February Meeting, 1938

A STATED Meeting of the Society was held, at the invitation of Mr. Hermann F. Clarke, at the Club of Odd Volumes, No. 77 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, on Thursday, February 24, 1938, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Vice-President Matt Bushnell Jones in the chair.

The records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.

In the absence of the Corresponding Secretary, the Recording Secretary reported the death on January 18, 1938, of Francis Russell Hart, a Resident Member.

Mr. Curtis P. Nettels read the following paper:

The American Merchant and the Constitution

A REVIEW of the careers of the outstanding American merchants during the 1780’s shows that for every one of their number who opposed the Constitution there were eighteen who supported it.16 Unfortunately, not many of the merchants have left systematic statements of their positions on the economic issues which faced the country in that decade. That group as a whole were not given to theorizing.17 They seem to have been in general agreement as to the economic benefits which they expected from a stronger central government; the task before them was that of creating the political forms which would realize their economic objectives. For this reason, political problems overshadowed economic issues in the debates of the decade, thus giving the impression that economic factors were of secondary importance—a conclusion that does not necessarily follow.

Pelatiah Webster, the Philadelphia merchant, did, however, write systematically of currency, credit, and taxation as parts of the federal problem between 1776 and 1790.18 From fragmentary evidence pertaining to the merchants as a whole one may conclude that Webster’s views in large measure represented their theories and their program. Two other considerations support such a view. Webster’s ideas with respect to taxation and finance were very similar to those incorporated in the Constitution. Furthermore, one can scarcely imagine that a large majority of the merchants would have supported the Constitution had they been hostile toward its economic features.

In order to appreciate the importance of Webster’s economic theory one must keep in mind the familiar clauses of the Constitution with reference to money and credit. It will be recalled that the Constitution conferred upon Congress the exclusive right to coin money and to regulate its value. At the same time it deprived the states of the power to issue bills of credit and did not expressly confer such a right upon the federal government, although the right might be inferred for the latter from the power of Congress to make effective the delegated power of borrowing money.19 The states were forbidden to make anything but gold and silver coin legal tender in payment of debts, nor could they enact any laws impairing the obligation of contracts.20 Thus the Constitution denied the state governments control over money, credit, and debt modification except in so far as a state could charter private banks. If a state did charter a bank, the issuance of paper currency (bank notes) was placed in the hands of private persons, subject to the rule that such notes could not be made legal tender—a protection to creditors against the abuse of the privilege. The inferred power of Congress to issue bills of credit might have been used to establish a public scheme of credit control; on the other hand, the power of Congress to charter a national bank could also be inferred, in which case control over credit might be lodged in the hands of the private citizens who composed the bank. In short, with reference to the creating and the supplying of credit the Constitution forbade the states, as such, to act; it did not specifically authorize Congress to act; it permitted the states to charter private banks; and, by inference, it permitted Congress to charter such a private bank. The power of Congress to tax and the constitutional duty imposed upon it of paying the national debt also had a very important bearing upon the monetary and credit structure as appears clearly in the writings of Pelatiah Webster.

In 1776 Webster began his discussion of finance in “An Essay on the Danger of Too Much Circulating Cash.” This was followed by his seven elaborate essays on free trade and finance, published between July, 1779, and January, 1785. In December, 1780, appeared his strictures on a Pennsylvania Legal Tender Act, followed in January, 1781, by his plan for a national superintendency of finance. In 1783 came his memorable dissertation on the need of a stronger federal government. Three years later, in February, 1786, he published his very important essay on credit. In 1787 he wrote in defense of the Constitution; and in 1790 he concluded the series with a plea in behalf of the public creditors.21 In these and other papers he expounded the monetary, business, and legal theories that have been asserted ever since by the Federalist-Whig-conservative-Republican element in American society.

Webster’s primary interest was focused upon the currency problem. Everyone knows, he wrote in 1783, “what a spring, what vigor” money

gives to every kind of business in the country, whether of husbandry, mechanic arts or trade. There is no comparison between the advantages of carrying on any sort of business in a country where cask circulates freely, and in a country where cash is scarce. In the one case, every kind of business will flourish, and industry has every sort of encouragement and motive for exertion; in the other all business must be sadly embarrassed, and of course make but a feeble and slow progress.22

But the currency must also have a stable value. Money, he wrote in 1779, “becomes a sort of common measure of the value of all articles of trade; and therefore I should conceive it would be as dangerous to adopt any measures which would alter its value and render it fluctuating, as to alter the standard weights and measures. . . .”23 A depreciating currency is “a dangerous article to keep on hand: it is like perishable goods, which are lost in the keeping.”24 Again: “Money in a state is like salt in cookery; some of it is very necessary, but too much of it spoils every dish, and renders the whole dinner unsavory to the taste, and hurtful to the health.”25

In all his essays Webster assumed that a single, uniform paper currency of national circulation was indispensable. It would eliminate all the exchange difficulties that attended thirteen separate state currencies, each of different value. A stable paper currency would even have advantages over metallic money in that “it is sooner counted, and more easily conveyed.”26 But paper currency issued by the general government was not in effect money; Webster believed instead that such paper was only an instrument of credit—a promise of the government to pay the holders of its bills a stated sum in actual money. Since such paper “has no real fixed value in itself, it is necessary that it should be connected, tied, or fastened firmly to something that is fixed. . . . Such a fixed medium is hard money, the value of which cannot vary much from its value in Europe, and therefore its permanency may be safely depended on.”27 “And I think farther, it is very manifest that we must have a promiscuous circulation of both hard money and paper, in order to keep the exchange of them equal.”28

If paper currency lacked intrinsic worth, what conditions were necessary in order to establish and maintain its value? The idea is implicit in all Webster’s writings that such value depended upon the quantity of the paper in circulation and the supply of commodities available for trade.29 Should the quantity and circulation of money increase without a corresponding increase in the supply of goods, the currency would depreciate; if the supply of money were increased while the supply of goods was decreased, depreciation would be doubly rapid.30

Of the effects of depreciation Webster noted, first, that it acted as a a tax—and not uniformly on all the people, but with particular severity upon the possessors of money and upon all who had investments in mortgages, bonds, and book-debts. If the supply of money were doubled, he argued, the value of the dollar would be cut in two, thus effecting a capital levy of 50 per cent on the moneyed and investing classes.31 Depreciation appeared monstrous to him because it “brings the burden beyond due proportion, on the most virtuous and useful of our people, such as by prudence and economy have made money and got a good command of cash . . . and at the same time operates in favor of the most worthless men amongst us, the dissipating, slack, lazy and dilatory sort, who commonly keep themselves in debt, and live on the fortunes of others.”32

So also depreciation affected the relationship between the buyer (or merchant) and the seller of produce (or farmer). According to statistics cited by Webster, the price of country produce rose more rapidly during the Revolutionary War than did the price of imported goods.33 The abundance of currency in circulation enlarged the supply of cash in the hands of the sellers inasmuch as their payments on account of taxes, interest, and purchases of imports did not increase in proportion to the increased supply of money they obtained through high prices for produce. Consequently, the sellers of produce, not hard pressed for money for taxes and interest, could hold back their produce until they could get high prices.34

On the other hand, the merchant who had to pay such high prices did not benefit. Unlike the farmer (who might keep his produce on hand without extra storage costs or grave risk of the deterioration of products), the merchant could not afford to hoard the produce he purchased, for if he did so it became a dead weight on his hands. “Goods which cannot be sold, are as useless in the hands of the merchant, as money which cannot be circulated.”35 The merchant’s necessity of selling goods therefore quickly tended to keep down his price. “Let a man who is under necessity of selling an article, apply to one to purchase, who is under no necessity of buying, he must take what is offered.”36 And when the merchant received payment in a depreciating currency, he dared not keep that on hand lest it waste away “in the desk.” Nor did he dare invest it in mortgages that might be destroyed by depreciation. Hence he had to put his money quickly into goods. This made money active and kept up the price of everything he bought. Currency depreciation thus compelled the merchant to buy at high prices and to sell quickly without being able to add both the increased price and the customary charge for profit. His nominal profits increased, but his real profits decreased.37

Considering Webster’s attitude toward currency depreciation, one can understand why he devoted much thought to the means of avoiding it. First of all, he condemned efforts to maintain currency values by means of price-fixing and legal tender acts. Assuming that, without legal restraints, buyers and sellers would compete freely, he argued that when all persons were seeking profit in trade, they would buy and sell as much as possible, thus bringing a maximum quantity of goods of the best quality to the market. If a scarcity occurred, the rise in prices stimulated producers and traders to supply the scarce article, thereby converting scarcity into plenty. Should a scarcity persist, then high prices preserved the existing stock against waste, thus tending to ward off “high distress and want” till larger supplies arrived. When, however, sellers were ordered to part with their goods at unduly low prices in paper currency, they would either take high prices secretly or hoard their goods. Hoarding aggravated the scarcity, retarded production, and forced a resort to barter which lessened the demand for and the circulation of the currency. Such a result depreciated further the value of the currency and threatened to destroy it altogether—just the opposite effect intended by the price-fixers.38

To legal tender paper currency Webster objected, not only because it defrauded creditors by compelling them to receive a lesser value than they had given, but also because it retarded future investments. “Who can lend money with any security,” he asked, “and of course who can borrow, let his necessity and distress be ever so great? who can purchase on credit, or make any contract for future payment? in very deed all confidence of our fellow-citizens in one another is hereby destroyed, as well as all faith of individuals in the public credit.”39 In line with this attitude Webster argued strongly against making the Continental currency legal tender, and when depreciation was acute in 1780, he urged that all past debts be paid in a specie value equivalent to that of the original loan.40 Replying in 1787 to the criticism that the Constitution contained no Bill of Rights, he said: “The Constitution contains a declaration of many rights, and very important ones, e.g. that people shall be obliged to fulfill their contracts, and not avoid them by tenders of any thing less than the value stipulated.”41

In the years before 1781, when Webster assumed that the Continental bills of credit would continue to form the national currency, he was intent upon finding some means of keeping their quantity fixed and their value stable. Such a purpose naturally required a method of war finance other than that of a continual increase in the supply of paper currency. One method which he rejected was that of long-term borrowings in Europe for war expenditure. He estimated that, due to the low credit of the United States and to prevailing rates of foreign exchange, the government would receive only eighty dollars in specie for every hundred dollars of debt it incurred, and he also objected to paying the yearly 5 per cent interest charge to foreigners.42 Furthermore, borrowing abroad increased the supply of money at home, thus inducing the very depreciation he sought to avoid.43 In addition, he believed that it was “as necessary that we preserve ourselves independent of France, Spain, and Holland as of England.” The nation, he wrote, which “is in debt to a superior power, cannot be free and independent, but is ever liable to demands the most insulting and inconsistent with freedom and safety.”44 Finally, if money must be raised on loan, let it be borrowed at home. “If interest of hard money . . . must be paid, I think it better that our own people should have it than strangers, that the yearly profits of the loan should lie among ourselves, and not go out of the country, never to return.”45

During the war Webster urged taxation as the best means of preventing new issues of paper money and thus of keeping its quantity and value fixed. If new issues were not made, the bills already in circulation would soon reach a natural exchange level with specie, and this exchange rate should be legalized for all payments.46 Thus if paper should adjust itself to specie at the rate of 20 to 1, an obligation of one dollar in specie could be met with twenty paper dollars.47 He offered various arguments in favor of this plan. A tax (whether poll, property, excise, or impost) would, he said, bear upon all the people, whereas a depreciating currency penalized one class—the investors and the possessors of money.48 Furthermore, if the sellers of produce (or farmers) were obliged to pay each year a large tax with paper money, they would not possess a surplus of cash. Needing money for taxes, they would not be able to withhold their produce from the market; they would have to sell in order to get tax money, and sell at prices not detrimental to buyers.49

The need of taxation as a means of stopping the increase of paper currency first prompted Webster to demand a stronger central government. In March, 1780, he wrote:

No plan of taxation, or any thing else, can be of any good effect, if there is not some method adopted to bring all the States into an union and punctuality of execution. The least company of men, who have a common concern . . . find it absolutely and essentially necessary to have some way to compel their partners into a punctual discharge of their quotas. . . . If one State hangs back, another will, and the best concerted plan possible may be rendered ineffectual by delays and defects in the execution.

It is essential to the very being of any independent community, that it has in it all the powers necessary for its own preservation. These powers doubtless exist in the Thirteen States. . . . And . . . I suppose they must be vested in the Congress. . . . But if it is thought that these powers are not sufficiently explicit and declared . . . it is necessary that this declaration should be made without delay. . . .50

As to a federal tax program, Webster favored levies on imported goods (excepting raw materials) and internal taxes to be apportioned among the states according to “the number of living souls or human persons of whatever age, sex or condition. . . .”51

The disappearance of the Continental currency and the cessation of war expenditures did not solve the problem of currency and taxation. There remained the task of paying the public debt, a subject which engaged Webster’s thought during the 1780’s. In this connection he insisted that the debt should be paid in full, but not by means of foreign loans or government issues of paper currency. “A total discharge of the principal at once, if sufficient money could be obtained, would make such a sudden, so vast an addition to our circulating cash, as would depreciate it, and reduce the value of the debt paid, much below its worth at the time of contract, and introduce a fluctuation of our markets, and other fatal evils of a depreciated currency. . . .”52 The debt must, therefore, be paid, argued Webster, out of tax revenues. But since the debt in 1783 amounted to $40,000,000, he admitted that the principal could not be at once paid from taxes; hence he favored a funding scheme that would not at the outset reduce the principal, but would merely provide a yearly interest to the public creditors. “It would . . . be much better,” he wrote, “for the creditor to receive a certain, well-funded security of his debt than full payment: for in that case, if he needed cash for his debt, he might sell his security at little or no discount, which is the constant practice of the public creditors in England, where every kind of public security has its rate of exchange settled every day, and may be negotiated in a very short time.”53

Since Webster estimated the interest charge against the government for servicing the debt at $2,000,000 a year, he had to consider carefully the kind of tax to be levied.54 He decided in favor of import duties and spoke eloquently of an impost on luxuries which would touch the pockets of the rich.55 Such an impost must be a national tax that “would in no case be subject to their [the states’] repeals or modifications,” thus guaranteeing that “the public credit would never be dependent on, or liable to bankruptcy by the humours of any particular Assembly.”56 In the Dissertation of 1783 he even proposed, as a constitutional provision, that “such acts [of Congress] as create funds for the public credit . . . shall never be repealed till their end is effected, or other funds equally effectual are substituted in their places. . . .”57

Webster further proposed that Congress should redeem the outstanding certificates in specie at their face value. He also favored paying the full face value in specie only to the original holders of such securities.58 If the certificates had changed hands, the original lender should receive the full value, less what he had received when he had sold them. Speculators who had purchased the certificates should not receive more than they had paid to procure them.59

After 1783 Webster turned against issues of paper currency by Congress as the means of supplying the country’s monetary needs. He denounced state issues even more emphatically. He now favored the policy of private control of credit through the agency of a single private bank of national scope. Such a bank should be owned and controlled by the merchant-capitalists on the assumption that public bodies did not have sufficient knowledge of finance properly to regulate the currency. He estimated that the supply of paper currency in the states could be two or three times more than the supply of coin without running the danger of depreciation. A paper currency totaling $10,000,000 (specie value) was all the country needed. The bank should issue notes redeemable in coin, but if such notes were used as tax money, and if the government employed the bank as its fiscal agent, people would not ordinarily demand coin for notes, and the bank might even expand credit further through loans to its clients, who would receive money as a deposit and withdraw it by check.60 “The force and energy of credit,” he declared, “perfectly well established and permanent, is vast almost beyond conception; it is found by experience to supply the place of cash, and much better than cash, in almost all transactions, except in small expenses, where small change is necessary, such as travelling expenses, market-money, &c.”61

Of the advantages of a bank Webster had much to say. “The bank gains all the lost paper, i.e. all such bank-bills as are lost (where the loss cannot be proved) and, of course, can never be brought to the bank for redemption or payment.”62 Such an institution would also expose debased or depreciated currency, thus protecting its clients who might otherwise accept such currency at a loss.63 In addition, the bank would give men of wealth great political influence. “Our bank is a sort of mercantile institution, and the influence of merchants is the safest of any that can affect a government.”64 Furthermore, bank stock offered an ideal form of long-term investment. “It affords a much better security than can be found in the hands of any private man, and the half-yearly dividends are more than equal to any profit that can be derived from them when put to interest on mortgage, and the punctuality of payment better secured, and the trouble of collection much less.”65

Webster assumed that a national bank should be a monopoly. He told with approval an episode in connection with the Bank of North America. A group of investors, jealous of the profits made by that bank, threatened to organize a competing institution. But the directors, convinced that competition would be destructive, persuaded their rivals to join the bank, “so that the difficulty was got over.”66

The occasion for Webster’s memorable essay on credit (February 10, 1786) was an attack on the Bank of North America made by the paper money party of Pennsylvania, then in control of the state legislature. Webster noted that, although Congress had chartered the bank on December 31, 1781, investors had hesitated to put money in an institution which had only the dubious authority of Congress behind it. Consequently, the promoters had secured a charter from the state of Pennsylvania on April 1, 1782. Realizing that state bills of credit were inconsistent with the Bank of North America, the paper money party succeeded (September 13, 1785) in having the legislature repeal the act which granted the Pennsylvania charter.67 In closing his essay on credit, Webster presented a remarkable defense of the bank on constitutional grounds. He justified it as a federal institution by a broad construction of the powers of Congress under the Articles of Confederation. As to the state charter, he insisted that it had created a vested property right which the constitution of Pennsylvania protected. The charter as a contract could be annulled only by mutual consent of the two parties or by proof in a court of law that the contractors had violated their trust. Thus in 1786 Webster expounded the doctrines of vested property rights, of the sanctity of contracts, of the supremacy of the Constitution over the legislature, of judicial review of state legislation, and of due process of law.68

It is evident that the fundamental ideas of Pelatiah Webster pertaining to currency, credit, taxation, and the public debt were also those of his fellow merchants of the 1780’s. It is likewise evident that most of these ideas found lodgment in the Constitution. By restraining the states from issuing bills of credit the Constitution opened the way to the issuance by banks, whether chartered by the states or by Congress, of currency that was not legal tender. It is true that the powers of Congress might have been construed so as to authorize the issuance of a national, public paper currency as well as to justify the establishment of a private national bank. That Congress chartered such a bank in 1791 and that Congress did not authorize the issue of legal tender bills of credit until the Civil War suggests again the early influence of the merchant class.

