USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 44
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The town records contain little more allusion to the war than a few ref- crenees to the " settlement" of the poor people thrown back upon Boston. The knotty questions of "town settlement " and "State settlement," as wc now define them, began with these experiences.1
Boston went into the encounter ready for war, indeed, but with little experience of it. Not a man fought who had ever been in battle, - unless he had seen it in fights with cavaliers in England. "Ncd Randolph," an unfriendly critic, saw their army after a year's training in the field, and he says : "Each troop [of horse ] consists of sixty horse besides officers ; and they are well mounted and completely armed with back, breast, and head-picec, buff coat, sword, carbine, and pistols, each troop distinguished by their coats. The foot also are very well furnished with swords, muskets, and bandolecrs. The late wars have hardened their infantry, made them good firemen, and taught them the ready use of their arms."
Of a population of perhaps twenty-five thousand, Massachusetts had lost in battle five or six hundred of her sons. The estimate frequently made, that she lost one tenth of her fighting men, is probably beneath the truth. Of that population Boston alone, as she then was, made perhaps one fifth. Her loss was nearly proportional to that of the others, though her troops were not in any one of the great massacres. Four of her captains, Hutch- inson, Johnson, Davenport, and Mosley had been killed. When in October, 1675, a special tax of £1,553 was ordered, Boston paid $300, Charlestown £180, Dorchester £40, and Roxbury £30. This gave Boston a little more than one third of the tax, - about the proportion she pays to-day.
With such diminution of resource the little town and State were to turn to their harder battle against their king.2
Edward 6 Hale
1 [As to the contribution sent to the colony from Ireland in 1676, to assist in the support of those weakened or famished by the war, see Mr. Charles Deane's communication in the N. E.
Hist. and Geneal. Reg., July, IS48, p. 245. - ED. ]
2 [This struggle to maintain their charter is narrated in Mr. Deane's chapter. - ED. ]
327
BOSTON IN PHILIP'S WAR.
EDITORIAL NOTE. - If the reader desires to follow out more minutely the events of this war, he will find one of the best general accounts of the causes of it in Palfrey's New England, iii. ch. iv. That historian does not believe it was a wide-spread, premeditated effort to expel the colonists. A Rhode Island Quaker, John East- on, wrote a Narrative of the Causes which led to Philip's War, which was printed in 1858, with notes by F. B. Hough. Easton did not think all the faults were on the side of the Indians. (Cf. Palfrey, iii. ISo, on its supposed authorship ) Increase Mather, in his Early Ilistory of New England, of which Drake edited an edition in 1864, goes into the question of the origin of the war. Drake has followed the preliminaries in his " Notes " in the N'. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1858, January, April, and July, 1861. He also, in his Old Indian Chronicle, 1836, has re- printed several contemporary narratives, the original editions of which are preserved in llarvard College Library. They were written in New England, but printed in London. Some of them -like The present State of New England, 1675; A new and further Narrative of the State of New England, 1676; Warre between the Eng- lish and Indians in New England, 1676; Mather's Brief History, 1676: News from New England, 1676; and Hubbard's Varrative, all which once belonged to Sir Walter Scott, and were given by him to Mr. Brevoort, of New York-were described by Baylies in his History of the Old Colony, i. p. x., while in the possession of J. Car- son Brevoort, of Brooklyn. It was ostensibly to correct the statements of one of these old narra- tives, some of which were ascribed to "a mer- chant of Boston " (see Palfrey's New England, iii. 151), that Increase Mather hastily prepared his Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England, from June 24, 1675, to Aug. 12, 1676, London, 1676, and Boston, same year (a copy, which belonged to Samuel Mather, and had been "revised and corrected " by the author, his father, is one of fourteen early tracts bound together by the son, being writings mostly by the father, the whole priced in 1876 by William George, bookseller, Bristol, at £350), - a reprint of which was edited by S. G. Drake in IS62, col- lated with Cotton Mather's account of the war in his Magnalia. This last account was written twenty years after the war, and its author availed himself, without giving credit, of Hubbard's War- rative of the Troubles with the Indians, - a better account than Increase Mather's. The ground is also gone over in Hubbard's New England, ch. Ixxi. Palfrey, New England, iii. 153, thinks IJubbard had good opportunities.
