Kitabı oku: «The Bay State Monthly. Volume 1, No. 1, January, 1884», sayfa 3

In addition to these were many smaller vehicles, drawn by one or two horses, to say nothing of the private carriages of individuals who were traveling for business or pleasure.

For many of the facts mentioned in this paper I am indebted to Mr. Moses Gill, an octogenarian of Groton, whose mind is clear and body active for a man of his years. Mr. Gill is a grandson of Lieutenant-Governor Moses Gill, and was born at Princeton, on March 6, 1800. He has kept several public houses in Groton, already mentioned, besides the old brick tavern situated on the Lowell road, near Long-sought-for Pond, and formerly known as the Half-way. House. This hotel came within the limits of Westford, and was kept by Mr. Gill from the year 1842 to 1847. In his day he has known personally seventy-five landlords doing business between Davenport's (opposite to the celebrated Porter's tavern in Cambridge) and Keene, New Hampshire; and of this number, only seven are thought to be living at the present time.

THE FAMILY IMMIGRATION TO NEW ENGLAND

BY THOMAS W. BICKNELL, LL.D

The unit of society is the individual. The unit of civilization is the family. Prior to December 20, 1620, New-England life had never seen a civilized family or felt its influences. It is true that the Icelandic Chronicles tell us that Lief, the son of Eric the Red, 1001, sailed with a crew of thirty-five men, in a Norwegian vessel, and driven southward in a storm, from Greenland along the coasts of Labrador, wintered in Vineland on the shores of Mount Hope Bay. Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor has revealed their temporary settlement. Thither sailed Eric's son, Thorstein, with his young and beautiful wife, Gudrida, and their twenty-five companions, the following year. His death occurred, and put an end to the expedition, which Thorfinn took up with his marriage to the young widow, Gudrida; with his bride and one hundred and sixty-five persons (five of them young married women), they spent three years on the shores of the Narragansett Bay, where Snorre, the first white child, was born,—the progenitor of the great Danish sculptor, Thorwaldsen. But this is tradition, not history. Later still, came other adventurers to seek fortunes in the New World, but they came as individuals,—young, adventurous men, with all to gain and nothing to lose, and, if successful, to return with gold or fame, as the reward of their sacrifice and daring.

Six hundred years pass, and a colony of one hundred and five men, not a woman in the company, sailed from England for America, and landed at Jamestown, Virginia. Within six months half of the immigrants had perished, and only for the courage and bravery of John Smith, the whole would have met a sad fate. The first European woman seen on the banks of the James was the wife of one of the seventy Virginia colonists who came later, and her maid, Anne Burroughs, who helped to give permanency and character to a fugitive settlement in a colony, which waited two hundred and fifty years to learn the value of a New-England home, and to appreciate the civilization which sprang up in a New-England town, through the agency of a New-England family.

An experience similar to that of the Virginia settlers—disappointment, hardship, death—attended the immigrants who, under George Popham, Raleigh, and Gilbert, attempted to make a permanent home on the coast of Maine, but their house was a log camp, with not a solitary woman to light its gloom or cheer its occupants. Failure, defeat, and death were the inevitable consequences. There was no family, and there could be no permanency of civilization.

The planting of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies was of another sort. Whole families embarked on board the Mayflower, the Fortune, the Ann, the Mary and John, and other ships that brought their precious freight in safety to a New World. Of the one hundred and one persons who came in the Mayflower, in 1620, twenty-eight were females, and eighteen were wives and mothers. They did not leave their homes, in the truest sense,—they brought them with them. Their household goods and hearthstone gods were all snugly stowed beneath the decks of the historic ship, and the multitude of Mayflower relics, now held in precious regard in public and private collections, but testify to the immense inventory of that one little ship of almost fabulous carrying capacity. To the compact signed in Plymouth harbor, in 1620, John Carver signs eight persons, whom he represents; Edward Winslow, five; William Brewster, six; William Mullins, five; William White, five; Stephen Hopkins, Edward Fuller, and John Turner, each, eight; John Chilton, three,—one of whom, his daughter Mary, was the first woman, as tradition says, to jump from the boat upon Plymouth Rock. In the Weymouth Company, under the leadership of the Reverend Joseph Hull, who set sail from Old Weymouth, England, on the twentieth of March, 1635, and landed at Wessaguscus,—now Weymouth, Massachusetts,—there were one hundred and five persons, divided into twenty-one families. Among these were John Whitmarsh, his wife Alice, and four children; Robert Lovell, husbandman, with his good wife Elizabeth and children, two of whom, Ellen and James, were year-old twins; Edward Poole and family; Henry Kingman, Thomas Holbrook, Richard Porter, and not least of all, Zachary Bicknell, his wife Agnes, their son John, and servant John Kitchen.

