JOHN WINTHROP (1588-1649)

As Plymouth owed her existence to the notable ability of William Bradford, so Boston, or more properly the Province of Massachusetts Bay, was dependent in considerable measure upon the energy and administrative skill of John Winthrop.

He was born in 1588, in Suffolk, of a good family, and received his education at Trinity College, Cambridge. Marrying in 1605, before a degree had been granted him, he spent the next few years at the home of his wife in Essex. When she died in 1615 he had become a man of considerable property, of respected social position, and of markedly religious propensities. A second wife, whom he married in 1616, lived less than a year. In 1618 he married Margaret Tyndal, who was later to follow him on his great adventure to America.

How Winthrop spent the next few years is not altogether certain, but the study of law must have occupied some of his time, for in 1626 he seems to have been admitted to the Bar, and in 1628 he became a member of the Inner Temple-a fact which is quite properly interpreted as indicating that his emigration to New England was not then in contemplation.

In 1629, however, when Charles I dissolved Parliament, Winthrop began to have acute misgivings concerning the future.

"I am

verylye persuaded God will bring some heavye affliction upon this lande, and that speedylye," he wrote to his wife; and again, "Evil times are coming, when the church must fly to the wilderness." In August of the same year he was one of twelve who signed an agreement to emigrate to New England, provided the government of the proposed colony could be legally established in America. On the 29th of March, 1630, bearing the Royal Charter made out in the name of "The Governor and the Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England," and having been already elected first governor of the new colony, Winthrop boarded the Arbella, flagship of his squadron of six vessels, and began the voyage to the new land.

When Winthrop and his associates were finally established at Boston, the colony became at once the most important center of English civilization in America. Many of the emigrants were, like Winthrop, University men; some were men of considerable property. Stern and uncompromising in their Calvinistic Puritanism, admitting no one to the suffrage who was not a church-member, and becoming in some ways as intolerant as the Stuart monarch whose tyranny they hoped to escape, these leaders of the colony were nevertheless able administrators, skilful business men, and farsighted, constructive statesmen. They established a system of popular education from which the entire American public school system has descended; within six years of landing at Boston they founded Harvard College; they laid the foundations for representative government; they enforced the laws, and promoted the worship of that Creator under whose special guidance they felt themselves to be.

The cbvious faults of Winthrop and his associates-intolerance, narrowness of spiritual outlook, cruelty in their dealings with Indians and Quakers, superstition-these were faults which it was inevitable that time should ameliorate or remove. Their virtues were of the primary sort without which early American society would have disintegrated and disappeared.

For nearly nineteen years Winthrop lived at Boston, and was intimately connected with the government during the entire time. As Governor, Deputy-Governor, or member of the Council, he was one of the small group in whose keeping rested the future of the colony. His death in 1649 removed from Massachusetts her foremost citizen.

Winthrop's Journal, which constitutes his chief claim to inclusion in a volume like the present, is a simple record of events, beginning with the embarkation at Cowes, in March, 1630, and ending with an entry for January 11, 1649, only two and one half months before Winthrop's death. The work lacks the coherence of Bradford's history of Plymouth; stylistically, it is far inferior to that document. But as a first-hand account of the early years at Boston, as a self-portrait of one of America's great men, and as an intimate revelation of the soul of the Puritan, the Journal can hardly be said to have a peer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EDITIONS. The first complete edition of the Journal was that of James Savage, Boston, 1825-26, revised and reprinted in 1853. Savage had access to the three original notebooks in Winthrop's own hand. The second of these was burned shortly after Savage made his copy. Consequently the best recent edition, that edited by J. K. Hosmer, N. Y.

1908, is based on the Savage of 1853. Inasmuch as Savage modernized the spelling, and expanded Winthrop's abbreviations, the selections in the present volume differ markedly as regards language from those, say, by Bradford, who was writing at the same time.

BIOGRAPHIES. The best sources of biographical information, aside from the Journal itself, are R. C. Winthrop's Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Boston, 1863, and J. H. Twichell's John Winthrop, First Governor of Massachusetts, N. Y. 1892. Some Old Puritan Love-Letters, ed. J. H. Twichell, N. Y. 1893, shows a side of Winthrop's character that does not appear in his more formal work. Volumes 6 and 7, Series IV, Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections, contain a large number of letters by Winthrop and his contemporaries.

