USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Quincy > History of old Braintree and Quincy : with a sketch of Randolph and Holbrook > Part 18
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Braintree > History of old Braintree and Quincy : with a sketch of Randolph and Holbrook > Part 18
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Mr. Cotton was so dissatisfied with this law that he says "he intended to have removed out of the jurisdiction to Quinnypicak, since called New Haven, but finding the law was not improved to exclude such persons as he feared it would be, he altered his mind."
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sufficiently obliged to spare my life that it is fitter for him to do it than for me to seek it.'" 1
Mr. Wheelwright was the brother-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson, and a zealous advocate of her doctrines. He arrived in Boston on the 26th of May, 1636, and on the eighth of October of the same year was granted a right to preach at Mount Wollaston, and here, on the twentieth of the next January, it being a specially appointed Fast Day, he preached the famous sermon which finally occasioned his expulsion from the colony. The text of this sermon was taken from Matthew Ix : 15, "And Jesus said unto them, can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the day will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast." This sermon set forth the doctrine of Antinomianism in a very lucid manner. On account thereof Winthrop says that, at a court which began March 9, 1636-7, Mr. Wheelwright was adjudged " guilty of sedition, and also of contempt."2 Sentence was deferred, however. There followed
1. See Life of Vane, by Rev. C. W. Upham. Spark's Biography.
2. " It was concluded by the Court that Mr. Wheelwright was guilty of con- tempt and sedition." March 9, 1636-7.
" Mr. John Wheelwright was enjoyned to appear at the next session of this Court, to answer further or receive such sentence as the cause shall require." May 17, 1637.
" Mr. William Aspinwall, being questioned in regard to his hand was to a peti- tion or remonstrance, & he justified the same, maintaining it to be lawfull, the Court did discharge him from being a member thereof. Mr. John Coggeshall, affirming that Mr. Wheelwright is innocent & that he was persecuted for the truth, was in like sort dismissed from being a member of the Court." 1637.
" Mr. John Wheelwright, being formerly convicted of contempt & sedition, & now justifying himself, & his former practise being to the disturbance of the civill peace, hee is by the Court disfranchised & banished, having 14 dayes to settle his affaires, & if within that time he depart not the patent, hee promises to render himselfe to Mr. Stoughton, at his house, to bee kept till hee bee dis- posed of. & Mr. Hofx undertook to satisfy any charge that hee, Mr. Stough- ton, or the country should bee at." 2 November, 1637.
Mr. Savage, in his Winthrop, relates in reference to disarming the friends of Mr. Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson, that, " in no part of the history of any of the United States, perhaps, can a parallel be found for this act." This high- handed injustice left them without any protection to themselves or their fam- ilies from the scalping knife, or the horrors and barbarism of an Indian mas- sacre. And all this persecution for their religious belief!
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remonstrances and petitions from the governor, (Mr. Vane,) and other dissenters, as well as from the Boston First Church, justi- fying the sermon and condemning the court's proceedings. A synod was also convened, consisting of all the ministers of the colony, by whom the theological questions involved in the con- troversy were discussed. This assembly terminated unfavorably for Mr. Wheelwright. In the mean time a political revolution had been effected. Vane and Coddington, friends of Wheel- wright, had been left out of the offices they had previously held. At length, " the General Court being assembled, in the 2d of the 9th month, and finding upon consultation that two so opposite parties could not continue in the same body without apparent hazard of ruin to the whole, agreed to send away some of the principals, &c. Then the Court sent for Mr. Wheelwright. He persisted in justifying his sermon, whole practice and opinions, refusing to leave either the place or his public exercises. He was disfranchised and banished, upon which he appealed to the King, but neither called witnesses nor desired any act to be made
" Whereas, the opinions and revelations of Mr. Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson have seduced and led into dangerous errors many of the people heare in Newe England, inasmuch as there is just cause of suspition that they, as others in Germany in former times, may, upon some revelation, make some suddain irruption upon those that differ from them in judgment; for preven- tion whereof it is ordered that all those whose names are underwritten shall, (upon warning given or left at their dwelling-houses, ) before the 30th day of this month of November, deliver in at Mr. Cane's (or Capt. Keayne, as it was after- wards spelt, ) house at Boston, all such guns, pistols, swords, powder, shot and match as they shall bee owners of, or have in their custody, upon paine of tenn pounds for every default to bee made thereof, which arms are to bee kept by Mr. Cane till this Court shall take further order therein. Also it is ordered upon like penalty of £X, that no man who is to render his arms by this order shall buy or borrow any guns, swords, pistols, powder, shot or match, untill this Court shall take further order therein.
