treaty with the English. Had he failed, the history of the Pequot War might have had a very different reading. Time brings its revenges. Williams banished, fleeing from the oppression of those who now so earnestly besought his help, was become their mediator and their savior.

Notwithstanding they had been baffled in their purpose of effecting at least a truce with the Narragansetts, the Pequots continued their efforts to destroy the settlements at Saybrook and at Wethersfield. Intercourse between the plantations was almost cut off by roving bands of the enemy.

In the following spring the loyal Narragansetts took the field against the Pequots, inflicting some losses upon them. In May the settlements on the Connecticut held a general court at Hartford, at which war was formally declared against the Pequots. Ninety men were enrolled under the orders of Captain John Mason. Eighty Mohegan warriors were also joined to this force. Massachusetts Colony had previously sent a few men to Saybrook under command of Captain Underhill. Plymouth did not co-operate in the war when invited by Massachusetts to do so. She had been the first established on the Connecticut, and felt herself badly treated in that quarter by her more powerful neighbor.

With these forces Mason proceeded by water to Narragansett Bay, where he was well received by Miantonomoh, who furnished a reinforcement of four hundred warriors. Mason then began his march for the Pequot stronghold at Mystic. He arrived before the fort on the night of the 26th of May. The Pequots, deceived by Mason's long détour, when they had expected him to land in the Thames, were lulled in fatal security. They had passed half the night in joyous festivity, and were now stretched upon their mats in deep slumber.

Mason formed his men by the light of a splendid moon, and gave the order to advance with caution. When the English had reached the foot of the hill, on the summit of which the fort was situated, they perceived that their Indian allies had deserted them. Nothing daunted, Mason gave the final signal, when the English rushed on to the assault. A horrible scene of carnage ensued, the English being, as Underhill says, "bereaved of pity.” When it was over the power of the Pequots was forever broken. Between six and seven hundred perished by fire and sword. The conquerors took only seven prisoners. But two Englishmen were killed. The surprise was complete; the slaughter horrible.

Before Mason marched from Narragansett Captain Daniel Patrick of Watertown notified him of his arrival, with forty Massachusetts soldiers, at Roger Williams's plantation. Mason marched without him. Patrick afterwards joined Mason at Pequot harbor, and moved with him to Saybrook. These forty men were part of two hundred which Massachusetts was levying for the war. The emergency having thus happily passed, a day of thanksgiving was kept throughout Massachusetts for the signal victory over the Indian enemy. Captain Israel Stoughton of Dorchester was then despatched, with a hundred and twenty additional soldiers, for the scene of action. In conjunction with the other troops, he captured or destroyed the remnant of this once dreaded nation. The Pequot women and children were parcelled out among the conquerors as servants, Stoughton himself stipulating for the fairest one he saw among them. Thus the war which began with a fatal blunder ended gloriously for the English arms. Connecticut was saved; Plymouth and Massachusetts had forty years in which to prepare for their deadly struggle with the Narragansetts.

WHILE the war which threatened to decide the very existence of the English was progressing, the government, ministers, elders, and people of Boston were engaged in a bitter wrangle over questions of religious opinion, - questions that now astound us to think they could ever cause serious division. The other plantations were more or less affected what is known as the Antinomian controversy, but Boston was the hotbed, the centre, of this extraordinary affair. Here the entire community was arrayed in two factions; a state of anarchy, almost impossible to describe, prevailed. Universal madness seems to have seized upon the whole people. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson and Rev. John Wheelwright led the crusade against the Old Theology. In Boston public opinion was so excited that the General Court-and, later, an ecclesiastical council for the examination of the new heretical doctrines and their advocates — was held at Newtown; the public stores of arms were also removed from Boston to Roxbury and Newtown as a measure of precaution. Both Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheelwright were banished, the former going to Rhode Island, the latter to what is now Exeter, N. H., of which he was the founder. Wheelwright appealed to the king's majesty, but his judges refused to entertain his appeal. Many persons of note and condition were disfranchised, a large number disarmed; and some very worthy citizens left the colony in disgust, never to return. Among them may be mentioned Coggeshall and Coddington, both of whom became honorably identified with the early history of Rhode Island.

duced something like open rupture between them. Each represented a faction bitterly hostile to the other. The struggle for the control of this court resulted in the defeat of Vane and his friends, who attempted to obtain a revocation of Wheelwright's sentence without success. Party spirit ran so high that it is related of Rev. Mr. Wilson of Boston, that he harangued the multitude from the limb of a tree, the first recorded instance we find of stumpspeaking in the colony. Vane soon left Boston for England, where he became an actor in the great drama of the Civil War.