Families these,—all on board,—households, treasures, all worldly estates, and best of all the rich sympathies and supports of united, trusting hearts, daring to face the perils of an ocean-passage of forty-six days' duration, and the new, strange life in the wilds of America, that they might prove their faith in each other, in their principles, and in God. "He setteth the solitary in families," says the Psalmist; and the truth was never better illustrated than in the isolated and weary life of our ancestry, two and a half centuries ago.

To the Pilgrim and the Puritan, wife, children, house, home, family, church, were the most precious possessions. Nothing human could divorce ties which nature had so strongly woven. And whenever we think of our honored ancestry, it is not as individual adventurers; but we see the good-man, the good-wife, and their children, as the representatives of the great body of those, who with them planted homes, families, society, civilization, in the Western World. They came together, or if alone, to pioneer the way for wife and children or sweetheart by the next ship, and they came to stay, as witness the names of the old families of Plymouth, Weymouth, Salem, Boston, Dorchester, in the leading circles of wealth and social position in all of these old towns. "Behold," says Dr. Bushnell, "the Mayflower, rounding now the southern cape of England, filled with husbands and wives and children; families of righteous men, under covenant with God and each other to lay some good foundation for religion, engaged both to make and keep their own laws, expecting to supply their own wants and bear their own burdens, assisted by none but the God in whom they trust! Here are the hands of industry! the germs of liberty! the dear pledges of order! and the sacred beginnings of a home!" Of such, only, could Mrs. Hemans's inspired hymn have been written:—

 
"There were men with hoary hair
Amidst that pilgrim band;
Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?
 
 
"There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth."
 

REASONS FOR FAMILY REMOVALS.

To understand the reasons why thirty-five thousand loyal and respectable subjects of Charles I should leave Old England for the New, in family relations, between 1620 and 1625, let us look, if we can, through a chink in the wall, into the state of affairs, civil, social, and religious, as they existed in the best land, and under the best government, the sun then shone upon.

Charles I succeeded his father, James I of Scotland, in 1624. The great, good act of James was the translation of our English Bible, known as King James's Version, a work which, for the exercise of learning, scholarship, and a zealous religious faith, has not been surpassed in any age. Take him all in all, James was a bigot, a tyrant, a conceited fool. He professed to be the most ardent devotee of piety, and at the same time issued a proclamation that all lawful recreations, such as dancing, archery, leaping, May-games, etc., might be used after divine service, on Sundays. An advocate of religious freedom, he attempted to enforce the most abject conformity in his own Scottish home, against the well-known independence of that section of his realm, and drove the Puritans to seek an asylum in Holland, where they might find liberty to worship God.

In the county of Somerset, the old king consented to an act of tyranny which would grace the age of Henry VIII. One Reverend Edmund Peacham, a clergyman in Somersetshire, had his study broken open, and a manuscript sermon being there found in which there was strong censure of the extravagance of the king and the oppression of his officers, the preacher was put to the rack and interrogated, "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture," in order to draw from him evidence of treason; but this horrible severity could wring no confession from him. His sermon was not found treasonable by the judges of the King's Bench and by Lord Coke; but the unhappy man was tried and condemned, dying in jail before the time set for his execution. Just about this time was the State murder of Overbury, and the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, one of England's noblest sons, brave and chivalric, who, at the executioner's block, took the axe in his hand, kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." These and kindred acts serve to illustrate the history of a king whose personal and selfish interests overruled all sentiments of honor and regard for his subjects, and who publicly declared that "he would govern according to the good of the commonweal, but not according to the common will." With such a king as James on the throne, is it a wonder that the more intelligent and conscientious of his subjects—like the Pilgrims and Puritans—sought a home on this side the Atlantic, where wild beasts and savage men were their only persecutors?

We are told that "the face of the Court was much changed in the change of the king" from James to Charles I; "that the grossness of the Court of James grew out of fashion," but the people were slow to learn the difference. Of the two evils, James was to be preferred. Charles ascends the throne with flattering promises, attends prayers and listens to sermons, pays his father's debts and promises to reform the Court. Let us see what he does. The brilliant but profligate Buckingham is retained as prime minister. Charles marries the beautiful Henrietta Maria, the Roman Catholic princess of France. He fits out fleets against Spain and other quarters, and demands heavy taxes to meet his heavy expenses. Parliament is on its dignity, and demands its proper recognition. He dissolves it, and calls another. That is more rebellious, and that he summarily dissolves. Men of high and low degree go to prison at the king's behest, and the disobedient were threatened with severer penalties.

