My Shuttle's shot, my Race is run,
My Sun is set, my Day is done.
My span is measured, Tale is told,
My Flower is faded and grown old.
My Dream is vanish'd, Shadows fled,
My Soul with Christ, my Body Dead,
Farewel dear Wife, Children and Friends,

Hate Heresie, make Blessed Ends,

Bear Poverty, live with good Men;

So shall we live with Joy agen.

Let men of God in Courts and Churches watch,

O're such as do a Toleration hatch,

Lest that ill Egg bring forth a Cockatrice

To poison all with Heresie and Vice.

If Men be left and otherwise Combine,
My epitaph's I DY'D NO LIbertine.

Thomas Dudley was a staunch defender of the Puritan faith, and so received the hatred of all its dissenters in the Massachusetts Colony, including the Roger Williams Baptists, the Quakers and Ann Hutchinson's followers, some of whom openly rejoiced over his death and looked upon it as an act of Providence. It was his boast that he condemned toleration, that toleration itself was an heresie. He was of a nervous, excitable disposition, and as occasion seemed to him to require, outspoken and plain in expressing his opinions and denouncing his opponents. For some reason, not clearly apparent, he at first was not in favor of closing Mrs. Hutchinson's mouth and forbidding her Boston meetings. His friend, Rev. John Cotton, advocated the weekly meetings for examining and criticising the Sunday sermons of their different ministers. Mrs. Hutchinson's meetings seem to have been of a natural outgrowth from the men's meetings. The men of the Boston churches came together every Thursday morning to go over the text and sermon of the preceding Sunday, of which the members had taken notes, and made criticism either favorable or

adverse. This was in the presence of the minister. No women were admitted to these meetings, much less would they have been permitted to speak their opinion.

But after awhile the women thought it equally right and instructive for their own sex to have a meeting from which the men should be excluded. Ann Hutchinson, by general consent, was seated in front and allowed herself to be questioned.

Her lovely

life and her works of charity gave immense power to her words. Dudley had made careful inquiries as to her religious standing, and was satisfied; the most religious and influential among the people of the Colony paid unusual attention to her. All Boston admired and believed in her, and her administrations at sick beds gave her unusual popularity, and had she been content, when opposed, to have abandoned her public meetings, she still would have been a useful and honored woman. In the meantime the men had broken down all barriers, and entered without opposition the women's meetings but not allowing women to enter theirs. John Cotton, the ablest and most powerful minister in the Colony, gave at first strong and decided support to the women's meetings. Three-fourths of the ministers and elders of the Colony, however, were utterly opposed to women holding forth as teachers to the flock of Christ, even to their sex. The tide after awhile was everywhere against Ann Hutchinson and her teachings, for she clashed on doctrinal points as well as in methods and teachers. Winthrop, Dudley and Bradstreet joined the ministers in support of the old Puritan faith, as they believed it, and against the new lights and women teachers and Antinomianism.

In this fight against the Antinomian doctrines the Colony became nearly unanimously on the side as against the new doctrine, except Boston, and that was veering around toward the popular breeze and tidal current. The power of the ministers and magistrates was potential and victory was theirs. Ann was sent into

the wilderness, another "Hagar and Ishmael," along with Roger Williams and the Quakers.

Rufus Choate in New York in "the forties 66 on Forefathers' Day," gave the toast, "Our Pilgrim Fathers: they founded a church without a bishop, and a State without a king." He might have added, "They had a minister for every church, who was both bishop and king."

So complete was the victory for the Puritan church, that for over a century no opposition appeared within their own borders. In the opprobrium attached to the expelled ones, all Antinomians and women advocates shared largely. It was not till twenty years after that Anne Bradstreet suffered her works to be printed, and then in London, and even her name not attached thereto. How changed now is the Puritan church. Women are being "set apart," and ordained as ministers and pastors in the Congregational churches all over New England. In Elmira, New York, Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Beecher, "the last of the Beechers," has an associate pastor in the person of a Rev. Mrs. C. L. Eastman, who is able, popular and effective; who performs marriage ceremonies, baptismal rites and sacramental services. The Independent or Congregational organization allows each church and society to select either a man or woman as minister, and the one thus selected is ordained with all ministerial prerogatives and powers.

The Unitarians, Universalists and Baptists have the same independent form of church government, and women are being or may be ordained in all of them, except the Baptist, where a woman minister could baptize by immersion with great difficulty, if in many cases at all. In the Episcopal churches, including the Methodist Episcopal, the hand of the bishop is a cold one, and no woman as yet has been ordained as a Conference preacher, with Ann Hutchinson was all the privileges accorded to men. 66 suppressed" over two hundred years ago, but if alive to-day she could

be ordained a minister and serve whenever wanted in the Puritan church from which she was driven.

In this view of those times, Professor Norton, of Harvard College, in his Introduction to the volume of Anne Bradstreet's works, published by the Duodecimal Club, which is claimed as the seventh edition of her works, makes the following statement : "What value her verses have received for her depends rather on the rare circumstances of a woman's writing them at the time she did, and in the place where she lived."

This notice of Governor Thomas Dudley would be incomplete, if some mention was not made of his son, Joseph Dudley, a child by his second wife, and therefore half brother to Anne Bradstreet. He was deputy-governor, succeeding Governor Bradstreet, when he was removed from that office by Sir Edmund Andros, at the time when the old charter of the Colony was abrogated by that troublesome official of King James II.

Joseph Dudley was the most talented of all the Dudleys known in America, and so loyal to the king that he was a subservient tool to do the bidding of that tyrant, Sir Edmund Andros.

Randolph and others were comparatively strangers in the Colony, and not so much expected of them, though their names were execrated and held in contempt everywhere, yet Dudley was to the manor born, of good Puritan lineage, and better things were expected of him. He brought a taint upon the name of Dudley, which all the services and sacrifices of generations cannot efface. "But one sad losel soils a name for aye,

However, mighty in the olden time;

Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,

Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme;

Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime."

Of the Star Chamber Judges, Joseph Dudley was the chief or presiding judge, who tried the Ipswich patriots, John Wise, John

Appleton, Robert Kinsman, William Goodhue and Thomas French, immortal names, and Ipswich the only town in its corporate capacity, taking positive action against Andros.

Chief Justice Joseph Dudley must have well known every one of the Ipswich men, as General Dennison was his brother-inlaw, and Major Nathaniel Wade married his niece, and these men on trial, or their fathers, settled the town with his father, Governor Thomas Dudley, who when he died had large interests there.

Joseph Dudley disgraced himself and his office when he said to Rev. John Wise, who claimed the privilege of an English subject, "he had no more privilege left him, than not to be sold for a slave."

We shall treat more fully of Andros and his tyranny and sudden downfall in our next chapter, while giving a notice of Governor Bradstreet.