USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 19
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The road to Watertown, now Brattle Street, and formerly the great highway to the south and west, left the market-place, as now, by the rear of the English Church, but communicated also more directly with Charlestown road by the north side of the Common. It was by this road that Washington arrived in Cambridge and the army marched to New York. By it, also, Burgoyne's troops reached their designated camps. The reader will go over it with us hereafter. All these particulars are deemed essential to a comprehension of the military oper- ations of the siege of Boston when Cambridge was an intrenched camp.
Not far from the Square, and on the west side of Brighton Street, is the site of Ebenezer Bradish's tavern, of repute in Revolutionary times. Its situation near the bridge was com-
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patible with the convenience of travellers ; nor was it too re- mote from the College halls for the requirements of the students when Latin classics became too dry, and Euclid too dull for human endurance. Many, we will venture to say, were the plump, big-bellied Dutch bottles smuggled from mine host's into Old Harvard, Massachusetts, or Stoughton. Bradish kept a livery too, which was no doubt well patronized by the col- legians, though here he encountered some disgrace by letting his horses to David Phips to carry off the province cannon at Gage's behest. Bradish seems, however, to have been well affected to the patriot cause. His inn was long the only one in the town, and had the honor of entertaining Generals Bur- goyne, Philips, and the principal British officers on their first arrival in Cambridge. This tavern, also later known as Porter's, was for a time the annual resort of the Senior Class of the Col- lege on Class Day, for a dinner and final leave-taking of all academical exercises. Bradish's was the rendezvous of Rufus Putnam's regiment in 1777.
The first publican in Old Cambridge was Andrew Belcher, an ancestor of the governor of that name, who was licensed in 1652 " to sell beare and bread, for entertainment of strangers and the good of the towne." It is at least a coincidence that a Belcher still dispenses rather more dainty viands on Harvard Square.
It is a relief to find that in the year 1750 there were some convivial and even thirsty souls about, as we learn from the journal of a rollicking sea-captain, who was having his ship repaired at Boston while he indulged in a run on shore : -
" Being now ready to Sale I determined to pay my way in time, which I accordingly did at M' Graces at the Request of M' Heyleg- her and the Other Gentlemen Gave them a Good Supper with Wine and Arack Punch Galore, where Exceeding Merry Drinking Toasts Singing Roaring &c. untill Morning when Could Scarce see One another being Blinded by the Wine Arack &c. we where in all ab' 20 in compy."
The tavern bills of the General Court in 1768 - 69 would astonish the ascetics of Beacon Hill. We remark a great dis-
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parity between the quantity of fluids and edibles. In a docu- ment now before us eighty dinners are flanked with one hun- dred and thirty-six bowls of punch, twenty-one bottles of sherry, and brandy at discretion. Truly ! we are tempted to exclaim with Prince Hal on reading the bill of Falstaff's supper, -
" O monstrous ! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack."
What, then, would Prince Hal have said to a bill of your modern alderman ?
Returning into the Square, we continue our peregrinations around the College enclosure. As you turn towards the Com- mon, in approaching from Harvard Street, you pass over the spot whereon the second edifice of the first church was erected. A little elevation which formerly existed here is supposed to have been the Watch-house Hill, before mentioned, and later called Meeting-house Hill. In 1706 the third church was erected on this ground, and in 1756 the fourth house was raised, somewhat nearer Dane Hall. This church was taken down in 1833, when the site became the property of the College.
In the meeting-house which stood here the First Provincial Congress held their session in 1774, after their adjournment from Salem and Concord. The Congress first met in the old Court House on the 17th of October, but immediately adjourned to the meeting-house, of which Rev. Nathaniel Appleton was then pastor, and who officiated as their chaplain. This was the period of the Port Act, and the crisis of the country. The Congress was earnestly engaged in measures for the relief of the distressed and embargoed town of Boston, the formation of an army, a civil administration, and other revolutionary meas- ures. Here was made the organization of the celebrated minute- men, the appointment of Jedediah Preble, Artemas Ward, and Seth Pomeroy as general officers ; and of the famous Revolution- ary committee of nine, of which Hancock, Warren, Church, Devens, White, Palmer, Quincy, Watson, and Orne were mem- bers. This body, called the Committee of Safety, wielded the
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executive power, and in the recess of Congress were vested with almost dictatorial authority. The members of the Second Con- tinental Congress were also chosen at this time.
