USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Old South church (Third church) Boston. Memorial addresses, Sunday evening, October 26, 1884 > Part 2
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JOSH : SCOTTOW.
BOSTON this 7 (1) 1655-56."
Only under an absolute reign of terror, could a man of Mr. Scottow's position and influence have felt it necessary to apologize in phrases so abject, to save himself from condem- nation and disgrace. Mrs. Hibbins is believed to have had the sympathy of the honored ministers of the First Church, Mr.
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Wilson and Mr. Norton ; but they could not save her life. She was executed, June 19, 1656. The persons named in her will, to administer upon her estate, were Thomas Clarke, Edward Hutchinson, William Hudson, Joshua Scottow and Peter Oliver.
In 1669, Mr. Scottow, with John Hull, Hezekiah Usher, Thomas Savage, Edward Rawson, Peter Oliver, John Alden and others, seceded from the First Church and founded the Third or South Church. They had been opposed to the call of the Rev. John Davenport of New Haven, to the pastorate made vacant by the death of Mr. Wilson, and they had been dissatisfied, still more, with the methods employed to bring him to Boston. They determined, therefore, to organize a new church, for which, indeed, there was ample room in the growing town. They were thwarted in every possible way by the majority led by Governor Bellingham, and years passed before they were recognized by their brethren from whose fellowship they had felt it to be their duty to withdraw. We do not propose to go into the history of this old controversy on this occasion, further than to illustrate the force of charac- ter displayed by the men of the minority. They had to meet opposition and to suffer reproach for what they believed to be the truth. The question of the baptismal, or half-way covenant, lay at the root of the difficulty, but the issue came to involve the rights of the individual and the rights of a minority in the administration of church affairs. It required some courage to be a friend, and much more to be a member, of the South Church in those days. Failing, first, to prevent the formation and recognition of the church, and then, to create a panic among the ministers and churches outside Boston, the ultra conservative party carried the quarrel to the General Court. Here, a committee on the state of the colony was induced to prepare a report, which was adopted, charg- ing the South Church and the ministers and churches who stood by it, with being the occasion of all the calamities, temporal and spiritual, with which Massachusetts was threat- ened. One paragraph will show the temper of this report.
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" Declension from the primitive foundation work ; innovation in doc- trine and worship, opinion and practice; an invasion of the rights, liberties and privileges of churches; an usurpation of a lordly prelatical power over God's heritage; a subversion of gospel order ; and all this with a dangerous tendency to the utter devastation of these churches; turning the pleasant gardens of Christ into a wilder- ness ; and the inevitable and total extirpation of the principles and pillars of the congregational way; these are the leaven, the corrupting gangrene, the infecting, spreading plague, the provoking image of jealousy set up before the Lord, the accursed thing, which hath pro- voked the divine wrath, and doth furthur threaten destruction."1
In other words, a company of Christian men had organized a church in accordance with their own convictions of duty.
But Joshua Scottow, Edward Rawson and their associates proved themselves equal to the emergency. The next elec- tion was made to turn on the question of friendship for the new church, or opposition to it ; the men who had voted for the obnoxious report, for the most part, lost their seats ; and, at the next session of the Court, a new report was adopted, reversing, in effect, the judgment of the preceding year.
Mr. Scottow was one of the trustees to whom Mrs. Norton made her conveyances of land for the new meeting-house, the first in 1669, the second in 1677, and, no doubt, he con- tributed his share towards the erection of the building. He served with Samuel Sewall, John Joyliffe and others, as an overseer of seats, and he assisted in sustaining the neigh- borhood prayer meeting of which we have spoken, and which met from house to house. He seems to have been on intimate terms with Judge Sewall, who was his near neighbor on Cotton Hill, and in full sympathy with him in his prayers and labors in behalf of this church.
As Mr. Scottow advanced in age, he lost the buoyancy, the
1 Mr. Oakes, of Cambridge, in his election sermon in 1673, after quoting the above paragraph, well says : need give you no other instance of this evil spirit of jealousy and calumny than this. Here is good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over." He goes on to rebuke in severe terms the men who are "wont to make
and improve false alarms of danger, that people may believe that religion and liberties are at the stake, and in danger to be lost." "These calumnies," he adds, "are immoralities and scandalous evils, and it is the duty of God's ser- vants to lift up their voice as a trumpet, to cry aloud and not spare them that are guilty, whatever the issue be."
