USA > Rhode Island > Washington County > Narragansett > South county studies of some eighteenth century persons, places & conditions in that portion of Rhode Island called Narragansett > Part 4
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JOHN SAFFIN, HIS BOOK
T HE name of Saffin declares itself to be of other than Saxon derivation, and is thought to have a Norman origin. Its New England associations have been strictly Puritan, and whenever it appears in Rhode Island annals, it stands for that measure of influence which Massachusetts communicated to our Colony. If we may indulge a taste for the picturesque in historical retrospect so far as to personify the ele- ments that mingled in our early colonial life under the aspect of figures in a dramatic scene, we shall recog- nize in the Rhode Island of more than two centuries ago a vigorous infant, sprung from a hardy stock, and we shall naturally conceive of the influence which formed the future State under the homely image which furnishes a summary of the ingredients of the caudle posset. The infant Colony, born to the heritage of poverty and exile, and reared with but scant counsel from aristocratic, ecclesiastical, or scholarly authorities, was nurtured upon a potion for which English tradi- tion supplied the formula. But it was freely diluted with pure water from the Founder's spring, and it was steeped over the pioneer's camp-fire, at the edge of the unbroken forest. The friendly Indian brought to it his offering of wholesome roots, of which the evanescent woodland aroma exhaled gratefully. The Quaker salted and stirred the mixture with benevolent care; the Hu- guenot piously mingled with it the rare gift of a few drops of wine from the sacred chalice; the Church- man, newly arrived in the Narragansett wilds, rose up reverently to say grace over it; then the Puritan,
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roused to wrath by the spirit of independence and fraternity uniting this pacific group of fugitives, sud- denly strode forth among them, from the lowering shadows of the forest, and, sternly thrusting them aside, cast into the decoction a handful of bitter herbs. The subtle infusion crept into the colonial veins, and lingers yet in the circulation of that body-politic whereof we are members. But by virtue of the timely spell pronounced by the Father of the Colony, provid- ing for the authority of the magistrate "only in civil things," the harshness of the controversial rancor was forever allayed; so that, despite the clash of Puritan bit- terness in our colonial loving-cup, all the coming gen- erations might drink from it, undismayed. The char- acteristic temper of Massachusetts towards Rhode Island is illustrated by some phases of the life of John Saffin, a typical Puritan. Puritan types have become fixed in our conceptions of such figures as are famil- iar to us either under the historical or poetical touch - stern leaders of our mythical age, or potent by the genius of our great romancer. Seldom do we meet with the sincere rendering of the life of an obscure but rep- resentative Puritan, unknown to history, unidealized by tradition. Searching the records that most vividly reproduce for us such a man, his class, and his times, is assuredly a work that needs no justification under a system of historical study which, in the modern spirit of inquiry into the social conditions of the colonists, has unveiled the Sewall diary.
John Saffin, who was born in 1632, belonged by nativity and family to "the County of Devon," Eng- land, being the eldest son of Simon Saffin, merchant, of
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John Saffin, His Book
Exeter, and Grace his wife, only daughter of Mr. John Garrett of Barnstable. We first hear of him in Scitu- ate, Massachusetts, when but ten years old. Apparently he lost his father early in life, and almost the only glimpse of his mother is afforded by one of her letters, received by him in his twenty-second year, but copied out by him with great reverence after he had reached middle age. His preface to it runs in a strain of true filial piety, albeit he winces slightly at the necessary recognition of a step-father. "A copie of a pathetical, pious, Instructive Letter, written by my own Dear and Hon'd Mother, Mrs. Grace Saffin, alias Ellsworth : her own handwriting: w'ch being worn allmost in pieces, I for its singular worth here Revived it:
London, March first, 1654
DEAR SON,
Three Letters I received by Mrs. Winslow, whereby I perceive you are going a Voyage for Virginia: I can- not but admire at God's Love and Mercy, both to me and mine that he doth look upon us in all Estates and conditions wheresoever we are, Either far or near."