Space does not permit us to linger among those giants who welded the Old Thirteen together with the fire of their elo- quence. One incident must have created no little sensation in an assembly of which probably a majority were slaveholders. A letter was brought into the Congress directed to Rev. Dr. Appleton, which was read. It represented the propriety while Congress was engaged in efforts to free themselves and the people from slavery, that it should also take into consideration the state and circumstances of the negro slaves in the province. After some debate the question " was allowed to subside."
" A ! freedome is a nobill thing! Freedome mayse man to haiff liking! Freedome all solace to man giffis; He levys at ese' that frely levys ! A noble hart may haiff nane ese, Na ellys nocht that may him plese, Gyff fredome failythe ; for fre liking Is yearnyt our all other thing Na he, that ay hase levyt fre, May nocht knaw well the propryte, The angyr, na the wretchyt dome, That is cowplyt to foul thryldome."
In the olden time people were summoned to church by beat of drum, - until a bell was procured, a harsh and discordant appeal for the assembly of a peaceful congregation, - but those were the days of the church militant. On the contrary, our grandsires, whose ears were not attuned to the sound, could as little endure the roll of British drums near their sanctuaries on a Sabbath morn, as could the poet the clangor of the bell of Tron-Kirk which he so rudely apostrophized : -
" Oh! were I provost o' the town, I swear by a' the powers aboon, I'd bring ye wi' a reesle down ; Nor should you think (So sair I'd crack and clour your crown) Again to clink."
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The old Court House, which has been named in connection with the Henley trial, stood at first bodily within the Square, but was later removed to the site of the present Lyceum building, and is even now existing in its rear, where it is utilized for workshops. It was built in 1756, and continued to be used by the courts until the proprietors of Lechmere Point obtained their removal to that location by the offer of a large bonus. The old wooden jail stood at the southwest corner of the Square, and was but little used for the detention of crimi- nals after the erection of the stone jail at Concord in 1789. The Court House witnessed the trials of many notable causes, and furnished the law-students of the University with a real theatre, of which they were in the habit of availing them- selves.
As late as 1665 declarations and summonses were published by sound of trumpet. The crier opened the court in the king's name, and the judges and barristers in scarlet robes, gown, and wig, inspired the spectator with a wholesome sense of the majesty of the law. The usual form of a document was " To all Xtian people Greeting."
Under the first charter, or patent as it was usually called, the Governor and Assistants were the sole depositaries of all power, whether legislative, executive, or judicial. When the patent was silent the Scriptures were consulted as the proper guide. The ministers and elders were, in all new exigencies, the ex- pounders of the law, which was frequently made for the occa- sion and applied without hesitation. The cause of complaint was briefly stated, and there were no pleadings. Hutchinson says, that for more than the first ten years the parties spoke for themselves, sometimes assisted, if the cause was weighty, by a patron, or man of superior abilities, but without fee or reward. The jury -and this marks the simplicity of the times - were allowed by law, if not satisfied with the opinion of the court, "to consult any by-stander." Such were the humble beginnings of our courts of law.
The following is extracted from the early laws of Massachu- setts : --
10
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" Everie marryed woeman shall be free from bodilie correction or stripes by her husband, unlesse it be in his owne defence upon her assalt. If there be any just cause of correction complaint shall be made to Authoritie assembled in some court, from which onely she shall receive it."
The common law of England authorized the infliction of chastisement on a wife with a reasonable instrument. It is related that Judge Buller, charging a jury in such a case, said, " Without undertaking to define exactly what a reasonable instrument is, I hold, gentlemen of the jury, that a stick no bigger than my thumb comes clearly within that description." It is further reported that a committee of ladies waited on him the next day, to beg that they might be favored with the exact dimensions of his lordship's thumb.