NOTES

THE JOURNAL

20. a. 28. Thomas Morton. Another reference to the notorious trouble-maker at Merrymount. See Bradford's references to him, p. 14, above, and his own account, p. 27, above.

21. a. 38. To come to a killock. To anchor, using a heavy rock instead of an anchor.

22. a. 45. Snake-weed. A plant, still known in some places by this name, which was supposed to be a specific for the bite of venomous snakes.

23. b. 27. The ensign at Salem was defaced. John Endicott's most famous exploit the act of cutting the cross from the royal colors-occasioned his contemporaries much alarm. They sympathized with his anti-papal prejudices, but did not wish the colonists to appear as rebels against the crown. See Hawthorne's story, Endicott and the Red Cross, p. 367, above.

24. a. 5. Being criminally accused.

The

record of Winthrop's trial on the charge of having exceeded his legal powers, and of acting in a tyrannical and oppressive manner, is one of the most significant entries in the Journal. Here is clear indication of the growth of a democratic spirit with which the Puritan establishment was out of sympathy. To be sure, the verdict of the court, which acquitted Winthrop, and fined his principal accusers, shows that the protestors were still powerless to effect any real change in the social or legal order; the fact that they dared protest, and summon a man of Winthrop's position to trial, is indicative of the unrest that later was to modify the entire order of things in America.

THOMAS MORTON (?-1646)

When Thomas Morton published his New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637), he not only set forth his side of a famous quarrel, but also gave evidence of being a man of some wit and humor. He was an English lawyer, of dubious reputation, who first visited New England in 1622, and returned three years later as a member of Wollaston's adventurous company. Settling at what is now Braintree, Massachusetts, Wollaston soon left for Virginia (see Bradford's remarks, p. 14, above), and Morton became the leader of the new community. Both his character and conduct were offensive to his neighbors at Plymouth; the erection of a May-pole, in the spring of 1627, was a direct challenge to them. Much more serious than this, however, was the fact that Morton was suspected of furnishing the Indians with powder and muskets.

This last offence was more than the Pilgrim temper could endure. An expedition was fitted out under the leadership of Miles Standish, and after a sort of opera-bouffe skirmish, Morton was led away in chains, and the main dwelling house of the settlement destroyed. The May-pole was later cut down by John Endicott. Hawthorne's account, in The Maypole of Merrymount, makes the whole matter sufficiently vivid, though the details are more inaccurate than is usual with Hawthorne.

During the remainder of Morton's life his career was that of an unprincipled adventurer and trouble-maker, and is uninteresting so far as American literature is concerned. He died in destitution in 1646.

of a committee of ministers, of whom Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Welde were the most influential. The immediate occasion of the publication was the desire, on the part of the Puritan churches, for a metrical translation of the Psalms, adapted for singing, and more literal than that currently in use. It shortly became known by the title commonly given it to-day, and remained the most popular hymn-book in America till the Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts supplanted it a century later.

Though the versification often appears crude and harsh, there is a dignity about the work which redeems it from commonplaceness; and occasionally, as in the version of the 121st Psalm, the translation rises to heights not often surpassed in early American religious verse.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Copies of the original edition of the Whole Booke of Psalmes are today exceedingly rare. Fortunately a facsimile reprint, edited by Wilberforce Eames, N. Y. 1903, for the New England Society, is available in most large libraries.

ROGER WILLIAMS (?1604-1683)

The name of Roger Williams inevitably calls to mind the most outspoken attempt made during the early years of Puritan civilization in America to mellow the sternness of the dominant régime, and especially to popularize a more tolerant attitude towards persons who differed from the majority on matters of conscience. Bradford makes note of Williams in his History, and Winthrop records the vote of banishment passed against him. Neither man, however, understood the significance of Williams's protest, or anticipated the fame that would come to him as a result of his opposition to the Puritan régime.

was

He was born in London, just when is uncertain, but between 1599 and 1604. cated at the Charterhouse School and CamEdubridge University, he took orders, and in 1629 was holding a chaplaincy in Essex. In February of 1631, however, he landed at Boston, and soon "Teacher" of the church at Salem. A short established as residence at Plymouth followed before he returned to Salem, where he soon found himself in disfavor with the authorities because of his opposition to their methods of dealing with the Indians, and his outspoken arguments in favor of religious toleration. Banished from the colony in 1635, he fled to what is now Rhode Island, where he established a new settlement, which he hoped would be a "shelter for persons distressed for conscience."

