USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Reminiscences of Salem, Massachusetts : embracing notices of its eminent men known to the author forty years ago > Part 6
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But Sir Richard had better claims than these to present remembrance. He took it upon himself to rebuke the prevailing intolerance of his time in language as courteous as it was bold, addressed to the Boston clergy. He writes to them as "Reverend and dear friends, whom I unfeignedly love and respect." These are his timely words, written from London a few years later. Fortunate for New England had they been duly pondered !
"It doth not a little grieve my spirit, to hear what sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and persecutions in New England, as that you fine, whip, and imprison men for their consciences. Truly, friends, this your practice of compelling any in matters of worship to do that whereof they are not fully persuaded, is to make them sin, for so the apostle tells us, and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward man, for fear of punishment. We pray for you and wish you prosperity every way, and hoped the Lord would have
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given you so much light and love there, as not to practise those courses in a wilderness which you went so far to prevent. These rigid ways have laid you very.low in the hearts of the saints. I do assure you I have heard them pray in the public assemblies that the Lord would give you meek and humble spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity as to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. I hope you do not assume to yourselves infallibility of judgment, when the most learned of the Apostles confesseth he knew but in part and saw but darkly."
Then there was the preacher Phillips, another Cambridge man, thirty-seven years of age, the first pronounced con- gregationalist in the Colony-an independent theologian, standing alone among the clergy but in full sympathy with the broader views of Saltonstall and Browne- whose resistance to a church tax in 1632 is thought to have resulted in the instituting of our legislative house of representatives. And there were the Johnsons, Isaac and his young bride, whose untimely deaths were soon to invest the Winthrop enterprise with painfully romantic interest. Besides being one of the youngest, the groom was by far the richest of the company, and the largest adventurer in the joint stock also. Not three months more remained to him on earth, and in a will made before leaving England, of which the great Hampden was named executor, he had left his estates in part to the enterprise in which he had embarked his life. When his hour came, he declared that whatever was sacrificed in the furtherance of so great a work could not be wasted, and such was the affection in which his neighbors held him, that as one after another to the number of two hundred fell asleep that fatal winter, until the habitations of the living failed to keep pace with the sepulchres of the dead, they found
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consolation in the fact that their kindred were resting by the grave of Johnson.
His lovely bride, flitting athwart the strong light of history for' a moment, to vanish in the next, as the bright insect of a day flits across the sunbeam, gathers to herself all the poetry and sentiment of this puritanic picture. The good ship "Eagle," bought for the admiral and pilot of the fleet, had been rechristened the "Arbella" in her honor, and though her resting place may be unknown, no nameless grave can hide the memory of her virtues, while the ship "Arbella" keeps on her silent voyage down the ages. She had come, as was said in the quaint diction of the times, "from a paradise of plenty and pleasure, in the . family of a noble earldom, into a wilderness of wants." All too willing to follow her young spouse wherever he might lead her on earth, she sojourned but a little here and herself led the way, anticipating him by a month, on the everlasting journey.
Small as the colony was, the little Endicott cottage, with all its early fame for unbounded hospitality, was hardly large enough for those who made haste to welcome the coming Governor and his suite. But just beyond it, on the west, lay the principal thoroughfare of the village, laid out in the beginning, as it runs to-day, four rods in width from river to river, across the narrowest portion of our narrow town. The boat landings at either end have disappeared, as the coves of North and South River have given place to solid ground. Beneath its entire length thunder incessant trains freighted with life and wealth, and shake the sods where the Governor's children played, as though riven by an earthquake. The Governor's cottage stood on this highway, not far from the corner now formed by the southeastern intersection of Federal and Washington streets. And just beyond the Gover-
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nor's "fayre house," was a spot west of the street and not far from the present site of the Sewall-street Meeting House, which was at once the highest central elevation in the town, and also the common point nearest the head waters of both the North and South River. A creek from the South River crossed the street now named for Richard Norman, extending nearly or quite to the site of Mechanic Hall, while the Court Houses occupy land which bounded another cove pushing in from the north. Being the defensible point of the little peninsula, this had been chosen, perhaps by master gunner Sharpe, who lived near by, as the site for a blockhouse fort. It was known as the Arbor Lot, or, being at the head of the harbor, I am inclined to think, as the Harbor Lot Fort.
