History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 57

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

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It is not necessary to here discuss the justice or legality of this arrest of Morton. That has been fully done elsewhere.1 It is sufficient to say that it seems to have been a mere act of self-preserva- tion. Yet it is equally clear that the Plymouth mag- istrates had legally no jurisdiction over any part of Boston Bay. Their action could accordingly be justi- fied only on the ground of necessity and might, for the limits of their territory, as expressed in such a

1 See the introductory matter to the Prince Society's edition of the " New English Canaan."

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

patent as they then had, lay south of Weymouth. Morton, on the contrary, seems to have had some sort of a patent of his own from the Council for New Eng- land. It has not been preserved, and the bounds of his grant are not known ; but his title would seem to be the same as that of the Plymouth colony. Both emanated from one source. Meanwhile, just before the arrest, the Council for New England, all the affairs of which were loosely managed, had issued another patent to those who afterwards became the Massachusetts Bay Company. This patent bore date the 19th of March, 1628, and specifically covered all the territory between the Merrimac on the north, and an east and west line three miles to the southward of the southernmost part of Massachusetts Bay, as Boston Bay was then called. Mount Wollaston was clearly within these limits, and thenceforth became subject to the jurisdiction of the patentees ; unless there was some saving of rights under the earlier Wollaston grant. This does not appear to have been the case. On the 6th of September, almost three months after the arrest of Morton, Governor Endicott landed at Salem. He represented the new patent and the company of the Massachusetts Bay.

There is reason to suppose that the evil reputation of the Wollaston plantation was at this time well known in London. From several influential English quarters a close watch was kept over events in New England. Accordingly, it would seem probable that Endicott came bringing definite instructions as to the course he was to pursue toward Morton and his fol- lowing. Whether this was the case or not, he cer- tainly took prompt action. As soon as he landed at Naumkeag-having passed the outward bound Mor- ton in mid-ocean-he must have heard of the action taken by the Plymouth authorities, for the dwellers on Cape Ann had been parties to it. Typical Puritan as he was,-harsh in temper, decisive in action, and merciless in the infliction of punishment,-Endicott doubtless approved of all that had been done, though he probably regretted that a more condign treatment had not been visited on the transgressor. Nor did he delay to do what was still in his power to prevent any harm resulting from the weak leniency of his Ply- mouth brethren. Taking with him a small party he crossed the bay ; and, suddenly appearing at Mount Wollaston, he thoroughly overawed the demoralized settlers there. Not only did he sternly rebuke them for their profaneness and evil doings, but he caused

monishing them to look to it well that there should be better walking, he went back to Salem, leaving Morton's followers and his maypole equally down-

fallen. " So they now, or others," as Bradford says, " changed the name of their place again, and called it Mount Dagon."1

According to Bradford, " some of the worst of the (Merrymount) company" dispersed during this sum- mer, betaking themselves elsewhere, while " some of the more modest kept the house" until Morton should be heard from. The place was not wholly de- serted. Among the worst who went elsewhere was, probably, Walter Bagnall, who about this time took up his permanent abode on Richmond Island. He was commonly known as "Great Walt," and seems to have been a rude frontier trader of the most worth- less sort. He carried the Merrymount methods with him to his new home, where he prospered greatly, getting together what was for those days considerable possessions in money and goods ; until at last, in Oc- tober, 1631, the Indians set upon him and killed him.2 The only other follower of Morton of whom there is any record was Edward Gibbons, apparently one of the more modest who kept the house. At a later day Gibbons was a prominent member of the Massachu- setts community, rising to the high rank of major- general ; and in 1649 he succeeded Governor Endicott in command of the military forces of the colony. But Gibbons' later career was not particularly associated with the town of Braintree. Shortly after the hew- ing down 'of the maypole he went over to Salem, where, listening to the preaching of the Rev. Francis Higginson, he underwent a change of heart and be- came a member of the church. But still the original Merrymount spirit from time to time showed itself in him, and he has left footprints of himself here and there in the early colonial records which call in vain for satisfactory explanation.3

It was in the autumn of 1629 that Endicott hewed down the maypole. Six months later, in April or early May, there is reason to believe that another and somewhat mysterious personage took up his abode on the south shore of the Neponset, not far from its mouth. This was Sir Christopher Gardiner. Of him it is not necessary to here speak at length, as his temporary abode within its subsequent limits in no way affected the history of Quincy. It is sufficient to

1 Dagon was the sea-idol of the Philistines.

"Sea monster, upward man,

And downward fish."

