USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 14
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" Deposed this toth of June, 16S4, by John Odlin, Robert Walker, Francis Hudson, and William Lytherland, according to their respec- tive Testimonye,
" Before us, S. BRADSTREET, Gou""". SAM. SEWALL, Assist."
Shurtleff notes that Odlin was a cutler by trade, and died Dec. IS, 1685. Hudson was the fisherman who gave his name to the point of the peninsula nearest Charlestown. Walker was a weaver, and died May 29, 1687. Lyther- land was an Antinomian, who removed to Rhode Island and became town clerk of Newport, and died very old. - En.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Royalist and Church party in England. The scheme had come to nothing ; and it now only remained for the next wave of emigration - which was to originate with the other party in Church and State - to so completely sub- merge it as to obliterate through more than two centuries every historical tradition even of its continuity with what followed.
harves to Adaces In
The Colonial period.
CHAPTER I.
THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY.
BY SAMUEL FOSTER HAVEN, LL.D. Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society.
C ARLYLE, in his book on Cromwell,1 refers to our city of Boston thus : -
" 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 had found there, which has become a large one since, - the big, busy capital of Massachusetts, - Boston, so called. John Cotton, his mark, very curiously stamped on the face of this planet ; likely to continue for some time."
The passage is a very good specimen of Carlyle's mannerism ; but it must not be mistaken for correct history. Many errors in recording minor particu- lars may be found in the narratives of early New England authorities, which have been adopted and transmitted by later writers; this is one of them. The placing of Endicott's expedition after the procuring of the charter, when he really sailed more than eight months before, is another. It is a want of precision in them, which indicates that their minds were more occu- pied with the great results they had witnessed than with the order of events. Hence, a little readjustment of the time and manner of occurrences is some- times necessary. Governor Dudley's almost official letter to the Countess of Lincoln is described by himself as written 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; " and that 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." 2
1 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elu- cidations, iii. 197.
2 " Deputy-Governor Dudley, Mr. Hubbard, and others, wrongly place Mr. Endicott's voyage after the grant of the Royal Charter, whereas he
came above eight months before." - Prince, An- nals, edition of 1826, p. 249. "Governor Brad- ford and Mr. Morton seem to mistake in saying he (Endicott) came with a patent under the broad seal for the Government of the Massa-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Hubbard is responsible for the assertion that the neck of land on the south side of Charles River was called " Boston," " on account of Mr. Cot- ton."1 Vet the circumstance of bestowing upon the principal town of Massachusetts the name of the principal town of the English county of Lincolnshire has an historical significance which deserves to be more carefully stated.
Dr. Young 2 was probably right in his opinion that the name " Boston" was given, not out of respect for Mr. Cotton particularly, but because so many of the prominent men of the colony were from that part of the coun- try. It was at a Court held at Charlestown, Sept. 7, 1630, that it was sim- ply ordered that Tri-Mountain be called Boston. Mr. Cotton was not men- tioned; and no reason was assigned for selecting that name. It is rather singular that Winthrop, in his very particular diary, does not record this important act of the General Court. He uses the name for the first time about a month later, in stating the fact that a goat died there from cat- ing Indian corn, - which affords to his editor an occasion to remark : "Here is proof that the name of our chief city of New England was given, not, as is often said, after the coming of Mr. Cotton, but three years before."
Governor Dudley intimates that it had been predetermined to adopt that name for whatever place should be chosen for the first settlement, - "which place we named Boston (as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on)." He gives no reason for it.3 Perhaps a motive may be found in the relations of the several interests that were combined in the organiza- tion of the colony.
