the score of too narrow room.

The territory of "the newe towne" was felt to be limited, and it seemed to be circumscribed by natural barriers which could not be set aside. The legislation of the court indicates endeavors to ease the town upon this score. Further difficulties arose respecting boundaries, but this time with Watertown, the neighbor on the west. In May, 1634, Mr. Dudley was chosen governor in place of Mr. Winthrop, and in August following the court assembled in "the newe towne," its sessions being held here consecutively till 1636, and again in 1637 and 1638. Little by little, discontent with quarters, confined for the most part, it would appear, to Mr. Hooker's company, took active form and definite direction. In May, 1634, an expedition was sent out to "Merrimack," to prospect for a "fit place" for removal. In July half a dozen men took passage in the Blessing of the Bay, the little bark which Governor Winthrop had built at “Mistick,” and had launched on the 4th of July, 1631, with the purpose of discovering the Connecticut River, and of removing the town thither. This project of removal, which had received some previous countenance from the authorities, came up in full form before the court at its session in "the newe towne" in September, and provoked much discussion. The discussion grew into "a great difference," to heal which, and to find a wise way out of the exigency, a day of humiliation was resorted to. Mr. Cotton of Boston preached; and so well was the occasion improved, that "the newe towne" people accepted of "the enlargement" which had been proposed to them, and "the fear of their removal to Connecticut was removed." "This enlargement' embraced Brookline, Brighton, and [the present] Newton. Brookline, then called Muddy River, was granted on condition that Mr. Hooker and his congregation should not remove. They did remove; and thus this grant was forfeited. But the grant of what was afterwards Brighton and Newton held good."

The removal of Mr. Hooker's company to Connecticut, which was the final result of all this agitation, was not fully accomplished until the spring of 1636; by which time a new chapter had been opened in the history of the settlement of the town, the disclosures of which were sufficiently cheering to offset in a good measure the drawback of such an important departure. This was the arrival of Mr. Shepard's company.

The Rev. Thomas Shepard was in some sense

another Hooker. He was a native of Towcester, Northamptonshire, where he was born in November, 1605. Like Hooker, he was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, took up the ministry, and encountered persecution because of his Puritanism. After a variety of truly romantic and often pathetic adventures and experiences, colored deeply with the religious hue, he turned his face towards America, and, with his wife and child, a brother, and some sixty followers and friends, arrived in Boston in the Defence, October 30, 1635. This was on a Saturday, and as to what followed we may read his own words:

"Upon Monday, Oct. 5, we came (being sent for by friends at Newtown) to them, to my brother Mr. Stone's house, and that congregation being upon their removal to Hartford at Connecticut, myself and those that came with me found many houses empty and many persons willing to sell, and here our company bought off their houses to dwell in, until we should see another place fit to remove into." 1

On the 15th of October "about sixty men, women, and little children went by land towards Connecticut, with their cows, horses [heifers] and swine," the pioneers of Mr. Hooker's company. The temporary entrance of Mr. Shepard's company ended in a permanent occupation, "partly because of the fellowship of the churches, partly because they thought their lives were short and removals to new plantations full of troubles, partly because they found sufficient for themselves." On the 1st of February, 1635-36, they organized themselves into a new church, to take the place of Mr. Hooker's. In May, the weather being settled, "Mr. Hooker . . . . and the rest of his congregation" went to Connecticut, "following those who had gone the autumn before, and completing the removal. His wife was carried in a horselitter; and they drove an hundred and sixty cattle, and fed of their milk by the way." Thus, by a very happy fitting together of circumstances, the places of the departing were immediately taken; and a population for "the newe towne" was perpetuated without interruption.

The exact reasons of Mr. Hooker and his company in taking their departure are enveloped in some obscurity. They alleged lack of sufficient accommodation, too great proximity of towns, superior advantages of the region of Connecticut, 1 Life of Shepard, as quoted by Paige.

2 Savage's Winthrop.

some others near him), in the name of their churches, gave his hand to the elder, with a short speech of their assent, and desired the peace of the Lord Jesus to be with them. Then Mr. Shepherd made an exhortation to the rest of his body, about the nature of their covenant, and to stand firm to it, and commended them to the Lord in a most heavenly prayer. Then the elder told the assembly, that they were intended to choose Mr. Shepherd for their pastor, (by the name of the brother who had exercised,) and desired the churches, that, if they had anything to except against him, they would impart it to them before the day of ordination. Then he gave the churches thanks for their assistance, and so left them to the Lord."

A pathetic incident formed the sequel to these interesting proceedings. Mrs. Shepard was lying at her house at this time in the last stages of consumption, and her reception into the new-formed church followed, as thus affectingly described in her husband's own words::

"After the day was ended, we came to her chamber, she being unable to come unto us. And because we feared her end was not far off we did solemnly ask her if she was desirous to be a member with us; which she expressing, and so entering into covenant with us, we thereupon all took her by the hand and received her as become one with us, having had full trial and experience of her faith and life before. At this time and by this means the Lord did not only show us the worth of this ordinance, but gave us a seal of his accepting of us and of his presence with us that day; for the Lord hereby filled her heart with such unspeakable joy and assurance of God's love, that she said to us she had now enough; and we were afraid her feeble body would have at that time fallen under the weight of her joy. And thus, a fortnight almost before her death unto her departure, in the midst of most bitter afflictions and anguishes, her peace continued." 1

The date of Mr. Shepard's ordination is not definitely known, but it could not have been long "after the constitution of the church; and his eminent character must have had much to do with the part the church was called to take in an important proceeding which soon followed, of which the little meeting-house on Dunster Street was the scene, and in which all the churches around were the actors. This was nothing less than a synod composed of "teaching elders" and messengers from all the 1 Sermon by Cotton Mather, quoted by Paige.

churches of New England; and the object of it was to put down the dangerous and disturbing doctrines of Mistress Anne Hutchinson.