" When the ark was placed in his temple, Dagon fell, and the the maypole to be felled to the ground. Then ad- | palms of his hands were broken off." (1 Samuel, v. 2-4.) "It was on a feast-day to Dagon that Samson pulled down the pil- lars of the temple at Gaza." (Judges xvi. 23-26.)

2 Prince Society edition of " New English Canaan," 218, n. 3 See note in Palfrey's " New England," ii. 226.

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say that Gardiner was apparently an emissary of the as he could. For a time he seems to have been toler- ated ; and he even attended a general meeting of the planters at Salem, in which he made all the trouble in his power, refusing to conform to the company's trade regulations. About Christmas Endicott sent over a party to arrest him. But he was on the watch and eluded them, so that they were only able to ransack his house, which contained nothing of value. How many followers he now had does not appear; proba- bly at the most not more than two or three. So he passed the winter, living upon the game he shot. In the spring Gardiner came and established himself not far away; and now probably both he and Morton anxiously looked for the arrival of a long talked-of outfit which was to take final possession of the region around Boston Bay in the interest of Gorges. It was well known that Endicott and his people at Salem had been reduced by disease and famine to the last extremity. A remnant of them barely struggled through the winter. Unless aid came soon the settle- ment would cease to exist. But instead of a Gorges expedition, on the 17th of June Governor John Win- throp, who had arrived at Salem five days before, came Council for New England, sent out to keep a watch on the Massachusetts Bay Company. He brought with him to the country a young woman, named Mary Grove, to whom he was not married, and who has since figured largely in American works of fiction. The two for nearly a year lived together, it has been surmised on the savin-covered hummock not far east of the Old Colony railroad bridge across the Neponset, on its Quincy side. The magistrates then learned that two women in England claimed to be married to Gardiner. A warrant for his arrest was accordingly issued ; but he, being on his guard, escaped the offi- cers and lay hid in the woods for a month, until the savages carried him a captive into Plymouth. He was sent back to Boston, and subsequently took his departure to Maine, and thence to England. He seems to have been the first European resident in the northern limits of Quincy, for David Thompson, and his widow after him, lived on the island which bears his name; though not impossibly their patent covered' also the neighboring peninsula of Squantum. It is also a curious fact that both Gardiner and his com- panion were members of the Church of Rome, which | into the harbor, and Morton must have watched his thus early obtained a footing on Quincy soil,-a hold which was early broken. Nearly two centuries passed before it was again renewed.1

shallop with anxious eyes as it worked its way in front of Mount Wollaston up the channel to the mouth of the Mystic. Its appearance in those waters boded him no good.

When Gardiner fled into the forest in March, 1631, there is reason to believe that the whole region be- Yet he was not at once disturbed. A few days later the whole fleet made its appearance, and dis- charged its thousand passengers, the first installment of the great migration. Then followed the busy and fatal summer of 1630. The immigrants were crowded - together on the hill-side at Charlestown; everything was in confusion, and the confinement and salt food diet of a long sea-voyage was succeeded by exposure on shore, and too great indulgence in the wild fruits and berries of a new country. Dysentery naturally tween Neponset and the Monatoquit was left without a single European occupant. His own dwelling was de- serted, and the house at Mount Wollaston had a month previously been burnt to the ground. During the summer of 1629-nearly a year and a half before- Thomas Morton had found his way back from Eng- land. While there no charge had been brought against him, and he seems to have worked his way into a certain degree of favor with Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Isaac Allerton, the agent in London of the | set in, and soon took the form of pestilence: Plymouth colony, was then in some way induced to Not until the 23d of August was any meeting of the befriend him ; and at last even took him back to Ply- , magistrates held. Morton's arrest was then ordered. mouth, to the unspeakable indignation of the people He seems to have made no attempt to elude the offi- cers or resist them. He probably realized that it would be useless. So two weeks later, on what would now be the 17th of September, at the second session of the magistrates, he was arraigned. there,-" as it were to nose them," Bradford said. For Morton to remain long in Plymouth was out of the question, nor probably did he have any desire to do so. He wanted to get back to Merrymount. Thither he accordingly went in the autumn of 1629, and there he remained all through the following win- ter. To Endicott he now made himself as annoying