" The names of Boston men to be disarmed: Capt. John Underhill, Mr. Thomas Oliver, William Hutchinson, William Aspinwall, Samuel Cole, Wil- liam Dyer, Edward Rainsfoard, John Button, John Sanfoard, Richard Cooke, Richard Fairbanks, Thomas Marshall, Oliver Mellows, Samuel Wilbore, John Oliver, Hugh Gunnison, John Biggs, Richard Gridley, Edward Bates, Wil- liam Dinely, William Litherland, Mathewe Jyans, Henry Elkins, Zache Bos- worth, Robert Rice, William Townsend, Robert Hull, William Pell, Richard Hutchinson, James Johnson, Thomas Savage, John Davy, George Burden, John Odlin, Gama Wayte, Edward Hutchinson, William Wilson, Isaack
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of it. The Court told him an appeal did not lie; for by the King's grant we had power to hear and determine without any reservation, &c. So he relinquished his appeal, and the Court gave him leave to go to his house, upon his promise that, if he were not gone out of our jurisdiction within fourteen days, he would render himself to one of the magistrates."1 This was in the latter part of November, 1637.
After leaving here, he went into New Hampshire and founded the town of Exeter. He remained there until 1642. " The in- habitants of Exeter, finding themselves comprehended within the claims of Massachusetts, petitioned the Court, and were readily admitted (Sept. 8) under their jurisdiction, and they were annexed to the county of Essex. Upon this, Wheelwright, who was still under sentence of banishment, with those of his church who were resolved to adhere to him, removed into the province.of Maine and settled at Wells."
In 1643, September 10th, Mr. Wheelwright wrote Gov. Win- throp a letter, in which he confessed that he had pressed his theological views too far, and urged them with an undne warmth,
Groose, Richard Carder, Robert Hardinge, Richard Wayte, John Porter, James Penniman, Thomas Wardell, William Wardell, Jacob Eliot, Thomas Matson, William Baulston, John Compton, Mr. Parker, William Freeborn, Henry Bull, John Walker, William Salter, Edward Bendall, Thomas Wheeler, Mr. Clark, Mr. John Coggeshall."-Mass. Ree., Vol. I, pp. 211, 212.
The same order was served on the towns of Salem, Neweberry, Roxbuerry, Ipswich and Charlestown. The persons at Mount Wollaston that were dis- armed have been enumerated with the Boston men, as the Mount at that time was a part of Boston.
By the order of the Court the followers of Wheelwright and Hutchinson might retain their arms by renouncing their belief in the doctrine of Antino- mianism :- " It was ordered, that if any that are to bee disarmed acknowledge their sinn in subscribing the seditious libell, or do not justify it, but aeknowl- edge it evill to two magistrates, they shall bee thereby freed from delivering in their armes according to the former order." Many of the disarmed people were the most distinguished persons in the colony, and quite a number of their descendants became renowned in the historical annals of the Common wealth. After Mr. Wheelwright's expulsion and banishment; he emigrated in mid- winter through the deep snows, into the wilderness of New Hampshire, (and it was a wonder to many that he did not perish, ) and there, by the Falls of Piscataquaek, organized a township and called it Exeter.
1. Winthrop's History,
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and upon this his sentence of banishment was soon after re- leased. Being restored to the freedom of the colony, he removed to Hampton, where he ministered many years.
In the year 1658, according to Farmer, he was in England, and was in favor with the Protector, Cromwell, and they are said to have been school-fellows. And the anecdote has been handed down that Cromwell declared Wheelwright to be the only per- son he ever was afraid of at foot-ball.
Upon the fall of the Commonwealth and the restoration of the royal government in England, Wheelwright returned and settled at Salisbury, and there died, November 15th, 1679. " IIe lived," says Hutchinson, " to be the oldest minister in the colony, which would have been taken notice of if his persecutors had not remained in power."