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energy and the elasticity of his earlier and mature years ; his contemporaries were passing away, and he found himself out of sympathy with the new generation of men who were taking their places. He could not appreciate them, and they could not understand him. It was not uncommon for Puritan lead- ers, clergymen as well as laymen, to mourn over what they called the degeneracy of the times ; but they had this for their justification as compared with the religious pessimists of this day, that they had set before themselves and their generation so high a standard,-so sublime a model,-for social life and for government, that it could hardly be reached, much less permanently realized. William Stoughton thus lamented, in an election sermon preached in 1668: "God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilder- ness. Alas ! how is New England in danger this day to be lost even in New England ! to be buried in its own ruins ! How is the good grain diminished and the chaff increased !" Thomas Walley, of Barnstable, that " blessed son of peace," uttered a similar lamentation in an election sermon at Ply- mouth in 1669: " How is New England fallen ! The land that was a land of Holiness, hath lost her Holiness."
In 1691, Mr. Scottow issued a pamphlet of 26 pp., with the following quaint title : "Old Men's Tears for their Own Declensions, mingled with Fears of their and posterities further falling off from New England's Primitive Constitution. Published by some of Boston's old Planters and some other." This publication is a lamentation over the state of the country, and evidently it represented the opinions of other old men besides Mr. Scottow who was responsible for it. The writer imagined that the prevalence of sin had called down the vengeance of heaven upon the land, which was shown in many instances of punishment, as " strange diseases, not suited formerly to the pure and serene air of our climate (whither strangers were wont to have recourse to recover their desired health). Not only with the infectious small-pox have we laboured under, but with burning and spotted fevers," etc. The Indian war and the ill-success of the great expedition
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against Canada in the preceding year, were marks of divine displeasure. " Hath he not himself fought against us, by the stars in their courses, and his anger smoked against our prayers ; raising snow and vapour, and his cold (which no man can abide) with the stormy wind fulfilling his word, to the impeding and disappointment of our naval military design, and disinabling our fleet."
The author of the pamphlet thus witnesses against the de- generacy of the times : "Our spot is not the spot of God's children ; the old puritan garb, and gravity of heart, and habit lost and ridiculed into strange and fantastic fashions and attire, ...... the virgins dress and matrons veil, showing their power on their heads because of the holy angels, turned into powdered foretops and top gallants attire, not becoming the Christian, but the comedian assembly, not the church but stage-play, where the devil sits regent in his dominion, as he once boasted out of the mouth of a demoniack, church member, he there took possession of, and made this response to the church, supplicating her deliverance ; and as now we may and must say New England is not to be found in New Eng- land, nor Boston in Boston ; it is become a lost town (as at first it was called ;) we must now cry out, our leanness, our lean- ness, our apostacy, our apostacy, our atheism, spiritual idolatry, adultery, formality in worship, carnal and vain confidence in church privileges, forgetting of God our rock, and multi- tude of other abominations." 1
Three years later, Mr. Scottow printed a larger work, with this suggestive title page : "A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony, Anno 1628. With the Lord's Signal Presence the First Thirty Years. Also a Caution from New England's Apostle, the Great Cotton, How to Es- cape the Calamity, which might Befall them or their Posterity. And Confirmed by the Evangelist Norton with Prognosticks from the Famous Dr. Owen, Concerning the Fate of these Churches, and Animadversions upon the Anger of God, in
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1 This sketch of the contents of the pamphlet is from the Second Series of
the Collections of the Mass. Hist. Soci- ety, Vol. IV. pp. 102, 103.
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sending of Evil Angels among us. Published by Old Planters, the Authors of the Old Mens Tears. Boston, Printed and Sold by Benjamin Harris, at the sign of the Bible over against the Blew-Anchor 1694."1
It appears that, as in the case of the previous publication, more than one person was concerned in the authorship. The dedication was to the venerable Simon Bradstreet, late Gov- ernor, and for many years a member of the South Church, and we make two extracts from it :
" The long Experience of your being the only Surviving Antiquary of us Nov-Angles, the Prime Secretary and Register of our civil and sacred Records, and the Bifronted Janus who saw the Closure of the Old, and the Overture of this New-Albion World."
