enlarged by some further stipulations, was renewed, and ordered to "stand and remain inviolable." 1 Institution of a college. 1636. Oct. 28. In Massachusetts, the thoughts of the freemen had not been engrossed by the pressing distractions of the troubled times through which they were passing. They still had attention to bestow on the wants of posterity; and no men better understood what were the necessary foundations for the permanent well-being of a commonwealth. The seventh year since the transportation of the charter had just begun, when "the Court agreed to give four hundred pounds towards a school or college, whereof two hundred pounds to be paid the next year, and two hundred pounds when the work is finished, and the next Court to appoint where and what building." "2 That Massachusetts assembly, over which Henry Vane presided, has been said to be the first body in which the people, by their representatives, ever gave their own money to found a place of education."3 Their College preceded the next oldest in British America (the College of William and Mary in Virginia) by more than fifty years. Provision had hardly been made for the first wants of life, — habitations, food, clothing, and churches. Walls, roads, and bridges were yet to be built. The power of England stood in attitude to strike. A desperate war with the natives had already begun, and the government was threatened with an Antinomian insurrection. Through and beyond these dark complications of the present, the New-England founders looked to great necessities of future times, which could not be provided for too soon.* 1 Plym. Col. Rec., I. 133. See houses, provided necessaries for our above, p. 178. 2 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 183. 3 Edward Everett, Speech at the Celebration in 1836, in Quincy's History of Harvard University, II. 654. 4"After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the first things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our pres The appropriation was equivalent to the colony tax for a year. Regarded in that point of view, a million of dollars would at the present day inadequately represent it. Newtown was fixed upon for the site 1637. Nov. 29. John Har of the College, and a committee of seven Magis- Nov. 15. trates and six ministers, men of the first distinction in their respective classes, were directed "to take order" for it.2 The generous project engaged the sympathy of John Harvard, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who, dying childless vard. within a year after his arrival at Charlestown, bequeathed his library and "the one half of his estate, it being in all about seven hundred pounds,3 for the erecting of the College." In just gratitude, the Court ordered it to be called by his name. town had just before received the name of Cambridge.5 ent ministers should lie in the dust." (New England's First Fruits, 12.) but to "The early establishment of your College," said the Marquis Wellesley to a Massachusetts man in India, “hastened the American Revolution half a century." (Knapp, Biographical Sketches, &c., 180.) The Governor-General did not know how far short this came of the truth. The College, for more than its first century, did not a little to preserve a British America to be revolutionized. 1 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 208. This was with a view, says Johnson, perhaps Johnson did not know, securing for the youth "the orthodox and soul-flourishing ministery of Mr. Thomas Shepheard." (Wonderworking Providence, 164.) The town of Shepard's ministry, "a place very pleasant and accommodate" (New England's First Fruits, 12), gave two acres and two thirds of land. The site, level ground on a river's bank, resembles the sites of houses of religion and education in England, and was naturally recommended by that association. - a New 2 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 217. 1C38. Sept. 14. 1639. March 13. 3 New England's First Fruits, in Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 242; comp. Winthrop, II. 87, note 2. The statement is ambiguous; and the amount of Harvard's bequest (that is, whether the whole or the half of his property amounted to "about seven hundred pounds") is not ascertained from other sources. The question is discussed by President Quincy, in his valuable History of the University (I. 460, &c.). The library, of two hundred and sixty volumes, consisting of classical and patristical works, as well as modern writings in theology and general literature, was, with the building containing it, all consumed by a fire in 1764, with the exception of a single volume. This book, so precious from its association with the founder, is John Downame's "Christian Warfare against the Devil," a folio volume published in London in 1634, three years before Harvard's emigration. 4 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 153. 1638. When the Indian war was over, and the movers of sedition had been quelled, everything within Massachusetts began to wear the aspect of a new prosperity. The vigor of the rulers had in England inspired confidence, and no fewer than three thousand settlers came over in three months. The government was indulgent as soon as it was safe; and the arms which had been taken from nearly a hundred excited persons were restored to as many of them as remained in the colony "carrying themselves peaceably." Probably it was the remembrance of the recent alarm that caused the government to hesitate, when "divers gentlemen and others, out of their care of the public weal and safety by the advancement of the military art and exercise of arms, desired license of 1639. Nov. 5. ..... 