In this rude fortress doubtless reposed, for safety, the authenticated duplicate of the Charter of Charles I, as well as the silver seal of the company, the only one ever struck, both forwarded to Gov. Endicott by Higginson's fleet the year before. Here, too, hung suits of armor,- the halberds and partisans; the cuirasses of brass and corslets of chain and leather ; the match-locks and snaph- ances, "four foot in the barrel, without rests" each with its bandoleer and bullet bag; the pikes and demi- pikes ; the gorgets and helmets ; the swords with cow- hide belts.
Here, too, frowned from the parapet of this strong house the five great pieces of ordnance, so scrupulously consigned by the company in London in 1629 to the care of master gunner Sharpe, and which now and again belched out their thunders to awe the feeble remnant of a wasting race. Here met, for the first meeting house was not yet built, the congregation for worship, the heads of households for government, the young for catechising, the able-bodied for the manual of arms. Here Higginson
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may have preached that first sermon before Winthrop, which was to prove the last sermon of his life. From these wooden battlements was to be had the most sweep- ing survey of the novel scene, and to this spot Master Endicott and his distinguished guests without doubt re- paired, for a better acquaintance with the people and the place.
Nearly in front of the fort, stretched towards the east the narrow lane, since grown to Essex street, which con- nected the Arbor Lot and its cleared training field or esplanade on the eastern side, with that swampy tract extending from Shallop, now Collins Cove, and Planter's marsh, to the site of the Franklin Building. Part of this marsh became successively the Town Swamp, the Train- ing Field, the Common, the Mall, and now Washington Square. Pleasant street, and parts of Brown and Winter streets have since been cut through it on the one side,- Forrester, once Bath street, on another. But long after Winthrop's time it extended to the line of Essex street, including the creek which as late as 1802 gave Bath street that name. And this marshy tract was almost met by a cove flowing up from the harbor on the Elm street side about as far as the church of the Immaculate Conception. Thus the narrow neck upon which Conant and his men planted themselves in 1626 to await the recruits and succor promised by the Rev. John White, of Dorchester, was nearly severed by the inroads of the sea at two sev- eral points, not far from Washington street on the west and Washington Square on the east. Between these points, on this "pleasant and fruitful neck," as Conant's friend Hubbard describes it, nestled the cottages of the early planters. The hamlet had grown, from the half score of houses which Higginson found in 1629, to a habitation for half a dozen scores of people, in 1630.
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And this was the scene upon which Winthrop, Saltonstall and Dudley looked from the Arbor Lot Fort, under the mellow light of waning day. Higginson lived at the site of our Post Office, and Skelton at that of the Police Station. After these and Gov. Endicott, no persons were held in more esteem than Roger Conant, John Woodbury and Peter Palfray. It cannot be but that these worthies gathered at the fort. And Brackenbury, too, had come in his shallop from Bass River Side, and Jeffrey from Jef- frey's Creek, and Masconomo from his tented headland perhaps had sent, in birch canoes, an embassy of good will, for there was news from England, and news from England was then no every-day affair.
Conant was there, and we can feel the pride with which he points out the first house built in Salem, the work of his hands and his residence now, standing on the spot where has lately lived and died Richard Saltonstall Rogers ; Conant, the Governor at Cape Ann under the . patent of Lord Sheffield; Conant, who quit Plymouth in search of a more liberal system of worship; Conant, that "religious, sober and prudent gentleman," whose firmness alone, when threatened with desertion, saved to . Endicott the foundations of his colony. The cottage east of Conant's is Peter Palfray's, and that west of Conant's is John Woodbury's, and Woodbury was there, for he was Conant's right hand man,-the first constable of Salem, selected in 1627 for a difficult mission to England, which he discharged with credit, and which must have made him acquainted with the promoters of the enterprise this day arriving; Woodbury, of whom since he was an ancestor of mine I may be pardoned for speaking with peculiar interest. Endicott himself was there ; Endicott, oftener reelected chief magistrate than any other Governor of Massachusetts ; Endicott, of whom the exhaustive
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address delivered by his distinguished namesake and rep- resentative, Judge Endicott, two years ago, has left us nothing to say,-all these were there. Nor is it hard to guess the topics to which conversation leaned. The pano- rama before them was abundantly suggestive. Within its charmed horizon lay the bay then, as to-day, tossing and sparkling in the glancing sunlight, dotted with islands now fresh with verdure, but then dark with forests-and locked, as now, within the wooded heights of the north shore and Naugus Head. On right and left the crystal currents of our lazy streams moved on, unvexed by bridges, to the sea, and there no friendly beacon warned the adventurous boatman of hidden ledges,-at night, no hospitable lighthouse called him home. And beyond all, the ocean, changeless, yet ever new, unscarred by time !-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now !
