USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 66
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
General Court that he " shall have a staff with some remarkable distinction provided by the town, which may be as a sign or badge of his office, and this staff to take along with him when he shall go forth to discharge any part of his office; which staff shall be black and about five feet or five and a half foot long, tipped at the upper end about five or six inches with brass." The Tipstaff thus was as near an approach to familiar slang as our ancestors seem to have allowed. Nevertheless, in spite of the dignity of this office, - because, perhaps, of its arduousness, - it became difficult after a while to secure constables, especially in Boston ; and in 1653 a fine of ten pounds was laid on any one who refused to accept the office.1
The opportunities of the constable were frequent and various, for the laws were minute and explicit. The early records of the colony sound with the swish of the rod, and no picture of the early Boston seems at all com- plete without a well-filled stocks and bilboes. Robert Bartlett, presented for cursing and swearing, was sentenced to have his tongue put in a cleft stick. John Smith, for swearing, being penitent, was set in the bilboes. The treasury must have been considerably augmented if all the fines im- posed were paid. Nor were the graver modes of correction and punish- ment wanting. Already, in 1632, a House of Correction was ordered for Boston, and with it a house for the beadle, who seems to have acted as sheriff. The gallows stood ready to receive obdurate sinners,2 and while the penalty of death upon the statute book was probably in many cases only a sol- emn threat, it is certain that no merely sentimental dread of capital punish- ment stood in the way of inflicting it. In one instance, at least, the public executioner burned heretical books in the market-place, when, in 1654, the books of John Reeves and Lodowich Muggleton, who pretended to be the last two witnesses and prophets of Jesus Christ, appeared in Boston. Two years later some books in defence of the Quaker doctrine shared the same fate.
The town crier was another ancient officer whose voice has been silent for some years in Boston. His orders were to cry three several times for things lost, and to keep a book wherein he was to write down faithfully all such things with their marks, the names of parties, and the days of crying, his fees being twopence apparently for each article.
For protection against fire there were laws, buckets, and ladders; and in 1654, at any rate, fire-engines were offered to the selectmen by Joseph
1 [Savage's Boston by Daylight and Gaslight, 1873, since enlarged into a History of the Boston Il'atch, gives further details. Some particulars relating to the setting of watches are noted in Sewall Papers, i. 53. - ED.]
2 [The earliest executions took place on the Common. Shurtleff, Description of Boston, 352. Dunton, Letters, p. 118, describes with a good deal of particularity the execution of Morgan, a murderer, and the sermons preached before
him, one of which, by Cotton Mather, was the first of his three hundred and eighty-three publi- cations. Dunton speaks of another of these sermons by Increase Mather, as preached before five thousand people in Mr. Willard's meeting- house, after the "gallery had cracked" in the new church, where the services began. The place of execution was "about a mile out of Boston." - ED.]
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
Jynks. The chief cause of fire was held to be in flaming chimneys, and a fine was exacted in every case where fire was seen to issue above the top; special orders were given also from time to time to secure chimneys when they appeared to be dangerous. Chimney-sweepers were under the appoint- ment of the selectmen. At the time of what was known as the Great Fire, in 1653-54, an order of the town required every householder to provide for his house a ladder long enough to reach to the ridge, and " a pole of about twelve foot long, with a good large swab at the end of it, to reach the roof of his house to quench fire," while six good and long ladders for the use of the town were hung upon the side of the meeting-house. Further regulations gave power to the authorities to pull down houses if necessary to stop fire, permission to construct a cistern, and restricted the building of a fire within certain limits after nine o'clock at night and before five in the morning. So, later still, a regulation was made to prevent people from carrying fire from one house to another in " open fire-pans or brands-ends ; " and a special order forbade any person taking tobacco, or bringing a lighted match or fire, under- neath or about any part of the town-house, except in case of military exer- cise.1 In 1652 there was a water-works company incorporated in Conduit Street, of which an account is given in another chapter .? One Captain Crom- well 3 had given some bells to the town, and in 1650 the selectmen were em-
1 After the second fire in 1676, which suc- ceeded to the name of the Great Fire, the General Court took action which recalls dis- tinctly enough the condition of affairs after what is now known as the Boston Fire. " Up- on complaint made by the selectmen of Bos- ton of the inconvenience of the straitness of the streets lately laid waste by fire, it is ordered that no person presume to build there again without the advice and order of the selectmen, until the next General Court," 24th May, 1676.
