USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > St. Botolph's town; an account of old Boston in colonial days > Part 3
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By August the little company was appar- ently settled for good in Charlestown, for the first Court of Assistants had now been held and recommendations as to " how the minister should be maintained " adopted. As a further step towards permanency Governor Winthrop,
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St. Botolph's Town
as we are told in the town-records, " ordered his house to be cut and framed there."
Then sickness came upon them, the Lady Arbella and her husband being among the first to pass away in the land from which they had hoped so much. Of the lady Cotton Mather has said quaintly that " she took New England in her way to Heaven." She was only one of the many who died. Johnson in his " Wonder- Working Providence " records that " in almost every family lamentation, mourning and woe were heard, and no fresh food to be had to cherish them. It would assuredly have moved the most lockt up affections to tears, had they past from one hut to another, and beheld the piteous case these people were in; and that which added to their present distress was the want of fresh water. For, although the place did afford plenty, yet for present they could find but one spring, and that not to be come at, but when the tide was down."
Enter, thereupon, Mr. William Blackstone, as the saviour of the enterprise! Blackstone was one of those who had come over with Sir Robert Gorges and had remained in spite of untoward conditions. On Shawmut (after- wards Boston) he possessed large holdings by virtue of a title Winthrop and his men later
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In Old England and New
acquired by purchase. Now, therefore, " he came and acquainted the Governor of an excel- lent Spring there; withal inviting him and soliciting him thither. Whereupon after the death of Mr. Johnson and divers others, the Governor, with Mr. Wilson, and the greatest part of the church removed thither; whither also the frame of the Governor's house, in pre- paration at this town, was also (to the discon- tent of some) carried; where people began to build there houses against winter; and this place was called Boston." Thus does the record incorporated in Frothingham's " His- tory of Charlestown " tell the tale of Boston's actual birth. There are those who maintain that the story of our city's growth could very effectively be told by a series of historical ta- bleaux; for the initial number on the program they name with excellent judgment the picture of Blackstone, the gentle recluse, exhibiting to John Winthrop the " excellent spring " of his own domain.
This act of Blackstone's was the more praise- worthy because he was a " solitary " by nature and frankly disliked men even remotely of Puritan stripe. He was at this time about thirty-five and had dwelt in his lonely hut on the west slope of what is now Beacon Hill, not
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far from Beacon and Spruce streets, for about five years, spending his quiet days in trade with the savages and in the cultivation of his garden. Just why he had left England is not more clear than just why he later left Boston. But when he died in Rhode Island (May 26, 1675) he left behind him " 10 paper books " in which it is believed he may have told the story of his mys- terious life. These were unfortunately des- troyed by the Indians when they burned his house, however, and all that we further know of him is that he returned to Boston, after he had ceased to be an inhabitant of the place, and married the widow of John Stephenson, who lived on Milk street, on the site of the build- ing in which Franklin was born.
In regard to a name for the new settlement there seems to have been absolute unanimity. By common consent it was called after the old-world city, St. Botolph's town, or Bos- ton, of Lincolnshire, England, from which the Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband had come and in whose noble parish church John Cotton was still preaching. The order of the Court of Assistants, - Governor Win- throp presiding, -" That Trimontaine shall be called Boston " was passed on the 17th of September, 1630, thus giving the death blow
ST. BOTOLPH'S CHURCH, BOSTON, ENGLAND
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to Carlyle's picturesque statement in his book on Cromwell concerning Cotton's share in the matter: " Rev. John Cotton is a man still held in some remembrance among our New Eng- land friends. He had been minister of Boston in Lincolnshire; carried the name across the ocean with him; fixed it upon a new small home he found there, which has become a large one since, - the big busy capital of Massa- chusetts, - Boston so called. John Cotton, his mark, very curiously stamped on the face of this planet; likely to continue for some time." This is superb writing, of course, but ex- ceedingly lame history. Cotton did not come to the new world until nearly four years after this settlement was named Boston.
But, since it is a fact that the St. Botolph's town, in which Cotton was still living, exercised a profound influence upon that to which he presently came let us turn aside and make a little pilgrimage there. Hawthorne did this during one of his trips abroad and he printed the result in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 1862. We cannot do better, I think, than to follow as he leads: " In mid-afternoon we be- held the tall tower of Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Cathedral) loom-
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ing in the distance. At about half-past four we reached Boston (which name has been short- ened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pronunciation, from Botolph's town) and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough; and we were shown into a small stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco smoke, -to- bacco smoke two days old, for the waiter as- sured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, too, apparently a genuine descend- ant of the old Puritans of this English Bos- ton.