Across the rivers, in North and South Fields, might be seen the outlying farms of planters, where Indian and settler plied the hoe together, while the birch canoe, and the dug-out, called their water-horse, threaded each silver stream which served them for a lane. Roads they had .none. Venice in all her arrogance of wealth had not such leagues of water for her streets. Here on the south curled the wigwam fires of the Indian Camp in Forest River Valley. Here, close at hand, rose the pallisadoed fort on Castle Hill. Turning to the north might be seen the shipyard from which, the year before, Moulton and his men sent out the first craft of considerable size ever launched into the waters of Massachusetts. While across North River and fronting the Governor's house ranged themselves in straight, well ordered lanes flanked with small patches of pumpkins, tobacco and maize, the smoky huts of another Indian village,-the sagamore's town,-
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oblong habitations, framed of birch saplings, covered with mats of flagging, in weaving which, Indian girls anticipated the æsthetic culture of household art, and together wearing the aspect of a camp of ornamented ambulance wagons, dismounted from their wheels. And everywhere beyond, spreading away, until the eye grew weary, dark, illimitable, impenetrable forest, pathless, vast and unsubdued.
Such was the picture for whose fit setting the Topsfield hills reared their dark frame against a northern sky. But what added charm would the picture acquire, could we but fathom the thought of those who looked upon it, with Winthrop, for the first time to-day! They were no pigmies, set by force of accident on a lofty pedestal and growing smaller as they rose. Before embarking in this venture they had counted its cost and grimly questioned the future. They had not turned their backs on English homes like theirs from any mean anxiety to better their estates. The oppressions from which they fled would not have weighed on minds of meaner mould. They had not sacrificed and endured and braved,-they were not looking to sacrifice, endure and brave, without some consciousness of the great part they had been called to play. The world was to profit by their losses and to be a partner in their gains. They knew, when Conant re- solved to stay at the hazard of his life, though all others left him, that it was the future more than the present which hung upon his will. They knew, when Endicott, with that stout soul of his, struggled alone to evolve a polity out of a state of things no prescience of statesman- ship could foresee, administering law, repelling force, conciliating the old planters, apportioning the lands, that it was the English Commonwealth, now not far away, which stood militant, in his person, on this virgin soil.
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They knew, when Winthrop released from bonded service all the indentured labor of the company, putting his hand to ordinary work with the humblest, when not preoccupied with official duty, that caste and precedence were doomed .
on this continent, and that rank was not to rest on acci- dent but on manhood from that day forth forever.
Some gleam at least of the dawning glory had reached their vision. They had looked for a city which hath foundations-a tabernacle that shall not be taken down. They were not to die without a vision of the land of promise. In this strong soil they had planted the tree which God has given us to water,-which was to spread its branches mightily,-to defy the tempest and to gather the world to its umbrageous shelter.
