XX., N. E. Historical and Genealogical Register.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
learn that Wadsworth was slain on Friday, the | son's men, in which they say that they " drove 200 2 Ist. This letter also says Scituate was assailed on the same day with Sudbury.
The Plymouth authorities thus fix the date of Wadsworth's disaster on the 21st. Moreover, Inerease Mather, in his History of the War (Lon- don, 1676), also says the two cvents, at Sudbury and Scituate, occurred on the same day.
It being clear that news of the attack on Sud- bury did not reach Boston until the 21st, we will return to the reinforcements despatched by Gookin. Hunting's Indians, arriving too late for the battle, lay on their arms for the night. Then continues General Gookin, " Early in the morning, upon April 22d, our forty Indians having stripped them- selves and painted their faces like to the enemy, they passed over the bridge to the west side of the river, without any Englishman in their company, to make discovery of the enemy." They found the enemy gone, but soon came upon the bodies of Wadsworth, Brocklebank, and their men, "who were slain the day before." If Hubbard is right in his date, the dead had then been unburied four days, and four days had elapsed before these reinforce- ments reached the spot !
An anonymous but truthful writer whose account was published in London the same year of the war (1676), and who states that Wadsworth's action was on the 21st, tells us that the survivors "es- caped to a mill, which they defended until night, when they were happily rescued by Captain Pren- tice, who coming in the day hastily, though some- what too late, to the relief of Captain Wadsworth, having not above six troopers that were able to keep way with him," etc. This account, which was printed before that of Gookin, is in complete ac- cord with him ; for Prentice's men, being mounted, reached Sudbury some time before Hunting, and on the same evening of the battle. It thus becomes authority.
Still another authority comes to establish Gook- in's entire faithfulness. After narrating the arrival of the tidings from Sudbury, he (Gookin) adds, " Indeed (thro' God's favor) some small assistance was already sent from Watertown by Capt. Hugh Mason, which was the next town to Sudbury. These with some of the inhabitants joined, and with some others that came in to their help, there was a vigorous resistance made, and a check given to the enemy. But these particulars were not known when the tidings came to Charlestown."
On the State files is a petition of three of Ma-
Indians over the river, pursued them, and being joined with some others went to see if they could relieve Capt. Wadsworth on the hill." Finding the Indians too strong, after a hard fight Mason's men retreated to Goodnow's garrison, and remained there until dusk, when they went "to Mr. Noies mill " to see if any of Wadsworth's men had es- caped to that place. They found thirteen or four- teen survivors of the battle and brought them to Sudbury. As soon as it was light the next morn- ing they went out and buried the Concord men killed the day before in the meadow ; then, joining Captain Hunting, they passed the river and per- formed the same rites for Wadsworth and his ill- fated band. Thus is Hunting's presence on the morning after the battle fully corroborated.
Again Rawson writes, this time to Lieutenant Jacobs of Brocklebank's company, whom the latter left in command at Marlborough, to tell him that Wadsworth and his men were “ destroyed yester- day." This letter is dated April 22d, and shows that fuller intelligence from the battle-ground reached Boston after the secretary had sealed his letter to Governor Winslow. The secretary now authoritatively says Wadsworth's command was " destroyed " April 21st.
On the same day, April 22d, Jacobs writes the secretary that the Indians were in front of him in great force, and had fired on that part of Marl- borough next to Sudbury. Seeing these Indians and hearing their victorious war-whoops, he writes in terms of great anxiety about the fate of his comrades, whom Hubbard supposes to have been killed four days previous.
Hubbard's statement that Marlborough was burned on the 17th is disproved by official author- ity (Rawson) ; also by Mather, who says news of the burning of Sudbury and death of Wadsworth was received on the 21st, and is confirmed by Gookin, Rawson, and the Plymouth authorities. Gookin says the two events occurred on the 21st, and is confirmed by Rawson, the Plymouth authori- ties, and the anonymous author. It would be diffi- cult to have authorities, so entirely independent of each other, more fully harmonizing in their state- ments. They are all contemporary with the events they relate; they give the only connected, coherent account of Sudbury fight. Leaving the historians, diary-keepers, and almanacs out of the case, the council's letters establish its true date beyond question.
