BOSTON NEIGHBORS.
Accounts of isolated figures are often more interesting than chapters
of general history, and biographies more attractive than state records,
because more petty details of vivid human interest can be learned; so,
in order to present clearly a picture of the social life of women in
the earliest days of New England, I give a description of a group of
women, contiguous in residence, and contemporary in life, rather than
an account of some special dame of dignity or note; and I call this
group Boston Neighbors.
If the setting of this picture would add to its interest, it is easy
to portray the little settlement. The peninsula, but half as large as
the Boston of to-day, was fringed with sea-marshes, and was crowned
with three conical hills, surmounted respectively with the windmill,
the fort, and the beacon. The champaign was simply an extended pasture
with few trees, but fine springs of water. Winding footpaths--most
interesting of roadways--connected the detached dwellings, and their
irregular outlines still show in our Boston streets. The thatched clay
houses were being replaced by better and more substantial dwellings.
William Coddington had built the first brick house.
On the main street, now Washington Street, just east of where the
Old South Church now stands, lived the dame of highest degree, and
perhaps the most beautiful personality, in this little group--Margaret
Tyndal Winthrop, the “loving faythfull yoke-fellow” of Governor John
Winthrop. She was his third wife, though he was but thirty when he
married her. He had been first married when but seventeen years old.
He writes that he was conceived by his parents to be at that age a man
in stature and understanding. This wife brought to him, and left to
him, “a large portion of outward estate,” and four little children.
Of the second wife he writes, “For her carriage towards myselfe, it
was so amiable and observant as I am not able to expresse; it had only
this inconvenience, that it made me delight in hir too much to enjoy
hir long,”--and she lived with him but a year and a day. He married
Margaret in 1618, and when she had borne five children, he left her
in 1630, and sailed to New England. She came also the following year,
and was received “with great joy” and a day of Thanksgiving. For the
remaining sixteen years of her life she had but brief separations
from her husband, and she died, as he wrote, “especially beloved of
all the country.” Her gentle love-letters to her husband, and the
simple testimony of contemporary letters of her relatives and friends,
show her to have been truly “a sweet gracious woman” who endured the
hardships of her new home, the Governor’s loss of fortune, and his
trying political experiences, with unvarying patience and “singular
virtue, modesty and piety.”
There lived at this time in Boston a woman who must have been well
known personally by Madam Winthrop, for she was a near neighbor,
living within stone’s throw of the Governor’s house, on the spot
where now stands “The Old Corner Bookstore.” This woman was Anne
Hutchinson. She came with Rev. John Cotton from Boston, England,
to Boston, New England, well respected and well beloved. She went
an outcast, hated and feared by many she left behind her in Boston.
For years her name was on every tongue, while she was under repeated
trials and examinations for heresy. In the controversy over her and
her doctrines, magistrates, ministers, women, soldiers, the common
multitude of Boston, all took part, and took sides; through the
pursuance of the controversy the government of the colony was changed.
Her special offences against doctrines were those two antiquated
“heresies,” Antinomianism and Familism, which I could hardly define if
I would. According to Winthrop they were “those two dangerous errors
that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person, and
that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification.”
Her special offences against social and religious routines were thus
related by Cotton Mather:--
At the meetings of the women which used to be called gossippings
it was her manner to carry on very pious discourses and so put the
neighborhood upon examining their spiritual estates by telling them
how far a person might go in “trouble of mind,” and being restrained
from very many evils and constrained into very many duties, by none
but a legal work upon their souls without ever coming to a saving
union with the Lord Jesus Christ, that many of them were convinced of
a very great defect in the settlement of their everlasting peace, and
acquainted more with the “Spirit of the Gospel” than ever they were
before. This mighty show and noise of devotion made the reputation of
a non-such among the people until at length under pretence of that
warrant “that the elder women are to teach the younger” she set up
weekly meetings at her house whereto three score or four score people
would report....
It was not long before it was found out that most of the errors then
crawling like vipers were hatch’d at these meetings.