Anne Hutchinson was the first strong-minded woman who made herself known in New England history. She had come over from England in 1634, bringing a mild and submissive husband with her. She was a woman "of a ready wit and a bold spirit." Conuecting herself with the church in Boston, she at once made herself useful by various charitable offices. Being debarred from speaking in the ordinary meetings of the church, she gathered meetings of her own, and began to teach views which conflicted with those of the church. The novelty and vigor of her utterances attracted immediate attention. Parties were formed for and against her. Some espoused her doctrines; others denounced them. Her sharp tongue spared nobody, but cut right and left. Whether in the right or in the wrong, she was a disturber of the peace, and the little town of Boston was in peril of being rent in twain.

What was to be done with Anne Hutchinson?

To obtain an answer to this question the synod was called. Newtown was selected as the place, not alone, probably, because of the piety and learning of its minister, but also because its people had not been infected with the alleged poison. The excitement in Boston had already risen to so high a pitch that it had been deemed advisable for the court to meet in Newtown, and at an election on the Common, Governor Vane, then in office, who had sided with Mrs. Hutchinson, was superseded by John Winthrop. Tradition runs that this election took place under an oak-tree on the north side of the Common, a little west of North Avenue; and that on this stormy occasion Mr. Wilson, the minister of the afflicted church in Boston, a man upwards of fifty years old at the time, climbed the tree in his zeal, for the purpose of addressing the crowd. A sermon by Mr. Shepard, on this election day, undoubtedly contributed to its issues, and the synod followed.

The synod assembled on the 30th of August, 1637. We must picture to ourselves the scene presented by the little town and its meeting-house while in possession of the council. Though not large, the council was weighty. It began with the "emptying of private passions," continued three weeks, and ended "comfortably and cheerfully." Mr. Hooker of Hartford and Mr. Bulkeley of Concord presided as moderators; Mr. Shepard

III. THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE.
1636-1638.

THE event was now to occur which was to determine "the newe towne's" destiny. The expected honor of being the capital of the colony it had lost, through no fault, however, of its own; but there was reserved for it the unexpected and higher honor of being the seat of the oldest, and what was to prove the amplest and noblest, institution of learning in the country.

On the 28th of October, 1636, the General Court had "agreed to give £400 towards a school or college, whereof £200 to be paid the next year, and £200 when the work is finished, and the next Court to appoint where and what building." The sum appropriated was equal to the whole colony tax for the year. In November, 1637, the Court selected "Newtowne" as the place for the college. And in May, 1638, the town granted two and two thirds acres of land, being the forefront of the present college yard towards the west, "for a public school or college," forever.

The foot of civilization was still struggling for a hold upon the shore of the New World; frail human life was faced and threatened by hardship, toil, and peril; fortifications remained to be completed, and roads were waiting to be opened; savage foes were in front, the seas behind, and political factions beyond the seas; but a "public school or college" there must be.

At the time of this very important action there was living at Charlestown the Rev. John Harvard, à young dissenting minister of about thirty, a graduate also of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England, who had become a freeman of the Massachusetts colony in 1637. We may suppose that he knew the way by "the path to Watertowne "

in the place itself, as well as in the project of planting a college there. For when he died, in September, 1638, it was found that he had bequeathed to the projected college the whole of his library, and the half of his other property, which latter in its entirety amounted to something like £1,500. In May, 1638, it had been ordered by the court "that Newetowne shall henceforward be called Cambridge"; and in March, 1639, the order followed, from the same authority, that the college agreed upon to be built there should be called by Harvard's name. Nothing certainly could have been more appropriate than to give the name of the university town of Old England to the university town of New England, and the name of the first benefactor of the institution to the institution itself.

Other gifts to the college followed, both of money and of books. Mr. Nathaniel Eaton had been chosen "Professor" in 1637, and to him by name, in time, was made the town grant of land. To him also was assigned the care of donations for the college and of disbursements for the building; and under him was begun the instruction of the first class in 1638. Mr. Eaton was a scholar, but he was hardly a gentleman; and he was not a success either as a teacher or an administrator. His abuses led to his ignominious discharge from office, and Rev. Henry Duuster, who succeeded him in 1640, was really the first president of the college. Under him was graduated, in 1642, the first class, of nine: "young men of good hope," who "performed their acts so as gave good proof of their proficiency in the tongues and arts." There were "Latine and Greeke Orations, and Declamations, and Hebrew Analasis, Grammaticall, Logical, and Rhetoricall of the Psalms"; and "answers and disputations in Logicall, Ethicall, Physicall, and Metaphysicall questions"; and the young men were presented by the president to the magistrates and ministers, and by him, upon their approbation, solemnly admitted unto "their degree," and "a booke of arts delivered into each of their hands, and the power given them to read lectures in the hall upon any of the arts, when they shall be thereunto called, and a liberty of studying in the library." Most of the members of the Court were present at this first Commencement, "and dined at the college with the scholars ordinary commons," reads Governor Winthrop's journal, "which was 1 New England's First Fruits.