2 [By Mr. Smith, on "Boston and the Col- ony."- ED.]
3 [This Captain Cromwell was a notorious character, who might well figure in a Boston romance. Winthrop, Hist. of New England, ii. 263, records his being here a common seaman in 1636. Ile was a vagabond of kindly nature, but was then well treated by one "of the poorer sort," and remembered it when ten years later, in 1646, he came into the harbor with a number of Spanish prizes in his train, which he had captured in a freebooting way, under a commis- sion from the Earl of Warwick. Coming across the hay, stress of weather had forced him into Plymouth, where he and his men " spent liberally and gave freely," which the Pilgrims, in their straits, were not averse to their doing. lIere one of Cromwell's men got drunk, and assault- ing the captain the fellow was killed by a blow from his rapier. Cromwell then brought his fleet to Boston, and, as the story goes, though he had
money enough to hire the finest house in town, he contented himself with quarters under the humble roof of the poor man who had earlier befriended him. Bradford, recording his story, Plymouth Plantation, 441, says that " he scattered a great deal of money" in Boston, "and yet more sin, I fear, than money." He presented to the Governor a rich sedan chair which he had taken on one of his prizes; and Winthrop, a little later, turned it to good account in giving it to D'Aulnay by way of propitiation, when he settled terms of a treaty with him. Cromwell liked Boston well enough to settle here, but he was soon off on another marauding expedition, and was absent three years. Bradford says " he tooke sundry prises, and returned rich unto the Massachusets, and ther dyed the same somere, having gott a fall from his horse, in which fall he fell on his rapeir hilts, and so brused his body as he shortly after dyed thereof." This happened between August, 1649, when he made his will, and October, when it was probated. In it he gave six bells to the town, doubtless some of his plunders. (.V. E. Hlist, and Geneal. Reg. iii. 26%.) Ilis widow, Anne, married Robert Knight ; and, again a widow, married John Joy- liffe, in 1657, whose death Sewall records in 1701. (Sewall Papers, ii. 48.) It was one of the Cromwell bells, probably, referred to in the fol- lowing memorandum from the Town Record, in 1655: "A greatt bell belonging to the towne sent to Castle Island to Capt. Richard Daven- port."- ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
powered to dispose of them to the best advantage, and to lay out the pro- ceeds in one bell for a clock; but a year or two afterward the bells had not been disposed of, for it was ordered on March 1, 1652, " that James Everill and the neighbors which set up the Conduit by the Dock shall have one of the bells (which were given by Captain Cromwell) for a clock, and to enjoy it while they make that use of it there." Smaller bells were used by bell- men, who went up and down at night as special watchmen.1
The beacon on Sentry Hill was the great alarm-tower of the town. It was ordered to be set up in March, 1634-35, " 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 present- ly sent by that town where the danger is discovered to all other towns within the jurisdiction." But the necessity of a watch and of military training was coincident with the settling of the town. In 1631 it was ordered that a watch of six and an officer should be kept in Boston; and in the same year a training was observed every Saturday. The next year the train- ing-day was made monthly, and in 1637 the number of trainings in the year was reduced to eight; but every person above eighteen, except the magistrates and elders, was compellable for service either in person or by substitute. The magistrates and teaching elders were also allowed each a man free from training. Absence from training was fined, and a little later, in 1645, it was ordered that all the youth from ten to sixteen years should be instructed by a competent person in the exercise of small arms, such as small guns, half pikes, and bows and arrows.2 The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company dates from this time, when on the 13th of March, 1638-39, it was formed under its first name of the "Military Company of the Massachusetts." 3
Some slight military pomp added to the dignity of the Governor's office. It was ordered, in 1634-35, that at every General Court six men appointed by the Governor from his town should attend with halberds and swords upon the person of the Governor, - a custom which has survived apparently in the occasional attendance of the Lancers, as at Commencement. This custom of military attendance is referred to by Winthrop in his Journal,
1 [The Town Records, under date of " 26th, Ioth moneth," 1653, say : "Simon Rogers and Robtt. Read hath engaged to serve the towne as Bellmen, to goe up and downe throughout the towne by the space of five howers in the night, beginning at eleaven, and soe to contynue till foure, and to have twentye shillings by the week for their labor." - ED.]
