and commanded him to attend again the next day, when, being called, he was commanded to the lower end of the table, (where all offenders do usually stand,) and, being openly convict of all the former offences, by the oaths of four or five witnesses, he yet continued to justify himself; so, it being near night, he was committed to the marshal till the next day. When the court was set in the morning, many of the elders came into the court, (it being then private for matter of consultation,) and declared how, the evening before, they had taken pains with him, to convince him of his faults; yet, for divers hours, he had still stood to his justification; but, in the end, he was convinced, and had freely and fully acknowledged his sin, and that with tears; so as they did hope he had truly repented, and therefore desired of the court, that he might be pardoned, and continued in his employment, alleging such further reasons as they thought fit. After the elders were departed, the court consulted about it, and sent for him, and there, in the open court, before a great assembly, he made a very solid, wise, eloquent and serious (seeming) confession, condemning himself in all the particulars, &c. Whereupon, being put aside, the court consulted privately about his sentence, and, though many were taken with his confession, and none but had a charitable opinion of it; yet, because

sorry that it was so at any time, and should tremble to have it so, were it in my hands to do again."

The above is an exact copy of all that is written by that hand; but on the next page is found, in a more difficult, but uncommonly beautiful chirography, "and whereas they say, that sometimes they have sent down for more meat, and it hath been denied, when it have been in the house, I must confess, to my shame, that I have denied them oft, when they have sent for it, and it have been in the house."

In the archives of the State House it is not probable that any document more minute or entertaining can be preserved; nor would this seem of importance and gravity appropriate to this work, were it not connected with the history of the college, and highly illustrative of our author's text. That no complaints against Mrs. Eaton had been brought down from antiquity, when her husband suffered perpetual malediction, is perhaps owing to the gallantry of our fathers. Her accomplishments as a housewife appear equal to the gentleness of the head of the college. Her adherence to the religion, in which she was educated, might have been as frail as his, had she not been lost on a voyage with her children to Virginia the next year. The commons of the students have often been matter of complaint, but, I believe, have never since occupied the attention of the government of the state.

66

Of the two young men referred to by Mrs. Eaton, Wilson was son of the pastor of Boston, graduated in the first class, 1642, and, Mather says, continued, unto old age, a faithful, painful, useful minister of the gospel" in Medfield. Hough was, probably, son of Atherton, the assistant, and was the second minister of Reading. Why he received not the usual degree is unknown. See Johnson, lib. II. c. 25. In our Town Records I find, "Mr. Samuel Haugh, pastor of the church at Reading, deceased at Mr. Hezekiah Usher's house in Boston, 30 March, 1662." The Moor was probably a slave.

of the scandal of religion, and offence which would be given to such as might intend to send their children hither, they all agreed to censure him, and put him from that employment. So, being called in, the governour, after a short preface, &c. declared the sentence of the court to this effect, viz. that he should give Briscoe £30, fined 100 ||marks,|| and debarred teaching of children within our jurisdiction. A pause being made, and expectation that (according to his former confession) he would have given glory to God, and acknowledged the justice and clemency of the court, the governour giving him occasion, by asking him if he had ought to say, he turned away with a discontented look, saying, "If sentence be passed, then it is to no end to speak." Yet the court remitted his fine to £20, and willed Briscoe to take but £20.

The church at Cambridge, taking notice of these proceedings, intended to deal with him. The pastor moved the governour, if they might, without offence to the court, examine other witnesses. His answer was, that the court would leave them to their own liberty; but he saw not to what end they should do it, seeing there had been five already upon oath, and those whom they should examine should speak without oath, and it was an ordinance of God, that by the mouths of two or three witnesses every matter should be established. But he soon dis

covered himself; for, ere the church could come to deal with him, he fled to Pascataquack, and, being pursued and apprehended by the governour there, he again acknowledged his great sin in flying, &c. and promised (as he was a Christian man) he would return with the messengers. But, because his things he carried with him were aboard a bark there, bound to Virginia, he desired leave to go fetch them, which they assented unto, and went with him (three of them) aboard with him. So he took his truss and came away with them in the boat; but, being come to the shore, and two of them going out of the boat, he caused the boatsmen to put off the boat, and, because the third man would not go out, he turned him into the water, where he had been drowned, if he had not saved himself by swimming. So he returned to the bark, and presently they set sail and went out of the harbour. Being thus gone, his creditors began to complain; and thereupon it was found, that he was run in debt about £1000, and had taken up most of this money upon bills he had charged into England upon his brother's agents, and others whom he had no such relation to. So his estate was seized, and put into commissioners' hands, to be divided among his creditors, allowing somewhat for the present maintenance of his wife and chil

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dren. And, being thus gone, the church proceeded and cast him out. He had been sometimes initiated among the Jesuits, and, coming into England, his friends drew him from them, but, it was very probable, he now intended to return to them again, being at this time about thirty years of age, and upwards. See after.