Dane Hall, which bears the name of that eminent jurist and statesman through whose bounty it arose, was erected in 1832 and enlarged in 1845. The south foundation-wall of Dane is the same as the north wall of the old meeting-house, so that Law and Divinity rest here upon a common base.
The first law-professorship was established through the be- quest of Isaac Royall, the Medford loyalist, who gave by his will more than two thousand acres of land in the towns of Granby and Royalston for this purpose. 3 In 1815 Hon. Isaac Parker, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was appointed first professor, and in 1817, at his suggestion, a law school was established. Judge Parker's lectures were delivered in what was then known as the Philosophy Chamber, in Harvard Hall. Both the Law and Divinity Schools were established during Dr. Kirkland's presidency. It is worthy of mention that the first doctorate of laws was conferred on Washington for his expulsion of the British from Boston.
Nathan Dane, LL. D., a native of Ipswich and graduate of Harvard, is justly remembered as the framer, while in Congress, of the celebrated "Ordinance of 1787 " for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio, by which slavery was excluded from that immense region. In 1829 the Law School was reorganized through the liberality of Mr. Dane, who had
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offered a competent sum for a professorship, with the right of nominating the first incumbent. The person who had been selected for the occupancy of the chair was Joseph Story, whose fame as a jurist had culminated on the Supreme Bench of the United States.
Judge Story remained in the Dane Professorship until his death in 1845, a period of sixteen years. It is believed that his life was shortened by his prodigious intellectual labors and the demands made upon him for various kinds of literary work. As a writer he belonged to the intense school, if such a char- acterization be admissible, and this mental tension appeared in the quick changes of his countenance and in his nervous movements as well as in the rapidity of his pen. A great talker, he never lacked interested auditors ; for his was a mind of colossal stamp, and he never wanted language to give utter- ance to his thoughts.
The first settlers in Massachusetts Bay did not recognize the law of England any further than it suited their interests. The common law does not appear, says Sullivan, to have been re- garded under the old patent, nor for many years after the Charter of 1692. In 1647 the first importation of law books was made ; it comprised, -
2 copies of Sir Edward Coke on Littleton,
2 of the Book of Entries,
2
66 of Sir Edward Coke on Magna Charta,
2 of the New Terms of the Law,
2
:6 of Dalton's Justice of the Peace,
2 of Sir Edward Coke's Reports.
This was four years after the division of the Colony of Massa- chusetts Bay into four shires. Norfolk included that part of the present county of Essex north of the Merrimac, and also the settled part of New Hampshire.
There were attorneys here about ten years after the settle- ment. Lechford, who came over in 1631, and returned to England in 1641, where he published a pamphlet called " Plain Dealing," says that "every church member was a bishop, and,
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not inclining to become one himself, he could not be admitted a freeman among them ; that the General Court and Quarter Sessions exercised all the powers of King's Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery, High Commission, Star Chamber, and of all the other courts of England." For some offence Lechford, de- barred from pleading and deprived of practice, returned to England, to bear witness against the colonial magistrates. But from other authority than Lechford's, we know that the dis- tinction between freeman and non-freeman, members and non- members, appeared as striking to new-comers as that between Cavalier and Roundhead in Old England.
In 1687, almost sixty years from the first settlement of this country, there were but two attorneys in Massachusetts. The noted crown agent, Randolph, wrote to a friend in England, in that year, as follows : -
" I have wrote you the want we have of two or three honest at- torneys, if there be any such thing in Nature. We have but two ; one is Mr. West's creature, - came with him from New York, and drives all before him. He takes extravagant fees, and for want of more, the country cannot avoid coming to him."
The other appears to have been George Farewell, who said in open court in Charlestown that all causes must be brought to Boston, because there were not honest men enough in Middlesex to make a jury to serve their turns.
Our two oldest Universities have never displayed a political bias like Oxford and Cambridge in Old England, where the dis- tinction between Whig and Tory was so marked that when George I. gave his library to Cambridge, the following epigram appeared : -
" King George observing with judicious eyes The state of both his Universities, To Oxford sent a troop of horse ; for why ? That learned body wanted loyalty. To Cambridge books he sent, as well discerning How much that loyal body wanted learning."
