ANNUAL MEETING, NOVEMBER, 1932

    THE Annual Meeting of the Society was held at the Algonquin Club, No. 217 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on Monday, November 21, 1932, at half-past six o’clock in the evening, the President, Samuel Eliot Morison, in the chair.

    The Records of the last stated Meeting were read and approved.

    The Corresponding Secretary reported the death of Frederic Winthrop, a Resident Member, on May 6, 1932, and of Ezra Henry Baker, a Resident Member, on September 22, 1932.

    Mr. Allston Burr, of Boston, Mr. Perry Gilbert Miller, of Cambridge, Mr. Henry Lee Shattuck, of Boston, and Mr. Kenneth Grant Tremayne Webster, of Cambridge, were elected Resident Members of the Society.

    The Annual Report of the Council was read by Mr. Robert Walcott.

    REPORT OF THE COUNCIL

    During the past year, the Society has held three meetings. On December 17, 1931, at Mr. Morison’s house, Mr. Matt B. Jones presented “Bibliographical Notes on Cotton Mather’s ‘Accomplished Singer,’” and the President communicated a paper by Thomas H. Johnson on “Jonathan Edwards and the ‘Young Folks’ Bible.’”

    On February 25, 1932, at our Treasurer’s house, Mr. Francis Parkman, continuing his family tradition, read a paper on “French Policy in the Mississippi Valley, 1697–1712.” Mr. Tuttle read extracts from a contemporary diary dealing with the “Last Pomps of Governor Burnet,” and Mr. Anderson read a note on “Governor Burnet as a Golfer,” which provoked several members to give their views on the origin of golf and the merits of Governor Burnet. Prosfessor Hart concluded this meeting by an informal talk on the Washington Bicentennial.

    On the evening of April 28, we were the guests of our Recording Secretary in the historic Apthorp House at Cambridge. In this eighteenth-century atmosphere, Mr. Matthews read a paper on “Certain Alleged Daughters of Benjamin Franklin”; Mr. Goodspeed contributed notes on “The Wicked Primer”; and the President spoke on “The Education of Thomas Parker, of Newbury.” Our meetings have been well attended the last year, interest has been keen, and discussion brisk.

    In the matter of publications, we are proud this year to be able to report completed performance, as well as notable progress. Volume XXVII of the Publications, covering the Transactions of the Society from January, 1927, to November, 1930, has been distributed. This volume contains a reprint from the original manuscript of Thomas Shepard’s autobiography, with a bibliography of Shepard’s writings by our present Editor, reprint and bibliography being a contribution of the Society towards the Tercentenary of Massachusetts Bay. After prolonged pains of parturition, in which three successive editors have served as midwives, and numerous members and others have rendered advice and assistance, the Society has given birth to the Index to Volumes I-XXV of its Publications. The first serial of Volume XXVIII, including Transactions for December, 1930, to April, 1931, has been printed and distributed to the authors of communications.

    During the past summer and the present fall, your President and Editor and Mr. Chafee have spent much time and effort on Volumes XXIX and XXX, containing the Records of the Suffolk County Court from 1671 to 1680. The text, some 1100 pages, is all in page proof; Mr. Chafee is at work on the Introduction; and Mr. Waldo Palmer, who prepared the Index volume for the press, is indexing these two volumes. They should be distributed early in the new year. These forthcoming volumes are in the nature of an extracurricular activity of Mr. Chafee and of your President, who wish therefore to warn the members that in spite of the Editor’s professional efforts to cover up their deficiencies, these volumes must fall short of that high standard for accuracy, annotation, and consistency established for the Society’s publications by Mr. Matthews and continued by his successors in the editorial office. The excuse of Messrs. Chafee and Morison is that if they had not done it, the work would not yet have been even begun; that the money for printing these records was in the treasury; and that they felt that we should spend that money now, thus providing employment for expert printers, rather than hoard it up for later and we hope better times.

    In addition to its work of direct publication, under its own name, your Society has become the principal supporter of the New England Quarterly, an historical review of New England life and letters founded by members of the Society in 1928, and now about to enter its sixth year. The New England Quarterly, both for its articles and its book reviews, has acquired a place that is filled by no other publication, and one that long needed filling. Although neither the editors nor the contributors are paid, the costs of printing are such that a quarterly of this sort cannot exist without a subsidy. For three years it was supported by contributions, in which members of the Society took a leading part; when the three years elapsed, the magazine must have succumbed to the depression, had not the Society come to its rescue with a subsidy.

    Although this publishing programme has been expensive and your Society will have spent this year far more than its annual income, these unusual outlays had been anticipated by the Treasurer and Council by saving out of the income; hence we are still living within our means, and are not in debt. The Society is very fortunate in. having no building to maintain, and but one small salary to pay; it can therefore devote almost its entire means to publication.

    In 1928, Mr. George Nixon Black left your Society by will his splendid family collection of the manuscripts of General David Cobb, together with a bequest of $10,000. The Cobb manuscripts have now been handed over by Mr. Black’s executor to the custody of your President. The publication of a volume of Cobb Papers, covering the years 1760–1820, will probably be undertaken by your Editor and Council as soon as sufficient income has accumulated from the Black and other funds.

    The Society’s usefulness as a publisher of important historical material is limited only by its income. Gifts and bequests to our publication fund will be thankfully received.

    It will doubtless be news to many members that the Society possesses a small library, the bequest of our founder, Henry Herbert Edes. Although Mr. Edes’s widow had by his will the use of these books during her lifetime, she kindly turned over the bulk of them to the Society, which, after storing them in more or less inaccessible places, has been allowed to put them in one of the history seminary rooms of the Harvard College Library. The sale of a few duplicates provided for a bookplate and for binding and repairing other books that needed attention. This library is in daily use by Harvard graduate students in colonial history. Additions to it, in the field of New England colonial history, will be gratefully received; in particular we could put to good use a set of Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary, many of the Prince Society Publications, a set of the Reports of the Boston Record Commissioners, and a set of the publications of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

    In 1915, our associate Horace Everett Ware, with a gift of $500, established a fund for a memorial to the Founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. To this he added $2,000 by will, in 1919. By accumulation this fund now amounts to almost $6,000. Your Council thought it best not to expend this sum until the blare of trumpets connected with the Tercentenary had died away. But since other tercentenaries will shortly be upon us, they deemed this year opportune to carry out the purposes of Mr. Ware’s bequest. The memorial to the memory of our Founders will take the form of a carved walnut setting for the inscription, the Charter, and the seals and insignia connected with the Founders. It will be placed in the Meeting House of the First Church in Boston, and in such a position that it will balance the Governor Hutchinson Memorial Doorway erected by this Society several years ago. A most beautiful and fitting design has been made by our fellow-member, Mr. Sturgis, and will be carved here from drawings and models made by him in Italy. It will be placed and dedicated early in the new year, when due notice will be given to members.