Various influences were united in the constitution of the Massachusetts Company that also affected the policy of the colony. The religious and political elements are more marked in the views and purposes of the men from the eastern counties of England, - usually termed " the Boston men." The commercial element existed more visibly among the adventurers from the western counties of Dorset and Devon, who were commonly designated as " the Dorchester men." The merchants and capitalists of London min- gled hopes of profit with the desire to do good and advance the cause of religion. Between the Dorchester men, with whom the movement for a plantation originated, and the Boston men, who were new associates, there is an appearance of competition - amicable, doubtless - in the matter of first establishing and naming a settlement in the new country. The Dor-
chusetts." - Ibid. p. 250. Harris, in his edition of Hubbard, tries, we think unsuccessfully, to give a different construction to Hubbard's state- ment. Hubbard says in the same place : "The Company having chosen Mr. Cradock Governor (&c.), sent over Mr. Endicott." Cradock was not chosen by the Company till May 13, 1629 (Easter week), the day assigned for elections by the charter, after letters had been received from Endicott. The first officers were designated by
the charter itself. Mr. Savage says of Hubbard : " He seems to have slighted most of the occur- rences in which he should have felt the deepest interest, and for anything of date preceding 1630 his information is sometimes authentic, and often curious." Winthrop, New England, i. 297, note.
1 Hist. of New England, ch. xxV.
2 Chronicles of Mass., pp. 48, 49.
3 Letter to the Countess of Lincoln.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY.
chester emigrants came in a large and well-appointed ship by themselves. They arrived a fortnight sooner than the rest of Winthrop's fleet, and fixing upon Mattapan (now South Boston), called it "Dorchester,"-expecting it to become the principal town ; and there were good reasons for that anticipa- tion. Rev. John White, of Dorchester, in England, was the acknowledged father of New England colonization; and the existence of the proposed colony was chiefly due to his exertions. No other man and no other county were so well entitled to such a memorial of services in the first introduc- tion of permanent settlements here.
The situation selected was well supplied with pastures and fields for till- age, possessing also a convenient harbor and facilities for trade; and for a time it took the lead among the new plantations. Wood 1 calls Dorches- ter "the greatest town in New England." Prince says that Dorchester became the first settled church and town in the county of Suffolk, "and in all military musters or civil assemblies used to have the precedency."2 In 1633, when four hundred pounds were assessed upon the colony, Dorches- ter was called upon for one fifth of the whole, - eighty pounds, - while Boston paid only forty-eight pounds.3
On the other hand, when the Boston men joined the Massachusetts Com- pany, after the two preliminary expeditions had been provided for, and after the royal charter had been prepared for signature, their superior wealth and standing gave them the ascendency in its councils; and their election to the offices of the government placed in their hands the management and con- trol of the enterprise. They came over holding the power and responsi- bility of an organized community; and to their authority all previous and all subsequent operations became subordinate. When they decided upon "Tri-Mountain " as the seat and centre of their jurisdiction, they simply gave it the appellation by which, as a body, they were best known in the mother country, - the name of the place around which their home associa- tions were chiefly gathered. Thus it came to pass, legitimately enough, that Lincolnshire and its neighborhood of counties acquired the birthright of Dorset and Devon. The adopted metropolis naturally became, - as Wood describes it in the carly period, -"althoughi neither the greatest nor the richest, yet the most noted and frequented, - being the centre of the Plan- tations where the monthly Courts are kept."
But a Boston already existed - nominally - on the coast of New England, for which King Charles himself, then only Prince Charles, stood godfather fourteen years before. In 1616, when Captain John Smith dedicated his famous map, made in 1614, to the Prince, he begged the favor of him to change the native names of places for more cuphonious
1 New England's Prospect, London, 1635.
" Annals, edition of 1826, p. 287, note.
3 The vicinity of Dorchester, Mass., was re- garded by Smith (perhaps we should say by Prince Charles, who gave the English names) as the probable site of the future capital of New VOL. 1 .- 12.