1 Winthrop, I. 268. Settlers came, not only from England, but from Virginia and the West Indies.. "Those countries, for all their great wealth, have sent hither, both this year and formerly, for supply of clothes and other necessaries, and some families have forsaken both Providence, and other the Caribbee Islands and Virginia, to come and live here. Our people saw what meagre, unhealthful countenances they brought hither, and how fat and well-liking they be came soon." (Ibid., 331.) — In 1640, Winthrop was annoyed "by divers letters and reports, that the Lord Say [with views altered by the new career now opened to him in England] did labor, by disparaging this country, to divert men from coming to us, and so to draw them to the West Indies"; and that to that end he, and his associates in the project of a plantation there, "finding that godly men were unwilling to come under other governors than such as they should make choice of themselves, &c., condescended to articles somewhat suitable to our form of government, although they had for- and Honora ble Artillery Company. the Court to join themselves in one company, and to have liberty to exercise themselves at such The Ancient times as their occasions would best permit." But, for the present, few occasions arose for any extraordinary legislation; and the record exhibits for the most part only the details of the common administration, as it has been already described, varied here and there with the introduction of some improvement in the transaction of the public business, or by some action which is interesting as throwing light on the sentiments. and manners of the time. legislation, istration. 1637. As, with the increase of population, the original provisions became inadequate for a speedy and con- Progress of venient dispensation of justice, courts additional organization, to those at the seat of government were estab- and adminlished at Salem, Ipswich, and Newtown; and in the following year, to the end of bringing May 17. legal relief near to every man's door, other tribunals, for the determination of controversies for small amounts, were instituted in the respective towns.3 A public registration of births, marriages, and deaths was established, as well as that excellent 4 1 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 251. "Divers of our chief military officers had declared themselves favorers of the familistical persons and opinions." (Ibid., 256.) The petition of the "gentlemen and others" was granted, March 13, 1639, with a careful proviso, "that this order or grant, or anything therein contained, shall not extend to free the said company, or any of them, their persons or estates, from the civil government and jurisdiction here established." This company, called for the last hundred and twenty years The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, is the oldest corporation existing in Massachusetts, except the College and a few towns. The pleased spectator of its proceedings, when, on the first Monday 1638. Sept. 6. 1639. of every June, according to ancient Nov. 5. 2 system of registration of deeds and of testamentary instruments which has rendered the conveyance of property in New England so safe. A rule was made for the publication of intentions of marriage. A post-office for foreign correspondence was set up. "That abominable practice of drinking healths" was forbidden, under a penalty of twelve pence for each offence, as being "a mere useless ceremony," and "also an occasion of much waste of the good creatures, and of many other sins, as drunkenness, quarrelling, bloodshed, uncleanness, misspense of precious time, &c., which, as they ought in all places and times to be prevented carefully, so especially in plantations of churches and commonweals, wherein the least known evils are not to be tolerated by such as are bound by solemn covenant to walk by the rule of God's word in all their conversation."3 Prohibitions, addressed to both possessor and purveyor, were aimed against "the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others." 4 To a Sept. 4. Sept. 9. 1 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 275. 2 Ibid., 281. 3 Ibid., 272; comp. Winthrop, I. 324. This was a great point with Winthrop, whose own example had discountenanced the practice. 4 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 274. The contemplated extirpation included other enormities of the same kind, as "short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered in the wearing thereof," "sleeves more than half an ell wide in the widest place thereof," "immoderate great breeches, knots of ribbon, broad shoulder-bands and rails, silk rases, double ruffs and cuffs, &c." (Ibid.) A law of the same character had been passed five years before, Sept. 3, 1634. It took notice of the appearance of "some new and immodest fashions, as also the ordinary wearing of silver, gold, and silk laces, girdles, hat-bands, &c."; and "ordered that no person, either man or woman, should hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woollen, silk, or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes, &c.; also, that no person, either man or woman, should make or buy any slashed clothes, other than one slash in each sleeve, and another in the back; also all cutworks, embroidered or needlework caps, bands, and rails, were forbidden hereafter to be made and worn, under the aforesaid penalty; also all gold or silver girdles, hat-bands, belts, ruffs, beaver hats, are prohibited to be bought and worn hereafter, under the "Men and aforesaid penalty, &c." |