Through it all, though Simon Bradstreet's name occurs often in the records of the Court, it is usually as asking some question intended to divert attention if possible from the more aggressive phases of the examination, and sooth the excited feelings of either side. But naturally his sympathies were chiefly with his own party, and his wife would share his convictions. There is no surprise, therefore, in finding him numbered by the Quakers as among those most bitterly against them.
It is certain that Simon Bradstreet plead for moderation, but some of the Quaker offences were such as would most deeply wound his sense of decorum, and from the Quaker standpoint he is numbered among the worst persecutors.
In "New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord," a prominent Quaker wrote: "Your high-priest, John Norton, and Simon Bradstreet, one of your magistrates, … were deeply concerned in the Blood of the Innocents and their cruel sufferings, the one as advising, the other as acting," and he writes at another: point "Simon Bradstreet, a man hardened in Blood and a cruel persecutor."
There is a curious suggestiveness in another count of the same indictment. "Simon Bradstreet and William Hathorn aforesaid were Assistant to Denison in these executions, whose Names I Record to Rot and Stink as of you all to all Generations, unto whom this shall be left as a perpetual Record of your Everlasting Shame."
William Hathorn had an unwholesome interest in all sorrow and catastrophe, the shadow of these evil days descending to the representative Nathanael Hawthorne, whose pen has touched Puritan weaknesses and Puritan strength, with a power no other has ever held, but the association was hardly more happy for Bradstreet then, than at a later day when an economical Hathorn bundled him out of his tomb to make room for his own bones.
CHAPTER XVI.
HOME AND ABROAD.
In the midst of all this agitation and confusion Anne Bradstreet pursued her quiet way, more disposed to comment on the misdoings of the Persians or Romans than on anything nearer home, though some lines in her "Dialogue between Old England and New," indicate that she followed the course of every event with an anxious and intelligent interest. In 1657, her oldest son had left for England, where he remained until 1661, and she wrote then some verses more to be commended for their motherly feeling than for any charm of expression:
UPON MY SON SAMUEL HIS GOEING FOR ENGLAND, NOVEM. 6, 1657.
Thou mighty God of Sea and Land,
I here resigne into thy hand
The Son of prayers, of vowes, of teares,
The child I stayed for many yeares.
Thou heard'st me then and gave'st him me;
Hear me again, I give him Thee.
He's mine, but more, O Lord thine own,
For sure thy Grace is on him shown.
No friend I have like Thee to trust,
For mortall helps are brittle Dust.
Preserve O Lord, from stormes and wrack,
Protect him there and bring him back;
And if thou shall spare me a space,
That I again may see his face,
Then shall I celebrate thy Praise,
And Blesse thee for't even all my Dayes.
If otherwise I goe to Rest,
Thy Will bee done, for that is best;
Perswade my heart I shall him see
Forever happefy'd with Thee.