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."1 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. 1646. 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 May 22. 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 1 Winthrop, II. 258. -Yet no person, were passed at the next Court, Novemnot a Magistrate, had been a Commis- ber 4. (Ibid., 176-182.) In several of sioner, except (in 1644) Mr. Hathorne. them, the ecclesiastical jealousies, to 2 Mass. Rec., II. 109.-Some of these 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, and a 1648. copy of the code, fairly engrossed for publication, May 10. was "at the press." 4 2 By degrees the original rudeness of the revenue system was reformed. Vintners, or other persons that Improve 66 revenue sys 1644. Nov. 13. 1645. had license to draw wine," were held to pay ments of the twenty shillings for every butt of sack drawn, tem. 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.s A poll-tax, not felt to be oppressive, of twenty 1646. 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 1 7 Nov. 4. 8 Winthrop, II. 259; comp. Mass. redound to the country by putting of Rec., II. 157. the law in print.” (Ibid., 286.) 2 Mass. Rec., II. 168, 196, 209. Ibid., 217, 230. 4 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 5 Ibid., 82. After three years, this tax was raised to fifty shillings. (Ibid., 215.) • Ibid., 106; comp. 246, 259, 268. 7 Ibid., 107; comp. 131. 8 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,— "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. 2 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 of 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 graces to none. "The whole land," wrote the contemporary chronicler of Plymouth, "sustained 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. 1647. July 7. was firm, and not touched by the adversary until the period of his life; and, with much joy and peace in believing, he fell asleep in the Lord." He had lived sixty-one years. His death was keenly felt throughout New England as a general calamity. He had been sharply opposed to Winthrop in the controversies which engaged their respective Colonies; but Winthrop was not a man to permit public or personal differences to obscure to him the duty, or despoil him of the satisfaction, of a cordial recognition of kindred excellence. After relating the ravages of an epidemic sickness in Massachusetts and Connecticut, he proceeds: "But that which made the stroke more sensible and grievous, both to them and to all the country, was the death of that faithful servant of the Lord, Mr. Thomas Hooker, pastor of the church in Hartford, who, for piety, prudence, wisdom, zeal, learning, and what else might make him serviceable in the place and time he lived in, might be compared with men of greatest note. And he shall need no other praise; the fruits of his labors in both Englands shall preserve an honorable and happy remembrance of him for ever."2 Death of In less than two years after recording this tribute to his friend, Winthrop was called to follow him. Winthrop. Early in his sixty-second year, "he took a cold, 1649 which turned into a fever, whereof he lay sick March 26. about a month," and then closed his eyes upon 1 Morton, Memorial, 237.- Cotton, imagined to have had some rivalry with Hooker in Massachusetts (see Vol. I. 446), wrote an elegy in eight stanzas, of which the following are two: " "T was of Geneva's worthies said, with wonder, (Those worthies three,) Farel. was wont to thun der; Viret, like rain, on tender grass to shower; "All these in Hooker's spirit did remain, A pourer forth of lively oracles, In saving souls, the sum of miracles." longer "lamentation " over him. According to this, "To sinners stout, which no law could bring To them he was a son of dreadful thunder; If the verses are not graceful, the feeling which prompted them was most profound, reverential, and hearty. Winthrop, II. 310. Mather, Book II. Chap. IV. § 12. The last entry, which is a long one, The Muse of Bulkley, minister of in Winthrop's Journal, bears the date Concord, also brought her tribute in a of January 11. |