The mother's pious meditations flow on, as in the familiar cadences of the Prayer Book, or as caught up and echoed directly from the rhythm of the Psalmist. Her notes of praise are in tune with his harmonies, and her prayers rise on the wings of his words. This, and a second journey to Virginia, which Saffin made a few years later, were doubtless commercial ventures, for he is described as a merchant, though he must have had some legal training to fit him for the positions to which
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he rose. His mother fervently exhorts him to "rest on Him that heard our prayers, and left us not to the will of them that would have trodden us down, and cryed there is no help for us: But the Lord was seen in the Mount when man rose up against us." Saffin notes in the margin, with a literalness that brings the seven- teenth century almost within our touch, "This was in the civil war, between the King and Parliament. J. S." Mrs. Ellsworth again refers to the past, in closing : "Now for myself I bless God I have a Comfortable Sub- sistance, and more than I did expect I should have had, in regard to the troubles of War we have had among us, wherein few were sure of Enjoying what they had, so that I may say with Jacob hitherto hath the Lord helped me and mine. Blessed be his holy Name." The tone of the mother's letter, intense in the solemnity of its appeals, even rising to the adjuration, "I charge you upon my Blessing that you labour after the knowledge of Christ," indicates the quality of the spiritual atmos- phere breathed by the son and prepares us for that proof of young Saffin's gravity and stability which appears in his election as a selectman of Scituate in his twenty-first year. Further testimony to this effect is found in a paper drawn up and subscribed by two of his townsmen, at his request (probably with a view to his settlement in Plymouth), and stating that "we have known him ever since he was about ten or twelve years old, .. . during which time his carriage was sober and civil, yea very commendable, and we do not know neither have hard of any carriage of his that could be a just blame unto him, nor did we ever p'ceive that he was at all edicted to keepe company (according to the
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common acceptation) but allways observed him very prudent in his carriage and wary whome he consorted with, always companinge with the better sorte, and every way demeaninge and carrying himself as inof- fensive, and as became an honest man."
A young man of such maturity of character and such dignity of manners soon found favor even with a father-in-law so exacting as the Worshipful Thomas Willett, a magistrate of Plymouth, and the first mayor of New York, who ordered by his will that if any one of his sons should marry without the consent of a ma- jority of the five executors, he should by that act forfeit his inheritance. John Saffin, in his twenty-sixth year, married Martha Willett, one of the magistrates offici- ating, on a Friday, as he notes, evidently in the spirit of Puritan protest against any fast day of ancient ap- pointment. On a Friday, also, he sailed for Virginia the next year, in a ketch bound from New London, prob- ably in accordance with the vessel's horoscope, since in such cases the superstition of the sea revoked its laws. After twenty years, his wife died, and the last survi- vor of his eight sons died in London, aged twenty-three. In Boston, of which town he had been a freeman since 1671, he married Elizabeth, widow of Peter Lidgett, Esq., a merchant, by whom she had been named ex- ecutrix of his will, being described as "the well be- loved wife of my youth." The ceremony was performed by "the Worshipful Joseph Dudley." Mrs. Saffin be- came an invalid and was "sundry years Bedrid, and some part thereof Distracted, but came to herself againe before She Dyed." Saffin, now aged fifty-six, married an heiress, Rebecca, the young daughter of his contem-
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porary, Rev. Samuel Lee, and granddaughter of a wealthy London citizen. The marriage was performed by a minister. Among the Puritans as with other colo- nists marriages were frequent, and the intervals of widowhood were brief. In their revolt from the Catholic interpretation of Christianity, and their literal follow- ing of the Old Testament, their asceticism, parting with the mediaeval type, became wholly Hebraistic in its regulations. Their esteem for marriage was absolutely Jewish, and their records, crowded with marriages, re- marriages, and intermarriages of family connections, suggest the solidity of a densely woven web of life, in which the cutting of one thread is felt throughout the fabric.