The hero of the war was, perhaps, Colonel Benjamin Church, of Plymouth Colony, whose sword is preserved in the Historical Society's cabinet. (Cf. Proceedings, i. 379.) The history
of the ordinary portrait, so called, of Church, - which is really a likeness of Charles Churchill, the English poet, with a powder-horn slung over his shoulder, -is given by Mr. Drake in the Hist. Alag., December, 1868, p. 27. Cf. Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., March, IS58, p. 293. It was en- graved by Paul Revere, who also engraved a picture of "Philip, King of Mount Hope." Church's son, Thomas Church, wrote out for his father an account of the war, - Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War, - which was published long afterwards in Boston, in 1716, and often since; the best edition being that edited by Henry M. Dexter, 1865-67, in two volumes, including a memoir of Church. The original edition is very scarce; Brinley, having watched forty years for a sale of it, secured it at last at Drake's sale. (Brinley Catalogue, No. 383.) A copy once owned by Dr. S. A. Green passed for $200 some years since into the hands of Sa- bin, who at that time had " never seen a copy for sale " (Sabin, Dictionary, No. 12,996), and from him passed to a Brooklyn collector at $400.
Other original material, beside that at the State Ilonse, can be found, somewhat scattered : Records of the United Colonies, published by the State of Massachusetts; Gookin, Historical Col- lections, and his narrative transmitted to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, printed in the Archeologia Americana ; Mrs. Rowlandson's Narrative of her Captivity, an original copy of which is in the Prince Library, but it has been reprinted; Captain Thomas Wheeler's narrative of the expedition to Brook- field, in the N'. H. Ilist. Coll. ii., and in Foot's Historical Discourse on the History of Brookfield ; the Bradford Club, 1859, published Papers on the Attack on Hatfield and Deerfield : the New Hampshire Provincial Papers, i. 354; the life of Major-General Denison in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., July, 1869; papers in the appendix of Drake's edition of Mather's Brief Ilistory ; a letter of Major Bradford is printed in Davis's edition of Morton's Memorial ; the Prince Cala- logue shows various contemporary manuscripts ; Waldron's letter on the war at the eastward in the V. E. Ilist. and Geneal. Reg., January, 1853; a few original papers are given in a volume (" Miscellaneous Papers, 1632-1795") in the llis- torical Society's cabinet, which includes a letter of Jonathan Brewster on the outbreak of the war, which has been printed in that Society's Pro- cecdings. Of the later historians, mere mention may be made of the following : Palfrey, New England, iii. ch. iv., who takes a low estimate of Philip's character, and gives an all-sufficient ac- count, with full references; Drake, Book of the Indians, bk. iii .; Baylies, Old Colony, with ad- ditions in Drake's edition, ii. ch. iv .; Bancroft, United States, ii. ch. xii. ; Bryant and Gay, United
328
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
States, ii. ch. xvii., - a good account ; Barry, Hist. of Mass., i. ch. xv., xvi. ; Theodore Dwight, Ilist. of Connecticut, ch. xxii., xxiii .; Arnold, Rhode Island, i. ch. x. ; Potter, Early Ilist. of Narragansett, p. 78; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, i. 118-134, &c. It would be too long a list to give all the local histories, which have told the part of many towns in the struggle.
Fuller bibliographical detail on this subject can be found in Field's Indian Bibliography. Some of the rarer titles are given in the Brinley Catalogue, Nos. 382, &c.
Convenient maps for the campaign will be found in Dexter's edition of Church, and the same in Drake's edition of Baylies ; also others in Ilough's edition of Easton's Narrative, and in Kidpath's United States, p. 139. These may be contrasted with the map of New England which was issued in England at this time by John Seller, hydrographer to the King, accompanied by a description taken from Josselyn's Two l'oy- ages, which shows the prevalent ignorance of New England geography in England ; there is a copy of it in Harvard College Library. The same cartographer issued a New England Al- manac, 1685, which has a small sketch-map of New England; and Palfrey, New England, iii.
