Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

1641.

influence over the early ecclesiastical transactions in that Colony; for Dunster, Street, Hooke, and Norton, though men of still superior ability, were connected with its churches for only a little time. His estimation in the other Colonies is proved by his election to be the associate of Cotton and Mather in preparing for the Cambridge Synod their "Model of Church Government according to the Word of God." When Chauncy made known his heretical opinions on baptism, Partridge was thought to be the most competent person in the Colony to manage the dispute with him. In Massachusetts, Cotton had died six years before this time, surviving his friend the first Governor by four "If Boston be the chief seat of New England," wrote Mather, his grandson, "it was Cotton that Cotton. was the father and glory of Boston." This is excessive praise. The personal estimation in which he was held was high, but his influence over public affairs was controlled by men of superior qualifications for governing. Winthrop loved him, and used largely his abilities for the public service, but took good care that the reins should never be yielded to his hands. His draft of a code of laws was quietly set aside for that of Ward. His championship of Vane and Mrs. Hutchinson

1 Ibid., Chap. I. § 1; and again, in the Epitaphium: "Cujus ultima laus est, quod fuerit inter Nov-Anglos primus." (Ibid., § 34.) Comp. Hubbard, History, 182.

Ward died in England, the year after Cotton, at Shenfield, in Essex, of which place he was the minister. He was a confident, a restless, and, in words at least, an intolerant man; but extremely able, thoroughly honest, and, on the whole, eminently serviceable. His Body of Liberties is a sort of Magna Charta of New England.

Mr. Savage thinks (Winthrop, II. 167, note) that Ward sailed from Mas35

VOL. II.

years.

Death of

1652.

Dec. 23.

sachusetts with Winslow in December, 1646. Perhaps it was intended that Winslow should have his advice in the important business on which he was employed. Possibly Ward was discontented after the defeat, in 1644, by Winthrop's party, of his measure of a popular commission to manage affairs in vacations of the General Court. (See above, p. 158.) At his departure he gave to the College six hundred acres of land near Andover.

The very valuable library of Colonel Aspinwall, lately United States Consul at London, contains a copy of a sermon preached by Ward, in 1647, be

was, with respectful tenderness, but with unflinching vigor, resisted and put down. His leaning to a semi-Presbyterianism, prompted partly by a talent for organization, and partly by a love of power unsuspected by himself, was watched and overcome. He was far from being the ruling spirit of the Colony. Probably he did not individually influence its destiny so much as he supposed. But, acting with others, and advised, instructed, and checked by them, he rendered it memorable service. If he was disposed to magnify his office, still it was with reserve and meekness; if, in some sense, his self-estimate was high, he was not obstinate, or overbearing, or passionate, or self-seeking. There was no mistake in the opinion which his neighbors universally entertained of his devoted piety. Faith in things unseen was his steady principle of action. He honestly consecrated his life to the service of God. Prosperity could offer no attractions to allure him, hardships and dangers had no power to deter him, from that employment of his talents. His talents, developed by the best education England afforded in his day, were such as fitted him eminently to shine in the sphere in which he stood. He had acuteness and learning for controversy, a moving eloquence for the pulpit, and an affectionate and winning address and a knowledge of common business, which, in the less public duties of the sacred office, secured to him great power. Cotton was no dictator of the affairs of Massachusetts; but he served her with conscientious diligence, as well as with

fore the House of Commons, whom he rebukes in round terms for their acquiescence in the seizure of the King's person by Cornet Joyce. It is a production of the highest curiosity. The author's "Simple Cobler of Aggawam" is not more brilliant and witty, to say nothing of the boldness of such a homily in such circumstances. I believe that, at the time of preaching the sermon, Ward was seventy-seven years old.

"I could not be master of my thoughts and memory," Ward says in a prefatory letter, "but forgat some things material, and expressed two or three passages inconveniently. ..... I was very loath to read my notes; had I done it, I presume I had not offended any; but my judgment is altogether against it." It seems from the same Preface, that he "was not thanked or ordered to print."

conspicuous ability, and has a right to be remembered with the most meritorious of her early benefactors.

Death of

1653.

July 31.