    During the year the following members have been elected:

    Resident:

    • Frederic Ives Carpenter
    • Robert Ephraim Peabody
    • Augustus Peabody Loring, Jr.
    • Harold Bowditch
    • William Emerson
    • Clifford Kenyon Shipton

    Corresponding:

    • Leonard Woods Labaree
    • Walter Goodwin Davis
    • Max Farrand

    Associate:

    • Timothy Leary

    Under our new By-law, which provides for transference of a member from one class of membership to another when his residence is changed, there have been three transfers:

    From Resident to Corresponding:

    • Worthington Chauncey Ford
    • Arthur Stanwood Pier

    From Corresponding to Resident:

    • John Carroll Perkins

    By death we have lost six members:

    Ezra Henry Baker, Resident, 1910; died September 22, 1932. By profession a banker, director of many corporations, he devoted much time and energy to public institutions, notably to Radcliffe College. A man of strict integrity and unbounded generosity.

    William Wallace Fenn, Resident, 1907; died March 6, 1932. An honor student at Harvard, his life was devoted to the Unitarian ministry, and to the Harvard Divinity School. Friend and guide to several generations of theological students; candid and scholarly investigator into the faith and forms of our Puritan ancestors; eloquent expounder of their ideals, defender of their way of life, which was exemplified in his own life of singular beauty and serenity.

    Percival Hall Lombard, Resident, 1928; died January 22, 1932. After several years spent in Pennsylvania and the West, he divided his time between Brookline and Cape Cod, where he founded the Bourne Historical Society and raised the funds to rebuild the Pilgrim Fathers’ trading post at Manomet. His last years were a courageous struggle to achieve a contented and useful life in the face of heart weakness so pronounced that he paid for attendance at even a single business or social function by complete exhaustion the following day.

    Edward Percival Merritt, Resident, 1910; died at Mentone, April 16, 1932. A frequent contributor to our Publications, and Corresponding Secretary of the Society from 1927 to 1930; a painstaking researcher in the ecclesiastical history of Boston; a modest gentleman of firm character and independent views.

    Frederick Jackson Turner, died at Pasadena, March 14, 1932. Elected a Corresponding Member in 1899, he became a Resident Member in 1910 when he came to Harvard as Professor of American History, and Corresponding Member again when he returned to his native West, the full significance of whose history he was the first to disclose. President of this Society from 1914 to 1916. A delightful companion, a stimulating teacher, a professional scholar with insight and creative imagination, he gave a new turn to historical writing and research in the United States.

    Frederic Winthrop, Resident, 1924; died May 6, 1932. A lover of manly sports and country life led to an interest in colonial history through his strong feeling of family loyalty, he attended our meetings regularly, entertained the Society at his Boston residence, and served for three years on the Council. A gentleman, sportsman, and worthy inheritor of a great name.

    The Treasurer submitted his Annual Report, as follows:

    REPORT OF THE TREASURER

    In accordance with the requirements of the By-laws the Treasurer submits his Annual Report for the year ending November 14, 1932.

    statement of assets and funds—november 14, 1932

    assets

    Cash:

    Income Balance

    $16,602.96

    Less — Loan to Principal

    7,089.61

    $9,513.35

    Investments at Book Values

    Bonds

    $98,778.75

    Stocks

    44,928.13

    Mortgages

    10,500.00

    Savings Bank Deposits

    2,750.77

    156,957.65

    Total Assets

    $166,471.00

    funds

    Total Funds

    $149,868.04

    Income

    16,602.96

    Total Funds

    $166,471.00

    INVESTMENTS AS OF NOVEMBER 14, 1932

    Bonds: Book Value

    $5,000

    Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company General 4’s, 1995

    $4,237.50

    5,000

    Bell Telephone Company of Canada First 5’s, Series B, 1957

    4,062.50

    5,000

    Canadian Pacific Railway Equipment Trust 5’s, 1944

    3,872.50

    5,000

    Cedars Rapids Manufacturing and Power Company First 5’s, 1953

    4,450.00

    5,000

    Central Manufacturing District, Inc., First 6½’s, Series C, 1944

    5,100.00

    5,000

    Central New England Railway Company First 4’s, 1961

    3,512.50

    5,000

    Central Pacific Railway Company First and Refunding 4’s, 1949

    3,762.50

    5,000

    Chester Water Service Company First 4½’s, 1958

    3,375.00

    5,000

    Chicago & Western Indiana Railway Company Consolidated 4’s, 1952

    3,640.00

    5,000

    Chicago Junction Railways and Union Stock Yards Company Mortgage and Collateral Trust Refunding Gold 5’s, 1940

    3,762.50

    5,000

    Indianapolis Power and Light Company First 5’s, 1957

    4,593.75

    5,000

    Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railway Company First Refunding 6’s, Series A, 1946

    5,000.00

    5,000

    New England Telephone and Telegraph Company First 5’s, Series A, 1952

    4,875.00

    12,000

    New River Company First Mortgage and Collateral Trust 5’s, 1934

    11,130.00

    5,000

    New York Water Service Company First 5’s, 1951

    3,650.00

    5,000

    Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company First and Refunding 4’s, Series A, 1961