He can scarcely be said to have had a trial, the proceedings were so very summary. He seems to have made some attempt at a defense, in the midst of which he was bidden to hold his peace and listen to his sentence, which was pronounced by Winthrop. It was sufficiently severe. He was ordered to be set in the stocks, to be sent prisoner to England, to be

I A detailed account of Gardiner and his experiences in New England is to be found in vol. xx. of the "Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society."

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

deprived of all his possessions, and to have his house , first of the many similar barriers which that civiliza- burnt to the ground, to the end that " the habitation tion was destined to overleap. of the wicked should no more appear in Israel." "This | It did overleap it in 1635. The region south of the river was then known to have a fertile soil, but through Morton's doings it had gained an evil name. The course of emigration set along the Charles into the interior, and up the Mystic to the north. The leading men of the Massachusetts Bay Company be- { longed to the class of English gentry, and they brought with them to America that land-hunger which they inherited direct from both Saxon and Norman ancestry. They were eager to secure vast estates for themselves and their descendants. Accordingly, grants were made to them of five hundred acres here, and one thousand acres, or two thousand acres, somewhere sentence also was literally carried out. There was some delay about sending him back to England, the master of one vessel refusing to carry him. At length, in January, 1631, a passage was secured for him on board the " Handmaid," and not until then, and while the prisoner was sailing out of the harbor, was that por- tion of his sentence which related to the burning of his house put in execution. It would seem to have been vindictively delayed. Then at last the torch was applied to the buildings at Mount Wollaston, and to Thomas Morton, as he looked back from " a farre of abourd a ship, the smoke that did ascend appeared to be the very sacrifice of Kain." The plantation ; else. In this way the neighboring country was rapidly was wholly destroyed. None of Morton's followers parceled out, and the peninsula of Boston being " too small to contain many," the residents there were " constrained to take farms in the country." remained there ; nor did he or any of them ever come back to the place.

CHAPTER XXV.

QUINCY-(Continued). MOUNT WOLLASTON.

FOR several years after Morton's expulsion the sea- ward slope of the Blue Hills remained unoccupied. There were as yet no road from Boston to Plymouth, nor, indeed, to Hingham and Weymouth, and what little intercourse there was between these places was kept up by boat across the bay. The Indian trail followed the shore, but it could not be called a path. The eye of the trained woodsmen was needed to de- tect its devious way as it wound about the head- waters of tidal inlets and across the upland to those points at which alone it was possible to cross the swamps. A forlorn remnant of the Massachusetts tribe, stricken with plague and smallpox, haunted the forest, the mere ghost of a dying.race; but between the Neponset and the Monatoquit there were abso- lutely no white inhabitants. In 1634 a man named Alderman lived at Hingham, or Bear Cove, as it was then called. Having occasion to be in Boston he undertook to return home by the trail. In doing so he lost his way, and for three days and two nights he wandered through woods and swamps without fall- ing in with a habitation or a human being. Then, starved and weary, with torn clothing and bruised body, he struggled out of the wilderness to find him- self in Scituate. The Neponset was, in fact, the southern boundary of Massachusetts civilization,-the !

Then at last people began to look across the Nepon- set. Accordingly, at the May session of the General Court of 1634, it was ordered "that Boston shall have convenient enlargement at Mount Wollaston," and a committee of four was appointed to fix metes and bounds, and to report the same, with an accompany- ing plan or map, to the next General Court. This committee did the work assigned to it, though of neither its report or plan is there any record. Yet both papers seem to have been presented to the court and adopted, for in the records of the session held in September, 1634, there is the following brief entry : " It is ordered that Boston shall have enlargement at Mount Wollaston." The Boston records then take up the story, and at a general meeting, on public notice, held on the 8th of December following, a formal grant of land of Mount Wollaston was made to the Rev. John Wilson, the pastor of the Boston Church. He, therefore, was the first Quincy landowner under the Massachusetts charter.