" In my first ramble about the town, chance led me to the riverside, at that quarter where the port is situated. ... Down the river I saw a brig, approaching rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd impression of bustle and sluggishness and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life; and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town; - the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long
JOHN COTTON'S VICARAGE
--
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In Old England and New
Wharf and Faneuil Hall, and Washington street and the Great Elm and the State House, and exulted lustily, - but yet began to feel at home in this good old town, for its very name's sake, as I never had before felt in England."
The next day Hawthorne visited " a vacant spot of ground where old John Cotton's vicar- age had stood till a very short time since. Ac- cording to our friend's description it was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of brick, with a thatched roof. In the right- hand aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel, which at the time of our visit was in process of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Cotton, whom these English people consider as the founder of our American Boston. . . The interior of St. Botolph's is very fine and satisfactory, as stately almost as a cathedral, and has been repaired - as far as repairs were necessary - in a chaste and noble style. . When we came away the tower of St. Botolph's looked benignantly down; and I fancied that it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cot- ton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height and the town beneath it, to the people of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living
.
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inhabitants of old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard."
It is of this tower with its beacon and its bells that we hear in Jean Ingelow's touching poem, " High Tide On the Coast of Lincoln- shire." St. Botolph, the pious Saxon monk of the seventh century, who is believed to have founded the town, received his name, indeed, - Bot-holp, i. e. Boat-help, - from his service to sailors; and the high tower was originally de- signed to be a guide to those out at sea, six miles down the river. An account of the town written in 1541 tells the whole story in one terse paragraph: " Botolphstowne standeth on ye river of Lindis. The steeple of the church ' being quadrata Turris ' and a lanthorn on it, is both very high & faire and a mark bothe by sea and land for all ye quarters thereaboute."
Perhaps it was remembrance of what the beacon in St. Botolph's tower had meant to the people of Lincolnshire which caused the Court of Assistants, assembled in new Boston, to pass the following resolution March 4, 1634 : " It is ordered that there shalbe forth with a beacon sett on the Centry hill at Boston to give notice to the Country of any danger, and that there shalbe a ward of one pson kept there from the first of April to the last of September ;
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In Old England and New
and that upon the discovery of any danger the beacon shalbe fired, an allarum given, as also messengers presently sent by that town where the danger is discov'red to all other townes within this jurisdiction."
Hawthorne hints, too, that it is to the influ- ence of the old St. Botolph's town that the winding streets of our modern city may be at- tributed. " Its crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of Hanover street, Ann street, and other portions of our American Boston. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollections of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New England metropolis; at any rate here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes and a number of old peaked and. projecting- storied dwellings, such as I used to see there in my boyish days. It is singular what a home feeling and sense of kindred I derived from this hereditary connection and fancied physi- ognomical resemblance between the old town and its well-grown daughter."
Somewhat less romantic but still appealing is the explanation of our crooked streets volun- teered by Bynner. " The first houses [of the colonial period] were necessarily of the rudest
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description and they seem to have been scat- tered hither or thither according to individual need or fancy. The early streets, too, obedient to the same law of convenience, naturally fol- lowed the curves of the hills, winding around their bases by the shortest routes and crossing their slopes at the easiest angles. To the pio- neer upon the western prairie it is compara- tively easy to lay out his prospective city in squares and streets of unvarying size and shape, and oftentimes be it said, of wearying sameness; to the colonist of 1630 upon this rugged promontory of New England it was a different matter. Without the power of leisure to surmount the natural obstacles of his new home, he was contented to adapt himself to them.
" Thus the narrow winding streets, with their curious twists and turns, the crooked alleys and short-cuts by which he drove his cows to pasture up among the blueberry bushes of Beacon Hill, or carried his grist to the wind- mill over upon Copp's steeps, or went to draw his water at the spring-gate, or took his sober Sunday way to the first rude little church, - these paths and highways, worn by his feet and established for his convenience, remain after two centuries and a half substantially un-
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changed, endeared to his posterity by priceless associations. And so the town, growing at first after no plan and with no thought of propor- tion, but as directed and shaped by the actual needs of the inhabitants, became a not unfitting exponent of their lives, - the rough outward garb, as it were, of their hardy young civiliza- tion."
Truth, however, demands the statement that our forefathers made brave efforts to compel a ship-shape city. In 1635 it was ordered: " That from this day there shall noe house at all be built in this towne neere unto any of the streetes or laynes therein but with the advise and consent of the overseers . for the more comely and commodious ordering of them." At a subsequent meeting in the same month John Gallop was summarily told to im- prove the alignment of the "payles at his yard's end." Very likely he fought off the order, however; and very likely dozens of others did the same, regulating their homes in the fashion attributed to those settlers of Mar- blehead who are said to have remarked, each to the other, " I'm a'goin' to set here; you can set where you're a mind to." Apparently just that had happened in the old St. Botolph's town; not improbably that was what also hap- pened in the new.