England, he having placed the city of London in this neighborhood. Hist. of Dorchester, by a committee of the Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society, p. S. [A glance at Smith's map does not wholly confirm this view of Smith's location of London. - ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
appellations.1 Of course the prospective head of the Church did not intend to honor particularly the Non-conformist capital of Lincolnshire, and doubt- less, without any special motive, suggested such names as happened to occur to him, -"Berwick," "Plymouth," "Oxford," "Falmouth," "Bristol," "Cam- bridge," "Boston," &c. It is possible that, when asked for a charter to the Massachusetts Company, his mind reverted to his examination of Smith's map; and this, in connection with the intrinsic advantages of the locality for one of the most valuable branches of trade of his dominions, perhaps led to the favorable conditions granted to the applicants. It is certain that on several subsequent occasions Charles exhibited a mind of his own on the subject, and independent sentiments more liberal and friendly than those of his ministers and advisers.2
The transition from a trading copartnership engaged in the business of fishing to the embryo of a religious and political Commonwealth is the history of the Massachusetts Company, whose steps are to be now concisely traccd.
While the deeply wooded shores of the northern portion of the continent continued in undisturbed barbarism, the fisherics werc frequented by gen- crations of hardy mariners of different nations, through whom a knowledge of their abundant riches was gradually communicated to European countries.3 A century of familiar acquaintance with the harbors and islands of the sca
1 " Ilumbly intreating his Highness he would please to change their barbarous names for such English as posterity might say Prince Charles was their Godfather." "Whose barbarous names you changed for such English that none can deny but Prince Charles is their Godfather." Smith, Desc. of New England. [See Mr. Win- sor's chapter in the previous section. - ED.]
2 See Winthrop's New England, i. 102, 103. Before leaving this point I wish to refer to a paper upon " Anthropology, Sociology, and Na- tionality," by D. Mackintosh, F.G.S., read at the forty-fifth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in August, 1875. In that portion of his lecture which re- lated to the ancestors of the British, the writer endeavored to show that " between the northeast and southwest portions of England, the difference in the character of the people is so great as to give a semi-nationality to each division. Rest- less activity, ambition, and commercial specula- tion predominate in the northeast ; contentment and leisure of reflection in the southwest." He concluded by a reference to the derivation of the settlers of New England from the southwest, mentioning as a fact that, while a large propor- tion of New England surnames are still found in Devon and Dorset, there is a small village called Boston near Totness, and in its immediate neigh- borhood a place called Bunker ITill ! Did some English political dissenter of 1775 at the Devon- shire Boston (near which may now be found
meeting-houses for Independents, Methodists, and Unitarians) thus signify his sympathy with the Boston of New England by christening a neighboring hill after the famous battle-field of our Revolution ? Local differences of manners, of dialects, and of temperament are strongly marked in England, and betray diversity of an- cestral derivation. It is a suitable task for our New England Ilistoric Genealogical Society to determine whether the southwestern or the north- eastern sections of the mother country, or the intermediate point of London and its vicinity, contributed most largely to the numbers that ulti- mately formed the Massachusetts Colony. Ilig- ginson, in the journal of his voyage, written from New England, July 24, 1629, describes the Com- pany of Massachusetts Bay as consisting of many worthy gentlemen in the city of London, Dor- chester, and other places. He does not mention Lincolnshire. The merchants of London already took a leading part, but the Lincolnshire men had not come to the front when he wrote. Hig- ginson writes again, in September, 1629, " There are certainly expected here the next spring the coming of sixty families out of Dorsetshire. Also many families are expected out of Lin- colnshire, and a great company of godly Chris- tians out of London." Young, Chron. of Mass. p. 260.
3 It is clanned that the first French settle- ments originated from this source, and that the active participation of Ilolland in the trade drew
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THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY.
had passed away without plantations or durable stations on land for settle- ment or traffic. During this period there would be more or less exchange of articles of use or ornament with the natives for furs or provisions. Occasionally a ship or boat would be wrecked, and the brass kettles of the fishermen, transmuted into breast-plates and decorations of metal, fur- nished materials for " The Skeleton in Armor," and other supposed relies of the Northmen.1 Mr. Sabine, in his learned Report to Congress, in 1853, on American fisheries, carries back the trade as a regular employment as far as A. D. 1504. The Biscayan sailors of France and Spain led the way, while the merchants of Holland were more prompt than those of England in securing its profits. The earlier American fisheries were chiefly in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. The particular fisheries of Massachusetts Bay did not commence till about 1618 or 1619. The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, and govern- ing of New England in America, succeeded to the Northern Company of Virginia as proprietors of the portion of the continent between the fortieth and forty-eighth degree of latitude on the 3d of November, 1620, and all British subjects were prohibited from visiting and trafficking into or from the said territories, unless with the license and consent of the Council first obtained under seal.