Mr. Joseph H. Beale read a paper entitled “A Lawyer’s View of the Mayflower Compact.”

1 Suffolk Probate Records, xxii. 585.

2 Suffolk Deeds, lxxv. 257–258.

3 See Ronald Fuller, Hell-Fire Francis (London, 1939).

4 British Museum, Add. MSS., 30870.

5 Public Record Office, A. O. 13:73.

6 Alexander Gillespie, An Historical Review of the Royal Marine Corps to 1803 (Birmingham, 1803), 191.

7 Id., 193.

8 Cyril Field, Britain’s Sea-Soldiers: History of the Royal Marines (Liverpool, 1924), 156.

9 Gillespie, Historical Review of the Royal Marine Corps, 199.

10 A. O. 13:73.

11 William Hall Gage, 2nd Viscount Gage, brother of the General.

12 A. O. 12:105, f. 103.

13 A. O. 13:73.

14 There are biographical sketches of Arthur Savage and Joseph Domett in E. Alfred Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (London, 1930).

15 A. O. 12:100, f. 323.

16 In preparing this paper I compiled, from readily accessible printed materials, a list of merchants active in the 1780’s. The careers of such merchants were then examined in order to determine the views of each respecting the Constitution.

The present study is not intended to be definitive, but it is believed that a large enough sample has been considered to yield valid conclusions. The records examined disclosed that fifty-three merchants, at least, expressed views on the Constitution. Only three men in this group opposed it: Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, John Lamb of New York, and Charles Pettit of Pennsylvania. Among the fifty who supported the movement for strengthening the general government, twenty-four lived in Massachusetts: Jonathan Austin, Joseph Barrell, Samuel Barret, James Bowdoin, Samuel Breck, George Cabot, Caleb Davis, Stephen Higginson, Nathaniel Gorham, William Gray, Jonathan Jackson, Charles Jarvis, John C. Jones, Jonathan Mason, Perez Morton, Samuel A. Otis, Edward Payne, William Phillips, Joseph Russell, Thomas Russell, Isaac Smith, James Swan, and William Tudor. At critical points John Hancock acted with the majority of his fellow merchants. Among the pro-Constitution merchants of Pennsylvania were Charles Biddle, William Bingham, George Clymer, Tench Coxe, Thomas Fitzsimons Isaac Hazelhurst, Samuel Howell, Mordecai Lewis, Thomas Mifflin, Robert Morris, John M. Nesbit, John Ross, Pelatiah Webster, Richard Wells, John Wilcox, and Thomas Willing. The names of four Rhode Island merchants appear on the list: John Brown, Moses Brown, Nicholas Brown, and Samuel Ward. Connecticut was represented by Roger Sherman and Benjamin Trumbull; New Hampshire, by John Langdon; South Carolina, by Christopher Gadsden; North Carolina, by Hugh Williamson; Maryland, by James McHenry. In the preparation of these lists the following works have been particularly useful: Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1935), Chapter 5; Norman S. B. Gras, The Massachusetts First National Bank of Boston, 1784–1934 (Cambridge, 1937); Robert A. East, “The Massachusetts Conservatives in the Critical Period,” The Era of the American Revolution. Studies Inscribed to Evarts Boutell Greene, Richard B. Morris, Editor (New York, 1939); and the Dictionary of American Biography. In the April, 1787, number of the American Museum (Philadelphia) are petitions in favor of a stronger central government signed by merchants of Philadelphia (313–314) and by merchants of Boston (320–322).

17 “The men of that age [1750–1825], while striking out for themselves a new path in a new country, never fell into the mistake of abandoning practice in favor of theory. . . . If from lack of imagination they went too far in their contempt for theory, at least they understood what they meant. . . .” Henry Cabot Lodge, Life and Letters of George Cabot (Boston, 1878), 10.

18 Born in Lebanon, Connecticut, November 24, 1726, Webster studied theology after his graduation from Yale in 1746. Between 1749 and 1755 he was pastor at Greenwich, Massachusetts, a post which he left to become a merchant at Philadelphia. During the Revolution he supported the American cause and suffered considerably at the hands of the British. He died on September 2, 1795. Dictionary of American Biography, xix. 597. Webster’s most famous essay, A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the United States of North America (1783) led Hannis Taylor to regard Webster as the father of the Constitution and to petition Congress for national recognition of his work. See Hannis Taylor, A Memorial in Behalf of the Architect of Our Federal Constitution (Washington, 1908). Taylor’s exaggerated claims were refuted by Gaillard Hunt in the Nation, December 28, 1911.

19 Article 1, Sections 8, 10.

20 Article 1, Section 10.

21 Webster originally presented his argument in the form of articles or pamphlets signed “Citizen of Philadelphia.” His articles were collected and printed in 1791 as a volume entitled Political Essays. The most important papers, for this study, are: 1. “An Essay on the Danger of Too Much Circulating Cash” (October 5, 1776)—a plea for financing the war by means of taxes rather than issues of paper currency. 2. “An Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (July, 1779)—an attack upon statutory price-fixing and other legal restraints on trade. 3. “Second Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (August, 1779), in which he proposed to prevent the increase of paper money by means of tax levies designed to raise enough money for new war expenditures. He proposed to leave the existing paper in circulation to pass at the rate of twenty paper dollars to one silver dollar. 4. “Third Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (January 8, 1780). The argument resembles that of the “Second Essay.” Foreign loans should be made only for the purpose of procuring the means of paying the interest on the money borrowed within the United States. Webster again opposed price-fixing. He suggested in this essay the establishment of a federal office of Superintendent of Finance. 5. “Fourth Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (February 10, 1780)—a plan for stabilizing the paper currency, in which Webster opposed either an increase or a decrease in the quantity of paper in circulation. He favored taxation as a means of preventing such increase. 6. “Fifth Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (March 30, 1780)—a criticism of paper currency on the ground that it imposed an unjust levy upon wealth, and another plea for taxation as the proper means of financing the war. 7. “Strictures on the Tender-Acts” (December 13, 1780)—a very strong statement against legal tender paper currency, inspired by an act of Pennsylvania of December, 1780. 8. “An Essay to Examine the True Interest of Pennsylvania with Respect to Paper Currency” (December 13, 1780)—another plea for taxation in preference to more issues of paper currency. 9. “An Essay on the Economy of the Thirteen States” (January, 1781), in which Webster again insisted that taxation was necessary in order to restore the currency. 10. “Dissertation on a Financier-General” (January 24, 1781), in which Webster presented his plan for a superintendency of finance. 11. “A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the United States of North America” (1780)—Webster’s famous plan for a strong central government endowed with independent taxing power as a means of raising assured revenues in order to pay the public debt and avoid the issuance of paper currency. 12. “Sixth Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (March 24, 1783)—an argument for a federal tax on imports as a means of raising money to support the public credit. 13. “Seventh Essay on Free Trade and Finance” (January 10, 1785)—a protest against further issues of paper currency and a plea for payment of the public debt, with safeguards against the enriching of speculators in federal certificates of indebtedness. 14. “Essay on Credit” (February 10, 1786)—an analysis of credit and a defense of the Bank of North America. 15. “A Plea for the Poor Soldiers and Other Public Creditors” (January 2, 1790). 16. “A Review of the Principles and Arguments of the Seventh Essay and of the Plea for the Poor Soldiers” (December 20, 1790). In these last two pamphlets Webster proposed to pay original creditors in full and to pay speculators an average market price of depreciated certificates of indebtedness. Two other essays by Webster are “Remarks on the Address of the Sixteen Members of the Assembly of Pennsylvania to their Constituents” (Philadelphia, 1787); and “The Weakness of Brutus Exposed” (Philadelphia, 1787), reprinted in Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, Paul L. Ford, Editor (Brooklyn, 1888). Both essays defend the Federal Constitution of 1787.

22 Political Essays, 235–236.

23 Id., 32.

24 Id., 61.

25 Id., 37.

26 Id., 144, 150.

27 Id., 84.

28 Id., 114.

29 Id., 86, 104, 139, 140, 285.

30 Id., 14, 18, 115, 117, 141, 157.

31 Id., 6, 8, 27–32.

32 Id., 31.

33 Id., 17.

34 Id., 123.

35 Id., 16.

36 Id., 62.

37 Id., 2–3, 60–62.

38 Political Essays, 9–16, 60, 66, 153, 157, 237.

39 Id., 138.

40 Id., 84–85, 149.

41 Id., 407.

42 Id., 257.

43 Id., 40–41.

44 Id., 63.

45 Id., 64.

46 Id., 105.

47 Id., 46–47.

48 Id., 7–8; 27, 49, 145.

49 Id., 60–61.

50 Political Essays, 126–127.

51 Id., 207.

52 Id., 243.

53 Id., 243.

54 Id., 258.

55 Id., 152–157, 231–241, 244–245, 247, 258–268, 272–273, 291.

56 Id., 203.

57 Id., 224.

58 Id., 274, 277, 279, 282, 291.

59 Id., 347, 349, 354.

60 Id., 45, 85, 160; 435, 436, 439.

61 Id., 435–436.

62 Id., 435.

63 Id., 436.

64 Id., 443.

65 Political Essays, 436; see also 422.

66 Id., 447–448.

67 Id., 448–449, 453, 454.

68 Id., 451 456–458.

69 The minute books of the New England Committee are among the Friends records preserved at the Moses Brown School, Providence; those of the Philadelphia Meeting are at the Friends Record Room, 304 Arch Street, Philadelphia.

70 Papers of the Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14 (1774–1778). A valuable history, “The Society of Friends in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1764 to 1782,” was started in The Friend, September 12, 1846 (xix. 404), using largely the official records. But after many instalments it stopped abruptly, unfinished, in the issue of July 10, 1847 (xx. 333), when it had reached a date early in 1775. Consequently only a few of the records here cited were included.

71 Published in 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, iv. 1–278.

72 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, i. 426–427.

73 Id., 439; printed in The Friend, xx. 293. The “few lines” were printed in Philadelphia in 1775 under the tide, The Epistle from the Meeting for Sufferings in London to Friends and Brethren in New England.

74 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, i. 454.

75 See my article, “Intercolonial Solidarity of American Quakerism,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, lx (October, 1936), 362–374.

76 To Dr. Sandiford, Philadelphia, October 8, 1774. Pemberton Papers (MSS., Historical Society of Pennsylvania), xxvi. 165.

77 Id., 162, 167, 171, 173, 175, 180; xxvii. 1, 20, 27, 28.

78 This memorandum (id., xxvn. 21) is as follows:

List of Friends in Boston	No.	Occupation
Ebenezer Pope, wife, & son ab^t 17 years old	3	Taylor, depends on his business, rather low in circumstances
John Pope wife & 2 Children	4	Doctor & Surveyor, in Circumstances
Samuel Pope	1	Scyth Smith Not in needy circumstances
James Raymer & 3 Daughters (Grown up)	4	Tallow Chandler & Grocer in Good Circumstances
John Philips Wife & Daug^r	3	Ship Carpenter, has a house etc. & two apprentices (works Journey work)
Eph. Silsbury, wife, & Daughter	3	ship carpenter, aged & infirm depends on his dayly labour
Nathaniel Low, wife, & 3 Children	5	Blacksmith & at present full of Business
Ezra Curtain wife, & 7 Children	9	Shoemaker, a House & full business
Ezra Collins & Sister	2	Hatter in Good Circumstances
Daniel Silsbury, & 2 sisters	3	merchant. The sisters keep a House of Entertainment
Ann Gillett, (a widow) with Elizabeth Ann & Hannah Orrick & Jane Burn	5	Have a house etc. in a small [ ] of Business. 2 of the Young [ ] go out to sew etc
Sampson Silsbury & wife being cousins married Out
Josiah Goram, wife & 4 Children	6	Mariner

79 Id., xxvii. 20.

80 Moses Brown of Providence.

81 Pemberton Papers, xxvii. 28.

82 4 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, iv. 148.

83 Jonathan B. Smith to William Phillips, Philadelphia, November 25, 1774. Id., 150.

84 Id., 149 n.

85 The Friend, xx. 252.

86 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, i. 418.

87 Id., 431; printed in The Friend, xx. 292.

88 This particular letter I do not find; but Israel Pemberton did write to Brown shortly before October 19 (Pemberton Papers, xxvi. 177½), and Brown received a letter from Pemberton—perhaps the same one—on November 28 (id., xxvii. 27). The former letter was sent by the hand of James Manning, President of Rhode Island College. “He is a Baptist preacher and with another of them from New England and a committee of their Yearly Meeting here [Philadelphia] last week had a conference with the speaker and other members of the Massachusetts Assembly on the sufferings of that people in their country and on their laws under which they and Friends may be subjected to sufferings.”

89 New England Hist. Gen. Reg., xxx. 377.

90 Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting, at Moses Brown School, 199, 200.

91 Papers of the Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14. The paper is dated Lynn, March 9, 1775, and is signed by Joseph Southwick, James Purinton, Joseph Gaskill, Daniel Newhall, and Isaac Basset.

92 Pemberton Papers, xxvii. 107.

93 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, 11 (1775–1785), 1f.

94 Pemberton Papers, xxvii. 165. The writer had come to Yearly Meeting from his home in Salem but had not had opportunity to go into Boston on his way.

95 The text of the appeal is given in the Minutes of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 10ff. It was drafted by John Hunt, Israel Pemberton, James Pemberton, John Reynell, David Evans, and Anthony Benezet, and subscribed “7th of 6 mo. 1775, John Pemberton, Clerk.” It is not mentioned in the bibliographies of Joseph Smith, Hildeburn, or Evans. A copy, lacking, however, the subscription blank, in the Haverford College Library is reproduced here. Another copy, likewise without the blank, is now in the Yale University Library in the Mason Franklin Collection. This copy, formerly belonging to Charles F. Heartman, is recorded in Sabin (No. 95902) from the title as given in Charles F. Heartman, The Cradle of the United States, ii, No. 950. From the same source it is listed as No. 436 in the unpublished “Supplement to Hildeburn’s Century of Printing,” by Ethel M. Metzger (M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, 1930). The subscription form, recoverable from other sources, was worded as follows (Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 11f.):

“We, the subscribers, in Consideration of the distresses to which many of our fellow subjects in the province of the Massachusetts Bay & the adjacent Provinces, are subjected, thro’ the unhappy commotions now prevailing, being desirous of contributing towards their relief do agree and promise to pay the sums by us respectively subscribed to — of — to be by — paid unto John Reynell of Philadelphia or Samuel Smith of Burlington, Treasurers of the Yearly Meeting of Friends in Pennsylvania & New Jersey, in order that the same may be transmitted at such time and in such manner as the said Yearly Meeting or the Meeting for Sufferings at Philadelphia may judge most expedient to the Committee lately appointed by the Yearly Meeting of Friends in New England to assist, advise, and relieve such who are or may be reduced to necessitous circumstances thro’ the present calamitous state of public affairs there, or to be otherwise distributed to & among such sufferers.

“Witness our hands the — day of the — Month, 1775”

96 Epistle from Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, July 27, 1775. Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 15.

97 Pennsylvania Ledger, July 22, 1775; Pennsylvania Mercury, July 14, 1775; Pennsylvania Gazette, July 12, 1775; Virginia Gazette, July 29, 1775; Newport Mercury, July 31, 1775. Cf. Newport Mercury, July 24, 1775; Essex Gazette (Salem), July 21, 1775. For these references I am indebted to Mr. Arthur J. Mekeel.

98 See letter to John Pemberton from a Quaker correspondent, London, September 11, 1775. Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 59.

99 Letter to Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, August 14, 1775. Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 22.

100 Epistle from New England Committee for Sufferings, September 12, 1775. Id., 28.

101 Letter of David Evans to Israel Pemberton, written en route at New London, November 16. Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 108.

102 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings (November 30, 1775), ii. 48.

103 This is a reference to the prevalence of Continental currency, which Friends objected to using.

104 Letter from Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, November 17, 1775. Id., 38f.

105 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Worthington C. Ford and Gaillard Hunt, Editors, ii. 189. Neither comparison of dates nor any mention by one party of the other indicates that either’s action was in any sense a bargain with the other. Before long most of the Congress were much less well disposed towards conscientious objectors.

106 Meeting at Smithfield, June 30, 1775.

107 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings (July 15, 1775), i. 3.

108 William Rickman to —, New York, August 9, 1775. Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 25.

109 Moses Brown to John Pemberton, Providence, August 29, 1775. Id., 41.

110 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 9; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 27f.

111 Letter from New England Committee for Sufferings to the Meeting for Sufferings in Philadelphia, Providence, November 21, 1775. Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 17; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 49.

112 Printed in The Friend, xxii. 406.

113 A full-length biography of Brown is badly needed. There is an article on him in the Dictionary of American Biography, iii. 146–147. There is also a sketch by Augustine Jones entitled, Moses Brown: His Life and Services (Providence, 1892).