It was in part at least due to his influence

that when the Pequot War broke out in 1636 the Narragansett Indians remained friendly to the whites and gave them valuable aid. Of his many activities in promoting the welfare of the Rhode Island settlement, this is not the place to speak. Suffice it to say that he stood in much the same relation to it that Bradford and Winthrop assumed towards Plymouth and Boston. His fame, however, is due neither to his administrative ability nor to his work among the Indians, whose friendship he won, and for whose language he prepared a dictionary. He lives rather on account of his "liberalism," his opposition to that intolerance which was the most unlovely element in the older Puritanism. His death took place early in 1684.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

For a short time after reaching Massachusetts, till his failing health compelled him to resign, he was minister of the church at Ipswich; after giving up this position in 1636 he remained in the new colony till 1646, and became a person of considerable influence with the governing minority. He had a large hand in framing the Body of Liberties adopted by the General Court in 1641, and served on the committee that revised all the laws of the colony in 1645. In 1646 he returned to England, where he served in the church till his death in 1652. His best-known work, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam (London, 1647), is primarily one of the counter-blasts to the attacks which were already being made upon the Puritan régime in America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best available edition of the Cobler is that published at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1906, by the Ipswich Historical Society. J. W. Dean's A Memoir of the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, Albany, 1868, is the best biography, though unfortunately rare.

NOTES

THE SIMPLE COBLER

37. a. 22. True religion is Ignis probationis, etc. True religion is a testing fire, which doth gather together the like, and separate the unlike.

37. b. 14. The Jannes and the Jambres. See 2 Timothy iii, 8.

b. 20. Nullum Malum, etc. No evil is worse than liberty to err.

38. a. 13. Ridentem dicere verum, etc. What prohibits a laughing man from speaking the truth?

39. a. 49. Le Roy le

veult, . . . les Seigneurs. ... assentus. Phrases used, respectively, to indicate that the King has accepted a bill passed by Parliament, that the Lords have passed a bill, and that the Commons have passed a bill.

ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672)

Among the passengers in the Arbella, flagship of the squadron which in 1630 brought "The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay" to Boston, were Thomas Dudley, Simon Bradstreet, and the latter's eighteen-year-old bride, Anne Dudley Bradstreet. Thomas Dudley, the father of the poetess, later became Governor of the colony; so did her husband. It is obvious, then, that Mistress Anne Bradstreet represented the best of the early New England stock.

From 1638 till her death in 1672 Mrs. Bradstreet was a prolific writer of verse, some of which, after having long circulated in manuscript, was published in 1650, in Lon

don, as the work of "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America." A second edition, appearing in 1678, contained several additional poems. The nature of her poetical work appears from the selections here reprinted. A certain fluent accuracy, an occasional suggestion that she had the poet's vision and a modest share of the poet's imagination, a sincerity which her affectation of learning does not wholly conceal-these are her best qualities. That she had great ability, no one would contend. But she took her art seriously-perhaps too seriously-and did better work than any one of her day in America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Two modern editions of Mrs. Bradstreet's works are The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse, ed. J. H. Ellis, Charlestown, 1867, and The Poems of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, with an introduction by C. E. Norton, Boston, 1897. The best biographical study is Helen Campbell's Anne Bradstreet and her Time, Boston, 1891.

NOTES

THE PROLOGUE

40. 8. Great Bartas' sugared lines. Guillaume du Bartas (1544-1590), a French poet, was especially regarded in America for his La Creation.

33. Calliope's own child. Calliope was the Muse of epic poetry.

TO MY DEAR AND LOVING HUSBAND

47. The poetical epistles were written in 1661, while her husband was in England.

MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631-1705)

When Wigglesworth's parents brought him to New England in 1638, a lad of seven years, they could hardly have dreamed that he was to become the most popular American poet of the century, and one of the most influential theologians. They had in mind sending him to Harvard College, and fitting him for the practice of medicinean art of which the new colony stood in great need. He did indeed study medicine, but the years following his graduation from Harvard in 1651 saw him more concerned with theology than with surgery, and in 1656 he was installed as minister of the church at Malden, where he lived and labored till his death in 1705. He never abandoned his interest in medicine, however, and ultimately became well known as a physician. His epitaph, probably written by Cotton Mather, makes no reference to his pastoral work, but refers particularly to the fact that

Once his rare skill did all diseases heal; And he does nothing now uneasy feel.