So disturbed was the synod of ministers which was held early in the
controversy, that this question was at once resolved:--
That though women might meet (some few together) to pray and edify
one another, yet such a set assembly (as was then the practice in
Boston) where sixty or more did meet every week, and one woman (in a
prophetical way by resolving questions of doctrines and expounding
scripture) took upon her the whole exercise, was agreed to be
disorderly and without rule.
As I read the meagre evidences of her belief, I see that Anne
Hutchinson had a high supernatural faith which, though mystical at its
roots, aimed at being practical in its fruits; but she was critical,
tactless, and over-inquisitive, and doubtless censorious, and worst of
all she “vented her revelations,” which made her seem to many of the
Puritans the very essence of fanaticism; so she was promptly placed
on trial for heresy for “twenty-nine cursed opinions and falling into
fearful lying, with an impudent Forehead in the public assembly.” The
end of it all in that theocracy could not be uncertain. One woman,
even though her followers included Governor Sir Henry Vane, and a
hundred of the most influential men of the community, could not stop
the powerful machinery of the Puritan Church and Commonwealth, the
calm, well-planned opposition of Winthrop; and after a succession of
mortifying indignities, and unlimited petty hectoring and annoying,
she was banished. “The court put an end to her vapouring talk, and
finding no hope of reclaiming her from her scandalous, dangerous, and
enchanting extravagancies, ordered her out of the colony.”
In reading of her life, her trials, it is difficult to judge
whether--to borrow Howel’s expression--the crosier or the distaff were
most to blame in all this sad business; the preachers certainly took an
over-active part.
Of the personal appearance of this “erroneous gentlewoman” we know
nothing. I do not think, in spite of the presumptive evidence of the
marked personal beauty of her descendants, that she was a handsome
woman, else it would certainly be so stated. The author of the _Short
Story of the Rise Reigne and Ruine of the Antinomians, Familists, and
Libertines that infected the Churches of New England_ calls her “a
woman of a haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and active
spirit, and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in
understanding and judgment inferior to many women.” He also termed
her “the American Jezebel,” and so did the traveller Josselyn in his
_Account of Two Voyages to New England_; while Minister Hooker styled
her “a wretched woman.” Johnson, in his _Wonder-Working Providence_,
calls her the “masterpiece of woman’s wit.” Governor Winthrop said she
was “a woman of ready wit and bold spirit.” Cotton Mather called her a
virago, cunning, canting, and proud, but he did not know her.
We to-day can scarcely comprehend what these “double weekly
lectures” must have been to these Boston women, with their extreme
conscientiousness, their sombre religious belief, and their timid
superstition, in their hard and perhaps homesick life. The materials
for mental occupation and excitement were meagre; hence the spiritual
excitement caused by Anne Hutchinson’s prophesyings must have been to
them a fascinating religious dissipation. Many were exalted with a
supreme assurance of their salvation. Others, bewildered with spiritual
doubts, fell into deep gloom and depression; and one woman in utter
desperation attempted to commit a crime, and found therein a natural
source of relief, saying “now she was sure she should be damned.”
Into all this doubt and depression the wives--to use Cotton Mather’s
phrase--“hooked in their husbands.” So; perhaps, after all it was well
to banish the fomenter of all these troubles and bewilderments.
Still, I wonder whether Anne Hutchinson’s old neighbors and gossips did
not regret these interesting meetings, these exciting prophesyings,
when they were sternly ended. I hope they grieved for her when they
heard of her cruel death by Indian massacre; and I know they remembered
her unstinted, kindly offices in time of sickness and affliction; and
I trust they honored “her ever sober and profitable carriage,” and I
suspect some of them in their inmost hearts deplored the Protestant
Inquisition of their fathers and husbands, that caused her exile and
consequent murder by the savages.
Samuel Johnson says, “As the faculty of writing is chiefly a masculine
endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been
thrown upon women.” As the faculty of literary composition at that day
was wholly a masculine endowment, we shall never know what the Puritan
women really thought of Anne Hutchinson, and whether they threw upon
her any reproach.