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TRANSITION FROM THE COLONY TO THE PROVINCE.
XI.
TRANSITION FROM THE COLONY TO THE PROVINCE. - WITCHCRAFT. - KING WILLIAM'S WAR.
IT is considered somewhat remarkable that even in the hour of her greatest need the colony did not apply to England for help to conquer Philip. With grim determination she fought out the battle alone. Yet it was her right to demand and to re- ceive succor. Certainly the king's interest, honor, and dignity equally enjoined him to defend his sub- jects of New England against their foes. Whether the colonists were, as Lord Anglesey said, " poor and proud," feared to create a pretext for quartering imperial troops among them, or were ashamed to appear as suppliants before a monarch they had so lately defied, we do not undertake to determine ; but it is almost certain that their application for men, money, and munitions of war would have been promptly honored. This hanghty and independent spirit cost the colony dear. The war closed with a depleted treasury, a frontier heaped with ruins, and mourning in every household in the land.
The last year of this war witnessed new compli- cations in the relations with the throne. This year that remarkable personage, Edward Randolph, came over, bringing with him a letter from the king and copies of the petitions and complaints of Mason and Gorges relative to alleged encroachiments of Massachusetts on their patents in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. A long and tedious controversy resulted in Massachusetts being com- pelled to abandon her jurisdiction over Maine ; and also over so much of Mason's grant as included the towns of Dover, Exeter, Portsmouth, and Hampton. The decision of the king in council fixed the north- ern boundary of Massachusetts along the course of the Merrimack, so far as it extended, including a narrow strip, three miles wide, north of that river.
Randolph was able, unscrupulous, and a sworn enemy to the Puritan idea of government. He never relaxed his efforts to break down the old independent spirit of self-government until the ancient charter was wrested from Massachusetts. For forty years the struggle to maintain it had been going on; now its fate was approaching a
crisis. Randolph repeatedly crossed the ocean, each time carrying a budget of information and complaints, and each time bringing back fresh de- mands, new exactions, reiterated warning or reproof from the throne. A few years later he was ap- pointed by Charles surveyor and searcher of cus- toms for New England ; but the local authorities refused to recognize him, and caused his official advertisement, notifying the public of his appoint- ment, to be torn from the door of the town-house in Boston. Randolph repaid these affronts with usury.
The colony continued to give the enemies of its civil and religious government - and they were both powerful and numerous - fresh cause for complaint. New laws were enacted against the Quakers, new obstructions thrown in the way of the enforcement of the navigation acts, under the pretence that they were an invasion of the rights of the colony.
Upon the decease of Governor Leverett, in 1678, he was succeeded by Bradstreet. Thomas Danforth of Cambridge, a very able man, was elected deputy- governor. Massachusetts lad no idea of relin- quishing her hold upon Maine, and when the decision adverse to her title was made she quietly purchased Gorges' claim. She now entered upon the exercise of her proprietary rights, under which Danforth was created first president of Maine, and a force despatched to hold possession of that prov- ince. This was a further cause of displeasure to the king, who regarded it as an attempt to over- reach him.
Events were now rapidly hastening. The old, or extreme, Puritan party, whichi still held the as- cendant in the colony, was forced to meet the issue its subterfuges, its audacious assumptions, and its arbitrary acts had provoked. The long dream of sovereignty was rudely interrupted. The king ad- dressed his incorrigible subjects for the last time. He reminded them of their many acts of disobe- dience, and what he was pleased to call their crimes,
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
and misdemeanors ; he then pronounced their doom as follows : "We are fully resolved, in Trinity term next ensuing, to direct our attorney-general to bring a Quo-Warranto in our court of King's bench whereby our charter granted unto you, with all the powers thereof, may be legally evicted and made void. And so we bid you farewell." Randolph was the bearer of this letter. For the purpose it declared he was the most fitting messenger; for his personal ends it was a tremendous auxiliary.
