twelve-pound shot? After having sent back to Boston to correct the blunder, only to have it renewed; as he unwillingly ordered grape instead of balls to be used against the entrenchments, he cursed his officer of ordnance; saying that he knew he was not at his post; no, most likely he was making love to the schoolmaster's daughter-Miss Lovell!-truer daughter of her country than of her tory father, the Judith of our mythology; she shall be remembered as the Schoolmaster's Daughter of the 17th of June, if the day ever comes when our history shall be written.

The Boston Town Records read as follows:

"The 13th of the 2d moneth, 1635. Att a Generall meeting upon publique notice. . . . . it was then generally agreed upon that our brother Philemon Pormort, shalbe intreated to become scholemaster, for the teaching and nourtering of children with us."

This vote was the beginning of the School which has ever since been maintained by the town, and is now known as the Public Latin School.

Mr. Pormort "accepted the trust, and was supported partly by donations of liberal friends of education, and partly by the income of a tract of land assigned to him at Muddy River" (Brookline).

Of his powers as a teacher nothing whatever is known. The only testimony that can be considered direct, to prove that under his care the classical languages were taught in the School, is the fact that John Hull, who was one of his pupils, knew Latin. It is not a violent inference, however, to suppose that they were-as his assistant and successor, Daniel Maude, who was perfectly competent to teach those languages, was appointed without any implication that he was to fulfill other duties than Mr. Pormort had done.

Mr. Dillaway, our oldest surviving Head Master, says: —

"This being the only public school in the town for about half a century, it is reasonable to infer that the elementary as well as the higher branches were taught. Its principal object, however, from its establishment to the present time, has been to prepare young men for college. 'Out of small beginnings,' says Bradford, great things have been produced; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea, in some sort, to our whole nation.' He must have had in his mind the first Boston school, which has been perpetuated in the present Latin School. Its origin was simple and unpretending; its advantages as an educational institution in its early days hardly to be compared

with those of the humblest country school of the present time; and yet what a burning and shining light it has become! For nearly two and a half centuries it has been training statesmen whose wisdom has guided our nation. It has given us such men as Benjamin Franklin, whose statue stands on the spot where his brief school-days were spent; Samuel Adams, the distinguished patriot, whose statue has been recently erected; Cotton Mather, one of the best scholars of his time; Judge Hutchinson; Governor Leverett and his grandson, a President of Harvard College; Wm. Stoughton, Chief Justice of Massachusetts; James Bowdoin; and many others whose eminent public services are on record."

Of the age, birthplace, character or education of Mr. Pormort, we know nothing from any documents we have yet discovered. On the 28th of August, 1634, he was admitted, with Susanna his wife, a member of the First Church.† In the records of that church we find the baptism of his son Lazarus, March 1st, 1636, and of his daughter Anna, April 15th, 1638.

We find Mr. Pormort's name in connection with the Hutchinson controversy, the history of which has been published in a form which makes it quite unnecessary for us to discuss it here, but in no other transactions of the colony, excepting those which related to the School, and, in one or two instances, in the affairs of Muddy River. In this celebrated controversy he did not sign any of the earlier petitions or other documents drawn up by Mrs. Hutchinson's adherents; but when, in 1638, the Rev. John Wheelwright led a colony of her friends to found the town of Exeter, N. H., Pormort enrolled himself among their number, and his name appears attached to the document by which they established themselves in an independent state.

Without entering into an investigation of the errors or the blame of the Hutchinson controversy, the facts of the case, as far as Pormort appears connected with them, seem to be that he was upholding with such men as Vane and Wheelwright, the rights of conscience and religious liberty, against more absolute and formal views. In his love of that liberty he pressed more deeply into the wilderness which he had vainly sought in his hope for it. He had constancy enough, and sincerity enough of opinion to leave his first

* Memorial History of Boston. Article on Education, Vol. IV. p. 237.

+ See First Church Records.

Life of Mrs. Hutchinson in Vol. xvi. of Sparks's American Biography, by Rev. Geo. E. Ellis, D. D. (at the time of writing, a member of the Historical Committee of this Association.)

western home for a wilderness, though nothing but a strong sense of duty could have called him.

The dismission of these colonists, thus really driven into exile by the harshness of the people of Boston, from the First Church was amicable in form, and is dated January 6th, 1638.*

The documents by which the colony of Exeter was established are dated October 4th, 1639.†

Mr. Pormort's administration of the Latin School was, therefore, probably about three years, extending from April, 1635, to the close of 1638. He seems to have left Exeter, and gone to Wells, but, before 1642, to have returned to Boston. We find no record of his death.

In August, 1636, a subscription was made "by the richer inhabitants, toward the maintenance of a free schoolmaster for the youth with us," and Mr. Daniel Maude was chosen to the office.