" The Late Series of Divine Dispensations tending not only to the dissolving of the Cement, but to the subverting of the Basis of that Fabrick which the wonderful worker hath here so stupendiously erected, nor to the Cropping off their Branches; but to the Rooting up of the tender Plant, which the Heavenly Father, here so graciously hath Planted ; hath put some of the Old Relict Planters, upon smiting on our thighs, and serious considerations of what provoking evils we have committed, and what special sins, God now would bring to our Remembrance, whereby we have so highly displeased our Benign God, and Gracious Father, thus tremenduously to treat us : the Aspect of Providence so terribly varying, from what formerly it was wont to be, puts us into an amusing amazement. And being in this perplexed · Labyrinth, of Distracting thoughts of heart, there was darted into our meditations, a Caution which above Eight Septenaries of years past, came from the first Seraphical Doctor of Boston Church."
We could wish that there were more narration in this " Narrative." It contains general references to the early emigration and to the trials which followed,-the Indian wars, antinomianism, the quakers, the prevalence of witchcraft, etc., and the writer then relapses into the same almost broken- hearted lamentations as before. The period was indeed a trying one for New England ; Cotton Mather called the years 1690 to 1700 "the woeful decade "; but, fortunately, there were younger and braver hearts to cope with the trials and to
1 Mass. Hist. Collections, Fourth Series, Vol. IV.
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overcome the difficulties. Brighter days came, although Simon Bradstreet and Joshua Scottow did not live to see and rejoice in their light.
The two friends died within less than a year of each other, Bradstreet, March 27, 1697, and Scottow, on the 21st of the January following, in the midst of a week of unusually severe wintry weather. Judge Sewall records :
"By reason of the severity of the wether, and a great Cold, I went not to the catechising Jany 18, nor to the Lecture January 20th.
"Jany 21, Sixth day, Mr Willard comes to visit us; though He him- self also is very much indisposed by the cold: prays with us. Speaks as if heard Capt. Scottow was dead : but was not very certain. But before he went away, Jno. Roberts came to invite me to be a Bearer to-morrow. It seems Capt. Scottow died the last night. Thus the New England Men drop away.
"Seventh-day, Jany 22, 1697-8, Capt. Joshua Scottow is buried in the old burying place ; Bearers, Majr Gen1 Winthrop, Mr Cook, Col. Hutchinson, Sewall, Sergeant, Walley: Extream Cold. No minister at Capt. Scottow's Funeral ; nor wife nor daughter.
"Jany 23, 1697-8, Very Cold. Mr Fitch preacheth with us and pronounceth the blessing, Mr Willard not being there, by reason of illness : Text was, The Lord is my Shepherd &c. Mr Willard comes abroad in the Afternoon, and preacheth excellently; baptiseth a child and a woman. Very thin assemblies this Sabbath, and last; and great coughing : Very few women there. Mr Willard pray'd for mitigation of the wether : and the South Wind begins to blow with some vigor."
Mr. Scottow's age, given on his tomb-stone, was eighty- three. Several of his family were members of this Church.1 His daughter Mary was the wife of Samuel Checkley, for many years one of its deacons, who died in 173S. Their son, the Rev. Samuel Checkley, was the first minister of the New South Church ; their grandson, the Rev. Samuel Checkley,
1 His daughters joined the Third Church in the following order: Eliza- beth, wife of Thomas Savage, in 1670; Lydia, wife successively of Benjamin Gibbs, Anthony Checkley and William Colman, in 1671; Rebecca, wife of the Rev. Benjamin Blakeman, in 1680; Sarah, wife of Samuel Walker, in 1683; Mary, wife of Samuel Checkley, in 1685.
All these sisters, with the exception of Lydia, and their brother, Thomas, seem to have owned the covenant in 1669; but some of them were then very young, Rebecca, seventeen years of age, Mary, thirteen, and Thomas, only ten. Lydia, Mrs. Colman, was suggested as a pos- sible wife for Judge Sewall, when he was a widower, in 1720.
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was a minister of the Second Church ; and their granddaugh- ter, Elizabeth Checkley, became the wife of Samuel Adams, the patriot, who wrote of her in the Family Bible, at the time of her death in 1757: " She ran her Christian race with a re- markable steadiness and finished it in triumph." Another granddaughter, Mary Bowles, married Benjamin Lynde, Jun., of Salem, and in this line Joshua Scottow has descendants living in Boston to-day.