In the next year the many days of Thomas Dudley were numbered and finished.1 He had been twice Governor, Deputy-Governor thirteen times, and Major-General of the militia in other years. His Dudley. well-known capacity, experience, and scrupulous fidelity to every trust, made him an object of implicit respect. His integrity was unimpeachable; his superiority to influences of human blame or favor was above question; the fear of God was an ever-present and deciding motive to him; no man, in public action, had a more single eye to the public welfare. But Dudley's was one of those characters in which virtue does not put on her gracious aspect. He belonged to the class of men who are commended, confided in, and revered, but not loved. If hasty, he was not revengeful; he never meant to be unjust, and he did sincerely mean to be magnanimous ; but he wanted the qualities to conciliate and win. Strictly true to his own engagements, he expected a like precision from others, and was thought to exact it with too great rigor. He was positive, prejudiced, undemonstrative, austere. When he was gentle and generous, it seemed to be more from conscience than from sympathy, so that even benefits from him won approval rather than affection. It might be expected of such a man, that he would find it hard to tolerate a difference of religious opinion; and it is recorded of Dudley, that after his decease some lines expressive of that form of narrowness were found in a pocket of his dress. He was not alone in cherish

1 Dudley was fifty-four years old when he came to New England in 1630. The lines, twenty in number, are preserved by Mather (Magnalia, Book II. Chap. V. § 1). They conclude thus:

"Let men of God in courts and churches watch O'er such as do a toleration hatch,

Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice, To poison all with heresy and vice. If men be left, and otherwise combine, My epitaph 's, I died no libertine.'" Such clamorous assertions of an intol erant spirit are themselves a forcible indication of the existence in other minds of a different tone of feeling, which it was thought necessary to rebuke.

ing it. Others among his eminent fellow-laborers were perhaps ready to act on his harsh maxims of this kind, if a sounder public opinion, countenanced and fostered by minds of more calmness and comprehension, had not disabled and controlled them. But, on the other hand, it is not safe to draw exact inferences as to men's character and deliberate plans from their animated expressions in speech, or even in writing. In the warmth of controversy the thought and feeling of the moment are not seldom uttered with a vehemence which inexactly represents the permanent purpose of the mind; and constantly it is seen that men trusted with authority, properly impressed with its responsibilities, and brought to look at practical questions with the dispassionate scrutiny which its possession rightfully requires, adopt in action a course of lenity and good sense different from what had been foreshadowed by their less well-considered words.

Roger

Roger Ludlow, one of Dudley's early associates in Massachusetts, seems at first view to have resembled Ludlow. him in some points of character. But the resemblance was not close. Both had traits fitting them to take a lead in business; and both were obstructed by their want of suavity, and of an aptitude for accommodation. But in Dudley a sense of duty, if sometimes perverted or only partially operative, was always paramount, while Ludlow's pertinacity was apt to be passionate and wilful; his better qualities were mixed with an alloy of personal ambition and of jealousy of associates, with which Dudley could not be charged; and repeated disappointments and mortifications, which his morbid selfreference both provoked and made keener, impaired his self-respect and disturbed his sense of obligation. The worst mischief of a course of opposition and defeat is experienced when, generating ill humors, it hinders a cheerful perseverance in useful action. Ludlow, after a restless career in Massachusetts, left that Colony in dis

gust at what he thought injustice to his deserts, though he had repeatedly received almost the highest tokens of public esteem. By his new neighbors in Connecticut he was treated with scarcely greater favor. He sometimes represented them in the federal congress; but they never elected him to the highest office in their government, and only twice to the second; and this penurious confidence must have occasioned him the more chagrin, because Haynes, the ruler first preferred to him in Connecticut, was the person whose promotion in Massachusetts had probably been one of the motives for his departure thence. His new associates did not like his project of founding a remote settlement under their jurisdiction, though they indulged him in it, as a man bent on having his own way, and worth gratifying. But when the Massachusetts people refused to go to war with the Dutch, he could not control his indignation. His companions at Fairfield resolved to wage the war on their own 1653. account, and made him commander of their levy.2 November. Discountenanced in this rash step both by Connecticut and by New Haven, he gave free way to his His departresentment, and in the following spring, after New Engtwenty-four years of residence in New England, withdrew himself to Virginia, never to return.3

ure from

land.

1654.

May.

Ludlow left what possibly might even yet have proved a more open field to him in Connecticut; for Haynes died. just before his departure, and Hopkins had gone Death of to England the year before.

1 See Vol. I. 538.
2 N. H. Rec., II. 47.

He went away in the midst of a quarrel with New Haven, about the vessel in which he embarked. (Ibid., 69-75.) Neither the time nor the place of his death is known.

I think it probable that Ludlow's agency was important in the quarrel between the western Colonies and

These men, the

Haynes.
March 1.

[blocks in formation]
« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »