Settlement of knowledge of the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and a wide acquaintance with the theological literature of his time.) He was one of the patentees named in the Charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, from Charles the First, which bears the date of March 28, 1628.1 He was also named in the same charter one of the eighteen Assistants, and was connected with the government of the Company before it was transferred to this side of the Atlantic by the notable vote of Roxbury. its members. He was the leader in the settlement of Roxbury, and one of the founders of the first church in that town. He was engaged in business, perhaps as a merchant. While at Roxbury he was for some years Treasurer of the Colony, and was elected, from year to year, one of the Assistants. He was early licensed as a furtrader. In 1632, he paid twenty-five pounds into the treasury of the Colony for his license as a furtrader. The same sum was paid each year until 1635, when the General Court remitted one fifth of the amount, probably because the trade had become less lucrative. 2 II. Ir is not easy to understand why it was that, within five or six years after the settlements near 1 Bancroft, vol. i. 265, 281. Mass. Records, vol. i. 2 Hist. Boston, vol. i. 401-411. Boston were begun, the people in a number of these settlements were moved by a common impulse to go further west. The reasons given, says Winthrop,1 were their "lack of accommodations for their cattle, Colony. so that they were not able to maintain The Desire to their ministers, nor could receive any Plant a New more friends to help them; and also the fruitfulness and commodiousness of Connecticut, and the danger of its being possessed by others," Dutch or English; and, what is always the decisive reason with persons seized by the western fever, "the strong bent of their spirit to remove thither." Cotton Mather says, "It was not long before the Massachusetts Colony was become like a hive overstocked with bees, and many of the new inhabitants entertained thoughts of swarming into plantations extending further into the country." "The Colony," he says, " might fetch its description from the Scripture: Thou hast brought a vine out of England; Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it; Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.' But still there was one stroke wanting, to wit,' She sent forth her branches unto the river,' whereupon many of the planters, belonging especially to the towns of Cambridge, Dorchester, Watertown, and Roxbury, took up reso 1 Winthrop's History of New England, vol. i. 140. 2 Quoted by Dr. Holland in Hist. of Western Mass., i. 20. lutions to travel an hundred miles westward from those towns for a further settlement upon that famous river, the report of which had made a little Nilus of it." All of which means, that Boston, Cambridge, and the rest were full, as the people thought, and they were already feeling the stirrings of that wonderful instinct which in two centuries and a half has belted the continent with Puritan populations, which stretch already as far as the Massachusetts charter gave a title, even to the western sea. The 14th of May, 1634,' the General Court granted leave to the inhabitants of Newtown "to remove their habitations to some convenient place." On the 6th of May, 1635, it was voted to grant liberty to the inhabitants of Watertown, and to the inhabitants of " Rocksbury to remove themselves to any place they shall think meete, not to prejudice another plantation, provided they continue still under this government." That same year a company, or several companies, settled on the Connecticut River within the present limits of Connecticut.) In 1635, two men, John Cable and John Woodcock, were sent by Mr. Pynchon to the Connecticut River to build a house for the new plantation. It is probable that Mr. Pynchon himself had before this crossed the country, to the valley of the river, and selected the place for the settlement. 1 Mass. Records, i. 136. III. IN the spring of 1636, Mr. Pynchon and seven other men made their way through the wilderness, following, it is supposed, the Bay Path, The Springfield so called, and began a new plantation. Colony, 1636. Their goods were sent by water, in Governor Winthrop's vessel, the "Blessing of the Bay," which left Boston, April 26th. We ride to Springfield, over almost the exact route of the Bay Path, in less than three hours. The pioneers were perhaps a week cutting their road through the forest, following, for a part of the way, an Indian trail. The date of their arrival is not known, but on the 14th of May they subscribed an agreement, which contains fifteen articles, and which was designed as the fundamental law of the Colony. It gives it the name of the Plantation of Agawam, spelled in the agreement Agaam, according to the pronunciation of the Indians of the vicinity. The first article provides for the settlement of a "Godly and faithful minister," "with all convenient speed, with whom we propose to joyne in church covenant, to walk in all the ways of Christ." The second limits the number of families to forty, or by general consent to fifty at the utmost. The others provide for the allotment of land to the 1 Judge Morris's Address, 1876, Appendix. various settlers, and for defraying the expenses of the settlement. It was stipulated that no man except Mr. William Pynchon "shall have above ten acres for his house lot." On laying On laying out the land, the general course was to "allow each inhabitant a house lot on the west side of " what is now called Main Street, " eight rods wide, from the street to the river; a like width in the meadow in front of his house, to the foot of the hill; and a wood lot, of the same breadth, extending, at first eighty, and afterwards an hundred rods, nearly to the top of the hill; and, when practicable, an allotment in the intervale, on the west side of the River, of the same width, and, as near as might be, directly against his lot."1 Mr. Pynchon was the magistrate of the Colony, at first under a general commission from the General Court, dated March 3, 1636,2 which authorizes eight persons to de Mr. Pynchon the only Magistrate. termine, in a judicial way, differences, and to inflict corporal punishment, or imprisonment, or to levy fines, in various plantations on the Connecticut River. There is on record, at the Registry of Deeds in Hampden County,3 a paper which conveys the Indian title to the lands, on both sides of the river 1 Address by George Bliss, March 24, 1828. 2 Massachusetts Colonial Records, vol. i. 170-171. |