    4,105.00

    5,000

    Texas Corporation Convertible Debenture 5’s, 1944

    5,012.50

    4,000

    Union Pacific Railroad Series A, Equipment Trust 7’s, 1933/34

    4,000.00

    2,500

    United States Cold Storage Company First Mortgage 6’s, 1946

    2,500.00

    4,000

    United States Cold Storage Company First Mortgage 6’s, 1945

    4,000.00

    5,000

    Western Union Telegraph Company Gold 5’s, 1960

    5,137.50

    5,000

    Wickwire-Spencer Steel Company Prior Lien Collateral and Refunding 7’s, 1935

    5,000.00

    Total Bonds

    $98,778.75

    Stocks:

    50 shares American Telephone & Telegraph Co

    $8,593.63

    50 shares Consolidated Gas Company of New York, Common

    3,077.50

    100 shares Electric Bond and Share Company Cumulative $6.00 Preferred

    10,600.00

    50 shares E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co

    2,683.75

    50 shares First National Bank of Boston

    1,750.00

    1 share First National Bank of the City of New York

    1,565.00

    240 shares General Electric Company, Common

    5,719.50

    50 shares Insurance Company of North America

    1,963.75

    5 shares Travelers Insurance Company

    2,225.00

    50 shares United States Cold Storage Corporation 7% Preferred “A”

    6,750.00

    50 shares United States Cold Storage Corporation, Common

    Total Stocks

    $44,928.13

    First mortgages on improved property in Greater Boston

    10,500.00

    Deposit in Warren Institution for Savings

    $2,711.43

    Deposit in Provident Institution for Savings

    39.34

    2,750.77

    Total Investments

    $156,957.65

    COMPOSITION OF FUNDS — NOVEMBER 14, 1932

    Publication Fund, established in 1893 by gift of $100 from Quincy Adams Shaw: composed of sundry small gifts and portions of the Income which were added from year to year. Income only to be used for Publications

    $10,000.00

    General Fund, established in 1893: composed of Admission Fees and Commutations added to Principal. Income only to be used for Current Expenses

    33,631.09

    Benjamin Apthorp Gould Memorial Fund, established in 1897 and 1898 by subscriptions in his memory. Income only to be used

    10,000.00

    Edward Wheelwright Fund, established in 1900 under his will without restrictions as to use

    20,000.00

    Robert Charles Billings Fund, established in 1903 under his will. Income only to be used for Publications

    10,000.00

    Robert Noxon Toppan Fund, established in 1904 by a gift in his memory from his widow. Income only to be used

    5,000.00

    Robert Charles Winthrop, Jr., Fund, established in 1905 under his will. Increased by $2,000 in 1924 under the will of Elizabeth Winthrop. Income only to be used

    5,000.00

    Andrew McFarland Davis Fund, established in 1908 by a gift from him to be added to the permanent publication funds. Income only to be used

    $2,000.00

    William Watson Fund, established in 1916 under his will without restriction as to use

    1,000.00

    Horace Everett Ware Fund, established in 1916 by a gift of $500 from him. Increased under his will by sundry installments of cash since 1919. To be accumulated and used for Massachusetts Bay Colony monument or other memorial

    6,027.10

    George Vasmer Leverett Fund, established in 1920 under his will. Income only to be used for Publications

    30,000.00

    Henry H. Edes Bequest, established in 1923 under his will. To accumulate until it reaches the sum of $3,000, when it shall be called the Martha Rebecca Hunt Fund. Income only to be used for special purposes

    2,711.43

    Henry H. Edes Memorial Fund, established by sundry subscriptions from 1923 to 1925. To accumulate until it reaches the sum of $10,000. Income only to be used for Publications

    4,498.42

    George Nixon Black Fund, established in 1929 under his will without restriction as to use

    10,000.00

    Total Funds

    $149,868.04

    CHANGES IN PRINCIPAL OF FUNDS

    Total Funds, November 14, 1931

    $148,114.19

    Add — Additions to General Fund:

    Profits on Sales of Securities:

    5 shares Boston Insurance Company

    $294.80

    $5,000 New York Edison Company 6½’s, 1941

    450.00

    $20,000 Western Telephone and Telegraph Company 5’s, 1932

    3,040.00

    Commutation — One life membership

    100.00

    Savings Bank Interest transferred from Income.

    1.40

    3,886.20

    Income added to Principal:

    Horace Everett Ware Fund

    341.16

    Henry H. Edes Memorial Fund

    254.63

    Henry H. Edes Bequest

    98.86

    $152,695.04

    Deduct — Losses on Sales of Securities Charged to General Fund:

    $5,000 Cleveland Union Terminals Company 5½’s, 1972

    $1,509.50

    5,000 England, Walton and Company, Inc., 6’s, 1942

    1,182.50

    2,000 Kingdom of Belgium 6’s, 1955

    135.00

    $2,827.00

    Total Funds, November 14, 1932

    $149,868.04

    INCOME CASH RECEIPTS AND DISBURSEMENTS

    Balance, November 14, 1931

    $24,257.55

    Receipts:

    Interest

    $6,700.38

    Dividends

    2,132.75

    Annual Assessments

    680.00

    Sales of the Society’s Publications

    473.00

    Admission Fees

    80.00

    Contributions

    155.00

    Total Receipts of Income

    10,221.13

    $34,478.68

    Disbursements:

    Editor’s Salary

    $1,000.00

    Publications:

    Volumes 22 and 23

    $1.00

    Volume 27

    2,449.17

    Volume 28

    1,206.43

    Volumes 29 and 30

    5,631.48

    Consolidated Index

    3,361.49

    Other Publications

    4.76

    12,654.33

    Annual Dinner

    477.50

    New England Quarterly

    2,000.00

    Bibliography of American Historical Writings

    50.00

    Stewart, Watts and Bollong, accounting services

    250.00

    Stenographic Services

    100.00

    Stationery and Office Supplies

    81.09

    Postage and Express

    37.35

    Notices of Meetings

    42.50

    Insurance on Stock

    21.41

    Storage on Plates and Stock

    65.44

    Union Safe Deposit Vaults

    22.00

    Bank Collection Charges

    1.05

    Bank Check Tax

    .28

    Accrued Interest on Securities Purchased

    476.98

    Interest on Henry H. Edes Memorial Fund added to principal

    254.63

    Interest on Horace Everett Ware Fund transferred to principal

    341.16

    Total Disbursements of Income

    17,875.72

    Balance of Income Cash, November 14, 1932

    $16,602.96

    PRINCIPAL CASH RECEIPTS AND DISBURSEMENTS

    Balance, November 14, 1931

    $7,423.68

    Receipts:

