had won for him the confidence of the patriots of Massa chusetts, and the hostility of the present rulers. A letter, subscribed with the initials of his name, had been received from Boston five years before by a gentleman of Amsterdam. It contained severe animadversions upon the English ministry, and eulogies upon Lord Shaftes bury, Titus Oates, and other persons obnoxious to the King's displeasure. A copy, somehow obtained, was conveyed to Sir Lionel Jenkins, Secretary of State, who sent it to New England. Mather, brought to bay, insinuated that it was a forgery of Randolph.1 Randolph prosecuted than two years. At the end of this time he died, and the Reverend Increase Mather, of Boston, and the Reverend Samuel Torrey, of Weymouth, were successively chosen to succeed him; but both refused to forsake their parochial charge. Mr. Rogers was then a second time elected, and held the office for a year or two, till his death. Then the Reverend Joshua Moody, of Portsmouth, was chosen, but he too declined the place; and, June 11, 1685, the Fellows voted to request Mr. Mather "to take special care for the government of the College, and, for that end, to act as President until a further settlement be orderly made." Increase Mather was son of the Reverend Richard Mather, of Dorchester; in his youth he was a favorite pupil of John Norton; after graduating at Harvard College at an early age, he went abroad for four years, spending one year in study at Trinity College, Dublin, and preaching to several congregations. The alteration in the prospect for Dissenters at the restoration of the King, and some intimations of General Monk's displeasure against him personally (Parentator, 21), drove him home; and he had now been for twenty-one years a minister of the Second Church in Boston. Ir this twofold position, of pastor and academic, the administrations of Dudley and of Andros found him. He had also been long one of the acknowledged leaders in both the ecclesiastical and the secular politics of the Colony, as the reader of this work has already had some occasion to observe. (See above, pp. 332, 385, 388.) In the ten years between the resignation of Hoar and the appointment of Mather, only fifty-two young men took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Harvard College. From the time of Mather's accession the number largely increased, - a result in no small part to be ascribed to the ability and reputation of Governor Leverett's grandson John, already Tutor, and eventually President. 1 There is a copy of this letter among the Colonial Papers of the British State Paper Office. It was sent by one George Rosse to "Edward Randolph, Esq., at the Plantation Office at Whitehall," to whom Rosse writes: "It is a long time since I see you in Scotland, where your favors ever obliged me to be your humble servant"; and, "being lately in Amsterdam, accidentally came into my hands a letter from Boston, which I had time to copy." He dates his own letter, "Friday, June 6"; the him for defamation. Mather was acquitted by a jury; but Randolph had the government on his side, and contrived to keep the suit alive, partly for the important object of preventing Mather's voyage. Mather concealed himself sixth day of June fell on Friday in the year 1684. The letter transmitted by Rosse to Edward Randolph, dated December 3, 1683, signed I. M., and addressed to "my worthy friend Mr. G. [Gouge] in Amsterdam," purports to have been sent by the hand of a Jew who was first going to Barbadoes. Dudley received from England a transcript of it, which he showed to Increase Mather. In a letter to Dudley, of November 10, 1684, Mather disavows it, and suggests that it was a forgery of Randolph. He says that he received no letter (as the letter attributed to him declared that he did) by the hand of the agents, Dudley and Richards, on their return from England. He says that one of several books which the letter desires his friend to procure, he has had no occasion to send for, for he has owned it no less than fifteen years, while another he never heard of, and others are on sale in Boston. He declares he never esteemed Lord Shaftesbury, whom the letter commends. 66 Belike," he says, "the Jew's name that carried the let ter was either Edward or Barnard Randolph. . . . . . It is reported that he has a notable art in imitating hands; that he can do it so exactly that a man cannot easily discern the knavery. ..... You may communicate this to whom you please." (Colonial Papers, &c. The copy of Mather's letter to Dudley got into that collection in consequence of being sent by Randolph to John Paddy.) Hutchinson (Hist., I. 327), and other writers, have treated this letter as a forgery made with Randolph's privity I have strong doubts as to the correctness of this opinion. I cannot imagine that he should have thought it worth his while to resort to such a trick. For him, as far as I can see, the play would not have been worth the candle. I find nothing in the letter, whether in respect to topics or opinions, that Increase Mather might not have written in 1683; and if not his, it is certainly a very clever specimen of the Matherese style. Still, I can by no means impugn his express denial. Repelled from this supposition, the next conjecture would refer us to an alter idem of the President, which—in some respects, though by no means in others- his son Cotton was. In 1683, Cotton Mather was but twenty years old; but he was exceedingly precocious. When an act was done inexplicable on any obvious grounds, it is to the inexplicable Cotton Mather, rather than to any other per son of that time, that it is naturally ascribed; and I cannot but think that the writing of this letter, and putting his father's initials to it, would have been a freak quite characteristic of him. When it was written, no particular harm could have seemed likely to come of it. But when it got into the hands of a Secretary of State, and brought the ostensible author into trouble, the relations between him and the real author might have made the latter afraid to avow it; and a natural resource would be to charge a forgery upon Randolph, who had done roguery enough to justify the suspicion of any amount of more. Still, I am not ready to believe that, if Cotton Mather was to avoid the service of a writ, and at length managed, by