* 1638 6th of 11 moneth. This day dismissions granted to our Brethren

Mr. John Wheelwright

Richard Monys

Richard Bulgar

Philemon Pormort
Isaac Grosse
Christopher Marshall

George Baytes
Thomas Wardall and
Willyam Wardall

unto the Church of Christ at the falls of Paschataqua if they be rightly gathered and ordered. Records of First Church.

--

+ See Belknap's History of New Hampshire.

See Second report of the Record Commissioners of Boston, p. 160 Note. 12th of the 6th, August, 1636.

At a general meeting of the richer inhabitants there was given towards the maintenance of a free school master for the youth with us, Mr. Daniel Maud being now also chosen thereunto:

No doubt, many of the subscribers were parents of Mr. Maude's pupils, but as there is no list of our scholars in his time, we can only conjecture this.

Mr. Maude was a Non-Conformist Puritan minister,* who arrived from England probably Aug. 17, 1635. At this time he was about fifty years old. He was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of Bachelor in 1606, and of Master in 1610.†

Mr. Maude was admitted freeman at the general election, May 25, 1636, the year after his arrival, and on the second of August following was appointed, as has been mentioned above, teacher in the Latin School. It is uncertain whether Mr. Pormort resigned his office before leaving for Exeter, and was succeeded by Maude; or whether the latter was for a time associated with him and then his successor; or (as an incidental reference some ten years after seems to imply that Mr. Pormort, who had then returned to the town, had resumed his office, and was alone in it), his substitute during his absence. But, from the phrase in the terms of the subscription, "being now also chosen thereto," it would seem that Maude attended to the duties of this office, together with Pormort.

In 1641 the people of Dover, N. H., petitioned the Massachusetts government to extend over them its supervision. The petition was granted, and in this connection it is mentioned by Johnson,§ that

*Mr. Maude had been ejected from his charge in England on account of his Non-Conformity. Cotton Mather places him, therefore, in his first classis of ministers, who had been in pastoral duty before the emigration to this country.

+ Mr. Savage's Gleanings. Collections of the Mass. Hist. Soc., 3d series, vol. p.

At that time subscription in the books of the University was not required—the requisition which has since kept so many students from the English Universities, not being made till 1616.

At a town meeting on "The 17th of the 2d moneth, 1637 * * it is agreed that Mr. Danyell Mawde, scholemaster, shall have a garden plot next unto Stephen Kinsley's house plott upon like condition of building thereon if neede bee."

By the Book of Possessions this lot is thus described:
Daniel Maud, his possession within the limits of Boston.

One house and garden, bounded with Mr. Bellingham south and west, Mr. Cotton north, the streete east.

As laid down on Lamb's Map this location is on the western side of Tremont Street, not far from the present site of the Suffolk Savings Bank.

§ Edward, in his "Wonder Working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England."

"it pleased God to fit stones by the continual hearing of the word, and called to the office of Pastor one Mr. Maude, both godly and diligent in the work."

Without any intimation to the contrary, we feel justified in supposing that Maude continued in office as our schoolmaster until he accepted this call and removed, with his wife Mary, to Dover in the end of 1641, or the beginning of 1642. The influence of his character upon the church in Dover, where he remained until his death in 1655, was long felt, and most happy. Johnson says he was godly and diligent; and Hubbard that he was a good man, of serious spirit, and of a quiet and peaceable disposition. We have no other notices of his life. So far as we can learn, he left no children.

Maude was a member of the same English College as John Harvard, who has given the name to our College at Cambridge. It is interesting to learn that the Master of the Latin School, and the benefactor of the infant college had this common ground of sympathy while together here in Boston.

There is no reason to suppose that the course of instruction followed by our first two Masters differed much from that pursued in the English schools in their time,* where the established period of school education in the classics preparatory to the college was about seven or eight years.

A Master of Arts of Emmanuel, his learning recommended Maude to a place which he filled well. It was his good fortune, and, perhaps the credit of it is to be assigned to him rather than to his predecessor or colleague, to engraft on the infant School the learning and scholarship of the most ancient institutions; and while its Master, three years after its foundation, he saw the foundation of the College which gave the name of his own Alma Mater to the town where it was first planted. To that College he sent its first pupils, and secured for his and our School the noble reputation of being the first seminary for classical learning in our regions of the Western World.

The catalogue of Pormort's and Maude's pupils, if such there ever were, has been lost, and we can probably never ascertain who of the

* Thomas Lechford, a London lawyer, (who had been two years in this country, and had returned dissatisfied to London, probably because in a hard working colony he had found little to do) the author of "Plain Dealing," well known to antiquarians as a book which handles the colony harshly and unkindly, wrote to Winthrop in 1640:

"Consider how poorly your schools goe on. You must depend upon England for help of learned men and schollars, bookes, commodities infinite almost."