USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 20
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The matter was under debate, says Palfrey, for more than seven weeks, with only one week's intermission, and was at length adjusted by an agree- ment on all hands for a complete acquittal of Winthrop, and for the punish- ment of all the petitioners by fines, the largest of which was twenty pounds, and that of the minister two pounds.
" According to this agreement," writes Winthrop himself, in his Journal, " presently after the lecture, the magistrates and deputies took their places in the meeting-house ; and the people being come together, and the Deputy-Governor placing himself within the bar, as at the time of the hearing, &c., the Governor [Dudley] read the sentence of the Court, without speaking any more ; for the deputies had (by importunity) ob- tained a promise of silence from the magistrates. Then was the Deputy-Governor desired by the Court to go up and take his place again upon the bench, which he did accordingly, and the Court being about to arise, he desired leave for a little speech."
Few speeches, if any, which have ever been made in Boston, during its two centuries and a half of existence, have attained a celebrity so wide and so durable as this " little speech " of Winthrop's, delivered in the meet- ing-house of its First Church, before the assembled General Court of Mas- sachusetts, on the 14th (24th) of May, 1645. In the Modern Universal History 1 it is given at length, and pronounced " equal to anything of an- tiquity, whether we consider it as coming from a philosopher or a magis-
1 Vol. xxxix.
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BOSTON FOUNDED.
trate." James Grahame, the excellent Scotch historian of the United States, says of it: "The circumstances in which this address was delivered recall the most interesting scenes of Greek and Roman history; while in the wisdom, piety, and dignity that it breathes, it resembles the magnan- imons vindication of a judge of Israel." De Tocqueville, in his remarkable essay on Democracy in America, quotes a passage from it as "a fine definition of liberty." This passage may well be quoted here, as one of the cherished memorials of the carly days of Boston : -
" There is a two-fold liberty, - natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt), and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists ; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exer- cise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts : Omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it.
" The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal ; - it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it ; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this, is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority ; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free."
Winthrop, as we have seen, had encountered many controversics; but this was the last. In 1646, 1647, and 1648, successively, he was elected Gov- ernor again, with Thomas Dudley as Deputy-Governor. He did not live to be the subject of an election in 1649.
The limits of our chapter will not allow of any detailed account of the legislation of the colony, or of the progress of Boston, as its capital, during these three remaining years. Yet there are some matters which must not be omitted. And before all others must be mentioned, as an enactment of inestimable value and of immeasurable influence on the future character and welfare of the Colony and the Commonwealth, the Order of Nov. II (21), 1647, - which was in the following words : -
" It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue ; so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, - that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, -
" It is therefore Ordered, that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the pru- (lentials of the town shall appoint ; provided those that send their children be not op- pressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns.
" And it is further Ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a Grammar School, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University ; provided, that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year, that every such town shall pay five pounds to the next school till they shall perform this Order."
Massachusetts has nothing wiser or nobler to boast of, whether in her earlier or her later legislation, than this memorable provision for Education. It has been the very light of her own path, and the inspiration of her own onward progress, from that day to this; while it has furnished an ex- ample, never to be forgotten, to all the world. Two centuries after this Order was passed by her little General Court, it was held up for imitation and admiration in the British Parliament by one of the most brilliant speakers and writers of his day.1
At this same session of the Colonial Legislature a provision was made as follows : -
" It is agreed by the Court, to the end we may have the better light for making and proceeding about laws, that there shall be these books following procured for the use of the Court from time to time: Two of Sir Edwd Cooke upon Littleton ; two of the Books of Entryes ; two of Sir Edwd Cooke upon Magna Charta ; two of the New Terms of the Law; two Dalton's Justice of Peace; two of Sir Edwd Cooke's Reports."
English Law, with Coke as its expositor and commentator, was thus adopted as the model of Massachusetts legislation, while the foundation was laid thus early of a State Library for the General Court. But from Eng- land, too, Massachusetts seems to have derived her earliest suggestions and encouragements in regard to the dreadful delusion which was soon to per- vade the colony. The records of the May session of 1648 contain this clause : --
" The Court desire the course which hath been taken in England for discovery of Witches, by watching them a certain time. It is Ordered, that the best and surest way may forthwith be put in practice, - to begin this night if it may be, being the 18th of the 3ª mo., and that the husband may be confined to a private room, and he also then watched."
But the story of Witchcraft, either in Old or in New England, of which this record is but a preamble, belongs happily to a later chapter.
