USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 30
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The Governor had first tried to purchase a site THE FIRST KING'S CHAPEL. 1 for the new church on Cotton Hill, nearly oppo- site; but Judge Sewall, who had no liking for Andros or for Episcopacy, felt that it would be a desecration of the ground on which Sir Henry Vane had built a house, and which on leaving the country he had given to John Cotton. He was more than once approached on the subject, and once particularly by Mr. Ratcliffe, but constantly replied that he " could not ; first, because he would not set up that which the people of New Eng- land came over to avoid, and second, because the land was entailed."
Finally the Governor and Council seem to have used their authority, as the supreme governing body, to appropriate a part of the corner from the old burying-ground, which probably was then but thinly tenanted. Ill-na- tured question is sometimes made of the rightful tenure of this spot by the church, but the question seems to be fairly answered by two facts: first,
1 [The little vignette showing this original wooden edifice, with Beacon Hill beyond, and given by Dr. Greenwood in his Hist. of King's Chapel as taken from an old print of Boston of 1720, and which has been copied by Drake,
Whitmore, and others, is really taken from what is known as Price's View of Boston, of a date -probably a few years later than 1720, and of which a later issue of 1743 is now only known, so far as has been discovered. - ED.]
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THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS.
only the smaller moiety of the land on which the present King's Chapel 1 stands was obtained at that time, the other portion having been bought from the town when the present church was built, at an exorbitant price, suffi- cient to cover the fair value of all the land; second, if the town had power to sell to the church in 1749, the Governor and Council, being the only law- ful authorities at the time, had the right to convey a piece of the public land in 1688. If it had not been so considered, the act would surely have been at least impugned, if not annulled, after the overthrow of Sir Edmund Andros. But no attempt to do so appears, even in Sewall's Diary.2
Here, then, the modest little church was built at a cost of £284 16s. or $1,425. To defray this expense, ninety-six persons throughout the colony had contributed £256 9s., the balance being given by Andros on his depart- ure from the country, and by other English officers later.
There was poetical justice in the fact that Andros and Randolph never entered the building which they had done so much to obtain. They were punished for their misdeeds of oppression by not enjoying their good deed, or seeing established the emblem of that form of religion for which they really cared. The church-book, on the next page to that which states the cost of the house, contains the following: "Note that on 18° Aprill pre- seeding the date on th' other side, began a most impious and detestable rebellion ag" the King's Majesty's Government; the Govern' and all just men to the same were brought into restraint." There can be little doubt where the sympathies of the writer lay. If he was the Senior Warden it is not strange, as Dr. Bullivant had been one of those imprisoned.
The storm of that time had well-nigh driven the little ark of the church from its anchorage. Even now, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, it is impossible to read the Andros Tracts without feeling the ground-swell of those waves of passion which tossed so fiercely in the little town of Boston. In July, 1689, Rev. Robert Ratcliffe returned to England. It is very un- likely, in the angry state of public feeling, that there was any public dedica- tion, or perhaps any consecration at all, of the wooden church. The very building itself seems to have been in some danger, for in those days there was such a power as the " Boston Mob." A pamphlet published in London in 1690, entitled New England's Faction Discovered; by C. D., states that " the church itself had great difficulty to withstand their fury, receiving the marks of their indignation and scorn by having the Windows broke to pieces and the Doors and Walls daubed and defiled with dung and other filth in the rudest and basest manner imaginable, and the Minister for his safety was forced to leave the country and his congregation and go for England." 3
1 As enlarged in 1754.
2 The charges against Andros and others, given in Andros Tracts, i. 149-173, from Mass. Archives, Inter-Charter Papers, xxv. 255, bring together everything which could be collected by
the Committee of Seven, but make no mention of the taking of land for the Church, - which they would surely do if that had been regarded as a usurpation.
3 Andros Tracts, ii. 212.
216
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The church, however, survived to be fostered by the care and honored with the gifts of the successive monarchs of England, from William and Mary to George the Third. Under the long ministry of Rev. Samuel Myles it won the respect, if not the love, of its neighbors. The plain building was the only place in New England where the forms of the court church could be witnessed. The prayers and anthems which sounded forth in the cathedrals of the mother country were here no longer dumb. The equipages and uniforms which made gay the little court of Boston brightened its portals. Within, the escutcheons of Royal governors hung against the pillars; at Christmas it was wreathed with green; the music of the first organ heard in New England here broke the stillness of the Sabbath air.1
The religious struggle of twenty-five years was over. If it be asked which party won in it, the answer must be, - Neither, and both. The despotism of Andros was overthrown; the charter never was restored in its first fulness, but its work was wrought ; a people had been trained to great traditions of freedom, and these survived eighty-six years more and then burst into blossom and fruit. On the other hand the religious despotism of Puritanism was broken forever. Baptists, Episcopalians, Quakers, might henceforth worship as they would; to-day, everything, anything, or noth- ing may be believed where for nearly sixty years the Calvinism of New England was all in all.