The people of England are aroused, as the king of the earth sets himself against their claims in behalf of the royal prerogative. The king and the people are at war. Which will come off conquerer? There is only one answer to that question, for the battle is one between the pigmy and the giant. The contest grows sharper as the months go on, and the people are in constant alarm. Murders are common, and even Buckingham, the favorite minister, dies at the point of the assassin's knife, and the murderer goes to the Tower and the scaffold accompanied by the tumultuous cheers of London. Soon comes the Parliament of 1629, in which the popular leaders make their great remonstrance against the regal tyranny. In that House sat a plain young man, with ordinary cloth apparel, as if made by an old-country tailor, "his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untonable," with "an eloquence full of fervor." That young man is yet to be heard from. His name is Cromwell, known in history as Oliver Cromwell. His briefly-reported speech of six lines is destined to be weightier than the edicts of a king. The session was brief. Popery and Arminianism, unjust taxation and voluntary payment of taxes not ordered by Parliament, were declared treasonable and hostile principles in Church and State,—so said Parliament. "You are a Parliament of vipers,"—so said the king; and, on the tenth of March, Parliament was dissolved, not to meet again in the old historic hall for eleven long years; until, in 1640, the majesty of an outraged people rises superior to the majesty of an outraging ruler. Now follow the attempted riveting of the chains of a despotic and unscrupulous power, which does not understand the temper of the common people, nor the methods of counteracting a great popular upheaval in society.

It is not easy to resist the iron pressure of a tyrant; but, to our ancestors, it was far better than to accept the peace and profit which might follow abject submission. To borrow the words of De Tocqueville: "They cling to freedom for its native charms independent of its gifts,—the pleasure of speaking, acting, and breathing without restraint, under no master but God and the Law." The Englishmen of the first half of the seventeenth century were the fathers of the men who fired shots at Lexington and Concord, "heard round the world."

But how do the royal prerogatives affect our ancestors in England? Our fathers were of common mould, and feel the unjust demand of the tax-gatherer and the insolent demeanor of the Crown officers, who threaten fines and imprisonment for a refusal to obey. The people are aroused and are united; some are hopeless, some hopeful. The Crown seems to have its sway, but the far-sighted see the people on the coming throne of righteous judgement. What troubles our ancestors most is the interference with their religious life. Archbishop Laud is now supreme, and the Pope never had a more willing vassal. Ministers are examined as to their loyalty to the government, their sermons are read to private judges of their orthodoxy, the confessional is established, and the alter-service is restored. It is a time when earnest men and women cannot be trifled with on soul concerns. Their property may perish or be confiscated, but the right to unmolested worship is older than Magna Charta, and as inalienable as life itself. What is to be done? Resistance or emigration—which? Resist and die, say Cromwell and Wentworth, Eliot and Hampden. Emigrate and live, say the men and women who came by thousands from all parts of England during the reign of this monarch, and made possible the permanent establishment of a new society, on the basis of social order and family life.

AN INCIDENT OF SIXTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX

BY THE HON. MELLEN CHAMBERLAIN

On the afternoon of the twenty-sixth of May, 1686, two horsemen were riding from Boston to Cambridge. By which route they left the town is now known; but most probably over the Roxbury Neck, following the path taken by Lord Percy when he went to the relief of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith's ill-starred expedition to seize the military stores at Concord, on the nineteenth of April, 1775. Of the nature of their errand—whether peaceful or hostile,—of the subject of their conversation, as they rode along the King's highway, neither history nor tradition has left any account. But when they had reached Muddy River, now the beautiful suburb of Brookline, about two miles from Cambridge, they were met by a young man riding in the opposite direction, who, as he came against them, abruptly and without other salutation, said: "God save King James the Second!" and then rode on. But soon turning his horse towards the travelers he most inconsequentially completed his sentence by adding, "But I say, God curse King James!" and this malediction he repeated so many times and with such vehemence, that the two horsemen at last turned their horses and riding up to him, told him plainly that he was a rogue. This expression of their opinion produced, however, only a slight modification of the young man's sentiments, to this form: "God curse King James and God bless Duke James!" But a few strokes of their whips effected his complete conversion, and then, as a loyal subject, he exclaimed: "God curse Duke James, and God bless King James!"

Such is the unadorned statement of facts as sworn to the next day in the Council by these riders, and their oath was attested by Edward Randolph, the "evil genius of New England." I present it in its legal baldness of detail. The two horsemen are no reminiscence of Mr. James's celebrated opening, but two substantial citizens of Boston, Captain Peter Bowden and Dr. Thomas Clarke; and the young man with somewhat original objurgatory tendencies was one Wiswell, as they called him—presumably not a son of the excellent Duxbury parson of the same name; and for the same reason, even less probably, a student of Cambridge University, as it was at that early day sometimes called.