May we not hail it as a happy omen for Massachusetts Bay, that while our Plymouth neighbors landed in the dreary winter solstice, the longest day of our leafy summer solstice welcomed the arrival of Winthrop? But the longest day has an end. Twilight is creeping on, and the entry of this crowded experience in the Governor's journal closes at last. These are his words : "At night we returned to our ship, but some of the women stayed behind. In the meantime most of our people went on shore upon the land of Cape Ann, which lay very near us, and gathered store of fine strawberries. An Indian came aboard us and lay there all night." Here ends the record. Winthrop, with his council of assistants, had returned before nightfall to his gallant ship. Shall we leave him there, standing apart upon that lofty quarter- deck of the Arbella, his face set westward, as his heart had long been wedded to the future,-"revolving many memories,"-sighing for the morrow with its first taste of the Sabbath rest of New England,-peering into the open gates of sunset, until their purple glories faded into
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night,-and forecasting, it may be, the destiny of a new- born world?
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God said, -I am tired of kings ; I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.
Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor?
My angel,-his name is Freedom, - Choose him to be your king ; He shall cut pathways east and west, And fend you with his wing.
I will divide my goods ; Call in the wretch and slave : None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.
I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great : Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a State.
Go, cut down trees in the forest, And trim the straightest boughs ; Cut down trees in the forest, And build me a wooden house.
Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling, and him that hires.
And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church, and state, and school.
Lo! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers his statue, When he has wrought his best.
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THE LADY ARBELLA.
A POEM WRITTEN FOR THE WINTHROP FIELD MEETING,
By LUCY LARCOM. ,
THE LADY ARBELLA.
Read by Rev. DE WITT S. CLARK, of the Tabernacle Church, Salem.
The good ship Arbella is leading the fleet Away to the westward, through rain-storm and sleet ; The white cliffs of England have dropped out of sight ; As birds from the warmth of their nest taking flight Into wider horizons, each fluttering sail Follows fast where the Mayflower fled on the gale With her resolute Pilgrims, ten winters before ; - And the fire of their faith lights the sea and the shore.
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There are yeomen and statesmen; the learned and rude ; One brotherhood; jealousy cannot intrude Between heart and heart; with one purpose they go,- To knit life to life, a new nation, and grow In the strength of the Lord. There are maidens discreet,. And saintliest matrons; but none is so sweet As the delicate blush-rose from Lincoln's old hall, he Lady Arbella, the flower of them all.
Beloved and loving, one stands at her side, A bridegroom well matched with so lovely a bride. Wise Winthrop is balancing care in his mind For the colony's weal, for the wife left behind; And godly and tolerant Phillips is there To comfort his shipmates with blessing and prayer : One and all, they have taken their lives in their hand, To be scattered as seed in a wilderness land. (29)
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There is hope in their eyes, though it gleams through regret; They go not as those who can lightly forget The Church, their dear mother, the land of their birth, In the glamour that flushes an unexplored earth - A limitless continent, fringing the rim Of the silent sea-vastness with promises dim; And their love, reaching back from the voyage begun, Links Old and New England forever as one.
They drift through blank midnight; they toss in the mist, Blown hither and thither as wild winds may list. Moons wane, ere a glimpse of the land that they seek Breaks the chaos of billow and fog :- though the cheek Of Arbella grows pale, with a clear, kindling eye, She says, "It is well that we go, though we die." And the heart of the bridegroom beats high at her side, In response to the undismayed heart of his bride.
And still, side by side, they keep watch on the deck, Till the faint shore approaches, - an outline - a speck That wavers and sinks, and arises again, Undefined, on the outermost verge of the main. And lo ! on a golden June morning, a smell As of blossoming gardens, borne over the swell Of the weltering brine; cliff and headland that dip Their green robes in the sea, leaning out to the ship !
And shining above them, afar on the sky, Where the coast-line trends inland, the snow summits high, A glimmer of crystal! The lady's rapt gaze Lingers long on that wonder of filmy white haze, As a vision of mountains celestial, that rise On the soul of the dying, who nears Paradise ! Did she know, could she dream, that to her it was given But to touch at this new world, and pass on to heaven ?
There looms Agamenticus, beckons Cape Ann ; There a smoke-wreath reveals Masconomo's red clan, Or the camp-fire of settlers, and here a canoe - Here a shallop steers out to the storm-beaten crew; The low islands part, as an opening door, And they glide in, and anchor in sight of the shore, Where the wild roses' fragrance, the strawberries' scent With the music of song-bird and billow are blent.