We gain a slight knowledge of what Margaret Winthrop thought of all
this religious ecstasy, this bitter quarrelling, from a letter written
by her, and dated “Sad-Boston.” She says:--
Sad thoughts possess my sperits, and I cannot repulce them; wch makes
me unfit for anythinge, wondringe what the Lord meanes by all these
troubles among us. Shure I am that all shall worke to the best to them
that love God, or rather are loved of hime, I know he will bring light
out of obcurity and make his rituusnesse shine forth as clere as the
nounday; yet I find in myself an aferce spiret, and a tremblinge hart,
not so willing to submit to the will of God as I desyre. There is a
time to plant, and a time to pull up that which is planted, which I
could desyre might not be yet.
And so it would seem to us to-day that it was indeed a doubtful
beginning to tear up with such violence even flaunting weeds, lest the
tender and scattered grain, whose roots scarce held in the unfamiliar
soil, might also be uprooted and wither and die. But the colony endured
these trials, and flourished, as it did other trials, and still
prospered.
Though written expression of their feelings is lacking, we know
that the Boston neighbors gave to Anne Hutchinson that sincerest
flattery--imitation. Perhaps her fellow-prophets should not be called
imitators, but simply kindred religious spirits. The elements of
society in colonial Boston were such as plentifully to produce and
stimulate “disordered and heady persons.”
Among them was Mary Dyer, thus described by Winthrop:--
The wife of William Dyer, a milliner in the New Exchange, a very
proper and fair woman, notoriously infected with Mrs Hutchinsons
errors, and very censorious and troublesome. She being of a very proud
spirit and much addicted to revelations.
Another author called her “a comely grave woman, of a goodly personage,
and of good report.”
Some of these Boston neighbors lived to see two sad sights. Fair comely
Mary Dyer, after a decade of unmolested and peaceful revelations in
Rhode Island, returned to her early home, and persistently preached
to her old friends, and then walked through Boston streets hand in
hand with two young Quaker friends, condemned felons, to the sound of
the drums of the train band, glorying in her companionship; and then
she was set on a gallows with a halter round her neck, while her two
friends were hanged before her eyes; this was witnessed by such a
multitude that the drawbridge broke under the weight of the returning
North-enders. And six months later this very proper and fair woman
herself was hanged in Boston, to rid the commonwealth of an intolerable
plague.
A letter still exists, written by William Dyer to the Boston
magistrates to “beg affectionately the life of my deare wife.” It is
most touching, most heart-rending; it ends thus, “Yourselves have
been husbands of wife or wives, and so am I, yea to one most dearlye
beloved. Oh do not you deprive me of her, but I pray you give me her
out againe. Pitye me--I beg it with teares.”
The tears still stain this poor sorrowful, appealing letter,--a missive
so gentle, so timid, so full of affection, of grief, that I cannot now
read it unmoved and I do indeed “pitye” thee. William Dyer’s tears have
not been the only ones to fall on his beautiful, tender words.
Another interesting neighbor living where Washington Street crossed
Brattle Street was the bride, young Madam Bellingham, whose marriage
had caused such a scandal in good society in Boston. Winthrop’s account
of this affair is the best that could be given:--
The governour Mr Bellingham was married. The young gentlewoman was
ready to be contracted to a friend of his who lodged in his house, and
by his consent had proceeded so far with her, when on a sudden the
governour treated with her, and obtained her for himself. He excused
it by the strength of his affection, and that she was not absolutely
promised to the other gentleman. Two errors more he committed upon
it. 1. That he would not have his contract published where he dwelt,
contrary to the order of court. 2. That he married himself contrary to
the constant practice of the country. The great inquest prosecuted him
for breach of the order of the court, and at the court following in
the fourth month, the secretary called him to answer the prosecution.
But he not going off the bench, as the manner was, and but few of the
magistrates present, he put it off to another time, intending to speak
with him privately, and with the rest of the magistrates about the
case, and accordingly he told him the reason why he did not proceed,
viz., that being unwilling to command him publicly to go off the
bench, and yet not thinking it fit he should sit as a judge, when he
was by law to answer as an offender. This he took ill, and said he
would not go off the bench except he were commanded.