489, gives a reduced fac-simile of a map of New England and New York, likewise by Seller. In some respects a more accurate though rude map of New England was issued, just at the close of the war, by Hubbard in his Narrative of the Troubles in New England, and it is said to be the first map cut in the colony. It is given en- tire in Judge Davis's edition of Morton's New England Memorial, and in Palfrey's New Eng- land, iii. 155. William B. Fowle had a fac- simile made of it in 1846. Sections showing Boston Harbor are given in Lossing's Field-book of the Revolution, i. 446, and in S. A. Drake's New England Coast. A similar section is given herewith. Both Davis's and Palfrey's fac-similes are given, however, from the London edition of the book of the same year, for which the map was recut, and is to be known from the Boston edition by the substitution of " Wine llills " for " White Hills." A copy of this London edition, with its map, is in Harvard College Library. In 1872 Henry Stevens, of London, had fac- similes made of both editions of the map, and he says : " The London edition, though a close copy, is entirely recut," and differs in minor par- ticulars. Cf. Stevens's Bibliotheca Geographica, p. 228; Field's Indian Bibliography, p. 178.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARTER, 1628-29.
CHAPTER X.
THE STRUGGLE TO MAINTAIN THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST, AND ITS FINAL LOSS IN 1684.
BY CHARLES DEANE, LL.D. Corresponding Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
I HE Royal Charter of "The Governor & Company of the Massa- chusetts Bay in New England" passed the seals March 4, 1628-29, confirming to Sir Henry Rosewell, Sir John Young, Thomas Southcott, John Humfrey, John Endicott, and Symon Whetcomb, and twenty others, their associates, named, their heirs and assigns, a certain parcel of land in Massachusetts Bay in New England, extending from three miles south of Charles River to three miles north of Merrimac River, and in breadth from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea, -which land had been granted to these six persons named above by the Council for New England, March 19 in the preceding year. The Charter also ordained that these twenty-six persons and all such others as shall hereafter be admitted and made free of the Company shall be forever hereafter one body corporate and politie in fact and name, by the name above cited ; with power to make laws and elect officers for disposing and ordering the general business concerning said lands and the plantation, and the government of the people there.1
The powers of government contained in this instrument have been
1 Some authorities say that the charter cost the Company two thousand pounds sterling. The original instrument is at the State House in Bos- ton. It is beautifully engrossed on four sheets of parchment, the initial letter "C" containing a representation of King Charles the First. It was printed by Governor Hutchinson in his Col- lection of Original Papers in 1769, from a manu- script copy, each sheet of which bears at foot the autograph signature of Governor Winthrop; it is attested by him at the end, under the date of " this 19th day of the first month, called Feb- ruary, 1643-44." Here is an error in calling February the first month, which Hutchinson corrects. This manuscript is in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Hutchin- son appends to his copy a note saying that the charter had never been printed, that there were but few manuscript copies of it, and he now pub- lishes it as the most likely means of preventing its being irrecoverably lost. The question might
be asked if the original parchment, in Hutchin- son's day, was missing ? The charter, however, had already been printed eighty years before Hutchinson printed it, "by S. Green, for Benja- min Harris, at the London Coffee House near the Town-House in Boston, 1689," in 4to., 26 pp. See Catalogue of the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. ii. p. 26. It was here printed from the duplicate of the instrument sent over to Governor Endicott in 1629, and now in the Salem Atheneum. The charter is also printed in Hazard, vol. i., from the "original," likewise in the volume of Charters and General Lazos, Boston, 1814, and is also included in the first volume of the Mass. Col. Records.
[A heliotype of the charter, as at present dis- played on the walls of the Secretary's Office at the State House, is herewith given. A cut of the heading of the document is given in Bryant and Gay's United States, ii. 376. The original is indorsed with the autograph of Wolseley, while
VOL. I .- 42.