Henry Milden Foote.
1 This organ was the gift of Thomas Brattle. A Mr. Price was the first organist. Greenwood, King's Chapel, P. 75.
CHAPTER V.
BOSTON AND THE COLONY.
BY CHARLES C. SMITH. Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
W THEN Winthrop and his company cast anchor in Salem harbor, in the summer of 1630, it was their intention to remain together and begin only a single settlement. With this view an exploration of the neighbor- hood was begun three days after the arrival of the " Arbella."1 But circum- stances over which they had no control soon compelled them to relinquish this purpose. "We were forced," says Deputy Governor Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, " to change counsel, and for our present shelter to plant dispersedly, - some at Charlestown, which standeth on the north side of the mouth of Charles River ; some on the south side thereof, which place we named Boston ( as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on ) ; some of us upon Mistick, which we named Medford ; some of us westward on Charles River, four miles from Charlestown, which place we named Watertown ; others of us two miles from Boston, in a place we named Roxbury; others upon the river of Saugus, between Salem and Charles- town; and the western men four miles south from Boston, at a place we named Dorchester."2 Accordingly, at a Court of Assistants held at Charles- town on the 7th of September, 1630, Old Style, which corresponds with the 17th of September as time is now reckoned, it was ordered " that Trimoun- tain shall be called Boston."3 This order is the only act of incorporation which Boston had under the colony charter.
What was the extent, and what was the source of the powers, which the towns of Massachusetts exercised is by no means clear. It has been asserted by high authority that the principle on which the Plymouth Colony was founded, - and the remark is equally true as to the Massachusetts Colony,- required that while the inhabitants of the town " should remain a part of the whole, and be subject to the general voice in relation to all matters which concerned the whole colony, they should be allowed to be what their sepa- rate settlements had made them; namely, distinct communities, in regard to
1 Winthrop, New England, i. 27. The party 2 1 Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 39; Young, Chron- was absent three days, went up Mystic River, icles of Mass. pp. 313. 314. and visited Noddle's Island and Nantasket.
VOL I .- 28.
3 Mass. Col. Records, i. 75.
218
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
such affairs as concerned none but themselves."1 There was no sharply defined line separating the powers which the town and the colony might respectively exercise ; and the limitations with which we are familiar grew up by slow degrees, or were created by orders of the General Court or the Court of Assistants, sometimes limited to the towns named in the order, and some- times of wider application.2 So late as October, 1662, the General Court passed an order reciting that, notwithstanding the wholesome orders hither- to made by the selectmen of Boston against fast riding, many persons fre- quently galloped in the streets of that town, to the great danger of other persons, especially children ; and ordering that no one should, in future, gallop any horse there under a penalty of three shillings and four pence for each offence, to be paid, on conviction before any magistrate of the town, to the treasurer of the county of Suffolk.3 And at a still later period, in Octo- ber, 1679, the General Court passed the following order : -
" For prevention of the profanation of the Sabbath, and disorders on Saturday night, by horses and carts passing late out of the town of Boston, it is ordered and enacted by this Court, that there be a ward from sunset, on Saturday night, until nine of the clock or after, consisting of one of the selectmen or constables of Boston, with two or more meet persons, who shall walk between the fortifications and the town's end, and upon no pretence whatsoever suffer any cart to pass out of the town after sunset, nor any footman or horseman, without such good account of the necessity of his business as may be to their satisfaction ; and all persons attempting to ride or drive out of town after sunset, without such reasonable satisfaction given, shall be apprehended and brought before authority to be proceeded against as Sabbath-breakers ; and all other towns are empowered to do the like as need shall be." 4
The passage of such orders as these shows how undefined was the extent of the powers which the colonial authorities exercised in the first half- century after the settlement of the town.
The need of some sharper distinction between the powers which the colony reserved to itself and those with which the town was invested seems to have strongly impressed the inhabitants of Boston. Twice, at least, during the
I Paper by Professor Joel Parker on "The Origin, Organization, and Influence of the Towns of New England," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Jan- nary, 1866, pp. 29, 30. [Cf , further, Mr. Winsor's references in the chapter on "Colonial Litera- ture " in the present volume. - ED.]
