Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

And whereas they say, that sometimes they have sent down for more meat and it hath been denied, when it have been in the house, I must confess, to my shame, that I have denied them oft, when they have sent for it, and it have been in the house.

Truly a pitiful tale of shiftless stinginess, of attempted extortion, of ill-regulated service, and of overworked housewifery as well.

The Reverend Mr. Eaton did not escape punishment for his sins. After much obstinacy he “made a very solid, wise, eloquent, and serious confession, condemning himself in all particulars.” The court, with Winthrop at the head, bore lightly upon him after this confession, and yet when sentence of banishment from the college, and restriction from teaching within the jurisdiction, was passed, and he was fined £30, he did not give glory to God as was expected, but turned away with a discontented look. Then the church took the matter up to discipline him, and the schoolmaster promptly ran away, leaving debts of a thousand pounds.

The last scene in the life of Mrs. Eaton may be given in Winthrop’s words:—

Mr. Nathaniel Eaton being come to Virginia, took upon him to be a minister there, but was given up to extreme pride and sensuality, being usually drunken, as the custom is there. He sent for his wife and children. Her friends here persuaded her to stay awhile, but she went, notwithstanding, and the vessel was never heard of after.

So you see she had friends and neighbors who wished her to remain in New England with them, and who may have loved her in spite of the sour bread, and scant beer, and bad fish, that she doled out to the college students.

There was one visitor who flashed upon this chill New England scene like a brilliant tropical bird; with all the subtle fascination of a foreigner; speaking a strange language; believing a wicked Popish faith; and englamoured with the romance of past adventure, with the excitement of incipient war. This was Madam La Tour, the young wife of one of the rival French governors of Acadia. The relations of Massachusetts, of Boston town, to the quarrels of these two ambitious and unscrupulous Frenchmen, La Tour and D’Aulnay, form one of the most curious and interesting episodes in the history of the colony.

Many unpleasant and harassing complications and annoyances had arisen between the French and English colonists, in the more northern plantations, when, in 1643, in June, Governor La Tour surprised his English neighbors by landing in Boston “with two friars and two women sent to wait upon La Tour His Lady”—and strange sights they truly were in Boston. He came ashore at Governor Winthrop’s garden (now Fort Winthrop), and his arrival was heralded by a frightened woman, one Mrs. Gibbons, who chanced to be sailing in the bay, and saw the approach of the French boat, and hastened to warn the Governor. Perhaps Mrs. Gibbons had a premonitory warning of the twenty-five hundred pounds her husband was to lose at a later date through his confidence in the persuasive Frenchman. Governor and Madam Winthrop and their two sons and a daughter-in-law were sitting in the Governor’s garden in the summer sunshine, and though thoroughly surprised, they greeted the unexpected visitor, La Tour, with civilities, and escorted him to Boston town, not without some internal tremors and much deep mortification of the Governor when he thought of the weakness and poverty of Boston, with Castle Island deserted, as was plainly shown to the foreigner by the lack of any response to his salute of guns; and the inference was quick to come that the Frenchman “might have spoiled Boston.”

But La Tour’s visit was most friendly; all he wished was free mercature and the coöperation of the English colony. And he desired to land his men for a short time, that they might refresh themselves after their long voyage; “so they landed in small companies that our women might not be affrighted with them.” And the Governor dined the French officers, and the New England warriors of the train-band entertained the visiting Gallic soldiers, and they exercised and trained before each other, all in true Boston hospitable fashion, as is the custom to this day. And the Governor bourgeoned with as much of an air of importance as possible, “being regularly attended with a good guard of halberts and musketeers;” and thus tried to live down the undignified heralding of a fellow-governor by a badly scared woman neighbor. And the cunning Frenchman, as did another of his race, “with sugared words sought to addulce all matters.” He flattered the sober Boston magistrates, and praised everything about the Boston army, and “showed much admiration professing he could not have believed it, if he had not seen it.” And the foreigners were so well treated (though Winthrop was blamed afterwards by stern Endicott and the Rome-hating ministers) that they came again the following summer, when La Tour asked material assistance. He received it, and he lingered till autumn, and barely eight days after he left, Madam La Tour landed in Boston from London; and strange and sad must the little town have seemed to her after her past life. She was in a state of much anger, and at once brought suit against the master of the ship for not carrying her and her belongings to the promised harbor in Acadia; for trading on the way until she nearly fell into the hands of her husband’s enemy, D’Aulnay. The merchants of Charlestown and Salem sided with the ship’s captain. The solid men of Boston gallantly upheld and assisted the lady. The jury awarded her two thousand pounds damages, and bitterly did one of the jury—Governor Winthrop’s son—suffer for it, for he was afterwards arrested in London, and had to give bond for four thousand pounds to answer to a suit in the Court of Admiralty about the Boston decision in favor of the Lady La Tour.

In the mean time ambassadors from the rival Acadian governor, D’Aulnay, arrived in New England, and were treated with much honor and consideration by the diplomatic Boston magistrates. I think I can read between the lines that the Bostonians really liked La Tour, who must have had much personal attraction and magnetism; but they feared D’Aulnay, who had brought against the Massachusetts government a claim of eight thousand pounds damages. The Governor sent to D’Aulnay a propitiatory gift of “a very fair new sedan chair (of no use to us),” and I should fancy scarcely of much more use in Acadia; and which proved a very cheap way of staving off paying the eight thousand pounds.