Sewall records the death of Mrs. Scottow in May, 1707, at the age of eighty-six. The bearers at her funeral were Sam- uel Sewall, Isaac Addington, James Hill, Nathaniel Williams, John Ballentine and John Coney.
There is another founder of this church, to whom it is our privilege this evening to pay our tribute of respectful and grate- ful remembrance, -- John Alden, whose tombstone has been given to us by representatives of the Alden name and lineage in this generation.
John Alden was the eldest son of John Alden and his wife Priscilla Mullens, who came over in the "Mayflower" in 1620. Through his parentage he connects this Church in- directly with the Plymouth Pilgrims, but it has a closer and direct connection with them ; for in 1671, Mary Chilton, one of their number, with her husband, John Winslow, moved from Plymouth to Boston, and joined its membership by a letter of dismission and recommendation still preserved on our files. John Alden, the second, was born at Plymouth in 1626 or 1627, afterward lived in Duxbury, was admitted free- man in 1646, and came to Boston in 1659. He lived here on a passage leading from Cambridge Street to Sudbury Street, from him called Alden's Lane, until 1846, when, Drake says, it was dignified with the name of Alden Street. He was a mariner, " a man of sound judgment, active business habits and un exceptionable moral character." He united with the brethren of the First Church who were opposed to the coming of Mr. Davenport, in the organization of the Third Church, but he sailed for England late in the year 1669, in command of a
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vessel belonging to John Hull,1 and was absent from home for more than a year, so that he was spared much of the anxiety and annoyance to which the other members were subjected at that period. He afterward commanded for many years the armed vessel belonging to the colony, which supplied the forts to the eastward with provisions and stores. He saw service in the French and. Indian wars; in 1690 he was ap- pointed to treat with the Indians at Sagadahock, and was successful in his negotiations. He had accumulated a good property, and had attained an honorable age, when, for some unexplained reason, in the midst of the witchcraft madness in 1692, he was accused, arrested and imprisoned, as being in league with the evil one. He had lived in Boston for more than thirty years, and had maintained an unblemished repu- tation as a Christian man and as a citizen, but all this availed nothing. When the venerable widow of the Rev. Thomas Thacher, the first minister of this Church, was suspected as a witch, no one was safe. Captain Alden is the only one among those accused, who has left a written statement of his arrest, examination and subsequent experiences, and we give this entire.
"John Alden Sr. of Boston, in the county of Suffolk, mariner, on the twenty-eighth day of May, 1692, was sent for by the magistrates of Salem, in the county of Essex, upon the accusation of a company of poor distracted or possessed creatures or witches; and being sent by Mr. Stoughton, arrived there on the 31st of May, and appeared at Salem Village, before Mr. Gedney, Mr. Hathorne and Mr. Corwin.
" Those wenches being present who played their juggling tricks, falling down, crying out, and staring in people's faces, the magistrates demanded of them several times, who it was, of all the people in the room, that hurt them. One of these accusers pointed several times at one Captain Hill, there present, but spake nothing. The same accuser
1 John Hull refers to some of Alden's voyages in his Diary :
1669. IIth month. Master John Alden went for England, in the Ketch " Friendship," being three-fourths mine ; came well to West Chester ; and, through Mr. Alden's desire to expedite, he dealt with a man wanting honesty, who hin- dered him much time, and lost me much
estate,-near five hundred pounds dam- age and loss to me, the Bermuda Com- pany seizing that sort of tobacco. The vessel returned not home until May, 1671."
" 1672. Also I lost my Ketch, three- fourths, with her lading, from Virginia, taken by the Dutch from John Alden, worth about two hundred pounds."
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had a man standing at her back to hold her up. He stooped down to her ear : then she cried out, ' Alden, Alden afflicted her.' One of the magistrates asked her if she had ever seen Alden. She answered, ' No.' He asked her how she knew it was Alden. She said the man told her so.
" Then all were ordered to go down in the street, where a ring was made; and the same accuser cried out, 'There stands Alden, a bold fel- low, with his hat on before the judges : he sells powder and shot to the Indians and French . Then was Alden committed to the marshal's custody, and his sword taken from him; for they said he afflicted them with his sword. After some hours, Alden was sent for to the meeting-house in the Village, before the magistrates, who re- quired Alden to stand upon a chair, to the open view of all the people.