" [ The town drummer was Arthur Perry, and in 1638 he was allowed yearly {2 " for his drum- ming to the Company upon all occasions." His pay was increased to 64 10s., in 1642. For his last year and a half he had £9. In 1643 he was paid £4 for teaching his successors, Nathaniel
Newgate and George Clifford, who agreed to do " all common service in drumming for the towne on Trayning dayes and watches." Perry lived on School Street, near Province Street. He continued to drum for some years after this, not- withstanding the new appointments. - ED.]
3 [Z. G. Whitman's History of this company has been twice printed, - 1820 and 1842. Captain Robert Keayne, who had been a member of the London Company of similar title, seems to have been the chief promoter of the new organiza- tion; and the Boston association claims to be an offshoot of the older one, as is allowed in G. A. Raikes's History of the London Company .- ED.]
51I
BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
where he speaks of a difficulty which he had with the attendants: "Upon the election of the new governor, the sergeants who had attended the old governor to the Court (being all Boston men, where the new governor also dwelt) laid down their halberds and went home; and whereas they had been wont to attend the former governor to and from the meetings on the Lord's days, they gave over now, so as the new governor was fain to use his own servants to carry two halberds before him; whereas the for- mer governor had never less than four." 1
The clergy, however, were as high in honor and social position as the magistrates. In the list of things noted the 16th of March, 1628-29, to provide to send for New England, the order in which these " things " stand is (1) Ministers; (2) Patent under Seal; (3) Seal, -and after that seed grains of various sort. The Company was plainly intent on sowing the seed of the Word first ; 2 and in a subsequent meeting for the preliminary arrange- ments it was decided that the expense of ministers and churches should be borne one half by the Company, one half by the individual planters. The very first order upon the records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony after reaching this country has reference to the building of houses for the ministers, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips, and the furnishing them with sup- plies. They were ever in the minds of the Colony. In 1646 the supply was giving out, and there began to be an opportunity for home-bred ministers. We read in the records of the colony: "This Court being sensible of the necessity and singular use of good literature in managing the things of greatest concern in the Commonwealth, as also perceiving the fewness of persons accomplished to such employment, especially for future times, have thought meet to propose to all every our reverend elders and brethren that due care be had from time to time to employ and exercise such stu- dents, especially in divinity, so that they may not have to go away." It was added as a practical suggestion that the younger students should assist the church officers in their work. In 1657 other troubles arose, and a committee was appointed to inquire into the alleged poverty of the min- isters of the churches.
The well-known respect shown to the clergy was a part of that general respect for religion and religious observances which found expression in a number of legislative acts, all looking toward conformity to the Puritan ideal.3 Absence from church meetings was visited by fines and imprison- ment. Should any man reproach the Word or the minister thereof, he was
1 History of New England, i. 221. See Savage's note there, as also a passage and note, pp. 224, 225.
2 " Now to declare how this people pro- ceeded in religious matters, and so consequently all the Churches of Christ planted in New Eng- land, when they came once to hopes of being such a competent number of people as might be able to maintain a minister, they then surely seated themselves, and not before; it being as
unnatural for a right N. E. man to live without an able Ministery as for a Smith to work his iron without a fire." - Johnson, Wonder-work- ing Providence, bk. ii. ch. 22.
3 [Dr. Dexter has shown the common notion, that such a thing as the dismission of a pastor scarcely took place in the early days of New England, to be an error, disproving it by citing numerous instances. Congregationalism as secu in its Literature, 586, 587. - ED.]