It only remains for us to close this summary sketch of the foundation- period of Massachusetts and of Boston by some notice of the death of him
1 Macaulay, in 1847, in my own hearing.
1
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BOSTON FOUNDED.
who has often been called the Father of both. Governor Winthrop's last entry in his Journal bears date the IIth of January, 1648, or as we now count it, the 21st of January, 1649. This was the very last day of his sixty- first year. A letter to his eldest son, bearing date, in modern style, Bos-
JOHN WINTHROP.1
ton, Feb. 10, 1649, is the last written evidence of his being in life and health. We hear next of his having " a cold which turned into a fever," and that he "lay sick about a month." Five or six years before he had written of himself, -" Age now comes upon me, and infirmities therewithal, which makes me apprehend that the time of my departure out of this world
1 The best portrait of Governor Winthrop is ber is that referred to in Mather's Magnalia. that in the Senate Chamber of Massachusetts, - A descendant in New York has another likeness, much inferior, of which there is a copy, or duplicate, in the hall of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester. The family has also a miniature, thought to be an original ; but it is in very bad condition. There are two copies of the Senate Chamber likeness in Memorial Hall at Cambridge : another in the Boston Athenæum, and one in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society. - ED.] always ascribed to Van Dyck. There is a mar- ble statue of him, in a sitting posture, in the chapel at Mount Auburn, and another, stand- ing, in the Capitol at Washington. A third, standing and in bronze, is to be unveiled in Boston on the 17th of September next. All the statues are by Richard S. Greenough, [See R. C. Winthrop's Life and Letters of John Win- throp, ii. 408. The portrait in the Senate Cham- VOL. J. - 18.
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is not far off. However, our times are all in the Lord's hand, so as we need not trouble our thoughts how long or short they may be, but how we may be found faithful when we are called for." He now sent for the elders ot the church to pray with him, and " the whole church fasted as well as prayed for him,"- John Cotton preaching a sermon on the occasion. Deputy-Gov- ernor Dudley is said to have waited on him, during this last illness, to urge him, as Governor, to sign an order for the banishment of some one deemed heterodox; but Winthrop refused, saying that " he had done too much of that work already."1 He died, March 26 (April 5), 1649, being, as Mr. Savage has been careful to calculate (in correcting the error of Cotton Mather), 61 years 2 months and 14 days old.
Governor Winthrop died at his residence, on what is now Washington Street, just opposite the foot of School Street, his garden being now oc- cupied by the " Old South." His house was burned up as firewood by the British soldiers in 1775, while they were using the meeting-house for their cavalry horses. In the parlors of that house, immediately after he had breathed his last, a consultation was held by the principal persons of Bos- ton as to the ordering of the funeral, "it being the desire of all that in that solemnity it may appear of what precious account and desert he hath been, and how blessed his memorial." These were the words used by John Wilson and John Cotton and Richard Bellingham and John Clark, in a let- ter 2 addressed to John Winthrop of Connecticut, " from his father's parlour," on the same day, - announcing that the funeral would take place on the 3d (13th) of April, and despatched by a swift Indian messenger. On the 13th of April, accordingly, his remains were buried with " great solemnity and honor," in what is now known as the "King's Chapel Burial Ground," where the old Winthrop tomb is still to be seen. The only positive state- ment in regard to the funeral is found in the following record at the next meeting of the General Court : -
" Whereas the Surveyor General, on some encouragements, lent one barrel and a half of the country's store of powder to the Artillery officers of Boston, conditionally, if the General Court did not allow it to them as a gift to spend it at the funeral of our late honored Governor, they should repay it, - the powder being spent on the oc- casion above said, - the Court doth think meet that the powder so delivered should never be required again, and thankfully acknowledge Boston's great, worthy, and due love and respects to the late honored Governor, which they manifested in solemnizing his funeral, whom we accounted worthy of all honor." 3
Nearly twenty years had now elapsed since Winthrop was elected Gov- ernor of Massachusetts by the Company in London; nearly nineteen years
1 The authority for this statement, which had eluded the search of Mr. Savage, has been kindly furnished to the writer of this chapter by Dr. George H. Moore, the superintendent of the Lenox Library in New York, - viz., George Bishop's New England Judged, 1661, p. 172. Bishop mentions the person whose banishment was urged as " one Matthews, a Weltch man, a
Priest," - probably Marmaduke Matthews, who had then been ten years in the colony.
2 [Given in fac-simile in the Life of John Winthrop, ii. 395. - ED.]
8 [See Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, pp. 190, 652 ; and Mr Winthrop's appeal for the preservation of the old burial spots in Boston in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., September, IS79. - ED.]
