USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > St. Botolph's town; an account of old Boston in colonial days > Part 15
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a hundred feet on what was then called High street but which we now know as Washington street.
The house was square and of brick. It had three stories, with a gambrel roof and lofty cupola, the last-named adornment surmounted with the gilt-bronzed figure of an Indian with a drawn bow and arrow. Over the portico of the main entrance was an elaborate iron balus- trade bearing the initials of the owner and the date " 16 P. S. 79." Large trees graced the court-yard, which was surrounded by an ele- gant fence set off by ornamented posts. A paved driveway led up to the massive steps of the palatial doorway. Two small out-build- ings, which, in the official days served as por- ters' lodges, signified to passers-by that this house was indeed the dwelling-place of one who represented the majesty of England.
Hawthorne in his " Legends of the Province House " has repeopled for us this impressive old mansion and, at the risk of anticipating somewhat the arrival of governors not yet on the scene, I shall quote his description while suppressing, as far as possible, his allusions to the deplorable condition of the house at the time he himself visited it: " A wide door with double leaves led into the hall or entry on the
THE PROVINCE HOUSE
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right of which was a spacious room, the apart- ment, I presume, in which the ancient gover- nors held their levees with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the Counsel- lors, the judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of the Province thronged to do them honour. . . The most venerable ornamental object is a chimney- piece, set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture; and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue tile. . .
" The great staircase, however, may be termed without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square landing- place, whence the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A carved balustrade ... borders the staircase with its quaintly twisting and intertwining pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes of many a Governor have trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded them so wide a view over the metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon with several windows, and
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a door opening upon the roof. ... Descending . . . I paused in the garret to observe the pon- derous white oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton."
The cheerful task of recalling the courtly functions of the Province House in its bright days has been ably discharged by Edwin L. Bynner who, writing in the Memorial History of Boston on the " Topography of the Provin- cial Period " invokes " this old-time scene of stately ceremonial, official pomp or social gay- ety, of many a dinner rout or ball. Here dames magnificent in damask or brocade, towering head-dress and hoop petticoat - here cavaliers in rival finery of velvet or satin, with gorgeous waistcoats of solid gold brocade, with wigs of every shape, - the tie, the full-bottomed, the ramillies, the albermarle, - with glittering swords dangling about their silken hose - where, in fine, the wise, the witty, gay and learned, the leaders in authority, in thought and in fashion, the flower of old Provincial life, trooped in full tide through the wainscoted and tapestried rooms, and up the grand old winding staircase with its carved balustrade and its square landing-places, to do honour to the hospitality of the martial Shute, the courtly
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Burnet, the gallant Pownall, or the haughty Bernard."
At the time of Bellomont's administration, however, the house had not yet become identi- fied with any great amount of official grandeur. The Boston of that year (1699) impressed one traveller, indeed, as a very poor sort of place. This traveller's name was Edward Ward and he is worth some attention as a wit, even though we may need to discount a good deal of what he wrote about the chief town of New England: " The Houses in some parts Joyn as in London," he says, " the Buildings, like their women, being neat and handsome; their Streets, like the Hearts of the Male Inhabit- ants are paved with Pebble. In the Chief or High street there are stately Edifices, some of which have cost the owners two or three thou- sand pounds the raising; which, I think, plainly proves two old adages true, - viz that a Fool and his Money is soon parted, and Set a Beggar on Horseback he'll Ride to the Devil, - for the Fathers of these men were Tinkers and Peddlers. To the Glory of Religion and the Credit of the Town there are four Churches. . Every Stranger is invariably forc'd to take this Notice, That in Boston there are more religious zealouts than honest men. . .. The
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inhabitants seem very religious showing many outward and visible signs of an inward and Spiritual Grace but though they wear in their Faces the Innocence of Doves, you will find them in their Dealings as subtile as Serpents. Interest is Faith, Money their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they covet. Elec- tion, Commencement and Training days are their only Holy-Days. They keep no saints' days nor will they allow the Apostles to be saints; yet they assume that sacred dignity to themselves, and say, in the title-page of their Psalm-book, ' Printed for the edification of the Saints in Old and New England.' "
A witty fellow certainly, this taverner and poet whom Pope honoured with a low seat in the Dunciad and who so cleverly hit off the peculiarities of our Puritan forbears that we have to quote him whether we will or no. In connection with the law against kissing in pub- lic he tells a story which has since become classic of a ship captain who, returning from a long voyage, happened to meet his wife in the street and, of course, kissed her. For this he was fined ten shillings. " What a happi- ness," comments Ward, " do we enjoy in old England, " that can not only kiss our own wives but other men's too without the danger
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of such a penalty." Ward regarded our women as highly kissable, observing that they had better complexions than the ladies of Lon- don. "But the men, - they are generally meagre and have got the hypocritical knack, like our English Jews, of screwing their faces into such puritanical postures that you would think they were always praying to themselves, or running melancholy mad about some mys- tery in the Revelations."