When Mr. Wilson went to take possession of his grant, which lay apparently in the north part of the present township of Quincy, he was confronted by an Indian title. This he had to extinguish. It was the same with the other original grantees. They all held direct from the Indians, as well as from the General Court. But thirteen months seem to have elapsed after the grant to Wilson before further grants were made. Then at last, at a meeting held on the 4th of January, 1636, the point which still bears his name was allotted to Atherton Hough ; and at the same meeting, instead of making other individual allot- ments, a committee of five, clothed with full powers, was appointed to do this work. But having thus ap-

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parently disposed of the whole matter, the meeting went on and ordered one holding laid out which after- wards had a curious significance. Mr. William Hutchinson was to have a sufficient farm at Mount Wollaston, beyond Mr. Wilson's, in the country adjoin- ing Dorchester. Mr. William Hutchinson, thus made a neighbor of the Rev. John Wilson, was the husband of Mistress Anne Hutchinson, between whom and the pastor of the Boston Church a feud was even then developing which a little later was to divide the set- tlement into hostile factions and bring it to the verge of civil war.

This did not take place immediately, and on the 14th of March, 1636, farms along the bay front were confirmed to William Coddington and Edmund Quincy. On the 30th of February, 1637, it was further agreed " that our brother, Mr. John Wheel- wright, shall have an allotment of two hundred and fifty acres laid out for him at Mount Wollaston." In a history like the present it is neither interesting nor profitable to give to each of these allotments its pre- cise place on the map of to-day. It is sufficient to call attention to the fact that Wilson, Hutchinson, Coddington, Wheelwright, and Hough had all been provided for at the " the Mount," and that they were in 1637 neighbors in what is now Quincy. John Wheelwright was the first clergyman settled within the present limits of the town ; and, while officiating as such, it was his fate to preach on a fast-day the most momentous discourse ever delivered from the American pulpit. With the Rev. Mr. Wheelwright and his little congregation the consecutive civil his- tory of Quincy may be said to open.

June, 1636. During the following month he was admitted to membership in the church. It has already been mentioned that the Rev. John Wilson was the pastor of that church, the only one in Boston ; with him the Rev. John Cotton was asso- ciated as teacher. Boston was then a small, newly built, seaport settlement, numbering a few hundred inhabitants. These dwelt in rude houses, mostly built of logs though some were framed, clustering about a barrack-like structure which served as a meet- ing-house. In that early and pious community it does not need to be said, though it has ever to be borne in mind, everything centred about the church. Its membership carried with it political rights. The clergyman was the first man in the town. The meet- ing, the sermon, and the lecture were the events of the week. The affairs of the church accordingly occu- pied even more general attention than affairs of state, while the two were so interwoven that they did not admit of separation.

At the time Wheelright landed in Boston, Sir Henry Vane was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, having just been chosen to succeed Haynes. Winthrop, the first Governor, had for the time being lost his popularity. It was said that he had been too lax in his administration of the criminal law, and dis- posed to overlook transgression more than a Puritan magistrate should. The leading men had, some of them, grown jealous of him, while the body of the freemen were probably disposed to try a change. In Vane they found it. Hardly more than a boy, he had been in the country a short time only. He was full of crude ideas, and of impulses which were even more uncertain than they were generous. Within the church Mrs. Hutchinson was making her pres- ence felt. At that time a woman of less than forty years of age, she had followed Cotton, her favorite preacher, to New England, and at Boston found her- self in just the position she would naturally have craved as that best suited for the full display of her peculiar powers. She was an intellectual woman, with a great social faculty, and an inordinate love of notoriety and prominence. A born intriguer, she de- lighted in talking and making her influence felt. Accordingly, she had not been long in New England when she began to hold a series of exclusively female

