Your verie loveing friend and servant,
Jo: Endecott.
Boston, the 29th 4th mo., (June,) 1657.
During the principal part of Gov. Endecott's administration, and particularly from 1655 to 1660, the Colony, "under his prudent and equal government," made rapid progress in all things necessary to its respectability and importance. Its population and wealth rapidly increased; its trade flourished; and its foreign intercourse became every day more widely extended. Free admission was allowed to vessels of all nations, and the importations of all commodities was subject to no incumbrance or restraint. The Colony took no notice of any act respecting navigation, or other laws made in England for the regulation of trade. They were never recognized as in force here, unless required by their own legislature.
In 1658, the Court granted Gov. Endecott, "for his great service, the fourth part of Block Island." At this time he was also elected President of the body of Colonial Commissioners. He now held the double office of Governor of Massachusetts and President of the United Colonies.
His conduct towards the aborigines, that much abused and injured people, was always marked with forbearance, lenity, and mildness. To his eldest son John, the Indians in 1660 gave a tract of land, which grant he applied to the Court to confirm. The Court declined taking such power on itself; but at the same time, however, it passed the highly complimentary resolve:
The Court, "considering the many kindnesses which were shown the Indians by our honored Governor in the infancy of these Plantations, for pacifying the Indians, tending to the common good of the Planters; and in consideration of which the Indians were moved to such a gratuity unto his son, do judge meet to give the petitioner four hundred acres of land."
Though Governor Endecott removed from Salem to Boston in 1655, yet neither he nor Mrs. Endecott removed their connection with the Salem church, until November, 1664. A large and brilliant comet made its appearance on the 17th of November of this year, and continued to the 4th of February following. It was the general belief of that period, that comets were omens of great evil. One appeared just before the death of that distinguished divine, the Rev. John Cotton; and the death at this time of their aged Governor, and the troubles with which the Colony met the next year from the King's Commissioners, Hutchinson informs us, tended to confirm the people in their opinion.
We are told that "old age and the infirmities thereof coming upon him, he fell asleep in the Lord on the 15th of March, 1665," at the age of 77, "and was with great honour and solemnity interred at Boston," on the 23rd of the same month. His death was easy and tranquil. Tradition has handed down the fact, that the "Chapel Burying-Ground" was the place of his interment. But the exact spot is not now known. No stone marks the resting-place of this intrepid Father of New England.[17] Yet his name alone will ever be a monument to his memory, more enduring than marble, and as imperishable as the granite hills of his adopted country.
Gov. Endecott came to this country in 1628, at the age of 40, and died in 1665, at the age of 77. During these thirty-seven years he was nearly all the time in public life, and for about seventeen years, or nearly half the whole period, he was Governor of the Colony. He was longer at the head of the administration than any other Governor of Massachusetts.
He was a man of highly respectable natural talents, good education, a zealous Puritan, a brave man, a decided patriotic republican, a friend of learning and religion, a lover of God and his country.