One of the chief objects that the king had in mind in appointing Lord Bellomont gov- ernor was the suppression of piracy, which had long been an appalling scourge on the whole American coast. The new incumbent did not disappoint his royal master, for he promptly arrested and caused to be sent to England for subsequent hanging the notorious Captain Kidd, who, from pirate hunting with Bellomont as silent partner, himself turned pirate and had to be given short shrift. While Kidd was in jail he proposed to Bellomont that he should be taken as a prisoner to Hispaniola in order that he might bring back to Massachusetts the ship of the Great Mogul, which he had unlaw- fully captured, and in the huge treasure of which Bellomont and his companions would own four-fifths if the prize were adjudged a
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lawful one. Bellomont refused this offer, for he well knew that the Great Mogul's ship ought not to have been attacked inasmuch as that personage was on friendly terms with England. It is to this " great refusal " of Bellomont that we owe the mystery that to this day en- shrouds the whereabouts of Captain Kidd's treasure.
Bellomont died in New York - whither he had gone for a short visit - March 5, 1701, after a sojourn in Boston of a little over a year. The stern-faced Stoughton again filled the gap as the head of the government. And then, on July 11, 1702, there arrived in Boston harbour as governor that Joseph Dudley who, eleven years before, had been sent out of the country a prisoner in the " crew " of the hated Andros. Dudley has been more abused than any of the royal governors. Most historians speak of him as " the degenerate son of his father " but, as far as I can see, they mean by this only that he honoured the king instead of the theocracy and attended King's Chapel instead of the Old South Church. He had been born in Roxbury July 23, 1647, after his father had attained the age of seventy, and was duly educated for the ministry. But, preferring civil affairs to the church, he held various of-
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fices and was sent to England in 1682, one of those charged with the task of saving the old charter. He soon saw that this could not be done and so advised the surrender of that doc- ument, - counsel which, of course, caused him to be called a traitor to his trust. But it served to recommend him to the royal eye and brought him the appointment of President of New Eng- land. How he was imprisoned, how he at- tempted escape and how he was finally pun- ished ( ?) in England we have already seen. Dudley was in truth much too able a man to be ignored. During the almost ten years of his exile from America, he not only served as deputy governor of the Isle of Wight but he was also a member of Parliament. Most inter- esting of all he enjoyed the close friendship of Sir Richard Steele, who acknowledged that he " owed many fine thoughts and the manner of expressing them to his happy acquaintance with Colonel Dudley; and that he had one quality which he never knew any man pos- sessed of but him, which was that he could talk him down into tears when he had a mind to it, by the command he had of fine thoughts and words adapted to move the affections." Even those who admired Dudley did not invariably trust him, however. Sewall, whose son had
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married the governor's daughter, records that " the Governor often says that if anybody would deal plainly with him he would kiss them. But I (who did so) received many a bite and many a hard word from him." Dud- ley, first among the royal governors, began that fight for a regular salary which lasted almost as long as did the office. For some time he refused the money grants which were voted to him but, when he found that he would get nothing else, he at last gave way. Yet he was so unpopular that there was hardly any year when he received more than six hundred pounds. When Queen Anne died he knew that his power must come to an end. So he retired from public office to his estate at West Rox- bury, where he died in 1720, having bequeathed fifty pounds to the Roxbury Free school for the support of a Latin master. All his life he had been a conspicuous friend of letters and, in distributing commissions, he uniformly gave the preference to graduates of the college for which he had done so much.