114 Moses Brown Papers, ii. 32.

115 Mr. Allen French has called to my attention what is probably an echo of this interview, told by Moses Brown himself a few years before his death to the biographer of General Nathanael Greene. Greene had been a Friend, a member of Greenwich Monthly Meeting, Rhode Island, but had been disowned in 1773 for his military propensities. He was now on Washington’s staff at Cambridge. “Go to General Greene; he is a Quaker, and knows more about it than I do, was his [Washington’s] answer to Moses Brown, who had been sent to Cambridge upon some business in which the Quakers were particularly interested.” George W. Greene, The Life of Nathanael Greene, i (New York, 1867), 142–143.

116 Moses Brown to Henry Lloyd, Roxbury, December 15, 1775; Brown to Ellis Gray, Providence, January 30, 1776. Moses Brown Papers, ii. 47, 49.

117 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 33; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 75ff.

118 Pemberton Papers, xxix. 2.

119 Episde from Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings to New England Meeting for Sufferings. Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 89.

120 Id., 89; Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 44f.

121 This letter has been printed, much edited, in The Friend, xxii. 412f., and, more nearly accurately, in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, i. 168–174. Its text as given here is from the original in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It was evidently circulated with other documents as a form of report to the contributing meetings in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There is, for instance, a copy in the papers of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14. The manuscript report received by Shrewsbury Quarterly Meeting is preserved at the Record Room at Friends Meeting House, 221 East Fifteenth Street, New York City.

122 See above, pages 51–52.

123 The letter to Howe, his reply, and the letters to Pope and Ramor are copied in the report mentioned above, page 54, n. 4. They are also copied in Minutes of the New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 23ff.

124 The remark is probably: “How many are spending their time and money in vanity and superfluities, while thousands and tens of thousands want the necessaries of life, who might be relieved by them and their distress at such a time as this, in some degree softened by the administering suitable things.”

125 “Watertown, Nov. 27 . . . Friday last, General Howe sent 300 Men, Women and Children, Poor of the Town of Boston, over to Chelsea, without any Thing to subsist on, at this inclement Season of the Year . . .” Boston Gazette, November 27, 1775.

126 See their briefer report in Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 27.

127 Pemberton Papers, xxix. 32. In the same letter Moses Brown remarks: “I think it may be said in justice to the people of that government [Massachusetts] that there is now as little appearance of the Spirit of Persecution of Friends as in any of the Colonies.”

128 Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 100f. In the Reynell-Coates Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is John Reynell’s original account book containing the same itemized information under the heading “Dr & Cr Subscriptions received from the monthly meetings belonging to the Yearly Meeting for the relief of the poor Inhabitants of Massachusetts.” The book itself is now marked “Pensilvania and New Jersey Yearly Meeting Stock in account with John Reynell 1762–1783.” I cannot find trace of any record of the individual donations.

129 James Berry of Maryland wrote from Choptank to John Pemberton on August 8, 1775: “Diverse Friends hereaways have for some time past been inclined to give a small matter towards the support of the sufferers in New England but not finding any satisfactory way of conveying it (till the Meeting for Sufferings in Philad^a opened a channel for that purpose) nothing has been done till our last Quarterly Meeting when I was directed to receive the contributions of Friends and to convey it to the Meeting for Sufferings provided it can be joined to the sum raised in your provinces and forwarded therewith.” Pemberton Papers, xxviii. 23.

130 Papers of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, Box 14.

131 Of the Boston Quaker families listed in 1774 (see page 42, n. 5, above) the following refugees were, according to the lists, assisted: at Falmouth, Maine, Phebe Pope, Nathaniel Low, wife, and three children; at Salem, Sarah Silsbey; at Lynn, Ephraim Silsbey and wife, Ezra Curtain and wife.

132 Lilley Eaton, Genealogical History of the Town of Reading, Mass. (Boston, 1874), 715–716.

133 MS., Massachusetts Historical Society. There are twenty-one families totaling eighty-two persons on this list. On the back is an account of what the town of Concord provided for them from May 13, 1775.

134 Minutes of New England Meeting for Sufferings, i. 38; Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 82.

135 Minutes of the Meeting for Sufferings of New York Yearly Meeting (Friends Record Room, 221 East Fifteenth Street, New York City), i. 38.

136 Compare the action in 1781 of the congregation in Chelsea, Mass., in sending money to “the distressed inhabitants of South Carolina and Georgia who are driven out by British troops.” 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, ix. 105–108.

137 According to English minutes preserved in the records of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings (Box 18), this wish was fulfilled by a grant of £500 to the Negro school in Philadelphia, while other money was being applied as late as 1789 to war sufferers in Nova Scotia.

138 Joseph B. Felt, The Annals of Salem (Salem, 1827), 497, 499. Cf. Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (New York, 1911), 152, where he observes: “In Salem the Friends in company with the selectmen of the town went from house to house and distributed their relief through the very streets along which the Quakers had been whipped a hundred years before.”

139 The New England Meeting for Sufferings wrote to Philadelphia in May, 1776, that the distribution had “a tendency to make a good impression on the minds of some who have been prejudiced against Friends.” Minutes of Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, ii. 84.

140 The abbreviations used in the lists are:

B. Baptist	M. Moravian
C. Church of England	P. Presbyterian or Congregationalist
D. Dissenter	P. Presbyterian or Congregationalist
F. Friend	R. Roman Catholic
L. Lutheran	W. Widow

141 “N.B. Those Woomen who have no Occupations put against them, Usualy got their Living by their hand Labour of Various Kinds, now Obstructed & Stopt by the present Troubles &c.”

142 The “child” listed as Mrs. Lopthorn’s is stated to be “aged 59 years.”

143 “Taken Prisoners at Mechias in 6^th M^o 1775 whose allowance is small (1^st of y^e 3^d M^o 1776).”

144 “Those in Malbrow marked * in the Margin were not Vissited Living much dispers’d in the Town, but after due Enquiry of other people who came from Boston & the Select Men the Sums were apportion’d and sent by John Sigane of Boston & Two of the Select Men.”

145 “He freed by his master. She purchased by him, have a house in Boston & paid Taxes per bills shewn us from 1766 to 1772, but have not been favor’d with the publicks support he has 10 children She One of them, all Slaves.”

146 “Those marked * in Reading living scatter’d & remote were after due Examination relieved by sending the Moneys Anex’s to each, by Benj^a Brown a Select Man per Rc^t.”

147 “N.B. All those in Glocester on Cape Ann (a few expected as per the first Lists) are Presbiterians Congregationalist.”

148 “Calls herself a Quaker.”

149 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

150 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

151 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

152 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

153 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

154 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

155 “These persons were Imprisoned in Worcester Goal for not Appearing (or procureing others) with Arms when calld for & Refusing to pay the fine, and Leaving their Familes poor & Needy were Visited after Visiting them in Prison; they are called by some New Lights by some Friends, they seldom Attend friends Meetings but appeard sober Some faild in their perseverance & have Lamented their fall, Others were Released by their parents & Relations and are all out of Goal.”

156 “Put into the hands of John Beckford, Timothy Pickering, Samuel Holman, Joseph Brown, John Tuesdal and Jeremiah Hacker to deal out agreeable to directions.”

157 “Put into the hands of Robert Hooper Junr. of Marblehead, to deal out according to directions. And it appears likely more than 200 families will receive of these provisions, lodged in these two Towns, the number of poor, & smallness of the quantity to each is such, that an exact account is not required of the persons who deliver’d it, their integrity & faithfulness is not to be doubted.”

158 1,008 lbs. beef were distributed to 38 persons.

159 “Independent.”

160 “Omitted in the other Acc^t.”

161 Printed, in substance, in The Colophon, New Series, III, No. 4, 531–557.

162 Essex Institute Historical Collections, viii. 215–224; x. 73–104.

163 Editorial in the Boston Sunday Globe, February 17, 1929.

164 Essex Institute Historical Collections, viii. 168–174.

165 Scribbled on the title page is the following: “p^r 1s 2d J. G. hunc librum vendicat.” On the verso of the title page Green has written a list of the symbols and abbreviations used in his manuscript. In printing, only those that can be readily reproduced in modern type have been retained.

166 When he was teaching school at Roxbury.

167 Nehemiah Walter, minister of the church at Roxbury.

168 This is written on the verso of the second leaf, which is unnumbered. On the recto there is a business memorandum in a later hand.

169 Edward Green, captain of the Eagle.

170 Thomas Johnson of Cambridge, who married Green’s sister Elizabeth.

171 Samuel Champney (d 1695), whom Green’s mother married as her second husband.

172 Zechariah Hicks, who married Green’s sister Ruth.

173 Joseph Hicks, who married Green’s sister Bethiah.

174 Bethiah Green Hicks.

175 This sentence was inserted by Green at a later time.

176 Antigua.

177 Green’s memorandum: “Y^s letter I have not sent.”

178 Son of John Vassall of Jamaica, formerly of Scituate, Massachusetts. He stood at the head of the Class of 1695.

179 William Brattle did become minister of Cambridge in 1696.

180 Nathaniel Williams, Henry Flynt, Nathaniel Hunting, and Joseph Baxter of the Class of 1693.

181 Walter Price of Salem, a merchant in later life. He was captain in the fight with the Indians at Haverhill, August 29, 1708.

182 Richard Saltonstall of Haverhill, later a representative and colonel of militia.

183 Nathaniel Saltonstall, brother of Richard, college butler until 1697, subsequendy librarian.

184 John Hubbard of Ipswich, later minister at Jamaica, Long Island.

185 Simon Willard, son of the Reverend Samuel Willard, vice-president of the college.

186 Habijah Savage of Boston, apothecary and commander of the fort at Pemaquid.

187 Alfred Noyes of Boston, physician, politician, promoter of Long Wharf, and owner of fishing vessels.

188 Thomas Phipps of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

189 Timothy Lindall of Salem, merchant and councillor.

190 Jonathan Law, chief justice of Connecticut, 1725–1741, and governor, 1742–1750.

191 Ezekiel Lewis, master at the Boston Latin School and merchant.

192 Thomas Blowers, minister of Beverly.

193 Thomas Little, physician and clerk of courts at Plymouth.

194 Ephraim Littie, minister of Plymouth.

195 John Perkins, physician of Ipswich.

196 Jedediah Andrews of Hingham, minister of a Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.

197 John Robinson of Dorchester, minister of Duxbury.

198 Joseph Mors of Medfield, minister of Dorchester Village (Canton).

199 Nicholas Webster of Newbury, preacher and physician at Manchester and Gloucester.

200 Green’s memorandum: “this I had thoughts of sending but afterwards repented me &c.”

201 Percival Green (A.B. 1680, A.M. 1683), minister of Wells, Maine. He died July 10, 1684.

202 Elijah Corlett, a graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and master of the Cambridge Grammar School from its foundation about 1641 to his death on February 25, 1686/7.

203 Nehemiah Walter (A.B. 1684), at this time studying at the college, often served as a substitute for Corlett. John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, iii. 295.

204 “The successors of Mr. Corlett were generally young men fresh from college.” Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1877), 369. No Hastings is mentioned in his list, and the only college graduate of that name was John Hastings (A.B. 1681).

205 The bracketed words are crossed out in the original manuscript.

206 John Hancock (A.B. 1689), minister of Lexington, 1698–1752, grandfather of the patriot.

207 A.B. 1680; a physician of Cambridge.

208 He married a sister of Joseph Green’s mother and lived in Boston. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. 414⁷.

209 Apparently Joseph’s blacksmith brother. Paige states (History of Cambridge, 569) that he was living in 1691.

210 A.B. 1668; a merchant of Boston and a member of the governor’s council.

211 A.B. 1689; a man of means who later lived in England.

212 A.B. 1689; he was learning the mercantile business in 1691.

213 A brother of Thomas and William Brattle.

214 A.B. 1686; later chief justice of the province.

215 A.B. 1687; later agent of the province and the college in London and secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

216 The wife of Jonathan Mitchel (A.B. 1687).

217 Benjamin Wadsworth, later president of the college.

218 The bracketed words are crossed out in the original manuscript. Green’s predecessor was Thomas Barnard (A.B. 1679), whose description of the school in 1681 is given in Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 174–175.

219 Thomas Doolittle, A Treatise concerning the Lord’s Supper. The earliest Boston edition, which is described as the nineteenth edition, was published in 1700.

220 A Companion for Communicants: Discourses upon the Nature, the Design and the Subject of the Lord’s Supper (Boston, 1690).

221 Samuel Williams, ruling elder.

222 Pages [145–146] are missing.

223 William Brattle, his college tutor.

224 Nathaniel Ingersoll, ordained deacon in 1691 and the first innholder of Salem Village.

225 A Daniel Andrew was one of those who on July 21, 1697, as “Attornies for the people of the Village” addressed a remonstrance to the arbitrators appointed to settle the controversy between Parris and the Salem Village church that continued after his active ministry had ended. Samuel G. Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion in New England (Roxbury, 1866), ii. 159.

226 Nicholas Noyes, minister of Salem; John Hale, minister of Beverly; Joseph Gerrish, minister of Wenham, Jonathan Pierpont, minister of Reading; and Nehemiah Walter, minister of Roxbury.

227 Green characteristically fails to mention his first triumph for charity and peace following his ordination. On November 25, 1698, the church, at his instance, unanimously received back into full communion the three seceding members who had raised the faction against his predecessor. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, ii (Boston, 1867), 506–507, where other extracts from the church records are given.

228 Green’s diary begins on March 4, 1699/1700, with a characteristic entry: “Quiet & rainy. Heard small phebe and other birds sing. I was at home partly reading & pruning my orchard.”

229 “On the death of Mr. Hale, some difficulty appears to have arisen in the church, the nature of which is not defined.” Edwin M. Stone, History of Beverly (Boston, 1843), 221.

230 Printed, in substance, in Harold R. Shurtleff, The Log Cabin Myth (Cambridge, 1939).

231 Coram claimed credit for the passage of the Act of 1704 to encourage the making of tar and pitch in the colonies. Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, vi. 172.

232 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America and West Indies (1712–1714), §§357, 364, 460 (June and August, 1713); Nova Scotia Papers (Gay Transcripts, Massachusetts Historical Society), I. 117–121.

233 Col. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §§385, 390, 448, 459.

234 Id., §§629, 633, 634, 635, 640.

235 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, iv (New Haven, 1938), 385–390.

236 Proposals of Coram not discussed here may be found in Cal. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §§629, 633, 634, 635, 640; Documentary History of Maine, ix. 342–348.

237 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §460; Nova Scotia Papers, i. 117–121 (August 19, 1713).

238 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1716–1717), §577; see also §§412, 528, 567, 582; Journal of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations (hereafter cited as Board of Trade) (1715–1718), 235.

239 The date is probably 1718. A copy is in the Boston Public Library.

240 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, lvi. 29.

241 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1712–1714), §§643, 656, 672, 673, 677; (1716–1717), §§249, 291, 303, 305, 315, 340.

242 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1716–1717), §599; Documentary History of Maine, ix. 357–361; Nova Scotia Papers, i. 749.

243 Board of Trade (1715–1718), 321–322, 323, 351; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1717–1718), §§308, 383.

244 Board of Trade (1715–1718), 352–354; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1717–1718), §458.

245 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1717–1718), §543.

246 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ii (Boston, 1767) 244–245.

247 Doctor Pinfold’s State of the Case of the Petitioners, for Settling His Majesties Waste Land, Lying between Nova Scotia, and the Province of Main in New-England, in America. It is dated March 17, 1721. A copy is owned by the Boston Public Library.

248 Board of Trade (1722–1728), 90, 93, 114, 119, 124.

249 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §501.

250 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1726–1727), §§820, 841.

251 Dunbar to Lord Wilmington, February 5, 1738/9. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part IV, 282–283.

252 Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 88. The complete text of Coram’s memorial is given in id., 76–91.

253 Board of Trade (1722–1728), 418.

254 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §6281; Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 99–101.

255 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §§630, 631, 665; Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 101–115.

256 C.O. 217/5:108–109.

257 Report on Canadian Archives (1894), 68.

258 Documentary History of Maine, x. 440–441.

259 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1728–1729), §483.

260 Id; §§133; 234i, 365 iii.

261 Documentary History of Maine, x. 455, 459, 465; xi. 31; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §3531 (1730), §402.

262 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 79.

263 Colonial Office, Maps and Plans, 180, 181 (Public Record Office).

264 For the discoveries at Pemaquid, see Warren K. Moorehead, “The Ancient Remains at Pemaquid, Maine,” Old-Time New England, xiv (January, 1924), 133–141.

265 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §217.

266 Order of Both Branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts to Appoint Commissioners to Investigate the Causes of the Difficulties in the County of Lincoln; and the Report of the Commissioners Thereon (Boston, 1811), 145. Waldo took over the peppercorn idea in his deeds subsequent to Dunbar’s leaving Pemaquid. Some of the deeds are to be found in Knox Papers, l. 21f. (Massachusetts Historical Society), and in the Maine Historical Society’s manuscripts.

267 Commissioners’ Report, 144.

268 Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 125–130. Dunbar’s advertisement for settlers in the Boston Gazette, August 17, 1730, gives no hint of a change of plans. He felt that it was necessary to broach the matter to the prospective settlers by degrees. Cal. State Paps., Col. (1730), §402.

269 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 44–47; Massachusetts House Journals, ix. 272; Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §§6i, 12, 12 iii.

270 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 63–65. It should be mentioned that Woodside had been in difficulties with the Massachusetts House. Executive Records of the Council (MS., Mass. Archives), xv. 54–55; Massachusetts House Journals, x. 100–101.