In 1622 the President and Council of New England published an account of their condition, the difficulties they had encountered, their proposed plans, &e., which was dedicated to Prince Charles, on whom they relied for encouragement and assistance.2 It contains a summary of the past history of the Council, and affords very satisfactory reasons why thus far they had made no progress; and also tends to explain why it is that
the attention of the Pilgrims to this particular place of refuge; while, again, the cod-fisheries of the New England seaboard, whose emblem has so conspicuously figured in our popular hall of legislation, first brought hither the merchant ships of the southern ports of Great Britain.
1 It seems safe to say at this time that no authentic vestiges of Scandinavian occupancy have ever been discovered in New England. See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, ISSo, for re- marks of George Dexter, Esq., on communicat- ing a letter of Erasmus Rask to Henry Wheaton. [A chapter by Mr. Dexter in this volume covers this question. - ED.]
2 A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Plan- tation of New England, London, 1622, reprinted in 2 MMass. Hist. Coll. ix. The beginning of the dedication is significant of the good will of Prince Charles towards American colonization, as well as of his knowledge of the country. " And for the subject of this relation, as your highness hath been pleased to do it the honor by giving it the name of New England, and by your most favorable encouragement to continue
the same in life and being, so ought we to render an account of our proceedings from the root thereof unto the present growth it hath," &c. It seems that after their patent passed the seals in 1620, "it was stopped, upon new suggestions to the King, and referred to the Privy Council to be settled." "These disputes held us almost two years, so as all men were afraid to join with us," &c. "But having passed all these storms abroad, and undergone so many home-bred op- positions and freed our patent, which we were by order of state assigned to renew for the amendment of some defects therein contained, we were assured of this ground more boldly to proceed on than before." It is just at this point that the records begin, and it was just at this period that the fisheries were becoming very profitable. Hence it was the time of effort and activity on the part of the Council, and also the time when inducements to emigration were the strongest. Thus it happened for a year or two that there was a demand for grants from the Council, and a swarming of adventurers to the Bay of Massachusetts.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the two copies of their records which have been brought to light within a few years have their first entries so late as May, 1622.1
During the few years of prosperity in the fishing business, the Council made great exertions to secure their monopoly and to establish their authority on land; but they lost courage and energy as soon as the business of fishing was broken up by the Spanish and French wars, catising a loss of the best customers and great hazard to navigation. The re- action began in 1624, when the war with Spain commenced, and was made com- plete by the additional war with France in 1626, and the civil dissensions at home. But all those things were preparing the GENS IN SERVIET COGNITA MIIII way for the rise of a very different series of operations under very different auspices.
John White, of Dorchester, a Puritan SEAL OF THE COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND.2 minister, but not a Non-conformist, whose parishioners and friends were actively en- gaged in the business of fishing, being troubled at the godless life and unruly condition of the men employed by them (and having some views of his own about plantations, which he subsequently embodied in a tract), conceived the idea of establishing a settlement on the land. His purpose was to furnish assistance to the crews in the busy season, to provide supplies of provisions and other necessaries by cultivating the soil and trafficking with the natives, and to afford religious instruction to both planters and sailors. To this end, about 1624, he raised a common stock of three thousand pounds, and pur-
I Among the irregular proceedings of the Council for New England was an early attempt to divide the territory embraced in their patent among their members; a measure which did not acquire a legal validity. But the Earl of Shef- field, in whose portion Cape Ann was included, acting upon his anticipated right, conveyed five hundred acres there to Robert Cushman and Edward Winslow, their associates and assigns, with the "free use of the Bay and islands, and free liberty to fish and trade in all other places in New England." It was this conveyance (which came to nothing) that led to John Smith's state- ment in his Generall Ilistorie, p. 247, " that there is a plantation beginning by the Dorchester men which they hold of those of New Plymouth." The story is very well told by Mr. Thornton in his Landing at Cape Anne, 1624. ITis principal mistake was in giving too much significance to what was in reality one of the least important incidents of the period, having little or no bearing on subsequent events. [The matter of this abor- tive division of territory above referred to is fur.
