NOTES:
1 ([return])
[ Milman, Lat. Christ. vii. 395.]
2 ([return])
[ Gardiner, The Puritan Revolution, p. 12.]
3 ([return])
[ Green, History of the English People, iii. 47.]
4 ([return])
[ Steele's Life of Brewster, p. 161.]
5 ([return])
[ Gardiner, Puritan Revolution, p. 50.]
6 ([return])
[ It is now 204 years since a battle has been fought in England. The last was Sedgmoor in 1685. For four centuries, since Bosworth, in 1485, the English people have lived in peace in their own homes, except for the brief episode of the Great Rebellion, and Monmouth's slight affair. This long peace, unparalleled in history, has powerfully influenced the English and American character for good. Since the Middle Ages most English warfare has been warfare at a distance, and that does not nourish the brutal passions in the way that warfare at home does. An instructive result is to be seen in the mildness of temper which characterized the conduct of our stupendous Civil War. Nothing like it was ever seen before.]
7 ([return])
[ Picton's Cromwell, pp. 61, 67; Gardiner, Puritan Revolution, p. 72.]
8 ([return])
[ Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 654.]
9 ([return])
[ C.F. Adams, Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight, p. 31.]
10 ([return])
[ The compact drawn up in the Mayflower's cabin was not, in the strict sense a constitution, which is a document defining and limiting the functions of government. Magna Charta partook of the nature of a written constitution, as far as it went, but it did not create a government.]
11 ([return])
[ See Johnston's Connecticut, p. 321, a very brilliant book.]
12 ([return])
[ See the passionate exclamation of Endicott, below, p. 190.]
13 ([return])
[ Excursions of an Evolutionist: pp. 250, 255.]
14 ([return])
[ A glimmer of light upon Gorton may be got from reading the title-page of one of his books: "AN INCORRUPTIBLE KEY, composed of the CX PSALME, wherewith you may open the Rest of the Holy Scriptures; Turning itself only according to the Composure and Art of that Lock, of the Closure and Secresie of that great Mystery of God manifest in the Flesh, but justified only by the Spirit, which it evidently openeth and revealeth, out of Fall and Resurrection, Sin and Righteousness, Ascension and Descension, Height and Depth, First and Last, Beginning and Ending, Flesh and Spirit, Wisdome and Foolishnesse, Strength and Weakness, Mortality and Immortality, Jew and Gentile, Light and Darknesse, Unity and Multiplication, Fruitfulness and Barrenness, Curse and Blessing, Man and Woman, Kingdom and Priesthood, Heaven and Earth, Allsufficiency and Deficiency, God and Man. And out of every Unity made up of twaine, it openeth that great two-leafed Gate, which is the sole Entrie into the City of God, of New Jerusalem, into which none but the King of glory can enter; and as that Porter openeth the Doore of the Sheepfold, by which whosoever entreth is the Shepheard of the Sheep; See Isa. 45. 1. Psal. 24. 7, 8, 9, 10. John 10. 1, 2, 3; Or, (according to the Signification of the Word translated Psalme,) it is a Pruning-Knife, to lop off from the Church of Christ all superfluous Twigs of earthly and carnal Commandments, Leviticall Services or Ministery, and fading and vanishing Priests, or Ministers, who are taken away and cease, and are not established and confirmed by Death, as holding no Correspondency with the princely Dignity, Office, and Ministry of our Melchisedek, who is the only Minister and Ministry of the Sanctuary, and of that true Tabernacle which the Lord pitcht, and not Man. For it supplants the Old Man, and implants the New; abrogates the Old Testament or Covenant, and confirms the New, unto a thousand Generations, or in Generations forever. By Samuel Gorton, Gent., and at the time of penning hereof, in the Place of Judicature (upon Aquethneck, alias Road Island) of Providence Plantations in the Nanhyganset Bay, New England. Printed in the Yeere 1647.">[
15 ([return])
[ Father of Benedict Arnold, afterward governor of Rhode Island, and owner of the stone windmill (apparently copied from one in Chesterton, Warwickshire) which was formerly supposed by some antiquarians to be a vestige of the Northmen. Governor Benedict Arnold was great-grandfather of the traitor.]
16 ([return])
[ Gorton, Simplicitie's Defence against Seven-headed Policy, p. 88.]
17 ([return])
[ De Forest, History of the Indians of Connecticut, Hartford, 1850, p. 198.]
18 ([return])
[ Doyle, Puritan Colonies, i. 324.]
19 ([return])
[ See below, p. 222, note.]
20 ([return])
[ See my Excursions of an Evolutionist, pp. 239-242, 250-255, 286-289.]