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BOSTON FOUNDED.
since he landed with the Company at Salem, bringing the charter of Mas- sachusetts with him. During that period he had been twelve times re- elected as Governor, three times chosen Deputy-Governor, and in all the few other years had served at the head of the Board of Assistants. Mean- time there had been no intermission of his devoted services to Boston, at the head of her Selectmen, or otherwise, from the day on which, under his auspices, the town was founded, and " Trimontaine called Boston." Boston had now become the thriving and prosperous capital of a colony which con- tained more than fifteen thousand people. Institutions of government, education, and religion had been established in town and country. Indeed, Dr. Palfrey, in his history, writing of this period, says : -
" The vital system of New England, as it had now been created, was complete. It had only thenceforward to grow, as the human body grows from childhood to graceful and robust maturity." I
And he adds, in relation to Winthrop : -
" The importance which history should ascribe to his life must be proportionate to the importance attributed to the subsequent agency of that Commonwealth of which he was the most eminent founder. It would be erroneous to pretend that the principles upon which it was established were an original conception of his mind ; but undoubtedly it was his policy, more than any other man's, that organized into shape, animated with practical vigor, and prepared for permanency those primeval senti- ments and institutions that have directed the course of thought and action in New England in later times. And equally certain is it that among the millions of living men descended from those whom he ruled, there is not one who does not - through efficient influences, transmitted in society and thought along the intervening genera- tions - owe much of what is best within him, and in the circumstances about him, to the benevolent and courageous wisdom of JOHN WINTHROP." 2
Similar tributes by Cotton Mather and Governor Hutchinson, by Josiah Quincy and George Bancroft, and others, might be added. But one such is enough, coming as it does from a venerable author to whom no suspicion of partiality can attach.
Robchinchard
1 Hist. of New England, ii. 265.
2 Hist. of New England, ii. 266.
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TIL MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
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AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN HAMPDEN.
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[NOTE. - This auto- graph of the famous Eng- lish patriot, John Hampden, which concerns Governor Winthrop's "Conclusions for New England," and is referred to by Mr. Win- throp in the preceding chapter, is taken from a fac-simile of the entire let- ter, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., July, 1865. The letter was addressed to Sir John Eliot, and was found among his papers, together with the transcript, sent by Eliot, endorsed " The project for New England. For Mr. Hampden,"-and this text of the paper, together with another from the State Pa- Concerning per Office, is given in the same place. It may be interesting in this connec- tion to recall the fact that Isaac Johnson, before leaving England, made a will, in which John Hampden and John Winthrop were associated as his executors, and the sum of "three pounds lawful monies " left to each of them " to make him a ringe of." 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 244, 245. - ED. ]
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4
CHAPTER III.
THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH: ITS BASIS, ORGANIZATION, AND ADMINISTRATION; ITS CONTENTIONS; ITS CONFLICTS WITH HERETICS.
BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS.
Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
T HE colony or local government established here by the original set- tlers and founders was not by themselves called "The Puritan Com- monwealth; " but the title is a most apt and just one for defining what really seems to have been their intent, and what was actually the result of their enterprise. Nor is it likely that those most gravely engaged in that enterprise would have objected to that title. There is no assumption in it which would have to them seemed unbecoming; nor would prejudice, con- tempt, or satire associated with it have led them to repudiate it.
The title, however, is one assigned by a later age, and after the experi- ment which it describes had been modified by stress of circumstances, or, as some would even say, had failed. It is our phrase for designating the idea and the practical working of a sternly serious scheme of colonization on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, of which the town of Boston was the centre. Nor is it presumptuous in us to say that we ourselves are more favorably situ- ated for forming a fuller and more intelligible view of their object than they defined in such statements of it as they have left to us. Of course, they had what was to them a deliberately formed design, - clear in its main intent and distinguished in its chief purpose, however vaguely appre- hended, as to all the requisitions and conditions which would present them- selves in its practical working. We look back upon it, and, seeing what it involved of difficulties, embarrassments, and errors, we can judge it more wisely ; and while generously appreciating its sincerity in their hearts, and the zeal and sacrifice which they devoted to it, we may account its qualified merits and success to causes which they did not take into view as likely to thwart their purposes.