271 Cf. Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea-Power (Cambridge, 1926), 262.

272 Cal. State Paps., Col. (1731), §§73, 300, 301.

273 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 67–70; Massachusetts House Journals, ix. 282, 289.

274 The committee’s report is in Documentary History of Maine, xi. 70–85. Two original manuscript copies, signed by the members, are in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Miscellaneous Papers, iii. 16–18.

275 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 66–67.

276 Id., 112–128.

277 Massachusetts House Journals, x. 387–403; xi. 117.

278 Documentary History of Maine, xi. 134–135; 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 422–425; Massachusetts House Journals, xi. 174, 257–258, 281.

279 Massachusetts House Journals, xi. 322, 329; Acts and Resolves, xi. 759; 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 396.

280 6 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 327; see also 318–321, 324–328, 331–338.

281 C.O. 217/5: 108–109.

282 The Society has, with Mr. Frost’s permission, issued and distributed amongst the members a broadside containing A Considerable Speck, one of the poems, hitherto unpublished, which Mr. Frost read on this occasion. The broadside was printed from the first font of type cut and cast by Mr. Dard Hunter, Jr., and on paper made by Mr. Dard Hunter, Sr.

283 On December 17, 1936, Mr. Mood spoke before the Society on “The Genesis of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Historical Ideas.” Some of the material dealt with was afterward used in his essay, “Turner’s Formative Period,” printed (pages 5–39) in The Early Writings of Frederic Jackson Turner (Madison, 1938). Though based in part on the essay of 1938, the present paper is essentially a new piece of work.

284 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xv (September, 1931), 93; xix (September, 1935), 101–103. I have also consulted the data on the population of Wisconsin in the Census of 1870.

285 “History of the ‘Grignon Tract’ on the Portage of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers,” State Register (Portage, Wisconsin), June 23, 1883. My thanks are due the late Joseph Schafer, who kindly supplied me with a photostat copy of this, the earliest writing by Turner.

286 “The History of Fort Winnebago,” Collections, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xiv (Madison, 1898), 65–102.

287 On Veblen’s beginnings, see the earlier chapters in Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America (New York, 1934).

288 Official transcript of the record of Fred Jackson Turner at the University of Wisconsin.

289 Frederick J. Turner, “Problems in American History,” The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner (Madison, 1938), 76. This volume also contains a chronological list of all Turner’s works, compiled by Everett E. Edwards, and an introduction by Fulmer Mood.

290 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xix (September, 1935), 101–103.

291 Official transcript of the record of Fred Jackson Turner at the University of Wisconsin.

292 William F. Allen, Essays and Monographs (Boston, 1890), 8. D. B. Frankenburger’s memoir in this volume gives the fullest account of Allen’s life. The Dictionary of American Biography has a sketch.

293 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1881–1882 (Madison, 1882), 49.

294 The syllabus was reprinted to form a part of Methods of Teaching History, G. Stanley Hall, Editor (Boston, 1886), 323–336.

295 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1884–1885 (Madison, 1884), 8, 10. Hereafter specific references will not be given to the University of Wisconsin catalogues when the context supplies sufficient information to run down the source.

296 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xv (September, 1930), 89.

297 Printed in the University Press (Madison), 14 (35): 4 (May 26, 1883).

298 University Press, 15 (39): 12 (June 21, 1884). This oration was awarded the Lewis prize.

299 “An Act to Provide for a System of Common Schools,” Statutes of California Passed at the Sixteenth Session (Sacramento, 1866), 400–401.

300 Reuben Gold Thwaites. A Memorial Address (Madison, 1914), 38.

301 Id., 18.

302 This textbook by Alexander Johnston (1849–1889) was the first really successful, scholarly work of the kind. Editions, revised from time to time, were published in 1879, 1880, 1882, 1890, 1892, 1898, 1907, and 1910.

303 This forms part of his History Topics. See Hall, Methods of Teaching History, 330–336.

304 Syllabus of American History, 61.

305 Nation, xli (1885), 54.

306 Id., xxxii (1881), 280.

307 The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), 25.

308 For a contrary view, see Wirt A. Cate, “Lamar and the Frontier Hypothesis,” Journal of Southern History, i (February, 1935), 497–501.

309 History of America, 386–387.

310 Hall, Methods of Teaching History, 282. The London edition of Doyle’s work was reviewed by Allen in the Nation, xxii (May, 1876), 296.

311 The Colonies, 1492–1750, ix.

312 Dr. Edward L. Hardy graduated from the University of Wisconsin with the degree of B.L. in 1893. During his last two years he elected courses in American history with Turner and accumulated an extensive file of notes recording the opinions of the lecturer. In April, 1940, Dr. Hardy, with marked generosity, presented these to me. On going through them again lately, I noted a reference by Turner to the maps in Doyle’s History of America in Dr. Hardy’s notes on the course on American Economic and Social History which he had in 1892–1893.

313 Nation, xx (1875), 226.

314 Id., xxxii (1881), 151.

315 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin, 1888–1889 (Madison, 1889), 14.

316 Proceedings, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xxxvi (Madison, 1889), 52–98.

317 Id., 97–98.

318 Outline Studies in the History of the Northwest, 6.

319 “Little Known Fragments of Turner’s Writings,” Fulmer Mood, Editor, Wisconsin Magazine of History, xxiii (March, 1940), 329–330 (the quotation is from the editor’s Introduction). One of the “fragments” here reprinted is the article on Wisconsin, first published in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (xxiv. 616–619), and reprinted in the tenth edition (xxxiii. 861–862).

320 Official transcript of advanced courses taken by Frederick J. Turner at Johns Hopkins University.

321 Early Writings of Turner, 198.

322 Richard T. Ely, An Introduction to Political Economy (New York, 1889), 39–41.

323 Ely, Introduction to Political Economy, 41.

324 Id., 42–50.

325 Id., 53–54.

326 Ely, Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society (New York, 1903), 21 and n. 1. In the Philadelphia edition of List the scheme of stages is found on page 72.

327 Francis A. Walker, Political Economy, Advanced Course (2nd ed., New York, 1887), 44–53.

328 Ely’s popularization of this concept of stages gave it wide currency. Note, for example, its influence on his pupil, Charles J. Bullock, in Bullock’s Introduction to the Study of Economics (Boston, 1897), Chapter ii, “The Growth of Foundational Industry.” Bullock had studied at Wisconsin under Ely. Through the medium of Elementary Principles of Economics, together with A Short Sketch of Economic History (New York, 1904, and later editions), both by Ely and George R. Wicker, the concept reached an immense audience on both the high school and college levels. Book ii, “The Natural History of a Society,” in Albion W. Small and George M. Vincent, An Introduction to the Study of Society (New York, 1894), comes pretty close to the idea. Ely and Small were at Baltimore at the same time.

329 Of course, to take over, however critically, any a priori scheme or concept is to run a grave risk. The Listian sequence of stages is today firmly embedded in Turner’s great essay, and today the Listian concept can be asserted to be, as a universal rule, a fallacious idea. It is one component element in Turner’s essay that will not now stand the test of inspection.

330 Proceedings, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, xxxv (Madison, 1888), 16.

331 On Gannett, in addition to the sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography, see Simon N. D. North, Henry Gannett, President of the National Geographic Society, 1910–1914 (Washington, 1915).

332 Scribner’s Statistical Atlas, Fletcher Hewes and Henry Gannett, Editors (New York, 1885), vii (hereinafter cited as Atlas). Hewes was apparently responsible for the editing of the text; he had compiled other works earlier. Fittingly, the work was dedicated to Francis A. Walker.

333 Atlas, Plates 7–10.

334 Id., Plate 11.

335 For the text of the essay, see id., xxxvii–xl; for the maps, see id., Plates 12–17.

336 Id., Plates 15–17.

337 Early Writings of Turner, 195.

338 Atlas, xii–li.

339 Id., Plates 54–57.

340 Id., xxiii–xxiv.

341 In its first edition this work (published by the American Book Company) was issued as one of the National Geographic Monographs (1, Number 3). It was republished the following year (1896) by the National Geographic Society, Washington. It was used by Turner in his classroom teaching for many years. When I studied the history of the West as a Harvard undergraduate in 1919–1920, I was required to have the substance of this essay completely at my command. As the scientific study of physiography developed, Turner kept pace with it and made use of new findings. The paragraph in the text can be rounded out by the following quotation: “I have generalized from the report of N. M. Fenneman, Physiographic Divisions of the United States (Association of American Geographers Annals, xviii, 261–353), and A. K. Lobeck, Physiographic Diagram of the United States (Madison, Wis., 1922). . . . An older, and still useful, analysis is J. W. Powell, ‘Physiographic Regions of the United States. . . .’” Frederick J. Turner, The United States, 1830–1850: The Nation and Its Sections (New York, 1935), 2, n. 2.

342 The original MS. is in the Harvard College Library.

343 “Problems in American History” (1904), The Significance of Sections in American History (New York, 1932), 9.

344 Atlas, xliii–xliv. and Plate 22.

345 Atlas, xliv.

346 United States Census Office, Eleventh Census, 1890, Census Bulletin No. 12. Population of the United States by States and Territories, 1890 (Washington, 1890), 5. For a republication of the substance of this discussion, including tables, map, and text, see Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890. I. Population (Washington, 1892), xl–xliv.

347 Early Writings of Turner, 198–199.

348 United States Census Office, Eleventh Census, 1890, Extra Census Bulletin No. 2. Distribution of Population according to Density: 1890 (Washington, 1891), 1–2.

349 Id., 4.

350 Official transcript of advanced courses taken by Frederick J. Turner in Johns Hopkins University.

351 Letter from Wilson to Turner, Middletown, Connecticut, August 23, 1889, in the Harvard College Library.

352 I am under obligation to Dr. Eric F. Goldman of the Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, who called my attention to this material and assisted me in other ways in settling specific points relating to Turner’s period of study at Baltimore. Dr. Goldman’s student, Thomas W. McElhiney, kindly permitted me to make transcripts from his notes of the seminar discussions.

353 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar, 420.

354 W. Stull Holt, Editor, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 1876–1901: As Revealed in the Correspondence of Herbert Baxter Adams (Baltimore, 1938), 156; Johns Hopkins Half-Century Directory, 1876–1926, W. Norman Brown, Editor (Baltimore, 1926), 363. Other historians who completed their work on the same day were Charles H. Haskins, John M. Vincent, and James A. Woodburn.

355 Holt, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 158–159. Turner had received twenty-five copies of the published work by December 9.

356 Id., 168–169, 173–174.

357 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar (December 4, 1891), 622.

358 Johns Hopkins University Circulars, No. 4 (April, 1880), 47–48.

359 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar (October 31, 1884), 66.

360 MS. minutes of the Johns Hopkins University seminar, 139.

361 Id. (October 15, 1886), 160.

362 Id. (October 14, 1887), 29.

363 Ely’s teaching on economic rent is brief and clear. See his Introduction to Political Economy, 215–216.

364 Early Writings of Turner, 185–186.

365 Walker, Political Economy, 193, 211.

366 George W. Pierson, “The Frontier and the Frontiersman of Turner’s Essay,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, lxiv (October, 1940), 449–478.

367 Walker, Political Economy, 193.

368 Id., 193–218.

369 Francis A. Walker, Land and Its Rent (Boston, 1883), 21.

370 Id., 22.

371 Walker, Land and Its Rent, 23.

372 Id., 25–26.

373 Id., 45–47.

374 Id., 140.

375 Id., 41.

376 Early Writings of Turner, 82–83.

377 Proceedings, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, xxxviii (Madison, 1891), 93.

378 The edition was small, and the book soon went out of print.

379 J. Franklin Jameson, The History of Historical Writing in America (Boston, 1891), 141–142.

380 Dial, x (August, 1889), 71.

381 Early Writings of Turner, 236–237.

382 Holt, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 145.

383 For bibliographical details, see Early Writings of Turner, 236–240.

Wisconsin Magazine of History, xxii (December, 1938), 216.

384 Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science, ii (Philadelphia, 1892), 782–783.

385 James A. James and Albert H. Sanford, American History (New York, 1909). In a letter to me Professor James states that this book “was, I think, the earliest text for schools to make use of the Turner viewpoint.” The book was not submitted to Turner in manuscript, Professor James adds.

386 For the inception of the plan, see Proceedings, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, xxxvi. 47.

387 Transactions, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, viii (Madison, 1892), 288–298.

388 Here Turner followed the gracious custom of his predecessor, Professor Allen.

389 Collections, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xii (Madison, 1892), 299–334.

390 Id., xiv (Madison, 1898), 341–393.

391 J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States in the Formative Period, 1775–1789, by Graduates and Former Members of the Johns Hopkins University (Boston, 1889), 67.

392 Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913), 5.

393 Orin G. Libby, The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787–8 (Madison, 1894), iii–vii.

394 Collections, Wisconsin State Historical Society, xiii (Madison, 1895), 293–334.

395 Id., 334.

396 Id., 335–374.

397 Id., 363.

398 I have reprinted the 1894 “Frontier” essay, with introductory remarks, in “Little Known Fragments of Turner’s Writings,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, xxiii (March, 1940), 330, 338–341. Why Turner allowed this useful essay (as well as his Ægis article of 1892) to drop out of sight is a minor mystery. He seems to have had little concern over being misunderstood by those who were to come afterward. Until the recently published chronological bibliography of Turner’s writings by Dr. Edwards (Early Writings of Turner, 234–268) it was quite impossible to trace the unfolding of his scholarship.

399 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington, 1894), 6.

400 Catalogue of the University of Wisconsin for 1891–1892 (Madison, 1892), 98.

401 Trent was of Virginian birth, had done postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins, and was the author of English Culture in Virginia (1889) and Life of William Gilmore Simms (1892).

402 William P. Trent, Southern Statesmen of the Old Régime: Washington, Jefferson, Randolph, Calhoun, Stephens, Toombs, and Jefferson Davis (New York, 1897), vii–xv.

403 Max Farrand, “Frederick Jackson Turner at the Huntington Library,” Huntington Library Bulletin, Number 3 (February, 1933), 159.

404 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1896 (Washington, 1897), i. 281–296.

405 Id., 283.

406 Id., 287.

407 For bibliographical details, see Early Writings of Turner, 239.

408 Id., 239–250 (entries for the years 1895–1905).

409 For a statement of Libby’s views on this subject, see his article, “A Plea for the Study of Votes in Congress,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1896, i. 323–334.

410 Id., 323.

411 Id., 332.

412 Id., 332 and n.1.

413 Ulrich B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights. A Study of the Political History of Georgia from the Revolution to the Civil War, with Particular Regard to Federal Relations (Washington, 1902), 5.

414 See Everett E. Edwards, “A Bibliography of the Writings of Professor Ulrich Bonnell Phillips” [Introduction by Fred Landon], Agricultural History, viii (October, 1934), 196–218.

415 His American Diplomacy (New York, 1915, and four subsequent editions) developed from this branch of his teaching.

416 Holt, Historical Scholarship in the United States, 276.

417 Woodrow Wilson to F. J. Turner, Princeton, January 21, 1902, in Harvard College Library.

418 This anecdote comes to me from Professor Wilbur C. Abbott.

419 Huntington Library Bulletin, Number 3, 160–162.

420 The helpful Introduction by Professor Avery Craven reveals how Turner worked and composed his manuscript.

421 For an account of the literary project that Fish had in hand, see his The American Civil War, vii–viii.

422 The project was outlined by Phillips in the Preface to Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1929).

423 Wisconsin Magazine of History, xix (September, 1935), 96–97.

424 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1909 (Washington, 1911), 165–172.

425 Id., 165.

426 Mr. Potter, to whose studies and interest all later concern with the John Harvard donation is indebted, retired as the Harvard College Librarian in 1936. The Library has continued, however, to secure as far as possible copies of the books whose titles were identified. A list of some seventy such additions will be found below in the footnote on page 355; but there remains a list of desiderata, nearly twice as long, representing the items still lacking at the Library. Most of the books regarded as replacements of the original donation have been classified as a separate category with a shelf list of their own, and many of them have stood together in a separate show case in the old Treasure Room in the main building of Widener Library.

The substance of this paper is included in a more popular article, “What Happened to John Harvard’s Books?” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, xli (November 18, 1938), 241–248.

427 “A Few Notes concerning the Records of Harvard College,” Bibliographical Contributions, Justin Winsor, Editor, No. 27 (Cambridge, 1888). The list, without identifications, was published in Thomas G. Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620–1730 (New Haven, 1920), 265–272, and in our Publications, xv. 158–166.

428 In his list Potter used the designation “(Cat. 1723)” to indicate items that he identified in this way. This symbol may now be added to his printed list in the following instances, confirming or correcting his titles and editions: Nos. 26, 44 (should be Geneva, 1625), 50, 55 (also Poitiers, 1619, f^o), 81 (should be 4^o), 111a (the edition in English), 163b (should be Basel, 1611), 196 (should be 4^o), 222 (should be edition of 1547, for which “1647” in the Catalogue is an obvious error), 227b. The dates in Potter’s list should be further corrected in these items: Nos. 8b (1620 for 1630), 72d (1572 for 1568), 143a (1599 for 1589), 174a (1570 for 1574), 198a (1618 for 1628), 199 (1629 for 1627). The asterisk used by Potter to mark items of which copies are in the Harvard College Library may now be added, owing to more recent accessions, to the titles and editions which he names under Nos. 1, 2, 6a (Volumes 3 and 4), 13, 16, 18, 23a, 24a (Antwerp, 1616), 29b, 29d (Venice, 1617), 30d, 31, 33, 42, 46a, 46e, 48b, 48d, 48e, 48g, 48j, 51a, 54, 59, 60, 62a, 62c, 62f, 62h, 70, 72a, 75b, 75c, 90 (London, 1593), 91 (London, 1633), 94 (Frankfort, n.d.), 106, 108a, 109b, 114, 116, 117, 126, 134, 140, 143b, 156, 162, 163b (Basel, 1603), 169 (London, 1638), 172, 174, 183a, 184b, 189a, 191e, 195, 198a, 205, 208, 210, 220, 222 (Lyons, 1547), 234, 237, 242b, 245, 246 (London, 1618), 247, 250.