Saffin's life is naturally divided into two periods, the first marked by his prominence in the affairs of Bos- ton, and the second by his retirement to "New Bris- tol." He had lived in Swansea, Massachusetts, being numbered in the first rank of that unique New England community, which was divided into patricians and ple- beians, with inhabitants of middle standing. His manu- script record opens thus : "Memoriam. That in the be- ginning of November, Anno 1665, I was joyned to the first Church in Boston, God in mercy make me faithful to his covenant." A long letter to his "Hon'd and Beloved about to be Brethren," written four years later when the Old South was founded by separation from the First Church, breathes a more moderate spirit than that by which hewas afterwards known, but lays no slight em- phasis upon his individual opinions. Still, he is resolved not to secede from the Church, quoting the opinions of certain of "the Reverend Elders of New England,"
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in support of his position, and using the words of one worthy, who says of such divisions that "they are as Weights that Sinke and as Darts that Strike through my very Soul." "Thus Hee." The letter is marked by that vigor of which the writer has left many similar ex- amples. Saffin was one of the two "overseers" (as execu- tors were then styled) of the junior Endicott's will, proved in 1666, and in 1676, not long after the Nar- ragansett Swamp Fight, he was the bearer of a letter from the Massachusetts Council to the Rhode Island Government, demanding the delivery of Indians that "lie skulking in the woods," the tone of the message implying that Rhode Islanders were culpably lenient with the savages. In 1678 he took a prominent part in the elaborate funeral ceremonies of Governor Lev- erett, carrying one of the banners displayed in this first mortuary pageant which Puritan rigor had allowed. As the representative of the heirs of Thomas Willett, and as an independent proprietor, his name repeatedy appears in the records of the Atherton Purchase, and he was one of the three Narragansett proprietors who, in 1686, assigned to the Huguenot refugees the New- barry tract, west of Wickford, and who, upon their ob- jection to it, as too far from the sea, granted them that portion of East Greenwich still known as Frenchtown. He had long been involved in that controversy over the possession of the Narragansett lands which very nearly assumed the proportions of border war.
In 1679, upon his conviction, at Newport, of up- holding a foreign jurisdiction (that of Connecticut), the worthy Boston merchant experienced the fate of a very Shylock. Not only were his lands pronounced "confis-
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cate unto the State of Venice," or her modern represen- tative the indignant republic of Rhode Island, but he was, with superfluous severity, also fined and impris- oned. Saffin's resentment afterward inspired a rhymed address to the newly appointed Governor Bellamont, whom, of course, "Heaven hath sent to be a Sun in this our Firmament." Adopting the fraternal style of the Colonists of the Bay in saluting those of the Planta- tions, he brands them as "false perfidious, vile Rhode Islanders." The lapse of twenty years had not cooled the poet's wrath. Again he bore a part in this colonial drama, when, in 1683, he, with other adherents of Con- necticut, sustained their claims before the King's Com- missioner at Wickford, on that memorable occasion when the Rhode Island Legislature, assembled within a mile, redeemed its offended dignity by sending out the "sergeant general" with his trumpet, at the head of a troop of horse, who, by loud proclamations, or as the Commissioners plaintively allege, "in a riotous man- ner," warned them against holding a court in that juris- diction. This blowing of horns around that miniature Jericho, the contumacious hamlet of Wickford, failed to bring the besieged to terms of surrender; and Saf- fin once more paid an official visit to Narragansett when Dudley, in 1687, at his court held in the Smith Block- house, recognized the King's Province.
In Boston Neck, North Kingstown, he built in 1692 the house which was standing until 1872. This estate, which he is said to have occupied for three years, de- scended from him to the Willetts and from them to the late Willett Carpenter and his heirs. Here his individ- uality found expression in the massive chimney and
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wide hall that testified to his right English spirit, and the Scriptural tiles, crannies, and cupboards that il- lustrated his literal Puritanic beliefs and his labored quaintnesses of taste. It has been said that nothing so clearly marks the progress of the human mind as the changes in architecture: and in the typical homes of the colonists the buried seventeenth century still com- municates with us in tangible signs of timber and stone. Saffin could not escape that moral contagion of the slave-trade which left its blight on some of even the most exalted minds of his time. His letter in be- half of himself and other merchants, one of whom, Edward Shippen, was a Quaker, shows that more than two hundred years ago the wealthiest Bostonians were concerned in this traffic, while Rhode Island was as yet strongly opposed to it. The owners inform Mr. Wilstead, the master of one of the smaller vessels, that their ship Elizabeth, sent out the last year for Guinea, may be expected to touch at Swansea on her return. But the Rhode Islanders "understand thereof, and all give out there to leave her." Wilstead is to "Gayne ye entrance of that haven" ostensibly for fishing, keeping his men ignorant of his real design. He must speak with Warren, the returning captain, giving him the enclosed letter, and directing him to change his course to Nantasket, where Wilstead is to "take in such ne- groes, etc., as he hath of ours, and come up in the night with them, giving us notice thereof with what privacy you can, and we Shall take care for their Land- ing." Nothing must be suffered to hinder the meeting with Warren, "w'h is the needful at present."