To the year of Dudley's death belongs the institution of what is perhaps Boston's most unique educational enterprise, - " a Spinning School for the instructions of the children of this Town." There had arrived in Boston,
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shortly before this, quite a number of Scotch- Irish persons from in and about Londonderry, bringing with them skill in spinning and a habit of consuming the then-little-known po- tato. The introduction of the potato had no immediate social effect but the coming of the linen wheel, a domestic implement which might be manipulated by a movement of the foot, was looked upon as a matter of great importance. Accordingly, a large building was erected on Long-Acre street (that part of Tremont street between Winter and School) for the express purpose of encouraging apprentices to the manufacture of linen. Spinning-wheels soon became the fad of the day and, at the com- mencement of the school " females of the town, rich and poor appeared on the Common with their wheels and vied with each other in the dexterity of using them. A larger concourse of people was perhaps never drawn together on any occasion before." By a curious kind of irony the General Court appropriated to the use of this spinning school the tax on carriages and other articles of luxury.
The Common, by the bye, had now come to be the cherished possession which Bostonians of to-day still esteem it. Purchased by Gov. Winthrop and others of William Blackstone in
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1634 for thirty pounds, a law was enacted as early as 1640 for its protection and preserva- tion. Originally it extended as far as the pres- ent Tremont Building, and an alms-house and the Granary as well as the Granary Burying Ground (established in 1660) were within its confines. It is certainly greatly to be regretted that the famous Paddock Elms, set out on the Common's edge in 1762 by Major Adino Pad- dock, the first coachmaker of the town, whose home was opposite the Burying-Ground, had to be removed in 1873, in order to make way for traction improvements !
The next governor after Dudley was Colonel Samuel Shute, in whose behalf friends of the Province, then in London, purchased the office from the king's appointee for one thousand pounds. Shute was a brother of the after- wards Lord Barrington and belonged to a dis- senting family. It was, of course, expected by Ashhurst, Belcher and Dummer - when they obtained from Colonel Elisha Burgess the right to the governorship - that Shute would give them their money's worth and help them to down the rising Episcopal party in Boston. But their incumbent promptly showed that he was a king's man by voting an adjournment of the court over December 25, 1722. " The
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Governor mentioned how ill it would appear to have votes passed on that day," records Sewall; and on further argument Colonel Shute "said he was of the Church of Eng- land."
This must have been a bitter fact for our old friend, the justice, to write down in his Diary, for none had struggled harder than he against the inevitable advance of Episcopacy. Of course the religion of England must surely, if slowly, make its way forward in an English province governed by officials sent out from England. Sewall was too sensible a man not to know this. But he would not raise his left little finger to help the matter on. His Diary abounds, as we have already seen, in references to the difficulties encountered by those who were trying to introduce into Boston the ways and the worship of the old country. When Lady Andros died he had none of his usual exclama- tions of pity for the sorrow of the bereaved husband, and when Andros tried to buy land for a church-home Sewall refused to sell him any.
But the governor got land just the same, for he appropriated a corner of the burial ground for his church. The Reverend Increase Mather, speaking of the matter in 1688 said: " Thus
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they built an house at their own charge; but can the Townsmen of Boston tell at whose charge the land was purchased? " This refers, however, only to the land occupied by the orig- inal church. The selectmen of Boston docilely granted, in 1747, the additional parcels needed for the enlargement of the building then on the spot.