429 This striking difference between ancient and modern library practice is rarely mentioned or thought of today. Burnett H. Streeter thinks the custom goes back to the days of chained books. The Chained Library (London, 1931).

430 Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xx. 287, 288. The original manuscript of this list is in the Boston Public Library.

431 This similarity was noted by Andrew McF. Davis (Bibliographical Contributions, No. 27, 7), but he drew no deductions from it. The list was printed by him in id., 14.

Of course some coincidences between contemporary libraries in New England are to be expected. I have attempted to compute the number of titles in the John Harvard list that are also found in three other lists of the period. The library of Thomas Jenner, left by him in America in 1649 and bought in 1651 for the use of John Eliot by the Corporation for Propagation of the Gospel in New England (the New England Company) had 200 titles (our Publications, xxviii. 113–136), of which not more than 40 are in the John Harvard list. The library left in America by Thomas Weld (1595–1662) and similarly disposed of at the same time as Jenner’s (id., 136–156) contained 195 titles, of which about 32 may be the same as titles in the John Harvard list. A smaller and earlier library, owned and housed in various places in the colony from its presentation in 1629 until it was burned in the Town House fire in Boston in 1711, was that given the Massachusetts Bay Company by William Backhouse and the Reverend Samuel Skelton. About a dozen of the John Harvard titles may be included in its 52 entries. Proc. Am. Antiq. Soc, xx. 271.

432 The date at which the two lists were copied into the Record Book is not known. Mr. Morison thinks it was probably after 1667, when the new library laws called for a catalogue. The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, 1935), 264. The handwriting is not that of President Dunster, as was formerly thought, but it has not been identified. Bellingham’s gift may have been made in 1642, when the magistrates and elders gave to Harvard College from their libraries books to the value of £200 (id., 263); or by bequest at his death in 1672, when, according to the inventory of his estate, he had at his house in Boston a library of books worth £30. Mellen Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, 1624–1824 (Boston, 1908), i. 427.

433 Sibley has written on the bookplate: “This book belonged to the Library before the fire Jan. 24, 1766 [sic].”

434 Proc. Am. Antiq. Soc., xxxiv. 2–4, 14–19.

435 Our Publications, xvi. 522. On the recovery of nearly seventy of the duplicates thus disposed of, see my article, “My Professor’s Closet,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, xxxix (December 4, 1936), 297–301.

436 Our Publications, xvi. 570.

437 Id., 728.

438 Id., xxviii. 381–461.

439 Or perhaps a similar work of the same title by Ravisius Textor.

440 Of this total, $291.18 is to be reimbursed from the savings bank deposit belonging to the Martha Rebecca Hund Fund.

441 Printed in John Adams, Works, ix. 641–643, and Hezekiah Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America (New York, 1876), 107–108.

442 E. Francis Brown, Joseph Hawley, Colonial Radical (New York, 1931), 154.

443 Hawley to Gerry, February 18, 1776, in James T. Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry, 1 (Boston, 1828), 161.

444 Id., 160.

445 2. Samuel, i: 20.

446 The material for this paper has been obtained from the following sources:

Derby business papers, Essex Institute.
Edward B. Allen, Early American Wall Paintings (New Haven, 1926).
George C. Mason, Reminiscences of Newport (Newport, 1884).
Article by Joseph Northam in the Newport Daily News, December 31, 1895.

447 Our Publications, xxxii. 505–514.

448 Frederick M. Kimball, “Corné and Tomatoes,” Canco (the trade journal of the American Can Company), v (April, 1939), 6.

449 The substance of Mr. Murdock’s remarks is printed in Appalachia, vii (June, 1941), 344–354.

450 Political Register and Impartial Review, ix (London, 1771), 81–83.

451 Id., 81.

452 The first biographer of Wilkes to use the American letters was John Almon. In his Correspondence of the Late John Wilkes (5 vols., London, 1805), Almon printed four letters from the Sons of Liberty. Two recent biographies, Raymond Postgate, That Devil Wilkes (London, 1930), and O. H. Sherrard, A Life of John Wilkes (London, 1930), have quoted these and other American letters from the Wilkes papers in the British Museum. All these letters were printed by Worthington C. Ford in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 190–215.

Two other American letters to Wilkes are available in print: from the Sons of Liberty, November 4, 1769, in John G. Palfrey, “William Palfrey,” Library of American Biography, 2nd Series, vii (Boston, 1845), 358–362; from William Palfrey, March 13, 1770, describing the Boston Massacre, in 1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 480–483.

453 Printed in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 196–197.

454 John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1768).

455 Palfrey had sent Wilkes copies of the Boston Evening Post, which began on February 6, 1769, to publish a series of letters containing a “full answer to the Farmer’s.” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 196–197.

456 George Hayley, Palfrey’s commercial correspondent in London and Wilkes’s brother-in-law.

457 Copy by Anna R. Palfrey, corrected and endorsed by John G. Palfrey: “Original given by J. G. P. to Mrs. [George] Ticknor May 15, 1873.”

458 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 200–202.

459 Palfrey had sent Wilkes a copy of a deposition by Sampson Toovey, clerk to James Cockle, Collector of Customs at Salem, stating that Cockle received bribes and shared them with Governor Bernard. Wilkes published this, with a short introduction, in the London Daily Advertiser and Morning Chronicle, July 22, 1769.

460 Hancock’s sloop Liberty was condemned in 1768 after several months of litigation. See Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, lv. 239–284.

461 Printed by permission of the Harvard College Library. Excerpts from this letter are printed in Library of American Biography, 2nd Series, vii. 365n.

462 Eliot visited Wilkes on September 14 and 20, 1769. Anna Ticknor, Samuel Eliot (Boston, 1869), 32.

463 In his letter of July 26 Palfrey had written: “The society of the friends of Liberty have directed me to forward you two Turtles. . . . They are now in fine order, one weighs 45 lb., the other 47, making in the whole 92 lb. which is the Massachusetts patriotic number.” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, xlvii. 206.

464 John Glynn (1722–1779), London politician and lawyer, who took the lead in defending Wilkes in numerous suits.

465 Palfrey’s draft bears no date. However, the supplement to this letter, printed in i Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vi. 480–483, indicates that it was written on March 5, 1770.

466 John Jeffries (1745–1819), after graduating from Harvard in 1763, studied medicine in England for several years. At first an ardent patriot, he lost the respect of the radicals by testifying for Captain Preston in October, 1770. During the war he moved to England where he subsequently became famous for the first crossing of the Strait of Dover by air.

467 The passage in brackets is canceled in Palfrey’s draft.

468 Lieutenant Colonel William Dalrymple.

469 Ebenezer Richardson.

470 “Knight of the Post” was a term of contempt for a perjurer or one who got his living by giving false evidence.

471 One paragraph, describing the Richardson affair in words similar to those above, is here omitted.

472 Wilkes’s term in the King’s Bench Prison ended on April 18, 1770.

473 Copy by Anna R. Palfrey, endorsed by John G. Palfrey: “Copy of a letter of which I gave the original to Miss Arnold.”

474 Wilkes was sworn in as alderman on the day of his release from prison.

475 Palfrey’s draft is undated. The two paragraphs describing Governor Hutchinson’s character were printed in Library of American Biography, 2nd Series, vii. 368–372.

476 Colonel James Otis (1702–1778).

477 John Temple (1732–1798), Surveyor General of the Customs.

478 Henry Temple, second Viscount Palmerston (1739–1802).

479 See page 414, n. 3, above.

480 James Murray (1713–1781) was President of the Council of North Carolina before he moved to Boston in 1765.

481 These Boston and Marlborough merchants had aroused considerable animosity by their violations of the nonimportation agreement. See Publications of this Society, viii. 98n.; xix. 226, 226n, 232, 233n.

482 Charles Churchill (1731–1764), English poet.

483 Arthur Lee of Virginia (1740–1792).

484 Numerous pamphlets were printed in England and America in 1770 claiming to contain the complete love letters of the Duke and Lady Grosvenor. At a trial on July 5, 1770, at King’s Bench, Lord Grosvenor was awarded £16,000 “for a criminal conversation between the Defendant and the Plaintiff’s wife.”

485 Palfrey had been in England from February 3 to April 3, 1771.

486 John Sawbridge (1732–1795), Sheriff of Middlesex, who five times returned Wilkes as duly elected to Parliament in defiance of the House of Commons.

487 Unidentified, but not Charles Churchill, the poet.

488 Mr. George G. Wolkins has written two valuable articles on the exploits of Captain Daniel Malcom: “The Seizure of John Hancock’s sloop Liberty,” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, lv. 239–284; and “Daniel Malcom and Writs of Assistance,” id., lviii. 5–84.

489 C.O. 5:849.

490 Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, No. 76273.

491 Litigation was Captain John’s favorite pastime while on shore. During the twenty years 1750–1770 he was frequently suing somebody or being sued. Writ after writ is to be found in the files of the Superior Court of Judicature.

492 The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., Franklin B. Dexter, Editor (New York, 1901), i. 39.

493 Superior Court of Judicature, No. 90105.

494 “The War of the Regulation occurring in North Carolina . . . has often been regarded as a part of the general revolutionary movement. In reality it was rather a ‘peasants’ revolt’ against the hard conditions then prevailing; and most of the ‘regulators’ were tories a few years later. Professor Bassett, whose detailed article in the American Historical Association’s Reports (1894, pp. 141–212) is by far the best study that has yet been made, says (p. 211): ‘This investigation leads to the view that the Regulation could have no direct connection with the Revolution. I can see no continuity of influence. The Regulation did not make the later struggle inevitable.’ Although, as Professor Bassett states, there is no direct connection between the War of the Regulation and the American Revolution, and although most of the regulators were tories, these disturbances were doubtless influential in adding to the general spirit of unrest which was rising throughout the continent.” Edward Channing, A History of the United States, iii (New York, 1920), 122n.

495 Colonial Records of North Carolina, viii. 583.

496 State Records of North Carolina, xix. 843–845. The expedition ended on June 21, when Governor Tryon left to sail for New York.

497 The name of a fierce swashbuckler in the dramatic burlesque, The Rehearsal (1671), by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

498 Colonial Records of North Carolina, ix. 236–237.

499 Id, 300.

500 Id., 351.

501 Id., 618–619.

502 Boston Gazette, February 14, 1774.

503 Waldo’s letter to the Lords of the Treasury (T.I. 525, f. 119) is dated November 21, 1776, and is addressed to John Robinson, formerly one of the Commissioners of the Customs in Boston. Waldo had come to England after the burning of Falmouth, Maine, by the British in October, 1775. In the destruction of the town he lost his dwelling house and its contents, his distill house, and his storehouse, not to mention the customhouse, which was his own property. Treasury In-letters, 525, f. 125 (Public Record Office).

504 T.I. 525, f. 117.

505 Benjamin B. Thacher, Traits of the Tea Party; Being a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes (New York, 1835), 130–133.

506 Dartmouth mss., Patshull House, Wolverhampton, Shropshire.

507 Dartmouth mss.

508 Letters of a Loyalist Lady (Cambridge, 1927), 70–72.

509 Boston Evening-Post, December 5, 1774; Massachusetts Gazette, December 8, 1774; Massachusetts Spy, December 8, 1774.

510 The imprint reads: “London Printed for Rob^t Sayer & J. Bennett, Map & Printseller, No. 53, Fleet Street as the Act directs 31, Oct^r 1774.”

511 The imprint reads: “Printed for Carington Bowles, at his Map & Print Warehouse, No. 69 in St. Paul’s Church Yard, London. Published as the Act directs, Oct. 12^th, 1774.” The print was Number 306 in Bowles’s series of folio mezzotints.

512 The imprint is the same except for the date, June 2, 1775.

513 Two months later the London Chronicle, December 17, 1774, contained a news item confirming this expectation: “The Exciseman who was tarred and feathered at Boston and lately arrived in England has obtained a pension of 200£ per annum.”

514 R. T. H. Halsey, The Boston Port Bill as Pictured by a Contemporary London Cartoonist (New York, 1904), 93.

515 I first became acquainted with this print through the copy of it in Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia. My thanks are due to Charles L. Chandler, Esq., of Philadelphia for his kindness in securing a photograph of the print for me. I have subsequendy come across a copy of the print in the Harvard College Library.

516 The explanation of the scene given below the engraving is as follows: “Le 25 Janvier 1774 la populace irritée pénétra sans armes dans sa maison. Il blessa plusieurs personnes à coups d’épée: mais les Bostoniens, modérés jusques dans leur vengeance, le saisirent, le descendirent par la fenêtre dans une charrette; ensuite il fut dépouillé, goudronné, emplumé, mené sur la place publique, battu de verges, et obligé de remercier de ce qu’on ne le punisait point de mort: puis on le ramena chez lui sans autre mal.”

517 The Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759–1762, 1764–1779, Anne L. Cunningham, Editor (Boston, 1903), 261.

518 Massachusetts Gazette, February 3, 1774.

519 The complete report of Major Eyre is in the Parkman Transcripts, Massachusetts Historical Society.

520 The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Peter O. Hutchinson, Editor (London, 1886), i. 164.

521 Boston Gazette, January 31, 1774.

522 T.I. 510, f. 49.

523 Dartmouth mss.

524 Massachusetts Gazette, December 8, 1774.

525 Id., December 16, 1774.

526 Dartmouth mss.

527 Dartmouth mss.

528 Hutchinson Diary, ii. 100–101.

529 See pages 440–442, above.

530 Admiralty Office 13:79 (Public Record Office).

531 War Office 12:11616 (Public Record Office).

532 The word in the original is unexempted.

533 A.O.13:75.

534 Malcom’s case is entered under the head of “Persons receiving Allowances under a General Minute of the Board dated the day of but whose Claims are not set forth by Memorial or supported by Voucher.” He is put down as having a “present allowance” of £100, and his “profession” is given as surveyor of the customs.

535 A.O.12:105, f. 141.

536 A.O.13:75.

537 W.O.12:11616.

538 W.O.25:3101.

539 To purchase certain books from the Matt B. Jones collection as a memorial to Mr. Jones.

540 To purchase certain books from the Matt B. Jones collection as a memorial to Mr. Jones.

541 Printed in substance as “Origins of the Colonial Idea in England,” Proceedings, American Philosophical Society, lxxxv (September 30, 1942), 448–465.

542 Francis N. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions (Washington, 1909), iii. 1849.

543 Id., 1870, 1877.

544 New England Council, id., 1827, 1834; Maine, id., 1625, 1627; Connecticut, id., i. 529, 536; Rhode Island, id., vi. 3211, 3221.

545 See the Introduction by Charles M. Andrews in Beverly W. Bond, The Quit-Rent System in the American Colonies (New Haven, 1919), 14–17.

546 Lyttleton, His Treatise of Tenures, Thomas E. Tomlins, Editor (London, 1841), 153; Melville Egleston, The Land System of the New England Colonies (Baltimore, 1886), 14. Other reasons are suggested in Viola Barnes, “Land Tenure in English Colonial Charters of the Seventeenth Century,” Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews (New Haven, 1931), 4–40; George L. Haskins, “The Beginnings of the Recording System in Massachusetts,” Boston University Law Review, xxi (April, 1941), 299–302.

547 Cf. Charles H. Atherton, “Address,” Collections, New Hampshire Historical Society, iii. 153, 156–157.

548 Cf. Edward P. Cheyney, “The Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent,” American Historical Review, xi (October, 1905), 29–35.

549 A partial list of these writers may be found in Richard B. Morris, Studies in the History of American Law (New York, 1930), 106, n. 2.

550 “Fuit agrée per touts que si terre soit alledge d’estre en Kent, serra presume d’estre Gavelkind, si non que le contrary soit prove.” Browne v. Brokes (1659), 2 Siderfin, 153. “Touts terres in Kent sont suppose destre Gavelkind.” Wiseman v. Cotten (1661), 1 Siderfin, 135, 138. See also Robinson on Gavelkind, Charles I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, Editors (London, 1897), 44. Cf. Lord Hale’s opinion in Randall v. Writtall (1673), 3 Keble, 214, 216.

551 It should be pointed out that, contrary to the opinion of some, gavelkind was frequently an incident of free and common socage. Cf. Theodore F. T. Plucknett, review, New England Quarterly, iii (July, 1930), 575: “In discussing the famous manor of East Greenwich and the question of gavelkind, we miss the one simple and conclusive answer, viz. that the charters expressly define the tenure as socage; and socage is not gavelkind.” The answer is neither simple nor conclusive; see Charles I. Elton, Tenures of Kent (London, 1867), Chapter xv.

552 Further discussion of the social and economic implications of this is given in my article, “The Beginnings of Partible Inheritance in the American Colonies,” Yale Law Journal, li (June, 1942), 1280–1315. The medieval background is detailed in John E. A. Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England: The Jutes (Oxford, 1933), 19–30. See also George C. Homans, “Partible Inheritance of Villagers’ Holdings,” Economic History Review, viii (November, 1937), 48–56.

553 William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston, 1912), ii. 41–43.

554 Letter to Samuel Bloommaert, one of the directors of the West India Company, Collections, New York Historical Society, 2nd Series, ii. 352.