Saffin, though closely associated with Judge Sewall
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in official and intimate relations, was no convert to his more humane views, but printed an answer to Sewall's paper against the slave-trade. Yet in 1694 he granted a "Deed of Freedom" to one of his slaves, provided that he should continue to serve Mr. Saffin's tenant at Bristol for seven years, after which the instrument should take effect. He carefully states his motive, as "one's love to and for the Incouragement of my Negro man Adam to goe-on chearfully in his Business." At the end of this Hebrew term of servitude, Adam would be required to fulfil the condition that he "Doe-behave and abase himself as an honest true and faithfull Sar- vant ought to Doe." Saffin's conscience was not more callous than that of the mass of his contemporaries, whose humanity was subject to the limitations of the age. Strange and devious are the ways of custom and prejudice wherein the little souls of men grope through their accepted round. The hand that signed this let- ter, authorizing the most cruel of all legalized schemes of wickedness, was the same that records many a righteous groan at the tragedy of St. Bartholomew's Day, or the corruption of the Papacy, with an "O Abominable," "O Luciferian." When he reverently transcribed his mother's solemn exhortations, did he never apply them to the standards of his daily deal- ings, or did they pass unrecognized, as no more than a strain of pious and pleasing sentiment? "Labour for an Interest in Christ," she pleads, "and you have all, he is Riches; then the Blessing of the Lord will be upon you in your going out and coming in, Buying, Sell- ing, and all that you set your hand unto." A mother's sacred tenderness, a son's deep affections, and the re-
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John Saffin, His Book
ligious devotion of both, fail to reach any purer ideal than such as emanates from the dark spirit of the age, revealed in the pastoral example of Cotton Mather, who held his slaves, and never raised his all-powerful voice against the traffic in human merchandise.
In 1684 the last formal claim made by the Indians to the site of Boston was extinguished, the town tak- ing a deed from Sachem Charles Josias to sundry of the "proprieted inhabitants," of whom John Saffin was one. From 1684 to 1686 he was returned as a deputy to the General Court, and in the latter year his abil- ities obtained for him the place of Speaker of the House, which he filled until the arrival of Andros, be- ing at that time one of the Governor's Council. The protest of the Assembly against the new government was addressed to Dudley and his Council, having been "taken by me J. S.," as he relates in his note-book, 'passed by the whole Assembly, and so Entered by Record." In this paper the members complain that they are not officially recognized, and protest against the abridgment of the colonial liberties, implied in the new commission. They "cannot give assent thereto, yet hope Shall demean ourselves as true and loyal Sub- jects to his Majesty and humbly make our Addresses unto God, and in due time to our gracious Prince, for our relieff." Saffin calls this the "last reply" of the Court to Dudley. Five days later the change was of- ficially announced, being generally accepted with a resignation to which the harsh spirit of Saffin could not readily conform. He was one of the confidential com- mittee of three appointed to receive from Secretary Rawson all papers relating to Indian titles, and all re-
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ferring to the negotiations for keeping the charter; the mass of the state papers having been delivered up to Andros. A year later Saffin counselled submission to the new government in his letter despatched to his friend John Allen, the Colonial Secretary, at Hartford, and which is preserved in the files of the State De- partment. He anticipates the abrogation of the colonial charters, and fears that "they that stand out longest will fare the worst at last." Rage furnishes weapons, saith Saffin, saying it, however, in a learned language, with scraps of which he ever loved to adorn his pe- dantic pages. But his immediate anxiety is lest Con- necticut should "adhere to the West." This expres- sion refers to the designs of Governor Dongan, who was taking all means to secure the charter, in the hope of annexing Connecticut to New York. Should this happen, "you will be an undone people," exclaims Saffin, "for you will part with your best grounds." This letter was doubtless sent as an antidote to the bane contained in the official one from Andros with which it went, requiring the surrender of the charter, and com- mending Randolph, as worthy of confidence.