John Wheelwright was born at Saleby, a little Lincolnshire hamlet, about twenty-four miles from Boston, in England. Educated at Cambridge, he was there a companion of Cromwell, and on the football ground it is said that he and the future Lord Pro- tector often encountered each other. After gradua- tion Wheelwright became vicar of Bilsby, a little village not far from the place where he was born. He was not only a rigid Puritan, but essentially a contentious man. All through life he seems to have been engaged in controversy ; often with his brother clergymen, and even more frequently in the courts. Having been silenced as a preacher by Laud's High Commission, and driven from his parish in England, i gatherings, and then of gatherings at which men as early in 1636 he determined to emigrate to America. well as women were present. The original idea of these meetings was that an opportunity would thus be afforded for the recapitulation of the sermons of the preceding Sabbath for the benefit of such as had been unable to be present at their delivery. Gradu- ally these meetings assumed the form of an active re- He had then passed his forty-fourth year, and, his first wife dying, had married Mary Hutchinson, of Alford, a sister of William Hutchinson, who, with his wife Anne, had gone to New England two years be- fore. Wheelwright landed in Boston on the 26th of

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ligious revival. Then they absorbed the whole atten- tion of the settlement.

Though an ardent admirer of the teacher, Cotton, Mrs. Hutchinson showed scant respect to Wilson, the pastor. There was no bond of sympathy between them. A worthy, sincere minister no doubt, and per- haps a forcible expounder of God's word, Wilson was none the less a heavy, unimaginative man. He trod clumsily along in the beaten theological track. There was nothing fine about him. It was inevitable, there- fore, both being what they were, that, as the influence of Mrs. Hutchinson increased it would begin to make itself felt in hostility to her pastor. This had al- ready become apparent before the arrival of Wheel- wright, and that event brought matters to a crisis. In November, 1636, when he had been four months in Boston, it was proposed at a meeting of the church to associate Wheelwright with Cotton, making him an additional teacher. It was perfectly understood from what source this proposal originated. Next to Cotton, Wheelwright was Mrs. Hutchinson's favorite preacher, as he was also the husband of her sister-in-law. Wilson's friends and the conservative party in the church, headed by Governor Winthrop, took the alarm and openly resisted the proposal. Governor Vane sup- ported it. The weight of opinion was decidedly in favor of Wheelwright, and much feeling was manifested at Winthrop's course ; but, according to the rule of the Boston Church, it was sufficient that grave opposition was expressed. The proposal was dropped.

But John Wheelwright was much too active and able a man to remain long without a fixed settlement. The large majority of the Boston Church was in sym- pathy with him. Among these were a number who had recently received land allotments at Mount Wol- laston, which they were then engaged in developing. Population had accordingly begun to find its way across the Neponset. Quincy, Coddington, Hutchin- son and Hough dwelt themselves in Boston, but those occupying the land at the Mount, whether as farmers or employés, were far removed from the town, and had now for some time been complaining that they were practically cut off from all religious privileges. Poor men, with families, they were ten or twelve miles from the meeting-house. Accordingly, the gath- ering of a new church at Mount Wollaston had al- ready been under discussion. It was opposed on the ground that it would defeat the very object for which Boston had received enlargement,-the upholding of the town and the original church. The loss of so many leading men as would inevitably join themselves to the new church, if it was called, could not but seri- ously affect the old one. To meet this objection it | in the history of Massachusetts.

had been arranged, in September, 1636, that those living at the Mount, or having holdings there, should pay a small yearly church and town rate to Boston, which was fixed at sixpence an acre on land lying within a mile of the water, and threepence for land further back. It was a species of non-resident com- mutation tax. This arrangement imposed in turn on the Boston church a well-understood obligation to in some way provide for the religious needs of the out- lying region thus tributary to it. In those early days of sparse settlement the situation was not an un- usual one, and it was the custom in such cases to es- tablish branch churches, or " chapels of ease," as they were called. Some elder, or a gifted brother was wont to hold forth, or to prophesy, as it was phrased, at these each ordinary Sabbath, while at stated periods the sacrament was administered in the meeting-house of the mother church.

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 57

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534