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CHAPTER X.
A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED.
" It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words." -Jack Cade.
T THE Marquis of Wellesley is accredited with having said to an American, " Establishing a seminary in New Eng- land at so early a period of time hastened your revolution half a century." This was a shrewd observation, and aptly supplements the forecast of the commissioners of Charles II., who said, in their report, made about 1666 :-
" It may be feared this collidg may afford as many scismaticks to the Church, and the Corporation as many rebells to the King, as for- merly they have done if not timely prevented."
The earliest contemporary account of the founding of the College is found in a tract entitled "New England's First Fruits," dated at "Boston in New England, September 26, 1642," and published in London in 1643. This is, in point of time, nearly coeval with the University, and is as follows : -
" After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli-hood, rear'd convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civill govern- ment ; One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity ; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. And as wee were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work ; it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, then liv- ing amongst us) to give the one half of his estate (it being in all about 1700 l.) towards the erecting of a Colledge and all his Library; After him another gave 3001. others after them cast in more, and the publique hand of the State added the rest : The Colledge was by
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common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge, (a place very pleas- ant and accommodate) and is called (according to the name of its first founder) Harvard Colledge."
The account, with its quaint and pertinent title, gives also the first description of the College itself :-
" The edifice is very faire and comely within and without, having in it a spacious hall ; where they daily meet at commons, lectures and Exercises ; and a large library with some bookes to it, the gifts of diverse of our friends, their chambers and studies also fitted for, and possessed by the students, and all other roomes of office neces- sary and convenient with all needful offices thereto belonging : And by the side of the Colledge a faire Grammar Schoole for the train- ing up of young scholars and fitting them for Academical learning, that still as they are judged ripe, they may be received into the Colledge of this schoole : Master Corlet is the Mr. who hath very well approved himself for his abilities, dexterity, and painfulnesse in teaching and education of the youths under him."
Edward Johnson's account of New England, which appeared in 1654, mentions the single College building, which was of wood, as the commissioners before quoted say : -
" At Cambridge, they have a wooden Collidg, and in the yard a brick pile of two Cages for the Indians, where the Commissioners saw but one. They said they had three or more at scool."
The Indian seminary was built by the corporation in Eng- land, and in 1665 contained eight pupils, one of whom had been admitted into the College. By this time as many as a hundred preachers, physicians, and others had been educated and sent forth by the College.
There existed formerly, in lieu of the low railing at present dividing the College grounds from the highway, a close fence, with an entrance opening upon the old College yard between Harvard and Massachusetts. This was superseded in time by a more ornamental structure, with as many as four entrances, flanked by tall gateposts. The present streets, then but lanes, were enlarged at the expense of the College territory, thus re- ducing its area very materially.
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A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED.
The first building, or Old Harvard, was rebuilt of brick in 1672 by the contributions of the Colony. Of the £ 1890 raised for this purpose, Boston gave £ 800.
The old structures ranging along the street which separates the College enclosure from the Common are, with the exception of Stoughton, on their original sites, and were, when erected, fronting the principal highway through the town. Harvard, which is upon its old ground, was the nucleus around which the newer halls ranged themselves. Stoughton, second in the order of time, was built in 1698, and Massachusetts in 1720. These are the three edifices shown in an illustration, of which the original was published by William Price at the "King's Head and Looking Glass," in Cornhill (Boston), and is dedi- cated to Lieutenant-Governor Spencer Phips. It is entitled “ A Prospect of the Colledges in Cambridge in New England."
The first Stoughton was placed a little in the rear of, and at right angles with, Harvard and Massachusetts, fronting the open space between, so as to form three sides of a quadrangle. It stood nearly on a line with Hollis, was of brick, and had the name of Governor Stoughton, the founder, inscribed upon it. The foundation-stone was laid May 9, 1698, but, after standing nearly a century, having gone to irremediable decay, it was taken down in 1781. A facsimile of this edifice appears in the background of Governor Stoughton's portrait, in the gallery in Massachusetts Hall.