2 The most important of these orders was adopted by the General Court at the session in March, 1635-36. It begins by reciting that "par- ticular towns have many things which concern only themselves, and the ordering of their own affairs, and disposing of business in their own town." Therefore power was granted to them "to dispose of their own lands and woods, with all the privileges and appurtenances of the said towns, to grant lots, and make such orders as may concern the well-ordering of their own
towns, not repugnant to the laws and orders here established by the General Court ; as also to lay mulcts and penalties for the breach of these orders, and to levy and distrain the same, not exceeding the sum of twenty shillings; also to choose their own particular officers, as consta- bles, surveyors for the highways, and the like." (Mass. Col. Records, i. 172.) In Quincy's Mun- icipal History of Boston, p. I, the date of this order is misprinted 1630. The order was not passed until Boston had been settled between five and six years. The true date is of import- ance in tracing the history of town governments in Massachusetts.
3 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 59, 60.
4 Ibid. v. 239, 240. [Sce Mr. Scudder's chapter in this volume. - ED.] º
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BOSTON AND THE COLONY.
colonial period they petitioned for an act of incorporation. In May, 1650, in answer to a petition from the inhabitants of Boston, the Court declared a willingness " to grant the petitioners a corporation, if the articles or terms, privileges and immunities thereof, were so presented as rationally should appear, respecting the mean condition of the country, fit for the Court to grant; " and the petitioners were required to present their propositions at the next session.1 So far as now appcars, nothing further was donc at that time; and in May, 1659, the Court, in answer to a request of the town of Boston to be made a corporation, granted them " liberty to consult and advise amongst themselves what may be necessary for such an end, and the same to draw up into a form and present the same to the next session." 2 Again, three years later, in May, 1662, in answer to a petition of the inhabi- tants of Boston " for some further power in reference to the well ordering of trade and tradesmen, and the suppressing of the vices so much abounding there," a committee was appointed " to peruse the charter now in Court, and consider how far it is meet to be granted, or what else they shall judge meet for the attaining of the ends above mentioned, and to make return of what they shall conclude upon to the next Court of Election."3 In October, 1663, the same committee was reappointed, with the same instructions, ex- pressed in almost precisely the same words ;+ but it does not appear that any report was ever made by the committee, and here the matter apparently dropped. It is curious to notice how little trace of these applications has been left on the town records. There is not a single entry in them near the date of the orders of the Court which can be directly connected with these petitions for a charter ; and the only votes of the town which can be supposed to have even a remote reference to the matter were in October, 1652, and October, 1658.5 But in May, 1677, the town instructed her depu- ties to the General Court to use their endeavors "that this town may be a corporation, or made town and county." 6
In the original laying out of the towns the bounds were very loosely described, and controversies naturally arose at a very carly date between adjoining towns as to the extent of territory belonging to each. The pen- insula of Boston touched only one of the neighboring towns, Roxbury; but from the narrow limits which Nature had assigned to her, her inhabitants were forced to seek " enlargement" beyond the peninsula, - and Noddle's Island and extensive tracts at Pullen Point, Mount Wollaston, and Rumney Marsh were at different times granted to Boston by orders of the General Court. Questions of boundary frequently arose under these grants, and committees were appointed by the Court, or by the town, to settle
1 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 9. The charter which was asked for at this time is printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. xi. 206-210. [The original document is in the Secretary's office at the State House. - ED. [
2 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv. pt. i. p. 368.
Ibid. vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 56.
4 Ibid. p. 99.
5 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, pp. 112, 148.
b NIS. Records of the Town of Boston (in the office of the City Clerk), ii. 106.
¡ Mass. Col. Records, i. 101, 119, 130, 189. [ Cf.
also Wood's New England's Prospect, a quota- lion in Shurtleff's Description of Boston, P. 41 ; also pp. 32, 33. - ED.]