Mr. Wheelwright, according to the same authority, was "sev- eral years in England, and lived in the neighborhood of Sir Henry Vane, who had been his patron in New England, and now took great notice of him. Vane being disaffected to Cromwell, it is not likely that Cromwell had any great esteem for Wheel- wright ; yet he sent for him by one of his guards, and after a very orthodox discourse, according to Mr. Wheelwright's appre- hensions of orthodoxy, and without showing countenance to sectaries, he exhorted him to perseverance against his opposers, and assured him their notions would vanish into nothing. This meeting effectually engaged Mr. Wheelwright in Cromwell's favor."
William Coddington, Esq., the munificent donor of our school lands, from which this town has reaped great benefit in good schools for many years past, was another convert. He came to this country with Gov. Winthrop. In the dedication to Callen- der's Century Discourse, addressed to Hon. William Coddington, there is the following :- " Your honored grandfather, William Coddington, Esq., was chosen in England to be an assistant of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay, A. D. 1629, and in 1630 came over to New England with the governor and the charter, &c .; after which he was several times re-chosen to that honora- ble and important office. He was for some time treasurer of the colony. He was with the chiefest in all public charges and a
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principal merchant of Boston, where, it is said, he built the first brick house.
" In the year 1637, when the contentions ran so high in the country, he was grieved at the proceedings of the court against Mr. Wheelwright and others. And when he found that his op- position to these measures was ineffectual, he entered his pro- test, that his dissent might appear to succeeding times ; and, though he was in the fairest way to be great in the Massachu- setts as to outward things, yet he voluntarily quitted his advan- tageous situation at Boston, his large property and his improve- ments at Braintree for peace sake, and that he might defend, proteet and assist the pious people who were meditating a re- moval from that colony on account of their religious differences." After leaving Massachusetts he went to Rhode Island and founded that colony. He was elected their chief ruler annually for seven years. In the year 1647 he assisted in forming a body of laws which has been the foundation of the constitution and government of Rhode Island ever since. "In 1651 he had a commission from the supreme authority then in England to be governor of the island, persuant to the powers reserved in the patent." Some trouble having arisen under the charter, he read- ily laid down his commission. After this he seems to have retired from public business till toward the latter end of his days, "when he was again divers times prevailed with to take the government upon him. He died November 1st, 1678, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Thus, after he had the honor to be the first judge and governor of this island, (Rhode Island,) after he had spent much of his estate and the prime of his life in propagating plantations, he died governor of the colony." 1
Mr. Adams, in his address at the opening of the Town Hall in Braintree, in speaking of Mr. Coddington said, "His memory is now holden in honor among the people of that State, as that of Minos and Charondas, Lycurgus and Zaleuens, was held by those of ancient Greece, as the founders and legislators of nations. Such a life supplies a most significant warning of the folly and contentions and strife of zealous and mutual hatred,
1. See Callender's Century Sermon. Rhode Island Hist. So. Col., Vol. V.
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as they sometimes arise from the most insignificant causes, in the midst of the best ordered communities.
Although Mr. Coddington had a large grant of land at the Mount, we are of an opinion that he never resided there. He, like many others, held the land for sale, as a matter of profit rather than a place of domicile. My reasons for this statement are these :- December 14th, 1635, the ninth month of the year, a committee was appointed by the court to lay out at the Mount certain portions of land for Mr. William Coddington and Mr. Edmund Quincy. This committee made their report granting them their allotments March 14th, 1636. This was the date or time that they legally came in possession of their grants. In January, 1636, Mr. Coddington, Mr. Vane and others, came to the Mount from Boston, to keep Fast Day with Mr. Wheel- wright. On this occasion was delivered that famous sermon that set the whole colony in a blaze, and it was so extensive and intense that it severely scorched several of the eminent Puritan divines, such as the Rev. Mr. Cotton, Cotton Mather and others. Immediately after the preaching of this sermon the followers of Mr. Wheelwright were, by order of the court, condemned for "contempt and sedition," and were soon ordered to leave the colony. On March 12th, 1637-8, a warrant was issued for Mr. Coddington and his friends to depart from it. By the spirit of this warrant it would appear that they were expelled at their own request, they anticipating that this method was the better way, and the most judicious manner to get out of the difficulty of having the penalty of banishment pronounced upon them, or they may have only intended a short absence and to return again.