night and in disguise, to get on board a ship bound for England.1 April 7. Expedition of the Governor to the Eastern The great features of his administration having been determined so much to his mind, the Governor found leisure for an expedition to the eastward, which he had been contemplating for some months. He hoped to recommend himself both to the King and to the Colonists by frightening off the French settlers as far as to the St. Croix. He went from Boston to Portsmouth by land, and thence by sea to Casco Bay. Having visited the settlement at Pejepscot, and ascended the Kennebec several miles, ne proceeded to Pemaquid, where the Rose frigate awaited him. The frigate took the Governor to the Penobscot, his special object being a conference with an adventurer named Castine, who held a little dominion of his own near the mouth of that river, in disregard of the claim of King James to its possession. Castine was a Frenchman, who had established himself some years before among the Penobscot Indians, adopted their manner of life, and taken three or four of their women for his wives. Capture of The Governor caused his ship to be anchored "before Castine's door," and sent an officer on shore to Castine's post. announce his arrival, upon which Castine and his retinue decamped and took to the woods. "The Governor landed, with other gentlemen with him, and went into the house, and found a small altar in the common room, which altar and some pictures and ordinary orna ments they did not meddle with anything belonging the writer, he could have made up his mind to use the language which he has used in treating of the subject. (Parentator, 93.) Increase Mather, in a letter to Dudley, of January 24, 1688, said it was not Edward Randolph that he had in- thereto, but took away all his arms, powder, shot, iron kettles, and some trucking-cloth and his chairs, all which were put aboard the Rose, and laid up in order to a condemnation of trading." Andros had intended to repair an old English fort on the Penobscot, and had taken with him workmen and materials for the purpose; but finding the old work gone to ruin, "was resolved to spare that charge till a more proper time offered." He then returned to Pemaquid, having informed Castine, through some Indian messengers, that his property should be restored as soon as he would come to that place, and profess allegiance to the King of England. Randolph, who had been detained at Boston by illness, met the Governor at sea, and accompanied him to Pemaquid. There the Governor had business of two kinds. Occasion had arisen for uneasiness about Treaty with the temper of the Indians of Maine, who had the Indians. never been reconciled after their disasters in Philip's war, and who, excited, as was thought, by the influence of Castine, had recently broken out into some hostile acts.1 The Indian chiefs of the neighborhood were now summoned to Pemaquid, where they "were well treated with shirts, rum, and trucking-cloth; and his Excellency in a short speech, by an interpreter, acquainted them that they should not fear the French, that he would defend them, and ordered them to call home all their young men, and they should live quietly and undisturbed." 2 The other matter of business related to the recent administration of the County of Cornwall by Palmer and West, who, as deputies of Governor Dongan, had had it in charge. Randolph, confederate as he was with them, professed himself disgusted with the rapacity of their 1 See above, p. 503. 2 Randolph to Povey, June 21, 1688, In Hutch. Coll., 561-565; the same to the Lords of the Committee, October 8, in O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 567. Regulation Cornwall. proceedings. Anticipating the policy which Andros had now begun to carry out in Massachusetts, they of affairs in had terrified the inhabitants into taking out new grants for their lands on the payment of exorbitant lease-money; a grievance felt to be the more distressing, when Andros, coming to the knowledge of what had been done, declared the patents lately bought of West and Palmer to be of no validity, "the commission [from Dongan], and the whole proceeding, being illegal." These upstart persons, Randolph wrote, had " very much oppressed the poor here." Randolph was impatient of all rapacity which interfered with his own. He ill brooked the influence of any other counsellor with his superior; the interlopers from New York were clever men, and he was not without fear that they would supplant him. Before leaving Pemaquid, the Governor directed. 1 Randolph to Povey, June 21, 1688, in Hutch. Coll, 561-565; comp. Randolph's Letter to the Lords of the Committee, in O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 567. Randolph thus describes the happy family of which he was the second most important meinber: "Mr. Graham and his family are settled in Boston; he is made Attorney-General, and now the Governor is safe in his New York confidants, all others being strangers to his Council. My cousin Mason can make no progress in his business; he has attempted to try his title at Piscataqua, but has been delayed by the judges, and the inhabitants are far more obstinate than formerly, Mr. West having told some of them that his title is little worth. All Mr. West aims at is to have the passing grants for all Mr. Mason's lands; and neither he nor Graham will allow that he has power to make a grant to any tenant; they are for leaving him out of all. The news of the Dissenters being indulged and taken into favor, at home, encouraged this people; and the judges will not give a cause for the King. They now dispute his Excellency's grants, and plead either possession or Indian purchase in bar of it. The addition of New York to this government does very much enlarge our bounds, and may be of great service to the crown; but they have been squeezed so dry by Colonel Dongan and his agents, West and Graham, that there is little good to be done. We are in great expectation of Foye's arrival, and some preparations are making for a Southern expedition; but I believe Sir Edmund will not go into New York till Colonel Dongan is removed off the place. There is no good understanding betwixt them, and 't was not well done of Palmer and West to tear all in pieces that was settled and granted at Pemaquid by Sir Edmund. |