220
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the differences and establish the boundaries. So early as December, 1636, a committee was appointed at a general town-meeting to consider about form- ing a town and church at Mount Wollaston, with the consent of the inhabi- tants of Boston :1 and three years later, in January, 1639-40, the selectmen entered into an agreement with a committee acting in behalf of the residents at the Mount, by which Boston, in consideration of certain payments into her treasury, consented to the formation of a new town there, " if the Court shall think fit to grant them to be a town of themselves."? At the session of the General Court, in the following May, "The petition of the inhabitants of Mount Wollaston was voted, and granted them to be a town according to the agreement with Boston, - provided that if they fulfil not the covenant made with Boston, and hereto affixed, it shall be in the power of Boston to recover their due by action against the said inhabitants, or any of them ; and the town is to be called Braintree."3 Muddy River had probably belonged to Boston from the first settlement of the town; but the first mention of it in the Colony Records is in September, 1634,4 when the General Court, at a session held in Cambridge, ordered "that the ground about Muddy River, belonging to Boston, and used by the inhabitants thereof, shall hereafter be- long to New Town, the wood and timber thereof growing and to be growing to be reserved to the inhabitants of Boston ; provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that if Mr. Hooker and the congregation now settled here shall remove hence, that then " the ground at Muddy River shall revert to Boston.5 Hooker and most of his congregation removed to Connecticut in the sum- mer of 1636;6 and the title of the lands accordingly reverted to Boston. Muddy Brook continued to be a part of Boston until 1705, when it was made a town by the name of Brookline." Rumney Marsh and the adjacent territory remained for a still longer period under the jurisdiction of Boston ; and it was not until near the middle of the last century that these lands were set off from Boston, and incorporated under the name of Chelsca.8
In each of these outlying districts grants of land were made by the town, sometimes of extensive tracts to prominent individuals, and sometimes, especially at Muddy River, to " the poorer sort." For instance, in October, 1634, a grant was made to Mr. Wilson, pastor of the church, of two hundred acres of land at Mount Wollaston, in exchange for an equal quantity of land on Mystic River previously granted to him by the General Court.º Subse-
1 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, p. 14.
2 Ibid. p. 47.
3 Mass. Col. Records, i. 291.
4 [Two years before this, in 1632, Winthrop in his Journal had mentioned that ten Sagamores and many Indians were gathered at Muddy River when Underhill, with twenty musketeers, was sent to reconnoitre their camp. H. F. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, p. 10, says vestiges of this old Indian fort on a knoll in the great swamp were discernible up to 1844-45, when the ground was levelled in preparation for
building the house of William Amory, Esq., in Longwood. Pierce, Address, p. S. - ED.]
5 Mass. Col. Records, i. 129, 130. |The town of Brookline printed, in 1875, such extracts from the Boston Records as pertain to Muddy River, together with the records of the town to 1837, under the title of Muddy River and Brookline Records, 1634-1838. - ED.]
6 Winthrop, New England, i. 187.
7 Brookline Records, p. 91.
8 Province Laws, ii. 969-971.
9 Second Report of the Record Commissioners,
pp. 2, 3; Mass. Col. Records, i. 114.
221
BOSTON AND THE COLONY.
quently the town relinquished to him all claims to the land at Mystic, in con- sequence of defects in the title to the land at Mount Wollaston, which had
THE OLD ASPINWALL HOUSE.1
1 [This old house, still standing near the Episcopal Church in Longwood, was built by l'eter Aspinwall about 1660, and has descended through lineal descendants (Samuel, Thomas, Dr. William) to the late Colonel Thomas As- pinwall. Though still owned by the family, the last of the name to occupy it lived there till 1803. The original deed of the land from Wil- liam Colburn to Robert Sharpe is dated 1650, and is in the family's keeping. Wood, Brookline, ch. v. A famous elm, of which the stump still remains, once shaded the house. According to the No. Amer. Rev., July, 1844, it sprung up about 1656; but Dr. Pierce, Historical Address, p. 38, says it was planted about 1700. Mr. G. B. Emerson
says that "it was known to be one hundred and eighty-one years old in 1837, and then measured twenty-six feet five inches at the ground, and sixteen feet eight inches at five feet. The branches extended one hundred and four feet from southeast to northwest, and ninety-five feet from northeast to southwest." - Trees and Shrubs in Mass., &c., ii. 326. Our cut follows a photograph taken before 1860, and before the great tree fell, which was in September, 1863; and at that time it measured twenty-six feet girth at the ground, and sixteen feet eight inches at five feet from the ground, showing much the same dimensions as twenty-five years before. - ED.]