7. 17.] Mount Woollaston had been formerly laid to Boston; but many poor men having lots assigned them there, and not able to use those lands and dwell still in Boston, they petitioned the town first to have a minister there, and after to have leave to gather a church there, which the town at length (upon some small composition) gave way unto. So, this day, they gathered a church after the usual manner, and chose one Mr. Tomson, a very gracious, sincere man, and Mr. Flint, a godly man also, their ministers.3

2

Mo. 9.] At a general court holden at Boston, great complaint was made of the oppression used in the country in sale of foreign commodities; and Mr. Robert 4Keaine, who kept a shop in Bos

1 His cruelty and injustice might have been as great, if the Jesuits had had no share in his education; though, I fear, the author intended to refer the fruits to the soil, rather than the tree.

2 Satisfactory accounts of William Thomson may be seen in Eliot's and Allen's Dictionaries, in the Magnalia, III., Johnson, lib. II. c. 7, 10 and 18, and lib. III. c. 1 and 11, larger in Morton, sub. an. 1666, the year of his death, and, best of all, in the century sermon of Hancock, his successor in the church of Braintree, now of Quincy. He had been some years in the country, perhaps; for the Records of Dorchester, which I have inspected, according to the views of the historian of that town, 1 Hist. Coll. IX. 191, reckon him among their members in 1636. But I suspect that was two years before his admission. The scrutinizing author must have concluded, that he was a different person from the future minister of the adjoining town; for he adds, of him "I cannot obtain any information." He was admitted freeman 13 May, 1640. Most of the materials used by later writers were found in our author, the most interesting event in his pilgrimage here being the mission to Virginia, of which a full account will be found in the next volume. The first mention of him, after that in the text, will show, that he "had been an instrument of much good at Acomenticus." The Braintree Records mention the birth of his son, Joseph, 1 May, 1640, Benjamin, 14 July, 1642, and death of his wife in January, 1642. Benjamin was graduated at Harvard College in 1662. Him I consider the author of the verses in praise of Whiting, which are, probably, the best in the Magnalia. A tribute in verse, of greater justice than beauty, is entered in the Roxbury Church Records on the lamentable death of Thomson's wife, while he was absent on the service of his master. It is supposed, that the celebrated Benjamin Thomson, Count Rumford, is descended from this first pastor of Braintree.

3 Our MS. had first “their pastor," after "Tomson," and "teacher" to end the sentence; and, as the alteration is by the governour, I infer that the distinction was disregarded at the election.

4 This gentleman is, probably, the same with one, whose name is the last signed to a letter of encouragement of the plantation at Plimouth, 7 April,

40

VOL. I.

ton, was notoriously above others observed and complained of; and, being convented, he was charged with many particulars;

in

1624, preserved by Gov. Bradford in 1 Hist. Coll. III. 28, and who united with others, in all forty-two, in a loan of £1800 sterling, by which its life was preserved. Ib. 48. Being received into Boston church 20 March, 1635-6, we may conclude, he had come over in the preceding autumn, probably with Wilson in October. At the general election, in May following, he was admitted to the freeman's oath, at the same time with Samuel Appleton, Henry Flint, and Daniel Maude, who alone, out of sixty-two that day sworn, have the prefix of respect.

