And these, like their predecessors, were of “the best.”[885]
With them landed an illustrious trio—Hugh Peters, the younger Winthrop, and Sir Harry Vane.[886] The fiery Peters came from one exile to another; for he had been pastor of an English church at Rotterdam. He was an enlightened republican, public spirited, prodigiously energetic, and eloquent, already endowed with those high qualities which soon afterwards pushed him into prominence in the English civil war as the coadjutor of Cromwell, the jailor of Charles I., and an echoer of the regicidal verdict.[887]
During his seven years’ sojourn in New England, Hugh Peters was settled at Salem as the successor of Roger Williams.[888] At once his restless and various activity bubbled over into works of utility.[889] He was minister, he was politician, he was factotum. He saw the commercial capabilities of America, and set himself to develop them. He “went from place to place,” says Winthrop, “laboring both publicly and privately to raise men up to a public frame of spirit, and so prevailed, that he procured a good sum of money to set on foot a systematic fishing business.”[890]
The younger Winthrop was Hugh Peters’ compagnon de voyage. ’Tis related of a son of Scipio Africanus that, proving degenerate, the scoffing Romans forced him to pluck off a signet-ring which he wore, with his father’s face engraved upon it. There was no occasion for such public discipline in this case, for young Winthrop was, in Cotton Mather’s phrase, Bonus a bono, pius a pio, the son of a father like himself. After an exemplary and studious boyhood, he had followed the elder Winthrop to New England; where, dowered with the advantages of extensive travel and consummate education, he had been annually elected one of the gubernatorial assistants—an honor which was continued even when he returned to Europe for a space.[891]
He now came armed with the authority of Lord Say and the “good Lord Brooke,” the original patentees of Connecticut, to plant a new colony, of which he should be governor.[892] “But inasmuch as many good people from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth had already taken possession of a part of his demesne, this courteous and godly gentleman would give them no molestation; but saying, ‘the land is broad,’ he accommodated the matter with them, and then sent a convenient number of men to erect a town and fort at the mouth of the Connecticut, which he called, after the patrons of the enterprise, Say-brook. By this happy action, the planters farther up the river had no small kindness done them; while the Indians, who might else have been even more troublesome than they soon proved, were kept in some awe.”[893]
Winthrop was one of the few early Pilgrims who had been graduated at a university, yet was not won to lay aside his layman garb for the clerical robe. “It is a singular fact,” observes Elliot, “that, possessed as he was of scholarly and scientific tastes, he took hold resolutely of the material life of his plantation at Saybrook, and worked to shape it well, as the base of the superior structure which he meant to rear upon it. He appreciated what scholars and idealists are prone to forget, the prime value of a good material foundation. For many years he was chosen governor of the colony, and in that position he gave universal satisfaction. For his vices and his enemies, if he had either, they are forgotten.
“He was too large a man to engage in the persecution of the Quakers, which he always opposed; and if he believed in witchcraft, a rank superstition at that time common, it was as a query, not as a fact. His leisure hours were devoted to science; and his contributions to the old ‘Royal Society of London,’ of which he was an early member, were highly valued. Indeed, Boyle and other scientific scholars at one period had a plan for joining their fellow-student in the New World, for the purpose of pushing their investigations of natural knowledge.”[894]
The last member of this famous group, Sir Harry Vane junior, was at this time but twenty-three,[895] and he came out much against the wishes of a father who stood as high in the confidence of the queen of England as Strafford did in the affections of the king.[896] “Let him go,” said Charles to the perturbed courtier, when he learned that Harry had turned Puritan and proposed to emigrate—“Let him go; my word for’t, he’ll soon sicken on’t and be back, if you give him consent to remain in those parts for three years.”[897]
So the devout boy embarked. On reaching Boston, he was saluted with enthusiasm. His high birth, his sacrifices, his Puritanism, his splendid talents, every thing about him, served to enlist the sober Pilgrims in his favor; and this effect was heightened by his personal beauty, singular learning, and ingratiating manners.[898] As the Bostonians knew him better they liked him better; soon he was the most popular man in the colony; and in 1636 he was elected to fill the gubernatorial chair—elected over the heads of Winthrop, and Dudley, and the elders of our Israel, which they might and did look upon as a freak of democratic strategy quite superfluous.[899]