In October, 1636, during the height of the Pequot war, the court "agreed to give 400 7. towards a school or colledge whereof 200 l. to be paid the next year and 2007. when the work is finished and the next court to appoint when and what building.” This was the foundation of Harvard College. The next year, in November, 1637, while religious strife was blazing fiercely in the capital,—so fiercely that the court held its own sessions at Newtown,the college was ordered to be at that place because, as Shepard says, it was free from the contagion of Antinomian opinions. A committee consisting of Winthrop, Dudley, Bellingham, Humphrey, Harlakenden, Stoughton, Cotton, Wilson, Davenport, Welde, Shepard, and Peters was appointed to carry the order into effect. Into the hands of these twelve eminent magistrates and ministers was consigned this most important educational trust; and thus in the midst of an emergency which threatened the very existence of their structure of religious government the life of their religious seminary began.

death, in the previous year, bequeathed half his estate, which was estimated at about £1,600, and his library of three hundred volumes to it. The next year the ferry at Charlestown was granted to the college.

The example of the pious Harvard bore immediate fruit. His bequest was followed by one of £200 from the magistrates for the library, and by donations of smaller sums from others. The desire to help forward the enterprise was thus communicated to the people. Those who had money to give, gave it; and those who had not, sent sheep, cotton cloth, pewter flagons, and such articles as they supposed might be of use or convertible into money. Such gifts as a fruit-dish, a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, a sugar-spoon, and a small trencher-salt, which the records faithfully preserve in connection with the names of the givers, may perhaps excite a smile, but cannot be otherwise regarded than as constituting one of the most interesting pages in the annals of the university,-one which presents in the strongest light the contrast between its humble origin, when beginning its high mission, and its commanding attitude of to-day. The more lowly that origin, the grander the development; the more obstacles to be surmounted, the greater the achievement in overcoming them.

Notwithstanding these evidences of public and private favor, the college was, at the outset of its career, singularly unfortunate in its first master. The choice fell upon Nathaniel Eaton, a member of the church at Cambridge, who was also intrusted with the receipt of donations and superintendence of the building to be erected. By a vote of the town, May 11, 1638, two and two-thirds acres of land were set aside "to the town's use forever, for a public school or college; and to the use of Mr. Nathaniel Eaton" as long as he should be employed in that work. This tract, though not directly conveyed to the colony, is considered to be the town's contribution to the college, and its recognition of the act fixing its location at Cambridge. Holworthy, Stoughton, and Hollis are supposed to stand on the ground originally conveyed. The colony subsequently granted Eaton five hundred acres of land, to be confirmed if he continued in his appointment for life.

So far from justifying the trust reposed in him, Eaton was brought before the General Court, in 1639 on the charge of assaulting and cruelly beating Nathaniel Briscoe, his usher, " with a walnut

tree plant, big enough to have killed a horse, and a yard in length." The examination further showed Eaton and his wife to be guilty of gross cruelty and neglect towards the students under their charge. Its disclosures concerning the preparation of food for the scholars are revolting, and difficult to believe. Eaton was heavily fined, and debarred from exercising his calling within the jurisdiction. It excites a smile to read that after being sentenced Eaton greatly disappointed, surprised, and pained his judges by not breaking out in praises to God for the magnanimity and justice of the verdict.

The church of Cambridge now proposed to take Eaton in hand, but before it could "deal with him" he ran away, first to Piscataqua, where he was again apprehended, but by a clever ruse escaped to a ship bound for Virginia,- and finally reached England, leaving his debts in the colony, unpaid. The church then cast him out.

After the dismissal of Eaton his functions were transferred to Samuel Shepard, by whom they were performed until the appointment, in August, 1640, of Henry Dunster, with the title of President of the college. Dunster is mentioned by Lechford (probably in 1641) as having a class of about twenty young men.

In 1642 a government for the college was organized. It was composed of the governor, deputy-governor, and magistrates, together with the ministers of the six next adjacent towns, who with the president constituted a corporation for, regulating its affairs. At a public commencement this year nine young gentlemen received the de-. gree of Bachelor of Arts. Hutchinson says most of them went to England soon afterward. Several became celebrated; George Downing, soldier, negotiator, traitor, and Rev. William Hubbard, min-. ister and historian, are the most eminent. The thesis of the first class of graduates may be found in New England's First Fruits, printed in London in 1643.