When too late, an effort was made to avert the catastrophe. A court was hurriedly assembled. Anxious deliberations, agents despatched to Eng- land, partial, but only partial compliance with the king's demands, mark the eagerness of those in power to retrace their steps. But the choice was 110 longer theirs to make. The bridge to reconciliation had been broken down behind them. Randolph's appearance was rightly construed to be the signal of some new calamity. This time he brought the dreaded Quo-Warranto. He had fully earned his title of " Evil genius of the Colony." Armed with this weapon he boasted that " he would now make the whole faction tremble." Some further pro- ceedings took place to delay the execution of tlie royal mandate; but the die was cast, and in 1684 the charter of Charles I. was rolled up and put away like any other worthless piece of parchunent.
In 1685 Charles died, and was succeeded by James II. To the colony it was only a change of masters ; still, Charles's death freed the people from the fear into which they had been thrown by the announcement that the butcher, Percy Kirke, had been appointed their governor. The next year a provisional government was established by James. Joseph Dudley, son of the old Puritan Thomas, but by no means the inheritor of his sire's Puritan principles, received a commission as president of the colony. A council composed of those favor- able to the prerogative, or holding conservative views, was named by the king. The house of deputies ceased to exist, but courts of justice and town affairs continued to be managed as under the old order of things.
Dudley's rule was very brief .. He was suc- ceeded by Sir Edmund Audros, who, having re- ceived the appointment of viceroy, arrived at Boston in December. Sir Edmund appears to have been chosen for the task of crushing ont the too forward spirit of liberty in New Eng- land, with the same infallible coup d'œil that dis- cerned the special aptitude of the infamous Kirke
and the rare endowments of a Jeffreys for the work of extirpating the unfortunate adherents of the Duke of Moumouth. As a soldier, he doubt- less obeyed the commands of his royal master in governing New England like a conquered prov- ince ; in obliterating or attempting to obliterate all traces of its ancient structure of government ; and in the endeavor to establish, on its ruins, absolute and unquestioning submission to the will of the monarch. As a statesman, he signally failed to comprehend the spirit of the people, the tenacity with which they held to their ancient privileges, and the impossibility of reconciling them with a system so utterly repugnant to their religious and political education. To say all, Sir Edmund could level, but not rebuild.
His personal character was little calculated to soften the feeling of exasperation with which his administration was regarded. He was haughty, imperions, and choleric. He was an alien in re- ligion and by birth. He had the brusque manners of a soldier who had spent half his life in camps, and who felt a soldier's contempt for civil authority. Otherwise he was a man of moderate ability, un- questioned courage, and sufficient education not to play his part of viceroy ignobly. Perhaps his greatest offence was in surrounding himself with a coterie of hungry adventurers who ground, im- poverished, and insulted the people, and constituted a petty court which was the feeble reflection of the effete and tottering throne of the Stuarts. A body of royal troops, the first that had been quar- tered in the colony, accompanied Sir Edmund to Boston.
The death of Philip had not entirely ended the war. The demon he had raised could not be con- jured away until his fatal course was run. While the war smouldered in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut, its flames burst out among the settlements of New Hampshire and Maine. The same scenes were enacted that marked its progress elsewhere. Massachusetts sent troops and muni- tions into the district now being ravaged by the tribes inhabiting between the Merrimack and Penob- scot. For this purpose additional levies were made and new burdens imposed upon Middlesex, to all of which her people promptly and cheerfully re- sponded.
After the fall of Philip, the greater part of the Connecticut River Indians who had been engaged in hostilities with the English settled in their country, removed to the Hudson. In September,
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Andros a Prisoner in Boston.
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TRANSITION FROM THE COLONY TO THE PROVINCE.
1677, an incursion was made by a war-party of these Indians, or their allies, into their old home. Hatfield was surprised with the loss of about twenty persons killed, or captured, while going about their customary avocations. After this event no further hostilities occurred within the limits of the county.
The immediate results of Sir Edmund Andros' government were the establishment of the Church of England, the substitution of all the forms of the monarchy for those hitherto in use, the imposition of onerous burdens on the people, of which the last and greatest of all consisted in declaring all titles to lands in the colony invalid. This monstrous pretence that the old charter gave no legal title to estates, but that they must be newly confirmed, threw the whole body of landholders, the poor as well as the rich, into consternation. It served for a time to bring in a considerable revenue to Sir Edmund and his creatures, of whom Randolph was the most rapacious, the most insatiable. Thus was the solemn pledge of Charles II., that the peo- ple of New England should not be disturbed in their rights of freehold, violated.
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