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Did the Lady Arbella's light foot touch the beach ? Did the sweet-brier sway to her laugh and her speech ? Waves wash away footprints; winds sweep from the air Glad echoes- fresh odors ; - her memory is there ! And the wild rose is sweeter on Bass-River-Side For breathing where once breathed the sweet English bride; And the moan of the surges a pathos has caught From her presence there, brief as the flight of a thought.
Grave Endicott welcomes his beautiful guest. At last, in the wilderness, shall she find rest, And dream of the cities to rise at her feet In a nation where mercy and righteousness meet? Dear Lady Arbella ! so brave and so meek ! Too fragile a flower for this atmosphere bleak,- When the rose shed its petals on Bass-River-Side, The blush rose of Lincoln had faded and died.
But a soul cannot fail of its gracious intent ; We are known, and we live, through the good that we meant. The seed will spring up, that was watered with tears; If an angel looked on, through those first dreary years Of the colony's childhood, and bore up its prayer, The spirit of Lady Arbella was there ; And, to whatever Eden her footsteps have flown, New England still claims her - forever our own !
For the lady arose to her womanhood then, When gentry and yeomanry simply were men,
In communion of hardship. All honor be theirs Whose names on her forehead the Commonwealth wears, - Who planted the roots of our freedom ! Nor yet The blossoms that died in transplanting forget,- The true-hearted women who perished beside The Lady Arbella, the fair English bride !
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حمد هالوحيد ناء التفرقة بد والإشالاء مدا
HITY
ص١٧٣
ADDRESSES.
THE President briefly alluded to the three migrations from the mother-land to Salem previous to the one the 250th anniversary of which we this day commemorate. 1st, the arrival of Roger Conant in 1626; 2d, of John Endicott in September, 1628 ; 3rd, of Francis Higginson, in the summer of 1629, who, soon after his arrival, organ- ized the First Church.
We. have with us to-day, Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a lineal descendant of Francis Higginson, and also a member of Governor Long's staff. Shall we have the pleasure of hearing from him ?
RESPONSE OF COL. T. W. HIGGINSON, OF CAMBRIDGE.
Mr. Chairman, and, I suppose I may say, Fellow-members of the Essex Institute :
I AM very glad to respond to any call, whether in be- half of that third migration, or of the governorship of Massachusetts which began with Endicott and Winthrop, and which is now represented by my worthy chief, Gov- ernor Long. But I should speak with diffidence after the eloquence to which we have listened, after the beautiful poem, whose grace was so charmingly divided between the reading and the rhyme. But for the fact that I have left the living Governor behind me, I should only have been able to represent a few dead Governors of a century or two ago. There is this sort of appropriateness in the present
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situation of affairs, that whereas, just about the time of the landing of Winthrop on this very spot, I fancy that Endicott and the people of that day thought there was one Governor too much, we at this moment think there is a Governor too little. [Laughter. ]
I thought as I sat at your hospitable board partaking of your sandwiches with hearty relish (which I trust has always been characteristic of my race) that, if you were fecding me, I was,-retrospectively at least,- supplying you with a place whereon to feed. I do not know that you are aware that you are at this moment,- retrospec- . tively, and supposing I had my rights,-trespassing on my property. I may be mistaken in the boundaries, but I fancy this is a part of the old Higginson farm. I think the last Higginson who was here used to welcome others to this spot, instead of being welcomed by others, and I wish to be equally hospitable. [Laughter.] I do not know that I inherit one of the personal features of Col. John Higginson, but I do wish he had bequeathed me his Neck. [Laughter. ]
There is a common delusion that leads us to conceive our New England ancestry as tame and prosaic; and to assume that there was nothing in its early records to call forth our enthusiasm. But there are no people in the world prouder of their ancestral tree than are the men and women who hear me to-day ; there is no view in the world that should bring up nobler, tenderer recollections than the little strip of blue ocean before your eyes. There are no records of migration, there are no records of the founda- tion of a city more eloquent, more dignified, more thought- ful, more touching, than the carly annals of Salem, than the letters of Winthrop, and, I may say without assump- tion, than the journals Francis Higginson left behind him. The beauties of this place were never painted in more
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