I think the young English girl, Penelope Pelham, must have been
sadly bewildered by the strange abrupt ways of the new land, by her
dictatorial elderly lover, by his autocratic and singular marriage with
her, by the attempted action of the government against him. She had
a long life thereafter, for he lived to be eighty years old, and she
survived him thirty years.
A very querulous and turbulent neighbor who lived on Milk Street was
Mistress Ann Hibbins, the wife of one of Boston’s honored citizens.
Her husband had been unsuccessful in business matters, and this “so
discomposed his wife’s spirit that she was scarce ever well settled
in her mind afterwards,” and at last was put out of the church and by
her strange carriage gave occasion to her superstitious neighbors to
charge her with being a witch. She was brought to trial for witchcraft,
convicted, sentenced, and hung upon a Thursday lecture day, in spite
of her social position, and the fact that her brother was Governor
Bellingham. She had other friends, high in authority, as her will
shows, and she had the belongings of a colonial dame, “a diamond ring,
a taffety cloke, silk gown and kirtle, pinck-colored petticoat, and
money in the deske.” Minister Beach wrote to Increase Mather in 1684:--
I have sometimes told you your famous Mr Norton once said at his own
table before Mr Wilson, Elder Penn and myself and wife who had the
honour to be his guests--that the wife of one of your magistrates, I
remember, was hanged for a witch only for having more wit than her
neighbors. It was his very expression; she having as he explained it,
unhappily guessed that two of her prosecutors, whom she saw talking
in the street were talking about her--which cost her her life,
notwithstanding all he could do to the contrary.
It would naturally be thought, from the affectionate and intense
devotion of the colonists to the school which had just become
“Harvard-Colledge,” that Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, the head-master of the
freshly established seat of learning, would be a citizen of much
esteem, and his wife a dame of as dignified carriage and honored
station as any of her Boston and Cambridge neighbors. Let us see
whether such was the case. Mr. Eaton had had much encouragement to
continue at the head of the college for life; he had been offered a
tract of five hundred acres of land, and liberal support had been
offered by the government, and he “had many scholars, the sons of
gentlemen and of others of best note in the country.” Yet when he fell
out with one of his ushers on very slight occasion, he struck the usher
and caused two more to hold the poor fellow while he beat him two
hundred stripes with a heavy walnut cudgel; and when poor Usher Briscoe
fell a-praying, in fear of dying, Master Eaton beat him further for
taking the name of God in vain. When all this cruelty was laid to him
in open court “his answers were full of pride and disdain,” and he said
he had this unvarying rule, “that he would not give over correcting
till he had subdued the party to his will.” And upon being questioned
about other malpractices, especially the ill and scant diet provided
by him for the students, though good board had been paid by them, he,
Adam-like, “put it off to his wife.”
Her confession of her connection with the matter is still in
existence, and proves her accomplishments as a generous and tidy
housewife about equal to his dignity and lenity as head of the college.
It is a most curious and minute document, showing what her duties were,
and the way she performed them, and also giving an interesting glimpse
of college life in those days. It reads thus:--
For their breakfast that it was not so well ordered, the flower not so
fine as it might, nor so well boiled or stirred at all times that it
was so, it was my sin of neglect, and want of care that ought to have
been in one that the Lord had intrusted with such a work.
Concerning their beef, that was allowed them, as they affirm, which
I confess had been my duty to have seen they should have had it, and
continued to have had it, because it was my husbands command; but
truly I must confess, to my shame, I cannot remember that ever they
had it nor that ever it was taken from them.
And that they had not so good or so much provision in my husbands
absence as presence, I conceive it was, because he would call
sometimes for butter or cheese when I conceived there was no need of
it; yet for as much as the scholars did otherways apprehend, I desire
to see the evil that was in the carriage of that as in the other and
to take shame to myself for it.
And that they sent down for more, when they had not enough, and the
maid should answer, if they had not, they should not. I must confess
that I have denied them cheese, when they have sent for it, and it
have been in the house, for which I shall humbly beg pardon to them,
and own the shame, and confess my sin.