The next year, 1643, the college organization was further perfected by the choice of Herbert Pelham to be its treasurer, and by the adoption of a seal having for its device three open books on the pages of which was the word "Veritas." Harvard continued to be an object of attention throughout the New England colonies. The commissioners of the confederacy urged their constituents to aid it by voluntary offerings. Connecticut 1 Winthrop's Journal, I. p. 372.

made contributions of money and produce, and may be considered to have acquired a title to some share in the fame of the university. Seven years later the government of the college was made a corporate body, and received a charter, under the colony seal, which remained in force until the colony charter was itself vacated.

The building first erected was of wood. Edward Johnson quaintly says it was "thought by some to be too gorgeous for a wilderness, and yet too mean in others' apprehensions for a college." He says, further, that it had a fine hall, comfortable studies, and a good library. When he wrote, it was being enlarged by the purchase of some neighboring houses. The author of New Eugland's First Fruits, published in London in 1643, whose account precedes that of Johnson, describes the college building in much the same terms; mentioning in addition that a fair grammar school stood by its side in which young scholars were prepared to enter the college by Master (Elijah) Corlett. Not long after Johnson's account was written, the subject of Indian education being revived, a brick building of two stories was erected in 1665, near the college, chiefly at the cost of the Society for Propagating the Gospel. Master Corlett seems also to have had charge of this Indian school, which, however, never realized the hopes of its founders that it would prove instrumental in diffusing knowledge among the aborigines. The number of pupils was never large, and the name of only one Indian stands on the list of college graduates. The well-wishers and active promoters of the enterprise, among whom Eliot and Gookin are prominent, were compelled to acknowledge the experiment a failure. The building was soon converted into a printing-office, and Green's press set up there.1

Early in 1638 Winthrop and Dudley, then in their old places of governor and deputy, went together to Concord, in order to make choice of land which had been granted them for farms. Each offered the other the first choice, and after some friendly contention about it Dudley yielded. In testimony of reconciliation they named two great stones which marked the deputy's boundary the "Two Brothers," a name which received legal sanction from the General Court.

Among others a new plantation was begun this year at what is now Sudbury, although its incorporation did not take place until the following

1 Captain Samuel Green, printer, of Cambridge, father of Bartholomew Green of Cambridge and Roston.

year. The question of boundary between Massachusetts and Plymouth now came up for the first time, and became a matter of frequent controversy. Connecticut, too, had her grievance. She wished to be independent of Massachusetts; while Massachusetts desired to retain some sort of control as the head of a confederation which she was now proposing to the other colonies.

An event of importance was the establishment by Stephen Daye, in 1639, of a printing-house at Cambridge. It is probable that its want had been seriously felt in the great increase of public and private business; but especially for the multiplication of public documents of every description, which until now had been done by professional scriveners. Thus, the first thing printed was the "Freeman's Oath," the next an almanac made by William Peirce, mariner, and the next, the Psalms "newly turned into metre." Samuel Green, the successor of Daye, is sometimes erroneously called the first printer in the colonies, but this honor belongs to Daye. Green's most important work was the Bible, translated into the Indian tongue, which issued from his press in 1661 and 1663; the New Testament being published in the first and the Old Testament in the last named year. This stupendous task of translation, on which Eliot's heart had been set since 1649, was achieved under the patronage and at the expense of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, first established in England in 1649. The Society sent over a printer to assist Green, named Marmaduke Johnson, an idle, dissolute fellow, of whom the commissioners of the United Colonies made serious complaint to his employers. A copy of the Indian Bible being presented to Charles II., to whom it was dedicated, caused the learned Baxter to declare it "such a work and fruit of a plantation as was never before presented to a king."

1 The Bay Psalm Book, as it is called, is of such excessive rarity, that copies have been sold in Boston at $1000. A copy belonging to the late George Brinley recently sold for $1200. Prince, in his Preface to the revised edition of 1758, gives the over thither, near thirty learned and pious ministers, educated in the universities of England, and from the exalted principles of Scripture purity in religious worship, they set themselves to translate the Psalms and other Scripture songs into English metre as near as possible to the inspired original. They committed this work especially to the Rev. Mr. Welde and the Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, well acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek also. They finished the Psalms in 1640, which were first printed by Mr. Daye, that year and had the honour of being the first book printed in North America, and, as far as I find in the whole new world."

following account of its origin: "By 1636, there were come