555 The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts Reprinted from the Edition of 1660, William H. Whitmore, Editor (Boston, 1889), 51, Titles 81, 82. See also The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, 1648, Max Farrand, Editor (Cambridge, 1929), 53–54, and below, page 487.

556 It was repealed in 1789. Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts, 1788–1789 (Boston, 1894), 395–396. For fee tail estates, see below, page 486, n. 2.

557 Studies in the History of American Law, 107–108.

558 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, i (New Haven, 1934), 86n.–87n.; Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Introduction to Records of the Suffolk County Court, 1671–1680, our Publications, xxix. lxvii–lxviii. See also Professor Chafee’s article, “Professor Beale’s Ancestor,” Harvard Legal Essays Written in Honor of and Presented to Joseph Henry Beale and Samuel Williston (Cambridge, 1934), 39, 56.

559 There is some confusion in the records and the early authorities as to whether the rules of partible inheritance extended to a fee tail in Massachusetts, or whether primogeniture prevailed. In Baker v. Mattocks, Quincy, 69 (Mass., 1763), the court construed the province statute of 1692 as not extending to estates tail, thus holding that the common-law rule of primogeniture prevailed. Cf. The Charter and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1814), 230–232. Earlier in the century, however, the court reached an opposite result in two cases. See Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 100–101. Yet in 1723 the Council passed a declaratory resolve that the statute of 1692 did not apply to estates tail. Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, v (Boston, 1924), 279. The real difficulty is that the statute of 1692 refers explicitly to fee simple estates. The earlier enactments, in 1641 and 1660, in providing for descent to all children, make no distinction between fee simple and fee tail estates. Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51 (Titles 81, 82), 201. Morris (Studies in the History of American Law, 102) has concluded that partible descent existed as to fee tail estates during the seventeenth century. It is noteworthy that Plymouth enacted in 1685 that “all Lands heretofore Intailed, and that shall be Intailed hereafter, shall descend and enure as by the Law of England the same ought to do.” William Brigham, The Compact with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth (Boston, 1836), 299. This parallel might tend to weigh in favor of the view that in the Bay Colony rules of partible inheritance applied to estates in fee tail, since no contrary enactment exists. But the use of the words “fee simple” in the 1692 statute equally supports an opposite view. The question must remain an open one until more evidence than the enactments comes to light.

560 For full discussion of these and other incidents, see especially Robinson on Gavelkind, Book ii; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 39–44, 73–104; Nellie Neilson, “Custom and the Common Law of Kent,” Harvard Law Review, xxxviii (February, 1925), 482–498.

561 That is, among the living children of a deceased son by right of representation.

562 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51, Title 82.

563 Id., 51, Title 81.

564 Laws and Liberties of 1648, 53–54.

565 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 201; The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts Reprinted from the Edition of 1672, William H. Whitmore, Editor (Boston, 1887), 158.

566 Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, John Noble, Editor, ii (Boston, 1904), 97 (1640); Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, i (Salem, 1916), 62 (1647), 91 (1647), 173 (1654), etc.

567 See above, page 485, n. 3. The grant to Bradford and his associates in 1629 was not as of East Greenwich. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, iii. 1844. Prior to that their patent was from the Plymouth Company, which had received its charter in 1606 with an express mention of the Kentish manor. Id., iii. 3783, 3789. However, the leaders of the colony no doubt thought the tenure unchanged by the Bradford grant, since in the Code of 1636 they specifically mention East Greenwich. Brigham, Compact and Charter, 43, 51, 54.

The Plymouth laws of 1671 include a provision similar to the 1660 law in Massachusetts: that is, children take without distinction between males and females in cases of intestacy. Brigham, Compact and Charter, 281–282. In the revision of 1685 the daughters are expressly excluded and do not take unless there are no sons; again, the double portion is reserved to the eldest son. Id., 299.

568 Laws and Liberties of 1648, 17–18. There had been no earlier provision with regard to dower, as can be seen from the preamble to the title “Dowries” in this enactment: “Forasmuch as no provision hath yet been made for any certein maintainance for Wives after the death of their Husbands. . . .” The earlier provision in 1641 was of a very general character and was clearly “uncertain.” Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51, Title 79.

569 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, Nathaniel B. Shurdeff, Editor, ii (Boston, 1853), 281: amendment to 1647 law to strike out the clause “a third part of her husbands money, goods, & chattels, reall & personall.” For the 1692 statute, see Charter and General Laws of Massachusetts Bay, 230. The effectiveness of the amendment is perhaps open to question. Cf. Records of the Court of Assistants, in. 91: “. . . by A third part for the wife to be ment a third part of the whole.” This declaration was made in 1656 by Governor Endecott. See also Records of the Court of Assistants, iii. 208, where a committee was appointed by the court “to lay out the peticon^r hir Just thirds as the law directs.” (Italics mine.) Curiously enough, the excision in 1649 was voted at the same session (May 2) at which Endecott was elected Governor. Massachusetts Records, ii. 265.

The widow very often got a great deal more than her common-law third, but not in any definite proportion. This was particularly so when there were minor children to bring up. See Essex Probate Records, passim.

570 Brigham, Compact and Charter, 43. In practice, in Massachusetts Bay, the widow might get more if the allotted third was manifestly inadequate. The court had power to assign to her such part as should seem just and reasonable. Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 51 (Title 79), 201. The administration and settlement of estates in individual cases amply bear out this proposition. Cf. the Plymouth practice of relieving the widow when the husband by will deprived her of “reasonable allowance for her subsistency.” Brigham, Compact and Charter, 281.

571 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 35 (Title 11), 45 (Title 53) — 1641.

572 Id., 35, Titles 10, 11.

573 On this distrust of the English land system, see my article, previously cited, in Boston University Law Review, xxi. 301–302.

574 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, 1660, 35, Title 10: “All our lands and heritages shall be free from all fines and licences upon Alienations, and from all hariotts, wardships, Liveries, Primerseisins, yeare day and wast, Escheates and forfeitures, upon the deaths of parents or Ancestors. . . .”

Two points deserve special notice in this title. In the first place, a license to alienate was not necessary if a tenant held gavelkind land. Elton, Tenures of Kent, 74. This strengthens my position that gavelkind did not obtain in Massachusetts. In the second place, relief and primer seisin never attached to land held of the King in free and common socage. Lyttleton’s Tenures, 153. No doubt the colonists did not know this. At the same time, it is doubtful whether they had ever had to meet the obligations as socage tenants of the lord of East Greenwich.

In connection with the prohibition against forfeiture, mention should be made of the reply of the Massachusetts General Court to the objection by the Attorney General that persons condemned were in Massachusetts allowed to make wills: “. . . wee conceive it to be according to our patent; and if its originall, viz^t, that of East Greenwitch, according vnto which, as wee conceive, notw^thstanding the fathers crime, yet the children are to possesse the estate.” Massachusetts Records, v. 199. We cannot tell from this assertion whether the General Court actually thought the incident of gavelkind prevailed in Massachusetts, or whether the answer to the Attorney General was merely a legal argument which they hoped would stick. Thomas Hutchinson, writing a hundred years later, was surprised: “They strangely supposed that socage-tenure included all the properties and customs of gavelkind.” History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, Lawrence S. Mayo, Editor (Cambridge, 1936), i. 377. Cf. below, page 497.

575 Of general interest in this connection are Robinson on Gavelkind, Book I, Chapters ii, iii, and Elton, Tenures of Kent, 53^ff. Of more specific interest are Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederick W. Maitland, History of English Law (Boston, 1895), ii. 268, and Howard L. Gray, English Field Systems (Cambridge, 1915), 337. The relation of such customs to the Massachusetts law of partible inheritance is reserved for discussion elsewhere. See above, page 485, n. 1.

576 Those of 1606, 1609, and 1612. Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, vii. 3783, 3789, 3790, 3796, 3802, 3804.

577 Those of 1663 and 1665. Id., v. 2743, 2745, 2761, 2763.

578 Those of 1664 and 1674. Id., iii. 1637, 1638, 1641.

579 Those of 1664 and 1674. Id., v. 2533, 2534, 2546.

580 See Virginia Colonial Decisions, Robert T. Barton, Editor (Boston, 1909), i. 58, 163; John S. Bassett, “Landholding in Colonial North Carolina,” Law Quarterly Review, xi (April, 1895), 154, 164; Colonial Laws of New York, i (Albany, 1894), 114; Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 80, n. 2. In Rhode Island, whose charter of 1663 contained the East Greenwich clause, primogeniture prevailed except during the period 1718–1728. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, John R. Bartlett, Editor, iv (Providence, 1859), 238, 417; Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 80.

581 See above, page 484, n. 6.

582 Robinson on Gavelkind, 38–39.

583 Id., Book I, Chapter v; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 112; First Report of the Real Property Commissioners (London, 1829), Appendix ii. 228 (examination of Mr. John Bell, K.C.).

584 Lord Coke, writing in the reign of James I, observes that in a great part of Kent land was descendible to the eldest son. Coke on Littleton, 140b. The disgavelling acts and the persons whose lands were affected are listed in Robinson on Gavelkind, 67–71. See also the entries under “Disgavelled lands” in the Index to Elton, Tenures of Kent.

585 See previous note.

586 The best account is Edward Hasted, History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, i (Canterbury, 1797), 383–385.

587 The charters, together with other pertinent documents, are collected in Auguste van Lokeren, Chartes et documents de l’Abbaye de Saint Pierre (Ghent, 1868), i, ii. See below, n. 9.

588 Examples may be found in William Somner, Treatise on Gavelkind (London, 1660), 172–187. Cf. Jolliffe, Pre-Feudal England, 24–26.

589 War conditions have prevented my examining photostats of these court rolls, but Professor Viola F. Barnes of Mount Holyoke College, who has worked with them, has kindly informed me that there is no evidence in them of the existence of gavelkind. Cf. Essays Presented to C. M. Andrews, 33.

590 Domesday Book (London, 1783), i. 12b, under “Levesham.”

591 Placita de Quo Warranto (London, 1818), i. 356.

592 Printed in John Kimbell, An Account of the Legacies, Gifts, Rents . . . of the Parish of St. Alphege, Greenwich (London, 1816), 183–209.

593 Id., 206.

594 Robinson on Gavelkind, 73–75; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 236ff.

595 These charters may be found as follows: that of Edgar, in van Lokeren, Chartes, i, No. 38; that of Edward the Confessor, in id., No. 124, and in Benjamin Thorpe, Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici (London, 1865), 357–361; that of William II, in van Lokeren, Chartes, i, No. 159; that of Henry I, in id., No. 170; that of Stephen, in id., No. 215. These and other documents, in abstract, are calendared in John H. Round, Calendar of Documents Preserved in France (London, 1899), i. 500–505, and, in part, in Henry W. C. Davis, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum (Oxford, 1913), i, Nos. 141, 323. The charter of William the Conqueror, printed in van Lokeren, Chartes, i, No. 156, and in Kimbell, Legacies of Greenwich, 13–16, is unquestionably a forgery. See Davis, Regesta, 38.

A word must be said on a point raised by Davis when he asserts (Regesta, 38) that the manor of Greenwich was held by the Bishop of Lisieux of the Bishop of Bayeux in 1086. His authority for this is the entry in Domesday Book, i. 6b, which includes “Grenviz” under the holdings of the Bishop. It is to be noted, however, that these lands are specified as belonging to Earl Harold and Brixi in the time of Edward the Confessor, whereas we know that at the Conquest the manor of Greenwich was appurtenant to Lewisham and in the hands of the Abbot at Ghent. That this was the manor of Greenwich with which we are concerned seems plain from references in the charters of Henry I (“manerium suum . . . de Gronewic”) and Stephen (“maneria sua de Gronewic et Lieuesham”). The charters of William II and Henry I speak of it as having been held by the Abbot in the time of Edward the Confessor. Since Lewisham belonged to the Abbot at the time of Domesday (Domesday Book, i. 12b), we can only conclude that the manor remained appurtenant to Lewisham and belonged to the Abbot rather than to the Bishop. Just what is meant by “Grenviz” in the holdings of the Bishop is a point which must remain open. It was not until considerably later that the word “East” was prefixed to Greenwich. For our purposes, however, the important thing is that the manor of Greenwich was held in free alms before the Conquest and was certainly again held in free alms after the charter of William II. The possible doubts as to its tenure from 1066 to 1091 do not affect the conclusions as to gavelkind and frankalmoigne.

596 By the statute 1 Henry V, c. 7 (Statutes of the Realm, ii. 172).

597 Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, i (London, 1655), 974–977; Calendar of the Charter Rolls, 1341–1417, 469, 479, 482. Cf. confirmation by Henry VI in Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1422–1429, 222.

598 Thomas Rymer, Foedera (Hague ed.), vi, ii, 161.

599 The general rule is emphasized clearly in an early case in the time of Henry III relating to a manor held by the Priory of Christchurch in frankalmoigne from a time before the Conquest. It was held that lands held by such an ancient spiritual tenure were not subject to the customs of gavelkind. Robinson on Gavelkind, 74.

600 “Le custome est solement suspende par reason del prerogative, car maintenant que cest ceo vient in auter maines ceo discendre come gavelkind arrere.” Wiseman v. Cotten, 1 Siderfin, 138. However, it was only the custom of descent which remained in abeyance. Robinson on Gavelkind, 62–63. I am grateful to Professor Roscoe Pound for helpful discussion on this point.

601 Elton, Tenures of Kent, 157; Coke on Copyholds, s. 31. Put more graphically, the question is this: If A held Blackacre in Sussex as of the manor of Dale in Kent, and gavelkind prevailed at Dale, would Blackacre descend according to the customs of gavelkind? Apart from Elton and Lord Coke, there seems to be no explicit authority on the point. An early case, Anon. (1552), Dalison, 12, pl. 21, speaks of gavelkind as a custom which “runs with the land and is by reason of the land.” Robinson on Gavelkind, 55, 61, is explicit to the effect that gavelkind customs cannot be imposed on lands which had never been subject to them. Not even the King, he says, could do this.

What happened if an ordinary subject tried to vary a mode of descent is seen in another early case, Anon. (1560), Dyer, 179b, pl. 45. There it appeared that a man was seised in fee of borough-English lands after the statute of 27 Henry VIII, c. 10. He made a feoffment to divers persons in fee to the use of himself and of his heirs male of his body according to the course of common law. It was held on his death, however, that the youngest son should take by descent. Notice also a case in Y. B., Trinity, 26 Henry VIII (1534), 4, pl. 19, where a man seised of gavelkind lands made a gift in tail to hold of himself by knight’s-service. It was held the land nevertheless remained partible.

Finally, we have a statement in Wiseman v. Cotten, 1 Siderfin, 138: “Si Gavelkind terres sont tenus dun Sn̄ry que est tenus in Chivalry et puis ils Escheate, Issint que sont tenus in Chivalry ore il dit que le Gavelkind Custome est destroy, Mes ceo fuit deny par Twisden Justice (que est bien Conusant in les Leys de son pais).” The implication of this passage is not only that gavelkind is inherent in the land itself, and not merely a technicality of tenure, but also that land held of a superior holding is not affected by the customs of descent of that holding. Twysden’s knowledge of Kentish customs is undeniable. From this it may be argued that lands which normally descended according to common law would not become changed as to the descent when held of a manor which was itself subject to gavelkind. The plausibility of this contention is heightened by the ensuing remarks on the number of tenements held as of the manor of East Greenwich; or rather, its plausibility is heightened for those who may still insist that gavelkind attached to the manor of East Greenwich.

602 See above, page 489.

603 Rymer, Foedera, vii, ii, 156.

604 Select Charters of Trading Companies, 1530–1707, Cecil T. Carr, Editor (Selden Society, London, 1913), 51, 54.

605 Sir John H. LeFroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas (London, 1877), i. 550, 551.

606 Patent Rolls, 20 Charles II, pt. iii. I am grateful to the officials of the Public Record Office in London for checking this reference.

607 Robert M. Martin, History of the British Colonies (London, 1835), i. 38.

608 The number of these grants is too great to make possible any systematic list. See, however, the printed Calendars of the Patent Rolls for the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth (to 1560); Archaeologia Cantiana, xix (1892), lii (1940); Abstracts of Wiltshire Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward A. Fry, Editor (London, 1901), i. 3, 12, 40, 41, 59, etc.; Abstracts of Inquisitions Post Mortem Relating to London, George S. Fry, Editor, I (London, 1896), 200, 206, 221, etc.; Thomas Madox, The History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (London, 1769), i. 621; Owen Manning, History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, i (London, 1804), 357.

609 Quoted by Cheyney, American Historical Review, xi. 30. See also Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1598–1601, 517.

610 In the early years of Edward VI’s reign the socage grants show an increasing favoritism for the manor of East Greenwich. Forty-nine grants are made as of this manor, whereas those of other manors are much less numerous: e.g., five as of the Honour of Hampton Court; four as of Stalbridge, Dorset; three as of Stokenham, Devon; two as of Woking, Surrey, etc. See Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1548–1549; Viola F. Barnes in Essays Presented to C. M. Andrews, 10, n. 8.

611 American Historical Review, xi. 33–34.

612 See the instructions for the sale of lands in statute 35 Henry VIII, c. 14 (Statutes of the Realm, iii. 972–973); Letters and Papers foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, Editors, xix, i (London, 1903), 167–168, Section 5.

