DOROTHY QUINCY, FROM A PORTRAIT BY COPLEY Frontispiece CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH ST. BOTOLPH'S CHURCH, BOSTON, ENGLAND JOHN COTTON'S VICARAGE REV. JOHN COTTON COTTON CHAPEL, ST. BOTOLPH'S, BOSTON, ENGLAND SIR HARRY VANE, FROM AN OLD MINIATURE SIR HARRY VANE'S HOUSE, STILL STANDING IN HAMPSTEAD, FORT LA TOUR (OR ST. JEAN), ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK, 4 12 18 40 43 56 60 66 72 102 THE WELLS - ADAMS HOUSE, ON SALEM STREET, WHERE THE BAPTISTS HELD SECRET MEETINGS. SIR RICHARD SALTONSTALL GOVERNOR SIMON BRADSTREET INCREASE MATHER HOUSE OF COTTON MATHER, WHICH STOOD AT WHAT IS NOW 298 HANOVER STREET 172 206 COVER AND TITLE-PAGE OF JOHN HARVARD'S BOOK. DURING THE PRESIDENCY OF JOHN LEVERETT GOVERNOR JOSEPH DUDLEY THE DEANE WINTHROP HOUSE, WINTHROP 225 230 THE PROVINCE HOUSE THE ORIGINAL KING'S CHAPEL AND THE KING'S CHAPEL OF TO-DAY. 298 GOVERNOR WILLIAM BURNET. 303 THE MATHER TOMB IN THE COPP'S HILL BURYING GROUND 310 GOVERNOR SHIRLEY'S HOUSE, ROXBURY THE CLARKE HOUSE, PURCHASED BY SIR HARRY FRANK ST. BOTOLPH'S I AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING To Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the intimate friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and a man of much more than common interest in the history of Elizabethan England, is due the credit of the first enduring settlement in the environs of Boston. John Smith had skirted the coast of New England and looked with some care into Boston Harbour before Gorges came; Miles Standish had pushed up from Plymouth to trade with the Indians of this section; and Thomas Weston, soldier of fortune, had established a temporary trading-post in what is now Weymouth. But it remained for Gorges and his son Robert to plant firmly upon our shores the standard of England and to reiterate that that was the country to which, by virtue of the Cabots, those shores rightly belonged. The Cabots, to be sure, had come a century and a quarter before and, since their time, explorers of several other nations had ventured to the new world - one of them even going so far as to carve his name upon the continent. But an English king had fitted out the "carvels " of John and Sebastian Cabot; and English kings were not in the habit of forgetting incidents of that sort. The letter in which Sebastian Cabot relates the story of those Bristol vessels is very quaint and interesting. "When my father," he writes, "departed from Venice many yeers since to dwell in England, to follow the trade of merchandizes, he took me with him to the city of London, while I was very yong, yet having, nevertheless, some knowledge of letters, of humanity and of the Sphere. And when my father died in that time when news was brought that Don Christofer Colonus Genuse [Columbus] had discovered the coasts of India whereof was great talke in all the court of King Henry the Seventh, who then raigned, inso much that all men with great admiration affirmed it to be a thing more divine than humane, to sail by the West into the East where spices growe, by a way that was never known before; by this fame and report there increased in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing. And, understanding by reason of the Sphere, that if I should saile by way of the Northwest winde, I should by a shorter track come into India, I thereupon caused the king to be advertised of my devise, who immediately commanded two Carvels to bee furnished with all things appertaining to the voiage, which was, as farre as I remember, in the yeere 1496, in the beginning of Sommer. "I began therefore to saile toward the Northwest, not thinking to find any other land than that of Cathay, and from thence to turn toward India, but after certaine dayes I found that the land ranne towards the North, which was to me a great displeasure. Nevertheless, sailing along the coast to see if I could find any gulfe that turned, I found the land still continuing to the 56 deg. under our pole. And seeing that there the coast turned toward the East, despairing to find the passage, I turned back again, and sailed down by the coast of that land towards the Equinoctiall (ever with intent to find the said passage to India) and came to that part of this firme land which is now called Florida, where my victuals failing, I |