    $2,000

    Kingdom of Belgium 6’s, 1955, sold

    $1,615.00

    5,000

    England, Walton & Company, Inc., 6’s, 1942, sold

    3,750.00

    20,000

    Western Telephone and Telegraph Company 5’s, matured

    20,000.00

    5,000

    New York Edison Company 6½’s, 1941, sold

    5,450.00

    1,000

    Union Pacific Railroad Equipment Trust 7’s, matured

    1,000.00

    5,000

    Cleveland Union Terminals Company 5½’s, 1972, sold

    3,373.00

    5 shares Boston Insurance Company, sold

    1,689.80

    Commutation, one life membership

    100.00

    Transferred from Income to Principal:

    Horace Everett Ware Fund Income

    341.16

    Henry H. Edes Memorial Fund Income

    254.63

    Interest on Warren Institution for Savings Account

    98.86

    Interest on Provident Institution for Savings Account

    1.40

    Total Receipts of Principal

    37,673.85

    $45,097.53

    Disbursements:

    $5,000

    Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company General Mortgage 4’s, 1995

    $4,237.50

    5,000

    Bell Telephone Company of Canada First 5’s, Series B, 1957

    4,062.50

    5,000

    New York Water Service Company First 5’s, 1951

    3,650.00

    1,000

    Cleveland Union Terminals Company First 5½’s, 1972

    952.50

    5,000

    Canadian Pacific Railway Equipment Trust 5’s, 1944

    3,872.50

    5,000

    Central Pacific Railway Company First & Refunding 4’s, 1949

    3,762.50

    5,000

    Indianapolis Power & Light Company First 5’s, 1957

    4,593.75

    5,000

    Chicago & Western Indiana Railway Company Consolidated 4’s, 1952

    3,640.00

    5,000

    Central New England Railway Company First 4’s, 1961

    3,512.50

    5,000

    Chester Water Service Company First 4½’s, 1958

    3,375.00

    15 shares American Telephone and Telegraph Company

    $1,768.13

    50 shares Consolidated Gas Company of New York, Common

    3,077.50

    50 shares E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company

    2,683.75

    50 shares First National Bank of Boston

    1,750.00

    1 share First National Bank of the City of New York

    1,565.00

    5 shares Travelers Insurance Company

    2,225.00

    5 shares Boston Insurance Company

    1,395.00

    50 shares Insurance Company of North America

    1,963.75

    Interest on Warren Institution for Savings Account, added to principal

    98.86

    Interest on Provident Institution for Savings Account, added to principal

    1.40

    Total Disbursements of Principal

    $52,187.14

    Principal Overinvested, Borrowed from Income

    $7,089.61

    James M. Hunnewell

    Treasurer

    REPORT OF THE AUDITING COMMITTEE

    The undersigned, a Committee appointed to examine the accounts of the Treasurer for the year which ended November 14, 1932, have attended to their duty by employing Messrs. Stewart, Watts and Bollong, Public Accountants and Auditors, who have made an audit of the accounts and examined the securities on deposit in Box 1052-E in the Union Safe Deposit Vaults.

    We herewith submit their report which has been examined and accepted by the Committee.

    Nathaniel T. Kidder

    Matt B. Jones

    R. Ammi Cutter

    Auditing Committee

    Boston, November 21, 1932

    The several Reports were accepted and referred to the Committee of Publication.

    On behalf of the Committee appointed to nominate officers for the ensuing year, the following list was presented; and a ballot having been taken, these gentlemen were unanimously elected:

    PRESIDENT

    • SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON

    VICE-PRESIDENTS

    • ARTHUR PRENTICE RUGG
    • JAMES HARDY ROPES

    RECORDING SECRETARY

    • JAMES PHINNEY BAXTER, 3rd

    CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

    • ROBERT WALCOTT

    TREASURER

    • JAMES MELVILLE HUNNEWELL

    REGISTRAR

    • ROBERT DICKSON WESTON

    MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL FOR THREE YEARS

    • JAMES LINCOLN HUNTINGTON

    After the meeting was dissolved, dinner was served. The guests of the Society were Mr. Albert H. Hall, Mr. Arthur O. Lovejoy, Mr. Robert McElroy, Mr. Perry G. Miller, Mr. Robert E. Moody, Mr. Waldo Palmer, Mr. Philip S. Parker, Mr. Harold R. Shurtleff, Mr. Alexander Souter, Mr. John B. Wheelwright, and Mr. George G. Wolkins.

    After the dinner Mr. Charles M. Andrews addressed the Society as follows:

    Mr. President, fellow-members of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and guests of the evening.

    I bring to you the greetings of Connecticut, a Puritan state like your own, blood of your blood, bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh, a veritable rib from the side of your Puritan Adam. Connecticut even better than Massachusetts represented before 1818 the Puritan ideal of a Heavenly City of God, guarded from contact with the outside world and protected by the hedge which Cotton Mather wished to erect against the wild beasts of the ungodly to save it from contamination and defilement. An isolated, agricultural community in colonial times, Connecticut lay in a kind of backwater, admirably adapted for a religious retreat, with few of the commercial contacts that opened for Massachusetts the doors of worldly ideas and wealth. With no Anglican church in her midst, as Boston had after the coming of Andros, with scarcely any incomers of foreign stock, and with a minimum of relationships with the mother country, she was able to keep herself religiously unspotted from the world. Her position, environment, and connections were all favorable to the retention of the Puritan tradition, unchanged in all essential particulars. In consequence, she became, to a remarkable degree, the home of a simple, unaffected Puritan life, and tenaciously carried the torch of Puritanism long after Massachusetts had begun to descend the slippery path toward Unitarianism and heterodoxy. Connecticut remained persistently orthodox until long after the Revolution, retaining a single church organization, dominated by a single prevailing habit of religious thought, and influenced by a single religious purpose. Throughout the colonial era her people lived quiet and harmonious lives, undisturbed by quarrels within or excitements without. They engaged in pursuits that were neither spectacular nor sensational, steadily establishing a habit of conservative thought and action that has lasted until the present day. Connecticut’s history is the story of the most consistently Puritan of all the Puritan communities.