Sufficiently unpretentious, certainly, was the exterior of the early home of prayer-book serv- ice in Boston. It was of wood crowned by a steeple, at the top of which soared a huge " cockerel." In the one cut which has come down to us of the building, the height of this scriptural bird rivals that of the nearby Bea- con. This, however, is very likely attributable to an error in perspective on the part of the "artist." Greenwood tells us that " a large and quite observable crown " might be dis- cerned just under this ambitious bird. The interior of the church was much more attract- ive to the eye than was the case in the other Boston meeting-houses. Though there were no pews for several years, this defect had been remedied, by 1694, as the result of a purse of fifty-six pounds collected from the officers of Sir Francis Wheeler's fleet, which had been in the harbour shortly before. Further to offset
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THE ORIGINAL KING'S CHAPEL AND THE KING'S CHAPEL OF TO - DAY
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its humble exterior the chapel had a " cushion and Cloth for the Pulpit, two Cushions for the Reading Desks, a carpet for the Allter all of Crimson Damask, with silk fringe, one Large Bible, two Large Common Prayer Books, twelve Lesser Common Prayer Books, Linnin for the Allter. Also two surplises." All these were the gift of Queen Mary. There was be- sides a costly Communion service presented by king and queen. Against the walls were " the Decalougue viz., the ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed drawne in Eng- land."
G. Dyer, the early warden of the chapel gave also according to his means and wrote down for posterity the manner of his generosity : " To my labour for making the Wather cock and Spindel, to Duing the Commandements and allter rome and the Pulpet, to Duing the Church and Winders, mor to Duing the Gal- lary and the King's Armes, fortey pounds, which I freely give." In 1710 the chapel was rebuilt to twice its original size, to accommo- date the rapidly growing congregation. As now arranged the pulpit was on the north side, directly opposite a pew occupied by the royal governors and another given over to officers of the British army and navy. In the western gal-
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lery was the first organ ever used in America. The fashion in which the chapel acquired this " instrument " (now in the possession of St. John's parish, Portsmouth, New Hampshire) is most interesting. It was originally the prop- erty of Mr. Thomas Brattle, one of the found- ers of the old Brattle street church and a most enthusiastic musician. He imported the organ from London in 1713 and, at his death, left it by will to the church with which his name is associated, " if they shall accept thereof and within a year after my disease procure a sober person that can play skillfully thereon with a loud noise." In the event of these conditions not being complied with it was provided that the organ should go to King's Chapel. The Brattle street people failed to qualify and the Episcopalians got the organ. It was used in Boston until 1756 and then sold to St. Paul's church in Newburyport, where it was in con- stant use for eighty years, after which it was acquired for the State street Chapel of the Portsmouth church, where it still gives forth sweet sounds every Lord's day.
High up on the pulpit of King's Chapel stood a quaint hour-glass richly mounted in brass and suspended from the pillars, then as now, were the escutcheons of Sir Edmund Andros,
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Francis Nicholson, Captain Hamilton, and the governors Dudley, Shute, Burnet, Belcher and Shirley. It was arranged that the royal gov- ernor and his deputy were always to be of the vestry. Joseph Dudley accordingly hung up his armorial bearings and took his place under the canopy and drapery of the state pew as soon as ever he came back to the land in which his father had been a distinguished Puritan. There is nothing to show that he did not do this conscientiously, however. Certainly it must have been much pleasanter here for a governor than in the bare meeting-houses where everything he might or might not do would be counted to his discredit.
During Colonel Shute's term of office the smallpox, which Boston had escaped for nearly twenty years, again visited the town (1721). Nearly six thousand people contracted the dis- ease, of whom almost one thousand died. In- oculation was urged and Cotton Mather did really noble service in pushing its propaganda, soon converting to his belief in the efficacy of the practice Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, an eminent physician, and Benjamin Colman, first minis- ter of the Brattle street Church and for nearly half a century (1701 -1747) one of the famous preachers of the Province. Dr. William Doug-
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las was the chief opponent of the new theory and he printed in the paper of the Franklins his attacks upon those who urged it. Two years after the scourge Shute went to England on a visit from which he never returned, and Lieutenant Governor William Dummer took the chair, which, as the event proved, he was to occupy for nearly six years.
