Not much is known of Lady Anne Boteler, or Butler, the wife of George Fenwick. It is surmised that she died in childbed. The inscription that her monument undoubtedly bore has been so long obliterated that no record remains of it. A newer one, with the simple name and date, "Lady Fenwick, died 1648," has been cut in the perishable sandstone. Some one has also caused the cross to be chiseled there.[343] Considering the peculiar aversion with which the Puritans regarded the cross, the appearance of one on the tombstone of Lady Fenwick is suggestive of the famous prohibition of the cemetery of Saint Médard:
"De par le roi, défense à Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu."
Dr. Dwight states, as of report, that Fenwick, before his return to England, made provision for having his wife's tomb kept in repair. The sale of the title of Lords Say and Brook by him, in 1644, to Connecticut, is considered evidence as well of the existence of the design of removal alluded to as of its abandonment. After the death of Lady Fenwick her husband returned to England, and is mentioned as one of the regicide-judges. He subsequently appears with the title of "colonel," and is believed to be the same person who besieged Hume Castle, in 1650, for Cromwell. On being summoned, the governor sent his defiance in verse:
"I, William of the Wastle,
Am now in my Castle:
And aw the dogs in the town
Shanna gar me gang down."[344]
The English at Saybrook Point protected the land approach with a palisade drawn across the narrow isthmus, which very high tides overflowed and isolated from the main-land. Their corn-field was two miles distant from the fort, and skulking Pequots were always on the alert to waylay and murder them. Some of the Bay magistrates having spoken contemptuously of Indian arrows, Gardiner[345] sent them the rib of a man in which one, after passing through the body, had buried itself so that it could not be withdrawn.
Gardiner's manner of dealing with Indians was peculiar. When the expedition against the Pequots was at Saybrook Fort, distrusting Mohegan faith, he resolved to make a trial of it. He therefore called Uncas before him, and said, "You say you will help Major Mason, but I will first see it; therefore send you now twenty men to the Bass River, for there went yesternight six Indians in a canoe thither; fetch them now, dead or alive, and then you shall go with Major Mason, else not." So Uncas sent his men, who killed four and captured one, the sixth making his escape.
The old burial-ground of Saybrook is neat and well kept. Lady Fenwick's monument is just within the entrance, concealed by a clump of fir-trees. Not a quarter of the graves have stones, and that part of the ground occupied by the ancients of the village is so mounded and overcrowded that you may not avoid walking upon them. In another spot head-stones jutted above the turf at every variety of angle, and several monuments had cavities, showing where they had been robbed of leaden coats of arms—to run into bullets, perhaps. All are of ample dimensions, and on older ones creeping mosses conceal the inscriptions. The variety of color presented by slate, sandstone, or marble upon green is not unpleasing to the eye, yet those reckonings scored upon slate shall endure longest.
In the Hart inclosure repose the ashes of the once beautiful Jeannette M. M. Hart, whose slab bears the symbol of her faith. She, the fairest of all the sisters, renounced the world and, embracing the Roman faith, became a nun. Her remains were brought home from Rome, and laid to rest with the service of the Church of England. In a little separate inclosure, whispered to have been consecrated by the rite of Rome, another sister is lying. When Commodore Hull cruised in the old frigate United States, one of these beautiful girls was on board his ship. She was seen by Bolivar, who fell desperately in love with her at a ball, and became so attentive that the American officers believed they were betrothed.[346]
Saybrook was also the original site of Yale College, fifteen commencements having occurred here. The building, which was of a single story, stood about midway between fort and palisade. Its removal, in 1718, to New Haven occasioned great excitement, and the library had to be carried away under the protection of a guard. The Saybrook Platform, so called, was adopted here after the commencement of 1708. Harvard and Yale were in infancy probably not different from those Scotch universities which Dr. Johnson said were like a besieged town, where every man had a mouthful, but no man a bellyful.
The shores about Saybrook offer little that is noteworthy. On the beach the tide softly laps the incline of sand, that looks like a slab of red freestone, fine-grained and hard. A dry spot flashing beneath your tread, or perhaps a sea-bird circling above your head, attends your loiterings.