    But I did not come here to talk about Connecticut or her history. The direction of my thoughts was determined by your president, who suggested to me, in his letter of invitation, that I talk about the “crimes and vices” of Massachusetts. He added that you would listen to me with patience and a considerable measure of tolerance no matter how provocative I might be. Presumably he selected this topic because he thought it would be congenial to me, as one born in Connecticut and now living there, to indulge in this gentle sport of recrimination. I thank him for his consideration, though I think he is wrong in his premise, and I would like to take a moment to tell you why.

    Your president has this evening ventured into the field of genealogy. With so admirable a precedent, I should like to enumerate a few genealogical facts regarding myself, leaving you to judge how far I am qualified, to discuss the seamy side of Puritan history. In my ancestry I possess a strange compound of Puritan acquirements. My paternal forbear, William Andrews, came over with the John Davenport company and settled in New Haven, where he lived for many years and brought up a family. On my maternal side I trace back in two directions: one to Robert Williams, of Roxbury, who came to Massachusetts about 1638; and the other through that sturdy patriot of eastern Connecticut, Eliphalet Dyer, famed for his connection with the Susquehanna Company and the militant frogs of Windham, and on up the line to William Bradford of Plymouth. These pillars of Puritan and Pilgrim descent are buttressed by two collateral members of the same family, William Williams, of Lebanon, the signer, my great-grandfather’s brother, and his uncle Israel Williams, of Hatfield, the friend of Thomas Hutchinson, of whom my aunt, the genealogist of the family, wrote that “unlike most of the name he was a Tory in Revolutionary days, but not the less a patriot,” for such was her fine sense of the fitness of things. Finally, I myself was born in Wethersfield, one of the three oldest towns of Connecticut, of a father who had lived for many years in the western Connecticut towns of Kent and Cornwall. Lest one should look among these various strains for some outside and corrupting influences, let me add that not one of my ancestors ever lived or married outside of Massachusetts or Connecticut, thus preserving unsullied the Puritan inheritance.

    I would seem, therefore, to be pretty well compacted of Puritan stocks, fairly well distributed over different parts of the strictly Puritan area, and so to have in me, by virtue of my inheritance, no special antipathy to the Puritan cause. Had I acquired by descent some of the traits and characteristics of the founders of Rhode Island — Roger Williams and William Harris, William Coddington and John Coggeshall, Samuel Gorton and John Greene — as I have not; or could I go back—as I cannot—to some of the seventeenth-century settlers of Maine — Richard Vines or Edmund Godfrey or Francis Champernowne — the first group of whom were politely but firmly kicked out of Massachusetts, while the second had grievances against her, I might be admirably equipped to comment with asperity upon the “crimes and vices” of your energetic and somewhat aggressive Puritan past.

    But I am a Puritan of the Puritans, with an odd ancestry that for its variety probably few of you will be able to surpass; for New Haven, Plymouth, and Roxbury, not to mention Windham, Lebanon, Kent, Cornwall, and Wethersfield, have made their contribution to my ancestral record, each representative of a different and highly individualized Pilgrim or Puritan center of activity. As nearly all the adult males of my various families went either to Harvard or to Yale, no particularly devastating educational influences entered in to disturb the serenity of my lineage. Therefore there is nothing in the prepossessions inherited from my forefathers and foremothers that qualifies me for the task that your president has assigned me. I am not a student of criminology or penology and so am not qualified by any highly developed professional keenness of scent for ferreting out your assumed delinquencies. And I am still further relieved of the task because as a mere student of history I should only do my profession an injustice were I to take the part of one colony against another, to deal with the claims or counterclaims of precedence or priority, or to balance the respective virtues and vices of this or that group of peoples.

    I prefer to speak of another variety of “crimes and vices,” if we can use such strong language to indicate what at worst are mere frailties of our historical human nature. I should like to speak on the infirmities of some of the historians who, from one part of the country or another, have written upon the history of New England and the Puritans.

    In the first place, far too many works of this kind have been written in the spirit of defense on the one side and offense on the other. Peter Oliver attacks the Puritans, Palfrey and his followers defend them, the unrelated Adamses — Brooks and James Truslow — return to the attack, and present-day writers are digging themselves in, planting countermines, and planning resistance. This literary warfare has been going on for many years, justification and recrimination following each other in cycles, making no progress, until each side loses its historical sense in the recurring effort to make good its arguments. I yield to no one in my respect for Palfrey’s thoroughness, comprehensiveness, and loyalty, but I have no liking for his pious reflections, serious omissions, and strong prejudices, his almost childlike belief in the perfection of his characters, and his uncritical defense of the Puritan system. Just as the Greeks found Aristides too faultless for human nature to endure, so Palfrey’s opponents have taken pleasure in finding flaws in the Puritan character and in the system that the Puritans set up, and have gone to great lengths in their eagerness to expose the Puritans for what they think the Puritans were. It is unnecessary to say that history written for such a purpose is neither instructive nor honest.

    In the second place, too many writers on the Puritans and on other of the early settlers of our country have made the historical error of reading, consciously or unconsciously, into the minds of men of two or three centuries ago ideas that are the result of very modern achievement; of searching among the writings and events of older days for manifestations of principles and practices of life and government that have had acceptance only in our own time. Inevitably such a method of approach leads to distortion and a loss of proportion. Writers of this type are looking at the scene from the wrong end, and, as a rule, unable to rid themselves of the prejudices, prepossessions, and values of the age in which they live, generally undervalue or enormously overvalue the significance of many things they find. It is dangerous to apply to the past what Mr. Edwin Mead approvingly calls “our higher enlightenment.” For instance, this method of approaching American colonial history from the present instead of from the further past, results in ignoring or misunderstanding the place of a colony in the history of English colonization. Far too many writers are interested in the colonies only for their final contribution to the history of the United States and not for what they stand for in that great forward movement which we call the expansion of England. The first duty of the student of Massachusetts history is not to glorify the Puritan for his contribution to our national life and polity, but rather, in order to discover the position the Puritan occupied as part of a growing and enlarging kingdom, to trace without break the connection of Massachusetts with England throughout the entire colonial period. The first duty of the historian is certainly not, by reading backward, to emphasize the importance of the Puritans as forerunners of liberty, independence, and democracy, and so to perpetuate that version of history which, dominated by the whig tradition, has had so baneful an effect on the writing of history both in England and America.

