It was the deacons and elders who ruled public affairs, always under direction of well-nigh supreme authority vested in the minister. There was reason for such faith in them. "The objects of much public deference were not unaware of their authority; they seldom abused it; they never forgot it. If ever men, for real worth and greatness, deserved such pre-eminence, they did; they had wisdom, great learning, great force of will, devout consecration, philanthropy, purity of life. For once in the history of the world, the sovereign places were filled by the sovereign men. They bore themselves with the air of leaderships; they had the port of philosophers, noblemen and kings. The writings of our earliest times are full of reference to the majesty of their looks, the awe inspired by their presence, the grandeur and power of their words."
New England surely owes something of her gift of "ready and commanding speech," to these early talkers, who put their whole intellectual force into a sermon, and who thought nothing of a prayer lasting for two hours and a sermon for three or even four. Nathaniel Ward, whose caustic wit spared neither himself nor the most reverend among his brethren, wrote in his "Simple Cobbler": "We have a strong weakness in New England, that when we are speaking, we know not how to conclude. We make many ends, before we make an end…. We cannot help it, though we can; which is the arch infirmity in all morality. We are so near the west pole, that our longitudes are as long as any wise man would wish and somewhat longer. I scarce know any adage more grateful than 'Grata brevitas'."
Mr. Cotton was no exception to this rule, but his hearers would not have had him shorter. It was, however, the personality of the man that carried weight and nothing that he has left for a mocking generation to wonder over gives slightest hint of reason for the spell he cast over congregations, under the cathedral towers, or in the simple meeting house in the new Boston. The one man alive, who, perhaps, has gone through his works conscientiously and hopefully, Moses Coit Tyler, writes of John Cotton's works: "These are indeed clear and cogent in reasoning; the language is well enough, but that is all. There are almost no remarkable merits in thought or style. One wanders through these vast tracts and jungles of Puritanic discourse—exposition, exhortation, logic- chopping, theological hair-splitting—and is unrewarded by a single passage of eminent force or beauty, uncheered even by the felicity of a new epithet in the objurgation of sinners, or a new tint in the landscape-painting of hell."
Hubbard wrote, while he still lived: "Mr. Cotton had such an insinuating and melting way in his preaching, that he would usually carry his very adversary captive, after the triumphant chariot of his rhetoric," but "the chariot of his rhetoric ceased to be triumphant when the master himself ceased to drive it," and we shall never know the spell of his genius. For one who had shown himself so uncompromising in action where his own beliefs were concerned, he was singularly gentle and humble. Followed from his church one day, by a specially sour and peevish fanatic, who announced to him with a frown that his ministry had become dark and flat, he replied:
"Both, brother—it may be both; let me have your prayers that it may be otherwise."
Such a nature would never revolt against the system of spiritual cross-questioning that belonged to every church, and it is easy to see how his hold on his congregation was never lost, even at the stormiest episode in his New England career.
The people flocked to hear him, and until the removal to Ipswich, there is no doubt that Anne Bradstreet and her husband met him often, and that he had his share in confirming her faith and stimulating her thought. Dudley and he remained friends to the end, and conferred often on public as well as private matters, but there are no family details save the record of the marriage in later years, which united them all more closely, than even their common suffering had done.
Health alone, or the want of it, gave sufficient reason for at least a shadow of gloom, and there were others as substantial, for fresh changes were at hand, and various circumstances had brought her family under a general criticism against which Anne Bradstreet always revolted. Minute personal criticism was the order of the day, considered an essential in holding one another in the straight path, and the New England relish for petty detail may have had its origin in this religious gossip. As usual the first trouble would seem to have arisen from envy, though undoubtedly its originator strenuously denied any such suspicion. The houses at Cambridge had gradually been made more and more comfortable, though even in the beginning, they were the rudest of structures, the roofs covered with thatch, the fire-places generally made of rough stones and the chimneys of boards plastered with clay. To shelter was the only requisite demanded, but Dudley, who desired something more, had already come under public censure, the governor and other assistants joining in the reproach that "he did not well to bestow such cost about wainscotting and adorning his house in the beginning of a plantation, both in regard to the expense, and the example."
This may have been one of the "new customs" at which poor Anne's "heart rose, for none of the company, not even excepting the governor, had come from as stately and well-ordered a home as theirs, the old castle still testifying to the love of beauty in its ancient owners." Dudley's excuse was, however, accepted, "that it was for the warmth of his house, and the charge was but little, being but clapboards nailed to the wall in the form of wainscot."
The disagreement on this question of adornment was not the only reason why a removal to Ipswich, then known as Agawam, may have seemed desirable. Dudley, who was some thirteen years older than the Governor, and whose capacity for free speech increased with every year, had criticised sharply the former's unexpected removal to Boston, and placable as Winthrop always was, a little feeling had arisen, which must have affected both families. The first open indication of Dudley's money-loving propensities had also been made a matter of discussion, and was given "in some bargains he had made with some poor members of the same congregation, to whom he had sold seven bushels and a half of corn, to receive ten for it after harvest, which the governor and some others held to be oppressing usury."