21 ([return])
[ Gorton's life at Warwick, after all these troubles, seems to have been quiet and happy. He died in 1677 at a great age. In 1771 Dr. Ezra Stiles visited, in Providence, his last surviving disciple, born in 1691. This old man said that Gorton wrote in heaven, and none can understand his books except those who live in heaven while on earth.]
22 ([return])
[ Doyle, Puritan Colonies,: i. 369.]
23 ([return])
[ Doyle, i.: 372.]
24 ([return])
[ Milman, Latin Christianity, vii. 390.]
25 ([return])
[ Doyle, ii. 133, 134; Rhode Island Records, i. 377, 378.]
26 ([return])
[ Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, pp. 14-16; Levermore's Republic of New Haven, p. 153.]
27 ([return])
[ See my remarks above, p. 145.]
28 ([return])
[ The daring passage in the sermon is thus given in Bacon's Historical Discourses, New Haven, 1838: "Withhold not countenance, entertainment, and protection from the people of God—whom men may call fools and fanatics—if any such come to you from other countries, as from France or England, or any other place. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. Remember those that are in bonds, as bound with them. The Lord required this of Moab, saying, 'Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.' Is it objected—'But so I may expose myself to be spoiled or troubled'? He, therefore, to remove this objection, addeth, 'For the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land.' While we are attending to our duty in owning and harbouring Christ's witnesses, God will be providing for their and our safety, by destroying those that would destroy his people.">[
29 ([return])
[ Palfrey, History of New England, in. 138-140.]
30 ([return])
[ See Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, i. 80-85.]
31 ([return])
[ De Forest, History of the Indians of Connecticut, pp. 252, 257.]
32 ([return])
[ The story rests chiefly upon the statements of Hutchinson, an extremely careful and judicious writer, and not in the least what the French call a gobemouche. Goffe kept a diary which came into Hutchinson's possession, and was one of the priceless manuscripts that perished in the infamous sacking of his house by the Boston mob of August 26, 1765. What light that diary might have thrown upon the matter can never be known. Hutchinson was born in 1711, only thirty-six years after the event, so that his testimony is not so very far removed from that of a contemporary. Whalley seems to have died in Hadley shortly before 1675, and Goffe deemed it prudent to leave that neighbourhood in 1676. His letters to Increase Mather are dated from "Ebenezer," i. e., wherever in his roamings he set up his Ebenezer. One of these letters, dated September 8, 1676, shows that his Ebenezer was then set up in Hartford, where probably he died about 1679 In 1676 the arrival of Edward Randolph (see below, p. 256) renewed the peril of the regicide judge, and his sudden removal from his skilfully contrived hiding-place at Hadley might possibly have been due to his having exposed himself to recognition in the Indian fight. Possibly even the supernatural explanation might have been started, with a touch of Yankee humour, as a blind. The silence of Mather and Hubbard was no more remarkable than some of the other ingenious incidents which had so long served to conceal the existence of this sturdy and crafty man. The reasons for doubting the story are best stated by Mr. George Sheldon of Deerfield, in Hist.-Genealogical Register, October, 1874.]
33 ([return])
[ If Philip was half the diplomatist that he is represented in tradition, he never would have gone into such a war without assurance of Narragansett help. Canonchet was a far more powerful sachem than Philip, and played a more conspicuous part in the war. May we not suppose that Canonchet's desire to avenge his father's death was one of the principal incentives to the war; that Philip's attack upon Swanzey was a premature explosion; and that Canonchet then watched the course of events for a while before making up his mind whether to abandon Philip or support him?]
34 ([return])
[ A wretched little werewolf who some few years ago, being then a lad of fourteen or fifteen years, most cruelly murdered two or three young children, just to amuse himself with their dying agonies. The misdirected "humanitarianism," which in our country makes every murderer an object of popular sympathy, prevailed to save this creature from the gallows. Massachusetts has lately witnessed a similar instance of misplaced clemency in the case of a vile woman who had poisoned eight or ten persons, including some of her own children, in order to profit by their life insurance. Such instances help to explain the prolonged vitality of "Judge Lynch," and sometimes almost make one regret the days in old England when William Probert, after escaping in 1824 as "king's evidence," from the Thurtell affair, got caught and hanged within a twelvemonth for horse-stealing. Any one who wishes to study the results of allowing criminality to survive and propagate itself should read Dugdale's The Jukes; Hereditary Crime, New York, 1877.]
35 ([return])
[ Weeden, Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization, Johns Hopkins University Studies, II. viii., ix. p. 30.]
36 ([return])
[ Doyle, ii. 253.]
37 ([return])
[ Doyle, Puritan Colonies, ii. 254.]
38 ([return])
[ The quotation is from an unpublished letter of Rev. Robert Ratcliffe to the Bishop of London, cited in an able article in the Boston Herald, January 4, 1888. I have not seen the letter.]
39 ([return])
[ Doyle, Puritan Colonies, ii. 379, 380.]