And for such provoking words which my servants have given, I cannot
own them, but am sorry any such should be given in my house.
And for bad fish, they had it brought to table, I am sorry there was
that cause of offence given; I acknowledge my sin in it.... I am much
ashamed it should be in the family, and not prevented by myself or my
servants, and I humbly acknowledge my negligence in it.
And that they made their beds at any time, were my straits never so
great, I am sorry they were ever put to it.
For the Moor, his lying in Sam Hough’s sheet and pillow-bier, it hath
a truth in it; he did so at one time and it gave Sam Hough just cause
for offence; and that it was not prevented by my care and watchfulness
I desire to take the shame and the sorrow for it.
And that they eat the Moor’s crusts, and the swine and they had share
and share alike; and the Moor to have beer, and they denied it, and
if they had not enough, for my maid to answer they should not, I am
an utter stranger to these things, and know not the least foot-steps
for them so to charge me; and if my servants were guilty of such
miscarriages, had the boarders complained of it unto myself, I should
have thought it my sin, if I had not sharply removed my servants and
endeavored reform.
And for bread made of sour heated meal, though I know of but once that
it was so since I kept house, yet John Wilson affirms that it was
twice; and I am truly sorry that any of it was spent amongst them.
For beer and bread that it was denied them by me betwixt meals, truly
I do not remember, that ever I did deny it unto them; and John Wilson
will affirm that, generally, the bread and beer was free for the
boarders to go to.
And that money was demanded of them for washing the linen, tis true
that it was propounded to them but never imposed upon them.
And for their pudding being given the last day of the week without
butter or suet, and that I said, it was a miln of Manchester in old
England, its true that I did say so, and am sorry, that had any cause
of offence given them by having it so.
And for their wanting beer betwixt brewings, a week or half a week
together, I am sorry that it was so at any time, and should tremble to
have it so, were it in my hands to do again.
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.
Truly a pitiful tale of shiftless stinginess, of attempted extortion,
of ill-regulated service, and of overworked housewifery as well.
The Reverend Mr. Eaton did not escape punishment for his sins. After
much obstinacy he “made a very solid, wise, eloquent, and serious
confession, condemning himself in all particulars.” The court, with
Winthrop at the head, bore lightly upon him after this confession, and
yet when sentence of banishment from the college, and restriction from
teaching within the jurisdiction, was passed, and he was fined £30,
he did not give glory to God as was expected, but turned away with a
discontented look. Then the church took the matter up to discipline
him, and the schoolmaster promptly ran away, leaving debts of a
thousand pounds.
The last scene in the life of Mrs. Eaton may be given in Winthrop’s
words:--
Mr. Nathaniel Eaton being come to Virginia, took upon him to be a
minister there, but was given up to extreme pride and sensuality,
being usually drunken, as the custom is there. He sent for his wife
and children. Her friends here persuaded her to stay awhile, but she
went, notwithstanding, and the vessel was never heard of after.
So you see she had friends and neighbors who wished her to remain in
New England with them, and who may have loved her in spite of the sour
bread, and scant beer, and bad fish, that she doled out to the college
students.
There was one visitor who flashed upon this chill New England scene
like a brilliant tropical bird; with all the subtle fascination of
a foreigner; speaking a strange language; believing a wicked Popish
faith; and englamoured with the romance of past adventure, with the
excitement of incipient war. This was Madam La Tour, the young wife
of one of the rival French governors of Acadia. The relations of
Massachusetts, of Boston town, to the quarrels of these two ambitious
and unscrupulous Frenchmen, La Tour and D’Aulnay, form one of the most
curious and interesting episodes in the history of the colony.
Many unpleasant and harassing complications and annoyances had arisen
between the French and English colonists, in the more northern
plantations, when, in 1643, in June, Governor La Tour surprised his
English neighbors by landing in Boston “with two friars and two women
sent to wait upon La Tour His Lady”--and strange sights they truly
were in Boston. He came ashore at Governor Winthrop’s garden (now Fort
Winthrop), and his arrival was heralded by a frightened woman, one Mrs.
