Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

1646.

proceeding, but not manifest to the Deputies till a later stage of it." Mr. Hobart, being of a Presbyterial spirit, did manage all affairs without the Church's advice," and gave no heed to the counsel of the neighboring Elders when they went to Hingham to endeavor "to mediate a reconciliation."1 When, a few months later, the plot of Child and his six friends was just ripened for execution, the Marshal was resisted in his duty of collecting the fines which had been laid upon citizens of Hingham; and Hobart abetted the disorder by "questioning the authority of the warrant, because it was not in the King's name, and standing upon his allegiance to the crown of England." A summons to him to appear before the Magistrates in Boston having been disregarded, they sent a constable after him, and bound March 26. him over for trial at the next Court. The trial took place accordingly. "The matters he was charged with amounted to a seditious practice, and derogation and contempt of authority." It was proved that "before thirty persons" he had preached the political heresies of the Presbyterian mutineers, declaring that the Massachusetts Company were "but a corporation in England," and "by the patent, as he understood it, could not put any man to death, nor do divers other things which they did," and making "other speeches tending to disparage their authority and proceedings." "The jury found that he seemed to be ill affected to this government, and that his speeches tended to sedition and contempt of authority. Whereupon the whole Court (except Mr. Bellingham, who judged him to deserve no censure, and desired in open Court to have his dissent recorded) adjudged him to pay twenty pounds' fine, and to be bound to his good behavior till the next Court of Assistants, and then further if the Court should see cause."

1

"2

Winthrop, II. 235, 236; comp. 2 Winthrop, II. 255, 256; comp. New England's Salamander, &c., 4-6. 313.

Election of

be Governor.

May 6.

sermon.

The Presbyterians were plotting. The Narragansetts were stirring. Connecticut was thought to be encroaching. Plainly the times were out of joint, and again there was need of Winthrop. Changing places with Dudley, he resumed the highest office, to remain in it as Winthrop to long as he lived. Mr. Norris, of Salem, the Magistrates' candidate for the place of clerical adviser in the preceding year, preached the election "The Magistrates and Deputies had formerly chosen the Commissioners; but the freemen, looking at them as general officers, would now choose them themselves, and the rather because some of the Deputies had formerly been chosen to that office, which gave offence," says Winthrop, "to our confederates, and to many among ourselves." Deputies did not seem to the electors to be persons of sufficient dignity for the other station. Here was another evidence that the current was now setting against the party of professed champions of the people.

At the same time the subject of a written code of laws was revived. The Body of Liberties was in part the proper foundation, and in part the beginning of a superstructure, of the full system of legal provisions which was

Proceedings

laws.

1645. May 14.

desired. In the fourth year after its adoption, for a code of the General Court appointed six eminent persons in each of the counties (two in each county being ministers) "to consider of, and draw up, a body of laws." At the next annual Court of Election, they "made return of their commissions, and brought in many laws, which were read over, and some of them scanned;"2 and the Court authorized five persons, of whom Bellingham and Ward were two, "to extract out of the whole such as should be thought fit to be established, and so to reduce them into one

1646. May 22.

1 Winthrop, II. 258. -Yet no person, not a Magistrate, had been a Commissioner, except (in 1644) Mr. Hathorne.

* Mass. Rec., II. 109.-Some of these

were passed at the next Court, November 4. (Ibid., 176–182.) In several of them, the ecclesiastical jealousies, to which this year gave birth, are manifest.

volume, to agree with such as were already in force.”1 There is no reason to suppose that they who now had the business in charge desired to frustrate it; but it was not of a nature to be, at the same time, well and hastily done. The Court was careful to keep it in remembrance; and at length it was matured,3 and a 1648. copy of the code, fairly engrossed for publication, May 10. was "at the press." 4

Improve

revenue sys

tem.

1644.

Nov. 13.

1645.

