From other interests in St. Botolph’s you somehow keep always, or
finally, coming to the Stump, as the tower is called somewhat in the
humor of our Boston. It is not so fair within as without; that could
not be in the nature of things; and yet the interior of the tower has a
claim upon the spectator’s wonder, if not his admiration, which, so far
as I know, the interior of no other tower has. It is all treated as a
loftier room of the church, and its ceiling, a hundred and fifty feet
from the ground, is elaborately and allegorically groined. The work was
done when the whole church was restored about half a century ago, and
has not the claim of medieval whim upon the fancy. Not so much pleasure
as he might wish mingles with the marvel of the beholder, who carries a
crick in the neck away from the sight, and yet once, but not more, in a
way, it is worth while to have had the sight. Certainly this treatment
of the tower is unique; there is nothing to compare with it in Boston,
Massachusetts, and cannot be even when the interior of the Old South is
groined.
When we came out of the church, we found the weather amusing itself
as usual in England, raining with wind, then blowing without rain, and
presently, but by no means decisively, sunning without either wind or
rain. The conditions were favorable to a further exploration of the
town, which seemed to have a passion for old cannon, and for sticking
them about in all sorts of odd nooks and corners. We found one smaller
piece over a gateway, which we were forbidden by a sign-board to enter
on pain of prosecution for trespassing. There was nothing else to
prevent our entering, and we went in, to find ourselves in an alley with
nothing but a Gypsy van in it. Nothing but a Gypsy van! As if that were
not the potentiality of all manner of wild romance! Whether the alley
belonged to Gypsies, or the Gypsies had trespassed by leaving their van
in it, I shall now probably never know, but I commend the inquiry to any
reader of mine whom these pages shall inspire to repeat our pilgrimage.
[Illustration: LIFTING ITS TOWER FROM THE BRINK OF THE WITHAM]
There was no great token of genteel life in Boston, so far as we saw it,
but perhaps we did not look in the right places. There were good shops,
but not fine or large ones, and I am able to report of the intellectual
status that there are three weekly newspapers, but no dailies, which
could not be the case in any American town of fourteen thousand people.
Concerning society, I can only say that in our wanderings we came at one
point on a vast, high-walled, iron-gated garden, which looked as if it
might have society beyond it, but not being positively forbidden we did
not penetrate it. We did indeed visit the ancient grammar-school, one
of those foundations which in England were meant originally for the poor
deserving of scholarship, but which have nearly all lapsed to the more
deserving rich, careful of the contamination of the lower classes.
Being out of term the school was closed to its pupils, but we found
a contractor there removing the old stoves and putting in a system of
hot-water heating, which he said was better fitted to resist the cold
of the Boston winters. He was not a very conversable man, but so much we
screwed out of him, with the added fact that the tuition of that school
was no longer free. It came to some five guineas a year, no great sum,
but perhaps sufficient to keep the school, with the other influences,
select enough for the patronage to which it had fallen. It was a
pleasant place, with a playground before it, which in the course of
generations there must have been a good deal of schoolboy fun got out
of.
V
There remained for us now only the Guildhall to visit, and we had left
that to the last because it was the thing that had mostly brought us
to Boston. It was the scene of the trial and imprisonment of those poor
people of the region roundabout who were trying to escape from their
“dread lord,” James the First, and were arrested for this crime, and
brought to answer for it before the magistrates of the town. Their dread
lord had then lately met some ministers of their faith at Hampton Court,
and there browbeaten, if not beaten, them in argument, so that he was in
no humor to let, these people, who afterward became the Pilgrim Fathers,
get away to Holland, where there was no dread lord, or at least none of
King James’ thinking.
But no words can be so good to tell of all this as the words of Governor
Bradford in his _Historie of Plymouth Plantation_, where he says that
“ther was a large companie of them purposed to get passage at Boston in
Lincolnshire, and for that end had hired a shipe wholy to them selves, &
made agreement with the maister to be ready at a certaine day, and take
them and their goods in, at a conveniente place, wher they accordingly
would all attende in readiness. So after long waiting, & large expences,
though he kepte not day with them, yet he came at length & tooke them
in, in the night. But when he had them & their goods abord, he betrayed
them, haveing before hand complotted with the serchers & other officers
so to doe; who tooke them, and put them into open boats, & ther rifled
and ransaked them, searching them to their shirts for money, yea even
the women furder then became modestie; and then caried them back into
the towne, & made them a spectakle & wonder to the multitude, which
came flocking on all sides to behould them. Being thus first, by the
catchpoule officer, rifled, & stripte of their money, books, and much
other goods, they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers
sente to informe the lords of the Counsell of them; and so they were
comited to ward. Indeed the magistrats used them courteously, and shewed
them what favour they could; but could not deliver them till order
came from the Counsell-table. But the issue was that after a months
imprisonmente, the greatest parte were dismiste, & sent to the places
from whence they came; but 7. of the principall were still kept in
prison, and bound over to the Assises.”
My excellent “R. N.” of the _Handbook of Boston_ is anxious to have his
reader, as I in turn am anxious to have mine, distinguish between these
future Pilgrim Fathers and the gentlemen and scholars who later founded
Boston in Massachusetts Bay, and called its name after that of the town
they had dwelt in or often visited before they left the handsome keeping
of the gentler life of Lincolnshire. Such were Richard Bellingham,
Edmund Quincy, Thomas Leverett, John Cotton, Samuel Whiting, and
others, known to our colonial and national history. Not even Bradford
or Brewster, afterward dignified figures in Plymouth colony, were of the
humble band, men, women, and children, that the officers of Boston took
from their vessel. “Pathetic but splendid figures,” my brave “R. N.”
calls them, and he tells how, after a month’s jail, they were “sent home
broken men, to endure the scoffs of their neighbors and the rigors of
ecclesiastical discipline.”