Following the wise counsel for guidance in such investigations ex- pressed in the maxim, Melius est petere fontes quam sectare rivulos, we must derive our idea of the intent and object and the animating spirit of the enterprise from those who as its foremost leaders planned and guided it, and from documents left by them which were contemporary with the movement.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The leaders, the master spirits of it, were few in number; yet, the whole undertaking being at their charges and under their responsibility, they were entitled to authority in its direction. We must from the first distinguish carefully between the purposes and just rights of these responsible leaders, who embarked their worldly means and prospects in a scheme of their own devising, and the qualified interests of others - soon to become the major- ity - who, as associates, adventurers, servants, and subsequent members of the company, acceded to an influence over the development and fortunes of the enterprise without having the same ends in view, or the same interest at stake in it.
The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay derived certain defined rights and privileges from a patent purchased by them of the " Grand Council of Plymouth," confirmed by a royal charter. It was the manifest intent of this charter to constitute and empower a trading company, to be resident and administered in England, with power to send its agents to transact and oversee its business in the waters and over the territory here assigned to it. The circumstances under which, contrary to the manifest intent of the charter, it was transferred here and used as the basis of a gov- ernment claiming its sanction, to be set up and administered on this soil, have been defined on other pages.1
It is for us, at this point, to penetrate as thoroughly as we can into the avowed or secret purposes, so that we may apprehend the real motives of the chief and the responsible movers of the enterprise, - those who bore the cost of it, and claimed the authority to direct it. We have to guide us the significant fact that when, after due deliberation in private conferences and much serious consultation, the decision of transferring the charter and its administration was reached, there were some very important changes made in the membership and government of the company. We look for the master motive, and we question the leaders as to their spirit and pur- poses. The governor, John Winthrop, - the foremost of these leaders ; the wisest, truest, and most constant among those who formed and guided the enterprise, - on his voyage of permanent exile hither, having em- barked his whole estate in the venture, wrote in his cabin an essay, to which he gave the title: A Modell of Christian Charity2 For tenderness and devoutness of tone, for gentleness and serenity of spirit, and for loftiness of self-consecration to unselfish, self-sacrificing aims, it will be difficult to find any like composition with which to compare it. In this, he writes: " For the worke wee have in hand, it is by a mutuall consent, through a special overvaluing providence and a more than an ordinary approbation of ye Churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and Consorte- shipp under a due form of Government both civill and ecclesiasticall. In such cases as this, ye care of y" publique must oversway all private respects by which not only conscience, but meare civill pollicy, dothe bind us."
It hardly needs to be suggested that, while Winthrop was the master 1 [Cf. Mr. Winthrop's and Mr. Deane's chapters. - ED.| 2 | In 3 Mass. Hist. Col. vii. 31. - ED.]
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THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH.
spirit of the enterprise, he was by no means the arbitrary, autocractic dic- tator, asserting and securing for it the direction of his individual will. He was but one of a choice fellowship of intimate friends, animated by the same devout and generous aims. There is evidence enough in the con- ferences and debates above referred to that he and his chief associates had come into accord and mutual understanding by a deliberate weighing of proposals, a comparison of their several judgments, and a counting of costs. Winthrop makes a pointed reference, in his Modell of Charity, to the close-drawn covenant of mutual fidelity which he and his brethren had bound between them. He says: "Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man. Wee must entertaine each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for ye supply of others' necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar converse together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience, and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make others' conditions our owne; rejoice together, mourne to- gether, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our com- mission and community in the worke, as members of ye same body, &c."
With these helps for our guidance (among which we must reckon the Conclusions for New England, described in the preceding chapter), we may proceed to indicate the main design of the leaders of the enterprise, and the method by which they aimed to accomplish it. One preliminary sugges- tion may not be out of place here. Among the censorious criticisms, the harsh judgments, and even expressions of contempt and ridicule, to which the " Puritan Commonwealth" and its leaders in Church and State have been subjected in later times, the candid and considerate student of their plans and doings is generally able to discern for himself the line of distinc- tion between what is fair and reasonable and what is simply misleading and unjust in the arraignment of them before their posterity. Certain it is, that no assailant of the motives, methods, and plans of these Puritan founders of a new State has ever charged himself with the obligation to show how any particular set and sort of men and women could have been moved by the purpose and inspired with the energy and zeal for such an enterprise, unless a profoundly religious spirit had quickened them; nor how, with a series of failures before them as warnings, they could have failed to protect their hazardous venture against the risks of discord, sedition, and disaster to which it was exposed, by some such measures and safeguards as would have to those not personally in full accord with them the character of severity, bigotry, and stern intolerance. Their enterprise was arduous and full of perils. Failure would be ruin to them. Nor was it strange that, while they prepared for and faced the real dangers of their enterprise, they should have yielded also to timid apprehensions and anxious forebodings of possible perils.
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