512
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
proceeded against. For the first offence he was to be reproved by the magistrate. For the second he was to pay five pounds, or stand two hours openly upon a block four feet high, on a lecture day, with a paper fixed on his breast, with the words " A WANTON GOSPELLER " written in capital let- ters, that others might " fear and be ashamed of breaking out into the like wickedness." Indians were to be taught religion and laws, and to be brought under the same ecclesiastical discipline. Blasphemy, whether by Indian or white man, was punishable by death. Notorious and obstinate hereties were fined. The Church was regarded as an essential part of the State, and disregard of it was disregard of the plainest means of knowing the laws. "Seeing that the Word is of general and common behoof to all sorts of people, as being the ordinary means to subdue the hearts of hear- ers not only to the faith and obedience to the Lord Jesus, but also to civil obedience and allegiance unto magistrates, and to just and honest con- versation toward all men: it is therefore ordered and declared that every person shall duly resort and attend upon the Lord's Day, fasts and thanks- givings, or be fined."1 The Lord's Day was guarded by stringent regula- tions. "If any young person or others be found without either meeting house,2 idling or playing during the time of public exercise on the Lord's day, it is ordered that the constables or others appointed for that end shall take hold of them and bring them before authority."3 Within the meeting- house boys were also under watch. Indeed, the Puritan attitude towards boys generally is one of vast suspicion. They were in the eyes of the law a species of untamed beings, always bound for mischief, and capable of developing into good citizens only through a most restrictive process. There were regular officers, the tithing-men, employed to act as special police within the meeting-houses. "Sergeant Johnson and Walter Merry are requested to take the oversight of the boys in the galleries, and in case of unruly disorders to acquaint the Magistrates therewith."+ "Jno. Dawes is ordered to oversee the youth at the new meeting-house that they behave themselves reverently in the time of divine worship, and to act according to his instructions therein."5 The boys in the galleries were spectators of the services that went on under their eyes. It is doubtful if they were regarded as themselves a positive part of the worshipping congregation; but long before they came to their freedom they must have become familiar with the services on Sunday, and with the topics discussed from the pulpit. At first there was no bell to call people together, but a drum was beaten. It is probable that the first use of a bell was at the hands of the bellman going about the town as the hour for worship drew near.6 The families
1 4th Nov. 1646.
2 There were two at this time, - 1656.
3 Boston Town Records, 131.
4 Ibid., March 27, 1643.
5 Ibid., March 28, 1659.
6 [See, on early bells in Boston, N. F. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1874, p. ISo ; also, E. H. Goss's Early Bells of Massachusetts. Dr.
Dexter, in his Congregationalism as seen in its Lit- erature, has a note, p. 452, on the devices used in calling the people to services on Sundays. Ed- ward Tyng, who lived on the upper corner of State Street and Merchants Row (which was then the shore), where he had a warehouse and brew- house, maintained there a dial as early as 1643. Record Commissioners, Second Rept., P. 75. - ED.]
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BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
were divided, as one sometimes now sees them in New England country villages, -the men on one side, the women and girls on the other, and the boys, who made a third class, by themselves, with the tithing-man to super- vise them. The ruling elders had a seat immediately below the pulpit, facing the congregation. They were raised apparently upon a platform ; and in front of them, upon a lower plane, yet still often above the people, sat the deacons in similar position. The dignity and social rank of the families was indicated in the places severally assigned to them. The first service was at about nine o'clock in the morning. The pastor began with extemporaneous prayer, lasting about a quarter of an hour. After prayer, either the pastor or a teaching elder read a chapter in the Bible and ex- pounded it. A psalm was then sung, lined out by one of the ruling elders. The Psalms were something of a stumbling-block to the people. The Psalter, as used in the English church, was adapted to chanting, and more- over the associations with it were of prelacy. The Puritans, by the same instinct which led them to reprehend the reading of the Bible without comment as savoring of idolatry and the surrender of reason, wished to use the Psalms in a metrical version ; and in the early years of Massachu- setts Bay used either that of Sternhold and Hopkins, or that made by Ains- worth, of Amsterdam. The Plymouth people used the latter, Priscilla Mullins among them : -
" Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth, Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together."