330
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
differently interpreted by different writers; and there has not been an entire agreement on the question as to the legality of the transfer of the corporation and charter to New England, which took place at the time of the Winthrop emigration. As to the latter branch of this subject, Hutchin- son says: "It is evident from the charter that the original design of it was to constitute a corporation in England like to that of the East India and other great companies, with powers to settle plantations within the limits of the territory, under such forms of government and magistracy as should be fit and necessary. The first step, in sending out Mr. Endicott, appoint- ing him a council, giving him commission, instructions, &c., was agreeable to this construction of the charter." 1
This opinion has been concurred in by such historians as Chalmers, Robertson, Grahame, Ilildreth, and Young, and by the distinguished jurist Story. On the other hand Dr. Palfrey, the eminent historian of New England, and the late Professor Joel Parker, of Cambridge, are of opinion that the charter was adroitly drawn, with a design on the part of the patentees to be used either in England or in New England, - there being an absence of any language locating the corporation in England.2
It does not come within my province here to write a history of the colony under this charter; but it is necessary that I should give a brief analysis of that instrument, and show what were the complaints of the home Government from time to time against the Colony for alleged viola- tions of it, and the attempts by legal process and otherwise to vacate its franchises, at the same time that I narrate the struggles of the colonists to maintain their privileges and their rights, finally wrested from them.
the Salem copy bears his name in the scribe's hand. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, p. 19. " Winthrop Papers," in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. 159, note. The Brinley Catalogue, No. 2650, calls the 1689 edition, above referred to, "ex- cessively rare." That edition had a woodent of the Massachusetts seal on the title, which is given in fac-simile in Drake, Boston, p. 840, who says the seal was of silver, was sent over to Gover- nor Endicott in 1629, and continued in use till Andros's time. Cf. T. C. Amory's paper on the Seals of Massachusetts in Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., Dec. 1867, and the appendix to Felt's Currency of Mass. The " Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England " are preserved in the State House. An ancient copy of them, from the first meeting in London to Aug. 6, 1645, which supplies some leaves wanting in the original records, belonged to Governor IIutchinson, and later to Colonel As- pinwall, and passed with his library into the hand of S. L. M. Barlow, Esq., of New York. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., July, 1855. Cl. Archeologia Americana, iii. From a transcript of the original records of the Colony made by Mr. David Pul- sifer, the State ordered, in 1853-54, the printing
of them down to 1686, and it was done under the supervision of Dr. N. B. Shurtleff. Cf. Chas. W. Upham on "The Records of Massachusetts under the First Charter," in the Ilist. Soc. Lowell Institute Lectures, 1869. - ED.Į
1 Hutchinson, Ilistory, i. p. 13. See also his views more fully expressed in vol. ii. pp. 1, 2.
2 It may be mentioned that Attorney- General Sawyer, in the subsequent reign, ex- pressed the opinion "that the Patent having created the grantees, and their assigns, a body corporate, they might transfer their charter and act in New England." But Chalmers thinks that he had probably neither perused the in- strument with attention nor studied its history. " It conveyed the soil," he says, " to the corpor- ation and its assigns ; it conferred the powers of government on it and its successors. And, to all who have been accustomed to legal or accu- rate reasoning, these expressions must appear as different in sense as they are in sound. The two Chief Justices, Rainsford and North, fell into a similar mistake by supposing that the corporate powers were to have been originally executed in New England." Annals, p. 173.
331
THE CHARTER OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST.
As showing the process of issuing letters-patents, and as furnishing some evidence of the intention of the Crown as to the location of the cor- poration created by the Massachusetts Charter, it may not be inappropriate to give here a memorandum signed by the King's Solicitor-General, called a "docket," appended to the "King's bill," the latter being the first official Charles SK form in which the charter appears, --- in the very words of the instrument itself, as subsequently issued under
the Great Seal, - and the authority for its issue. In all chancery pro- cecdings, not to refer to others of a kindred nature, where papers are prepared for the King's signature, a memorandum is written at the foot of such documents by the Attorney or Solicitor General (sometimes by both jointly), addressed to the sovereign, briefly explaining to him the nature of the instrument he is about to sign. The following is the " docket " appended to the "King's bill" (or sign-manual) of the Massachusetts Charter, the spelling being here modernized :1-
SIGN-MANUALS. - VOL. X. NO. 16.