The original paper in which the foregoing facts are recorded has long been in my possession; and as often as my eye has rested on it, I have wondered what made that young man swear so; and by what nicety of moral discrimination he found his justification in blessing the Duke and cursing the King—"unus et idem"—in the same breath. Who and what was he? and of what nature were his grievances? Was there any political significance in that strange mingling of curses and blessings? That his temper was not of martyr firmness was evident enough from the sudden change in the current of his thoughts brought about by the tingling of the horsewhip. All else was mystery. But the commonest knowledge of the English and colonial history of those days was sufficient to stimulate conjecture on these points. At the date of the incident recorded James II had been on the throne more than a year, and for a long time both as duke and king had been hated and feared on both sides of the ocean. The Duke of Monmouth's ill-fated adventure for the Crown had failed at Sedgemoor, and his young life ended on the block, denied expected mercy by his uncle, the king: ended on the block: but not so believed the common people of England. They believed him to be still living, and the legitimate heir to the British crown, and that his unnatural uncle was only Duke James of England. In those days English affairs were more closely followed by the colonists than at present, and for obvious reasons; and it is quite open to conjecture at least that the feelings of English yeomen and artisans were known to, and shared by, their cousins in Massachusetts Bay, and that Master Wiswell only gave expression to a sentiment common to people of his class on both sides the water.

This, however, is mere conjecture. But there are important facts. On the preceding day, in the Town House, which stood at the head of State Street, where the old State House now stands, events culminated, in comparison with which the causes which led to the war of the Revolution sink into utter insignificance. On the twenty-third of October, 1684, in the High Court of Chancery of England, judgment was entered on the writ of scire facias, by which the charter of Massachusetts Bay was vacated; and as a consequence, the title to the soil, with all improvements, reverted to the Crown, to the ruin of those who had wrested it from the wilderness, and guarded it from the savage foe. The old government, so endeared to the people, and defended against kingly assault with the truest courage, was swept away by arbitrary power, and in its place a new one established, under the presidency of Joseph Dudley, and he a recreant son of the colony. It was the inauguration of this government which had taken place on the day before Captain Bowden and Dr. Clarke encountered John Wiswell, Jr., on their ride to Cambridge. There ceremonies of the inauguration were not without circumstances of pomp, and are set forth in the Council records at the State House, from which I transcribe the following incidents: When the new government, the president, and Council were assembled, the exemplification of the judgment against the charter of the late governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, publicly (in the court where were present divers of the eminent ministers, gentlemen, and inhabitants of the town and country) was read with an audible voice. The commission was read and the oaths administered, and the new president made his speech, after which, proclamation was openly read in court, and commanded to be published by beat of drum and trumpet, which was accordingly done.

The people in the Forum heard these drum and trumpets—young Wiswell, doubtless, with the rest—and knew what they signified: the confiscation of houses and lands; the abrogation of existing laws; taxes exacted without consent or legislation; the enforced support of a religion not of the people's choice; and navigation laws ruinous to their foreign commerce, then beginning to assume importance; and from these consequences they were saved only by the revolution, which two years later drove James II from his throne. It is difficult to credit these sober facts of history, and still more to fully realize their destructive import; but they should always be borne in mind; for if any one reflecting on the causes assigned by the leaders of the great Revolution, as justifying the violent partition of an empire, is led for a moment to question their sufficiency, let him then consider that they were assigned by a people full of the traditions of the long struggle against kingly injustice, in the days of the second Charles and the second James.

A few words—the result of later investigation—as to the actors in the events of this ride to Cambridge. When Bowden and Clarke had attested their loyalty by horsewhipping young Wiswell, they took him in charge to Cambridge, and vainly tried to persuade Nathaniel Hancock, the constable, to carry him before a magistrate. This refusal brought him into difficulty with Council; but his humble submission was finally accepted and he was discharged on payment of costs, on the plea that upon the change of the government there was no magistrate authorized to commit him to prison. Not quite so fortunate was John Wiswell, Jr., for on the third of August the grand jury found a true bill against him for uttering "these devilish, unnatural, and wicked words following, namely, God curse King James." That he was brought to trial on this complaint I cannot find. And so the actors in these scenes pass away. Of Bowden and Clarke I know nothing more; and the little which appears of John Wiswell's subsequent life is not wholly to his credit, I am sorry to say, and the more so, as I have recently discovered that he was once a townsman of mine, and doubtless a playmate of my kindred at Rumney Marsh.

These actors have all gone, and so has gone the old Town House; not so, as yet, let us heartily thank God, has gone the old State House which stands where that stood; on the one spot—if there is but one—which ought to be dear to the heart of every Bostonian, and sacred from his violating hand. For here, on the spot of that eastern balcony, looking down into the old Puritan Forum, what epochs in our history have been announced: the abrogation of the First Charter—the deposition of Andros—the inauguration of the Second Charter—the death and accession of English sovereigns—the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Constitution of the United States; and here still stands the grandest historic edifice in America, and within it?—why add to the hallowing words of old John Adams?—"Within its walls Liberty was born!"