The Bay Psalm Book superseded these in Boston in 1640. For a long time a very small number of tunes - of which York, Hackney, Windsor, St. Mary's, and Martyrs were the chief - were in use by congregations.1 Instrumental music was proscribed. There is little reference to the singing in churches in the early records, and the darkness is made more dense by this unex- plained passage in the records of the General Court, under date of June I, 1641: "Mr. Edward Tomlins, retracting his opinions against singing in the churches, was discharged." There is nothing to enlighten us as to the ground of Mr. Tomlins's objections ; he may have murmured against the quality of the music, as people do to-day who are not arrested; or he may have had painful doubts as to the propriety of singing at all.
After the singing came the sermon, which was the piece de resistance. When there was an affluence of ministry, one expounded the Word while another preached. The sermon was rarely written out in those days; it was measured, not by the number of pages upon which it was written, but by the hour-glass which stood at the preacher's side. The minimum or regu- lation length seems to have been an hour, but Johnson 2 speaks of a listener to Mr. Shepard, of Cambridge, seeing the glass turned up twice ; and on a special occasion, - the planting of a church at Woburn, - he relates that the Rev. Mr. Syms continued in preaching and prayer about the space of four
1 See Coffin's History of Newbury, 185, 186.
2 Wonder-working Providence, bk. i. ch. xliii. VOL. 1 .- 65.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
or five hours.1 Following the sermon was a prayer by the teaching elder 2 and the blessing. Sometimes another psalm also was sung after the sermon. A second service, substantially the same in character, was at two o'clock in the afternoon.
The mode of dispensing the sacrament of the Lord's Supper did not materially differ from that still in use in Congregational churches. Baptism was usually administered on Sunday in church, generally the Sunday near- est the birth of the child. Lechford, who is the authority for the mode of observances at this time, seems to imply that the rite was generally per- formed after service in the afternoon. It is done, he adds, " by either Pastor or Teacher, in the Deacon's seat, the most eminent place in the church, next under the Elder's seat. The Pastor most commonly makes a speech or cxhortation to the church and Parents concerning Baptism, and then prayeth before and after. It is done by washing or sprinkling." 3 The same writer does not fail to describe another part of the service which has always been conspicuous, and, because of its secular associations, perhaps especially interesting to the boys in the gallery, -" which ended," he says, directly after his description of baptism, " follows the contribution, one of the Deacons saying, 'Brethren of the congregation, now there is time left for contribution, whereof as God hath prospered you, so freely offer.' Upon some extraordinary occasions, as building and repairing of churches or meeting-houses, or other necessities, the ministers press a liberal con- tribution, with effectual exhortations out of Scripture. The Magistrates and chief Gentlemen first, and then the Elders, and all the congregation of men and most of them that are not of the church, all single persons, widows, and women in absence of their husbands, come up one after an- other one way and bring their offerings to the Deacon at his seat, and put it into a box of wood for the purpose, if it be money or papers; if it be any other chattel, they set it or lay it down before the Deacons, and so pass another way to their seats again. This contribution is of money, or papers promising so much money: I have seen a fair gilt cup with a cover offered there by one, which is still used at the communion. Which moneys and goods the Deacons dispose towards the maintenance of the Ministers, and the poor of the church, and the church's occasions, without making account ordinarily."4 Josselyn describes the scene even more graphically : "On Sundays in the afternoon, when sermon is ended, the people in the galleries come down and march two abreast up one aisle and down the other until they come before the desk, for pulpit they have none; before the desk is a long pew, where the Elders and Deacons sit, one of them with a money-box in his hand, into which the people as they pass put their offering, - some
1 Ibid. bk. ii., ch. xxii. [Yonge, Life of Hugh Peters, gives a caricature of that preacher, turn- ing over his hour-glass, saying, "I know you are good fellows; stay and take another glass."-ED.] 2 This description applies to a church com- pletely officered ; but all were not so. Upon the
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