222
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
involved him in some expenses.1 In December, 1635, a committee of five of the freemen was appointed at a general town-meeting, to " go and take view at Mount Wollaston, and bound out there what may be sufficient for Mr. William Coddington and Edmund Quincy to have for their particular farms. there ; " to " lay out at Muddy River a sufficient allotment for a farm for our Teacher, Mr. John Cotton ; " and also to lay out farms there for Mr. William Colburn, and for the two Elders, Mr. Thomas Oliver and Thomas Leverett. At the same time it was voted, " That the poorer sort of inhabitants, such as are members or likely so to be, and have no cattle, shall have their propor- tion of allotments for planting ground and other assigned unto them by the alloters, and laid out at Muddy River by the aforenamed five persons, or four of them ; those that fall between the foot of the hill and the water to have but four acres upon a head, and those that are farther off to have five acres for every head."2 Provision was likewise made for laying out the allotments at Rumney Marsh. The committee apparently made no report until January, 1637-38, when the allotments were entcred at length in the town records.3
From her favorable position at the head of the bay Boston could scarcely fail to become, and continue to be, the chief place in the growing colony ; and so early as October, 1632, the Court agreed, " by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay."+ Previously to that time, however, it had been a matter of uncertainty wheth- er Boston or Cambridge would be the seat of government; and the sharp controversy between Dudley and Winthrop, growing out of the failure of the latter to remove to Cambridge, is one of the most curious incidents in their personal relations : but it need not be considered here.5 It is sufficient to say that the purpose to make Cambridge the capital was relinquished, and steps were taken at an early date to secure Boston from attacks by sea as well as by land. From Winthrop's Journal we learn that a fort was begun on the eminence known to the first settlers as the Corn Hill, but which was called in later time Fort Hill, toward the end of May, 1632, and that the people of Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Dorchester worked on it on successive days.6 The work was not completed at that time; and in the following May the General Court ordered " that the fort at Boston shall be finished with what convenient speed may be, at the public charge."7 A few months later it was ordered that " every hand (except magistrates and min- isters) shall afford their help to the finishing of the fort at Boston, till it be ended." 8 This was not all that was deemed necessary for defence on the water side ; and in July, 1634, the Governor and Council, several of the min- isters, and other persons met at Castle Island, and there agreed to crect 1 Second Report of the Record Commissioners, 6 Winthrop, New England, i. 77. p. 6.
Ibid. p. 6.
3 Ibid. pp. 22 et seq.
A Mass. Col. Records, i. 101.
5 Winthrop, New England, i. 82-86. [Cf. Mr. R. C. Winthrop's chapter in the present volume. - ED.]
7 Mass. Col. Records, i. 105.
8 Ibid. p. IO8. [Cf. Shurtleff's Desc. of Bos- ton, p. 164. The records mention, in 1635-36, "ye ingineer Mr. Lyon Garner, who doth soe freely offer his help thereunto." Lyon Gardiner was, a little later, prominent in the Pequot war. See Mr. Bynner's chapter. - ED. 1
223
BOSTON AND THE COLONY.
" two platforms and one small fortification to secure them both; and for the present furtherance of it they agreed to lay out £5 a man, till a rate might be made at the next General Court."1 Accordingly, at the General Court in September, it was ordered "that there shall be a platform made on the northeast side of Castle Island, and an house built on the top of the hill to defend the said platform."2 In the following March, it was ordered by the General Court " that there shall be forthwith a beacon set on the Sentry Hill at Boston, to give notice to the country of any danger, and that there shall be a ward of one person kept there from the first of April to the last of September ; and that upon the discovery of any danger the beacon shall be fired, an alarm given, as also messengers presently sent by that town where the danger is discovered to all other towns within this jurisdiction." 3 In March of the following year, 1636, the Court granted to the inhabitants of Boston the use of six pieces of ordnance, and gave them thirty pounds in money toward the making of a platform at the foot of Fort Hill, requir- ing the inhabitants of the town to finish "the said work at their own proper charges before the General Court in May next."+ The defence of the town on the land side began at a much earlier period; and in the April after their arrival Winthrop wrote in his Journal, but afterward for some unknown reason erased the entry, " we began a court of guard upon the neck between Roxbury and Boston, whereupon should always be resident an officer and six men."5 These ample preparations, however, were not always kept up; the fortifications frequently fell into decay, and the garrisons were with- drawn, to be renewed whenever a new occasion of alarm arose. The colony and the town were equally reluctant to spend money on defences for which there seemed to be no probability of an immediate need; but they were always on the alert whenever a new danger arose. Thus in May, 1649, the Deputies voted, that "there being many ships in the harbor, and divers of them strangers, the Court judgeth meet to order that a military watch be forthwith appointed in Boston and Charlestown, to continue till any four magistrates shall see cause to alter it." 6
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