During the trouble with the Quakers Massachusetts was afflicted by a wordy controversy, imported from Connecticut, but which did not reach its culminating point till 1662. I refer to the “Half-way Covenant,” for the discussion of which a council of ministers from both colonies was called in 1657, in Boston, which pronounced in favor of the system in question. A synod of Massachusetts churches in 1662 confirmed the judgment here given, and the Half-way Covenant system prevailed extensively in New England for more than a century. After the synod was dissolved, and the result was published by order of the General Court, the discussion continued, and several tracts were issued from the Cambridge press, pro and con, in 1662, 1663, and 1664.[612] Of Morton’s New England’s Memorial mention has already been made in the preceding chapter, as it concerns chiefly the Plymouth Colony. It contains, however, many things of interest about Massachusetts; recording the death of many of her worthies, and embalming their memories in verse. It ends with the year 1668, with a notice of the death of Jonathan Mitchel, the minister of Cambridge, and of that of John Eliot, Jr., the son of the apostle, at the age of thirty-two years. There are five unpaged leaves after “finis,” containing “A Brief Chronological Table.”
There was printed in London in 1674 An Account of Two Voyages to New England, by John Josselyn, Gent., a duodecimo volume of 279 pages. This author and traveller was a brother of Henry Josselyn, of Black Point, or Scarborough, in Maine, and they are said to have been sons of Sir Thomas Josselyn, of Kent, knight. John came to New England in 1638, and landed at Noddle’s Island, and was a guest of Samuel Maverick; thence he went to Scarborough, stayed with his brother till the end of 1639, and then returned home. In 1663 he came over again, and stayed till 1671; and then went home and wrote this book. His own observations are valuable, but his history is often erroneous. He frequently cites Johnson. At the end of his book is a chronological table running back before the Christian era. His New England’s Rarities, published in 1672, giving an account of the fauna and flora of the country, has been reprinted with notes in the American Antiquarian Society’s Transactions, vol. iv., edited by Edward Tuckerman.[613]
The interest of John Ogilby’s large folio on America is almost solely a borrowed one, so far as concerns New England history, arising from the use he made of Wood, Johnson, and Gorges.[614]
The modern student will find a very interesting series of successive bulletins, as it were, of the sensations engendered by the progress of the Indian outbreak of 1675-76, known as “Philip’s War,” and of the events as they occurred, in a number of tracts, mostly of few pages, which one or more persons in Boston sent to London to be printed. They are now among the choicest rarities of a New England library.[615] It was to make an answer to one of these tracts that Increase Mather hastily put together and printed in Boston,[616] in 1676, his Brief History of the War, which was reprinted in London in the same year.[617] The year after (1677) the war closed,[618] Foster, the new Boston printer, also printed William Hubbard’s Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians, which likewise came from the London press the same year with a changed title, The Present State of New England, being a Narrative, etc.,—a book not, however, confined to Philip’s War, but going back, as the Boston title better showed, over the whole series of the conflicts with the natives.[619]
In the year 1679 it became known to the members of the General Court that the Rev. William Hubbard, of Ipswich, had compiled a History of New England, and in June of that year they ordered that the Governor and four other persons be a committee “to peruse the same,” and make return of their opinion thereof by the next session, in order “that the Court may then, as they shall then judge meet, take order for the impression thereof.” Two years afterward, in October, the Court thankfully acknowledged the services of Mr. Hubbard in compiling his History, and voted him fifty pounds in money, “he transcribing it fairly into a book that it may be the more easily perused.” There was no further movement made for the printing of the volume. The transcript made agreeably to this order is now in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The preface and some leaves of the text are wanting. This was by far the most important history of New England which had then been written. The compiler had the benefit of Bradford’s History and Winthrop’s Journal, though, after the fashion of the time, he makes no mention of them, only acknowledging in a general way his indebtedness to “the original manuscripts of such as had the managing of those affairs under their hands.” The manuscript was first printed in 1815 by the Massachusetts Historical Society; and a second edition, “collated with the original MS.,” was printed in 1848.[620]
The history of the struggles of the colony to maintain its charter during the period immediately preceding the loss of it is largely told in the pages of its records, and in a large mass of documents published in Hutchinson’s volume of Papers, and cited in Chalmers’ Annals and in Palfrey’s New England. Reference may also be made to a paper by the present writer in vol. i. of Memorial History of Boston, on this struggle to maintain the charter.
The history of the Dudley and Andros administrations may be gathered from numerous publications which came from the press just after the Revolution; and, without mentioning their titles, I cannot do better than refer to them as published in three volumes by the Prince Society of Boston, called the Andros Tracts, edited with abundant notes by William H. Whitmore.[621] Palfrey’s History should be read in connection with these memorials. The original papers of the “Inter-charter Period” are largely wanting, though some volumes of the Massachusetts Archives are so entitled.[622]
As materials for the history of the State it should be remembered that there are many town histories which contain matter of more than mere local interest. The history of the town of Boston is in a great degree the history of the colony and State, and the several histories of that town, notably those by Caleb H. Snow (to 1825) and Samuel G. Drake (to 1770), and the Description of N. B. Shurtleff,[623] may be specially mentioned; while the recently published Memorial History of Boston, edited by Mr. Justin Winsor, is indispensable to any student who wishes to know a large part of the story of Massachusetts.[624] The History of Salem, by Dr. J. B. Felt, gives many documents of the first importance relating to the settlement of that ancient town, where the colony had its birth; and the same writer’s Customs of New England, Boston, 1853, has a distinctive value.