IV
THE COMING OF A SHINING LIGHT
THE earliest and, in many ways, the best account of Boston life in the winter immedi- ately following the naming of the town was that sent by Thomas Dudley in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln, mother of Lady Arbella Johnson. The explanation of this letter's origin is found in a note which Dudley sent with it " to the righte honourable, my very good Lady, the Lady Bryget, Countesse of Lincoln " in the care of Mr. Wilson, pastor of the First Church, who sailed from Salem, April 1, 1631. " Madam," he wrote, " your Itt'res (which are not common or cheape) fol- lowing me hether into New England, and bring- ing with them renewed testimonies of the ac- customed favours you honoured mee with in the Old, have drawne from me this Narrative retribucon, (which in respect of your proper interest in some persons of great note amongst us) was the thankfullest present I had to send
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The Coming of a Shining Light
over the seas. Therefore I humbly intreat your Honour, this bee accepted as payment from him, who neither hath nor is any more than your honour's old thankful servant, " THOMAS DUDLEY."
Chronologically, the narrative trips in places for it was written, as Dudley himself says, by the fireside on his knee, in the midst of his family, who " break good manners, and make me many times forget what I would say and say what I would not," at a time when he had " no leisure to review and insert things forgotten, but out of due time and order must set them down as they come to memory." None the less the plain unvarnished descriptions in this let- ter make it a very telling one and when we put along with it Winthrop's brave notes to his son we have a vivid picture of the hardships of that first winter. "I shall expect your mother and you and the rest of my company here next spring, if God will ... " wrote the governor. " Bring some good oil, pitch and tar and a good piece of an old cable to make oakum; for that which was sent is much lost. Some more cows should be brought, especially two new milch, which must be well mealed and milked by the way, and some goats, especially
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sheep, if they can be had. Bring some store of garlick and onions and conserve of red roses, alum and aloes, oiled skins, both calf and sheep and some worsted ribbing of several sizes."
The middle of August, 1631, found Margaret Winthrop under sail for the new world and early in November the married lovers were re- united after their sad season of parting. In honour of the joyful occasion Governor Brad- ford of Plymouth came up to visit the head of the Massachusetts Colony and " divers of the assistants and most of the people of the near plantations " came also to bid the lady Mar- garet welcome, bringing with them "great store of provisions, as fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese partridges etc so as the like joy and manifestation of love had never been seen in New England. It was a great marvel that so much people and such store of provisions could be gathered together at so few hours' warning," recorded the happy husband.
The resources of the settlement, as the last sentence of this entry clearly shows, were still very meagre. And the governor was no more prosperous than a number of his associates. In fact, he was poorer than they, if anything, for he had no assured income from his office
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The Coming of a Shining Light
and he was under the constant necessity of spending money for the common good. In the fall of 1634 Winthrop presented a detailed ac- count of his pecuniary relations to the Massa- chusetts colony for " the four years and near an half " in which he had held the office of chief magistrate and this document is so interesting that it is here given entire from the Records of the Colony. It speaks more eloquently than we could in many pages of the severe simplicity of those early days in Boston.
" Whereas, by order of the last general court, commissioners were appointed, viz., Roger Ludlow, Esq. the deputy governour, and Mr. Israel Stoughton, gent. to receive my ac- compt of such things as I have received and disbursed for public use in the time of my government; in all due observance and submis- sion to the order of the said court, I do make this declaratory accompt ensuing : -
" First, I affirm, that I never received any moneys or other goods committed to me in trust for the commonwealth, otherwise than is hereafter expressed.
" Item, I acknowledge I have in my custody certain barrels of common powder, and some match and drumheads, with some things be-
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longing to the ordnance; which powder, being landed at Charlestown, and exposed to the in- jury of the weather, I took and bestowed first in a tent which I made of mine own broad- cloth, (being then worth eight shillings the yard but in that service much spoiled). After I removed it to my storehouse at Boston, where it still remains, save that some of it hath been spent in public service, and five barrels I sold to some ships that needed them, which I will allow powder or money for. The rest I am ready to deliver up to such as shall be ap- pointed to receive them.
" I received also some meal and peas, from Mr. White of Dorchester in England, and from Mr. Roe of London, which was bestowed upon such as had need thereof in the several towns; as also £10 given by Mr. Thomson. I received also from Mr. Humfrey, some rugs, frieze suits, shoes, and hose, (the certain value whereof I must know from himself,) with let- ters of direction to make use of the greatest part thereof, as given to help bear out my charge for the public. I paid for the freight of these goods and disposed of the greatest part of them to others; but how I cannot set down. I made use, also, of two pair of car- riage wheels, which I will allow for: I had not
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The Coming of a Shining Light
meddled with them but that they lay useless for want of the carriages which lay in Eng- land. For my disbursements, I have formerly delivered to the now deputy a bill of part of them, amounting to near £300, which I dis- bursed for public services divers years since, for which I have received in corn at six shil- lings the bushel, (and which will not yeild me above four shillings) about £180, or near so much. I disbursed also for the transportation of Mr. Phillips his family which was to be borne by the government till he should be chosen to some particular congregation.