The authorities may have been more lenient towards Mr. Coddington on account of the many high public trusts that he had held, (he was deputy of Boston up to the time he left,) which were administered by him with great fidelity and exem- plary justice. Still, with all this professed willingness to leave, the court were apprehensive that there might be some trickery about the matter. To prevent any further trouble they took precautionary measures for that purpose, by enacting an order so that the court could not be caught by deception, even if those
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who were banished only intended a temporary absence for the purpose of evading the law.1
In summing up the question of Mr. Coddington having re- sided there, first we find that he did not obtain full possession of his grant until March, 1636, and'a few months after came out to the Mount to attend Mr. Wheelwright's fast-day sermon, which would indicate that he did not reside there at that time. This sermon had created so much feeling and opposition to Mr. Cod- dington and other friends of Mr. Wheelwright as to have them adjudged guilty of "contempt and sedition." Mr. Coddington, with the understanding of this decision of the court, very well knew that in all probability he could not remain in the colony but a short time ; therefore he, a careful man as he was, would not be likely to erect a house there, when he knew that it was almost a positive fact that his expulsion was inevitable. Then .again, his publie and civil duties at Boston would engage all his time in this perilous period, as he was a very active business man as well as an energetic public servant; neither do we think that he would desire to relinquish his fine residence that he had so recently constructed in the town of Boston, (the first brick house, it is said, built there,) to come to the Mount through the wilderness of woods, as there were no roads at that time, and the access to the Mount was accomplished with great difficulty, for the mere purpose of sleeping over night. From this statement and other investigations we have made, we are very confident that Braintree's first public benefactor never resided there. We know this comes in conflict with high authority, still authors, like doctors, will sometimes disagree.
It is, however, very evident that he had begun to improve his farm there, to make it more valuable, as we find by the records
1. " Whereas you have desired and obtained licence to remove yourselves and your families out of this jurisdiction, and for that information hath bene given to the Court that your intent is only to withdraw for a season, that you may avoyde the censure of the Court in some things which may be objected against you, that Court doth therefore order that you may depart according to the licence given you, so as your families bee removed before the next Generall Court; but if your families bee not so removed, then you are to appear at the next Court, to abide the further order of the Court herein."-Mass. Rec., Vol. I, p. 223.
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+
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that he had engaged men for that purpose, and that they were at work there at the time the court granted permission to Mr. Coddington and his friends to leave, as in the same order of the Court his men were ordered to depart the limits of the colony.
"Of Mount Wollaston,1 Henry Randoll and John Johnson, Mr. Coddington's men, are to be removed before the next court." There may have been one or two more, as the original records indicate that one or two names were omitted.
Mrs. Hutchinson was also banished from the colony. Win- throp says that after sentence of banishment had been pro- nounced by the Court against her, "she went by water to her farm at the Mount, where she was to take water, with Mr. Wheelwright's wife and family, to go to Piscataquack ; but she changed her mind, and went by land to Providence and so to the island in the Narraganset Bay, which her husband and the rest of that sect had purchased of the Indians and prepared with all speed to remove into. "Her fate was a melancholy one. Her husband having died in 1642, she removed from Rhode Island into the Dutch country, and was killed by the Indians, with all her children except one daughter, who was carried into captivity." By the expulsion of the Hutchinsons, Coddington, Wheelwright and others, Antinomianism received its death blow in New England. After Wheelwright's banish- ment, services were discontinued at the Mount.
In 1639, the inhabitants of Mount Wollaston petitioned that they might have leave to establish an independent church there, which was reluctantly granted, the objection being that it would deprive the first church of Boston of the support of many in- fluential men. To obviate this, it was agreed that those that dwell at the Mount should pay sixpence per acre yearly for such land as was within a mile of the water, and threepence for that which was farther off, for the support of the Boston church, In one of the old books a record is made as follows : "The first church of Christ in Braintry was embodied 16th Sept., 1639, it being the Lord's Day."
1. It must be borne in mind that Mount Wollaston at this time was a part of Boston, and for five or six years, or from 1634-5 to 1640 had been under her mu- nicipal regulations, although called the Mount.