As has been remarked, there is a probability that the College press was kept in either Harvard or Stoughton as early as 1720, and the fact that the types belonging to the College were destroyed by the fire which consumed Harvard in 1764 gives color to the conjecture that the press was there. In May, 1775, the Provincial Congress, having taken possession of the College, assigned a chamber in Stoughton to Samuel and Ebenezer Hall, who printed the " New England Chronicle and Essex Gazette " there until the removal of the army from Cam- · bridge. From this press, says a contemporary, "issued streams of intelligence, and those patriotic songs and tracts which so pre-eminently animated the defenders of American liberty."
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
John Fox, who was born at Boston, in England, in 1517, thus speaks of the art of printing : -
" What man soever was the instrument [whereby this invention was made] without all doubt, God himself was the ordainer and dis- poser thereof, no otherwise than he was of the gift of tongues, and that for a similar purpose."
In 1639 the first printing-press erected in New England was set up at Cambridge by Stephen Daye, at the charge of Rev. Joseph Glover, who not only brought over the printer, but everything necessary to the typographic art. "The first thing printed was ' The Freeman's Oath,' the next an Almanac made for New England by Mr. Pierce, mariner; the next was the Psalms newly turned into metre." * John Day, who lived in Elizabeth's time at Aldersgate, London, was a famous printer, who is understood to have introduced the italic characters and the first font of Saxon types into our typography.
Samuel Green, into whose possession the press very early came, and who is usually considered the first printer in America, was an inhabitant of Cambridge in 1639, and pursued his call- ing here for more than forty years, when he removed to Boston. Green printed the "Cambridge Platform " in 1649 ; the Laws in 1660 ; and the " Psalter," " Eliot's Catechism," " Baxter's Call," and the Bible in the Indian language in 1685. Daye's press, or some relics of it, are said to have been in existence as late as 1809 at Windsor, Vt. All these early publications are of great rarity.
Massachusetts, which is the first of the old halls reached in coming from the Square, is the oldest building now standing. It is but one remove from, and is the oldest existing specimen in Massachusetts of, our earliest types of architecture as applied to public edifices. Like Harvard, it presents its end to the street, and faces upon what was the College green a century and a half gone by, - perhaps the very place where Robert Calef's wicked book was, by an edict which smacks strongly of the. Inquisition, burnt by order of Increase Mather.
* Winthrop's Journal.
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A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED.
The building, with its high gambrel roof, dormer windows, and wooden balustrade surmounting all, has a quaint and de- cidedly picturesque appearance. Though nominally of three stories, it shows five tiers of windows as we look at it, above which the parapet terminates in two tall chimneys. Between each range of windows is a belt giving an appearance of strength to the structure. On the summit of the western gable was a clock affixed to an ornamental wooden tablet, which is still in its place, although the clock has long since disappeared. Mas- sachusetts contained thirty-two rooms and sixty-four studies, until its dilapidated condition compelled the removal of all the interior woodwork, when it was converted into a gallery for the reception of the portraits belonging to the College.
Many of these portraits are originals of Smibert, Copley, and Stuart, which makes the collection one of rare value and ex- cellence. Of these, two of the most characteristic are of old Thomas Hancock, the merchant prince, and founder of the pro- fessorship of that name, and of Nicholas Boylston, another eminent benefactor, - both Copleys. Hancock, who was the governor's uncle, and who became very rich through his con- tracts for supplying Loudon's and Amherst's armies, kept a bookseller's shop at the "Bible and Three Crowns" in Ann Street, Boston, as early as 1726.
Copley has delineated him in a suit of black velvet, white silk stockings, and shoes with gold buckles. One of the hands is gloved, while the other, uncovered, shows the beautiful mem- ber which plays so important a part in all of that painter's works. The old gentleman's clothes fit as if he had been melt- ed down and poured into them, and his ruffles, big-wig, cocked hat, and gold-headed cane supply materials for completing an attire suited to the dignity of a nabob of 1756. The artist gives his subject a double chin, shrewd, smallish eyes, and a general expression of complacency and good-nature. What we remark about Copley is his ability to paint a close-shaven face on which the beard may still be traced, with wonderful faith- fulness to nature ; every one of his portraits has a character of its own.
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