May it please your Most Excellent Majesty : --
Whereas your Majesty's most dear and royal father did by his letters-patents in the eighteenth year of his reign incorporate divers noblemen and others by the name of the Council for the Planting of New England in America, and did thereby grant unto them all that part of America which lieth between forty degrees of northerly latitude and forty-eight inclusive, with divers privileges and immunities under a tenure in free socage and reservation to the Crown of the fifth part of the gold and silver ore to be found there, which said Council have since, by their Charter in March last, granted a part of that continent to Sir Henry Rosewell and others, their heirs and associates for- ever, with all jurisdictions, rights, privileges, and commodities of the same.
This bill containeth your Majesty's confirmation and grant to the said Sir Henry Rosewell and his partners and their associates and to their heirs and assignees forever of the said part of New England in America, with the like tenure in socage and reservation of the fifth part of gold and silver ore, -incorporating them also by the name of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England in America, with such clauses for the electing of governors and officers here in England for the said Company, and powers to make laws and ordinances for settling the gov- ernment and magistracy for the plantation there,2 and with such exemptions from
I See "Forms used in issuing Letters-Pa- tents," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Dec. 1869, p. 172 [by C. DEANE].
2 As I interpret the Docket, this last clause refers to the following in the charter : The Com- pany have power " to make, ordain, and estab- lish all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, statutes, and ordinances, directions and instructions . .. for the settling of the forms and ceremonies of government and magistracy
fit and necessary for the said plantation and the inhabitants there," &c., in virtue of which the Form of Government for the Colony, adopted on the 30th of April, 1629, was established. In the charter granted to the "Council for New England," established at Plymouth, the same power was given, namely, " to make, ordain, and establish all manner of orders, laws, directions, instructions, forms, and ceremonies of govern- ment and magistracy, fit and necessary for and
332
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
customs and impositions and such other privileges as were originally granted to the Council aforesaid, and are usually allowed to corporations in England.
And is done by direction from the Lord Keeper,1 upon your Majesty's pleasure therein signified to his Lordship by Sir Ralph Freeman.2
(Signed) Rı. SHILTON.3
Indorsed : " 1628, Expedit apud Westm' Vicesimo septimo die Februarij Anno Reg! Caroli quarto." + " p WOODWARD dep."
The Charter gave power to the freemen of the Company to elect an- nually from their own number a Governor, Deputy-Governor, and cighteen Assistants, and to make laws and ordinances, not repugnant to the laws of England, for their own benefit and for the government of persons inhabiting their territory. Four meetings of the Company, called the " four great and general courts," were to be held in a year, and others might be convened. Meetings of the Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Assistants were to be held once a month, or oftener. The Governor, Deputy-Governor, and any two Assistants were authorized to administer to freemen the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. The Company might transport settlers not re- strained by special name. They had authority to admit new associates, and to fix the terms of their admission, and to elect such officers as they should see fit for the managing of their affairs. By a form of language used in all the English charters from that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert down to the Charter of Massachusetts, the franchise provided that all subjects of the Crown who should go to inhabit within said lands, and their children born there, or on the scas, going or returning, should enjoy all liberties of free and natural subjects within any of the dominions of the Crown, as if they had been born within the realm. The Company also were empowered, agreeably to the often-repeated phrase in previous and subsequent charters, "to encounter, repulse, repel, and resist by force of arms, as well by sca as by land . . . all such person and persons as should at any time thercafter attempt or enterprise the destruction, detriment, or annoyance to the sail Plantation or inhabitants," &c. No mention is made of religious liberty.
Many of the powers which the Colony during the next fifty years pre- sumed to exercise, and for which they pleaded their charter as authority, were not specially granted in that instrument ; and, at a later period, these powers were held to have been assumed. No authority is expressly given
concerning the government of the said colony and plantation," &c.
1 Sir Thomas Coventry was at this time Lord Keeper.
2 Sir Ralph Freeman was " Auditor of Im- prests."
3 Sir Richard Sheldon, who signs this Docket, was the Solicitor-General. In the Docket as printed by Chalmers, and in that in the Signet Book, it says, "subscribed by Mr. Attorney- General." Sir Robert Heath was at this time
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