Gibbons, who chanced to be sailing in the bay, and saw the approach
of the French boat, and hastened to warn the Governor. Perhaps Mrs.
Gibbons had a premonitory warning of the twenty-five hundred pounds
her husband was to lose at a later date through his confidence in
the persuasive Frenchman. Governor and Madam Winthrop and their two
sons and a daughter-in-law were sitting in the Governor’s garden in
the summer sunshine, and though thoroughly surprised, they greeted
the unexpected visitor, La Tour, with civilities, and escorted him
to Boston town, not without some internal tremors and much deep
mortification of the Governor when he thought of the weakness and
poverty of Boston, with Castle Island deserted, as was plainly shown to
the foreigner by the lack of any response to his salute of guns; and
the inference was quick to come that the Frenchman “might have spoiled
Boston.”
But La Tour’s visit was most friendly; all he wished was free mercature
and the coöperation of the English colony. And he desired to land
his men for a short time, that they might refresh themselves after
their long voyage; “so they landed in small companies that our women
might not be affrighted with them.” And the Governor dined the French
officers, and the New England warriors of the train-band entertained
the visiting Gallic soldiers, and they exercised and trained before
each other, all in true Boston hospitable fashion, as is the custom
to this day. And the Governor bourgeoned with as much of an air of
importance as possible, “being regularly attended with a good guard of
halberts and musketeers;” and thus tried to live down the undignified
heralding of a fellow-governor by a badly scared woman neighbor. And
the cunning Frenchman, as did another of his race, “with sugared
words sought to addulce all matters.” He flattered the sober Boston
magistrates, and praised everything about the Boston army, and “showed
much admiration professing he could not have believed it, if he had
not seen it.” And the foreigners were so well treated (though Winthrop
was blamed afterwards by stern Endicott and the Rome-hating ministers)
that they came again the following summer, when La Tour asked material
assistance. He received it, and he lingered till autumn, and barely
eight days after he left, Madam La Tour landed in Boston from London;
and strange and sad must the little town have seemed to her after her
past life. She was in a state of much anger, and at once brought suit
against the master of the ship for not carrying her and her belongings
to the promised harbor in Acadia; for trading on the way until she
nearly fell into the hands of her husband’s enemy, D’Aulnay. The
merchants of Charlestown and Salem sided with the ship’s captain. The
solid men of Boston gallantly upheld and assisted the lady. The jury
awarded her two thousand pounds damages, and bitterly did one of the
jury--Governor Winthrop’s son--suffer for it, for he was afterwards
arrested in London, and had to give bond for four thousand pounds to
answer to a suit in the Court of Admiralty about the Boston decision in
favor of the Lady La Tour.
In the mean time ambassadors from the rival Acadian governor,
D’Aulnay, arrived in New England, and were treated with much honor
and consideration by the diplomatic Boston magistrates. I think I can
read between the lines that the Bostonians really liked La Tour, who
must have had much personal attraction and magnetism; but they feared
D’Aulnay, who had brought against the Massachusetts government a claim
of eight thousand pounds damages. The Governor sent to D’Aulnay a
propitiatory gift of “a very fair new sedan chair (of no use to us),”
and I should fancy scarcely of much more use in Acadia; and which
proved a very cheap way of staving off paying the eight thousand pounds.
Madam La Tour sailed off at last with three laden ships to her husband,
in spite of D’Aulnay’s dictum that “she was known to be the cause of
all her husband’s contempt and rebellion, and therefore they could not
let her go to him.” La Tour’s stronghold was captured shortly after
“by assault and scalado” when he was absent, and his jewels, plate,
and furniture to the amount of ten thousand pounds were seized, and
his wife too; and she died in three weeks, of a broken heart, and “her
little child and gentlewomen were sent to France.”
I think these Boston neighbors were entitled to a little harmless
though exciting gossip two or three years later, when they learned that
after D’Aulnay’s death the fascinating widower La Tour had promptly
married Widow D’Aulnay, thus regaining his jewels and plate, and both
had settled down to a long and peaceful life in Nova Scotia.