" The accusers cried out that Alden pinched them then, when he stood upon the chair, in the sight of all the people, a good way distant from them. One of the magistrates bid the marshal to hold open Al- den's hands, that he might not pinch those creatures. Alden asked them why they should think that he should come to that village to afflict those persons that he never knew or saw before. Mr. Gedney bid Alden to confess, and give glory to God. Alden said he hoped he should give glory to God, and hoped he should never gratify the Devil : but appealed to all that ever knew him, if they ever suspected him to be such a person; and challenged any one that could bring in any thing on their own knowledge, that might give suspicion of his being such an one. Mr. Gedney said he had known Alden many years, and had been at sea with him, and always looked upon him to be an honest man ; but now he saw cause to alter his judgment. Alden an- swered, he was sorry for that, but he hoped God would clear up his innocency, that he would recall that judgment again; and added, that he hoped that he should, with Job, maintain his integrity till he died. They bid Alden look upon the accusers, which he did, and then they fell down. Alden asked Mr. Gedney what reason there could be given why Alden's looking upon him did not strike him down as well; but no reason was given that I heard. But the accusers were brought to Alden to touch them; and this touch, they said, made them well. Alden began to speak of the Providence of God in suffer- ing these creatures to accuse innocent persons. Mr. Noyes asked Al- den why he should offer to speak of the Providence of God : God, by his Providence (said Mr. Noyes), governs the world, and keeps it in peace ; and so went on with discourse, and stopped Alden's mouth as to that. Alden told Mr. Gedney that he could assure him that there was a lying spirit in them; for I can assure you that there is not a word of truth in all these say of me. But Alden was again committed to the marshal, and his mittimus written.
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"To Boston Alden was carried by a constable : no bail would be taken for him, but was delivered to the prison-keeper, where he re- mained fifteen weeks; and then, observing the manner of trials, and evidence then taken, was at length prevailed with to make his escape.
Per JOHN ALDEN."
The mittimus was signed by John Hathorn and Jonathan Corwin, and Alden was, as he says, taken in charge by a constable, carried to Boston and lodged in jail, where he re- mained for fifteen weeks. He "made his escape about the middle of September, at the bloodyest crisis of the tragedy, and just before the execution of nine of the victims, including that of Giles Corey. He is understood to have fled to Dux- bury, where his relatives secreted him. He made his appear- ance among them late at night, and on their asking an expla- nation of his unexpected visit at that hour, replied that he was flying from the devil, and the devil was after him. After awhile, when the delusion had abated, and people were com- ing to their senses, he delivered himself up, and was bound over to the Superior Court at Boston, the last Tuesday in April, 1693, when, no one appearing to prosecute, he, with some hundred and fifty others, was discharged by proclama- tion, and all judicial proceedings were brought to a close. It is to be feared that ever after, to his dying day, when the sub- ject of his experience on the 31st of May, 1692, was referred to, the old sailor indulged in rather strong expressions."1
While he was lying in prison, a prayer meeting was held at his house, of which Sewall has left us an account. The ministers of the First and Second Churches, and his own pas- tor, Mr. Willard, offered prayer for him and his family, as did also his brethren Joshua Scottow and James Hill. Judge Sewall, who, happily, was not called to sit in judgment in the case of his fellow church-member, read a sermon on the all-sufficiency of God. The occasion must have been a solemn one. These good men were baffled and awe-stricken by the manifestations on every hand, of what they believed to be
1 Upham's History of Witchcraft, Vol. II. p. 246.
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diabolical agency. To them, witchcraft was a very real, and therefore a very terrible thing.
After the dark cloud had passed away, Judge Sewall, in the largeness and tenderness of his heart, called on the household with whom he had prayed in the hour of their adversity, to congratulate them on the issue. He says in his journal : "June 12, 1693. I visit Capt. Alden and his wife, and tell them I was sorry for their Sorrow and Temptations by reason of his Imprisonment, and that was glad of his Restauration."
Two or three years later, the stout hearted old captain com- manded a brigantine called the " Endeavour." in an expedition on the eastern coast. His father was the last survivor of the men who signed the compact in Plymouth Harbor, and he seems to have had a similarly vigorous constitution. He sur- vived all but three or four of the founders of this Church, and died in 1702, at the age of eighty, according to some of the genealogists, but his gravestone says seventy-five. Judge Sewall was constant in his friendship for him to the end. In his journal he says :
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