ther explained in Mr. Adams's chapter of this volume, and the map showing it is explained in Mr. Winsor's. For further, on Conant's Com- pany, see Felt's Salem ; George D. Phippen in Essex Institute Collections, i. 97, 145, 185; N. E. Ilist. and Gencal. Reg., July, 1848; Bradford's Ply- mouth Plantation, Deane's note, p. 169. Hub- bard's most valuable chapter is that on Conant, and his facts may have been derived from Conant himself. It is given in part in Young's Chron- icles of Massachusetts. - ED.]
2 [An account of the seal, with the reasons for believing this to be the seal, is given by Charles Deane in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1867. Dr. Palfrey adopts Mr. Deane's conclusions. The patent creating the Council will be found in llazard's Collections, i. 103; in Brigham's Ply- month Lutos ; in Baylies's Plymouth Colony, i. 160; in the Popham Memorial, p. ITO, and in Trumbull's Connecticut, i. 546. The petition for it can be found in the Colonial History of New York, ili., and the warrant in Gorges' New England. - ED.]
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THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY.
chased first a small ship which brought over fourteen men, who were left at Cape Ann. The New Plymouth men, and perhaps others, had stages at that place for drying and curing fish, and it was now selected for a per- manent plantation. He did not hesitate to make use of the disaffected persons from the little colony at Plymouth who had located themselves there and at Nantasket, and selected the most trustworthy among them to manage the new enterprise.
The associates in England struggled for three years against constant loss, till their capital was expended with no favorable results, when, becoming discouraged, they dissolved the company on land and sold their shipping and provisions. " The ill choice of the place for fishing, the ill carriage of the men at the settlement, and ill sales for the fish " are assigned by Mr. White as reasons for the bad results of the adventure. In brief, the stock was ex- pended with no returns, the settlers quarrelled with those from New Ply- mouth, and among themselves, till the community of three years' duration fell to pieces, and its members who desired to leave the country were helped to do so.
In the mean time, however, there were four "honest and prudent men"-Roger Conant, John Woodberry, John Balch, and Peter Palfrey, from the settlement - who had removed to Naumkeag (now Salem), and resolved to stay in Massachusetts if they were sustained by encouragement from England. On receiving an intimation to this effect, Mr. White wrote to them that if they would remain he would "provide a patent for them, and send them whatever they should write for, cither men, or provisions, or goods, for trade with the Indians." Through the influ- ence of Conant they were kept to their engagement, and are entitled to the consideration of being among the originators of the Massachusetts Company.1
There are three contemporary statements of what was done at this par- ticular juncture, representing three different points of view. One of these is that of Mr. White, the leader of the movement in the counties of Dor- set and Devon. Another is by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the President of the Council for New England, and the chief manager of its affairs. The third is the letter of Thomas Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, showing his impression of the time and manner in which the "Boston men" of the eastern counties became connected with the scheme of a settlement in Massachusetts Bay. Hubbard, the historian, wrote fifty years later, having been a young man when the events occurred.
1 "Conant," says Hubbard, "secretly con- ceiving in his mind that in following times (as since has fallen out) it might prove a receptacle for such as upon the account of religion would be willing to begin a foreign plantation in this part of the world, of which he gave some intimation to his friends in England."- Hist. of New England. And "that God," says White, " who is ready to
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