It was his work as poet, however, that made him known up and down the length of Puritan America, and even brought him some fame in England. In 1662 he published The Day of Doom, or, a Poetical Description of the Last Judgment. The nature of the work is adequately represented by the selections in the present volume; its length -two hundred and twenty-four eight-line stanzas-is as astonishing as its popularity.

To account for the undoubted popularity which the poem attained, it is necessary to keep two things clearly in mind. In the first place, The Day of Doom was exactly in tune with the Calvinistic theology of the day and place for which it was written. Here was the essence of the grim faith of Winthrop and the Mathers; here was a vivid exposition of the doctrines of Original Sin and Election, the corner-stones of the Calvinistic edifice; here too was a lurid, concrete picturing of that day of judgment to which the Puritan looked forward with mingled terror and joy. In the second place, it was written in fluent, readable, easily remembered verse, in a measure made familiar by the Whole Booke of Psalmes, and indeed, popularized long before that work by the stirring ballads which were part of the traditional literature of the English race. Even in Puritan New England poetry had not wholly lost its appeal. The result of Wigglesworth's timely combination of poetry and theology was to give him a fame and influence beyond that of any American versifier of his generation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Day of Doom is perhaps most easily available in W. H. Burr's modernized reprinting of the 1662 edition, N. Y, 1867. This contains Wigglesworth's own autobiographical sketch, and a brief but adequate memoir. J. W. Dean's Memoir of Reverend Michael Wigglesworth, Albany, 1871, is more detailed, but very rare, as only fifty copies were printed.

MARY ROWLANDSON

Many accounts of the hardships endured by early settlers who fell into the hands of their Indian foes are available today, but none is more graphic than that written by the wife of the minister of the church at Lancaster, Massachusetts, who was taken prisoner in February, 1676, in a raid that was part of the general uprising known as King Philip's War. As an actual first-hand record the chronicle is invaluable; it is almost as significant as an indication of one phase of the Puritan temper, and of the way a devout woman found in her sufferings only

added proofs of God's goodness. The title of the second edition is significant in this latter respect: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. The date of the first edition of this journal is uncertain, as are the dates of Mrs. Rowlandson's birth and death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Narrative was reprinted many times between 1770 and 1830, and some of these editions are to be found in most large libraries. The best available text today is the facsimile of the 1682 edition, published in 1903 at Lancaster, and edited by H. S. Nourse and J. E. Thayer. No adequate biographical treatment of Mrs. Rowlandson is in existence.

INCREASE MATHER (1639-1723)

Mather was the first American leader of distinction to be born in the new country; he was the first American scholar to go abroad, after graduating from Harvard, for further study in the Old World; twice he was President of Harvard; he was the first American to. be entrusted with an important diplomatic mission at a European court; he was a preacher of great ability and influence; he was the father of Cotton Mather. Taken all in all, his work marked him as "the most powerful man in all that part of the world" -to quote Tyler's_characterization of him.

He was born in Dorchester, in June, 1639, the son of Richard Mather, whose fame as a preacher was augmented by the acclaim that came to him as chief compiler of the Bay Psalm Book. Graduating from Harvard in 1656, he soon went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he received his Master of Arts degree in 1658. Three years later he was back in Massachusetts, and in 1664 began what was to prove a life-long pastorate in the Second Church of Boston. He early made himself one of the leaders in the colony, and throughout the political disputes that kept Massachusetts as well as England in turmoil and trepidation, Mather's influence was as great as that of any single person. When in 1683 the king tried to recover the charter of Massachusetts, Mather urged the colonists not to submit. In 1688 he went to London to represent the colony at court. Several times he had audiences with James II, but was unable to prevent the abrogation of the charter. When William and Mary came to the throne, Mather presented the cause of Massachusetts directly to William himself, and in 1691, largely on account of Mather's representations, a new charter was granted, by which Plymouth