    In the third place, there has been an appreciable absence, among writers on Massachusetts history, of the spirit and methods of the higher criticism in the handling of historical problems and of the evidences for their solution. The historian should be as curious as a cat and as inquisitive as a growing child. There is no good accomplished in repeating the same old tale, salted and savored to taste, year after year, as some college professors repeat their lectures. This is not perhaps a serious defect when one is merely imparting information of the kind found in a book of reference — and some teachers’ handling of history does not go much higher—but it attains to the stature of a major delinquency when one is trying to quicken the understanding and to stimulate thought. I have always felt a liking for Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, who would not believe merely on hearsay evidence; and also for the man from Missouri, who will not take on faith but has to be shown. I may add to these twain a third, that member of our own Society who wrote some years ago a paper entitled “Historic Doubts on the Battle at Lexington.”594 I remember wondering at the time how anyone dared to question, in the presence of that great and awe-inspiring body, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the entire truth of this sacred event. It seemed as if such a writer were laying profane hands on the ark of the covenant. But times have changed since that article was written. Doubt is the beginning of wisdom, and this axiom applies equally to life and to history. Inquisitive scepticism is the motor power that makes for progress in the writing of history, and happy is he who possesses it, for he is not likely to be stalled on the road. Too much historical writing goes round and round without getting anywhere and is written as one would write a creed or a confession of faith, never to be questioned or doubted. There is nothing either orthodox or infallible about historical interpretation.

    I should like to call my address “Historic Doubts Regarding Early Massachusetts History,” and were I to present the subject in full, I should, like Luther, have to nail at least ninety-five theses of doubt to the door of this assembly room and detain you far beyond the time allotted me as a reasonable test of your patience. If in presenting some of these doubts I seem to be overemphatic, I shall say, as once did an eminent biblical scholar, “Gentlemen, my mind is entirely open in this matter. If I am wrong I shall welcome conviction. But I should like to meet the man who can convince me.”

    Here are a few of my doubts. I do not believe that the writings of Bradford or Winthrop, or of any other of the Pilgrim or Puritan Fathers, are beyond the reach of legitimate criticism. They are sources of supreme importance, corner-stones of our early Massachusetts historical structure, but they are neither infallible nor sacrosanct nor privileged beyond other works. Their creators were men of intense feeling and strong opinions, acting, as they believed, under the immediate direction of the Most High. These particular men were not unprejudiced, for each was writing to defend a cause, Bradford a kind of apologia for the Pilgrims, Winthrop a defense, whenever the occasion demanded it, of his own peculiar ideas of what should constitute Puritan policy in Church and State. Their works are, therefore, inevitably under a certain amount of suspicion at critical moments. I should not take Winthrop’s word as final when he is commenting on affairs in Rhode Island, friendly as he always was to Roger Williams; I should not accept as true Winslow’s delineation of the character of Samuel Gorton; I should not follow Bradford’s opinion as reliable or his statements as proven when he is commenting on those whom he does not like or on those who were not in accord with Separatist ideals. Scholars criticize the books of the Bible, they raise questions regarding the truth of statements in medieval chronicles, and they lay unfilial hands on the writings even of John Adams the Great. Why then should Bradford, Winthrop, and Winslow be exempt?

    I have my doubts regarding some of the motives assigned as inducing the Great Migration of the Puritans to New England. I am far from clear that the Puritan leaders left home because of persecution by either Archbishop Laud or anyone else. I have yet to find any instance where the word “persecution” can be legitimately applied to the treatment of Puritan ministers or laymen. The clergy were deprived of their benefices or silenced because they refused to obey the canons and rubrics of the Church to which they had given their allegiance. Well, they ought to have been. But “discipline” is not “persecution,” and as far as I know no Puritan minister who came to America was hounded and made seriously to suffer. Richard Mather was not molested although, as he himself acknowledged, he had refused for fifteen years to wear a surplice. Furthermore, no Puritan holding office under government was, as far as I know, deprived of his post because of his Puritan predilections. John Winthrop is customarily cited as a case in point, but there is no satisfactory evidence upon which to base such a conclusion, and my own belief to the contrary is upheld, to my satisfaction, by the editor of the second volume of the Winthrop Papers, who is also a doubter and who makes the further point that nothing was done to Emmanuel Downing, Winthrop’s brother-in-law, who held a similar post in the Court of Wards and Liveries, and whose Puritanism was as strict as Winthrop’s own. These Puritans did not leave England because of persecution, nor did they leave solely because they wanted to found a purer form of church polity and worship in the New World. They left because, in very considerable measure, they were disheartened at the condition of England, as they saw it from the Puritan point of view, and, fearful of the times and unwilling to try to improve them, they fled from England to avoid the impending calamities which they thought were about to descend upon their country.

    This idea of seeking a refuge outside of England did not originate with the East Anglian and Lincolnshire Puritans, as has sometimes been said. There were Roman Catholics both in Elizabeth’s day and in the early years of the reign of James I who would have been glad to leave England, but were unable to carry their wishes to fruition. The same idea took shape in the mind of the Reverend John White, of Dorchester, who, some years before the Winthrop group thought of going to America, dreamed of a settlement there that should serve the fourfold purpose of a fishing venture, a place of religious instruction for the fishermen along the coast, a center for the spreading of the Gospel among the heathen, and a retreat to which those might go who were both out of sympathy with the High-Church tendencies of the Anglican communion, and also could not tolerate Plymouth, where the Pilgrims had set up an ecclesiastical polity that renounced the Church of England and all its works. Hubbard calls White “one of the chief founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England,” and it is hardly creditable that an Anglo-American, Mrs. Frances Rose-Troup, should have been, and that too very recently, almost the first to give White his legitimate due. Professor Channing in his history does not even mention his name, but Professor Morison has given him his rightful place among the Founders.