613 For example, the cut granted to the New River Company in 1619 was given as of the manor of East Greenwich. Select Charters of Trading Companies, 106, 113. So, too, the grant to the Yarmouth Saltmakers in 1636 (id., 148, 155) and the Bedford Level reclaiming project in 1663 (statute 15 Charles II, c. 17, Statutes of the Realm, v. 501). During the Interregnum the forfeited estates of various delinquents and the property of abolished bishops and deans were vested in trustees to be held as of the manor of East Greenwich in free and common socage. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (London, 1911), i. 881, 1018, 1150; ii. 83, 201, 592, 639, etc.

614 It is noteworthy how nominal the rents or other payments were in some of the charters for the British colonies. In Massachusetts Bay, for instance, it was one-fifth of the gold or silver discovered (Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, iii. 1849); in Pennsylvania, in addition, two beaver skins (id., v. 3037); in Maryland, two Indian arrows (id., iii. 1671); in Bombay, £10 (Select Charters of Trading Companies, lii, n. 4).

615 Wiltshire Inquisitions Post Mortem, i. 386.

616 Id., 209.

617 Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, iii. 1669, 1671; v. 3035, 3037.

618 Id., ii. 765, 771.

619 Charter to William Penn and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1879), 174, 231–232.

620 Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 108–111, has collected some of these. He attaches considerable weight to such expressions.

621 Morris (id., 108) considers the reference to East Greenwich in the Plymouth Code of 1636 as an expression of conviction that gavelkind had been brought over by the charter. The Plymouth law says: “That inheritance do descend according to the comendable custome of Engl, and hold of Est. Greenwich.” Brigham, Compact and Charter, 43. It is hard to see why this law is susceptible to that one interpretation. For one thing, gavelkind was never known as the “custom of England”; it was known as the common law of Kent at best. For another, “hold of Est. Greenwich” would seem merely to emphasize the tenurial aspect of landholding. The “Forme of Evidence” for particular holdings in Plymouth bears this out: “to A.B. his heires and assignes forever, The said lands to be holden of his Ma^tie and his successors as of his Mannor of East Greenwich,” etc. Id., 54. Cf. id., 279. The same would seem to apply to the reference to East Greenwich in the habenda of Massachusetts deeds, e.g. Suffolk Deeds, xiv (Boston, 1906), 69, 70. But see Morris, Studies in the History of American Law, 109.

622 See, for instance, Massachusetts Records, v. 199; 6 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 428; and above, page 488, n. 7. Cf. Collections, Connecticut Historical Society, v. 427. Such arguments are to be contrasted with the sober preamble to the 1692 Statute of Descents, which gives quite a different explanation for the persistence of partible inheritance: “Whereas estates in these plantations do consist chiefly of lands, which have been subdued and brought to improvement by the industry and labour of the proprietors, with the assistance of their children, the younger children generally having been longest and most serviceable unto their parents in that behalf, who have not personal estate to give out unto them in portions, or otherwise to recompense their labours. . . .” Charter and General Laws, 230.

Occasionally in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, partible inheritance, whether in or outside of Kent, was termed gavelkind. Elton, Tenures of Kent, 53–54. Reference has already been made (above, page 489, n. 1) to the existence of partible inheritance outside of Kent. However, the association of gavelkind with Kent on the part of the colonists when the argument of English precedent is made shows that they were not using the word in its loose sense of “partibility.”

623 Note the letter of William Harris, the Rhode Island planter, printed in Collections, Rhode Island Historical Society, x. 249–250.

624 Aspects of this general question are treated by Julius Goebel, Jr., “King’s Law and Local Custom in Seventeenth Century New England,” Columbia Law Review, xxxi (March, 1931), 416–448, and by George L. Haskins in Boston University Law Review, xxi. 281–304, and in Yale Law Journal, li. 1280–1315.

625 The will, which occupies 158 pages of the first volume of the Suffolk County Probate Records, is printed in Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, x. 1–54.

626 See three letters printed in Suffolk Deeds, i (Boston, 1880), 83–84.

627 Records of the First Church of Boston (copy in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society), 25.

628 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, x. 21.

629 See my article, “Responsibilities of a Puritan Parent,” More Books, xvii (April, 1942), 141–159.

630 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, x. 19, 21.

631 See More Books, xvii (March, 1942), 87–105.

632 New England Hist. Gen. Reg., i. 132.

633 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 213.

634 Files of the Suffolk County Court, No. 2233, paper 43.

635 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 212.

636 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 6.

637 Chamberlain MSS., M.H.S., iii. 179 (November 24, 1657).

638 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 62.

639 Massachusetts Archives, ix. 32.

640 Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, iii (Boston, 1928), 67–68.

641 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 8.

642 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in Neiv England, iv, Part i, 370 (May 28, 1659).

643 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 213.

644 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv, Part i, 392 (October 18, 1659).

645 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., October, 1666, M.H.S. (printed in Mellen Chamberlain, A Documentary History of Chelsea (Boston, 1908), ii. 63).

646 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 8.

647 Id., No. 2233, paper 43.

648 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., March 12, 1665/66, M.H.S. The extraordinary manner of this second marriage probably accounts for the fact that no record was made of it in the book of records.

649 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 5.

650 Id., No. 26733 (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, II. 12).

651 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 74, 79, 80; New England Hist. Gen. Reg. xxiii. 266–269.

652 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, papers 33, 35.

653 Id., No. 2233, paper 33.

654 Id., No. 2233, paper 44.

655 Id., No. 2233, paper 17.

656 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv, Part ii, 309.

657 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 10.

658 Id., No. 2233, paper 7.

659 Id., No. 2233, paper 43.

660 Id.

661 Suffolk Files, No. 26733 (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, ii. 12).

662 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, papers 39, 40, 41.

663 Massachusetts Archives, xxxix. 67.

664 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., October, 1666, M.H.S. (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, ii. 62–64).

665 Suffolk Files, No. 2233, paper 43.

666 Miscellaneous Bound MSS., October, 1666, M.H.S.

667 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv, Part ii, 327.

668 Massachusetts Archives, xvb, 107 (printed in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, i. 649–650).

669 New England Hist. Gen. Reg., xxxvii. 284.

670 Edward Randolph, Robert N. Toppan, Editor, iii (Prince Society, Boston, 1899), 70–73.

671 Id., iv. 12–14.

672 On June 2, 1686, it was voted in Council “that Mr. Paige have five pounds a quarter for his attendance on the President.” “Dudley Records,” 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xiii. 243.

673 Toppan, Randolph, ii. 90n.

674 Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley (New York, 1911), 52.

675 See the edicts issued by Dudley and the Council providing for courts and juries 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xiii. 232–237. The details of the ensuing litigation, with many of the documents in the case, may be found in Chamberlain, Documentary History of Chelsea, i. 635–668; ii. 1–84.

676 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 333.

677 Id., 225.

678 An Historical Catalogue of the Old South Church (Boston, 1883), 7.

679 5 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vi. 109.

680 Suffolk Probate Records, xx. 166–169.

681 Edward Taylor (ca. 1645–1729), a graduate of Harvard College in the Class of 1671, was minister at Westfield from 1672 until his death. The manuscript volume is in the Yale University Library, and transcription and publication of these verses are now possible by the generous permission of the Library. For a brief account of Taylor, see John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, ii (Cambridge, 1881), 397–412. Much of the best poetry has been published in The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, Thomas H. Johnson, Editor (New York, 1939), in which (pages 221–228) there is a full description of the manuscript.

682 The sole omission is that of two brief Latin elegies on the death of President Chauncy of Harvard College. They appear on the flyleaf of the volume, so mutilated as to make clear reconstruction impossible. For Taylor’s English elegy on the same theme, see the fifth selection, below.

683 All manuscript line-spacings as well as the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are exactly rendered. Words, phrases, and lines which are undecipherable or worn away are indicated by, or conjecturally supplied within, brackets.

684 Zechariah Symmes was born in Canterbury, England, on April 5, 1599. He was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and emigrated to Charlestown in 1634 in the same ship with Anne Hutchinson, whom he later reproved for “the corruptness and narrowness of her opinions.” Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, Lawrence S. Mayo, Editor (Cambridge, 1936), ii. 373. In December, 1634, he became teacher, and in March, 1636, pastor of the Charlestown church, and he held the latter post until his death on February 4, 1670/71. By virtue of that position he became, in accordance with the General Court’s order of September 27, 1642, a member of the first Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and he remained an Overseer throughout his life. Zechariah Symmes of the Class of 1657 was his son. Taylor was a senior at the time of Symmes’s death.

685 For Francis Willoughby, Deputy Governor of Massachusetts Bay from 1665 until 1671, see Isaac J. Greenwood, “The Willoughby Family of New England,” New England Hist. Gen. Reg., xxx (January, 1876), 67–78.

686 The early curriculum at Harvard required students to improve their rhetoric by delivering an oration or “declamation” at regular intervals during their four undergraduate years. These events took place at nine o’clock on Fridays and were so arranged that each student spoke at least once a month. After 1655 the requirements were modified, undergraduates declaiming bimonthly. Some of the declamations have been preserved, and this of Taylor’s is one of the most entertaining. It is unique among the declamations thus far brought to light in that it is composed in poetical form. Yet its frivolous and playful spirit was not uncommon to such occasions.

Taylor could not resist a pun, and his display of superficial learning has both the charm and the tediousness of much that still passes for undergraduate wit. Later on Taylor learned to govern his exuberant delight in figurative, involved language; and mere cleverness gave way to controlled harmonies. But the mood of the declamation was light and would have been judged only as oratory. Doubtless it am used the President and Fellows, as well as the less nimble-witted students who would admire the facile display.

I am indebted to Dr. Nabih A. Faris, Curator of Arabic Manuscripts and Literatures at Princeton University, for assistance in establishing the Hebrew readings; and to Dr. Floyd C. Harwood, Chairman of the Latin and Greek Departments, Lawrenceville School, for his suggestions regarding the most appropriate renderings of the Latin quibbles and puns. For sources about the Harvard curriculum in the seventeenth century, see Samuel E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), i. 139–280.

687 “I am not Hebrew, I am not Greek, neither am I a Latin.”

688 Taylor, addressing his classmates, employs the term nurslings in its seventeenth-century literal meaning of alumni: all students of a school or college, whether of the past or present, not necessarily graduates. It is significant that he refers to the Puritan institution as one nourished by the muses.

689 The eardrum is figuratively conceived as trussed: that is, drawn tight or stretched firmly during the period of attentive listening.

690 Here used figuratively to mean the air current striking the tympanum. The spelling follows an obsolete form.

691 That is, an apology for or defense of his subject is due if he speak the things with which men usually introduce a subject; the apology will perform the duty of a gentleman usher to the body of his remarks. At Harvard, as at the English universities, each fellow had a sizar—a poorer student earning part of his own education—to serve him as secretary and valet. The term gentleman usher, however, is figurative; it was not applied to any university or college function. An usher was an undermaster or teaching assistant.

692 “I say that such an introduction you have ‘never before’ had from me, lately attempting some complimentary speech for us.” The meaning is not entirely clear. These two lines, taken with the succeeding four, might imply that Taylor had been asked or had expected at some earlier date to declaim in some class exercise in which he was heckled during his speech.

693 Help in raising up.

694 A block placed under a wheel to prevent slipping.

695 Error for truckles: that is, pulleys. The whole sentence seems to mean that the duty imposed on the speaker was one in which he received no aid, and if he succeeds in performing adequately, he will do so with the prestige that accrues under a handicap.

696 Pots in which perfumes and cordials are kept or prepared.

697 The word is often used by Taylor to mean sweet odor; it is not in the New English Dictionary, where the last recorded entry in which reek means perfume is dated 1599.

698 A rare substitute for honeydew.

699 To make trim or neat: spruce.

700 Taylor seems to mean that English is relatively free from the particles, dots, and markings attached to letters frequently used in Hebrew and Greek. These are all weaving terms: Taylor had been brought up in or near Coventry, Warwickshire, a center of the English weaving industry. He often enriched his poetry with such native, homely terms.

701 Evidently Taylor had been preceded at “this Desk” by the declaimers in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

702 The Hebrew equivalent for the English h (pron. āch) is now usually transliterated ‘ain or ‘ayin. The Hebrew beginner’s grammar in use at Harvard in the seventeenth century was Johann Buxtorf’s Epitome Radicum Hebraicarum et Chaldaicarum. In it the transliteration is given ajin, and the symbol, formed vaguely like the Greek psi (on which Taylor puns two lines below), looks something like a drumstick lying across the edge of a drum, thus ע. In the possession of Lewis S. Gannett, Esq., of New York City, a Taylor descendent, is a copy of Victor Bythner, Lyra Prophetica Davidis Regis sive Analysis Critico-practica Psalmorum . . . ad Calcem Addita Est Brevis Institutio Linguae Hebraeae et Chaldaeae (London, 1664). The copy bears Taylor’s autograph on the flyleaf and seems clearly to account for these two lines. The brief introduction to Hebrew grammar which Bythner appends to his analysis of the Psalms spells the aspirate ghajin.

703 That is, careless students might be confused by the fact that certain initial vowels in Greek (e.g. aspirates) should be given the value of consonants. To be sure, students of Greek in the seventeenth century would not have been aware of the correct linguistic laws, but they would have been taught the fact by rule of thumb.

704 The letter h in Latin has the kindred but weaker aspirate value of our h, taken over from the Greek. Initially, however, the Latin h was totally silent in the vernacular forms which emerged as Old French and Italian. Ignorance of the fact might result in a sort of “cockney” dialect. The English h in the Teutonic part of the language comes from an original surd guttural, a k, which first became a guttural spirant (as ch in German and Scotch) and then weakened to a mere aspiration.

705 Latin nouns are declined in the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative cases.

706 That is, case endings are almost totally absent in English nouns. See the preceding note.

707 Most English words form plurals simply by adding s.

708 Arraign.

709 A reference to the Latin fifth declension, in which only res and dies have plurals. Singulariter and pluraliter were the words used instead of singular and plural to head paradigms in early textbooks.

710 For example, castra (second declension) is declined only in the plural, but with a singular meaning. Its syntax requires a plural construction. It is probable that Taylor had castra in mind, for it was commonly used in seventeenth-century textbooks to demonstrate the point.

711 For example, filia and dea (feminine, first declension) have a dative and ablative in -abus to distinguish them from the masculine forms of the substantives (filiis and deis).

712 “In the [irregular] dative case.”

713 “Into the accusative.”

714 The usual Latin textbook expression for “in the ablative.” Some nouns, for example, domus (second or fourth declension), would be recognized by the ablative, domo.

715 For example, vis, which is regular in the plural but irregular in the singular.

716 Copia means supply or plenty in the singular, troops in the plural. Locus is masculine in the singular, neuter in the plural.

717 Coniunx (conjunx): husband, wife, spouse. Lepus (hare) is usually given in its masculine form, but it takes a feminine adjective when it means a feminine hare. It was a common textbook example in early grammars.

718 In grammar a heteroclite is an irregularly inflected noun.

719 That is, in English, nouns regularly follow actual (i.e. sensitive), not grammatical, gender.

720 That is, treat them as neuters.

721 The craft or art in which a thing is made to lie in relation to something else. Cf. “the lay of the land.”

722 The meaning probably is: “We helve [furnish a handle to] their handspikes, made of foreign [outland] elements [olivant: oliphant or ivory].”

723 “We also adapt foreign words to English by giving them native spellings and pronunciations, thus increasing the richness of our tongue.”

724 Galls (provincial English) are imperfections. Taylor is either coining a word or using a dialectical form by substituting an adjective for the substantive.

725 A frieze is a thick, warm woolen cloth used for rough outer garments.

726 The rare transitive verb subaud (Lat. sub + audire) means to supply mentally, as a word or an ellipsis. Taylor is coining a substantive.

727 A false etymology. The Greek αὐλή, a hall or court, is cognate with air, aura, and asthma, and from it is derived New English aula (a court or hall). But New English hall is of Germanic origin.

728 That is, we do more than merely aspirate initially: we place the letter h at the beginning of the words. Such false etymologies were commonly taught long after Taylor’s day. His metaphors, however, are by no means dull.

729 The etymology here is correct. Lamp is derived, through Latin lampas, from the Greek λάμπας.

730 Hebrew qash, stubble. The pun is complicated but was probably not obscure to his audience.

731 In modern Hebrew, qul, but in the texts of the seventeenth century, kol: the imperative of the verb speak or say. The etymology is preposterous, but the pun makes good sense.

732 An entertaining pun. The Hebrew p (cf. Greek phi) was transliterated in early texts phe and had a value sometimes p and sometimes f. It was even then known originally to mean mouth. These lines are the sole indication I know of that seventeenth-century undergraduates at Harvard were sometimes fed pie for supper!

733 Provincial English: swaggering.

734 The colloquial adjective jemmy means spruce, neat, smart. It may have been Taylor’s intention to adapt the word here and give some such meaning.

735 The whole figure conveys a surprisingly lyric touch to Taylor’s concept of poetry.

736 In rhetoric, an immediate or almost immediate repetition of a word, involving added emphasis.

737 Clearly some kind of decoration for dress is intended, but such a meaning is not recorded in the New English Dictionary.

738 In rhetoric, a repetition of a word, especially the last word, of a clause at the beginning of the next.

739 In rhetoric, a repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive clauses.

740 In rhetoric, a figure in which several successive clauses or sentences end with the same word or affirmation.

741 In rhetoric, a repetition of one word at the beginning and of another at the end of successive clauses. It is a combination of epanaphora and epistrophe.

742 In rhetoric, the repetition or resumption of a figure, especially of one by which the same word or phrase is repeated after one or more intervening words, or on returning to the same subject after a digression.