The General Court being abolished, Saffin, now in his fifty-seventh year, disappears from public life in Boston, and retires to his estate in Bristol. History dis- misses him from her train of gentlemen-in-waiting, and relegates him to a place in merely parochial an- nals. His name appeared on the list of Bristol settlers in 1681, but his actual residence dates from 1688. He mentions the landing of his household stuff at his dwelling-house at "Boundfield," and the planting of an orchard there. He and his wife, with their eight ser-
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vants (doubtless negro slaves) are enumerated in the list of inhabitants, and he heads the list of the church members, being the only one who bears the valued title of Mr. He was probably attracted to the township by the relation in which he stood to its minister, Rev. Samuel Lee, his father-in-law, the Oxford scholar who was styled "the Glory of both Englands." His local activities now begin, and he zealously serves the new settlement in all capacities, from the temporary office of constable up to that of deputy to the Assembly for four years. He was selectman and justice of the peace ; was known as an eager mover in all local interests ; and vainly endeavored to obtain for Bristol the confirmation of an early grant of freedom from import and excise. He was foremost in church matters, being a member of the committees for the settlement of the successive ministers, for providing the means of their support, and for finishing the meeting-house. Certain of the larger positions which he still filled, linked him to his former associations in Boston. By the fall of Andros in 1689 he was restored to a place in the General Court. He was the first judge of probate appointed for the newly formed county of Bristol, and he filled that office for ten years. He was made judge of the Court of Common Pleas ; and he was a judge of the Superior Court of Massachu- setts in 1701, being an associate with Judge Sewall. At the first popular election of a Governor's Council in 1693, under the new charter of William and Mary, he was chosen one of the ten who were preferred to ten others, and he was thus a member of that council upon which the executive power devolved, during the short interval between the death of Governor Stoughton
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and the arrival of Dudley in 1703. Upon Dudley's re- turn to power, Saffin was rudely dismissed from public office, and never again held influential positions. After ten years of exile, Dudley's first act was to reject from the Council the five gentlemen who were members of the old Government which was restored in 1689, and by which he had been ignominiously imprisoned.
Hutchinson comments upon the insufficiency of Dudley's obstinate objection to these Councillors, who were all of good standing, Mr. Saffin being "one of the chief inhabitants of Bristol." It was but the second instance in which a Massachusetts Governor, under the charter, had challenged any name on the list of his assistants, and his course created much remark. He treated the House more cavalierly than did Phipps or Bellamont. Saffin sardonically deprecated Dudley's re- venge in a rhymed address, which was apparently re- ceived by the magnate with that hearty disgust which the impracticable man of letters inspires in the arro- gant officers of the State. Saffin warns his Excellency that his changes in Church and Commonwealth, if fully accomplished, would "Cause us to Cease to be Right Englishmen." Spurning Dudley's offensive de- scription of him, he subscribes his epistle
"From one, tho' aged, is not whimsey Pated, Or prone to dote, nor Superanuated."
In an indignant letter to a friend he cites a debate in the House of Lords, from which he draws authority for the spirit of his protest against Dudley's treatment of him. "I am not so stupid, nor insensible or Super- anuated (as he was pleased most unworthyle to ren-
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John Saffin, His Book
der me in the Council, when he put a negative on me and other Gentlemen, then legally chosen Members of her Majesty's Council) so as to incapacitate me of Enjoying the right of an Englishman's Birth, in point of honour, or other Interest."
Saffin despatched another caustic missive to Dud- ley in the following year, on hearing that his Excel- lency was in the month of January "going over Charles River upon the Ice, with a sley and four horses, with his wife and Daughters; the ice suddenly brake, and all the horses falling into the River, the two hinder- most Horses were Drowned, and his Excellency and his hardly excepted but were Wonderfully preserved. Laus Deo." The congratulations on his escape are tem- pered with very plain admonitions, and pointed hints at his defection from the principles of the fathers. Should Dudley's plans prevail, "We must Return to Egypt once agen." The writer appeals to the revered memory of
" Those Renouned Worthys, men of Name, Who first to settle to this Country came. But O consider what they preached and prayed, Who did denounce Great Woes to him who should, Rase that fair structure God by them did build."
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