During this interim both Increase and Cot- ton Mather died, the one in 1723, the other five years later. The father had preached sixty- six years and had presided over Harvard Col- lege for twenty; the son was in the pulpit forty-seven years and was one of the over- seers of the college. To bear him to his bury- ing-place on Copp's Hill six of the first min- isters of Boston gave their services, and the body was followed by all the principal officials, ministers, scholars and men of affairs, while the streets were thronged and the windows were filled " with sorrowful spectators." How ex- pensive this funeral was I do not know, but when Thomas Salter died (in 1714) the bill was as follows :
£ s. d.
50 yds. of Plush
10 8 4
24 yds. silk crepe
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2 16 0
9 3-8 black cloth .
11 50
10 yards fustian . 1 68
1
GOVERNOR WILLIAM BURNET
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Wadding
0 69
Stay tape and buckram
7 76
13 yds. shalloon .
2 12 0
To making ye cloths
4 17 0
Fans and girdles .
0 10 0
Gloves
10 9 6
Hatte, shoes, stockings
3 15 0
50 12 yds. lutestring
25 50
Several rings
3 10 0
Also buttons, silk, cloggs
3 10 0
To 33 gallons of wine @ 4s. 6d
7 86
To 12 ozs. spice @ 18d .
0 18 0
To 1-4 cwt. sugar @ 7s .
0 18 0
To opening ye Tomb
To ringing ye Bells
3 10 0
To ye Pauls
Doctor's and nurse's bills
10 00
2 yards of cypress
- the whole amounting to over £100.
Enter now as governor William Burnet, son of the historian bishop. He arrived in Boston July 13, 1728, and was escorted from the Neck to the Bunch of Grapes Tavern by a large body of enthusiastic citizens, among them the fa- mous Mather Byles, who dropped into poetry on this as on many a later occasion of state. Burnet had in his train a tutor, a black laun- dress, a steward and a French cook. Upon the latter, as will be easily understood, the Bos- tonians gazed with particular awe. But Bur- net was merely preparing to live here as he
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had lived in England and, later, in New York. He was a true English gentleman, cultivated, courteous, affable and inclined to be all things to all men. Had he come in any other capacity than that of royal governor he would have found life in Boston exceedingly agreeable. But one of his instructions was to push the matter of salary, and as soon as this matter was broached the people forgot that he was personally a delightful man. As if to avert any plea of poverty which the House might advance, he referred in his first address, ask- ing for a salary of £1,000, to the lavish fashion in which he had been welcomed. But this quite failed to make those whom he would have con- ciliated agree to what he demanded. They had planted themselves once and for all where the war of the Revolution found them-on the position that all " impositions, taxes and dis- bursements of money were to be made by their own freewill, and not by dictation of king, council or parliament." We must, as George E. Ellis lucidly points out in his study of the royal governors, honour their pluck and prin- ciple, while at the same time doing justice to the " firm loyalty, the self-respect, the dignity and persistency, with which Burnet stood to his instructions, nobly rejecting as an attempt
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at bribery, all the evasive ingenuity of the recusant House in offering him three times the sum as a present, while he was straitened by actual pecuniary need."
The dissension which followed after this question had been broached was harsh in the extreme and, in the midst of it, the governor, while driving from Cambridge to Boston in his carriage, was overturned on the causeway, cast into the water and so chilled as to be · thrown into a fever from which he died on September 7, 1729. The Bostonians seem to have realized that chagrin and excitement probably played as much part in hastening his end as the ducking which was the immedi- ate cause of it, and they buried him with great pomp at an expense of eleven hundred pounds.
The funeral was conducted after the English fashion and not in the slightly mitigated Puri- tan manner of Cotton Mather's interment. (Before Mather's day there had been wont to be no service whatever, the company coming together at the tolling of a bell, carrying the body solemnly to the grave and standing by until it was covered with earth and that, not in consecrated ground, but in some such enclo- sure by the roadside as one sees frequently to-day in sparsely settled country villages.)
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