Of the curious subject, introduced to our notice by the text, inquiry had, at the former session of the same court, in September, been instituted; and, from the language of the Record, I. 269, "Capt. Keayne was willed to return Sarah King her necessary clothes again," we may presume, the case was a flagrant one. It is evident, however, that much more tenderness was shown towards him than delinquents usually received; for we find, at the assistants' quarter court, four pages later, in the same volume, this note: "There is £10 delivered the governour by one that had failed by taking too great prices for his commodities. He hath satisfied the parties, whom he sold the commodities unto." At the general court in May after the date in the text, I find, Col. Rec. I. 276, "Mr. Robert Keayne had £120 of his fine remitted him; so that there remains only £80 to be paid by him." He was not the only person of eminence liable to this animadversion, though the proceedings against him went further than in any other case within my knowledge. Indeed, the attempt to prevent demand of high price for any commodity, however willing the purchaser may be to give it, is preposterous and destructive to all commerce between man and man. Sedgwick was admonished for a like frailty, in asking the money's worth for his goods. Before this scandal, Keayne had been four times chosen from Boston to the general court; and, after the evil report had passed over, was several times elected, and became speaker in October, 1646, but only for one day. Unhappily, he fell under obloquy again: a less probable, though more injurious accusation was preferred, of which a very particular relation is, in subsequent pages, given by our author. He certainly stood high in the estimation of the government; for, in May, 1639, a grant of four hundred acres had been made to him, when others of no larger quantity were made to several gentlemen of the first rank in the colony.

Keayne died 23 March, 1655-6. His will, proved 2 May after, written with his own hand,-for no other hand could have been so patient,—at different times, beginning 1 August 1653, is a most extraordinary instrument, commencing on page 116 of our first volume of Records in Probate office, and filling one hundred and fifty-eight folio pages. It would be an idle affectation to say, that it has been all studied by me, though most parts were cursorily examined; for no reader of this work would exact of its editor such an unprofitable labour. An abridgment of several pages could easily be afforded here, for it was made; but when thirty pages of the will are occupied about the animadversion of the court on his extortion, as explained in our text, with inculpation of his prosecutor for cruel and unfounded allegations in that and another affair, and thirty pages more given to explanation of his accounts in many different books, with the order and reasons, plentiful enough, of dividing his estate,-the most minute antiquary becomes weary with the trifles. Yet there are several curious parts. The ample declaration of his correct faith, that fills two of the early pages, hardly compensates, however, for the anxiously refined, but equivocal, morality, by which, towards the end, he excuses himself. Between his only son, Benjamin, and a daughter of Dudley,

some, for taking above six-pence in the shilling profit; in some above eight-pence; and, in some §small§ things, above two for one; and being hereof convict, (as appears by the records,) he was fined £200, which came thus to pass: The deputies considered, apart, of his fine, and set it at £200; the magistrates agreed but to £100. So, the court being divided, at length it was agreed, that his fine should be £200, but he should pay but £100, and the other should be respited to the further consideration of the next general court. By this means the magistrates and deputies were brought to an accord, which otherwise had not been likely, and so much trouble might have grown, and the offender escaped censure. For the cry of the country was so great against oppression, and some of the elders and magistrates had declared such detestation of the corrupt practice of this man (which was the more observable, because he was wealthy and sold dearer than most other tradesmen, and for that he was of ill report for the like covetous practice in England, that incensed the deputies very much against him.) And sure the course was very evil, especial circumstances considered: 1. He being an ancient professor of the gospel: 2. A man of eminent parts: 3. Wealthy, and having but one child: 4. Having come over for conscience sake, and for the advancement of the gospel here: 5. Having been formerly dealt with and admonished, both by private friends and also by some of the magistrates and elders, and having promised reformation; being a member of a church and commonwealth now in their infancy, and under the curious observation of all churches and civil states in the world. These added much aggravation to his sin in the judgment of all men of understanding. Yet most of the magistrates (though they dis||since||

66 an unhappy and uncomfortable match" is spoken of in this will; and that union, perhaps, with other disagreeable circumstances, compelled the son to return to the land of his fathers, where he died, I presume, in 1668. In August of that year, administration of the estate was granted to his son-inlaw. The male line ended with Benjamin.

lt con

The chief claims of Robert to be remembered, must arise from his activity in founding the Artillery Company, of which he was captain, and which is fondly remembered in the endless testament. See the History of that institution for other particulars. A large 4to MS. of his is preserved in the archives of the Historical Society, chiefly composed of the sermons or expo→ sitions of Cotton, as taken, probably in church, by the owner. tains, besides, two very curious cases of ecclesiastical discipline, in which all the church members deliver their opinions on the matters,-one against Mrs. Hibbins, the other against Serjeant Richard Wait. The lady was cast out; the serjeant continued in the affection of the body. The report of brethren sent to Rhode Island, to warn the dwellers there of contumacy, is also given; and a few other trifles. He left, among other liberal bequests, a large one to Harvard College, still preserved in their exhibit.