    Though the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company has been printed and commented on a score of times, no attempt has been made, except very incompletely by Dr. Charles Deane and as to its technique by Mr. Stewart Mitchell, to study it critically and to examine the circumstances under which it was granted. These circumstances are at best obscure and mysterious. I once asked Colonel Banks how he thought the charter was procured, and he replied bluntly: “By bribery.” I am far from convinced that this is so. Knowing something of the ways of the English chancery, I think it impossible that a royal letters patent bearing the great seal could have been obtained by deliberately bribing the important officials concerned with its preparation and issue. Other royal favors might be obtained by bribery but not the passage of a charter through the seals. Nor do I believe that any change could have been effected by bribery or otherwise when once the charter was on its way. Much discussion has arisen regarding the so-called “abscinding” of the place of residence of the company, which Winthrop is thought to have said was obtained with great difficulty. His words are: “with difficulty we got this abscinded,” the “this” meaning, supposedly, the place of residence. But the fact that Winthrop was not one of the petitioners and was not even a member of the New England Company, or of the Massachusetts Bay Company until eight months after its founding, and the further fact that the petitioners of 1628 had no intention of leaving England with the charter, preclude the possibility of such an interpretation. To have effected any change in a royal letters patent on its way through the seals would have required the connivance of the attorney general and at least three patent clerks — which is hardly conceivable. In fact, that which was abscinded was not anything in the charter itself but the continuance of the company’s government in England, the “we” referring to the signers of the Cambridge Agreement, of whom Winthrop was one, and the “with difficulty” to the efforts of the signers after their return from Cambridge to obtain a decision in the courts of the company favorable to their plan. This rendering of Winthrop’s words is the more likely in that the company had not yet committed itself to so drastic a change as the transfer of the company and charter to America. Matthew Cradock’s well-known remark means nothing more than that it might be well to increase the governing powers of the plantation at Salem so as to make it practically independent of the company in London and thus to satisfy the demands of those of the members who wished a change in plantation policy. The Massachusetts Bay Company in the summer of 1629 was already beginning to divide into two groups: one wishing to continue the original purpose for which the company was founded; the other expressing more interest in the plantation as a religious refuge and not averse to its Separatist tendencies.

    I believe that in obtaining the charter heavy pressure was brought to bear in certain influential quarters and that a great deal of labor was employed and money expended in the accomplishment of the task. Why was it, if in May, 1625, Charles I could issue a proclamation declaring that a trading company was not a suitable agency for promoting colonization, that four years later he should have exactly reversed himself in granting a charter to the Massachusetts Bay Company? The only answer to this is that the thing was done with the utmost secrecy and that the charge later brought against the company of having worked surreptitiously is largely true. Are we to go farther and say that incriminating documents were deliberately destroyed? It is strange that all documentary evidence is gone that would throw light on the securing of the charter. It is of course possible that those concerned were careful to avoid putting their thoughts and actions on paper, and did their business largely by word of mouth. But I am not satisfied with this explanation. Some evidence would certainly have accumulated. Where, for instance, is the original of the patent to the New England Company that is imbedded in the charter of 1629? Other similar patents exist; why not that? We know that the original was taken over to New England, but all trace of it has been lost. The Pilgrims and Puritans were not above doing certain things that we today consider unethical at least. If the Puritans purloined and opened other people’s letters, as they did on several occasions, they might well have felt justified, particularly at a time of such danger to their very existence as the threatened attack on the colony in 1635, in destroying documents that they feared might inculpate them. If the original land grant of 1628 were not the same as the grant embodied in the charter of 1629, then the enemies of the company would have a very strong case against it. The members of the Long Parliament before 1645 are believed to have done away with the great masses of High Commission Records at the time of the trial of Archbishop Laud, and it is not inconceivable that the Puritans who went to New England did something of the same sort when in 1635 they found themselves under indictment in England for their misdemeanors in obtaining the charter and abusing its privileges.

    It has always been taken for granted that the bringing of charter and company to America and the setting up there of an independent Puritan commonwealth was entirely legal and proper; and Palfrey consumes considerable space in an effort to demonstrate that the position the colony sought to occupy within the British system was a normal one. However much this thesis can be defended from the standpoint of America’s future destiny, it cannot be defended from the standpoint of English law and the normal processes of English colonization. I think that there is no doubt today that the intention of those concerned with the procuring of the charter was that the company should remain in England and conduct its plantation from there as the Virginia Company had done in Virginia, as the London and Bristol Company had done in Newfoundland, and as the Massachusetts Bay Company itself had been doing in the case of Salem. Such procedure was the only normal procedure. Those who wanted to take company and charter to New England were very doubtful of the legality of their course, and in the Cambridge Agreement there is a clause stating that the terms would be binding only if the transfer were found to be legal. But there is nothing to show that the Puritans made any attempt to determine the legality or illegality of the scheme. This was due partly to the fear that inquiry would lead to publicity, the very thing they wished to avoid, and partly to the anxiety they must have felt lest a decision be rendered against them. Inquiry might lead also to a disclosure of the fact that the charter granted away land which for ten years had been the property of another corporate concern, the Council for New England. Probably the Puritan leaders thought it wiser to go ahead, risking the chance of illegality, rather than to ask the crown lawyers for an opinion. No one except themselves seems to have been aware of the fact that they were taking company and charter to America, and the Great Migration of 1630 might well have been construed, if it aroused public attention at all, as merely a peopling of the colony already at Salem under Endecott. The Puritan leaders were probably wise in their decision, for I doubt very much if their actions would have stood the test of English law.

    Older writers, as in Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, have been accustomed to speak of the Andros administration as a “usurpation,” as if the Puritan commonwealth were a legal state and the annulment of the charter in 1684 the arbitrary and illegal act of a Stuart king. I think that the assumptions should be reversed and that the Puritan state should be judged a usurpation and the reduction of it to the status of a regular colony but a return to normalcy. The Puritans had settled on land that was the king’s and were supposedly on a colony footing, but they took as their definition of powers something that was never designed for a colony at all, a charter granted to a trading and colonizing company in England. The whole situation was highly irregular and anomalous and foreign to the existing idea, or to any idea, of what a colony should be. No settlement that was demanding entire freedom from royal interference of any kind can be considered a normal colony. The stretching of the charter of a trading company into a constitution of a state that claimed for itself something akin to sovereignty can hardly be construed as a legal act. The king had never consented that charter and company should be removed out of the kingdom — this was done without the knowledge of the English authorities; he had never granted the company any such part of his regalia as would make this exercise of local independence a justifiable act in the eyes of the law; and he made manifest his displeasure at this unwarranted assumption of power by instructing his attorney general in 1635 to obtain a writ of quo warranto against the company. To say that the Puritan commonwealth existed as a lawful and normal community and that the king in reducing it to dependence on the crown was acting unjustly is but another illustration of how facts can be wrongly interpreted when viewed from the standpoint of our later struggle for independence and under the influence of ideas that have become integral in our conception of liberty and the rights of man. To writers of this type any act of resistance to British authority during our colonial period is justified — a curious notion, but one that is entirely in accord with the whig tradition which sees in resistance to an executive authority a manifestation of progress toward liberalism and democracy.

    It has been customary in the past to extol the political and social principles of both Pilgrims and Puritans as of great significance, in that they anticipated the doctrines which were destined in time to become the warp and woof of our American system of government. I doubt this. I doubt if in the writings of either Bradford, Winthrop, or Winslow or in the practices of either of the colonies can be found anything to warrant such laudation. The Pilgrims and Puritans were not Utopians or dreamers as were Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker. They were hard-headed practical politicians of their own kind, and nowhere in their writings or applications of policy can we find any generalizations foreshadowing the ideals of the later American republic. They were none of them philosophers, theorists, or speculators. They were realists in every sense of the word and at bottom theological realists, in that their every thought and act had a religious end in view. They had convictions but not ideals. None of them would have subscribed to our American doctrines regarding Church and State, popular government, or religious freedom. I cannot imagine any of them saying with Hooker that the choice of public magistrates and the privileges of election belong unto the people by God’s own allowance and that those who have the power to appoint officers have the power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them. I cannot imagine any of them agreeing with such utterances of Roger Williams as these: “The world is full of admirable men and women who are not Christians”; “The wisdom of God prefers some women before thousands of men”; “I say liberty and equality both in land and government”; “Kings and magistrates must be considered invested with no more power than the people betrust them with”; “The sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people.” The bases of Winthrop’s political thought were the overruling sovereignty of God, the natural character of the inequality of man, and the essentially autocratic organization of society, arising out of nature, order, and antiquity. Winthrop condemned democracy, equality, toleration, and the separation of Church and State, denied free speech in principle as well as in fact, abhorred organized opposition in government, and believed that it was for the good of the people to vest all power in the hands of those most competent to exercise it. He took the ground that true liberty lay in subjection to authority, and that the authority of the magistrates was of divine origin, even though the men themselves might have been elected by the freemen of the colony. Such political dicta find no response in the mind of the modern American. In all Winthrop’s writings there is to be found no developed body of thought on political or social subjects such as we find in Williams’ Bloudy Tenent and its sequels and in his letters to the towns of Providence and Warwick. No one can defend Winthrop as a great political thinker, however much we may respect his character, or find in the early Massachusetts system a model society for the world of today. As I have said elsewhere, “the preservation of the religious doctrines of the Puritans, as shaped in the seventeenth century, the perpetuation of their ideals of government as worked out in the days of Winthrop and Dudley, and the continuance of a polity based on what these men conceived was God’s will in his relations to men, could have been of no value to Massachusetts or the world.”

    One more point and I am through. There are writers — one quite recently — who have seen in the defiance by Puritan Massachusetts in the seventeenth century of the authority of the king and his executive, judicial, and legislative officials an early exhibition of the spirit of liberty which culminated in the Declaration of Independence of 1776. This attempt to establish a precedent and to find an analogy is but another demonstration of the danger of viewing the past from the present and of carrying back and planting where they do not belong notions and ideas that are foreign to that day and generation. The motives which underlay this early expression of independence of Crown and parliament were entirely unlike those of the later date; they were religious, not political, and touched in no way the question of allegiance or fidelity. Their ultimate purpose was to protect “the right form of church government and discipline” as “a good part of the Kingdom of Christ on earth.” Emmanuel Downing and others openly acknowledged allegiance when they said that no colony could be “so foolishly besotted as to resist the protection of their natural prince.” But they would not render obedience, however much they might acknowledge the titular headship of their natural prince, for in the minds of Winthrop and the others — and also of the Connecticut Fathers, but not of those of Plymouth and the Rhode Island towns — the Lord’s intention in the work overrode all the claims that England might have to exercise authority over them. They considered themselves free to shape their government according to their religious convictions as to what were the plans of God, revealed in the Old Testament and interpreted by the clergy of the colony. They had gone a long way to find a place where they might build up a church community of just this sort, and they did not propose to allow the plans of God to be overturned by the intervention of men, that is, to allow anyone not of themselves to reverse their judgments or to disallow their acts. There is nothing in all this comparable with the motives that actuated the signers of the Declaration of Independence one hundred and fifty years later.

    These are not all the doubts that might be entertained regarding the statements of writers on the early history of Massachusetts, but they will suffice for our purpose. They have been brought to your attention not by a Connecticut man as such, but by a meddling historian. Connecticut is not jealous of Massachusetts, however often she may think that her neighbor and kindred state sometimes takes herself overseriously and is perhaps too closely wedded to a conventional view of the facts of her past. Connecticut accepts Massachusetts as the founder of the Puritan tradition, recognizes her as the powerful and influential leader in New England during the colonial period, and does not deny the fact that for many years she naturally and willingly followed the Bay horse, thinking her own thoughts but trotting along after her leader, in grateful appreciation of the latter’s enduring qualities as a helpful and co-operative, if somewhat assertive, Puritan state. Connecticut has a claim to a greatness of her own and, noblesse oblige, is more than ready to concede a similar claim to a colony and state which is so intimately bound up, as is Massachusetts, with the destinies of America.