By degrees the original rudeness of the revenue system was reformed. "Vintners, or other persons that had license to draw wine," were held to pay ments of the "twenty shillings for every butt of sack drawn, or begun to be drawn, and so proportionably for every greater or lesser vessel."5 A duty of" the four-and-twentieth part of the true value" was laid on "all wines brought into the Colony in any ship or other vessel, either of the Colony or of strangers, May 14. whether English, Dutch, or others." Tonnage and anchorage duties (the latter at the rate of sixpence the ton) were collected from foreign vessels coming into the harbors; but from this charge vessels belonging to friends of the Parliament were exempted, in consideration of the provision of that body in favor of New-England shipping. A poll-tax, not felt to be oppressive, of twenty pence annually levied on males above sixteen years of age, yielded a considerable supply. "Laborers, artificers, and handicraftsmen, (that usually took in summer time above eighteen pence by the day wages,) were charged with a uniform tax of three shillings and

1646.

Nov. 4.

[ocr errors]

1 Winthrop, II. 259; comp. Mass. redound to the country by putting of Rec., II. 157. the law in print." (Ibid., 286.) Ibid., 82. After three years, this tax was raised to fifty shillings. (Ibid., 215.)

2 Mass. Rec., II. 168, 196, 209. Ibid., 217, 230.

Ibid., 239.I have not been able to learn that any copy of this book exists. In October of the next year the Court testified to its "finding by experience the great benefit that doth

Ibid., 106; comp. 246, 259, 268. 7 Ibid., 107; comp. 131.

• Winthrop, II. 236; see above, Vol. I. 583.

four pence annually; upon other persons, payments were assessed "according to their returns and incomings." 1

Institution

of common

schools.

1647.

Nov. 11.

In the second year of Winthrop's fourth series of services as Governor, he had the satisfaction of giving his official sanction to a measure, the worth of which no man of that day could better estimate, though no estimate of that day could approach a just conception of its beneficent issues, as later time has revealed them. Not a word of such legislation as the following must be withheld from the reader.2 Since the seventeenth year of Massachusetts, no child of hers has been able to say, that to him poverty has closed the book of knowledge, or the way to honor.

"It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saintseeming deceivers, that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors,—

[ocr errors]

"It is therefore ordered, that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children,

1 Mass. Rec., II. 173.

Ibid., 203.- The measure is all the more impressive for having originated in a general voluntary movement of the people in their several settlements. In 1645, Winthrop writes: "Divers free schools were erected, as at Roxbury." (II. 215.) In 1644, the inhabitants of Dedham, "taking into consideration the necessity of providing some means

for the education of youth, did, by a unanimous consent, declare by vote their willingness to promote that work, promising to put to their hands to provide maintenance for a free school." And they made for the purpose an appropriation of some lands, and of twenty pounds annually. (Haven, Historical Address, &c., 58.) Comp. Clapp, History of Dorchester, 419–429.

or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint; provided those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns. And it is further ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University; provided, that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year, that every such town shall pay five pounds to the next school till they shall perform this order." 1

Death of

1645.

March 9.

Death had now begun to thin the ranks of the settlers of New England, and the career of some of the most illustrious among them was ended. The affluent and large-hearted George Willis, six years a Magistrate of Connecticut, and one year Governor, Willis. had left a memory scarcely less cherished than were to be the memories of the best of the fellow-laborers whom he had followed, or who followed him, to the grave. Of those associates, Thomas Hooker, if we may not assign to him precedence of the civil father of his Colony, was inferior in gifts and "The whole land," wrote the graces to none. contemporary chronicler of Plymouth, "sustained

[ocr errors]

Death of

Hooker.

1647.

July 7.

a great loss by the death of that most eminent servant of Jesus Christ. His name will live, and is embalmed, and doth remain, and will be as a precious ointment in the churches and amongst the saints in present and future ages. This special servant of Christ, as he served his Master with great zeal, love, wisdom, and sincerity, so he ended his life with much comfort and serenity; so as it is rare that was said of him, that the peace which he had in believing, thirty years before his death,

1 Mass. Rec., II. 203.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »