The Capital Laws were printed at Cambridge in 1642, probably under the
same restriction, as to number; and, as printed evidence, open to the
same construction as the Oath. Whatever the purpose, however, it had
been forestalled some four years earlier when the Capital Laws were
re-printed in London in a folio broadside. The copy in the British
Museum bears the Colophon: “Printed first in New-England, and re-printed
in London for Ben. Allen in Popes-Head Allen [_sic_] 1643.”
Fourthly, a relation of that story of Jonas verbatim as it was
delivered to me in writing by a Gentleman that was then a passenger
in the ship.
“When the first ship that came this year 1646 from New-England, was
almost ready to come from thence; Mr. Cotton in his Thursday-Lecture
at Boston, preached out of that Scripture, Cant. 2, 15. Take us the
little Foxes, &c. In his uses took occasion to say, That if any
shall carry any Writings, Complaints against the people of God in
that Country it would be a Jonas in the ship. * * He also advised
the Ship-Master, that if storms did arise, to search if they had not
in any Chest or Trunk any such Jonas aboard, which if you find (said
he) I do not advise you to throw the persons over-board, but the
Writings; or words to that effect. Whereupon, having great storms
(as could not be otherwise expected) some of the Passengers
remembering Mr. Cotton’s Sermon, it seems were much affected with
what he had said; and a woman amongst them came up from between the
decks about Midnight, or after, in a distracted passionate manner to
Mr. William Vassall who lay in the great Cabin, but for the present
was in the Sterage-door-way looking abroad: she earnestly desired
him, if there were any Jonas in the ship, that as Mr. Cotton had
directed it might be thrown over-board, with many broken expressions
to that purpose. He asked her why she came to him? and she said
because it was thought that he had some Writings against the people
of God: but he answered her, He had nothing but a Petition to the
Parliament that they might enjoy the liberty of English subjects,
and that could be no Jonas; and that if the best of New-Englands
friends could shew him any evil in that, he would not prefer it.
After this she went into the great Cabin to Mr. Tho. Fowle in like
distracted manner; who told her he had nothing but the Copy of
Petition which himself and others had presented to the Court at
Boston; and showed, and read it to her, and then told her, That if
she and others thought that to be the cause of the storm, she and
they might do what they would with it; but he professed that he saw
no evil in it, neither was his Conscience troubled with it. So she
took it and carried it between Decks to them from whom she came, and
they agreed to throw it over-board and it was thrown over-board: but
the storm did not leave us upon the throwing of the Paper over-board
as it is reported; for they had many great storms after that; much
lesse was the great and wonderfull deliverance which by Gods mercy
he gave unto them from shipwrack and drowning at the Isles of Silly,
upon the throwing of that Writing over-board; for that was thrown
over long before, at least 14 dayes. Also the error is the more in
this, That the report is that it was the petition to the Parliament
that was thrown over-board; and it was only a Copy of a Petition to
their own Court at Boston, and the Petition to the Parliament was
still in the ship, together with another copy of that which was
thrown over-board, and other writings of that nature, some of which
are printed in this book, and were as well saved as their lives and
other goods, and are here in London to be seen and made use of in
convenient time.”
It is true that at any time in the intervening years of a quarter of a
century I could have written to the British Museum authorities and been
sure of a courteous reply; but the matter seemed too important to be
settled in so prosaic a way. This, and the hope that sometime I might be
able to determine the matter personally, and achieve the honor that
would attach to its discovery, deterred me.
I suppose that men of all professions, in their callings, feel an
unwonted glow in the achievement of some object; but I know of no
greater joy than that which fills the lover of books when his long
search for a rare book is rewarded. Then it is that you seem to enter
into the holy of holies of delight, when the whole body thrills with
suppressed emotions, the eyes moisten, and the trembling hand stretched
out to take the volume does so with a touch which is almost a caress.
The feeling, I think, must be somewhat akin to the “buck fever” of the
deer hunter, whose mind and shaking limbs refuse to function, as he
looks into the luminous eyes, and notes the startled look, and graceful
beauty of his prey, until it has bounded into safety in the forest. Why,
I reasoned with myself, should I give to another the pleasure of these
emotions which were mine by right of discovery.
The opportunity of voyaging to England, which I had so long looked
forward to, did not come to me until the Spring of the present year, and
the pleasant anticipations with which I set out were comparable in my
own mind with those which must have animated the Knights of Arthur’s
Round Table in their quest for the holy grail. The morning after my
arrival in London found me an early visitor at the British Museum. The
preliminaries of admittance to the Reading-Room are not difficult, and
are soon over with, and I found myself within the great rotunda, its
walls lined in tiers with what is best in the literatures of the world,
and from which has gone out so much that is worth while in English
literature. From the Catalogue I filled out slips for some half dozen
works, artfully to conceal the one uppermost in my mind, handed them in
at the desk, and returned to my chosen seat to await with such calmness
as I could command the culmination of years of desire. Heeding the
legend that when the grail was approached by any one not perfectly pure
it vanished from sight; and that to be qualified to discover it one must
be perfectly chaste in thought and act, I endeavored to prepare myself
for its appearance. Somewhere I have read of an Oriental visionary who
attained a high degree of saintly perfection by fixing his gaze
steadfastly for hours upon his navel, which a growing embonpoint made an
easy thing to do, and I sought for holiness in the same way.