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The following is a copy of the original covenant as signed by the members of the first church of Braintree, at their first gath- ering, September 16th, 1639, as taken from the appendix of a century sermon preached by the Rev. John Hancock in the first church of Braintree, (now Quincy,) September 16th, 1739 :
" We poor unworthy creatures, who have sometime lived without Christ and without God in the world, and so have de- served rather fellowship with the devil and his angels, than with God and his saints, being called of God ont of this world to the fellowship of Christ by the Ministry of the Gospel, and our hearts made willing to join together in Church Fellowship, so by the help and strength of Christ, renounce the devil, the wicked world, a sinful flesh with all the remnants of Anti-Chris- tian pollution, wherein sometimes we have walked, and all our former evil ways, and do give up ourselves, first to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and offer up our proffered subjec- tion to our Lord Jesus Christ as the only Priest, Prophet and King of his Church, beseeching him in his rich grace and free mercy to accept us for his people in the blood of his Covenant, and we give up ourselves also one to another by the will of God, promising in the name and power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who worketh in us both to will and to do according to his good pleas- ure, to worship the Lord in Spirit and Truth and to walk in brotherly love and the duties thereof according to the will of the Gospel, to the edification of the body and of each member therein, and to be guided in all things according to God's re- vealed will, seeking to advance the Glory of Jesus Christ, our head, both in Church and Brotherly Communion, thro' the assist- ance of his Holy Spirit which he hath promised to his Church, and we do manifest our joint consent herein this day in presence of this assembly, by this our present public profession and by giving to one another the right hand of fellowship.
" WM. TOMPSON, Pastor, JOHN DASSETT, HENRY FLYNT, Teacher, WILLIAM POTTER,
GEORGE ROSE, MARTIN SAUNDERS,
STEPHEN KINSLEY, Elder, GREGORY BELCHER."
The original covenant of the first church has something of a history. This covenant of faith was published 1739, in the appen-
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dix of the Rev. Mr. Hancock's valuable century sermons of the first church. In 1811, Hancock's address had become so rare and searee, that Mr. John Adams desired the Rev. Mr. Whitney, (then its pastor,) to have it republished, who con- sented. But in having it reprinted, he being a strong advocate of liberal theology, had this covenant left out, for the reason that it was too strongly imbued with the dogmas of Calvin .- And it is a little singular, too, that the Rev. Mr. Lunt, a candid and thorough historian as he was, should have omitted this relig- ious compact in his admirable history of the first church.
" Mr. Tompson was ordained Nov. 19th, 1639, and Mr. Flint March 17th, 1639-40. According to the distinction observed in those early times in churches, Mr. Tompson became pastor and Mr. Flint teacher.
" Mr. Tompson graduated at Oxford and commenced preaching in the North of England. From the beginning he was a zealous advocate of the Protestant religion. The date of his arrival in New England cannot be determined with certainty, as historians differ greatly ; but certain it is, that he came either in 1637 or 1638. One of the most important incidents in the life of Mr. Tompson was, his being chosen one of three ministers to go on a mission to Virginia in 1642, upon a request from certain indi- viduals in that remote colony, that competent ministers of the Congregational order should be sent to preach the gospel to them. The following extract from Hubbard's History of New England will explain the reasons and object of this mission :
"In the same year, 1642, one Mr. Bennett, a gentleman of Virginia, arrived at Boston, bringing letters with him from sun- dry well-disposed people there, to the minister of New England, bewailing their sad condition for want of the means of salvation, and earnestly entreating a supply of faithful ministers, whom upon experience of their gifts and godliness, they might call to office. Upon these letters (which were openly read at Boston on a lecture day) the ministers there met, agreed to set a day apart to seek God in the thing, and agreed upon three, which might most easily be spared, viz : Mr. Phillips of Watertown, Mr. Tompson of Braintree and Mr. Miller of Rowley, (these churches having each of them two ministers,) which the General
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Court approved of, and ordered that the Governor should com- mand them, by his letters to the Governor and Council of Vir- ginia. But Mr. Phillips not being willing to go, Mr. Knowles, his fellow-laborer, and Mr. Tompson were sent away, with the consent of their churches, and departed on their way on the 7th of October, 1642, to meet the vessel that should transport them, at Narraganset ; but Mr. Miller, because of his bodily weakness, did not accept the call. Both the churches were willing to dis- miss their ministers to that work, and the Court likewise did allow and further it, for the advancement of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, not fearing to part with such desirable persons, be- cause they looked at it as seed sown, that might bring in a plen- tiful harvest.
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