743 In rhetoric, a recapitulation of the chief points or heads in a discourse.

744 Dapper?

745 The general idea is clear enough though the three metaphors complicate the image, and the third is structurally obscure. Taylor says that English is not inferior to the other three languages: it (1) will not lower topsail to them or (2) yield reverence “with Cap in hand,” but (3) proves its right to be accepted as a tongue of equal dignity and power.

746 Obsolete: to scratch or break slighty; graze.

747 “It is neither the language of the Bible [i.e., Hebrew and Greek] nor that used in college.” Latin was not only the language of the school texts then in use but of all recitations and, theoretically, of all informal conversation as well.

748 Hebrew was universally looked on before the nineteenth century not only as the sacred language of the Old Testament but as the parent tongue of all languages. It was therefore considered linguistically of great importance.

749 Taylor seems to mean that Latin was never a sacred language. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek; but Latin has been the source by which the Testaments have been transmitted from the days of the Vulgate. Latin also has been the language of most of the Biblical commentators and, together with Hebrew and Greek, of all textbooks.

750 “And if they compete on their individual merits for honors, English will take first place.”

751 Though the implication here is that Taylor expects to be quizzed or heckled, it is likely he is speaking facetiously, in keeping with the tone of the whole declamation. There is nothing here that would call for an answer. Of course the weekly disputations gave an opponent the chance to question the respondent. But no formula beginning Si quis (“If anyone wishes to question. . . .”) was therein followed.

752 As the tide states, those declaiming on the four languages were to be followed by “five upon the five senses.” Apparently the speakers declaimed in the order named.

753 John Allen (Allin), a graduate of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, emigrated to Dedham in 1637 and was ordained pastor of the church there two years later. He was one of the more notable figures among the first generation of colonists: he assisted John Eliot in missionary work among the Indians; drafted the reply to Dr. Robert Child, the Remonstrant, in 1646; and served as an Overseer of Harvard College from 1654 until his death on August 25, 1671. His sons John and Daniel graduated from the college in 1643 and 1675, respectively.

754 John Norton of Boston (d April 5, 1663), Samuel Newman of Rehoboth (d July 5, 1663), Samuel Stone of Hartford (d July 20, 1663), William Tompson of Braintree (d December 10, 1666), John Wilson of Boston (d August 7, 1667), Samuel Shepard of Rowley (d April 7, 1668), Henry Flint of Braintree (d April 27, 1668), Jonathan Mitchel of Cambridge (d July 9, 1668), John Eliot of Newton, son of the Apostle to the Indians (d October 13, 1668), Richard Mather of Dorchester (d April 22, 1669), Eleazar Mather of Northampton (d July 24, 1669), Benjamin Bunker of Malden (d March 3, 1670), William Woodward of Dedham (d June 26, 1669), John Rayner of Dover (d April 20, 1669), John Davenport of New Haven (d March 15, 1670), Zechariah Symmes of Charlestown (d February 4, 1671), John Warham of Windsor (d April 19, 1670). Gray remains unidentified.

755 The addition, by growth or accident, of a nonsignificant letter or syllable to the end of a word (e.g., agains-t, amongs-t).

756 For the best account of Chauncy, see Morison, Harvard College in the seventeenth Century, i. 320–339.

757 John Allen, the subject of the preceding elegy, who died August 25, 1671.

758 These words are written inside a crude drawing of a dove holding an olive branch with which Taylor decorated this page of his manuscript.

759 Taylor’s first wife, whom he married on November 5, 1674, was Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend James Fitch of Norwich, Connecticut. She died on July 7, 1689, in her thirty-ninth year, and in 1692 he married Ruth Wyllys, daughter of Samuel Wyllys of Hartford. Though the “posy-ring” verses are undated, they doubtless were composed about the same time as the decasyllabic couplets, dated October 27, 1674, which follow (No. VII).

760 The impersonal quality of these lines gives no clue to the husband’s sensitiveness, nor do they suggest his authentic talent as a poet. Among his “Sacramental Meditations,” under date of this very Sunday, is an extraordinarily beautiful poem of seven stanzas written on the occasion of his wife’s death. Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, 144–145, and Introduction, 14.

761 Samuel Hooker of Farmington, Connecticut, was a worthy but not distinguished son of the famous Thomas Hooker of Hartford. He was a classmate (H. C. 1653) of Taylor’s father-in-law, Samuel Wyllys. Ordained to his pastoral office in July, 1661, he remained at Farmington till his death. For a biographical sketch, see Sibley, Harvard Graduates, i 348–352.

762 A pun on the name of Thomas Hooker’s close friend and colleague at Hartford Samuel Stone (1602–1663).

763 Mary (Willett) Hooker, daughter of Captain Thomas Willett of Plymouth, later of Swansea and subsequently of New York, of which city he was the first mayor. She survived her husband and married the Reverend Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook in 1703.

764 Samuel Hooker was the father of nine sons and two daughters, one of whom, Mary, was the wife of the Reverend James Pierpont of New Haven and the mother of Jonathan Edwards’ wife Sarah.

765 Mehetabel (Wyllys) Woodbridge, born ca. 1658, was the second daughter of Samuel Wyllys of Hartford and an elder sister of Ruth Wyllys, Taylor’s second wife.

766 John Haynes, third governor of Massachusetts Bay (1635–1636) and first governor of Connecticut (1640).

767 George Wyllys, successively magistrate (1639), deputy governor (1641), and from 1642 till his death in 1645 governor of Connecticut.

768 An earlier spelling for grudge; now dialectical.

769 Ruth (Haynes) Wyllys, second daughter of Governor John Haynes.

770 Mehetable (Mabel) Wyllys first married (ca. 1676) the Reverend Daniel Russell of Charlestown. He died on January 4, 1678/79. The next year she married the Reverend Isaac Foster of Hartford, a classmate of Taylor and a close friend of her deceased husband. Foster died on August 20, 1682, at the age of thirty. She then married (ca. 1684) Foster’s colleague and successor in the Hartford pastorate, Timothy Woodbridge, who survived her by some thirty years. He married again shortly after her death.

771 Taylor’s verses are the only known source for the information that she bore sixteen children in the twenty-two years between 1676 and 1698 and died in childbirth on December 20, 1698. The five “Buds” here spoken of as surviving her—one each by her first two marriages and three by her third—all lived to maturity and were married.

772 Samuel Sewall noted in his Diary (iii. 389) that when Taylor died in 1729 he was “entirely enfeebled . . . longing and waiting for his Dismission.” This elegy, written upon the occasion of Increase Mather’s death on August 23, 1723, was undertaken when Taylor was approaching eighty. His handwriting is all but undecipherable, and much of the content is difficult to follow. The purport seems to be that Mather, in Taylor’s eyes, had been a champion of orthodox Congregationalism to the last, fighting courageously, under handicaps, against increasing heterodoxies.

773 Richard Mather died on April 22, 1669, while Taylor was an undergraduate at Harvard College. Mather was an Overseer of that institution at the time. Samuel Mather, a grandson of Richard, was a classmate of Taylor at college, and it may be that others of the class besides Taylor also acted as bearers.

774 Timothy Cutler, rector of Yale from 1719 to 1722, led “the Connecticut Apostacie” in the latter year by openly avowing adherence to the Church of England. In view of the fact that his defection from Nonconformist principles was considered to be not a sudden conversion but a carefully timed public statement of long-held private beliefs, his act, to men like Mather and Taylor, seemed open treachery.

775 This refers to the years (1688–1692) Mather spent in England, negotiating for the renewal of the colony charter.

776 The so-called “Pope Joan” was a legendary female Pope of the ninth century, usually placed between Leo IV (847–855) and Benedict III (855–858). She was said to have been born either in England or in Germany of English parents, and to have fled with a Benedictine monk to Athens, disguised as a man. On his death she is supposed to have gone to Rome under the alias of Joannes Anglicus, where she entered the priesthood, received a cardinal’s hat, and finally ascended the papal throne under the title of John VIII. The accounts have it that she died in childbirth during a papal procession. This myth was widely circulated from medieval times down through the seventeenth century. Taylor could have received the account from any of several authors who circulated the story.

Though undated, the verses bear every mark of late composition. They occupy the final pages among the topical poems, the handwriting suggests the author to be advanced in years, and the substance and thought are at times quite difficult to follow.

777 Muff?

778 Much satirical verse which John Cleiveland (1613–1658) never wrote was attributed to him till long after his day. The precise reference has not been identified.

779 Part of Harlequin’s Wishing Cap, or The Gift of Fortunatus.

780 Odell says she was the Wallacks’ sister. Annals of the New York Stage, ii. 247.

781 At the end of this performance there was a display of fireworks, as was the case on January 17 and on February 6 and 13. On February 6 the set pieces included “A Playing Fountain, The State-House at Annapolis, The Boston State-House, Emblems of Free Masonry, A Monumental Tribute to superior Worth, and the Arms of the United States.”

782 Also ascribed to Isaac Bickerstaffe, Richard Ford, Prince Hoare, and others.

783 The performances given on this date were originally scheduled for February 14.

784 A pantomime taken from the poems of Ossian.

785 These performances were originally scheduled for March 26. The postponement caused the cancellation of two plays by Arthur Murphy that had been announced for the twenty-eighth: Agnes of Bernauer and The Citizen.

786 Described in the announcement as “a gentleman of Boston,” he was probably not William Brown, author of West Point Preserved, also performed in Boston this season.

These performances were originally announced for August 21.

787 These performances were originally announced for October 13.

788 “A dramatic proverb in two acts.”

789 These performances were originally announced for October 16.

790 Later known by the name of Robert Treat Paine, Jr.

791 There are records of a program of entertainment by Messrs. Maginnis and Robinson at the Haymarket Theatre on December 16, advertised as their third such, and of another by Maginnis alone, at the same theatre, on December 30.

792 While Mein returned to England in November, 1769, advertisements of his Boston firm appeared in the Boston Chronicle as late as June 25, 1770.

793 Ironically enough, Knox’s Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed has also been ascribed to Mein.

794 “Books Printed at Boston and Cambridge before 1775,” Isaiah Thomas MSS., American Antiquarian Society.

795 Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America (2d ed., Albany, 1874), i. 152–154; ii. 59–61, 230.

796 Charles K. Bolton, “Circulating Libraries in Boston, 1765–1865,” Publications of this Society, xi. 196–200.

797 Charles M. Andrews, “The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement,” id., xix. 159–259, particularly 227–230; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution (New York, 1918), Chapter iv, and “Propaganda and the Boston Newspaper Press, 1767–1770,” Publications of this Society, xxxii 396–416, particularly 411–416.

798 Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses and Guild-Brethren, 1701–1760, Charles B. Boog Watson, Editor (Edinburgh, 1930), 138.

799 Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses, 1406–1700 (Edinburgh, 1929), 346; Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses, 1701–1760, 138.

800 Boston Gazette, October 22, 1764; Thomas, History of Printing in America, I. 152–153.

801 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 153.

802 Boston Gazette, October 22, 1764; Boston Evening Post, October 22, 1764.

803 See the articles on John Glas and Robert Sandeman in the Dictionary of National Biography and that on Sandeman in the Dictionary of American Biography.

804 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 152, n. 1.

805 Henry H. Edes, “The Places of Worship of the Sandemanians in Boston,” Publications of this Society, vi. 109–134, particularly 131, n. 3.

806 The Sandeman-Barrell Papers, in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, throw much light on the personal affairs of the Sandeman family in America at this time.

807 See Williston Walker, “The Sandemanians of New England,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1901, i. 131—162.

808 Samuel A. Drake (Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, 107) identifies the site as the north corner of what is today the junction of Franklin and Washington streets, but the wording of the advertisement indicates that the site may rather have been one or two doors north of Franklin Street. Mein remained in business at this address until sometime between July 29, 1765, and September 2, 1765. In the Boston Gazette of the latter date his advertisement states that his bookstore was then “opposite to the West End of the Town House,” i.e., in Cornhill. He remained here but a few weeks, however, for his newspaper advertisements show that sometime between September 23 and October 7, 1765, he moved his shop to “the second Door above the British Coffee-house, North Side of King-street,” the premises recently occupied by the firm of Rivington and Miller.

809 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 152–153; ii. 230.

810 J. G. Sandeman, The Sandeman Genealogy (Edinburgh, 1895), 15, 21.

811 Rivington, as sole owner, had opened the London Book Store on February 8, 1762. Boston Gazette, February 8, 1762. Subsequent newspaper advertisements show that his partnership with Miller began at some date between April 26 and July 19 of that year.

812 Boston Evening-Post, November 4, 1765. The account given there of Miller, “lately from Edinburg,” says: “He was a young Gentleman of an amiable Character enobled with Friendship; and therefore much lamented by all his Acquaintance of the same happy Disposition.”

813 No advertisement of the firm appeared in Boston newspapers after February 18, 1765.

814 The Massachusetts Historical Society possesses an apparently unique copy of this Catalogue of Mein’s Circulating Library. It has been reproduced in its series of Photostat Americana.

815 For a more extensive discussion of Mein as publisher, see John E. Alden, “John Mein, Publisher: An Essay in Bibliographic Detection,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xxxvi (Third Quarter, 1942), 199–214.

816 This partnership concerned only the printing business. The London Book Store continued to belong to Mein alone.

817 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 151.

818 Boston Records Commissioners’ Reports, xxix. 286.

819 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 150.

820 Edward A. Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (London, 1930), 206–207.

821 Thomas, History of Printing in America, i. 151.

822 Boston Records Commissioners’ Reports, xxix. 286.

823 Ezra Stiles MSS., Yale University Library.

824 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 101964, f. 73: “An Inventory of sundry goods attach’d by Joseph Otis, Deputy Sheriff, March 1st, 1770, being taken as the Property of John Mein, late of Boston, Bookseller.”

825 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xxxvi. 211–214.

826 Sparks MSS., Harvard College Library, Papers relating to New England, iii. 46. The quotation is taken from Mein’s notes in explanation of the terms “Muddlehead” (Otis) and “Pieces from Salem” used in satirical descriptions of certain Boston leaders which appeared in the Boston Chronicle of October 26, 1769.

827 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 101491, f. 134.

828 Professor Schlesinger tentatively identifies Populus as Samuel Adams. Publications of this Society, xxxii. 411, n. 3.

829 As a Boston business man Mein was early accepted, at least for a while, as a respectable citizen, being chosen constable in town meeting on March 10, 1766. This was, however, the only elective office he held while in Boston. Boston Records Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 164.

830 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 89428.

831 John Adams, Miscellaneous Legal Memoranda (photostat), Massachusetts Historical Society.

832 George Mason to Joseph Harrison, Boston, October 20, 1769. Sparks MSS., New England Papers, III. 40.

833 John Mein to Joseph Harrison, Boston, November 5, 1769. Id., 51.

834 Elizabeth Cuming to Elizabeth Smith, Boston, October 28, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

835 Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Anne R. Cunningham, Editor (Boston, 1903), 194.

836 John Mein to Joseph Harrison, November 5, 1769. Sparks MSS., New England Papers, iii. 51.

837 Elizabeth Cuming to Elizabeth Smith, Boston, October 30, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers.

838 Thomas Hutchinson to Lord Hillsborough, Boston, November 11, 1769. Sparks MSS., New England Papers, III. 53.

839 James Murray to Elizabeth Smith, November 12, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers.

840 Massachusetts Gazette, November 24, 1769; January 15, 1770.

841 James Murray to Elizabeth Smith, November 12, 1769. J. M. Robbins Papers.

842 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Early Court Files, Case 101964.

843 Hancock Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

844 John Hancock to Thomas Longman, Boston, May 18, 1770. John Hancock His Book, A. E. Brown, Editor (Boston, 1898), 94.

845 Thomas Longman to John Hancock, London, January 3, 1770. Hancock Papers.

846 John Robinson, Commissioner of Customs in Boston, best remembered for his brutal attack upon James Otis, which was not unlike that of Mein upon Gill.

847 Hancock Papers.

848 There is no reason to believe that Mein returned to Boston early in 1770, particularly in view of a letter from Mein to James Murray, dated London, January 25, 1770, which is in the J. M. Robbins Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. In his “Propaganda and the Boston Newspaper Press, 1767–1770” (Publications of this Society, xxxii. 415), Professor Schlesinger assumes that it was Mein who directed the continued campaign in the Boston Chronicle against the signers of the nonimportation agreement. Professor Schlesinger is evidently following the statements of Mr. Bolton, in his account of Mein’s circulating library, who draws the conclusion that because Mein was sued in the Boston courts he was himself present. Mein’s case, however, was obviously conducted for him through powers of attorney left with Fleeming. It may also be pointed out that Professor Andrews is obviously in error when he states (Publications of this Society, xix. 230) that Mein “left New England permanently some time after 1771.”

849 A copy of this affidavit is included among the Hancock Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. William Palfrey, Hancock’s chief clerk and agent, returned from London to Boston on May 9, 1771. Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 215.

850 J. M. Robbins Papers.

851 Id.

852 Charles Steuart, erstwhile cashier and paymaster of the Board of Customs in Boston.

853 It is probable that the “last years bounty” was the result of a similar memorial from Mein which is listed by Charles M. Andrews in his Guide to Materials for American History in the Public Record Office, 11 (Washington, 1914), 178, under Treasury Papers, In-Letters, 1770.

854 I am indebted to Professor Verner W. Crane of the University of Michigan for photostatic and microfilm reproductions of Mein’s contributions to the Public Ledger, from the files in the British Museum.

855 Thomas, History of Printing in America, 154.

856 Public Ledger, March 15, 1774.

857 Sagittarius’s Letters, 116–117.

858 The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself, John Bigelow, Editor (Philadelphia, 1905), ii. 547–556; The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Albert H. Smyth, Editor (New York, 1907), i. 164–166.

859 J. M. Robbins Papers.

860 Norton Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.