In time the white slips of my wants came fluttering back to me by
messengers, all marked, very properly for security on account of rarity,
that they could only be consulted in the North Library, until all were
in but the one most desired. Then followed a much longer wait and
then—the slip was handed back to me with a notation that I had given a
wrong shelf-mark! Gone in an instant were all the perfectly pure and
chaste thoughts with which I had been regaling myself while I was
apparently looking at the wrong button on my vest. I think I could have
stood the blow better if it had been that hoary old fiction of careless
assistants that it was “out”, but this is a boon denied to any assistant
in the British Museum, where nothing is allowed to go out. A comparison
with the printed Catalogue showed an exact correspondence, and I sought
the Superintendent of the Reading-Room, who assured me that the matter
would have his personal attention; and for the rest of the day I busied
myself with my other wants in the North Library without any word of the
missing broadside reaching me. That evening, in communion with myself, I
determined to throw off the mask of secrecy and frankly confide the
importance of my quest to the Keeper of the Printed Books—the somewhat
expressive and imposing title of the Librarian of the British Museum.
Before calling upon him I sought as an introducer Henry N. Stevens—the
worthy son of an illustrious father who follows closely in his footsteps
as the best authority on early printed American books in Europe—at his
shop across the street from the imposing Museum building, and to him I
told my story. As I proceeded his interest grew, and before I had
finished he excitedly grasped my arm with one hand and his hat with the
other, exclaiming: “Come with me. This is not a subject for underlings,”
and rushed me across the street without pause until we were in the
sanctum sanctorum of the learned and accomplished Keeper, Alfred W.
Pollard. And to him I told my simple tale, and asked his assistance. Mr.
Pollard is himself a bibliographer of note in his special field, and my
story was not without interest to him, but he refused to share my belief
that the missing broadside was what I supposed it to be, laying much
stress upon the black-letter feature as proof of its English origin. The
unsuccessful search for the missing broadside had evidently been called
to his notice, and the failure to produce anything in the millions of
books catalogued in that vast collection, he considered a challenge to
the efficiency of himself and his staff of assistants. A few days later,
he acknowledged failure; but gave me the interesting information that in
tracing the broadside back to its accession he had found that it was
acquired by the Museum in the year 1865, and formed part of a bundle of
miscellaneous matter, being considered of so little importance as not
even to have been mentioned in the contents of the bundle. Printing of
the letter F of the Catalogue was completed in 1888, and since that time
an expansion of the classification of books upon the shelves had been
made, from which dated its disappearance. He would not, however,
discontinue his efforts to find it. After apologizing for giving him a
“bad half-hour,” which only the importance of the broadside excused, our
second interview ended. On my last day in London, I went again with Mr.
Stevens to call on Mr. Pollard about the matter, and told him that I had
made my arrangements to fly from London to Paris on the morrow, and
asked him if these old eyes of mine were never to behold the holy grail.
“In black-letter?” he queried, touching the weak spot in my armor. “In
duodecimo!” I countered, pointing to the rent in his own. And the third
interview ended with his assurance that the search would go on until the
missing broadside was found.
And there the matter rests, very much in the condition of the story of
the cook who asked the skipper: “Is any thing lost when you know where
it is?” And to the skipper’s gruff response, “Of course not,” he
pleasantly replied: “I am glad to know that our only iron soup kettle
wasn’t lost when it fell over-board into the Bay.”
Through the courtesy of our fellow-members, Henry Edwards Huntington,
Esquire, and the accomplished bibliographer and librarian of his
unrivaled collection of books and art, George Watson Cole, the Society
is permitted to give a reproduction from the only known copy of “The
Book of General Lawes and Libertyes concerning the Inhabitants of the
Massachusetts”—the long-lost Code of 1648. No copy or fragment of a copy
was known to be extant for over two hundred and fifty years, when, in
1906, this copy was discovered in a small private library in England,
and was sold to the late Edmund Dwight Church for the highest price ever
paid for an American printed book—a record which is not likely to be
surpassed. The almost miraculous recovery of this volume, will, I have
given my reasons to hope, sometime have a counterpart in the recovery of
the only known copy of the first work printed in the United States of
America—The Oath of a Free man. From the year 1641, this bore the
abbreviated title of the