" Now, for my other charges, by occasion of my place of government, it is well known I have expended much, and somewhat I have re- ceived towards it, which I should have rested satisfied with, but that, being called to accompt, I must mention my disbursements with my re- ceipts and, in both, shall refer myself to the pleasure of the court.
" I was first chosen to be governour without , my seeking or expectation (there being then divers other gent. who for their abilities every way, were far more fit.) Being chosen I fur- nished myself with servants and provisions ac- cordingly, in a far great proportion than I would have done had I come as a private man,
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or as an assistant only. In this office I con- tinued four years and near an half, although I earnestly desired in every election to have been freed. In this time I have spent above £500 per annum, of which £200 per annum would have maintained my family in a private condition. So, as I may truly say, I have spent by occasion of my late office, above £1,200. Towards this I have received by way of benev- olence, from some towns about £50 and by the last year's allowance £150 and by some pro- visions sent by Mr. Humfrey, as is before- mentioned, about £50, or, it may be, somewhat more.
" I also disbursed, at our coming away, in England, for powder and great shot, £216, which I did not put into my bill of charges for- merly delivered to the now deputy, because I did expect to have paid myself out of that part of Mr. Johnson's estate, which he gave to the public; but, finding that it will fall far short, I must put it to this accompt.
" The last thing, which I offer to the consid- eration of the court, is, that my long continu- ance in the said office hath put me into such a way of unavoidable charge, as will be still as chargeable to me as the place of governour will be to some others. In all these things, I
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The Coming of a Shining Light
refer myself to the wisdom and justice of the court, with this protestation, that it repenteth me not of my cost or labour bestowed in the service of this commonwealth; but do heartily bless the Lord our God, that he hath pleased to honour me so far as to call for anything he hath bestowed upon me for the service of his church and people here, the prosperity whereof and his gracious acceptance, shall be an abundant recompense to me. I. conclude with this one request, (which in justice may not be denied me) that, as it stands upon rec- ord that, upon the discharge of my office, I was called to accompt, so this my declaration may be recorded also; lest, hereafter, when I shall be forgotten, some blemish may lie upon my posterity, when there shall be nothing to clear it. JOHN WINTHROP."
" September 4, 1634."
The person who had unconsciously precip- itated all this calling to account was none other than Winthrop's old friend, Rev. John Cotton, who, almost immediately after landing in Bos- ton, preached a sermon in which he maintained that a magistrate ought not to be turned into a private man without just cause. This was a view of civil government not at all palatable
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to the Massachusetts worthies of that day and, as if to assert, once for all that they wished to be entirely free in their choice of a supreme officer they chose for the highest office in their gift, not Winthrop who had so far served them continuously, but Thomas Dudley, his former deputy. Winthrop entirely acquiesced in this result and after entertaining the new governor handsomely in his own house rendered the above account of his stewardship, which had been demanded of him. Three years later he was again chosen chief magistrate. During twelve of the nineteen years of his life in Bos- ton, indeed, he served his fellow colonists in this capacity.
No doubt the Rev. John Cotton was sorely perplexed and not a little chagrined at the change in the government which his first effort in his new pulpit had brought about. But his had been an exciting life and he was fairly well used to changes. Born in 1585, a son of Rowland Cotton, a lawyer of Derby, England, he had entered Trinity College, Cambridge, when only twelve years of age and soon became noted for his acquirements. At nineteen he was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts. Soon afterwards he received the appointment of head lecturer, dean and catechist of Em-
1
Photographed from the Boston Parish Register
SIGNATURE OF JOHN COTTON, 1620
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The Coming of a Shining Light
manuel College. Here he came to be greatly loved by his students for his sweet and gentle disposition and prodigiously admired by the distinguished divines of the time for his grasp upon the doctrines of Calvin. His theological bent being what it was it is difficult to under- stand how he should have been called to St. Botolph's until one learns that this came about through a mistake on the part of the Mayor who voted for him when he intended to vote against him. And so great was the tact of the new clergyman that he was able to hold for many years a place gained in this extraordi- nary way! In his marriage as in many other things Cotton was fortunate, for Elizabeth Horrocks, with whom he lived eighteen years, brought him on his wedding day the " assur- ance of his spiritual redemption; hence it was a day of double marriage to him." After her death he married " one Mrs. Sarah Story, a vertuous widow, very dear to his former wife."
Eventually the news of Cotton's non-con- formity got to the ears of those on the lookout for heresy, and complaint being entered at the High Commissioned Court that " the Magis- trates did not kneel at the Sacrament " and that some other ceremonies were also unob- served " letters missive were dispatched in-
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