The course of many of the principal founders had now been run. William Bradford was in his sixtyeighth year when he died. For thirty-seven Bradford

Death of

1657.

May 9.

years he had been the foremost man of Plymouth Colony. His utterly unselfish public spirit, his good judgment, his courage, activity, impar

on the Journal of the Court, has no special resemblance to a pine; nor do the formal documents contain any designation of that kind. The earliest mention of it, that I am acquainted with, occurs in a petition, in 1680, for the establishment of a free mint. (Archæol. Amer., III. 300.)

ber when accounts were commonly kept in pounds, shillings, and pence; the pound signifying $ 3.33, that is, three quarters of the estimated pound sterling, as the silver pieces of the colonial coinage were worth three quarters of a sterling coin of the same denomination.

A learned treatise on the whole subject of the Massachusetts coinage, from the pen of Mr. Edward Everett Hale, is in the "Archæologia Americana," III. 281-306; comp. 315.

The New-England reader does not need to be informed that the names of money introduced with this currency have not yet gone quite out of use. A shilling, though we have no coin of that name, is, in New-England nomen- The following is a representation clature, a sixth part of a Spanish dol- of pieces of money belonging to the lar. People, not yet very old, remem- coinage prescribed in October, 1652,

tiality, and capacity for affairs, made him the object of a perfect confidence. Entering upon middle life with a very scanty stock of book-knowledge, he was diligent in the cultivation of his mind, and continued to learn as he grew old. Besides the Dutch and French languages, says Cotton Mather, "the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied, because he said he would see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty." That his poetry was not inferior to that of his contemporaries in Massachusetts who had been lights of the English universities, may claim no high praise in other respects; but it shows the versatility of his talents. He was as tender as he was firm and practically wise. He lived and died beloved as much as reverenced. He was "lamented by all the Colonies of New England, as a common blessing and father to them all."2 His conscientiousness was absolute. His earnest piety was calm and tolerant. His independence of spirit and intrepidity in action were as free from rashness as from rancor. Few names in history are associated with more of the distinctive attributes of a noble soul than the name of Bradford. It is not likely that the thought of being remembered in later ages ever crossed his mind; but among the last things to be forgotten by man is that movement of human affairs in which he took an eminently worthy part.

Death of
Winslow.

1655.

After Bradford, or after Bradford and Brewster,the first Colony owed to no man so much as to Edward Winslow. Always intelligent, generous, confident, and indefatigable, he was undoubtingly trusted for any service, at home or abroad, which the occasions of the infant settlement happened to require. Were the Northeastern fishermen to be sought for a supply of food in a famine; or was the Indian chief, whose capricious moods needed watching, to be looked

May 8.

1

Magnalia, Book II. Chap. I. § 9.

Ibid., § 10.

up in his forest solitude; or the Governor's place to be taken that the regular incumbent might have some rest; or Massachusetts to be dissuaded from too austere severity; or, finally, were the rulers of affairs in England to be made propitious,—the natural resort was to the agency of Winslow. For foreign employment, his better birth and breeding gave him advantages over his fellow-emigrants. Among the gentlemen of the British Parliament Winslow moved as one of themselves; and his address and winning qualities, no less than his sagacity and diligence, justified the choice which, when he went abroad for the last time, the larger Colony overlooked her own statesmen to make. That Winthrop, by a sympathy of character, was so capable of estimating him, was on this occasion the good fortune of Massachusetts. Bradford grievously missed from his side the partner of his early struggles. Cromwell saw at once the worth of the honest, religious, capable, strenuous envoy from North America, and took care never to lose his services while he lived, which was for nine years after he left Plymouth for the last time. Distress at the failure, through military mismanagement, of the attempt upon St. Domingo, which he was superintending for the Protector, is thought to have brought on his fatal illness. Now that Bradford was old, Plymouth could not have sustained a greater loss. But it was delayed till Plymouth had been set upon a secure foundation.

Death of

1656.

Oct. 3.

In the next year, the Colony had to celebrate the obsequies of its military chief. There is a touching peculiarity in the relation of Standish to his associates. Nature, endowing him with valor, quick- Standish. ness of apprehension, and good judgment, had qualified him for business and for war. Of his other peculiarities nothing has been recorded, except that he was of small stature, and of a hasty temper.2 Born of a good family, it was probably while serving in 1 Bradford, 444. Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 126, 339.

an English regiment in the Netherlands that he fell in with the company of English peasants, who, for conscience' `sake, were struggling for a livelihood by the practice of unwonted handicrafts at Leyden; and thenceforward he attached himself to them for life. Standish was no religious enthusiast. He never professed to care for, or so much as to understand, the system of doctrine of his friends, though he paid it all respect, as being theirs. He never was a member of their church. But their honest, self-renouncing piety fascinated him wholly. He crossed the ocean with them, receiving as much from their manly affection as he contributed to them by his ready practical resource. In the wretchedness of the first winter he nursed sick men, women, and children, and at the same time built a battery and drilled a platoon for defence against Indian hostility. He had no ambition except to do for his friends whatever from time to time they thought fit to charge him with, whether it was to frighten the Narragansett or Massachusetts natives, or to forage at Nauset for provisions, or to hold a rod over disorderly English neighbors, or to treat with merchants on the London exchange. In the misery of the early settlement, especially, the reader does not fail to reflect what relief must have been afforded by reliance on a guardian so vigilant and so manful.

The life of Ralph Partridge, minister of Duxbury, extended to the last year to which the history of Plymouth has been now brought down.' He must be regarded as the clergyman who exerted the most

Death of
Partridge.

1658.

'The name of this minister was a special godsend to Cotton Mather. "Being distressed by the ecclesiastical setters, he had no defence, neither of beak nor claw, but a flight over the ocean. The place where he took covert was the town of Plymouth. . . . This Partridge had not only the innocency of the dove, conspicuous in his blameless and pious life, but also the

loftiness of an eagle, in the great soar of his intellectual abilities." He was "so afraid of being anything that looked like a bird wandering from his nest, that he remained with his poor people till he took wing to become a bird of Paradise, along with the winged seraphim of heaven." Mather's Epitaphium upon Partridge is "Avolavit." (Magnalia, Book III. Chap. XI.)

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 years. "If Boston be the chief seat of New England," Death of 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 Mas

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